Critical Responsibility Beyond the U.S. Context

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Toward Intersectional Collectivity in Critical Whiteness Studies

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to urge CWS not to isolate its responsibility and transformation of practice to U.S. white people based on reading whiteness as a nuanced symbolic term describing oppressive power structure and systemic oppression. This study addresses the importance of acknowledging different forms and enactments of whiteness and white supremacy in various spaces and various scales interconnected with the broader U.S. society, including ethnic groups or countries in which race is less visible or indistinctive. As an international scholar whose academic ground is mainly based in the U.S., I ask the following questions: 1) What does it mean a non-white scholar doing critical whiteness work, especially whose majority of experience and identity are shaped outside the U.S. context? 2) How do we work on tensions and contradictions which will likely arise when we acknowledge and embrace different dimensions and intersectionalities involved in whiteness and white supremacy within and beyond the U.S. context?

This conceptual exploration mainly draws on a critical global race and racialization framework (Christian, 2018) and intersectionality theory applied to whiteness (Levine-Rasky, 2011). This approach adds historical and global dimensions to the current CWS framework because it acknowledges that these dimensions shape race and racialization into unique forms (Christian, 2018). Intersectionality theory invites us to consider that individual people are members of multiple dominant and subordinate groups at the same time. Likewise, these frameworks allow a complicated approach to individuals’ participation in white supremacy, including educators of color who attain and practice whiteness without noticing that their bodies of color can also perpetuate the oppressive power structure.

This paper highlights the responsibility of scholarship regarding the potential impact and influence of CWS beyond the U.S. context as well as a critical examination of current dominant narratives in critical race research. Scholars must be cautious of current critical whiteness approaches becoming a master narrative which implicitly enforces local scholars to assimilate their research to it (Motha & Varghese, 2018). Meanwhile, the discussion implies contradictions in one’s positionality when we consider local-global dimensions in which certain aspects will reinforce each other in some conditions, while contradicting each other in others. Rather than silencing the tensions and contradictions to come to an agreement, this study encourages us to embrace multiple perspectives and histories as an inspiration and the potential of generating critical questions to rethink and further develop CWS.

This paper advances previous research concerning social justice teacher education which concerns both local and global issues. If we recognize that U.S.-based scholarship has intentionally or unintentionally influenced and strengthened colonialist and neoliberal ideologies around the world, then CWS should be more aware that its endeavor toward social justice could be taken up in an oppressive way beyond the horizon that is conceivable in U.S. academia.

Author

• Younkyung Hong, Self-employed