"Fly on the Wall" Moments for Contested White Students Reveal the Hollowness of Race

• In Event: The Responsibility of Dismantling Whiteness in Higher Education

Abstract

The purposes of this paper are threefold: First, to delineate a new concept of “contested whiteness” as a location of racialized experience for some U.S. Americans; second, to articulate “fly on the wall” moments as a dynamic that contested whites experience in postsecondary contexts; and finally, to explore how these moments reveal the complete hollowness of race as a social construction.


An emergent body of literature in the social sciences focuses on the fluid and contested nature of racial identity (Khanna, 2004; Saperstein & Penner, 2012, 2014; Vargas, 2015; Vargas & Kingsbury, 2016; Vargas & Stainback, 2016). Racial contestation occurs when there is mismatch between self-identified and ascribed identities. Contested whites (Author, 2018) are a population located at the intersection of those who identify as racially mixed with white, and those who experience racial contestation on a day-to-day basis. These individuals cannot easily be categorized into contemporary racial schema of difference, and thus experience racial incongruence at the margins of whiteness. Contested whites include those who identify as 50:50 mixes of different racial/ethnic groups, 25:75 mixes, and other ratios that are not just biracial in composition. Contested whites can also include others who claim 100% ancestry in one single racial/ethnic group, but who experience racial contestation, such as white-passing Latinx folks, people from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, etc. It can include transracial adoptees raised in whiteness. All of these individuals experience insecurity and ambiguity along the borders of whiteness. Although not an incontrovertible designation, nevertheless “contested whiteness” is valuable insofar as it points to the intentional construction of whiteness as a site for political struggle (Omi & Winant, 1994, 2015).


This manuscript tells the stories of three “fly on the wall” moments for three contested white graduate students. Taking a poststructural approach to narrative (Tamboukou, 2008), I inquire who is being told by the narrative and how are they being told (instead of what is the content of the story, how is the story composed, etc.). The accounts are drawn from a larger study of 20 contested whites at a predominantly white postsecondary institution, where data collection included qualitative interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. Contested whites have an overwhelming tendency to assign themselves responsibility for resolving racial incongruence. In these “fly on the wall” accounts, elements of “racial authenticity,” racial performance, discovery, fraud, and shame elucidate the complete emptiness of “race” and racial categories. Implications for the responsibility of various actors within postsecondary education systems to first illuminate and then dismantle the hollow construction of race are explored.


This work is significant because it names an overlooked population and creates a construct by which we can bring light to the hollowness of race more generally, and whiteness in particular. It gives voice to the experiences of numerous students with a contested racial identity who often sit in silence and shame, and feel illegitimate to discuss racial dynamics. This work contributes to accepting educational responsibility for the dismantling of whiteness as a power formation.

Author

• Orkideh Mohajeri, West Chester University of Pennsylvania