Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Playing with shadows: white academics’ rituals of goodness

2022; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 36; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09518398.2022.2025479

1366-5898

Yukari Takimoto Amos,

Mentoring and Academic Development

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.