Constructions at the borders of whiteness: The discursive framing of contested white students at a predominantly white institution of higher education

Abstract

This dissertation examines the discursive construction of race for contested whites, a population of U.S. undergraduate and graduate students with a liminal racial location. Contested whites inhabit an ambiguous racial positioning along the borders of whiteness. They do not fit neatly into current U.S. racial structures. Sometimes they can pass as white. Sometimes they have a white parent or grandparent, but are read as a person of color, and sometimes they are compelled to identify as white by current technologies of racial categorization even though their day-to-day experiences are ones where they are racialized as nonwhite. Their racial status is under question, either by themselves, others, institutions, or larger contexts. This study centers the stories and voices of 20 self-identified contested white undergraduate and graduate students attending a predominantly white institution of higher education. Critical narrative analysis and a feminist poststructural approach enable the identification of specific racial discourses, which work alone or in tight formation, to construct subjectivities for contested white students. Methods of data collection included individual qualitative interviews and participant observation of meetings of a multiracial student group. Higher education constitutes an important site for the study of racialization as it both promotes and sometimes challenges white supremacy. Additionally, the years typically spent in pursuit of higher education constitute a critical time of individual identity development. This research demonstrates that racial discourses are active and productive in U.S. higher education settings, and construct a series of subjectivities for contested white students. Overall, contested whites are subjugated as unwanted, incomprehensible, and marginalized entities. In addition to constructions meant to be inhabited by contested whites, racial discourses simultaneously construct habitations for uncontested whites, thus lending evidence to the assertion that illogics of race produce distortion and affliction for both oppressor and oppressed. By centering the narratives of contested whites, this study helps displace normative whiteness and delineates some of the various and flexible ways in which racial discourses construct enactments of white supremacy.