In a supposed colorblind, postracial society (Bonilla-Silva, 2013;Johnston-Guerrero, 2016), racism and White supremacy are located in only the most overtly bigoted White people. However, critical whiteness studies (Applebaum, 2010;Leonardo, 2009) challenge us to consider how all White people, regardless of intentions, contribute to the maintenance and production of Whiteness and White supremacy. Drawing on critical whiteness studies and guided by narrative inquiry, this article reports on the nature of students' cocurricular involvement and how these experiences shaped and informed their engagement with racism and Whiteness. The results illuminate what I call the enlightenment narrative, or a particular discursive strategy concerned with presenting oneself as a racially conscious and progressive White student leader. The narrative underscores how these White student leaders were more concerned with a presentation of the self as racially good and innocent than any meaningful critique of racism and White supremacy. Further, by situating themselves as racially enlightened and aware, participants located themselves outside of the problem of White supremacy, instead understanding themselves as educators for other White students. The results from this study offer an important contribution to the literature on Whiteness in higher education, as White student leaders, by virtue of their positions on campus, have a disproportionate influence on the institutional racial climate.
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