White Peoples’ Work: Collectively Healing and (Re)Imagining Our Seeing, Being, and Doing for Racial Liberation

Abstract

Since its inception, white supremacy has been and continues to be a system of racial terror that produces violence, pain, and loss. Often, the repercussions of this horrific system are placed on the bodies of people of Color, physically, psychologically, and materially. Yet, numerous scholars of Color beg white audiences to see and feel the ramifications of being the beneficiaries and perpetrators of such a system. In an effort to heed this call, this dissertation asserts that white supremacy, understood as a system of racial violence, produces loss and harm for all racialized beings and therefore, resisting and dismantling white supremacy requires more than an intellectual understanding of racism. Specifically, if white people desire to work in solidarity for racial justice, we must grapple with the psychological, emotional, relational, and spiritual loss that Whiteness produces. The foundation for this assertion and the analysis for this study is a theoretical framework that understands Whiteness as loss. Drawing together the theories of white racial melancholia (Cheng, 2001; Grinage, 2017 and 2019) and (secondary) racial trauma (Menakem, 2017), grief and loss can be understood as sites of radical potential with generative possibilities if we are also committed to racial healing. The focus of this study was an inquiry into the possibilities and strategies that can emerge when white people shift antiracism labor from solely intellectual consciousness-raising to struggling with the losses that Whiteness creates. I was additionally interested in the ways that queerness and collectivity, as embodiments and structures that disrupt Whiteness, could increase the depth and capacity for this work. Thus, by designing my own queerly collective methodology influenced by multiple scholars (brown, 2017; Cohen, 1997; Halberstam, 1998; Lorde, 2007; Muñoz, 2009; Nagar, 2014), this project engaged a collective of six queer white people to collaboratively wrestle with the various impacts of Whiteness and imagine strategies to support our healing and thus, ability to see, be, and do differently. The storied findings of this project work to balance the tensions of identifying the losses of Whiteness and collective healing practices aimed at increasing our capacity as white people to stand in solidarity for racial liberation, alongside the messiness, non-linearity, and various challenges/assets of collectivity. In the conclusion, I illustrate the implications of the collective’s work on my visions for professional development and institutional change, our classrooms and pedagogies, and parenting.