Suchergebnisse

This second edition of White Folks features a new preface--by renowned critical whiteness studies scholar David Roediger--that places the book in historical and political context. It also includes an expanded discussion by Lensmire on doing research on race with white people.

The complex social production of white racial identity is the focus of this article. Drawing from a larger interview study conducted in a rural white community in the Midwest, I explore how Frank, a high school teacher, experienced being white. I pay particular attention to Frank's descriptions of two white spaces in which he said he participated: one that he called a "basement culture," characterized by laughter and racist and sexist humor, and another that he described as more formal and "politically-correct." Ralph Ellison thought that white racial identity was created in various scapegoating rituals, such as lynching and racist humor. With Ellison's help, I interpret a long comic story that Frank told about selling his van to Mexican immigrants, in which Frank was the butt of the joke, as an example of a scapegoating ritual that just might be compatible with a democratic project.

The concept of voice—despite important criticism—continues to be one of the most powerful metaphors we have for thinking about agency and authorship in politics and education. In the first part of this article, Timothy Lensmire summarizes his previous work on voice, in which he criticized two popular conceptions and proposed a new one. Then, Nathan Snaza discusses Barbara Kamler's response, grounded in feminist and poststructuralist commitments, to Lensmire's work. Despite much agreement with Lensmire, Kamler argues that voice should be abandoned as a leading metaphor in critical pedagogies, in favor of story or text. In the third section, we return to an earlier text by one of the leading figures in writing pedagogy, Peter Elbow, in which he claims that instead of worrying about whether voice or text is best, we need to adopt a both/and approach; however, we find he privileges reception over production. In the final section, we argue for using the metaphor of voice precisely because it can call attention to the moment of production. This moment holds potential, in our account, for a concrete project of democracy.