A Critical Narrative Inquiry of White Women's
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by SHAREOK repository UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE WHITE WOMEN DOING RACISM: A CRITICAL NARRATIVE INQUIRY OF WHITE WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES OF COLLEGE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By MOIRA L. OZIAS Norman, Oklahoma 2017 WHITE WOMEN DOING RACISM: A CRITICAL NARRATIVE INQUIRY OF WHITE WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES OF COLLEGE A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND POLICY STUDIES BY ______________________________ Dr. T. Elon Dancy, Chair ______________________________ Dr. Maria del Guadalupe Davidson ______________________________ Dr. Kirsten T. Edwards ______________________________ Dr. Michele A. Eodice ______________________________ Dr. Penny A. Pasque © Copyright by MOIRA L. OZIAS 2017 All Rights Reserved. DEDICATION For Em and Beck, Andrew, Duck and Deuce, and future generations of kids: May you find ways of living out liberation, love, and answerability that the rest of us can't yet imagine. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is not mine. It is not my work, as much as the academy is structured to insist that it is and convince me - and you - that it is. This is the work of many, of many friends and family, of the communities of resistance that have historically made a way out of no way in the United States, and of the communities that have wreaked havoc through violent domination in many forms. Part of my family came by the land it farms by taking up residence in what is now eastern Colorado after the Pawnee and Cheyenne had been massacred. Others were hillbillies in southwest Missouri whom I am sure participated in the racist violence of the slave-holding South. I am a product of this violence, massacre, and colonization. I also experience love in these families, and the complexities of getting older and unraveling the myths we have been told and tell ourselves. I also come to this dissertation because of the generations of black, brown, and queer educators who created resistant spaces of learning for themselves, for others, and for me. The spaces folks have created that have shaped and transformed me have traceable roots to the Freedom Schools of the south, the Highlander School (now Highlander Research and Education Center), and myriad homes, workplaces, and community spots where people gathered to learn and unlearn for freedom. I sit at all these intersections. This dissertation is my working through them in community with others. I do this work both for the communities that birthed and raised me, and also for the communities that continue to help me to undo the tangle of racism, settler colonialism, sexism, heterosexism, patriarchy, ablism, and classism that I was raised in. It is for every person whom I have hurt with my “nice white lady” racism, for iv every classroom I have sat in contributing to racism, genderism, and heterosexism through both my words and my silences. It is for the many folks of color who have come alongside me and decided to stay in relationship with me even when they knew I would hurt them, because that’s what white cis women do. I thank my participants for telling their stories so that I and others could learn. I will inevitably leave out folks who meaningfully contributed to this dissertation, but I especially want to thank: My dissertation committee: Dr. T. Elon Dancy, II, my Chair, thank you for your careful, insightful feedback, for your intellectual mentorship, and for challenging me as I develop as a thinker and researcher. Dr. Kirsten T. Edwards, thank you for your scholarly rearing, for creating seminar experiences for doctoral students that continue into communities of support and collaboration, and for always posing the questions that get to the heart of the matter and the hearts of the people. Dr. Maria del Guadalupe (Lupe) Davidson, thank you for your years of unrecognized leadership and mentoring of students of students at OU. And thank you for still somehow finding time to write brilliant scholarship. You are always instigating brave collaborations on a hostile campus, and involving students as collaborators. Thank you. Dr. Penny A. Pasque, thank you for bringing me into collaborations, and knowing what these outlandish arts- based and critical qualitative methodologies I was interested in were when I was still getting my footing in higher education as a field. Thank you for helping me and many others navigate unfriendly systems by giving us the secret codes and helping us find other ways. Dr. Michele Eodice, where are the words? You have held a space for me to grow, to discover myself as a scholar, practitioner, writer and human being … too many v talks, bottles of wine and glasses of bourbon, plates of Sunday sauce, and a life lived in the vision that if we unschool our institutions and lives something much more grand, loving, and fun is possible. Thank you to my family: Dan for his love and sticking with me when the going was hardest. When the anxieties and difficulties of doctoral life seeped out, he helped me by being there, cooking meals, growing a garden, making me laugh, and reminding me that life happens in the little moments. My mom, my first teacher and a career-long lover of helping children feel cared for and believed in as they learned to read, write, add, subtract, and treat each other well. My dad, for always diving into learning and new experiences with full force, and for teaching me to love words, both the reading and the writing of them. My sister, for being the best teacher I know, and for being true to her calling (since third grade!) of developing and celebrating young people whom others discount and discard, both in schools and at home. Thank you to all the people who kept me grounded and reminded me that life is more than writing and thinking. It’s also about eating and telling stories and just sitting around of an evening: Vern, Marilyn, Kindra, Jason and Andrew, Josh and Emery and Beckett, Kami, Megan, Annemarie, and Olive. Cheers! Thank you to all of the folks in the writing center world who challenged me to think about praxis, especially anti-oppressive praxis and what seeking justice looks like in real time, in real learning spaces: Beth, Jasmine, Frankie, Thomas, Rasha, the co- authors of The Everyday Writing Center and all of the folks who’ve played a role in the IWCA SIG on Antiracist Activism. Thank you also to all of the crew at the OU Writing Center who made it possible for me to have time and space to write! vi And never, ever ever would I have been able to begin, stick with, or finish this dissertation without my “cohort.” We found each other and are making it happen. Thank you, Ebony, LaVonya, Erin, Stevie! Liz, we bonded over a little Bakhtin and a lotta critical love; you have been a rock. And to Rodney, who from the time we stepped into that first qualitative methodology class was right there pushing me, learning with me, making it happen. Thank you. #CohortPower Y’all, let’s see what’s next! vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .................................................................................................................. xii Chapter 1 ................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 3 Significance of the Study .............................................................................. 6 Purpose of the Study ..................................................................................... 8 Key Concepts .............................................................................................. 11 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 14 Chapter 2: Literature Review & Theoretical Framework ....................................... 17 Literature Review ....................................................................................... 18 Historical Context: White Women Come to College ..................... 18 Current Context: White Women in College Today ........................ 27 How White Women Do Race & Gender ........................................ 28 Theoretical Framework ............................................................................... 34 Critical Whiteness Studies .............................................................. 35 Intersectionality & the Matrix of Domination ................................ 36 Decolonization & Indigenous Knowledge ...................................... 39 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 41 Chapter 3: Methodology ......................................................................................... 42 Why Narrative Inquiry ................................................................................ 43 Intersectional Methods ................................................................................ 45 Methodology: Critical Narrative Inquiry .................................................... 49 Critical Qualitative Research .......................................................... 50 viii Narrative Inquiry ............................................................................. 51 Positionality & Reflexivity ............................................................. 53 Praxis .............................................................................................