The Illusion of Freedom: Tyranny, Whiteness, and the State of US Society (original) (raw)
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White freedom the racial history of an idea
White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea Author: Tyler Stovall Description: In White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea, Tyler Stovall investigates the paradox of freedom as a foundational value in Western democracies, arguing that this concept has often been intertwined with whiteness. Stovall critically examines how Western ideals of freedom have frequently excluded non-white populations, revealing the racialized underpinnings of liberty from the Enlightenment to the present day. By analyzing pivotal historical events and ideologies across France, the United States, and colonial empires, Stovall shows how freedom has been constructed in ways that privilege white identities and reinforce racial hierarchies. This book presents a nuanced critique of the global history of freedom, asking readers to reconsider how ideals of liberty and equality have perpetuated systemic racism. Areas of Study: This book is key for studies in: - Critical Race Theory - Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies - Modern and Contemporary History - Sociology and Political Science - Enlightenment and Philosophy of Freedom - American and European Studies - Studies of Nationalism and Identity Stovall’s interdisciplinary approach makes White Freedom a vital contribution to understanding how race and freedom have been historically entangled, influencing contemporary views on democracy, rights, and citizenship.
NETSOL: New Trends in Social and Liberal Sciences, 2023
The book is the last published project of late Fordham University professor Tyler Stovall. All his previous work was devoted to French history, but in his last book he opened up the scope of his analysis to include the United States in order to explore how ideas of freedom in the modern world have been racialized (5), eventually becoming what he calls “white freedom”, the belief (and practice) that freedom is central to white racial identity, and that only white people can or should be free (11). Stovall published a well-researched and beautifully written book in order to explain this paradox (an apparently all-inclusive notion, such as freedom as understood in the modern world being restricted to a certain category of people and denied to the rest of humanity).
Oxymoronic Whiteness: From the Whitehouse to Ferguson
2017
THIS COLLECTION ESPOUSES a rhetorical lens for employing theories and methods of whiteness studies to analyze twenty-first-century texts and contexts; as such, it argues for the continued relevancy of whiteness studies in the twenty-first century. In particular, this collection identifies new sites for analyses of racialized whiteness, such as digitized representations of whiteness on the web and implicit representations of racialized whiteness in educational policies and politics. In the process, this collection exposes how seemingly progressive gains made in representing nonwhites in various cultural sites often reify a normative, racialized whiteness. Our attempt to revivify whiteness studies from its demise during the first decade of the twenty-first century is necessary because, in the words of one anonymous reviewer of this manuscript, whiteness studies had become "exhausted. Stagnant. Its momentum stalled in the wake of post-racial self-congratulations. Tedious. .. Critical Race Theory in whiteface. Insular and self-congratulatory. Mattering mostly only in the academy with little impact on or a relationship to social policy or to those outside of the academy." To counter such a demise, our collection offers broadly engaging analyses that inform academic readers interested in rhetoric, social media, whiteness studies, cultural studies, critical ethnic studies, communication studies, and critical race theory in both upper division and graduate classes as well as general readers interested in social media, film, school testing, and technology. Provocative in tone and argument, our collection invites these audiences into further discussions and actions that interrupt racialized whiteness in twenty-first-century culture; as such, our collection promotes rhetorical analyses as a productive means of fostering such discussions and actions. We three coeditors of Rhetorics of Whiteness also coedited a 2004 special edition of Rhetoric Review that focused on whiteness studies as an important site for developing antiracist and antiwhiteness tactics. But our scholarly call resulted in only a few scholarly projects, such as Jennifer Trainor's Rethinking Racism: Emotion, Persuasion, and Literacy Education in an All-White High School. One result of our collaboration, however, is that we periodically chat about the state of whiteness in U.S. culture. Recently we noted two seemingly contradictory cultural trends that intrigue us: the momentum of whiteness studies as an active research field has waned during the past decade even as the two elections of President Barack Obama have rendered white an operative term in mainstream discourses. Given this emergence of white in mainstream discourses, the need for whiteness studies as a means for theorizing, analyzing, interpreting, and challenging racialized whiteness seems more urgent than ever. So we decided to create this edited collection, Rhetorics of Whiteness: Postracial Hauntings in
The Plague of White Supremacy in the Age of Fascist Politics
Fast Capitalism, 2021
Language provides [fascism] with a refuge. Within this refuge a smoldering evil expresses itself as though it were salvation."-Theodor W. Adorno The toxic thrust of white supremacy runs through American culture like an electric current. Without apology, Jim Crow is back suffocating American society in a wave of voter suppression laws, ongoing attempts by right-wing politicians to implement a form of apartheid pedagogy, and the resurgence of a right-wing cultural politics organized around the legacy of white nationalism and white supremacy. The emergence of white supremacy to the centers of power is also evident in the reign of police violence against Black people that came into full view with the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer and the ensuing mass protest against racist police brutality across the globe. White supremacy works not only through the force of state repression and violence but also in the colonizing of subjectivity, manufactured ignorance, and the power of a reactionary culture with its relentless pedagogies of repression. The cult of manufactured ignorance now works through disimagination machines engaged in a politics of falsehoods and erasure. Its politics of cruelty now cloaks itself in the false claims of "patriotism." The spectacle of Trumpism and its brew of white supremacist ideology and disdain for the truth undergirds the further collapse of democratic visions in higher education and in broader public spheres, made all the more obvious by the obsession with methodologies and the reign of instrumental reason, which has returned on the educational front with a vengeance. Education as a vehicle for white supremacy now moves between the reactionary policies of Republican legislators that now use the law to turn their states into white nationalist factories and a right-wing social media machine that uses the Internet and other online services to spread racial hatred. As William Barber II, Liz Theoharis, Timothy B. Tyson, and Cornel West have argued, white supremacy has once again turned deadly and has put democracy on trial. They write: Even now, the ancient lie of white supremacy remains lethal. It has left millions of African-American children impoverished in resegregated and deindustrialized cities. It embraces high-poverty, racially isolated schools that imperil our children-and our future. It shoots first and dodges questions later. "Not everything that is faced can be changed," James Baldwin instructs, "but nothing can be changed until it is faced."i In what follows, I want to examine the totality of white supremacy as an educational force by connecting its threads through the rise of voter suppression, the attacks on education via critical race theory, and the culture of police violence.
White Eminence and the Case for Responsible Freedom
2018
White supremacy is a ubiquitous ideology that can surreptitiously greet us, like sunrise in the morning does after yet another night of insomnia, or can punch us squarely on the jaw with brass knuckles after an impassioned lesson about the virtues of turning the other cheek. Micro- and macro-presentations of white supremacy, othering and socio-political phobias are direct results of the insecurities and laziness of colonialists and their contemporary progeny, neocolonialists. Whichever way it shows up (and it does relentlessly, surviving on something more than oxygen), this so-called supremacy and those committed to working on its behalf inherently resist freedom. Conversely, autonomy is inevitable when we take for ourselves the chief components of what is necessary for any deep-rooted infrastructure, personal or otherwise: space and time. Taking space and time to learn, strategize, explore and create—individually and cooperatively—are essential to persevere and overturn an intangib...
"But I Just Never Knew": Theorizing and Challenging the Ideologies of Whiteness in Social Studies
2020
The ideological construction of whiteness begins as early as age three in both white children and children of color (Matias, 2016). This is of particular importance to educators in the social sciences, as no matter the age or race of their students, they will have internalized dominant messages about race. Yet the trajectory of the ideologies of whiteness are only heightened as they become further entrenched by the very process of education itself (Leonardo, 2009). In a nation created by and through settler colonialism and chattel slavery (Tuck & Yang, 2012), such social conditions could only manifest as a culture of white supremacy. Historically proving themselves to be sites of social reproduction rather than transformation systems of education, schools are at the center of civilizational and epistemological racism. In short, white people are “shocked” to learn their own histories of domination and oppression that have been hidden in plain sight—and thus the delusional utterance of denial, “But I just never knew!”
White Innocence Myths in Citizen Discourse, The Progressive Era (1974–1988)
Howard Journal of Communications, 2010
This study offers an analysis of 288 letters to the editor during one of the most allegedly progressive periods in US race relations, 1974–1988. Citizens' letters produced a mythic narrative that offered images of White innocence and victimage in order to resist federal desegregation orders, maintain political advantages, deflect racist accusations, and justify anti-Black hate crimes. By doing so, citizens blamed Blacks and liberals for persistent social problems while maintaining White privilege. The formal structures of this diffuse mythic narrative are (a) the purified scene (or rebirth), (b) individualistic heroes, and (c) institutional enemies. This article also exposes the limitations of rugged individualism myths to resolve racial inequalities, anti-Black racism, White privilege, segregation, poverty, and White masculine hate crimes.