Playing with shadows: white academics’ rituals of goodness

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Center for Teaching and Learning

Publication Date

1-19-2022

Abstract

This essay explores how good intentioned white academics can hijack the important essence of anti-racism work and allows whiteness to invade the site. During the process of participating in anti-racist meetings and events many white academics are more occupied with advancing their positive white identity than liberating people of color through anti-racism work. By doing so, they allow whiteness to creep in and make anti-racism work benefit them, not people of color. In the end, the work whose goal is to disrupt whiteness gets controlled by whiteness itself. Anti-racism work must be collaborative work between the dominant and subordinate groups, but academics of color must take a more proactive stance in providing white academics with knowledge that can be transformed into praxis.

Comments

This article was originally published in International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education

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