White Innocence as Racial Microaggression

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: A Critical Examination of Whiteness in Schools (Table 17)

Abstract

This presentation describes the discourse of white innocence as microaggressive. The discourse of white innocence is reviewed as a signifying practice that is hostile and derogatory toward People of Color. To illustrate how white innocence is operationalized and delivered as a microaggression, I offer an example of a white legislator’s verbal exchange with a Student of Color during a visit by the former to a high school Mexican American Studies class. I draw on tools from sociosemiotics to analyze the exchange for 1) its meaning making properties vis-à-vis white innocence, and 2) analyses of the exchange as microaggressive.

Author

• Richard A. Orozco, University of Arizona