Can Research Respondents of Color Identify White? Approaching Critical Whiteness Studies in Education's Unspoken Taboo

• In Event: 75.042 - MTCC Roundtable Session 34
  In Roundtable Session: 75.042-8 - (Re)Positioning Privilege, Power, and Praxis in the Interrogation of Whiteness

Abstract

Drawing from decolonizing analyses tendered by Fanon (1952/1967) and Anzaldúa (2009), this multi-authored paper critically troubles essentializing readings of racial identity, and attends to a provocative question hitherto considered taboo within Critical Whiteness Studies: Can research respondents of color identify as white? In particular, it extends this fundamental research question to also better understand the forms such racially-fluid social practices assume and the ends, or purposes, they serve. An ethnographic case study stemming from a larger ethnographic work that explored racial teacher identities, this paper endeavors to expand the epistemological assumptions so far deployed by Critical Whiteness Studies for education.

Authors

• Pauli Badenhorst, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

• James C. Jupp, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley

• Freyca Calderon-Berumen, Penn State University Altoona

• Karla O'Donald, Texas Christian University