Playing with shadows: white academics’ rituals of goodness

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.

Keywords:

• Whiteness
• anti-racism
• white identity

Acknowledgement

I thank my husband, Daniel Miles Amos, for our many discussions of this manuscript and for his editorial suggestions. I am also grateful for the comments the anonymous reviewers made to make this manuscript better. Thank you.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yukari Takimoto Amos

Yukari Takimoto Amos is a professor and the department chair of the Education, Development, Teaching, and Learning at Central Washington University.