In an attempt to bring about a society in which individuals can realise their full potential, South African (SA) education has
undergone fundamental reforms. However, despite these changes, the education system seems to remain hampered by
ongoing systematic and institutional racism, and subsequent socio-economic structures of poverty and privilege. Given the
national requirement for all teachers to be socially just educators, pre-service teachers need to be guided to first recognise
and understand their own worldviews, before they will be able to understand the worldviews of learners in diverse teaching
and learning contexts. Framed within Critical Race Theory, this article draws on the interplay between race and whiteness as
property to explore four white pre-service teachers’ preference for working with black learners. Data generated through an
iterative process of qualitative interviewing revealed how the participants’ preference is strongly embedded in power and
privilege. Based on the assumption that unexamined whiteness will contribute to the continuation of white privilege and
teaching premised on a deficit model, storytelling is proposed as a conceptual tool by means of which to decentre whiteness.

doi: 10.15700/saje.v36n1a1111