Contested White Students at an Institution of Higher Education: The Construction of Shame and Responsibilization

Abstract

Contested white students at an institution of higher education: The construction of shame and responsibilization ObjectivesBuilding on scholarly consensus that race is a social construction, this research argues that the narratives of contested white students (CWS) can illuminate the details of this construction work at the borders of whiteness, including the production of so-called "truths" about racial purity, racial mixture, and racial sense of belonging. This paper describes the processes of racial contestation and policing that CWS are subject to on a moment-to-moment basis, and highlights the deep sense of shame and responsibility that is engendered. In this study, the narratives of 20 CWS help trouble the "truths" and stories extant in U.S. society about racial purity and racial mixture. By focusing on the narratives of students positioned at the borders of whiteness, the spurious conceptualizations that larger society propagates can be more directly examined and questioned. Use of critical narrative analysis and examination of conceptions of "truth" align tightly with the conference theme, and point to how narratives and discourse are used to create misleading conceptions of racial difference and racial facticity, particularly in higher education and during the years of undergraduate and graduate education. Accounts from CWS facilitate the critical examination of race, ethnicity, nationality, and phenotype in institutions of higher education.Who are contested whites? Along the margins of whiteness in the United States, there are various populations that are liminally situated, such as poor whites, some individuals of multiracial backgrounds, transracial adoptees who were raised in white families, immigrants and the child of immigrants from sizable regions of the globe, and more. Contested whites (CW) include two broad categories of individuals who are located at the borders of whiteness: those who consider themselves to be people of color (POC), but who are read as white in public settings; and those who consider themselves to be white, but who are read as POC in public settings (Vargas, 2014). CW are not quite white, and their racial location and positionality is under constant interrogation. They are repeatedly asked to locate themselves and to prove their racial background and belonging. CW trouble the concept of a unified racial being because they do not easily fit into traditional conceptualizations of racial categories. Theoretical frameworkThis study is informed by the conceptual approaches of Critical Whiteness Studies, a useful lens through which to explore conceptions of whiteness and effects of white supremacy. Critical Whiteness Studies centers whiteness to "better understand and disrupt its dominance" (Marx, 2003, p. 4) and is characterized by an intentional turn to whiteness to destabilize it as normal and unremarkable (Morrison, 1992). Central to Critical Whiteness Studies is distinguishing whiteness as racial discourse and whiteness as a socially constructed category of identity (Cabrera,...