De-whitening consent amidst COVID-19 rhetoric

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article exposes four white-supremacist tactics embedded within extant consent discourse that became increasingly mobilized through the COVID-19 pandemic. These tactics include discourses of militarism as well as the dismissal of Black autonomy, reproductive access, and disability within existing consent rhetoric. We argue that these tactics create renewed exigence for de-whitening consent, and we build such a de-whitened consent framework by applying rhetorical scholarship on sexual violence to the 2020 Michigan anti-lockdown extremist protests, which were largely undertaken by white men. By exposing the white-supremacist tactics visible in these extremist protests, we highlight how pandemic-related rhetorics of bodily autonomy apply differently to Black, Muslim, disabled, trans, and migrant populations, and thus offer a de-whitened consent framework as a tool to chip away at white supremacist discourse.