White anti-racists and belonging

Grounded in critical whiteness studies and informed by the practices and goals of autoethnography, this article narrates and analyses two stories for what they might teach us about problems of belonging for white anti-racists. In the first story, I recount a verbal attack by a white person against another white person during a conference. I interpret the attack as a scapegoating ritual meant to secure the attacker’s identity and belonging as an anti-racist, and then explore how this attack is a repetition of the kinds of scapegoating engaged in by white people against people of colour. In the second story, I narrate a heated argument I had with my mother during George W. Bush’s second term as president of the U.S. I use the story to consider white people’s fears of abandonment and how these fears might undermine anti-racist pedagogies.