Teacher Education and the Enduring Significanceof ‘‘False Empathy’’

Chezare A. Warren • Bryan K. Hotchkins

Published online: 4 July 2014

� Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract The concept ‘‘False Empathy’’ posited by critical race theory luminary

Richard Delgado (Calif Law Rev 84(1):61–100, 1996) easily obscures White tea-

cher’s good intentions to be effective educators of racially, culturally, and lin-

guistically diverse students. It is argued here that critical race theory is useful for

isolating and explaining how race and racism intersect the teaching and learning

process. Thus, equipping White teacher candidates with the requisite skills needed

to become even more aware of perspectives and behaviors reflective of false

empathy. This paper explores how practicing White female teachers’ conceptions

and expressions of empathy in two separate studies suggest evidence of false

empathy. Findings demonstrate that false empathy may show up in three phases of

classroom interaction: pre-contact, contact, and post-contact. Implications and

recommendations for teacher preparation are discussed.

Keywords Empathy � Teacher education � Critical race theory � White teachers

Introduction

Early critical race theorist Richard Delgado (1996) ruminates the absence of

empathy relative to the fairness of the justice system on its darker constituents. He

ponders, ‘‘Reformers and minorities get little if any genuine empathy [emphasis

C. A. Warren (&)

Department of Teacher Education, College of Education, Michigan State University, Erickson Hall,

620 Farm Lane, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

e-mail: warren81@msu.edu

B. K. Hotchkins

Masters of Public Administration Department, University of Utah, 260 S. Central Campus Drive,

Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA

123

Urban Rev (2015) 47:266–292

DOI 10.1007/s11256-014-0292-7

added] in courts, or indeed anywhere, and can count on no one but themselves to

climb out of poverty and despair.’’ (p. 94). Delgado is confounded by the justice

system’s failure to account for the culturally specific needs of poor people and

people of color. In response to his lament, the central character of Delgado’s

counternarrative, Rodrigo, responds,

Empathy would work in a just world, one in which everyone’s experience and

social histories were roughly the same, unmarked by radical inequality. In

such a world, we would have things to trade. There would be reasons for

needing to get to know others, for understanding what they feel and need. But,

as we mentioned earlier, we don’t live in such a world. (p. 94)

Rodrigo too feels the burden of misinterpretation, having been a subject of racial

injustice. His pessimism points to a larger, systemic problem of disparities in

perspective, or points of view between members of majority and subordinated

culture groups. Ideally, empathy is theorized as the mechanism that reconciles

disparate perspectives. Yet, the dominant ideologies that shape the many policies

and practices that cumulatively manifest ‘‘radical inequality’’ in U.S. social

institutions are, at least in part, a result of the difference in the social and cultural

perspectives used to make sense of, or interpret the world around us.

The U.S.’s increasingly diverse public school population precipitates a need to

explore the significance of empathy as a professional disposition of White K-12

public school teachers. Empathy’s application is meant to minimize the personal

distress of those who are in the most need (Decety and Jackson 2004). Rodrigo’s

observation, when aptly and reasonably applied, bears relevance to how White

teachers are prepared to teach in settings where they are likely to be the racial

minority. Moreover, whiteness studies in education reminds us that these same

teachers are guided by dominant perspectives and cultural norms characteristic of

the majority White population in the U.S. (Leonardo 2002, 2009; Marx 2006; Parker

and Lynn 2002), and those not working against racism are complicit in racism

(Tatum 1997). It is likely that empathy becomes false empathy when left unexam-

ined through a critical race lens.

False empathy is understood in this paper as an individual’s tendency to think,

believe, and act as if he or she possesses more empathy than what can be personally

confirmed or validated by: (a) the beneficiaries of the empathetic response, or

(b) positive outcomes resulting from the individual’s application of empathy in

social relationships. Similarly, a core definition of empathy is borrowed from

scholarship in social psychology and social neuroscience. Decety and Lamm (2006)

contend that empathy requires that an individual is able to distinguish his or her

feelings, experience, and understanding of a circumstance from the feelings,

experience, and understanding of the same circumstance by those on the receiving

end of empathy’s application. Recognizing the difference, they argue, is central to

ensuring a truly empathetic response.

Empathy is both intellectual and emotional, but imagining the emotional state of

being of another human being is itself an intellectual act known widely as

perspective taking (Batson et al. 1997; Davis 1994; Decety and Jackson 2004).

Central to the application of empathy is the ability to engage in perspective taking,

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or adoption of the psychological point of view of another person. In student–teacher

interactions, empathy’s application is a cyclical process that includes the act of

perspective taking, using what is known about students to navigate a range of

interpersonal interactions with them, and finally attending to student feedback as

a reflexive form of perspective-taking (Warren 2013a). Teachers may negotiate the

use of empathy in interactions with students by making various personal and

professional adaptations. They do this in an effort to ultimately produce the most

favorable outcomes for the student or students involved in each interaction. False

empathy is thus viewed as the antithesis to genuine, authentic empathy.

Critical Race Theory, Empathy, and Dismantling Racism in Schools Beginning

in Teacher Education

Revealing the pernicious, covert effects of racism and whiteness for teachers begins

in preservice teacher education, and should be an ongoing priority for educators

committed to cultivating authentic empathy versus false empathy in their

professional teaching practice. Ladson-Billings (2009) asserts ‘‘It is because of

the meaning and value imputed to whiteness that CRT becomes an important

intellectual and social tool for…deconstruction of oppressive structures and

discourses, reconstruction of human agency, and construction of equitable and

socially just relations of power’’ (p. 19). Critical race theory (CRT) in education is a

tool for isolating race and racism in the teaching and learning process. It is essential

to unpack the ways race and racism inform teacher decision-making when

attempting to model for teacher candidates how commonsense practice and good

intentions easily translate into false empathy. The secondary data analysis of two

qualitative studies in this paper attempts to foreground how White teachers’

conceptions and application of empathy to their interactions with stakeholders of

color can lead to the unconscious cultivation of false empathy.

This article explores where and how false empathy shows up in the classroom

interactions of eight White female teachers with students and their families in two

urban school settings. The authors look at data through a critical race lens to unveil

the subtleties of racist ideology in teachers’ conception and application of empathy.

Evidence from the two studies corroborate Delgado’s (1996) theoretical construc-

tion of ‘‘false empathy’’. This paper builds on his ideas by unpacking the dimensions

of false empathy, specifically as they show up in the everyday interactions of

practicing classroom teachers. The article’s aim is to help teacher educators, teacher

candidates, inservice teachers, and those responsible for their professional

development better understand the subtleties of false empathy. The invisible

dimensions of false empathy’s enactment in one’s teaching practice without White

teachers really knowing it are discussed.

Moreover, good intentions to provide young people with a high quality education

does not scapegoat any one teacher, regardless of race, from negotiating interactions

that further marginalizes them. Therefore, it is the goal of this paper to provide a

language and one conceptual frame by which to gauge the effectiveness of

education practitioners’ interactions across racial, ethnic, cultural, and/or linguistic

difference. The utility of critical race theory in this context lies in how well it is used

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to expose where and how race and racism impact teaching and learning processes.

This in effect raises the likelihood that teacher education programs can proactively

respond to the issue of false empathy development in future teachers who ultimately

mean no harm to the diverse students they may teach one day. The authors develop

their understanding of false empathy by marrying Delgado’s framing to extant

literature in education that deals with issues of power, privilege, and race as well as

literature in social psychology.

Unpacking ‘‘False Empathy’’: A Conceptual Framework

The springboard for interest in empathy begins with Rodrigo’s aforesaid contention

that empathy is only possible when the racial playing field is leveled. Delgado

(1996) and his former student Rodrigo go on to grapple with the idea of ‘‘false

empathy’’ to explain the failure of liberal Whites to empathize fully, or to

understand and wholly grasp the weight of racial oppression. Rodrigo explains,

False empathy is worse than none at all, worse than indifference. It makes you

over-confident, so that you can easily harm the intended beneficiary. You are

apt to be paternalistic, thinking you know what the other really wants or needs.

You can easily substitute your own goal for hers. You visualize what you

would want if you were she, when your experiences are radically different,

and your needs are too. You can end up thinking that race is no different from

class, that blacks are just Whites who happen not to have any money right

now. (p. 94)

The different aspects of Rodrigo’s analysis of false empathy’s manifestation was

paired with existing literature and catalogued in Fig. 1. The authors draw both on

Delgado’s (1996) conception of false empathy and extant literature to construct the

figure.

The first two aspects of false empathy deal with one’s motivations1. First, false

empathy lends itself to a false consciousness, or a failure to recognize, as a person

with power and privilege, the multiple ways he or she subordinates others (Jost

1995; Matsuda 1990). Put differently, false consciousness makes one believe he or

she knows more about the plight of disadvantaged or marginalized people than he or

she actually does, and as a result, the inequality of subordinated groups maintains its

permanence. Next, false empathy is egotistical. Actions taken to help someone

simply to minimize personal distress, or because the helper knows an award is

eminent makes their application of empathy dubious, and severely inhibits authentic

altruism (Batson 1991; Batson et al. 1988). The benefits of serving others should not

be the priority for offering the service. When the empathizer’s needs become central

to the empathetic response, false empathy is likely present.

1 The conceptual framework of false empathy constructed for use in this paper flows out of interpretation

of Delgado’s (1996) work and the application of false empathy in O’Brien (2003) work. The authors then

draw on literature in the field of education to further ground the conceptual framework in relevant extant

literature.

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Third, false empathy blurs the boundaries of ally-ship. Individuals who think that

they are building cross racial relationships with others, but fail to negotiate the terms

of that relationship with the person they hope to be in relationship with, makes

unsubstantiated assumptions about what that individual needs (Bishop 2002; Reason

et al. 2005). Becoming an ally begins with an assessment of the nature of the

oppression from the perspective of the individual(s) experiencing the oppression.

Doing so helps the ally to discern the source of the distress and discomfort

experienced by the oppressed. Understanding oppression from the perspective of the

oppressed also helps the ally develop competency around the priorities of the

oppressed. Bishop (2002) and Tatum (1994) also contend it is extremely challenging

to become an ally without a thorough understanding of the actual oppression itself,

and the ally’s role in perpetuating that oppression. False empathy limits one’s ability

to do either of the aforementioned.

This leads to the last two dimensions of false empathy that likely help explain the

root of the interpersonal conflict experienced between those intending to respond

empathetically in a helping situation and the individual(s) on the receive end of

empathy’s application. False empathy characteristically represents the systematic

privileging of dominant voices and silencing of others. Critical pedagogy has long

spotlighted where and how power silences the disenfranchised in the classroom and

other educational spaces (McClaren and Kincheloe 2007). Similarly, evidence of

false empathy includes scenarios when the dominant voice, or the individual with

Reimaged "False Consciousness"

Egotistic Motivation

Boundary Blurring

Privileging and Silencing

Various Voices

Dominant Agendas

Fig. 1 Dimensions of false empathy. Note Each dimension is italicized and further defined in the text

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the majority of power or privilege in a social relationship, fails to leverage,

appreciate, esteem, and incorporate the perspective of individual(s) most impacted

by the response to the interaction. For example, many students have a significantly

small say about their academic achievement because teachers are ultimately

responsible for assigning grades and evaluating student behavior and progress. On

the contrary, decisions driven primarily by what teachers think is right with little

regard to students’ unique social and cultural differences can lead to gross

misperceptions and misinterpretations of student content knowledge and behavior.

Finally, false empathy results from the failure to strategically consider the wants,

needs, and desires of individuals most vulnerable in any given interaction, which

may point to the imposition of a larger dominant agenda in the social relationship.

The language of ‘‘dominant agenda’’ is meant to represent the primary intentions or

goals driving an individual with power or privilege to act or behave in a certain way.

The dominant agenda is a by product of a person’s self-centered belief he or she

knows what’s best for the other individual engaged in the interpersonal interaction.

For instance, one’s dominant agenda manifests as a result of what Warren (2014)

terms the ‘‘whiteness of good intentions’’. Whiteness in the teaching context

represents the unfounded, audacious, blind prerogative taken by White people to do,

act, and say what they please with little consideration of the longstanding

consequences their actions may have on historically marginalized youth and

families. This prerogative shows up as intentions to ‘‘help’’, ‘‘save’’, or ‘‘rescue’’

poor, ‘‘at-risk’’ youth. Furthermore, a plan or strategy employed to produce positive

outcomes in an interaction with underserved student populations can lead to

oppression that perpetuates what Young (2013) calls the ‘‘five faces of oppres-

sion…exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and

violence.’’ (p. 35). Privileging of certain voices while silencing those who are

most affected by poor decision-making could also be symptomatic of a dominant

agenda. Together, each of these inter-related dimensions round out the essence of

false empathy.

Other scholars explain how one’s intentions to do good work and conduct equity-

centered research in communities of color are undermined by false empathy.

O’Brien (2003) uses false empathy to explain why so many White antiracists have

difficulty building substantive relationships with individuals from the historically

marginalized people groups they are hoping to help. She argues that these

individuals walk into relationships with people of color without ever fully assessing

or inquiring about the boundaries of their ally-ship. The rejection they experience

confounds them in many cases and leads to disillusionment with antiracist activism.

The resulting conflict and discombobulation experienced by White antiracists is

evidence that their desire to help was never about the individuals they purported to

serve, but that their service was egotistical at best. Moreover, CRT has been used to

examine the limits of empathy, and thus, the reproduction of false empathy among

White people and people of color alike. Duncan (2002) argues for the utility of

‘‘reflexivity’’ in qualitative research to minimize the covert, deleterious effects of

false empathy. Duncan insists false empathy weakens researchers’ attempts to

demonstrate ‘‘care’’ and ‘‘empathy’’ in their inquiry. Avoiding forms of empathy

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that benefit, support, perpetuate, or maintain White supremacy is paramount to

doing socially just and equitable research.

Research in the field of education, but especially teacher education, is scant with

empirical examples or examinations of empathy’s conception, development, or

utility for individuals preparing to teach students of color. A robust, empirically

supported operation of teacher empathy in multicultural settings is emergent, but

still in its infancy stages. The challenge for teacher education is to combat false

empathy by helping White preservice teachers to become aware of the potential of

its manifestation in his or her future practice. One strategy to accomplish such a goal

is to expose the dimensions of false empathy in the practice of inservice White

teachers, hence the goal of this paper. To do this, the authors examine themes of

race and racism in two studies of teacher empathy. CRT is discovered to be

profoundly useful for illuminating the racialized construction of empathy and false

empathy.

Literature Review

False empathy’s relevance is felt through the racialized interactions of all teachers,

but particularly White teachers, with their Black and Latino students. This literature

review attempts to put false empathy into view by foregrounding the significance of

isolating race and racism in education, especially when preparing future teachers.

The application of empathy as a professional disposition is believed to be useful for

helping teachers at any stage deal effectively with issues of race and racism in their

professional practice. However, there is a need for them to see race clearly in the

ideologies, practices, and cultural norms of institutions of education and its agents.

Thus, the overarching goal of this section is to demonstrate the utility of CRT for

singling out race’s significance to one’s pedagogy, and as a result, for treating

threats to empathy’s full development as a professional disposition of preservice and

practicing teachers.

Interpolation of Race, Racism, and American Schooling

In his timely book Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools: Closing the

Achievement Gap in America’s Classrooms, Tyrone Howard (2010) insists that race

and culture indeed impact how teachers teach and how students learn. The data

Howard draws on suggests, like Lewis (2003), that schools are ‘‘race-making’’

institutions. That is, the social and political implications of race are made explicit in

the reality of students’ academic performance and schooling experiences. Race and

racism influence curriculum development, school funding, student–teacher interac-

tions, and various other aspects of education such as disproportionality in school

punishment (Skiba et al. 2002). Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) published a

seminal work formally introducing critical race theory to the field of education.

These scholars emphasize that, ‘‘although both class and gender can and do intersect

with race, as stand-alone variables they do not explain all of the educational

achievement differences apparent between Whites and students of color’’ (p. 51).

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Race and racism have been under-analyzed in connection to the ways schools

reproduce inequity, while the literature implicating gender and class subordination

has a longer history of being theorized in the field of education.

CRT in education takes on issues of race and racism in schools head on. Yosso

(2005) argues that CRT is useful for challenging the oppressive nature of racism and

its effects on ‘‘educational structures, practices, and discourses’’ (p. 74). CRT agrees

with Tatum’s (1997) definition of race as systemic, institutional, and widespread.

Racism is not limited to individual violent acts and people. It is ingrained and

deeply embedded within the political, social, and economic structures of American

society. CRT adds that race and racism are permanent in each of these structures as

manifested in the social and cultural norms, ideologies, and perspectives of

individuals. Tate (1997) concludes in his review of the history and utility of CRT,

that CRT is necessary for uncovering the debilitating factors of race and racism for

students of color. CRT in education examines how schools as a social institution

manufacture and perpetuate racism. These include manifestations of racism at the

global, structural level (i.e. school policy or governance), as well as instances of

racist ideology enacted at the local, interpersonal level (i.e. teacher perceptions and

beliefs).

CRT and Teacher Education

Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) begin by explicating the relevance of Derrick

Bell’s (1987) notion of property rights and its relationship to power and privilege in

the U.S. Their work names the multiple consequences of whiteness as property

rights (see Harris 1993) that include invisibly racist social constructions such as race

neutrality, objectivity, colorblindness, and meritocracy. Teacher education is easily

a property of Whiteness. Scholars agree that the practices, philosophies, and theories

most often found in teacher education tend to be conceptualized and structured in

the image of White cultural and social norms (Chapman 2011; Fasching-Varner

2009). Teacher education is doing a poor job of singling out empirically supported

strategies needed to better prepare White teachers for racially diverse school settings

(Sleeter 2001). Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) also concede the limitations of

multicultural education to be necessarily critical of race in the schooling

experiences of traditionally marginalized students. Offering a course or two of

multicultural education or diversity issues in a teacher education program will not

sufficiently prepare teacher candidates to see race critically in their practice.

Without a critical examination of race on its own across the curriculum, teacher

education will likely fail to disrupt public schools’ maintenance of White

supremacy.

Cultural deficit theories have posed significant challenges for preparing teachers

to be successful in diverse classroom environments. Solorzano’s (1997) article

argues for the abolition of cultural deficit theories and practices in teacher

education. He emphasizes that many racial stereotypes prevalent in mainstream

society are just as prevalent in teacher education. These stereotypes and pathologies

are passed on to teacher candidates through deficit-based language and instructional

frameworks. He offers CRT as useful for trying to ‘‘develop a pedagogy,

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curriculum, and research agenda that accounts for the role of race and racism in U.S.

education and [one that] works toward the elimination of racism as part of a larger

goal of eliminating all forms of subordination in education’’ (p. 7). CRT challenges

deficit orientations by foregrounding the challenges race and racism pose to

classroom teaching. Simple discussions or assumptions about empathy’s application

between White teachers and their students of color without a critical analysis of race

leaves space for false empathy to be birthed through White teachers’ good intentions

and ignorance of the specific personal experiences of ‘‘others’’ who are racially and

culturally different.

Scholars argue that teacher preparation programs are designed to perpetuate

racist instructional practices. Fasching-Varner (2009) critiques his own complicity

in perpetuating racist norms in preservice teacher education. He concludes, ‘‘In

preparing our future educators, mostly White middle-class women, we [teacher

educators] reinforce, reinscribe, and make acceptable [instructional and institu-

tional] practices that further widen the gap between white and black students in

K-12 settings.’’ (p. 825). He then calls for increased public discourse on the

problematics of race and racism, particularly in teacher preparation programs.

Chapman (2011) claims the function and structure of present-day teacher education

programs continue to reify racist ideologies. Too many teacher education programs

fail to equip teachers with the skills, perspectives, and knowledge needed to

dismantle and reframe deficit perspectives about students of color. Deficit

perspectives are caused, at least in part, by the failure of White teachers to

cultivate their ability to utilize empathy as a professional disposition (Howard

2010). Yet, too little evidence exists in the teacher education literature that explores

how empathy supports White teachers’ ability to minimize the adverse conse-

quences of deficit perspectives in their practice.

Cultivating Empathy versus False Empathy in Teacher Education

The aforementioned scholars separately emphasize the significance of perspective

both on the part of teacher educators and the future teachers they are preparing. As

was mentioned earlier in the article, the key to empathy’s expression is the ability of

one individual to adopt the perspectives of another (Decety and Jackson 2004). The

strength of a teacher’s ability to apply empathy is revealed through the accuracy of

his or her interpretation of students’ or families’ needs as evidenced by the student

feedback and/or outcomes (Warren 2013a). For White teachers to do either very well,

he or she has to be given space in teacher education to develop the skill of

empathizing with others who may be very different from them; learning how to

engage in perspective taking in cultural communities that are not their own. A

teacher education program that caters to White cultural norms as the standard for

what’s ‘‘right’’, whether through curriculum or instruction, undermines any attempts

to make teacher candidates authentically aware of racial difference as an asset to their

practice, and as a result leaves room for false empathy to develop unchallenged.

There is evidence to suggest that White teachers want to be more effective

teachers of students of color. Marx and Pennington (2003) are two White female

teacher educators who apply CRT to critique the racist assumptions and privilege

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among their White teacher education students. The researchers found that White

preservice students were generally open to talking about ‘‘taboo’’ topics such as

racism and whiteness and that they appreciated the explanatory power of CRT to

understand the various ways racism functioned in society, even when they did not

initially recognize how they were being racist in their own lives. The researchers

emphasize the importance of explicitly discussing whiteness and not shying away

from the topic though it may bring up uncomfortable moments and confounding

realizations among White teacher candidates. Their work offers new ways to talk

about race and racism with White preservice teachers that include challenging

students to read and discuss empirical research that offers tangible examples of

racial oppression. This paper is one such piece of work that directly examines the

salience of race in the work of practicing teachers. Activities such as this become

deeply personal and useful for helping White preservice teachers to see themselves

and the world around them in very different ways. These types of exercises also

function as a form of perspective taking.

Finally, it is important to note that developing the ability to empathize is not

without the threat of reifying racist social and cultural norms. Boler (1997, 1999),

Delgado (1996), and Noblit (1993) warn of the challenges applying empathy poses

when White people are unaware of their own power and privilege, especially when

interpreting the boundaries of empathy’s application. The authors are not attempting

to argue for the preparation of a more empathetic teacher workforce. This goal is

antithetical to the more pressing issue, which is, the application of empathy as a

professional tool or mechanism for producing positive student outcomes for students

historically underserved in culturally diverse urban schools. Similarly, Batson

(2009) argues that empathy can be used for good or bad purposes. What teachers do

with the knowledge they have (or think they have) about students could easily be

used to perpetuate deficit views and perspectives of youth of color, or conversely,

improve the quality of the learning experiences teachers provide. The covert

proliferation of false empathy amongst White teacher candidates when issues of

race go insufficiently addressed is at the core of the concern needing to be addressed

explicitly in teacher education.

In Sum…

This review was meant to briefly foreground the urgency of addressing race and

racism in teacher education, as well as the appropriateness of CRT to isolate race in

the teaching and learning enterprise. Doing so helps teacher candidates recognize

how race influences their social and cultural points of view. Ideally, empathy

minimizes the negative consequences of racist ideology and race or cultural

difference in student–teacher interactions. Nevertheless, attempts to help preservice

teachers cultivate empathy separate from teaching them to recognize and

proactively address the centrality of race and racism to pedagogical processes is

contradictory. The field knows far too little about the concept of false empathy and

the multiple ways it shows up in one’s professional practice. Exposing false

empathy as racialized in teachers’ harmless conceptions of empathy and discussion

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of their teaching is most useful for assisting teacher educators to better prepare

candidates to work in diverse learning contexts.

Methodology

This paper aims to spotlight various examples of false empathy based on a

secondary analysis of qualitative research data (Heaton 2000, 2008; Seale 2010).

Secondary data analysis includes reusing, ‘‘self-collected data in order to investigate

new or additional questions to those explored in the primary research…’’ (Heaton

2008, p. 35). In an effort to better comprehend under what conditions false empathy

is cultivated, reified, or perpetuated in cross cultural student–teacher interactions,

the authors reexamine data from two recent studies (see Warren 2013b, 2014).

These studies explore White female teachers’ conceptions of empathy, its

application, and its usefulness in interactions with students and families of color.

The following section will provide a brief overview of the two studies and the

analytic approach taken to investigate where and how false empathy shows up in the

professional interactions of practicing teachers.

Study One2

Warren (2014) investigated how a group of early career White female teachers

conceive of empathy, its development, and its impact on their teaching practice with

students and families of color. Individuals in the researcher’s professional network

referred eligible research participants. Four female teachers with between 2 and

3 years professional teaching experiences volunteered for participation in the study.

There were two high school teacher participants (Ms. Thompson and Ms. Terry),

one middle school teacher (Ms. Eisen), and one primary grade teacher participant

(Mrs. Foreman). Three of the teachers were Teach For America alum in their 3rd

year as charter school teachers while Mrs. Foreman was a 2nd year career-changer

teaching in a private catholic school. All four participants taught in a large

Midwestern city.

Each teacher participant also referred at least four or five of her professional

colleagues (e.g. other teachers and administrators) for interview. These individuals

were referred strictly based on the teacher participant’s confidence in her

colleague’s knowledge of the teacher participant’s professional teaching practice.

The teachers and administrators who were referred were deemed strongly capable of

discussing the teacher participant’s interactions with youth and families with great

clarity and detail. The study included a total of fifteen participants (i.e. 4 teacher

participants and 11 professional colleagues) each of whom self-selected their

participation in the study. Every teacher participant had three professional

2 The authors chose to provide abbreviated descriptions of studies one and two to save room in this paper

and to focus more on outlining the methodological approach and procedure to complete the secondary

analysis of qualitative data (Heaton 2008). Readers should refer to the citations Warren (2013b, 2014)

for a more nuanced discussion of each study’s research questions and design.

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colleagues who consented to be interviewed with the exception of Ms. Thompson,

who had two professional colleagues consent for interview of the five she referred.

Interviews were the primary data source for study one. The four teacher

participants completed one 60–90 min semi-structured, in-depth, one-on-one

interview (Glesne 2011). The women were asked to define empathy and to discuss

its significance to their practice as a function of their ability to be culturally

responsive. The teacher participants also discuss their route into teaching, the

challenges, and benefits associated with teaching as a racial minority in their

schools. Professional colleagues completed one 40–60 min structured interview

(Glesne 2011). The professional colleagues were asked to share specific examples of

each teacher participant’s teaching based on specific questions derived in reference

to indicators of culturally responsive teaching (see Gay 2010, 2013). The

professional colleagues described how each teacher participant demonstrates care

for students, whether or not the teacher’s students were academically successful,

and the ability of the teacher to connect learning to a larger social and political

awareness to name a few. The researcher constructed a complete narrative of each

teacher participant’s professional practice based on the overlapping anecdotes,

stories, and concrete examples provided by her professional colleagues. Addition-

ally, interviews with the professional colleagues also helped triangulate how the

teacher participants describe their own work and their perceptions about the utility

of empathy for producing high student outcomes.

Study Two3

This study picks up where study one leaves off. Warren (2013b) features four White

female high school teachers, Ms. Arnold, Babcock, Coleman, and Dantley, whose

professional teaching experience ranges between 6 and 15 years at the time of data

collection. Similar to study one, study two sought to examine conceptions of

empathy by practicing classroom teachers as well as better understand the utility of

empathy for negotiating cross racial student–teacher interactions. This study

included over 500 min of classroom observation for each teacher participant. The

researcher also conducted four in-depth, semi-structured interviews with each

teacher participant for a total of sixteen interviews.

The study was conducted in two high schools in the same district. The researcher

took a sampling approach similar to Ladson-Billings’ (1994) ‘‘community

sampling’’ approach. Recruitment in study two is reminiscent of Ladson-Billings

strategy to identify successful teachers of African American children through the

nominations of parents, administrators, and teachers. The teachers in study two were

selected based on recommendations by Black male students and school adminis-

trators at each high school. Focus groups were completed with Black male juniors

and seniors to generate a list of White female teachers who they believed to be

effective, knowledgeable, and personable. The student list was crosschecked with a

list provided by each high school’s principal. The administrators nominated White

female teachers who demonstrated evidence of cultural responsiveness based on

3 See #2

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three primary indicators which include: their students’ academic success, the ability

of the teacher to build strong relationships with students of color, and the likelihood

her and her class espouse a social and political awareness and commitment. The

student focus group list was ranked and teachers were recruited only if their name

appeared on both the student and administrator list, beginning with the top ranked

teacher on the student list.

Data Analysis

An amplified, supplementary analysis of the data was completed (Heaton 2000,

2008). In secondary analysis of qualitative data, amplified analyses combine ‘‘two

or more existing qualitative datasets’’ (Heaton 2008, p. 39) while a supplementary

analysis is about completing a more ‘‘in-depth analysis of an emergent issue or

aspect of the data.’’ (Heaton 2008, p. 39) The researchers aimed to reanalyze the

existing datasets to look more pointedly for evidence of the potential manifestation

of false empathy as described in the conceptual framework of false empathy laid out

in Fig. 1. To do this, the authors applied a critical race theory lens to analysis of the

qualitative data in an effort to unmask the racialized nature of empathy’s conception

and application in the two aforementioned studies.

The first phase of analysis follows DeCuir and Dixson’s (2004) admonition to use

the tenets of CRT in educational research. DeCuir and Dixson offer specific

examples for how to apply CRT as analytic lens useful for discerning the racialized

contours of everyday classroom scenarios. Hence, analyses for this project began by

scanning examples, scenarios, or interactions from the dataset used as evidence of

empathy’s conception, application, or utility in study one and two. These two sets of

data were then re-interpreted from a critical race perspective by applying concepts

from CRT which include interest convergence, the permanence of racism,

‘‘whiteness as property’’, and critiques of liberalism. The authors isolated incidences

from this data that suggest the subtlety of potentially racist or oppressive ideology

and behavior. The final selection of evidence identified as examples of false

empathy were determined based on the mutual agreement of both authors that the

selected themes suggest maintenance of White privilege and/or Whiteness.

Interactions are conceptualized here simply as the professional context for

contact between teachers and their constituents (i.e. students and parents). Warren

(2013a) describes three interaction types: academic, behavioral, and social/

relational. Each interaction type is differentiated by its intended outcome (p. 9).

Interactions encompass physical exchanges between students and families, but it

also accounts for the range of professional tasks teachers complete in preparation for

the physical exchange and responding to the needs of student and parents following

the physical exchange. Each interaction has antecedents and outcomes that are

directly tied to the nature and purpose of the interaction type.

Finally, three phases of classroom interaction were used to code the examples of

false empathy. The general act of empathizing with another person includes:

(a) encountering a condition; (b) then, interpreting what the needs of the person are

as to alleviate the distress associated with the condition; and (c) the act(s) of

responding to the person’s need based on that interpretation (Davis 1994; Stueber

278 Urban Rev (2015) 47:266–292

123

2006). These three phases were loosely paired to Davis’ (1994) organizational

model of empathy’s expression. Pre-contact is the space and time just before a

physical exchange. Teachers are making all sorts of decisions about what they think

is best for students (encountering) in this phase. Contact refers to the set of

instructional decisions during a physical exchange or interface with students and/or

families (interpretation). Teachers’ decisions are informed by interpretation of the

physical circumstance and their intentions for the outcomes of the interaction. Post-

contact happens following the physical exchange (responding). This is the phase

when teachers respond to what they know (or think they know/understand) about

what students need.

Findings

False empathy is a state of mind that ultimately places the needs, desires, and points

of view of the empathizer above those needs, desires, and points of view of the

intended beneficiary of an empathetic response. Each of the eight teachers in the two

studies thought of themselves as empathetic individuals. The women also believed

that empathy was a necessary disposition for teaching Black children, and Black

males more specifically. Table 1 provides snapshots of specific orientations,

perspectives, and ideologies that lend themselves to the concept of false empathy.

As previously described, these moments were selected based on the salience of race

in their development. In this section, the authors will describe data suggesting

evidence of false empathy from study one, study two, and overlapping themes from

both studies.

The examples offered in each phase represent social and/or cultural perspectives

teachers hold that inform some aspect of their decision-making, behavior, or

instructional approach with the students and families of color they serve. Findings

recorded in the pre-contact phase are teachers’ ideologies or points of view likely

formed as a result of early experiences or exposure with cultural groups different

from their own, personal or otherwise. The examples of false empathy in the pre-

contact phase represent ill-informed perceptions, inferences, notions, or stereotypes

about what students of color need prior to much meaningful engagement with them

or the cultural communities they represent. These scenarios also represent beliefs

about people of color that minimize their cultural strengths and assets.

Examples documented in the contact phase represent teachers’ conflicted sense

making around what she believes and/or the habits she has formed over time, and

how she should act or carry out her practice. These intellectual, social, and moral

frames of reference that misalign from stakeholders in a way that most immediately

disadvantages students and families when the teacher is negotiating aspects of the

physical exchange (e.g. leading a classroom instruction).

Data in the post-contact phase sit at the core of a teachers’ instructional

orientation. The teacher’s behavior in this phase is largely based on misinformed

perceptions of culture. These are judgments derived from physical interaction with

individual students and families, or the lack thereof. Similar to data coded in the

contact phase, these examples of false empathy fail to consider student and families’

Urban Rev (2015) 47:266–292 279

123

Table

1O

ver

vie

wof

exam

ple

sof

fals

eem

pat

hy

from

study

1an

d2

inth

ree

phas

esof

clas

sroom

inte

ract

ion

Pre

-co

nta

ct

En

coun

teri

ng

Co

nta

ct

Inte

rpre

tin

g

Po

st-c

onta

ct

Res

pon

din

g

Stu

dy

1T

each

erpar

tici

pan

tsen

tere

dte

achin

gto

‘‘hel

p’’

kid

s,as

a

mat

ter

of

‘‘so

cial

just

ice’

’,an

dto

liv

e‘‘

mo

re

pro

foundly

thro

ugh

educa

tion’’

Ter

ry’s

‘‘cl

ear

agen

da

teac

hin

g’’

Eis

en‘‘

I’m

[alw

ays]

rig

ht’’

com

ple

x

Fo

rem

anin

sist

ence

on

‘‘fi

xin

g’’

stu

den

tsan

dfa

mil

ies

Th

om

pso

n’s

to‘‘

feel

’’o

r‘‘

no

tto

feel

’’

con

und

rum

bec

ause

sch

ool

isn

ot

abo

ut

cult

ure

Stu

dy

2T

each

erp

arti

cip

ants

ten

dto

nam

en

egat

ive

or

adv

erse

circ

um

stan

ces

asth

eo

nly

form

so

fli

feex

per

ien

ces

they

par

alle

lto

thei

rst

ud

ents

;T

hey

rare

lyci

ted

po

siti

ve

life

exp

erie

nce

sth

ing

so

rsi

tuat

ion

so

ver

lapp

ing

wit

h

stud

ents

’li

feex

per

ience

s

Bab

cock

’su

seo

fR

ub

yP

ayn

e’s

(19

96)

tofr

ame

her

un

der

stan

din

go

fp

oo

rch

ild

ren

Cole

man

’sch

arac

teri

zati

on

of

‘‘B

lack

cult

ure

’’as

teen

age

pre

gnan

cy,

dea

th,

and

inca

rcer

atio

n

Stu

die

s

1an

d

2

Tea

chin

gw

asnot

anori

gin

alca

reer

pat

hfo

rea

chof

the

eig

ht

Wh

ite

fem

ale

teac

her

s.A

seri

eso

fu

nex

pec

ted

circ

um

stan

ces

and

chan

ceen

cou

nte

rsle

dth

emto

bel

iev

eth

eysh

ould

bec

om

ete

ach

ers

Tea

cher

sin

bo

thst

ud

ies

cite

‘‘tr

ial

and

erro

r’’

as

sig

nifi

can

tfo

rd

evel

op

ing

anu

nd

erst

and

ing

of

thei

r

stu

den

ts.

Mu

cho

fw

hat

they

bel

iev

edth

eyk

new

abo

ut

stu

den

tso

fco

lor

pri

or

tote

ach

ing

had

tom

od

ified

to

pro

duce

hig

her

stud

ent

ou

tco

mes

Tea

cher

s’co

nce

pti

on

so

fem

pat

hy

’s

sig

nifi

can

ceto

thei

rp

ract

ice

wer

en

ot

alw

ays

refl

ecte

din

thei

rac

tual

pra

ctic

e

280 Urban Rev (2015) 47:266–292

123

individual agency. They are deficit-based understandings of culture and stakehold-

ers’ cultural capital.

Pre-Contact

In study one, the four teachers were asked to describe why they wanted to become

teachers. The four women entered teaching through alternative education routes.

Three were from Teach for America and the fourth a mid-career changer, having

spent about a decade as a social worker. Each of them used the language of ‘‘Help’’

in their answer. Ms. Terry shares of her decision to forego interior design as a

career,

I didn’t feel like that was really helping anyone… It’s like I wasn’t doing

anything kind of good and in like the greater world…I didn’t know what else

to do…The more research I did on my own about education, the education gap

and the real inequities that exist within education…Seeing how different it

really is and how shortchanged a lot of our students were being… I’m here

because I feel like I’m fulfilling a need

Ms. Foreman had similar sentiments. Foreman maintained she wanted to ‘‘help

kids that were having troubled lives or going through troubles…I wanted to work

with primarily African American students, low-income students.’’ Ms. Thompson

had aspirations to become a doctor and was committed to this goal. Towards the end

of her college career she had an epiphany. She reflects, ‘‘I realized wow, I can affect

live almost, certainly just, as profoundly, but almost more profoundly through

education’’. Eisen offered that she ‘‘Never really thought about teaching necessar-

ily’’. She then spent 6 months in Thailand as an undergraduate and settled that she

wanted to be an urban teacher after meeting and talking to one of her instructors

who was a Teach For America alum. The only one of the women who had spent any

significant amount of time with people of color prior to college or teaching was Ms.

Foreman. She had married an African American man and felt firm that she really

understood the difficulties associated with being a person of color. Still, the four

White women grew up in racially homogeneous environments and each woman

attended predominantly White colleges or universities.

Teaching was the first time at least two of the women had ever been the racial

minority in any aspect of their lives. These women had a conception of teaching in

communities of color, but had not spent time developing relationships with or

serving people of color. Their visions of what is needed in these communities

diverge from the intentions and desires of those they serve. The four teachers, at

least at the time of data collection, appeared to have had little basis to confirm the

cultural assumptions they made about what Black and Latino students and families

need. Nor had these women duly assessed their capacity to meet those needs. As a

result, Warren (2014) argues that multiple conflicts and contradictions arise.

In study two, the teacher participants make several references throughout the

interviews to life experiences that they believe paralleled the experiences of the

Black and Latino students they taught. After being asked how she felt empathy

informed her curriculum examples and instructional choices, Dantley offers,

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I don’t ever want anyone to, in my classroom, look around and feel like, am I

the only one that doesn’t know this? Nobody wants to look dumb. So I will,

you know, pose questions or kind of bring things up, background…Umm, so I

take that into consideration, that’s where I’m empathetic…I don’t know if it

comes out of a fear that I used to have of looking dumb…I know that in

college, I never wanted to look dumb.

Teacher participants tended to point to students’ academic or social vulnerability,

rather than strengths or intelligences when determining the life experiences that they

had in common with students. The experiences teachers tended to share when

describing empathy’s importance to their professional decision-making took more

of a deficit tone. That is, teacher participants more often described negative

experiences, attitudes, or behaviors when asked to pinpoint instances when empathy

might be demonstrated in interactions with Black males. The teachers next to never

raised attention to students’ cultural strengths as markers of their affinity for or

connection to students. Conceptions of empathy by the teacher participants, when

contextualized in the professional teaching context, depicted students as lacking in

some way or fragile. These constructions fail to acknowledge students’ own agency

for bolstering their academic outcomes.

To that end, Ms. Dantley paralleled her experience dealing with the tragic death

of a parent to her understanding of how students feel when people they love pass

away. Ms. Babcock cited her knowledge of the ‘‘culture of poverty’’ (Payne 1996),

welfare, and broken homes as a way of ‘‘understanding’’ student’s problems. The

women did not bring up positive experiences, interests, or similarities when they

thought about how their lives overlapped with the lives of the young people they

taught. More interestingly, Ms. Babcock, Coleman, and Dantley grew up in the

district where they were now teaching. However, the experiences they reflected

upon did not necessarily reflect the experiences of their students in the present day.

For example, Coleman remembers, ‘‘When I was a student here, it was a primarily

White, blue-collar school…There were some African-American students but…I

really don’t remember…I had Black friends but they were from being in sports and

there weren’t a whole lot of AA students in my classes.’’ Even though there were

Black kids in her school, she did not spend much time interacting with them. As will

be seen in the next section, Coleman’s conception of ‘‘Black Culture’’ was in part

shaped by her inexperience interacting with people of color just before becoming a

teacher.

One common theme across the two studies as illuminated here are the reasons

that led each of the 8 women to become teachers. The teachers in study one took

alternative routes, while the 4 teachers in study two take a traditional route having

earned bachelor degrees in education. Still, even the four teacher participants in

study two have similar reasons for wanting to become teachers as the women in

study one. Ms. Dantley started mentoring in the area high schools where she grew

up. She admits, ‘‘I want[ed] to volunteer, [and I thought] how can I volunteer? I

wanna help kids.’’ After unsuccessfully starting out pursuing a degree in broadcast

journalism, Dantley conceded, ‘‘I needed to be a little more realistic’’, so she earned

a degree in education.

282 Urban Rev (2015) 47:266–292

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The women also chose communities of color to teach because they felt they had

something to offer those students or because they were pushed out of more affluent

schools. Ms. Arnold began her teaching in a wealthy, White suburb and after a

controversy with a school board member’s son, was asked to leave landing her in a

predominately Black school district. She reflects thinking of her decision, ‘‘What am

I doing here?’’ Ms. Coleman lamented,

When I originally started teaching, I was teaching at…a school…It is probably

98 % White. I did not enjoy teaching there because I felt, I had come off this

experience being immersed with people, different cultures and then I came

home and I was teaching in a 100 % Caucasian classroom…I just felt like a

disconnect.

Coleman had studied abroad in Mexico just before she graduated and desired to

teach more students of color. This was significant for her decision to teach in a more

diverse community.

Race in many ways shape how the teachers envision the difference that they plan to

make as teachers. They are intentional about teaching Black and Latino youth. Still,

they bring into the work interpretations of culture guided by deficit perspectives, and/

or frames of reference that don’t initially consider the needs and desires of the youth

and families being served. This is especially true for the teachers in study one. Unlike

the more veteran teachers in study two, these four women with the exception of Ms.

Foreman, had very little understanding of socio-cultural, historical, political, or

environmental context where they teach. This can lead to a number of challenges when

negotiating various interactions with students and families.

Contact

There were two specific examples from study one worth noting as examples of false

empathy in the contact phase. Two different professional colleagues named Ms. Terry as

‘‘frustrated’’ when asked to provide three adjectives to describe her teaching. The women

emphasize that she is ‘‘agenda focused’’ and ‘‘issues driven’’ which often work against her

because the agenda and issues she raises is disparate from what students find to be

noteworthy. The result tended to be a number of disagreements between Ms. Terry and her

students and the reality that her students are not academically successful according to

measures of teaching effectiveness used at Ms. Terry’s school. Still, Terry’s professional

colleagues described their coworker as very passionate about her work. They believed she

wants the best for her students, but they constantly refer back to her challenges dealing with

students and parents who do not think like she does and the difficulty it causes for her

effectiveness as a teacher. Terry maintained strong opinions about what her students need

motivated in large part by the sexual oppression she experienced as a LGBT person. This

perspective anchors her decision-making, but at the same time disenfranchises the young

people she is hoping to help. There were several students, Black males in particular, who

actively disagreed with her firm views on sexuality. These are students that tended to reject

her noble attempts at community-buliding in her classroom.

Similarly, Ms. Eisen conceded that she is used to being right, and that this has

always been a source of contention for her with friends and families. ‘‘I’ve always

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felt successful…Usually I would like make an argument in my head and I’d be like

‘I’m so right’ and I’d be like ‘oh, my argument is so great’.’’ Her insistence on being

‘‘matter of factly’’ and ‘‘rigid’’ as her professional colleagues described her, is a

source of conflict between her and students. Eisen also cited how her stubbornness

has posed conflict with family and friends. This conflict transfers to the relationships

she is able to build with students in her classroom.

Babcock’s understanding of the needs of her Black students is anchored in her

knowledge of the ‘‘culture of poverty’’. She commented at length about the significance

of Ruby Payne (1996) A Framework for Understanding Poverty for helping her better

understand her students. She recollected, ‘‘I totally read her [Payne] book and thought

‘Oh, now I get how to connect with them’’’. She cited Payne for helping her understand

that ‘‘comedy’’ was important to poor people. Thus, Babcock has cultivated her ability to

make witty comebacks in verbal combat with students during her class. Observations of

Ms. Babcock revealed that she has very jovial interactions with her Black male students

and that they really like her. Nevertheless, her understanding of Payne blinds her to

and minimizes her students’ creativity and intellectual prowess. Babock also fails to

consider how students see their circumstances.

Teachers in study two have been teaching significantly longer than the teachers in

study one. Trial and error was a major theme relevant to how the teachers come to

discover what strategies work for their students and which ones do not. They talked

about how their interpretations of students’ needs constantly shift over time,

however the source of their persistence despite early failure was not explored. Three

of four teachers in study one seemed to be experiencing considerable disappoint-

ment in their teaching effectiveness. Data suggests that initial orientations guiding

early instructional decisions have to be tested and modified constantly in the first

several years of teaching.

Post-Contact

Each of Ms. Foreman’s colleagues use the word ‘‘fix’’ to describe her interactions

with students and families of color. They believed that Ms. Foreman insists on

correcting what she perceives to be wrong in her students’ lives. One colleagues

offers,

Ms. Foreman has improved a lot…Being a social worker with a social worker

background, she viewed her children as cases, and how she could fix it, you

know I think that she had to take a step back this year and realized that should

not fix everyone. She’s caring in the fact that she wants to fix it, but sometimes

it’s a hindrance to think as a teacher that you can fix everything

Another colleague confirmed, ‘‘It seems like, Every time she has a struggling

student, she wants to fix the problem. She’s going to talk to the parents, she’s going

to talk to the children, she is using all these extra resources to learn or to read

better…’’ Foreman’s colleagues believed her compulsion to ‘‘fix’’ students is the

result of a sincere commitment to do what is best for each child. Still, this

orientation leads to many negative encounters with parents, because as Foreman

admits,

284 Urban Rev (2015) 47:266–292

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As a parent, I put myself in the role of parent in their perspective and I’m

totally projecting my own beliefs onto them easier for me to empathize with a

student that comes in everyday without eating and sometimes its harder to be

empathetic with the adult in that situation.

She is going to do all she can to fix the problem even if her actions directly

conflict with the needs of the Black parents of the 1st graders that she teaches.

Foreman’s belief that she knows what is best despite rarely consulting with parents

to inquire of their circumstance, points to the prerogative accorded to Whiteness.

She undoubtedly has good intentions, but those intentions are moot when the

proportion of power in Foreman’s favor routinely oppresses parents by limiting their

input and silencing them in the pedagogical process.

On the contrary, Ms. Thompson appeared to be a very effective teacher based on

measures of academic success that her school uses. Still, she reported not caring

much about how students feel. She argued emphatically, ‘‘I [will be] dishonest [to]

meet kids where they are so that they feel like I’m responding to them rather than

just lecturing them.’’ Her principal confirmed that culture has little do with teaching.

He would rather his teachers focus on pedagogy than issues of race. He celebrated

Thompson’s ability to differentiate the two orientations successfully. When

Thompson reflected on her previous teaching experience, she maintained,

In most urban educational atmospheres that flourish, its when they’re [Black

children] surrounded by really, really strong and strict expectations. I think that I

put myself in people’s shoes, but sometimes I might disregard it and say, ‘‘Nope,

they’re wrong’. In method, I’m empathetic, but I feel like it doesn’t affect me as

much as it should…I think about it, but I don’t necessarily act on what I’m thinking.

She feels the burden to be results driven, rather than cater to the social and

cultural needs of the predominately Latino students that she teaches. It was her first

teaching experience in a challenging Black school that shaped her conceptions of

empathy’s relevance and application to her professional practice.

After initial contact with her students of color, Ms. Coleman from study two

contemplates her learning about Black culture. She recounted,

Teaching here, I had to, I had to learn like about Black culture…I had never, I

had never known what it was like to have a link card or umm…They

experience death alot and people are like in jail. Friends are doing drugs and

the culture of girls getting pregnant and all of this kind of stuff. I never

experienced in the years I was in high school. Like, the pain and horrific things

that they have seen, like I feel, it saddens me that kids their age would even

have to even, even think about knowing what these things are like…

Coleman described herself as a very emotional person. As a consequence, one of

her greatest setbacks in her opinion is caring too much for students. Ms. Coleman

believed she gives of her money and time far too often. On the contrary she

lamented that if she doesn’t, no one else will. This orientation is a consequence of

her perception of Black culture and how needy she believes some of her Black

students are because of their home lives.

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Women from both studies admitted that they had never truly thought about empathy in

their practice before participating in the aforementioned research projects. Incongruities

and inconsistencies between teachers’ conceptions of empathy’s importance to curric-

ulum design and discipline, for example, and what the teachers did in practice exist in both

studies. Teachers in study two appeared to be more consistent, but the lack of awareness of

empathy’s dimensions and its influence on how the eight women negotiated interactions

with students calls their ‘‘brand’’ of empathy into question.

Discussion

When considering the scenarios and examples documented in the three phases of

classroom interaction, both studies demonstrate evidence of the various dimensions of

false empathy (see Fig. 1). Foreman’s compulsion to ‘‘fix’’ students points to a

dominant agenda she has that does not account for the unique social and cultural

perspectives of the families she serves, nor does her actions dutifully respond to the

needs of those families as they articulate them. Coleman’s conception of ‘‘Black

culture’’ suggests a false consciousness and though she has good intentions, she

unconsciously views her Black students from a deficit perspective. Thompson and

Eisen admit to not really considering their students’ points of view. Thompson makes

instructional decisions primarily based on what she thinks is right and Ms. Eisen is

typically consumed with having to be right most of the time. These two women, in

particular, are driven by high academic outcomes and teaching effectiveness. Being an

effective teacher should be every educator’s priority. Their actions, however, fall

short. Thompson’s students are academically successful, but their efficacy is more of a

mystery. The long term consequences to students’ views of themselves as intellectual

and academically capable after leaving high school are of great concern. They may

have tremendous academic challenges, in college perhaps, if they have only learned

how to follow teacher instructions rather than have developed into creative, flexible,

and critical thinkers. Eisen’s students are not academically successful and her in-class

relationships with students are often strained. None of this is to say that these women

do not mean well or that they are not working hard to be effective educators. These

findings simply suggest that race difference matters for the assumptions these women

make regarding how to approach the various demands of their professional work with

youth and families of color. The absence of a critical perspective of race difference and

the impediments it causes to one’s professional decision making easily creates room

for empathy to become false empathy.

Many assumptions about what ‘‘those kids [of color] need’’ and who has the skills

to meet their needs are made when individuals make the decision to teach. The eight

White female teachers in study one and two want to ‘‘help’’, engage in a more

‘‘profound’’ career, and have lives that represent a commitment to ‘‘social justice’’.

However, the basis of their decision to teach and offer ‘‘help’’ to students was not

cultivated or substantiated through interactions with the communities where they

would eventually teach. This is important because empathy is about understanding

life through the eyes of the individuals for whom empathy is meant to benefit. Recent

research argues that empathy is indeed important for teachers in multicultural

286 Urban Rev (2015) 47:266–292

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classroom settings (Dolby 2012; McAllister and Irvine 2002; Warren 2013a). It

appears that the women in study one, for example, have not engaged in much

perspective taking, the skill that prepares one to offer a truly altruistic, empathetic

response (Batson 1991). This may be because they have not been teaching long

enough, which is important for developing their skill set as effective teachers. The

findings demonstrate multiple examples of how a teacher’s egotistic motivation,

false consciousness, and boundary blurring happens subtly in various stages of

interaction between teachers with students and families. Understanding how the

various dimensions of false empathy manifest themselves in practice is exceedingly

important for helping teachers to recognize and become aware of racial blind spots.

Efforts to build genuine connections with students and families are confounded

when elements of false empathy become prevalent in classroom interactions.

Perspective taking is central to any attempt to cultivate empathy and oppose false

empathy. Perspective taking assumes that all teachers are on a developmental

continuum in their understanding of race, racism, and the consequences of privilege.

Each teacher participant in these two studies is in a different space along this

continuum. Teacher education is the time that candidates begin to locate themselves

on that continuum. Teacher candidates do that by acquiring critical lenses to help

see themselves in relationship to the people they eventually want to serve as

teachers. One important factor that mediates the process of becoming effective at

engaging in perspective taking is being able to recognize how race and racism shape

one’s social and cultural viewpoints. Teacher education programs have a

responsibility to expose students to the social, historical, and political implications

of race and racism on teaching and learning, especially for White teachers.

Recommendations for Teacher Education

Solorzano (1997) succinctly outlines 5 specific concepts central to the application of

CRT in the field of education. Four of the five areas are particularly useful for framing

CRT’s relevance to prepare teachers to avoid false empathy through perspective

taking. The recommendations offered here connect tenets of CRT as postulated in

Solorzano’s work to dimensions of false empathy described in Fig. 1 (i.e. false

consciousness, dominant agenda, boundary blurring, privileging and silencing of

various stakeholder voices, and egoism). Teacher candidates being prepared to

understand the operation of race and racism in their practice must recognize:

(1) The centrality of race and racism and its intersection with other forms of

privilege and subordination: Critical race theorists insist race intersects

multiple forms of subordination and oppression in America. Those intersec-

tions are valuable for exposing the debilitating power of racism (Crenshaw

1993; Delgado and Stefancic 2001). Teacher candidates can abstain from

developing false consciousness (Jost 1995; Matsuda 1990) around what

students of color need by understanding the ways that racism shapes policy

and practice in U.S. social institutions, such as schools. Much like the White

teachers in Marx and Pennington’s (2003) work, exposure to examples of

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race’s permanence is key for helping teacher candidates make connections

between their own racial identities, the legacy of racial oppression, and the

relationship of these concepts with a teacher’s own bias in his or her

professional decision making. These connections are important for developing

teacher candidate’s ability to adopt social and cultural perspectives of students

and families who are racially different.

(2) Challenges associated with mainstream, dominant ideologies: CRT pushes

backs against meritocracy, colorblindness, equal opportunity, race-neutrality/

objectivity, and post-racialism. These are ideologies masking the hegemonic

interests of the dominant group (Delgado and Stefancic 2001). This is an

especially sensitive problem as it relates to the field of education (Lynn and

Parker 2006). Scholars identify how these ideologies disguise the power and

privilege associated with being a member of the dominant group. Institution-

alizing a commitment to helping teacher candidates develop more critical

perspectives of liberal ideology across the teacher education curriculum helps

to dismantle students’ dominant agendas. A teacher’s plan or strategy for

improving students’ learning outcomes must include understanding the

multiple ways racism continues to covertly oppress people of color in the

U.S. (Bell 1987; Matsuda et al. 1993). Perspective taking includes ensuring

teacher candidates gain access to critical readings about the cultural history of

race and racism in various ethnic groups in the US and clinical experiences

throughout their programs. They need to understand how these dominant

worldviews have impacted their own social and cultural perspectives about

teaching in communities of color. Teacher candidates also need to see

explicitly the manner in which such forms of thinking subordinate students of

color who have been historically disadvantaged by them. Furthermore, by

pushing back against these dominant ideologies, teacher candidates can be

made aware of the places where they are developing a teaching agenda that

may be potentially oppressive to the youth they will teach and the

communities where they will teach.

(3) The importance of a commitment to social justice: Critical race theory takes an

activist orientation by reemphasizing the necessity for theory to make

meaningful contributions to practice (Stovall 2006). Critical race theorists

maintain CRT’s pertinence for not only discussing and thinking critically

about racism in America, but also developing concrete strategies for its

abolition at every level, including in schools (Dixson and Rousseau 2006). The

elimination of racism is the foundation for the eradication of other ‘‘isms’’

such as sexism, classism, and heterosexism (Bell 1984, 1985, 1987; Matsuda

1989). Perspective taking requires meaningful human interaction and

relationships with students and communities. Teacher candidates have to

have practice developing strategies and approaches for building relationships

with youth and their families in real time. Avoiding false empathy means

getting at the root of one’s egotistic motivation by allowing them in the field to

discover where and under what circumstances that motivation surfaces. When

the boundaries of ally-ship become blurred, teacher candidates should know

that they are less likely to be successful at building productive partnerships

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with students and parents. These partnerships must be negotiated with youth,

not for youth. They need this practice prior to leaving the teacher education

program so that they have practice.

(4) The centrality of experiential knowledge for people of color: Critical race theory

legitimates the relevance of personal experience in understanding, critiquing,

and unpacking the reality of racism. CRT actively supports the vocal expression

of the lived realities associated with being a member of a traditionally

marginalized group (i.e. person of color, woman, LGBTQ etc.). Their

perspectives and stories provide the counter-narrative useful for dismantling

dominant schools of thought perpetuated by the mainstream of American life

(Bell 1987; Delgado 1988; Crenshaw 1993). Perspective taking should be a form

of counterstorytelling. Teacher candidates need to practice telling their own

stories and seeing where race and racism matters to shaping their lives. More

importantly, they need practice learning how to listen to the stories of the

students and families they will eventually serve. Understanding and appreciating

the centrality of experiential knowledge is pivotal to minimizing the privileging

of the teacher’s voice and frames of reference over his or her students. The more

practice teacher education candidates have hearing from, reading, and engaging

with individuals from racially diverse people groups, the better. The interactions

have to be coupled with reflection activities that ask the teacher candidates to

think critically about how differences in personhood and background influence

their assumptions and beliefs about others.

Conclusion

Overcoming false empathy in classroom interaction begins with a visceral

awareness of the multiple ways race and racism emerges in the everyday talk,

assumptions, and ideology shaping a teacher’s professional decision making.

Teacher education is a space where preservice teachers are safe to discover their

contribution to the maintenance or disruption of racist malady in U.S. schools.

Teacher educators have the responsibility to equip teacher candidates with tools and

a language to help them see how their interpretations of racial difference are shaded

by their own racial identity. The conceptual framework and examples of false

empathy offered in this paper is one such tool. Teacher candidates will likely

identify with the scenarios and cases highlighted here. Foregrounding the enduring

significance of false empathy is simply one way teacher education can bolster

efforts to build a teacher workforce more critical and responsive to race in education

practice.

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