In this article, the author relies on a narrative based format to explore the interactions between everyday race-making processes and the white space of academia. Recognizing the unique ways systems of power interact with their experiences in the social world, they chronicle their engagements detailing the pervasive ways rules of white space are placed. The article recognizes three informal rules of white space in academia: the accepted reification of white sociological thought; the acceptance of white professional standards; and the continued centering of white comfort.
AnnammaS. A.JacksonD. D.MorrisonD. (2017). Conceptualizing color-evasiveness: Using dis/ability critical race theory to expand a color-blind racial ideology in education and society. Race Ethnicity and Education, 20(2), 147–162. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2016.1248837
2.
BrunsmaD. L.EmbrickD. G.ShinJ. H. (2017). Graduate students of color: Race, racism, and mentoring in the white waters of academia. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 3(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649216681565
3.
ColeJ. B.,Guy-SheftallB. (2003). Gender talk: The struggle for women’s equality in African American communities. One World.
4.
DavidsonD. (1970). The furious passage of the black graduate student. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 15(1970), 192-211.
5.
EmbrickD. G.WefferS.SilviaD. (2019). White sanctuaries: Race and place in art museums. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 39(11–12), 995–1009. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijssp-11-2018-0186
6.
EvansL.Leo MooreW. (2015). Impossible burdens: White institutions, emotional labor, and micro-resistance. Social Problems, 62(3), 439–454. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spv009
7.
GayG. (2004). Navigating marginality en route to the professoriate: Graduate students of color learning and living in academia. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 17(2), 265–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390310001653907
8.
KnowlesC. (2003). Race and social analysis. Sage.
9.
LadnerJ. A. (1998). The death of white sociology: Essays on race and culture. Black Classic Press.
LipsitzG. (2007). The racialization of space and the spatialization of race theorizing the hidden architecture of landscape. Landscape Journal, 26(1), 10–23. https://doi.org/10.3368/lj.26.1.10
12.
MasseyD. S.,DentonN. A. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Harvard University Press.
13.
MatiasC. E. (2016). Feeling white: Whiteness, emotionality, and education. Brill Sense.
14.
MooreW. L. (2008). Reproducing racism: White space, elite law schools, and racial inequality. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Patterson-FayeC. (2018). When and where I always enter: An auto-ethnographic approach to black women’s body size politics in academia. In The New Black Sociologists (pp. 87–100). Routledge.
WellinC. (2008). Telling tales out of school: Dilemmas of race and inclusiveness in the liberal academy. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(5), 686–708. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764207307750
20.
WingfieldA. H. (2015). Are some emotions marked ‘whites only’?: Racialized feeling rules in professional workplaces. Working in America: Continuity, Conflict, and Change in a New Economic Era, 57(2), 201–213. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2010.57.2.251
21.
WyseJ. P. (2016). Black sociology: The sociology of knowledge, racialized power relations of knowledge and humanistic liberation. In The Ashgate research companion to black sociology (Vol. 15). Routledge.
