This thesis examines the portrayal of racial and sexual identities in the film Love, Simon (2018). Love, Simon follows the story of Simon Spier, a white, gay high school student who discovers true love and acceptance from his peers. Many Hollywood entertainment reviewers praised the film for its progressive portrayal of a LGBTQ romance between teenage characters. At the same time, Love, Simon uses Black characters to re-center Simon to show that Whiteness can rehabilitate queerness. I use Jasbir K. Puar’s (2007) idea of homonationalism- LGBTQ rights discourse privilege white gay men while conversely decentering Black and Brown (queer) people- and postracism as organizing frameworks for this thesis project. I ask: how might homonationalism create new understandings of how Love, Simon portrays race and sexuality? What are the costs of the film including some bodies while isolating and disadvantaging others?

Considerable amounts of research, including research in psychology, has been produced to better understand the social constructions, dynamics, and relations of ‘race’, generally, and whiteness, in particular, within the field of sport. This study continues in this vein by critically examining the ways in which whiteness and, with it, racialised forms of prejudice can become implicated in water safety and the development of swimming skills, within the context of the learn-to-swim environment. This study specifically aims to explore how whiteness is (re)produced through, and (re)productive of, the perspectives of a sample of white South African learn-to-swim instructors by examining their racialised perceptions and constructions of swimmers of colour and, in particular, their abilities in learning to swim. To this effect, six white learn-to-swim instructors from a swim school in Gauteng Province, South Africa, were recruited and participated in one-on-one, face-to-face, unstructured, individual interviews. The data was analysed using a thematic analysis, underpinned by a theoretical framework of social constructionism and critical whiteness studies. The predominant themes that arose from this study include: (1) stereotypes by white learn-to-swim instructors surrounding the challenges that people of colour (PoC) appear to have when learning to swim swim as a result of fear, physiology, and issues around access; (2) whiteness in the form of comparing swimmers of colour to the ‘standard of whiteness’, white privilege and subtle forms of whiteness; (3) racial colour-blindness, and structural-institutional suggestions in order to make swimming and learn-to-swim more accessible to PoC and to assist in promoting water safety and swimming skills. Furthermore, two integrated themes emerged from the main themes, namely: (1) the understandings of race and (2) racialised coaching approaches. The value of this study lies in presenting initial insights into the ways that race, broadly, and swimmers of colours, more specifically, are perceived and socially constructed through the perspectives and coaching approaches of white learn-to-swim instructors. In doing so, the study attempts to understand the ways in which black subjectivities and black bodies are perceived and constructed, through the lens of whiteness and the perspective of the white gaze, in relation to water and, ultimately, how both explicit and implicit racialised prejudices continue to be (re)produced in learn-to-swim spaces and coaching approaches. / Mini Dissertation (MA (Counselling Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Psychology / MA (Counselling Psychology) / Unrestricted

In response to the national desegregation of schools from 1954-1976, white communities across the country formed segregationist academies to provide a privatized education to white children. In this study, I examined why parents in the rural South continue to choose these schools, as well as what this schooling environment means for the ‘comprehensive racial learning’ processes of its white, class-privileged student body. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews with parents who chose a segregationist academy in Mississippi as well as 20 interviews with children who attend this school, I found that parents justified their decision using racialized understandings of what constitutes a ‘good’ schooling environment. Additionally, this context of childhood directly influenced the kids’ perceptions of themselves as racial subjects, including the ways in which they justified their position in the reproduction of racial inequality. Overall, this study contributes to understandings of the ways that class privilege, rurality, and Christianity inform white identity formation and racial learning processes.

This dissertation examines the concept of haole, a Native Hawaiian articulation of whiteness, in two multimodal texts related to the proposed construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna-a-Wākea in Hawai'i. Specifically, I analyze the Aloha 'Aima mural at the University of Hawai'i and the 'Imiloa web interface, as two examples of delinking whiteness through decolonial enactment. Building on this analysis, this project theorizes a decolonial haole rhetoric by redefining the rhetorical character of whiteness from outside a Eurowestern frame. Haole is an example of decolonial enactment because it responds to cultural rhetorics by engaging with the loci of enunciation rather than attending to meaning. Haole rhetoric is a form of whiteness that responds to Hawai'i's specific history of, and resistance to, colonialism. I argue for white settler allyship that works from the rhetorical ground of colonial wounds to counteract the colonial control of meaning. In this dissertation, I have developed a haole methodology that includes the following tenets: 1) any presence of whiteness manifests coloniality; 2) Indigenous knowledges are always taken on their own terms and never through Eurowestern frames of thought 3) the aim is always to inform meaning-making practices for white settlers, as opposed to Indigenous people; and 4) engagement of cultural rhetorics aim of epistemic disobedience, or delinking, from settler logics. Shifting whiteness from communicative identity to inhabiting whiteness as a decolonial enactment manifests whiteness in the peripheries of decolonial futures. An embrace of decolonial haole rhetoric and methodology maintains the colonial history between white settlers and Native Hawaiians, where rather than feigning innocence, white settlers instead consider histories of colonialism as sites on which to build responsible relationalities that may be productive for efforts of decolonization. This project demonstrates how Indigeneity can inform haole epistemological delinking, and how obligations, friendship, and intimacies are forged in colonial situations. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation examines the concept of haole, a Native Hawaiian word for whiteness, in various texts, such as public murals and web interfaces, related to the proposed construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i. Specially, this project theorizes a decolonial haole rhetoric as a new way to be white that is obligated to of cultural knowledges of place and history of whiteness. I argue for settler allyship that understands whiteness not from its own understanding, but instead from the meanings and knowledges of Hawaiian conceptions of whiteness. In this dissertation, I have developed a methodology that includes the following tenets: 1) any presence of whiteness manifests coloniality; 2) Indigenous knowledges are always taken on their own terms and never made relatable towards Eurowestern thought; 3) the aim is always to inform meaning-making practices for white settlers, never Indigenous people; and 4) engagement of cultural rhetorics aims towards epistemic disobedience, or delinking, from settler logics. A haole rhetoric attempts to rethink whiteness in a way that doesn't double down on whiteness's own understanding of itself, but instead a way of inhabiting whiteness that is obligated and ethical to Hawaiian thought and culture. Embracing this a decolonial haole rhetoric doesn't forgive haoles for colonial wrongs, but instead focuses on colonial wrongs as sites to build relationalites of settler allyship.

In 1902, in an effort to reestablish what they saw as whites' natural right to control government rule over blacks, the delegates to Virginia's Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902 declared the new constitution law that they felt reflected "the true opinion of the people of Virginia." This thesis argues that while Virginia's 1902 Constitution increased the political power of whites and decreased that of black Virginians, the reasons why they needed the document in the first place highlights an important aspect regarding the anxiety of many white Virginians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Specifically, it helps to show how whiteness as a source of political and social power was not concrete or absolute, but rather was a reaction to the increasing presence and assertion of power by black Virginians. I argue that white Virginians, faced with the increasing political and social presence of black Virginians as equals, sought to reestablish their racial superiority through law and constitutional revision. However, by making their whiteness "visible"-- by continually reasserting their claim to legitimate power because they were "white"-- white Virginians revealed how unstable their racial world had become. / Master of Arts

This is a qualitative study using ethnographic methods to collect data and critical autoethnography to reflect on my personal history in the light of what I learned about others (Anderson and Glass-Coffin, 2013; Ellis, 2009; Erickson, 2011; Manning and Adams, 2015; Rennel, 2015). My research focuses on race and culture in relation to perceptions in relationships, community, and education before and after urban renewal. I present my work in two-manuscripts: Growing Up White: I Didn't Know What I Didn't Know and Gainsboro: It's Just the Way Things Were. The first portion of the study looks at growing up in a White neighborhood in Roanoke, Virginia, during the early years of integration and the Civil Rights Movement, while being unaware of the existence of another world beyond my own. The second manuscript presents findings from interviews in the corresponding Black community and archival research interrogating systemic issues associated with urban renewal. / Doctor of Philosophy / In this study, I examine the effects of urban renewal on race and culture in a mid-sized southern city. My work focuses on individual perceptions about relationships, community, and education. The first portion of the study looks at growing up in a white neighborhood during the early years of integration and the Civil Rights Movement, while being unaware of the existence of another world beyond this one. The following section presents findings from interviews with residents in the corresponding Black community and research on issues associated with urban renewal.

This report examines the rhetorical strategies employed in several judicial cases during the 1920s in which the U.S. government contested the racial eligibility of Hindus for naturalization under a law providing that only “white persons” were eligible for naturalization. Through a close examination of the arguments and evidence in the cases, the report argues that the decisions in the cases were inextricably linked to the the conflict between the British and a rising Hindu nationalism movement in the struggle for Indian independence during the period surrounding World War I, and thereby highlight the significance of a wide variety of group identities to racial identification as the courts in the cases negotiated the boundaries of America’s global identity through the lens of race. / text

This paper examines the interrelations of whiteness, gender, class and nationalism as represented in popular media discourses surrounding the coverage of the assault on Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan and the investigation of her rival, Tonya Harding. As with other recent works that have refocused the issue of "race" on whiteness, this essay seeks to unveil the exclusionary social processes in which boundaries are set and marked within the "difference" of whiteness. The concepts of habitus and historicity are used to understand how Tonya Harding became marked as "white trash," and the implications of her "flawed" qualifications are explored. Furthermore, this paper identifies ongoing ideological struggles over moral regulation and reproduction of the nation and its subjects.

Through open-ended interviews and oral history, this ethnographic project captures unique histories of cultivating critical race consciousness as a White subject in social contexts of continuing overt and covert racisms. The project studies the legacy of racist and prejudiced discourses in how White research participants embody, theorize, and perform White consciousness. I explore a spectrum of White consciousness that corresponds to shifting conceptualizations of racism (Jim Crow, Colorblind, and Critical Race Consciousness), unstable ideologies of activism and antiracism (reflecting whether or not and how subjects act against prejudice), and the changing politics of rhetorical practice in backstage settings (that is, how subjects represent and construct racialized realities in these discourse situations). The project concludes that storytelling can be strategically and effectively used in activist research and everyday conversation as a vehicle for positive social change to cultivate critical dialogue about and rearticulate lived histories of race, racialized identities, racial privileges, and racisms.

This critical case study investigated the experiences of ten White preservice social studies and language arts teachers as they learned about race and racism during the first semester of an urban-focused teacher preparation program. Through observation, interview, and artifact data, this inquiry analyzed how the preservice teachers engaged with the topic of race through the conceptual framework of critical Whiteness studies. This theoretical lens seeks to identify the normalized, oppressive practices of Whiteness with the goal of reorienting those practices in antiracist ways. The author identified two broad themes of transgressive White racial knowledge and conventional White racial knowledge to characterize the progressive and problematic aspects, respectively, of the preservice teachers’ engagement with race. The participants displayed transgressive White racial knowledge through the way they combatted deficit thinking toward urban students and through their knowledge of the mechanics of Whiteness and structural racism. They displayed conventional White racial knowledge through their stories of early experiences with racial difference, their use of subtle resistance discourses during race conversations, and their tendency to misappropriate critical racial discourses. As a whole, the racial knowledge of the ten White preservice teachers points to conflicted, ambivalent feelings at the core of their racial identities. Their desires to talk about race and to develop an antiracist teaching practice were mediated by competing desires to maintain their identities as “good Whites” and to protect their investments in Whiteness. The complex ways that these White preservice teachers engaged with critical racial discourses have significant implications for critical Whiteness studies, teacher education, and social studies education. Their willingness to explore race in a critical fashion should push teacher educators to resist homogenizing, deficit views of the antiracist potential of White teachers. However, their problematic engagement with race points to the importance of viewing White identity as conflicted. If antiracist pedagogies begin with this understanding of White racial identity, they can encourage profound shifts in the ontology, epistemology, and methodology of Whiteness. These shifts can help White teachers to develop racial literacy and to build an antiracist teaching practice.