Expertise, Populism, and White Identity Politics

• In Event: Constituting Nationalism: Populism, Whiteness and Pluralism

Abstract

This paper will map the complex terrain of white identity politics and its relation to authoritarian populism and the politics of expertise. Authoritarian populists in Europe and the United States have recruited followers in part by rejecting established expertise on topics such as vaccines and climate change. They appeal instead to claims about the wisdom of everyday experience. Authoritarian populists have also resisted efforts to make public institutions more broadly representative, often by appealing to dominant racial, ethnic, and religious identities. In this respect, authoritarian populism today amounts to a form of white identity politics. Authoritarian populists make explicit what has long been obvious to many nonwhites: those socially defined as white enjoy systematic advantages over nonwhites, and many of the basic values and institutions of modern science and democracy reflect and enable white supremacy. Many white liberals offer little help in this regard, since they cast themselves as the racially unmarked guardians of universal ideals of science and democracy. They implicitly reinforce whiteness as the unspoken standard to which nonwhites are expected to aspire. Some white liberals acknowledge systemic racism, but they seek to shift blame onto past generations or poor whites. And some white liberals become self-appointed “white saviors” who try single-handedly to fix the perceived problems of people of color. Indeed, white antiracist activism has long raised vexing questions for racial justice campaigns. Nonetheless, white antiracist activists, while generally few in number, also suggest the possibility of alternative forms of white identity politics. In contrast to most recent commentary on white identity politics, which focuses on conservative whites and often assumes a fixed conception of white identity, white antiracist activists potentially transform white identity into a site of political struggle. Among other things, they make clear that both left-wing and right-wing versions of white identity politics differ in key ways from the identity-based campaigns of disadvantaged groups. Whites are trying to define themselves as one group among others, but those other groups have been defined (and defined themselves) in opposition to the cultural and political dominance of whites. Disadvantaged groups have sought to build group identities in part on shared experiences of oppression and misrecognition, but whiteness provides varying degrees of insulation from such experiences (depending on how whiteness intersects with class, gender, sexuality, etc.). On one hand, then, white identity politics arguably relies more on various forms of expertise than on personal experience. On the other hand, right-wing white identity politics often draws on experiences of racial fear and anxiety. And left-wing white identity politics is frequently associated with experiences of white shame, guilt, empathy, and solidarity. This paper will provide a taxonomy of emerging forms of white identity politics, showing how they are intertwined with both authoritarian populism and the politics of expertise.

Author

• Mark B. Brown, California State University, Sacramento