Protect and Survive: ‘whiteness’ and the middle‐class family in civil defence pedagogies

Abstract 'Civil defence pedagogies' normalise continuous emergency through educational channels such as school, community and adult education. Using critical whiteness studies, and critiques of white supremacy from critical race theory, as a conceptual base, the protection of whiteness, and particularly the white middle‐class family, is considered to be centrally important to civil defence in education. Civil defence is not only classed and state‐centred, but a racialised and eugenic discourse where the state considers not necessarily the survival of the majority of white people, but the continuity of whiteness to be prioritised above the survival of people of colour. Within these policies, the enterprising white, middle‐class, suburban family has provided a key role as main reference, beneficiary, activist and supporter of civil defence pedagogies. Through the use of policy analysis and documentation from the USA in the 1950s and the UK in the 1980s, I discuss representations of the family, race and class in civil defence pedagogies. Although whiteness is contextualised by geography and history, there is congruence in terms of the eugenic tendencies of these seemingly innocuous pedagogies. Keywords: whitenessclasscritical race theoryracismhomeland securitycivil defense Acknowledgements Thanks to Bill Geerhart of Conelrad.com for permission to print the image from 'Duck and Cover' from the CONELRAD collection of civil defence materials. Thanks also to the Central Office of Information for permission to reproduce the image from 'Protect and Survive'. This image is Crown Copyright. Notes 1. The Federal Civil Defence Administration (1951–58), a government agency responsible for the creation and dissemination of information, advice and planning for civil defense in a nuclear attack on the USA.