Discourse of decency: white nationalists, white antiracists, and the criminality of color

Abstract

Contemporary research on white racial attitudes on race and crime reflect a grouping of opinions on a traditional liberal-conservative scale. These two groupings reflect what sociologists and political scientists call ‘issue constraint’ or a ‘clustering’ of ideas into a specific ideological worldview. Many now argue this gulf is growing; a white ‘culture war’ that many interpret as evidence of the increasing fracturing and political bifurcation of white racial identities over ‘hot button’ topics like race and crime. While a substantial literature on race and crime finds white racial attitudes to vary by educational level and political orientation, we know less about shared understandings of crime and race in relation to the processes of white racial identity formation. Rather than view attitudinal statements on race and crime as accurate reflections of essential different and static white racial political positions or ideological orientations, additional scholarship can examine discourse on crime and race as constitutive of the white identities that wield them. Drawing from an ethnographic study with conservative white nationalists and liberal white antiracists, this paper addresses the following question: what is the relationship between discourse on crime and race and the ongoing process of white racial identity formation?

Keywords:

• whiteness
• identity
• discourse
• racism
• criminality

Acknowledgments

I am appreciative of the feedback and criticism offered on earlier drafts of this article by the anonymous reviewers, Justin Smith, and Travis Linneman.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In order to receive Institutional Review Board approval, all potentially identifying information regarding ‘NEA’ and ‘WRJ’ was changed and replaced with pseudonyms. My relationship with the group was that of a known researcher.

2. I have intentionally left the ‘thick description’ of these two groups barer than I would prefer in order to protect their identity.