Disrupting the Big Lie: Higher Education and Whitelash in a Post/Colorblind Era

Melvin A Whitehead,Antonio Duran,Tenisha Tevis,Zak Foste,Nolan L Cabrera

doi:10.3390/educsci11090486

Abstract

James Baldwin (1998) described whiteness as “the big lie” of American society where the belief in the inherent superiority of white people allowed for, emboldened, and facilitated violence against People of Color. In the post-Civil Rights era, scholars reframed whiteness as an invisible, hegemonic social norm, and a great deal of education scholarship continues to be rooted in this metaphor of invisibility. However, Leonardo (2020) theorized that in a post-45 era of “whitelash” (Embrick et al., 2020), “post-colorblindness” is more accurate to describe contemporary racial stratification whereby whiteness is both (a) more visible and (b) increasingly appealing to perceived injuries of “reverse racism.” From this perspective, we offer three theoretical concepts to guide the future of whiteness in education scholarship. Specifically, we argue that scholars critically studying whiteness in education must explicitly: (1) address the historicity of whiteness, (2) analyze the public embrace of whiteness, and (3) emphasize the material consequences of whiteness on the lives of People of Color. By doing this, we argue that critical scholars of race in higher education will more clearly understand the changing nature of whiteness while avoiding the analytical trap of invisibility that is decreasingly relevant.

Highlights

James Baldwin famously referred to whiteness as the “big lie” of American society (Glaude, 2020) [1]
The racial dynamics of larger society frequently play out on college campuses (Cabrera, 2019) [12], and it is from this orientation that we explore the relevance of “the big lie” and the subsequent whitelash to the study of whiteness within higher education scholarship
Just as Harper (2012) [57] pointedly noted that too often race is explored in higher education without a corresponding attention to racism, we argue that racial violence cannot be fully understood without a necessary attention to whiteness

Summary

Introduction

James Baldwin famously referred to whiteness as the “big lie” of American society (Glaude, 2020) [1]. Baldwin (1998) [2] was critiquing the ideologies and structures of society that rendered whiteness as inherently superior relative to People of Color. Believing in the lie made the dehumanization of Black bodies justifiable for white people. The second set of lies produced a distorted sense of U.S history, one that is inherently innocent and always progressing towards justice and freedom (Glaude, 2020) [1]. The consequences of this lie are significant, largely because they delegitimized any truthful or accurate reckoning of the historical record of white supremacy and its violent effects on People of Color. Shatter the illusion of innocence at every turn and attack all the shibboleths the country holds sacred (p. 53)

Objectives

Discussion

Conclusion