White Guys on Campus
Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of "Post-Racial" Higher Education
Nolan L Cabrera (Author)
9780813599076
Hardback, published 15 November 2018
216 pages, 1 b-w
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.028 kg
"White Guys on Campus examines narratives of White males in order to reveal 'ecologies of Whiteness' that permit (and even empower) racism to persist. With sound scholarship and well-supported claims, this book is a unique and important contribution to the field."
- Susan Iverson (coeditor of Reconstructing Policy Analysis in Higher Education: Feminist Poststructural Perspectives) "There are and always have been lots of white guys on college campuses. This timely, important book helps us more deeply understand their racial identities, socialization, and attitudes. Cabrera masterfully complicates whiteness, illuminates white supremacy, and proposes ways to help white college men become less racist."
- Shaun R. Harper (Clifford and Betty Allen Professor, University of Southern California Rossier School of Education) (Chronicle of Higher Education) "From racial jokes to affirmative action, Nolan L. Cabrera analyzes the persistent white mindset that obscures systemic racism on our college campuses. Read this book if you want a truthful and evidence-based explanation about the effects of racist discourse."
- Zeus Leonardo (author of Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education) (Resilient Campus) "In this era of educational resegregation, Nolan Cabrera’s White Guys on Campus examines how whiteness blocks paths toward truth, justice, and reconciliation. A timely, provocative, even hopeful book.”
- Jeff Chang (author of We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race & Resegregation) (Washington Post) (Chronicle of Higher Education) (Ampersand) (Equity Alliance Blog) (Diverse Issues in Higher Education) (Chronicle of Higher Education) (A Life-Changing Course podcast) (Tucson.com) (Contexts) (Arizona Public Media "The Buzz") (Latinx Intelligentsia) (Speak Out with Tim Wise) (Black Agenda Report) "Overall, Cabrera’s book offers an important contribution to the literature. He blends existing terminology and scholarship...and masterfully weaves the why of racial attitudes of White men on campus; as the what—many of the narratives, ideals, and beliefs shared by participants—may be familiar to individuals who are seasoned in racial justice work or research in higher education or student affairs. Through concise and accessible writing with quotations from and references to Frederick Douglass, Hari Kondabolu, W. E. B. Du Bois, Geto Boys, and James Baldwin interspersed throughout, Cabrera is successful in his attempt to render the racial justice discourse more complete."
(Journal of College Student Development) "Cabrera unpacks decades of critical whiteness studies and provides encyclopedic coverage of how white supremacy has mutated and morphed."
(Education Review) "One of the main takeaways of White Guys on Campus is that white people need to be facilitating their own racial development and pushing their friends, families, and peers to do the same."
(Education Review)
Winner of the 2019 AERA Division J Outstanding Publication Award and the 2019 ASHE Outstanding Book Award
On April 22, 2015, Boston University professor Saida Grundy set off a Twitter storm with her provocative question: “Why is white America so reluctant to identify white college males as a problem population?” White Guys on Campus is a critical examination of race in higher education, centering Whiteness, in an effort to unveil the frequently unconscious habits of racism among White male undergraduates. Nolan L. Cabrera moves beyond the “few bad apples” frame of contemporary racism, and explores the structures, policies, ideologies, and experiences that allow racism to flourish. This book details many of the contours of contemporary, systemic racism, while engaging the possibility of White students to participate in anti-racism. Ultimately, White Guys on Campus calls upon institutions of higher education to be sites of social transformation instead of reinforcing systemic racism, while creating a platform to engage and challenge the public discourse of “post- racialism.”
Contents
Introduction
1 The unbearable Whiteness of being: White male racial immunity in higher education
2 “
Race just doesn’
t matter that much”
: White insulation, Occam’
s Racial Razor, and willful racial ignorance
3 “
The only discrimination left is that against White men”
: The campus racial politics of “
reverse racism”
4 “
Why can’
t Stevie Wonder read? Because he’
s Black”
: Whiteness and the social performance of racist joking
5 “
I almost lost my spot to a less qualified minority”
: Imagined v. Real affirmative action
6 “
They’
d never allow a White Student Union”
: The Racial Politics of Campus Space and Racial Arrested Development
7 “
Because it’
s the right thing to do”
: Racial awakening and (some) allyship development
8 Conclusion: White guys on campus, What is to be done?
Appendix A
Appendix B
Acknowledgments
References
Index
