From the Inside Out: Toward a Critical Whiteness Methodology

• In Event: 15.019 - Unveiling White "Post-Truth": Applying Innovative Methods in Critical Whiteness Work

Abstract

Critical whiteness studies centers whiteness as an object of study with the goal of ending white supremacy and racism (Leonardo, 2013). Although examining whiteness in this way also reifies white supremacy and maintains white domination because even whites examining whiteness can do so in problematic ways, (Applebaum, 2015), only in centering it can we get to new revelations and ways to disrupt it (Leonardo, 2013). White supremacy permeates every facet of society, including institutions, families, and our own minds, creating the need for interventions in all areas. Theorizing whiteness whether from a macro or micro level is significant in its undoing. For example, work on white emotional domination by scholars of color have very aptly named and examined how whites dominate and psychologically damage people of color to maintain their place at the top, but responses and examinations from whites about how their white emotionality is formed and operates are not as common. Work on emotional domination and other significant forms of control need to be able to access what cannot always be seen, but can indeed be felt and experienced (Roseboro, 2008), usually leading to material consequences for people of color as well. Sometimes even resistance work reveals more about how whites uphold the social structure then it does to dismantle it. For example, McIntosh’s (1997) list, classic introductory work, can be viewed as an important piece of white’s consciousness, but it’s usage simultaneously reveals white complicity and the limitations of current theory, as well as, the underpinnings of resistance discourse. The need for methodologies that address the unconscious and psychoanalytic components in order to break down whiteness is essential in dismantling the social structure.

This critical whiteness piece argues for a three-pronged approach to examining whiteness: ideologycritique (Guess, 1998), psychoanalysis (Britzman, 1998; Morrow & Brown, 1994), and critical reflection (Freire, 1970/1993) in order to form new theory. This presentation will explain a methodology for examining whiteness that attempts to capture linguistic and extralinguistic aspects of the social structure, the internal workings of whites, and ways in which whites can examine themselves less problematically in order to end white supremacy. The focus of the presentation is to explain how this approach can reveal the inner workings of whiteness that have material and emotional consequences for people of color. I also ponder the usefulness and implications of drawing on the “critical” works of those who were in no way interested in ending racism, sexism, or other forms of oppression, such as Freud. This work is significant to the field because, as the field continues to develop, it is important to define lines of inquiry, the naming of mechanisms of domination, and theoretical devices that disrupt and do not maintain white supremacy, achieving a true theory of resistance for the oppressor group.

Author

• Amanda Parker, University of New Mexico