Whiteness as Territoriality: Understanding the Identity-Territorality Dialectic in a White Supremacist Social Structure

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Whiteness: Territoriality, Oppression, and Niceness

Abstract

Pedagogical attempts to transform white student consciousness are only as good as the theoretical presuppositions that animate them. Current theories of whiteness are incomplete, at best. Most do not consider the implications of the relationship between territoriality and identity. Employing a more race-focused understanding of critical spatial theory and human territoriality, this paper argues that schools are not only white territories, where space, resources, and power are organized in favor of white interests, but also places where the enactment of white territoriality “makes” white people who they are, that is, it constructs not only their whiteness but also the category “white.” “Whiteness as territoriality” reveals how the discourses/practices of white territoriality construct whiteness itself, thus perpetuating racial domination.

Author

• Ricky Lee Allen, Independent Scholar