Unsettling Sociology Interrogating White Supremacy, Educating for Critical Consciousness, and Praxis

• In Event: 4451 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 18: Higher Education: Diversity and Institutional Context

Abstract

How do critical educators engage in questions of race and racism in an era of expanding white supremacy? Why has the university become a key battleground for debates over race and racial domination? How might educators use their classrooms to not only counteract the expansion of contemporary white nationalism and supremacy, but to untangle the more fundamental and institutional structures of racism that underlie the current political moment, and the university itself? This presentation will engage with the “walls of whiteness” within universities, (Brunsma, Brown & Placier, 2012) interrogating how they uphold and protect white supremacy and an ideology of whiteness. I aim to challenge the one-dimensional and binary manner in which white supremacy and whiteness as an ideology are often understood and discussed. I argue that this lack of nuance results in white supremacy maintaining a stronghold within the university context and society writ large. To reimagine and unsettle this, I engage with relevant theory, conceptual frameworks, and terminology, arguing that educating for critical consciousness and praxis have taken on a new salience within the current political moment.

Author

• Jennifer de Saxe, Victoria University of Wellington