“The Social Antagonism between Whiteness and Antiracism: How and Why White Antiracists lose their Whiteness”

Abstract

Abstract This article depicts two cases of “lost Whiteness” and unintentional racial “passing.” Based on years of ethnographic research, we present the story of two White people who – largely because of their truly-determined commitment to racial justice activism – were thought by others as being or becoming Persons of Color. These activists were not trying to pass. Rather, they are manifestations of a “reverse racial pass,” defined as “any instance in which a person legally recognized as white effectively functions as a non-white person in any quarter of the social arena” (Harper 1998: 382). These two cases illumine the relationships between the ongoing, negotiated process of racial identity formation and antiracist activism in the United States. We argue that Whiteness and antiracism are enmeshed in a paradoxical dynamic: Social emphases on antiracist activism enabled the reception of White activists as People of Color, while conversely, emphases on activists’ Whiteness enabled observers to doubt both their moral commitments and intellectual prowess toward antiracist activism. This dynamic gestures toward the necessity to examine the symbolic and discursive factors undergirding the social construction of “race”, which in turn destabilizes both layperson and scholarly focus on physical appearance and racialization.