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Understanding Critical Whiteness Studies: Harmful or Helpful in the Struggle for Racial Equity in the Academy?

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Doing Equity and Diversity for Success in Higher Education

Abstract

Focusing on the hazards and benefits that come with a critical interrogation of Whiteness, the chapter outlines its purpose and framework, and draws attention to the crucial need for it to be symbiotic with intersectional analysis and anti-colonial, anti-capitalist scholarship. This chapter concludes with a schematic framework that offers a way through the problems encountered by fixations with White personal shame or growth, towards an eradication of anti-Black racism in higher education that is served—not blunted—by individual grapples with White privilege, White guilt and White fragility. Cole also offers a practical insight into his own attempts at anti-racist praxis in the Higher Education. Cole proposes an anti-colonial schema of authentic engagement with Critical Whiteness Studies that centres Black radicalism for a positive way forward.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of East London, London, UK

    Michael Cole

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  1. Michael Cole
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Correspondence to Michael Cole .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Natural Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK

    Dave S. P. Thomas

  2. Department of Sociology, Durham University, Durham, UK

    Jason Arday

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Cole, M. (2021). Understanding Critical Whiteness Studies: Harmful or Helpful in the Struggle for Racial Equity in the Academy?. In: Thomas, D.S.P., Arday, J. (eds) Doing Equity and Diversity for Success in Higher Education. Palgrave Studies in Race, Inequality and Social Justice in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65668-3_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65668-3_21

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-65667-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-65668-3

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