Reinforcing and challenging whiteness through crisis communication: Proposing a discourse of community repair

Abstract

This study explored how Syracuse University (SU) and #NotAgainSU, a student activist group, conceptualized and communicated about a crisis of racism on campus. We found that SU took a functionalist approach and positioned the student activists as the crisis, while #NotAgainSU focused more broadly on systemic racism as the crisis and called for specific institutional action in response to the larger crisis. Our analysis also revealed that SU forwarded whiteness ideology through their communication, while #NotAgainSU engaged in practices such as counter-storytelling to resist communication that (re)produced whiteness. We conclude by offering a discourse of community repair as a community centered approach to responding to crises of racism and other social issues.