Preserving white comfort and safety: the politics of race erasure in academe

ABSTRACT

In this paper four critical scholars/ activists reflect on the complex institutional and public responses to recent white supremacist events on Canadian campuses and the equity discussions they have affected. Specifically, we interrogate practices, which reify and reinsure positions of dominance and human/social hierarchy in four ways. To begin, (1) we interrogate freedom of speech and freedom of expression positions, as well as the reliance on critique of neoliberalism to supplant analyses of racism and colonial logics, to identify their role in preserving white fragility. Next, (2) we provide a local media analysis of academe’s responses to white supremacy on campus to trace the discursive moves that obscure institutional racism. Following these contextual scaffoldings, (3) we explore the ways equity projects within institutions remain projects protecting and preserving whiteness while exploiting the politics of identity. Finally, (4) we carefully reflect on the various modes of inclusion in the academy, which produce racialized scholars(hip) to be complicit in the reproduction of racial thinking, alongside and occluded by institutional narratives of equity and progress. Critical questions are raised regarding the possibilities, complicities and complexities of achieving equity and transformation in the academy, as well as the role of racialized scholars(hip) in this work.     

Unsettling Australian settler supremacy: combating resistance in university Aboriginal studies

Higher education courses designed to equip students to work effectively with Indigenous peoples by teaching about racism and inequality often encounter resistance to these concepts. In particular, students argue that individual and structural racisms, and their own white privilege, are ‘not their fault’. This article examines different forms of student resistance expressed within a number of Aboriginal Studies courses taught in a regional Australian university. This article reflects on data collected from various research initiatives with students, and personal teaching experiences over decades, and argues that although the notion of white supremacy can explicitly identify white privilege it also actively promotes even greater student resistance to learning. As such, this article argues for a consistent sequence of anti-racism approaches and suggests a number of key pedagogical strategies for anti-racism education.     

Diversity as interest-convergence in academia: a critical race theory story

This paper presents a critical race theory story regarding diversity and affirmative action in academia. The story's purpose is to raise issues regarding the treatment of diversity as a commodity in academia and how white faculty seek to privilege themselves in the diversity discourse. The story raises questions regarding the costs and benefits of diversity and affirmative action for minority faculty. The story illustrates how white faculty privilege themselves in diversity discourses by silencing diversity.     

African American faculty expressing concerns: breaking the silence at predominantly white research oriented universities

A Delphi method was used with a panel of 24 African American faculty employed at 43 predominantly white doctoral extensive universities to arrive at a group consensus on a list of concerns that African American faculty in general experienced or held. Using the Delphi method a panel of African American faculty initially worked from a list of eight concerns (i.e., lack of mentor; little guidance about the tenure and promotion process; social isolation and lack of collegiality; excessive and token committee assignments; research viewed as trivial and discounted; little guidance about the academic workplace; limited opportunities to participate in departmental and institutional decision making; and infrequent occasions to assume leadership positions) to the development of a list of 13 concerns after employing three rounds of the Delphi method. The implication from the expressing of these concerns is that universities have a portion of their faculty that are yet experiencing racism, subtle and even overt discrimination. This study serves as a clarion call that some universities are not being as successful at achieving diversity and inclusiveness as they declare or think.     

Who is More Likely to “Not See Race”? Individual Differences in Racial Colorblindness

Many Americans endorse a colorblind racial ideology, meaning they strive to “not see race” and emphasize sameness and equal distribution of resources across racial lines. Currently, there is an absence of studies examining the personality and individual difference correlates of racial colorblindness. The current study investigated the association between three different aspects of racial colorblindness (unawareness of racial privilege, unawareness of institutional discrimination, and unawareness of blatant racism) and the Big 5, empathy, and aggression in white undergraduates. Our results revealed two divergent patterns. Unawareness of racial privilege was related to lower openness and perspective taking, but more empathic concern, whereas unawareness of blatant racism and unawareness of institutional discrimination were related to lower agreeableness, perspective taking, and empathic concern. These results are discussed in relation to the broader literature on prejudice and personality.     

Whitened rainbows: how white college students protect whiteness through diversity discourses

This qualitative study investigates white students’ attitudes toward campus diversity at a large, multiracial public university. Drawing upon focus group data gathered from a larger campus climate study, we identified four themes: participants voiced that: (1) racial diversity fosters campus tolerance; (2) diversity fragments into de facto racial segregation; (3) institutional support of diversity undermines and excludes whites; and (4) the university should avoid acknowledging white identity. Employing critical multiculturalism as a theoretical lens, we argue that these discourses maintain white dominance within a framework that promotes inclusion. These findings suggest that without more direct institutional guidance, white students will protect white supremacy even as they celebrate diversity in multiracial spaces.     

Whiteness and national identity: teacher discourses in Australian primary schools

The study examines how white teachers talked to children about national identity and cultural diversity by drawing on qualitative research with eight- to 12-year-old students and their teachers from four Australian primary schools with different racial, ethnic and cultural demographics. Despite a range of explicit and implicit approaches that fostered different levels of critique among students, teachers often communicated Australian national identity as commensurate to white racial and Anglo-Australian cultural identity. We identified three main approaches teachers used to talk about national identity and cultural diversity: cultural essentialism, race elision and a quasi-critical approach. We conclude that the wider education system needs to develop a more formal curriculum structure that guides teachers in developing a better awareness of the power of white normativity, and to critically and explicitly counter discourse and practice that centres whiteness as foundational to dominant conceptualisations of national identity.     

The athlete as model minority subject: Jose Bautista and Canadian multiculturalism

The discourse of multiculturalism disguises complicated racial dynamics in nations such as Canada. Although white privilege persists, it tends to be mediated through non-white figures who can engender consent from other minority members. These figures have been called model minorities, a role that is well-tailored to celebrated athletes. Athletes who fill the role of model minority represent the ideal immigrant citizen: English-speaking, middle class/bourgeois, disciplined, and hard-working. As such, they serve a disciplinary function for other immigrants by demonstrating how it is they should act and producing a standard against which they are evaluated. The model minority has become a crucial representational figure for multicultural nations like Canada because the political economy of these states requires cheap labour that can be hyper-exploited through the dehumanization of racialization. Drawing on articles in Toronto's most prominent newspapers, I argue that Toronto Blue Jays baseball star Jose Bautista has recently assumed the status of a model minority. I elaborate the functions of the model minority through a reading of Bautista's representation.     

Explicating race privilege: examining symbolic barriers to Aboriginal and non-indigenous partnership

Processes of racialisation and patterns of privilege continue to structure relations between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous Australia. This study explored the everyday ways race is reinscribed and unequal relations of power expressed, constituted and legitimised in a context marked by a history of oppressive colonisation. Conceptualising barriers to partnership as ideologically reproduced through discourse, critical discourse analysis was utilised to examine non-Indigenous and Aboriginal participants' understandings of the history of poor relations between groups. Participants were four male and three female non-Indigenous local government representatives and five female and four male Aboriginal community members, recruited for semi-structured interviews or a focus group. We focus the first part of our analysis on the discourse of ‘abstract liberalism’, which was identified in local government representatives' talk. Arguably, this hegemonic discourse, which reflects a monological conception of the world, is indicative of the circuits and consequences of dispossession within this particular local context. The discourse of ‘disregard’, mobilised by Aboriginal participants, demonstrates the continuity of coloniality and offers a counter story to the dominant ideological narrative. Explicating the reproduction of race privilege, while engaging with Indigenous knowledge as a space of critique and resistance is discussed as central to decolonisation and anti-racism praxis.     

Perceptions of Defendant Culpability in Pretrial Publicity: The Effects of Defendant Ethnicity and Participant Gender

Previous researchers have found that individuals who are exposed to negative pretrial publicity (PTP) are more likely to judge a defendant guilty than individuals exposed to little or no negative PTP. We examined whether or not minority defendants (black, Aboriginal) are differentially disadvantaged by negative PTP in comparison with white defendants within a Canadian context. Participants read an online newspaper article about a sexual assault case involving a white, black, or Aboriginal defendant and then answered questions regarding defendant culpability and their perceptions of their own abilities to be impartial jurors. The defendant’s ethnicity and the gender of the participant impacted perceptions of defendant culpability. Participants (particularly female participants) generally favored the black defendant and disadvantaged the Aboriginal defendant (in comparison with the white defendant). Despite this fact, participants generally felt they could be impartial and fair jurors. These findings suggest that current procedures for assessing—and trying to avoid—racial biases in jurors are insufficient.     

‘Are you gonna show this to white people?’: Chicana/o and Latina/o students’ counter-narratives on race,place, and representation

This article explores the recurring narratives on race, place and representation that emerged in the talk of Chicana/o and Latina/o sixth-graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles, California. Discourse analytic methods are used to closely examine how these narratives were constructed within the contexts of everyday classroom interactions. Drawing on the notion of counter-storytelling from critical race theory, the article highlights how these sixth-grade students articulated counter-narratives about who they were and what their community was like – often in direct opposition to what they perceived as white people’s stereotypical assumptions and misperceptions. It is argued that these narratives constitute a powerful and sophisticated critique of dominant narratives that frame working-class Chicana/o and Latina/o students in racist and pejorative terms. The article ends with a discussion of implications for understanding youth agency and the politics of representation.     

On the back of blackness: contemporary Canadian blackface and the consumptive production of post-racialist,white Canadian subjects

This article is based on a qualitative research project examining the phenomenon of contemporary Canadian blackface. It addresses the discursive juxtaposition of blackface with the claim to Canadian racial progressiveness that typically attends public debates about blackface. I argue that blackface and the discourses defending it are forms of racial consumption through which ostensibly progressive white subjectivities are secured. I further argue that contemporary Canadian blackface discourse is postracialist in its ability to juxtapose racist expression with claims of racial transcendence, and I identify this postracialism as a long-standing feature of Canadian national narratives that are partially constructed through revisionist understandings of the nation’s relationship to blackness, and against an ostensibly more virile racism in the US. This analysis reminds us of the symbiotic relationship between racial fetishization/fascination as found in contemporary blackface, the foundational white supremacy of the Canadian settler-colonial context, and the always uneven terms upon which blackness is included in Canada. It clarifies what is at stake for Canadians who participate in blackface and in defending it, and helps us to understand the pedagogical import of both blackface and Canadian egalitarianism for perpetuating anti-blackness in Canada.     

Hearing the voice of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander training stakeholders using research methodologies and theoretical frames of reference

Abstract

Researchers in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contexts within Australia are frequently faced with the challenges of working in an intercultural space where channels of communication are garbled with interference created by the complexities of misunderstood worldviews, languages, values and expectations. A concern of many researchers in these contexts is to ensure that the voices of research participants in remote communities are not only accurately represented, but are allowed to transcend the noise of dominant paradigms, policies and practices. This article brings together the experiences of four non-indigenous researchers in the space of remote vocational education and training. The authors present two vignettes from research in the context of health, employment and education. These vignettes highlight some of the conundrums for researchers as they attempt to harmonize the aims of research with the expectations of organizations involved. The purpose of the article is to explore the utility of Critical Race Theory (CRT), Indigenist methodologies, culturally responsive methodologies and those positioned at the ‘cultural interface’ (Nakata 2007). In so doing this article makes some assessments about the fit of CRT methodologies for such contexts.     

多元文化主义视阈下的少数民族权利问题

历史地看,多元文化主义一开始就与少数民族争取平等权利的要求密切相关。当前关于多元文化主义与少数民族权利的研究有两个特点,一是并不严格区分多元文化主义的不同维度;二是往往把多元文化主义仅视为少数民族的权利理论,没有从多民族国家构建的角度理解多元文化主义的重要意义。本文认为,多元文化主义至少存在于事实、理论、意识形态、政策和价值理念五个维度,每个维度下的"少数民族权利"都呈现出不同的面相,具有不同的意义和效果。少数民族权利保护与多民族国家构建是同一个历史过程的两个方面。多元文化主义不仅仅是少数民族的权利理论,它也是多民族国家构建的重要理论支点。     

Environmental affects: NASCAR,place and white American cultural citizenship

Attempts to grapple with the complicated tangle of race and memory are more prominent than ever in the public discourse of the United States. In 2006, public intellectual Henry Louis Gates sought to popularize the search for roots and meaning with his project African American Lives, and in 2007 the black and white descendants of the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case met in New Orleans to discuss the past and present significance of their ancestors’ lives. As the crafting of identities around increasingly fluid notions of ‘race’ proceeds apace, the activities of family historians provide a useful entrée into struggles over race, identity, and collective memory in the United States. The research reported here illustrates how the shared history of the multi-racial descendants of eighteenth and nineteenth century St Domingue/Haiti in Louisiana is encountered in racially distinct ways. Participant observation is used to examine how race is dealt with in the activities of two groups: 1) a mainly European American genealogical society, called the St Domingue Special Interest Group; and 2) the LA Creole cultural and genealogy group, made up primarily of Louisiana creoles of color. Preliminary findings indicate that while the process of engaging in family history research provides an opening for some participants to better understand others across racial and ethnic divides, this kind of cross-racial dialogue was limited by the organization of family history activities into racially distinct social networks. As the popularity of genealogy increases, the findings here point to the need to recognize the public significance of these private histories.     

Changing Identities: A Case Study of Western Muslim Converts Whose Conversion Revised Their Relationship to Their National Identity

Few studies explore the impact conversion to Islam has on a Western individual’s social identity configuration. This article focuses on six Western Muslim converts—three from Montreal, two from Berlin, and one from Copenhagen—who experienced difficulties relating to their national identities prior to conversion, exploring how it developed afterwards. A qualitative interview guide was adapted in a semi-structured format to the demands of each individual, and interviews were analyzed applying thematic content analysis. The participants reveal how they revised their social identity configuration upon conversion, ultimately reversing their antagonistic relationship to their national identity. Their narratives relate how political realities are embedded in the perception and development of the Western Muslim identity, necessitating a revaluation of their national identity as a form of social critique. Our results demonstrate how socio-political experiences of discrimination and race are all significantly implicated in the process of conversion and Muslim identity development.     

Un-American: Latina high school students’ testimonios of American and white conflation in the middle of nowhere

Abstract

Using a combination of counter-storytelling, testimonios, and Chicana feminist epistemology, I report on the findings of an ethnographic study that explores and analyzes the educational experiences of geographically isolated Latina high school students in a rural city in Wyoming. I demonstrate the labeling of these students by peers and teachers as ‘Un-American’ and the ways in which such a label is embedded in intersecting hegemonic discourses of whiteness, rurality and nationhood. It is through such labeling that white privilege is established and maintained and the immediate and future educational biographies of Latina/o students highly circumscribed.     

The power of Hyphen-Nationalism: Martin Scorsese's sojourn from Italian American to White-Ethnic American

Martin Scorsese is one of the most celebrated American filmmakers of the last 50 years. This essay looks at his public story in films, books, television, radio, journals, and newspapers. This story reflects the personal and artistic journey of Scorsese and the collective rendition of this journey by Scorsese, critics, journalists, and others. It shows the intersection of the personal life, public biography, creative work, and critical reception of a public intellectual negotiating his ethnic and racial-identity for six decades. Informed by work in Race and Ethnic Studies, Critical Whiteness Studies, and Critical Rhetoric Studies, this essay uses this story as a case study of the ideological power of white ethnic-identity and white racial-identity in the racial formation of post-civil rights America. I show how the public story of one of the most popular and critically acclaimed American artists over the last half-century transcribed the conversion of an ‘unmeltable’ Italian-American of the late 1960s Ethnic Revival to a White-Ethnic American of an end-of-the-century Hyphen-Nationalism. I demonstrate the power embedded in the institutional and cultural regime of Hyphen-Nationalism in the United States that acts to erase in personal memory, creative imagination, and art the power and legacy of white privilege.