On the elephant in the room: toward a generative politics of place on race in academic discourse

Abstract

In our conceptual essay, we draw on an exchange between a White scholar and a group of panelists on Critical Race Theory at an international conference. Taking up this exchange as our point of departure, we work in dialectical and multidimensional ways between the essentialized politics of place on race and critical anti-essentializing foundations in recent Critical Race Feminism and Critical White Studies’ literatures. Working the dialectics and multidimensionality of the place that race makes in academic discourse, we recognize and ethically work through the essentialized politics of place in advancing anti-essentializing understandings of race. In articulating these anti-essentializing understandings, our conceptual essay drives at the notion of a generative politics of place on race in academic discourse. A generative politics of place holds essentialized realities and anti-essentializing foundations of race in dialectical and multidimensional tension for teaching, learning, and discussing race in local, national, and international contexts.

Keywords:

• Race
• racial identity
• critical race theory
• White identity

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Corrigendum

Notes

1. This introduction combines interactions at several national-international conference venues over the last several years. Even though these events have taken place in real time, in our recounting we attempt to capture in dramatic and fictive fashion the unfolding as well as the sequence of real exchanges we have observed. However, the story of the conference exchanges should not be understood as ‘what really happened’ in a particular event or venue; rather, we take up the story as but one story that clearly represents many conference interactions on race we have observed. For this reason, we refer to the actuality of the story but anonymize the actors in it as they are representative of a larger pattern of interactions that the authors have experienced. In short, even though this story is based on real interactions, Martha is a fictive character based on exchanges at multiple conferences.