The involuntary racist : A study on white racism evasiveness amongst social movements activists in Madrid, Spain

• Main Author: Johansson, Sandra
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Linköpings universitet, Tema Genus 2017
• Subjects: social movements; whiteness; racism; white sincere fictions; racism evasiveness; critical whiteness studies; Social Sciences Interdisciplinary; Tvärvetenskapliga studier inom samhällsvetenskap; Gender Studies; Genusstudier
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-138364

This study explores how white social movement activists in Madrid, Spain, relate to race and racism, a previously unexamined issue in the Spanish context. The study is based upon qualitative semi-structured interviews and analytically framed within critical whiteness studies. The first part of the study focuses on how the interviewed activists understand race, whiteness and racism at a conceptual level. The second part analyses three dominant discourses that the white activists employ to make sense of race and racism in the specific context of social movements. The findings indicate an important gap between the two and show that when referring to social movements, all activists engage in racism evasiveness, allowing them to reproduce a sincere fiction of the white self as a "good" and "non-racist" person. The study moreover discusses how the three discourses may influence the way in which anti-racist work can be framed and despite some differences, they all present serious limitations in terms of challenging both internal and external racial power relations.