Picturing white women on campus: risks and possibilities of critical whiteness photo elicitation

Abstract

In this methodological inquiry, we ask: What are the walls that block the examination of whiteness for white women when using photo-elicitation interviewing? What are the methodological possibilities and risks of photo elicitation with white women when critically studying whiteness? Framed by concepts of white complicity, white vulnerability and vigilance, and Critical whiteness Methodology, the inquiry reveals key risks and possibilities of photo elicitation in critical whiteness research: 1) white racial bonding, 2) (de)racialization of space and place, and 3) refusals and silences from white participants. We discuss practices of white vigilance within qualitative research that resist racist harm and further interrogate the visual modes by which whiteness moves on college campuses via the white cisheteropatriarchal gaze. We propose Critical whiteness Photo Elicitation (CwPE) methodology as one methodological strategy for cracking the walls of whiteness.