Whiteness as territoriality: An analysis of white identity politics in society, education, and theory

This study examines the situatedness of radical whites as represented in critical theory and praxis. It argues that radical whites have been complicitous with white supremacy, whether consciously or not, due to the way that critical theory and praxis regularly dismisses the racial concerns of people of color. The methodology of the study employs an ideological critique of the presuppositions of critical theory that serve to mask the pervasiveness of white supremacy while opting instead for class-dominant forms of analysis. Through the theory of racial realism, the white identity politics of critical theory is revealed and disrupted. In addition to ideological critique, the study ontologically asserts that whiteness is a form of territoriality that takes shape in five different socio-spatial dimensions. In the microgeopolitical dimension, whiteness is a form of territoriality that both racializes and ranks social spaces as it also creates normative experiences that racialize people into different identity groups. Critical theories of territoriality rarely highlight this aspect of whiteness whereas critical race theories of territoriality place whiteness as territoriality as a central socio-spatial problem. In the institutional dimension, whiteness as territoriality is so endemic in bureaucratic settings, like public schools, that it prevents whites from seeing themselves as the oppressor and taking responsibility unjust social standing. Critical pedagogy unwittingly enables this situation because it is too vague on the specificities of identity, particularly when it comes to race. In the sociocultural dimension, social reproductionist theory's critique of the desire to achieve middle class occludes the desire of social beings to achieve whiteness. In the global dimension, Marxist critiques of neoliberalism expose the workings of transnational capital as they conceal the importance of the 500-year history of the globalization of white supremacy. And, in the media dimension, the film The Matrix magnificently depicts many of the theories of critical theory, however it is also based on a nihilistic and anarchist form of white identity that merely reasserts a white supremacist notion of social transformation.