What's in a Name? The Paradoxes and Possibilities of a White Antiracist Campus Group

• In Event: Whiteness-at-Work in Higher Education

Abstract

Better understanding white people’s motivation for and efforts at anti-racism in educational contexts is significant. bell hooks (2003) asserts, “If white folks can never be free of white-supremacist thought and action, then black folks / colored folks can never be free” (p. 57). Whites are overrepresented as students and faculty at most post-secondary institutions in the United States. In higher education, “a whiteness episteme centers and privileges certain habits, beliefs, and ways of being as normal, optimal and preferred” (Stewart & Nicolazzo, 2018, p. 135). The critical exploration of the possibilities and paradoxes of white anti-racism is central to better understanding and disrupting the operations of structural white supremacy.

This paper applies Yoon’s (2012) conceptualization of whiteness-at-work to the ethnographic exploration of an anti-racist group of white students and employees at a college in the United States. Critical whiteness studies has expanded as an interdisciplinary field in recent decades and increasingly informs post-secondary educational research. The roots of this line of inquiry in the work of African American scholars including W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin and Franz Fanon are often erased - just one illustration of the functioning of whiteness as a container in which higher education operates (Stewart & Nicolazzo, 2018).
This study is conceptually grounded in Baldwin’s (1963, 1984) writing on whiteness. His insights about how white people relate to one another and ourselves within the context of structural white supremacy inform the purpose and premise of this paper.

Part of a larger study about whites’ motivation toward anti-racist action, this project focuses on the tensions experienced by members of a campus-based group for white anti-racists. Ethnography is useful methodology for “exploring people’s reasoning, assumptions, and actions to discover how they, as active agents, formulate problems and their responses to them” (Demerath, 2002, p. 149). Exploring the question of motivation, I came upon data revealing deep tension among group members about the perception of the group among the broader campus community. Using interviews with current and former group members as well as field notes gathered as an observer-participant during group meetings, I analyze the data through the framework of whiteness-at-work. As Yoon (2012) notes, “whiteness-at-work strategies can perform functions that . . . by intention are anti-racist” (p. 590).

This ethnographic study reveals tension and paradox among members of the collectively-run white anti-racist group. A key event that emerged in data collection was the group’s decision to change its name; the decision, made to provide clarity about the group’s mission, sparked controversy among members. Analysis of the data provides insights about participants’ understanding of and motivation to anti-racism, as well as deep-seated tensions about the nature of whiteness itself.

As whiteness studies in education expands, it will be critical to interrogate the tensions and possibilities of whites working to disrupt white supremacy. Lather (1991) asserts that “we are inscribed in that which we struggle against” (p. 20) and Yoon (2012) points to the paradoxes of whiteness-at-work; this research extends the important empirical exploration of white anti-racism.

Author

• finn j. schneider, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities