How white supremacy is reproduced in the relations of white people to other white people, with some notes on what this means for antiracist education

Abstract

In this essay, I draw on two black theorists of whiteness—W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reverend Thandeka—to examine how white supremacy and white racial identities emerge from and are fortified in the relations of white people to other white people. I use stories told by two white people from a rural, white farming community in Wisconsin—William and Delores—to flesh out and complicate Du Bois’s and Thandeka’s ideas. Unfortunately, antiracist efforts in education and teacher education have mostly ignored the significance of white people’s relations to each other for the production and reproduction of white supremacy. What if our antiracist efforts have been so ineffective, in part, because we have ignored what is going on among white people?

Keywords:

• Whiteness
• social class
• violence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Lensmire (2017) for discussions of the theoretical and methodological commitments of the larger study. For this essay, the stories that William and Delores told have been slightly edited and condensed; I have indicated, with page numbers, where these appear in Lensmire (2017).

2 See Casey (2016) and Cabrera and Corces-Zimmerman (2019) for helpful, brief sketches of this history.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Timothy J. Lensmire

Timothy J. Lensmire is Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses in literacy, critical pedagogy, and race. Lensmire's current scholarship focuses on reconceptualizing white people as racialized actors, as part of the broader effort to mobilize white people for antiracist action.