Unpacking and interrogating White supremacy educating for critical consciousness and praxis

ABSTRACT

This article draws on theoretical frameworks that work to unpack and challenge white supremacy and hegemonic whiteness. The first section discusses the importance of contextualising ones’ standpoint and positionality, demonstrating how both are interconnected to critical self-reflexivity, educating for critical consciousness, and praxis. Part two unpacks the “walls of whiteness,” reinforcing the ways in which university education placates and upholds racial domination by failing to present and challenge systemic and institutional racism and white supremacy. Section three engages with a multi-faceted theoretical framework that aims to interrogate institutional and hegemonic whiteness discussed in section two. Here, I draw on the work of Mills, Leonardo, and Ladson-Billings, who all offer provocative arguments regarding the sustainability and omnipresent nature of racial domination through the Racial Contract and the Education Debt. Finally, section four considers some of the ways in which we may work to “Rewrite the Contract” and honour the Education Debt.

KEYWORDS:

• White supremacy
• hegemonic whiteness
• racial contract
• education debt
• educating for critical consciousness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Although this article focuses primarily on university education, the analysis can also include primary and secondary education, (in which there are few examples throughout) as all three are intimately connected to a pipeline of racial domination and inequality.

2. Within the context of this article, I discuss and refer to white supremacy as an ideology, manifestation and perpetuation of white racial dominance as opposed to individual acts of racism.

3. I follow Burke’s (2017) definition of ideology as being always grounded in material realities, embedded in institutions and concrete social practices that give them meaning and produce real social outcomes … ideologies are racist to the degree that they maintain a ‘racialized social system.’

4. Historically and presently, tracking, test scores, and measuring academic ‘achievement’ often reinforces the deeply interconnected nature between classism, sexism, racism and ableism (Annamma, Ferri, and Connor 2018).

5. I consider ‘becoming and epistemological traitor’ as a process which includes an unpacking of hegemonic and structural whiteness, an interrogation of an ideology of whiteness, and a deep -dive into a cognitive space that allows one to unlearn and relearn for white racial consciousness.

6. I refer to Bargh (2007) and her more nuanced understanding of neoliberalism. She sees neoliberalism as a ‘demonstration and translation of many older colonial beliefs, once expressed explicitly, now expressed implicitly, into language and practices which are far more covert about their civilising mission’ (13). In essence, a neoliberal ideology seeks to colonise, suppress, and dominate both the mind and body.

7. Parts of this section are adapted from de Saxe (2019)