Zak Foste
But moving too fast, we risk not hearing anything at all. And I think about that a lot because of white person learning from close friends and colleagues like Tenisha, right? Like, in keep what you mentioned about sort of the workshops, like what do I do? What do I do now? You know, the title of Tenisha and my chapter is the enormity of whiteness, or on the enormity of whiteness on higher education. And so I know it felt like I dumped a ton on you in that first question. But our goal with those three guiding questions that guide critical whiteness practice is to get IT folks to think in in ways that move beyond individual white people or good and bad actors. And think more expansively about whiteness.

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs now I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Today I’m joined by the editors of the book Critical Whiteness Praxis in higher education considerations for the pursuit of racial justice on campus. We’ll be discussing both theory and practice with these great folks. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week. On Wednesdays find details about this episode or browser archives, it’s studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity. A true partner Symplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him, his I’m a speaker, consultant and coach can find out more about me at Keithedwards.com. I’m broadcasting from Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of both the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to our conversation. Thank you both for joining us today. Let’s start off with some introductions and Tenisha. We’re gonna start with you.

Tenisha L. Tevis
And good afternoon here on the West Coast. Tenisha L. Tevis . She her are my pronouns. I’m an associate professor of Adult and Higher Education here at Oregon State University, which resides in the lands of the people. And I have the pleasure of studying for my research my research agenda, I look at students transition to college and the relationship between leadership and identity to really address patterns of inequality and exclusion. I also used to be a scholar practitioner, I was an administrator and faculty member for a number of years. And so it was in that role where I had a chance to observe what I now know as whiteness, and then all roads in academia lead to a conference and particular hotel, where you meet great people like Zak and so I had an opportunity to co edit this book, and other projects.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Well, Zak, you’ve got already got a compliment, which we know you’re a big fan of so tell us more about you.

Zak Foste
Sure thing. Hi, everyone. My name is Zak Foste. I use he him pronouns, assistant professor at the University of Kansas, here in Lawrence, which resides on the ancestral lands of the Osage and Shawnee people. I’ve been at University of Kansas now for going on my sixth year. A lot of my research explores issues of whiteness and higher education largely from two different angles, both which I think come through in the book and how the book unfolds. But the first being sort of how whiteness structures and underwrites can racially hostile, unwelcoming campus environment. And the second being sort of white students relationship to race and whiteness, and how we might move White students to more expansive or critically conscious ways of thinking about race and whiteness, and have gotten to know Tenisha a collaborator and co author, but it’s one of my dearest friends going back to the annual Association for the Study of Higher Ed meeting ash back five some years ago. And this project is really a labor of love. And so really cool to be here and get to chat with you about it, Keith?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, well, I know you both have released the book, about a year ago, have talked about it and lots of webinars, some packed rooms at ACPA, and some other conferences. So we know this is really interesting. We’ve been wanting to talk about this with you that whole time, and I’m glad we’re finally getting a chance to sit down and do it. So let’s just start with this term critical whiteness praxis. What exactly? Do we mean by critical whiteness praxis? Help us unpack this a little bit? Zak, we’re gonna start with you.

Zak Foste
Yeah, so I’ll back up just a little bit and talking about the motivation to the book, and then how we sort of get to the notion of critical whiteness practices. And I’ll defer to some of that Tenisha because she really pushed us throughout this process to constantly think about practical application and moving folks to action. And, you know, there’s not just being sort of like a theorizing exercise. So our hope was with this book was like, there’s all this really great sort of theoretical and conceptual work out there on the nature of whiteness, and in the critical study of whiteness. And a lot of it is really emerged and proliferated out of the last like, decade or so we weren’t sure how much of it was really getting to practitioners in sort of an accessible and practical way. And so our hope was to develop this sort of text that, you know, bridge theory and practice and appointment making, the introductory chapter that we wrote together is like, this isn’t a book that’s necessarily like for white people, or about white people per se, right? It’s not like an anti racist self help book, or a book about white identity development, that there are great books on that, like if some of my own work is in that area. But we wanted this book to really be an invitation to think more expansively and broadly about whiteness. And so what we Try to do in the book is rather than reduce whiteness to like an identity or individual white people alone is to think about whiteness as an ideology as a structure, how it organizes our campuses, how it structures, campus climate, and how as an ideology, whiteness sort of functions. Really, it’s like a lens through which people see the world act on the world, think about the world organize their thoughts move through campus on a daily basis. And as an ideology, we think about whiteness as being fundamentally a historical, highly individualistic, and a way of seeing the world that really uplifts white people white knowledge, white ways of knowing and being in so that’s from where we start. And then what we do in the introduction of the text, then is, is introduce or offer these three questions. And I’ll just share those briefly because these are sort of how we anchor critical whiteness praxis, and then I’ll turn it over to Tenisha. The first one, how was whiteness rendered normative and race lifts on campus? And how does whiteness then position faculty, staff and students of color in relation to that white normative center? Number two, how does whiteness induce a state of racial ignorance among both white individuals and institutions? And one of the consequences of such ignorance of both the level of individuals and institutions? And finally, how does whiteness encourage white individuals and institutions to maintain a sense of racial innocence to remain so certain of their goodness and effect, detaching themselves from systems and structures? And why are those desires so strong? So those are the questions that sort of scaffold or I guess, anchor, critical whiteness practices, as we conceive of it in the book.

Keith Edwards
I just want to, I just want to pause and breathe. That’s, that’s a lot. Thank you. Great. That’s a lot of context. And I think those questions are powerful, and we probably do an hour on each of them. But really, I love that you’re not talking particularly about white people or white identity, but this concept and how it affects so many of us in the othering and centering and the obliviousness I do a lot of work around aspiring ally ship and thinking about good intentions not being good enough, right. And that innocence, and we just don’t talk about it, then I’m fine, right? A race neutral position not being neutral at all. And I think those questions guiding, so we’ll just take that in and allow for it. And Tenisha take us to the next level. Well,

Tenisha L. Tevis
I don’t know if I can take you to another level. You know, to follow up I, I consider myself a a Praxis scholar, in that as a former leader, I wanted to write to leaders, I wanted to write to administrators, I wanted to write to people to get the job done. And in my own discovery of whiteness, it is seemingly heavy, right? It is, you know, people don’t know what it is. It’s not delineated as, for example, critical race theory, right? I mean, there, there have been some delineations. But there’s also been some fog around it, right? And so, how to kind of jargony it can be right, like what is whiteness? Right? What is praxis? And so I really wanted to spend some time writing and doing work in my own research agenda. And in this project with that, on offering help to someone because there was also this moment, this uptick, where people were like my whiteness, my whiteness, oh, that’s my whiteness, excuse my whiteness. And I wanted to move out of that to show whiteness manifestation, right? And so we were really wanting to show that the academy knew a whiteness was or is and how it manifested on campus. And so then this shifted, then the focus to the material consequences of one minutes, right meeting its effects on our campus. And so in really laying the groundwork, in some of the efforts truly led by Zak we drew on the concept of from liberation, now liberation is rarely united with whiteness, right? But that is actually from where we’re trying to be free. Right? That’s, that’s the bond we’re trying to break. And so it is this like freedom from oppressive practices, right? And their game through confronting the reality critically, right? Critical has a bad name, in this day and time, but it means to objectively observe right to see something in itself, objectifying it and then acting upon it. And so we needed to name whiteness, and demonstrate whiteness was real. And the consequences like you said, especially for those who’ve been entered by it to truly incite transformational action, and so we believe that this book allows that and lays the foundation for that.

Keith Edwards
Well, let me ask about that because I think it probably is clear to most of the folks watching and listening about how whiteness negatively impacts bipoc People of Color people who experience racism, but then there’s liberation and also talking about how it negatively affects while also granting privilege, white folks, and so could both of you talk a little bit about the effects of whiteness, and the benefits of this critical practice? For people who experience racial privilege and those who experienced racial oppression?

Zak Foste
Yeah, I can start off I think one of the pieces we hit on in the book was interesting context, like Tenisha. And I came together to write this book, really, I would say, or the crux of it was like, summer of 2020. Right? So you can’t escape like the writing of the text about whiteness and inviting chapter authors to write about whiteness. Outside of everything that was happening in the summer of 2020. Indonesian I try to write about that in the, the introductory chapter of like, how everything happening in the summer of 2020, sort of mirrors what’s happening on campus?

Keith Edwards
Well, that was COVID. That was the murder of George Floyd here in Minneapolis, where I am and so many other things going on.

Zak Foste
So there’s this context of writing. And I would say, like, for me, if you’re talking about the consequences, like much, much of the book is detailing the consequences of whiteness in the lives of folks of color, right? Traditionally, when folks have written about whiteness, I think particularly our discipline has been about white people white identity development, why critical consciousness, Ally development, again, all useful, but what we wanted this text to be about really was how does whiteness structure campus environments, so that we might have some sort of precision in the language we use? So you know, one of the ideas we talked about in the book, we introduced some different theoretical concepts as part of the book, and we talked about something like white normativity. Right? How does whiteness function in such a way that certain individuals are the assumed occupants of our laboratories, classrooms, student organizations, our faculties? Right, and who represents, you know, sociologist, Elijah Anderson, we’re talking about who are the unexpected guests, or visitors the disruptions to sort of the normative white sensibilities about who should be in a space, right? So one thing we tried to make clear with the book is a danger of whiteness work can be that it sort of colonizes these spaces that largely scholars of color have been taking up for a long time, what we want to do is put this into conversation with that type of work. And say, one sort of tool or concept folks might think with is white normativity. And so for instance, Lauren Irwin penned a really powerful chapter in the first half of the book is one of the guiding questions of critical whiteness practice, how is a sort of rendered as normative? And how does that sort of universal particular dynamic work? How is whiteness the universal the center? And how is everyone who departs from that sort of at the margin, or the particular manifestation of a departure from whiteness?

Keith Edwards
Tenisha, want to add add here, before we jump into more of the theory,

Keith Edwards
Well, I was just curious about the effects of whiteness, for those who experience racism and those who experience racial privilege and Zak, sort of saying you wanted to center the experience of those who experienced racial oppression.

Tenisha L. Tevis
So it’s twofold. I went back to because I had the book

Keith Edwards
showing again, started so people can see it. Yeah, let them see it. There you go.

Tenisha L. Tevis
I went back to the chapter that Natasha and I reference it later. But I went back to the chapter that Natasha Croom and I wrote and we talked about so there’s two things we open our chapter with the account of January 6, right? And really the consequences of whiteness in that moment, right and, and how you can frame that through multiple lenses, right? But we really because the book was about critical whiteness practice, we wanted people to see it, to Zak’s point, contextually, as we’re writing about this for higher ed. And then also in our chapter, we have three overarching claims. But the biggest one is that whiteness as opposed to white people solely is an overlooked progenitor to anti black racism. And so we really center the idea that this is a founding I’ll use a word from Zak a bedrock system for some of these other systems that have cause that are oppressive and suppressive. Right. And so we really wanted to show basically, and I say this later, the reach of whiteness, right in, in not just a privileging or an identity system, but really as a harmful system, and in its normativity internalized by all of us, but also the author of other large harmful systems that are equally at play at the same time. And so that for me is um I’m really worried that lies for the consequences, the material consequences in the lives of people of color and for sure, anti blackness anti black racism, right, that says something point pointing out when we were first starting this project, you know, populations in particular, white people don’t know themselves absent of right, like black people. And so they’re the two have to the to interact the to engage in order to function as it has increased the consequences as it has in the lives of people of color.

Keith Edwards
Thank you, as you’ve pointed to the book is theory and practice, practice. Let’s talk a little bit about the theory and then we’ll come to the practice. So the first part of the book is focused on theory, what are some of the theoretical underpinnings? And we’ve I think we’ve gotten to some of them already. So feel free to, to do that, that can inform how we think about critical whiteness.

Zak Foste
Yeah, we touched on normativity, a little bit. And that’s really central to I think the entire book and you see that play out in a lot of the practice chapters, right? Like one of the things we tried to drive home in the book, like a major way whiteness operates on campus is sort of by drawing boundaries of inclusion exclusion, again, right? Like, who is the natural occupant of the residence hall or the student organization in the classroom? And who is sort of the unexpected departure of that space? How does whiteness operate in that way? So that’s, that’s one theoretical idea, but we’ve hit on that one. So I guess another one, I would return to our notions of white racial ignorance. And I think when people hear that there may be sort of put off or unsure what we’re getting at. But the term comes from Charles Mills work in the racial contract. And it’s thinking about sort of institutionally or socially produced ways of not knowing, right, so it’s less about sort of this like passive, you know, lack of knowledge, right, a gap and knowing, which is I think, often how we think about our trainings and our workshops, right that like people just don’t know. So if we give them content, it in an hour workshop, they do better. What we were trying to get out with the white racial ignorance piece is how is that ignorant and again, this goes back to a number of theorists mills and Zeus, Leonardo and others. But how is whiteness on campus produced via ignorance via like a sustained, determined unwillingness not to know not to have to confront the histories and the horrors of white supremacy, I think one of the ways that plays out and we’re seeing it now is the anti CRT laws, the anti dei laws, we’re replacing anything that sort of has a structural or systemic focus with maybe these more celebratory diversity efforts, let’s all get along. Let’s all learn about difference but without any sort of underlying sort of structures or systems that produce inequities across that difference. So that’s sort of what we’re getting at with, with the racial ignorance piece. And again, I think the author’s in the, in the practice session really helped play out how ignorance so determined and willful plays out in between sorority life or leadership organizations or an LGBTQ centers. And again, the consequences of that ignorance

Keith Edwards
is really interesting to me, because I certainly relate to that about so many things that I continue to find out that I don’t know, didn’t, didn’t learn about and then also pointing out how there were opportunities along the way for me to know about a little bit and be more curious, but it felt uncomfortable. To me, it felt like when I really learned about that, that might be painful, or I might feel guilty, or I might feel a sense of responsibility. And so it’s more comfortable for me as a white person to stay ignorant because in large part, I don’t have to write, it’s not going to be on the test, it’s not going to be a part of dinner table conversation. And so I get to stay in that space. And I hear more and more people hearing learning about things and being like, well, how is it that I didn’t know about Tulsa? How was that possible? I mean, I was I was a US History major never came up.

Zak Foste
And this is where the I really appreciate it Tenisha and I sort of different positioning to the text in these ideas and how we move to the world very differently. Right and and how whiteness is structured our lives very differently. And I think one of the things we we try to make in the book clear is like the third theoretical idea we introduce his white innocence right? And it’s that ignorance that not knowing or that willingness to know or to engage, that allows for us white folks to progressive white folks we’re doing anti racist or to to but to maintain that illusion of innocence or being good ones. And that feels especially powerful in the age of Trump and this renewed sort of rise of white nationalism to feel safe over here being one of the good ones. And so not losing sight of how that happened. rinse contributes to that innocence.

Keith Edwards
Yes, boy that resonates with me wanting to be the temptation to be exceptional. A different kind of white person different from all those other white people. But yeah. Anything. Go ahead Tenisha?

Tenisha L. Tevis
Well, you know, I also feel like ignorance gets a bad rap, right? Because there’s ignorance and just not knowing. Right? And then there’s willful ignorance, right? The connotation of ignorance, though, it’s like, we just don’t know. Right? We can be ignorant to the facts. Right. But I do think that there is a, you know, in the ignorance, there are people who choose to stay in that space. Right? And that we talk about, like, what do you do when you’re uncomfortable? Right, with this work, and like you were saying, and so that allows people to stay ignorant, and it under this illusion of innocence, right, like, because they, Oh, I’m uncomfortable, I’m gonna shut it down. But one of the things we talked about is like, I don’t get to shut it down. I don’t, I don’t get to walk away from a situation. Because it makes me uncomfortable, because I’m reading it right, or I don’t, I haven’t had this live experience. And so, you know, again, in dabbling and whiteness, the way we have, it feels like a heavy lift, right? It just feels like, you know, what, I don’t know what to do with it, you know, it’s not me, it’s outside of me. And yet, we all toe the line of it, right. And when we, when we think about whiteness in this way, it you know, we talk about whiteness, from everything, from privilege to fragility, right, and all these in between, but really, in wanting to get to practice, these were the the frameworks we needed to get people to see the ways in which we operate in higher ed. Right in the industrial complex, that gives us knowledge, we we are very knowledgeable times I don’t know if that’s a word. But that knows I make up words all the time. Right. And so we offer in these opening chapters, what we thought would be helpful for for the reader to understand how whiteness shows up in the remaining chapters. And most importantly, for me, and this was also, you know, one of our I won’t say it’s one of our great debates. But you know, Zak has really pushed me in my own thinking and my own analysis, it was important for me to move the conversation beyond white people. Because I did not want I did not want the the guilt or whatever comes about the fragility to get them to walk away and really focus on this as a systemic endeavor. Right, it is one that is constantly manifesting itself and reinforcing itself. And I think we, I think we did a solid job in presenting the theories for that.

Zak Foste
I appreciate that point. I mean, in key, some of the pieces you’re talking about, like what we didn’t want to think right is like for white folks to feel so like, yeah, trapped in guilt from this tax or to feel so suspended that they couldn’t engage in action, right, that the idea was, and there is a chapter about white identity development in here authored by Melvin Whitehead and his colleagues, it’s a really wonderful model to think more critically about how white folks move through phases of thinking about identity. You know, I think one of the things that I kept thinking about throughout the text, as I was working with Tenisha, was, you know, this idea of innocence and what an obstacle that can be for like meaningful racial justice work both at the institutional level, and the individual level, because you know, Tenisha, and I would frequently be texting or talking as we were editing and working, probably more texting than working at some point. Right? It’s like, you know, some are 2020, there was a different statement that came out from a different university president every day, right. And we’re seeing it again, actually, the last few weeks with the rollback of affirmative action and race conscious admissions. Right, like, there’s always this discourse of like, it’s bad elsewhere. But here we get it where the good campus where the progressive campus maybe raises an issue here, or there, but not here. Right. We see this whenever there’s like the racist theme party, for instance, around Halloween, Chancellor provost will instantly say racism has no place here. It’s not born here. We don’t allow this type of work, but that that level, that desire to be innocent or good, and I remember this in my own journey, trying to do this work to and still felt trapped to it, right, like, wanting to say like, how do you not understand how do you not see this? How do you not get it? But again, then we sort of take ourselves outside of the picture. I think that was important for us in this book, was reminding folks that this is structural, this is historical, this is ideological, not to let White folks off the hook, but to say ground yourself in this broader system, waiting institutionally Well,

Keith Edwards
I think for me those those normativity and ignorance and innocence, seeing them as structural things as systemic things I think for me, as a white person makes me it gives me it’s not something wrong with me that I have that white and as a sensor, I’m, I want to avoid discomfort. It’s like, oh, that’s how the system works. Now, what do I do? How do I want to be different? How do I want to do something different? So for me, I really relate to those things that helps me see that in myself see that and others see that in systems and structures, I want to move us to the practice, because as you’re talking, I’m super excited about the practice part. Because in the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, here in Minneapolis, I did a bunch of workshops for white people want to be better anti racist allies. And the thing and I know, we don’t want to make it about white people. So moving in that direction, yep. But the thing that I heard again, and again, and again, is I get it, I understand, I’m furious. Just tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do as though there’s some magical thing. And I think there’s, you know, the ignorance and the innocence are bound up right there. And how I heard that and experiencing myself is, I don’t want to get it wrong, I don’t want to mess up. I don’t want to be criticized. And that sort of the perfectionism part of that. And so how do we get at this in practice? What can people do? change some of these structures and systems in higher ed, to move things forward forever?

Tenisha L. Tevis
I want to respond to quickly, Keith. So I think the biggest challenge that I’ve had in the last couple of years, and doing some of the, you know, trainings and supporting people is that what do you want me to do? Just give me what you want me to do. And it doesn’t work that way. Because there also has to, because part of what I want you to do is reflect and own and understand. Right? But then there’s another part of me that there is no quick fix. And it’s not our responsibility to give you that context. It takes this scenarios dictate this.

Keith Edwards
Other identities, yeah,

Tenisha L. Tevis
other identities that take this. And so it’s a bit of a challenge for me. And this happens on my own campus, this happens in working with other people where it’s like, just tell me what to do give me a bullet list, and people come with a pencil recipe. And, you know, you can give me a recipe, we all three of us can make zucchini bread, right, and it would probably taste a tinge different for whatever reason. And so I think that moving away from this to do list, because what people really want is a toolkit, the book is not a toolkit, it’s an invitation to be critical, right? And to substantively, right. And I really do want to encourage people to come out of Give me what to do. And I want people to sit with this is a long process. This is well predates us and my parents and all of our families. And so I think it’s leaning into gaining and understanding first, right and then doing the work but I’ll come off my soapbox to defer to Zak and then I’ll follow up after that. But the what do you want me to do? I really want people to let go of that because they want a toolkit and toolkits. Sometimes you’re gonna use the wrong tool on a different part. It’ll get the job done, but it’s not what you need. Right. And I want to do lists means like, we’ve come to absolution. We figured it out. And we haven’t.

Keith Edwards
Well, I also think it’s about Yeah, I think it’s a little bit about absolution and a little bit if I do the 12 steps that second Tenisha recommend and it doesn’t go well then I’m not to blame. It’s that continue shit, right? Yeah. So there’s, there’s a not wanting to take responsibility, not wanting to receive criticism, not wanting to mess it up, and then not doing anything. Right. And you want people to reflect and be thoughtful. Yeah, and do something.

Keith Edwards
discomfort. That’s right. That’s right.

Zak Foste
I’m reminded of a quote, and I’m probably gonna butcher it, but it’s from Sara Ahmed, and they write about, you know, sometimes if we risk acting too fast, we don’t hear anything at all.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. Can you say that again?

Zak Foste
Yeah, and I’m probably won’t hold you to it, let’s say your paraphrase, direct citation, but moving too fast, we risk not hearing anything at all. And I think about that a lot because of white person learning from close friends and colleagues like Tenisha, right? Like, in keep what you mentioned about sort of the workshops, like what do I do? What do I do now? You know, the title of Tenisha and my chapter is the enormity of whiteness, or on the enormity of whiteness on higher education. And so I know it felt like I dumped a ton on you in that first question. But our goal with those three guiding questions that guide critical whiteness practice is to get IT folks to think in in ways that move beyond individual white people or good and bad actors. And think more expansively about whiteness. And for me, like one of the revelations of this, and I think perhaps how folks might use this in practice is whiteness operates really predictably across our campuses. But it also operates in sort of unique ways depending on the context, right. So as you move through the book, you see there are really sort of unique manifestations of how whiteness functions in Fraternity and Sorority Life. versus, you know, Wilson Keller wrote a beautiful study chapter on faculty publishing, versus student leadership versus LGBTQ centers. You know, in some of the recent work I’ve been doing, right, like I’ve been studying race and whiteness and campus housing. There are certain ways that whiteness manifests in residence halls that are unique to the space of housing, rent, the ability to put a confederate flag on your door in and create a chilly and toxic environment or racism unwelcoming environment for the one black student on that floor. So one thing I would ask folks to think about, like in that instance, there are certain ways in which living on a residence hall floor allows for certain manifestations of whiteness would be different in the STEM classroom, or the library or athletic team. And so that’s one goal. I would like to move folks forward with practices. Think about, like as you read these chapters, what are some of the unique ways whiteness is up?

Keith Edwards
There? It’s really helpful. And you just gave some examples without really getting into them. But as you were saying fraternity sorority life I was like, Oh, right. And then how’s it Oh, right. And you know, just this this? Oh, yeah. And athletics. Oh, wow. There’s so many. And it was just so helpful to me here that then I’m thinking too about those are functional areas within a campus. What about University of Minnesota, Macalester College, University of Maryland, Kansas, Oregon, state, Willamette, right? Each institution, by size, by type with religious affiliation with history, with geographical location with culture, has his own sort of complexity. Both you’re pointing to some things within institutions, and then across institutions as well.

Zak Foste
Yeah, I think you know, one of the things I hate about academic articles is the implications for practice are always the shortest, and the least sort of token contributions, I don’t want to like, take us off the hook and say, We don’t have implications. I think the whole second half of the book really speaks to the practical applications. But I think context matters a lot. And I guess one thing I hope all readers will take away from this naming how they use it, is that it gives us like a precision of language to name how whiteness is operating in no uncertain terms, and the effects of the consequences of that. And we’re not the first people to do that, right. And we want to be in conversation with other scholars, Critical Race scholars, folks who study racism and anti blackness in higher ed, we help with what the the Praxis piece can do the critical whiteness practice piece, I think, and Tenisha have talked about this as give folks a real language to say, through the lens of white normativity. I’m beginning to see, right, who is the expected occupant of this residence hall? And who feels totally unwelcome, and so forth?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, and I really liked that. Who’s the expected occupant? And then who are the exceptional guests? Because sometimes it becomes the unwelcome guest, because sometimes I think it becomes who’s there and then who’s not but oh, look, there’s one or two and so we’re fine. Right away. And but that language of the unwelcome guests or the exceptional guest is sort of like their presence, and the notability of it is a sign of whiteness, being the normative kind of thing. So I really appreciate bringing that in. Tenisha What else do you want to say about praxis? And then we’ll we’ll move to what the two of you learn to this process.

Tenisha L. Tevis
So, when we wrote our chapter, we were in a bunch of limbo, I threw a bunch of ideas at that kind of like noodles at a wall. And it was like, what, what do you what do you want to do? Right? Like, I want you to do it. And so what we ended up doing was landing on the charge was the relationship between whiteness and anti black Ness or anti black racism. And so what we what we ended up pushing ourselves towards is the possibility in the foreclosures, right of doing anti black racism work, and research and what we found in a lot of work is that there is no analysis even in some popular works on like, how to be an anti racist, right? There’s this absence of an analysis of whiteness as a progenitor as a foundation as a bedrock for anti black racism. And so ours. For those who want to do research in that area, we really push them to Think about what are the possibilities and what is lost? Right? What is gained when you add it what is lost in your analysis? When you do or don’t take up whiteness as part of the analysis, right as part of the this kind of operating system in the background, right as access this larger ideology that informs structures in the system, this is what makes it systemic, right. And this is also then, for me, like, Zak, if this project was done in tandem with other research, of course, right. And so we’re working on other projects, and I decided to look at it almost in the same way and push me to look at whiteness and K 12 systems. I was asked to do this a long time ago, and I just was not ready to do it then. And really looking at the ways in which it manifests in the classroom and in social justice efforts in K 12. Right. And so that has led myself Naomi Nishi, and Maura Lee Grayson to wrote a small book on the gender transaction of whiteness to demonstrate the way whiteness is showing up in K 12 settings, which are largely led by white women. Right? And how that I don’t want to say it automatically, right, but how some of the ways, right those some similar theoretical underpinning pinnings guide, our interactions, our interpersonal relationships, our teaching. And then, you know, I think lastly, for me, the biggest thing that I take away from this, because you had asked professionally and personally, and this has actually been the hardest part to grapple with. But a necessary part that led to a project was that in some other mighty scholars is looking at the ways that we’ve all internalized whiteness, right? And how it is, it’s reinforced in our daily lives. Right, like, you know, our how we’ve internalized our knowing and being and doing and these kinds of normative standards, right, and, and how that has shaped us. So again, moving beyond just white people, but the ways in which whiteness as a normative system impacts us all. And is exercised by us. And so I think the reflection is all around, right. It’s not limited to just

Keith Edwards
white people. And I think that’s really exciting. Because once you recognize it, then you want to break free from it. How have I internalized this? How have I made this toxicity normal? And this is the way things are? And once you recognize that, then how do I get free from that? How do I separate from that, for the benefit of everyone, including, including myself yourself? Yeah, I think that’s really that’s really an exciting and critical kind of turn. For folks, both personally, but also professionally, how do we do this as a housing system? How do we do this as lots of lots of scholars? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, in our writing, and our research and our teaching, but also running a fraternity Sorority Life system for you know, 10,000 students on a particular campus. I’ve had the opportunity to edit a book. And, and you did too. And so my guess is that you had some great ideas reached out to dozens of brilliant folks, they gave you back some unexpected things that were just golden nuggets. So I’d love to hear from each of you. What is something that you learned through the process of editing and interacting with the contributors and hearing their ideas and their banter, not just their final chapters, but sometimes it’s, Hey, I want to do this instead of what you asked me to do. What is what’s something that you learned from the process? Or since it’s been out in the world, and you’ve been talking about it for a year? What’s something that has evolved for you since the book came?

Tenisha L. Tevis
That’s a good question. I will say so one of the things again, led by Zak, the majority of the authors in the book are people of color. And they wrote on their disciplines, but out of their theoretical disciplines, for some of them, right? They were all critical scholars and critical scholars, but you’re asking somebody who uses CRT to write about whiteness, right? Like so. Watching people go through that exercise was fascinating to me. You know, I would say having an opportunity to write with some of the most brilliant minds in higher education was mind blowing, you mentioned will sort of Akello. There’s a chapter on student leadership that was absolutely fantastic in the book and so folks stretched to themselves right and doing this work and they were fearless, creative, steadfast, and writing these chapters and like we mentioned, it cannot be lost during a pandemic during racial unrest. During political incivility, right with all All dissembles afoot, as Natasha would say, I would also say having the opportunity to work with Zak intimately, right? Like this was also, you know, we’re all at home now. Right? So it wasn’t like I needed an appointment in order to get on his calendar, like we’re talking to each other at random times of the day and the night to work on this. And, you know, his framing his passion, I’m not going to get emotional, his tangible investment in racial justice is contagious, it’s infectious. His leadership was wonderful. In this it, you know, there was it was unmatched that there was a point where Zak did not want his own chapters. Here’s a fun fact, I’m gonna throw this Yeah. And so we’re in a meeting with the stylus editors. And I, unbeknownst to Zak said, Hey, he doesn’t want to write a chapter. To write a chapter, I don’t want to write the conclusion, you didn’t want to write the conclusion to Oh, no, he the intro, he had to write like, exact but the conclusion chapter he didn’t want to write. And I watched that go through a lot of ups and downs in the season of writing this book. And in the season, we were all living in, right, it was just a tough season for all of us, especially those deeply invested in racial justice. And I felt like it would have been a disservice not just to the text, but to the field had he not written it, it anchored, right, you go from the enormity of whiteness, and you get to that last chapter, and it anchored the book and anchored the conversation, if you want to know where to go read the chapter that he had no, of in my head, wrote. And then I will say for me, you know, I, I had the fortunate pleasure of playing in the sandbox of key terms. If you know anything about me, all I want to do is to find words for the rest of my career. And so being with Natasha, we spent a lot of time really discerning the concepts to write about the relationship between whiteness and anti black, this an anti black racism. And part of that is we unpacked something very personal to us, as two black women in the field. And so this chapter, that chapter in particular, is what it is, because we are who we are. Right, and that was, I think it was one of the most moving in the project itself is my favorite and writing that chapter with her. So having a chance to to write and work with two of my favorite people was amazing. And, you know, the last thing I learned, and I use this in some other work, the reach of whiteness, right? Like, I mean, it is it begs the question, you know, for how long are we going to pull this thread, right, and watch things unravel, and yet still stay together? And I think that that is kind of really where I am in the idea that I want to disrupt this work. What else do I need to do to do it? And it started with this project. So I’m very grateful that for the time and the investment,

Keith Edwards
well, I love that. And I love that you started this project in the introduction on the enormity of whiteness, and that’s the thing that you keep learning. It’s it’s not it keeps getting bigger and bigger and more complicated and more in the bedrocks and the foundations of so many that’s, that’s powerful. You act now, now that Tenisha has embarrassed you and told story. Cool, what are you? What did you learn?

Zak Foste
Pivot in a whole other direction, I will say this book is finished. And most of the authors were authors of color, and they were generous enough to give their time and write about things during perhaps my most emotionally taxing times their professional and personal lives, right. And I’m just forever grateful for that I learned so much from this book, in writing it and editing it with Tenisha. And, you know, Tenisha has, you know, just the the opportunity to co edit it with Tenisha and read these chapters through very different lenses, very different backgrounds, very different upbringings and to come together and being me like that was probably just like the most special thing I have ever done as a faculty member, I will never get to do again. So it’s my all downhill from here. Right? Like this was too soon. Yeah. It was just a really special opportunity. And I’m just so grateful again to all the authors who were willing to give their time and you know, you can you can talk critically about whiteness and not be a critical whiteness scholar, right? Like there are a lot of ways to analyze, analyze whiteness, and that came through throughout the book. I’ll say again, though, the big piece from intonation. I constantly dialogue Donna and Keith, you just mentioned it is that language, the enormity of whiteness, and all of the nuanced ways in which it manifests. And in that last chapter, Melvin and I wrote, and I’ll give something tangible I often talk about and a lot of white folks write about whiteness is this in its infancy. All right, that’s the irony of whiteness and visible to those who benefit from it. You know, Melvin said something he said, you know, we gotta stop saying whiteness is invisible because whiteness is not invisible to folks of color, it’s painfully obvious, right? And so that’s one of those moments again, for me, oh, how I’m crafting this, how I’m framing this, the frame

Keith Edwards
ages, whiteness being invisible is the normativity of whiteness,

Zak Foste
right? And so as you know, white scholars can say whiteness is invisible. It’s painfully obvious at every turn of campus for folks of color. And so that’s one of you know, the five things I think it is Melvin and I write about in that last chapter. And it was his idea to start that chapter from Bell Hooks, his notion of starting from the margins, and gazing on whiteness from the margins and what what we learn about whiteness if we started from that vantage point, rather than individual white people and identities, which are important, but this opens up sort of new ways of perhaps thinking about.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, wonderful. Well, we are just about out of time is buying buy as we knew it would. And we always end with this question. So the podcast is called Student Affairs NOW. So what are you thinking, troubling or pondering now can be related to this conversation or other things that are on your mind? And you also want to share where folks can connect with you? Feel free to go ahead and do that. Zak, what is with you now?

Zak Foste
Yeah, one, I think just gratitude again, for the book and the opportunity to keep to be here with you and talk about it. I think since doing this book, you know, I said, we need to move away from the study or just concert talking about white people and identities. But one area I’ve been in lately, thinking about largely because of reading these chapters. It’s thinking about all of the socialization that white students experience about the significance of race prior to ever stepping foot on campus, and how much effort and time it requires, particularly amongst other white folks to help unravel that conditioning. And that socialization, right that white students don’t come to campus as blank slates, or empty containers just waiting to be filled up with new knowledge. And so some of the framing of this book has helped me launch this new project, have a paper coming out in JCS D here in a few months on that. But again, that notion of socialization, conditioning, and how white students come to think about these issues prior to ever being with us on campus.

Tenisha L. Tevis
I would probably say something similar, like I said, working on exploring this in the K 12. Space, right, looking at disparate outcomes looking at, you know, increased diversity yet, there’s still these pipeline to prisons for black girls and black boys and brown boys and, and just the stereotypes that continue to plague, communities of color, but also, again, the ways in which we as people of color hold up the standards of professionalism, or beauty or intellectual or even what it means to be hard working, and how we can, what does it mean to disrupt that? What does it mean to you? And, and we’re not saying these are causations, either, right? Like these kinds of theoretical underpinnings, but they are practices and they are widespread, they are adopted in their exercise in intensely in these spaces, and so really looking to uncover and think through that work in the K12 space, right? What does it mean to do an environmental scan? Like, exactly what does it mean to stand in the margins, and really look out and understand what is happening in those spaces? And also, I think how we can disrupt this whiteness manifestation and curriculum, I think is going to be very important, right? Like not just adopting books like this, but you should write but what does it mean to what are? How can we do better? How can we identify it in our classrooms? And how do we do better and stop doing these excuses of well, my field is neutral. Statistics isn’t neutral bios, a neutral? Right? These are these are fields that actually were the impetus in the author of a lot of how we come to be inferior, right. And so just looking at ways to disrupt that also in the classroom is an endeavor and a goal for me right now.

Keith Edwards
All right, I love that both of you are bringing me to the K 12. And I’m thinking, you know Tenisha, you mentioned, what’s going on in K 12. And Zak was talking about what are students coming to college with? And I’m just thinking about what the socialization of all students, white students as well around race and how it’s different from how I was socialized around race, and how much of that is the location of the small homogeneous town that I grew up in? And how much of it is the time versus what I see? My my kids thinking, not that the not that race isn’t an issue, but they’re talking about it in ways that I never talked about it. They’re talking about gender pronouns in ways that I never talked about. They’re talking about these things. They’re seeing things there, they have access to things in a way that’s very different. It’s still present. But there’s a difference there. And I, you know, I, one of the things I’m often challenging our, all of our higher ed colleagues is not to bring our mental model of our college experience because it’s so outdated. Even Even those of you who are 24, your mental model is really outdated. If you’re thinking about your residence hall floor, your student government meeting, your dining hall experience, the college experience has just changed so much, and what they experienced beforehand has changed so much as well.

Tenisha L. Tevis
And now listen, we’re affirmative action is, you know, hit the scene. So there’s going to be more to talk about, right. And I think that this book is going to be one of those books that again, opens up the door to have a substantively critical conversation going forward.

Keith Edwards
And race conscious admissions was always a tool. It wasn’t the goal, it was a tool to create more equity, more justice, more representation, better learning environments for everyone, not just for those who had it. And so I love that the book is pointing to a lot of other practices that can still be used to move us towards some of these admirable goals that we want to get to. So thank you both so much. Thank you. Thank you. It’s been terrific having you thank you so much for the book and the editors and the contributors who, who you mentioned many of them and many more, please check out the book. We’ll include some links in our show notes where you can get it. Thanks to both of you for joining us today to talk about this. And thanks as well to our sponsor. Today. Symplicity. Symplicity is the global leader in student services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institutions Symplicity sports all aspects of student life, including but not limited to career services in development, Student Conduct and well being student success and access and accessibility services. To learn more, visit symplicity.com or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. As always, a huge shout out to Nat Ambrosey. Our producer who does all the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. And we love the support for these important conversations from our community. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast, YouTube and weekly newsletter announcing each new episode and more. If you’re so inclined, you can leave us a five star review. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guests today and everyone who’s watching and listening. Please make it a great week. Thank you all.

https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Whiteness-Praxis-in-Higher-Education-Considerations-for-the-Pursuit/Foste-Tevis/p/book/9781642672695

https://www.tenishatevis.com/research

https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Whiteness-Praxis-in-Higher-Education-Considerations-for-the-Pursuit/Foste-Tevis/p/book/9781642672695