Threads of the White Web: Exposing and Contesting the Hegemony of Whiteness in Art Education

Abstract

Over the past few years, there has been an increased amount of art education scholarship that has focused on race, some of which has begun to examine Whiteness. However, many aspects of the art education field remain unexamined, allowing Whiteness to continue to operate invisibly, stealthily undermining our antiracist agenda. Using Joseph-Salisbury’s web of Whiteness as a framework and heuristic device, I explore how this web exists and works within K–12 art education through the threads of Whiteness of intellect and the Whiteness of curriculum. As a result, I propose that the web of Whiteness can be an effective tool to make visible the ways Whiteness operates within the art education field, which can subsequently prompt antiracist interventions and actions to contest it.