This article discusses pedagogical issues that arise in higher education when instructors of color teach classes with predominantly white students. We use student interview data collected during one graduate social foundations of education course to argue that in order to be effective, pedagogical decisions in a foundations course centered on race necessitate certain compromises in terms of power. To open up spaces of dialogic possibility for the discussion and understanding of white privilege, the authors suggest that instructors engage in a pedagogy of purposeful compromise. Such a pedagogy accepts that most white students will not, in the space of one course, recognize their own agency in the perpetuation of privilege and racism, but they might recognize white privilege as a larger structural process that inhibits the opportunities of people of color. (Contains 2 notes.)