A majority of American public school students are nonwhite; their teachers remain overwhelmingly white. In this essay, Spencer Smith uses Charles Taylor's concept of "footing" to explore how Color of Mind ideologies and ideologies of whiteness constrain the relationships white teachers build with their students amid the realities of educational inequity. Smith proposes that Gloria Ladson-Billings, with her ideas of educational debt and culturally relevant teaching, provides approaches we can use to avoid the problems these malignant constraints create. Smith concludes by analyzing first experience programs that are part of teacher preparation in order to enumerate the principles that such programs must articulate and adhere to if they are to foster culturally relevant teaching.