Cultivating Whiteness: How White Supremacy Continues to Matter in Qualitative Research

Abstract

This paper posits the concept of cultivating whiteness as not only a characteristic of neoliberal society, but also as a potential problem in qualitative research. Building off of the neoliberal conception of the hyper-realized individual, cultivating whiteness is an example of how white supremacy persists in clandestine and pernicious ways by existing as more aesthetically pleasing in comparison to the more egregious forms of racism. It contends that by placing the onus on the individual to fight white supremacy as opposed to collective action, the result is a cultivation of whiteness, allowing it to flourish as opposed to die on the vine. The paper then moves to examine, broadly, the qualitative researcher’s susceptibility to whiteness cultivation and, more specifically, how using popular culture as an apparatus of diffraction lends itself to the same.