How white supremacy is reproduced in the relations of white people to other white people, with some notes on what this means for antiracist education

Abstract

In this essay, I draw on two black theorists of whiteness—W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reverend Thandeka—to examine how white supremacy and white racial identities emerge from and are fortified in the relations of white people to other white people. I use stories told by two white people from a rural, white farming community in Wisconsin—William and Delores—to flesh out and complicate Du Bois’s and Thandeka’s ideas. Unfortunately, antiracist efforts in education and teacher education have mostly ignored the significance of white people’s relations to each other for the production and reproduction of white supremacy. What if our antiracist efforts have been so ineffective, in part, because we have ignored what is going on among white people?