ORIGINAL ARTICLES

(Un)Common White Sense: the WhitenessBehind Digital Media

Cheryl E. Matias1,2 & Jared Aldern1

# Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

AbstractWielding its power through operations of invisibility and normalcy, whiteness, as a raciallyhegemonic ideology, acts as if white racial domination is the normal, natural order of theworld, as if it is common sense. But this ‘common’ sense has another operating mecha-nism; it allows whiteness to go undetected, thereby masking racial inequities. That is, asfolks blindly accept what is ‘common’ sense as rationale to justify their actions, theyinadvertently ignore how whiteness, and thus white supremacy, is inextricably bound intothat white sense making. As such, we opt for another term, (un)common white sensewhich deliberately makes the ‘common’ uncommon by revealing the hidden tendencies ofwhiteness. Take, for example, historically white (In solidarity with Critical Race Theory(CRT) scholarship, this article strategically capitalizes Black and lowercases white)institutions of higher education where curating a diverse public image of racial magna-nimity generates a positive public reputation so needed by the university. Yet in thisbranding and imaging, whiteness is still ever-present. Though the university brochures areglittered with diverse Black and Brown faces, the university is pimping Black and Brownbodies for its own agenda, perpetuating the oft inequitable racial experiences of people ofcolour. In the end, those glittering, diverse university brochures are just another attempt topresent a fictitious racial utopia. By exposing how universities apply (un)common whitesense in their postdigital media, the maintenance and manifestations of white supremacyare revealed. Using Critical Race Theory’s method of counterstorytelling, this articleilluminates how (un)common white sense embeds itself in university postdigital media.We, the authors, first explore how this face-value diversity has been used in the past, how itis presently being enforced on a historically white university (HWU) campus, and how thepresent problem of white ‘common’ sense can perhaps be made (un)common.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-019-00076-5

* Cheryl E. MatiasCheryl.matias@ucdenver.edu

1 School of Education and Human Development, University of Colorado Denver, 1380 LawrenceStreet, #734, Campus Box 106, Denver, CO 80217, USA

2 University of Denver Sturm Law School, 2255 E Evans Ave, Office 435A, Denver,CO 80210, USA

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Published online: 28 October 2019

Keywords Whiteness . Digital . Postdigital . Higher education . Academia . Race . Criticalwhiteness studies . Critical race theory .Media

The Precursor of (Un)Common White Sense: an Introduction

The power in whiteness is largely facilitated by a convenient and all-too-common shieldof invisibility which keeps persistent racial inequities discreet and thus ostensiblyobsolete. However, what is often misinterpreted as natural and deserving of its sociallyconstructed position of superiority is an unnaturally contrived ideology employed byracial ruling elites to keep society racially stratified (Lipsitz 1995). Whiteness as suchbelieves in the existence of a white race and its superior nature, portending therefore thatracial domination by this group is the normal order of the world. Those possessing thisideology then carry on wrongly believing that society has actualized racial egalitarian-ism based on the increasing presence of minoritized persons in their midst. Such personsdeny the racial ramifications of a racist past, and hold neurotically onto imaginations ofthe ‘great’ days when there were no consequences for rape, brutality, and theft of people,land, and resources. Comfortably entrenched in this ideology of whiteness, people ofmany races though most predominantly whites deny that racial inequities persist, someeven going so far as to argue white males are the most oppressed group due to somesuccessful momentum in society towards racial and gender equity.

In the context of historically white institutions of higher education, or what Roediger(2005) properly refers to as historically white universities (HWUs) because suchuniversities serve white interests foremostly, curating a diverse public image of racialmagnanimity serves to mask the present and past racial inequities of the institution.Such inequities have been perpetuated in-part by gaslighting the public with images ofracial diversity when indeed they are not diverse. These public-facing images canpacify resistance to white supremacy or racially inequitable status quo they so hide.In fact, the literature on race and academia clearly indicate the racially inequitableexperiences continue to be experienced by faculty of colour (see Matias 2015). And,even attempts to redress racial inequity such as affirmative action are currently undersiege precisely for the way they have fundamentally changed the racial equity oncampuses for the better, resulting in white backlash, also referred to as whitelash (seeFisher V. University of Texas). Such whitelash are nonetheless exertions of whitenessbecause those engaging in them seek to make universities ‘great again’ by returning thefocus towards white racial interests yet again.

Here, an argument will be made that on the whole, historically white institutionshave never stopped revolving around white interests; however, amidst the pretence ofdesiring diversity, the whitelash has become even more nuanced. For instance, in thecase with HWUs, though they glitter their university brochures with diverse faces, theuniversity is merely pimping Black and Brown bodies to uphold a false imagery ofdiversity. These acts deliberately mask, or at least visually misrepresent, the raciallyimbalanced landscape of most universities. Whatever the case, and to be sure there is arange of reasons, HWUs participating in this form of branding are faking the delusionalfunk. While university imaging is about presenting diversity as a valuable and desirabletrait (Ahmed 2012) to the public and pretending that the university has racial harmonythrough its diversity, whiteness betwixt and between the hard or digital copy is stillreadily present to the trained observer.

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The Birth of the (Un)Common White Sense: a Roadmap

We, the authors, first explore how whiteness has been used in the past from labourunions to education. We then use Critical Race Theory’s methodology ofcounterstorytelling to illustrate how on our university campus whiteness is implicitlyaccepted and institutionally invoked. Specifically, we draw from the counterstory ofone of the authors to illuminate how the whiteness embeds itself in postdigital media.By adhering to whiteness, the university ultimately reinforces (un)common whitesense, especially in that it presumes ‘common’ sense is best acknowledged when itserves white interests. By drawing from postdigitalism, we then seek to complexifyhow whiteness embeds itself in the actions and motivations in the postdigital era. Wethen argue that to (un)common this sense, or, as Richard Dyer (2016) described it, tomake it strange, we must deconstruct it in order to move towards racial equity oncollege campuses and society at large. As such, with respect to how whiteness soinvisibly enmeshes itself with popularized notions of ‘common’ sense, we opt for theterm (un)common white sense to forever expose the invisible nature of whiteness.

(Un)Common White History

Just as universities operate with face-value whiteness, Roediger (2005) discusses howwhiteness operated in the historical evolution of labour unions following the GreatMigration. Though it was often surfacely observed that many freed Blacks moved northto work in industrial companies, they were oftentimes denied official membership intolabour unions. So at face value the working class looked diverse, but as Roedigerasserts, that was only skin deep. Therefore, whiteness masking racial disparities is aperfectly viable means of pretending to ‘keep with the times’, as occurred withhistorically white organizations like the labour unions of yesteryear. Institutions ofhigher education operate in a strikingly similar fashion. By placing cosmetic diversityfront and centre in their promotional materials, while all-too-often denying the struc-tural foundation of the ivory tower that keeps people of colour relegated to second-classstatus on campus, the institutions themselves institutionalize whiteness.

Part of institutionalization in this case is how one internalizes whiteness. Whitenesshas long deprived both white people and people of colour of their humanity, for loyaltyto whiteness, as Ignatiev and Garvey (1996) suggest, is nothing if not treason tohumanity. Considering that adhering to whiteness harms one’s own humanity forcesus, the authors, to demonstrate the impacts of whiteness on whites themselves since acommon assumption is that whiteness negatively impacts only people of colour. Matias(2016) provides a deeply psychoanalytic rumination on how whiteness impacts whites.Her analysis of white racial identity reveals a disrupted, unhealthy sense of self thatemploys neurotic behaviours, for lack of a better term, to restabilize itself into white-ness (Matias 2016). For example, she describes the emotionalities of whiteness andhow they can be operationalized to silence discussions or stop learning about race.Specifically, she describes an event where a student adamantly claimed that she did notsee race, yet when confronted with literature that showed how race operates in USsociety, she became so emotionally flustered that she began to cry. Matias (2016) askshow one can claim to not see something and yet emotionally react so negatively to it.

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No one reacts that way to the word and concept of a unicorn, and yet many will claimthat they have never seen a unicorn before either. Matias then argues that the emotion-alities of whiteness are used to control race narratives by operationally elevatingwhiteness to the apex of the racial hierarchy so that whites feel secure again. Essen-tially, the neurotic behaviour of crying about something one claims to not see is meantto alleviate some type of anxiety one has developed precisely because one does see andexperience it.

Furthermore, whites, as recipients of the unjust legacies of white racial favouritism,privilege, or as Cabrera (2018) posits, white immunity, often calibrate their identitiesbased on their ability to arbitrate all things for Others. For example, though manywhites claim that they do not experience race or racism due to their white privilege orimmunity, they still reserve the right and entitlement to be the Determiner with a capitalD (someone who usurps authority and presumes expertise) of what is and what is notracist. This is tantamount to an oncologist who believes himself to be qualified enoughto cure cancer despite disbelieving in its existence. Though this may seem ludicrous inthe latter situation, this nonetheless is exactly how whiteness operates. To challenge theabsurdity of one determining what is and what is not true about race while claimingnever to see race is a dangerous endeavour for the challenger. To bring up the fallacyputs the challenger or revealer in danger of being labelled a race baiter and of beingerroneously assumed to be the racist for merely bringing up the topic of race; beyondcharacter assassination, further dangers include violence like death by assassination, aswell as housing and job discrimination (all of which have historically been the result offolks pointing out racism).

To be sure what is deemed as ‘common sense’ in whiteness yields terrible results forthose who do not buy-in and therefore must be made uncommon. Thus, we willresistantly refer to it here-in as (un)common. Yet because whiteness hegemonicallywields power, this (un)common white sense is then forced upon others in order forwhites to feel emotional equilibrium. Returning to the aforementioned example, Matias(2016) describes that when the student began crying, it was a strategic means toweaponize her tears (Matias 2016) and silence the discourse of race, which wouldmake her feel comfortable again. If the challenger or revealer continues to press theconversation or learning about race, that person is labelled as aggressive, combative, or‘reverse-racist’ for insisting conversations about race have a place in academia. How-ever, if Others comply by remaining silent in racial discourse, some whites will feel thatthose people ‘get it’. When a person of colour, or fellow white person, points out thehypocrisy or nonsensical beliefs embedded in their (un)common sense, rage oftenensues. For example, Anderson (2016) discusses how white rage has really exacerbatedthe racial divide. She writes:

...white rage has undermined democracy, warped the Constitution, weakened thenation’s ability to compete economically, squandered billions of dollars onbaseless incarceration, rendered an entire region sick, poor, and woefully under-educated, and left cities nothing left but decimated. (6)

Clearly, this issue cannot be written off as located only within academia, and theadvertising department of universities at that. Sometimes, the white backlash, or‘whitelash’ as it’s been called, manifests in a variety of racially microaggressive ways,

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such as a nasty email or an attempt to disrupt one’s academic and career stability (seeMatias 2016). For example, instead of directly stating that they do not like a scholar’sresearch on race, a person can target the race scholar by sending an email statingsomething like, ‘Though we find your research important, we suggest that youfocus your efforts on what is truly pressing in our program right now’. Or theadministration can say they want to ‘help you grow’, yet do so by suspending youfrom having doctoral students.

While nasty, these academic decisions are often entrenched in false niceties. Suck-ling this white (un)common sense, the people performing these acts of whitenessassume they are encouraging stable academic environments where learners from vastlydiverse backgrounds can access campus opportunity in a shared, equitable, and neutralspace. Alas, that is not the case. By catering to this (un)common white sense, the HWUultimately acts like the aforementioned brochure, presenting itself as inclusive anddiverse, yet only at face value, not in true engagement or respect. Below that seeminglycalm surface, the racial trauma of diverse students, staff, and faculty accumulates. Bycomplying with professional decidedly white norms, many are left with a limited set ofoptions for how to engage with colleagues. The entire field of respectability politics andliterature on incivility both reveal how institutions operate their norms in ways thatmischaracterize how people of colour behave, interact, and present themselves.Leonardo and Porter (2010), for instance, even argue that the oft used ‘safe space’mantra is a falsity, claiming that white-normed institutions that claim safe space oftendo so on behalf of white sensibilities and not on behalf of people of colour who havehonest dialogues about race. By having their unique ways of being and knowingdismissed, mocked, and otherwise pushed to the margins for the benefit of those whoare invested in the institutional status quo, students and faculty of colour at historicallywhite universities are too often silenced and forced to appear complicit in (un)commonwhite sense lest they be labelled like those labels aforementioned: incivil, not collab-orative, or worse, angry. Needless to say, people of colour in spaces that normalizewhite (un)common sense are not free to be themselves. In the same vein, our suppos-edly ‘agreeable’ colleagues are not truly diversifying, or inclusive, in their endeavoursto maintain ‘respectable’ politics. Matias (2016) states, ‘when my [white] students say“respect is key,” what I [as a woman of colour] fear most is what definition of respect isbeing referred to—the one that merely caters to their needs or the one that rightfullydistributes the power embedded in respect’ (16). Thus, within white (un)commonsense, the idea of respect is typically unidirectional, and people of colour are expectedto be civil (code for kowtow), respectful (code for submissive), and collaborative (codefor silently carrying out whites’ interests and ideas).

Whiteness and the Postdigital Era

Though there is a plethora of literature that reveals the complexities of whiteness insociety, specifically in education, less is known about the merger between whitenessand postdigital media. Before delving into the dynamics between whiteness andpostdigital media, we explore postdigitalism first.

Traditionally, the study of the digital era focused on the separation of technology andmedia; however, in modern times, it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the

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two categories. Insofar as postdigital media influences life, education, and identity, it‘appears to adequately capture contemporary human existence’ (Jandrić et al. 2018:894). As argued by Jandrić et al. (2018), postdigitalism is not only ‘all around us’; ithas, more precisely, become of us. In other words, society has so adapted to virtualcommunication styles that we unknowingly accept dialogic diversity as a way to makemeaning of the world and ourselves. Or, as Jandrić et al. (2019) offer, ‘today’s dialogueis inherently postdigital’ (164). Therefore, one cannot fully understand a social phe-nomenon separate from the digital world and media that surrounds or is embedded in it.Specifically, Twitter posts, Instagram feeds, blogs, vlogs, online articles, and onlinechat wars have brought our once private direct conversations into the public digitalworld. Suffice it to say that one has to do more digital research than just a Wiki searchto fully investigate the social responses to any given topic.

Entering a postdigital dialogic era is of grave importance in the realm of socialjustice, and more precisely racial justice, for if a postdigital moment ‘provides a spaceof and for learning’, it then also offers a space for ‘struggle and hope’ (Jandrić et al.2019: 180). Just as the media has been understood to be a pedagogical tool (seeDurham and Kellner 2001), so, too, has the postdigital realm. For example, too oftendo K-12 educators quickly dismiss cell phone usage inside the classroom. This iscommonly seen in the USAwhere teachers ask parents to pick up confiscated phones,ones that were taken when students took them out during the school day. However,there have been more innovative teaching pedagogies and instructional approachesusing technology, like cell phones, in the classroom. Moreover, it is not just the simpleuse of additive technology in the classroom that is providing more meaning making.Instead, what is making students understand content more deeply is using the technol-ogy as a tool for postdigital dialogue.

One of the authors of this article admits to even using Facebook challenges toferret out the ideologies and emotionalities of whiteness in ways that would not beunderstood or experienced if not done digitally. In her course students read aboutwhiteness and the emotionalities of whiteness. But to fully understand the hegemonicpower of whiteness and its emotionalities, she incorporates textual analysis of socialmedia posts and reactions, viral videos, and reactionary comments on online blogs,vlogs, and/or articles. To test out their understanding, she invites willing students to asocial media challenge wherein the students post the statement, ‘I am taking a race,class, and gender course and I can now see why a Black woman in poverty mayexperience the world differently’ onto their Facebook feeds. Before they post,however, the class has already outlined the common responses, connected thoseemotional reactive responses to literature on whiteness, and generated an arsenal oftools for how to respond. In some ways this is a triggering activity, where they triggerpeople’s poorly developed anxieties about race and learn how to process and respondto them more effectively—a process needed for racial justice. But as the studentsengage with this process, they will experience how intoxicating and powerful theemotionalities of whiteness really are, and how they can be used to silence therealities and discourse about race. This type of educational pedagogy takes learningto a new postdigital level. Even in the absence of a physical smartphone or laptop inclass, the interpellation between the poster and the reactors is highly educative andshowcases how racial emotions play out in both the postdigital realm and face-to-facediscourse. This process becomes the educational text.

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Just as Fawns (2019) argues that education can never be totally online or digital, theconverse is now true in a postdigital era—meaning biological, physical, or socialeducation can never be strictly that. In a time when postdigitalism is everywhere andanywhere, ‘one leaves the classroom and continues to learn, often using digitalmedia...One stops attending to digital media and continues learning from within thephysical world, often embodied by other people who constitute part of the learningenvironment’ (135). The physical, face-to-face world can never be separated from thepostdigital world of today, and this warrants a deeper examination of how thepostdigital world influences the physical world and vice versa.

Knowing that postdigitalism is married to the physical world and cannot bedivorced, the question then becomes what constitutes the ‘post’ in postdigital. Arndtet al. (2019) provide a thorough definition. Of interest is their third conceptualization,wherein the ‘post’ in postdigital relates to criticality. This is seen with other criticalmoments, like the postmodern, postcolonial, and poststructural eras, in which ‘post’does not necessarily indicate that we are beyond a particular era but rather that we aretransitioning from blind acceptance to critical reflections on that era. Or, as Peters andBesley (2019) report, the ‘post’ in postdigital is ‘a critical attitude (or philosophy) thatinquires into the digital world, examining and critiquing its construction, its theoreticalorientation and its consequences’ (30). Operationalizing the postdigital in this wayprovides a space for critique, a critical reflective analysis, so to speak, that one canengage in to better understand the ramifications of a particular time frame, event,transition, or phenomenon.

Being able to critique is a vital avenue for possible explorations that may bettersociety. Take, for example, critical race theory. Though developed from legal studies,the theory has moved into education, offering hope qua new analysis of how raceoperates in education. Similarly, postdigitalism contributes to the ‘ongoing educationaland societal struggles and social movements working for eco-social justice and thedevelopment of genuinely democratic and emancipatory alternatives’ (Arndt et al.2019: 450). This definition is constructive in that operationalizing postdigitalism inthis manner allows for a critique of both the physical world and the digital world—acritique that is not employed solely to bash a topic but instead as a way to inform andtransform.

With respect to race and whiteness then, postdigitalism provides new spaces tocontextualize and analyse; that is, whiteness does not merely happen face-to-face withdirect words and actions directed at another biological being. Instead, withpostdigitalism, we need to consider how whiteness operates even moremultidimensionally. For example, whiteness can be embodied before, during, and/orafter the digital interplay. Or digitalism, more specifically postdigital media, can beused to reify whiteness, a process through which whiteness inevitably and slicklyrefines while bouncing around in postdigital echo chambers. Or technologies can shapeour understanding of enactments of whiteness qua videotaping racist acts and havingthe videos go viral. Metaphorically speaking, understanding digitalism and whitenesscomplicates the old rhetoric of the chicken and egg, because regardless of whatevercame first, whiteness is enacted in novel ways through multiple spaces over time. Andthis is precisely what needs to be considered when realizing what Bell (1992) speaks ofwith regard to the permanence of race. How are race and whiteness mutating orevolving in an ever-postdigital world?

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One aspect of whiteness and postdigitalism is identity formation. In fact, Arndt et al.(2019: 463) remind us that ‘if we do not reframe psychology in light of postdigitalrealities, we risk talking around students instead of stepping into their new paradigms,their social virtual realities, their third spaces of engagement’. As such, more consid-eration needs to be given to how identities are psychologically and digitally formed,influenced, and projected. No doubt online avatars are representations of our biologicalselves; however, recently the use of avatars has had racial implications. Frompretending to be Black to advance whiteness rhetoric (see Haag 2018; HuffingtonPost 2014; Virk and McGregor 2018) to engaging in other forms of blackface orblackfishing (like only using gifs with Black people in them), whiteness has usedthe postdigital media as a new way of reinventing old blackface minstrels. In fact,some whites who engage in whiteness rhetoric do not have to engage in thesaying, ‘I have a Black best friend’ anymore; they can simply create an onlineBlack persona. One of the authors experienced a strange form of Black showcas-ing in postdigital media, as another aspect of whiteness. Years ago, while hertwins were in kindergarten, one white mother kept using social media to displayher two African-adopted children. In every correspondence, from listservs toclassroom chat apps, the woman identified herself as the mom of the ‘dark Africankids’. Yet showcasing her ‘dark African kids’ in written and verbal form was notenough. This white mother went on to post pictures of herself and her two ‘darkAfrican kids’ on social media wearing Kente cloth—an odd display given that herchildren were from Senegal.1

This odd form of displaying Blackness for the sake of ‘proving’ the presumedmorality of whiteness is echoed again in the same author’s university courses. Eachyear, she bears witness to stories of biracial (African American and white) studentswhose white mothers kept them from their Black side and paraded them around theneighbourhood as if they were prizes used only to showcase how their mothers weregood white people. While taking one of the author’s classes on whiteness, one biracialstudent talked at length about how she began posting content on Black pride, Blackbeauty, and Black empowerment. Yet when she finally came into her Blacknessthrough courses and postdigital media, her white mother began to shun her. Sadly,they are no longer on speaking terms. Clearly, whiteness enacted within the postdigitalera has complexified how people engage with race.

On a larger scale, identifying formation for organizations like universities is alsocomplexified within the postdigital era. Similar to individual beings who use postdigitalmedia to solidify, shape, or represent their identity, universities use postdigital media asa way to shape their reputation and identity for the purpose of swaying public opinion.In fact, for universities, the use of postdigital media is not simply for social purposes;indeed, it is about ‘inciting a proliferation of academic research on the surveillancecultures and the profit-seeking motives of the technology industry’ (Knox 2019: 361).Conceptualized in this manner, the use of postdigital media at universities becomesmore complex than simple image branding; that is, there is a material, capitalistic, andsurveillance-like purpose to the content, images, and postings of universities. And withrespect to Peters and Besley’s (2019) argument on the postdigital era, there is nothingbenign or benevolent about how entities use postdigital media. Take, for instance, how

1 Kente cloth is typically from the Ashanti people of Ghana.

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universities brand themselves as inclusive and diverse by showcasing the few studentsand faculty of colour (much like the white mother of the dark African kids). On the onehand, university officials may argue that they are putting their best foot forward bytrying to highlight their minoritized students. On the other hand, this showcasing isalways done with selfish intent. Postdigitally speaking, if this is occurring at an HWU,it cannot be divorced from its’ pre-establishment in whiteness, and therefore cannot bedone purely on the basis of supporting the students of colour. Whether the intent is toattract more students and faculty of colour to a space that pretends to be diverse, orthinking of the fiscal benefits of increased student enrollment, there are capitalisticendeavours when engaging in postdigital media. Clearly, the digital becomescapital because it is ‘underpinned by a rampant desire for market share and profitderived from the mining of user data’ (Knox 2019: 361). Essentially, the stories,testimonies and quotations, and even scholarship of students and faculty of colourbecome nothing more than data used to turn a profit—and solely a white profit. Inthis sense, the use of postdigital media in universities could be likened to amodern plantation, showcasing the labour of folks of colour in the hopes ofcapitalistic gains just as it harvests certain testimonies and sells them as a falseimage to attract more students. This defines the (un)common white sense ofuniversity diversity and inclusion practices. With this in mind, we, the authors,explore how to better understand the dynamics of whiteness in the postdigital erausing methodologies found in critical theories of race.

Methods for Deconstructing (Un)Common White Sense:Counterstorytelling and the Hermeneutics of Whiteness

The mechanisms of race and whiteness in society are often masked because of itsinvisibility and normalizations (see Lipsitz 1995). Thus, ferreting out dimensionsof whiteness, in particular, becomes difficult in that acts of whiteness are sadlyconsidered standard practice. In fact, when speaking about race one of the authorslearned that large amounts of people are more able to identify when behaviours ordialogue are racially microaggressive. For example, folks are quick to acknowl-edge that the questions ‘where are you really from?’ and ‘why do you speakEnglish so well?’ are just two expressions used to racially microaggress a personof colour. Yet when asked what exactly undergirds the racial microaggression,folks oftentimes fail to recognize the whiteness that is oppressing them. Theexpression of whiteness that entitles one to enact a racial microaggression is lessknown because the mechanisms of whiteness are so often left unchecked. Plainly,whiteness undergirds the actions of racial microaggressions. Returning to theexamples mentioned previously, the enactment of whiteness in those inquiries isthat of (1) nativist racism (the presumption that being white means one is native tothe USA and anyone who does not align with white phenotypes must not be fromthe USA), (2) entitlement (the presumption that whites have authority to point outrace without ever being questioned themselves about the white race), (3) inno-cence (the presumption that to engage in this racial act is in and of itself okaybecause whites are always racially innocent and absolved from racial treachery,especially if they have associates, friends, or even a single neighbour of colour),

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(4) colourblind racism (the presumption that they see no colour yet are strategi-cally singling you out with this line of questioning precisely because they seecolour), (5) white privilege (the accrued benefits of being white and knowing youcan engage in this type of behaviour but then blame the victim), and the list goeson. The point is that whiteness is so commonplace, so seemingly natural in USsociety and abroad, that it often goes unnoticed, much like a lion eating anantelope. And because of this, methodologies are needed that can carefully extractthe hidden nuances of whiteness. As such, we, the authors, apply both critical racetheory’s counterstorytelling and the hermeneutics of whiteness because thesemethodological approaches respectively acknowledge race as a constant anddebunk dominant messages of hegemonic whiteness so that we may more justlyallow truth to surface in a posttruth and postdigital era.

First, Solórzano and Yosso (2002) argue the need for a specific methodology tobe applied to studies that employ critical race theory (CRT). Counterstorytelling,for example, ‘aims to expose race neutral discourse to reveal how white privilegeoperates within an ideological framework to reinforce and support unequal societalrelations between whites and people of color’ (Merriweather Hunn et al. 2006). Abenefit of this method is that when deconstructing the events, discourses, andactions behind the politics of what actually makes it onto a university’s postdigitalmedia, the mechanisms of postdigital whiteness are revealed. Using CRT’scounterstorytelling provides the same critique seen in the postdigital era; however,instead of focusing on postdigitalism, the critique here is of the processes ofinstitutionalized race and racism. Additionally, because CRT adheres to transdis-ciplinary approaches, the fusion of postdigitalism and race allows for a moreseamless critique of both.

Secondly, with respect to whiteness specifically, Leonardo (2016) posits that ahermeneutics of whiteness helps to interrogate the oft unquestioned tropes ofwhiteness that naturalize or normalize into everyday rhetoric, ideology, epistemol-ogy, behaviours, and emotions. As previously mentioned, whiteness is a tricky onein that it embeds itself so deeply into the fabric of society in the USA and abroadthat it often goes undetected. It is only when it is directly or indirectly challengedthat one finally becomes partially aware of its operating mechanisms. For exam-ple, returning to the racially microaggressive inquiries discussed earlier, one cando one’s best to answer the questions, but it’ll never fully satisfy the questionerbecause behind those seemingly innocent words are racial assumptions that arebeing left unchecked. However, if one asked a white person the same question(‘where are you from?’) and refused to accept their answer of ‘Ohio’ by asking,‘No. Where are you really from? Ireland or something?’ the silliness of it indicatesthat you are going against an unspoken norm. The norm being that of whiteness,wherein whites can directly question a person of colour’s authenticity based onwhite normalizations but are aghast to do the same. Therefore, the hermeneutics ofwhiteness gets at this tension in a literary manner.

Matias and Newlove (2017) corroborate this fact claiming that a hermeneutics ofwhiteness is needed to ferret out how white supremacist ideals get embedded ineveryday speech and practices. Applied to this theoretical analysis, a hermeneutics ofwhiteness allows for an in-depth investigation of how whiteness operates behind theeveryday university politics of postdigital social media.

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Battling (Un)Common White Sense: a Counterstory

The (un)common white sense is the underlying ideology that frames the interpretationof the following racial microaggressions, which add up to macroaggressions. To bestcapture the counterstory, the narration will change from expository to first person;however, we, the authors, return to a unified expository voice during the analysis at theconclusion. The first person in the counterstory below is the second author: a Blackmale doctoral student, one of the few in the doctoral program at this HWU.

Recently, my advisor was approached by the doctoral program’s director of market-ing at the HWU where I am a doctoral student to recommend students who will submita student testimonial for a new program website. The program, in fact the entire Schoolof Education, was undergoing an image rebranding which included creating a newwebsite that had student testimonials of their respective programs, each accompaniedby a smiling-face student photo. These testimonials were to be used on the schoolwebsite to draw in potential student applicants. The submission was to include ‘a 1–2sentence quote...explaining why you love the curriculum, faculty, fellow students, and/or research projects in the PhD...and a recent headshot’. I wondered at the language ofthis request: do they want honest testimonials or just a fake display of love? As a Blackman, I could not help but think how my picture and public pontification of loving theprogram might be operationally used to bring in more students of colour, despite myracial trauma in the program thus far. In participating in this seemingly simple request,was I about to be used as a minority on display, like the caged Filipinos during the St.Louis World’s Fair in the early 1900s? Or like Ota Benga, who, according to Newkirk’s(2015) biographical book, was a human attraction at the Bronx Zoo during the sametime period? How can I best represent what it is that I study within this critical studiesconcentration area? Yes, there is an upside of potential benefit to prospective studentsof colour in seeing my presence on the website, feeling represented, and deciding toalso pursue an advanced degree. But at what cost? And should I assume that they donot already believe they can attain a college degree? Does this serve the greater good byencouraging more applicants of colour despite the fact that I have great reservations dueto many of my experiences thus far in the program?

I understood that these advertising materials were not geared towards amassing astudent body so diverse as to constitute a change in the HWU being a predominantlywhite-serving institution, as in Bell’s (1980) dilemma of interest convergence whereinwhite interests are always held above those of people of colour. Rather, the intent wasto curate towards the (un)common white sense standard of a desirable educationalsetting, which, as Osei-Kofi et al. (2013) tell it, must include the presence of racialminorities. In short order, this strategic manoeuver helps whites avoid the ‘terror’ offeeling like racists, a phenomenon described by Aldern and Newlove (in press) as one‘in which white racism has become unacceptable only if publicly recognizable’ (2). Theaccomplishment of this surface level ideal of racial egalitarianism and postracial blissallows the furtherance of white emotional security, for, while racial minorities arepresent on campus, they are present only in the margins and only to the precise degreethat allows white students and faculty to navigate campus spaces in superior juxtapo-sition. Clearly, it is white interests that are served by increasing the numbers of studentsof colour to just the right amount, never exceeding parity, and these interests are theneedle through which HWU postdigital diversity and inclusion efforts are all too often

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thread. This does not mean that no people of colour are positively impacted by therepresentation of a Black student on the school website. And it definitely is not to arguethat students of colour should not be represented on school promotional materials. Butwhat it is indicative of is that the interests of people of colour are not the primarypurpose of HWU campus marketing and diversity and inclusion efforts on the whole;they are indeed an afterthought.

In response to the request from the department, I gave them a headshot of myself.You could see my figure, and recognize me as a Black male; however, you could notsee my face. Additionally, I included a quote about love and change from AssataShakur, finding it apropos to highlight the words of a Black woman feminist in acritical studies doctoral program instead of aggrandizing my own words. I alsorequested they not alter the formatting of my name or picture prior to publicationwithout first getting my approval. To this, I received an email response from themarketing director of the School of Education claiming that they would not publishthe submission to the website since I ‘didn’t provide...a student testimonial’—code for Idid not provide the white kind of testimonial like a good Black boy.

I responded, ‘That’s truly unfortunate, and I would say an incredible error injudgment’. Then, lo and behold, the director of marketing, a white woman, engagedin (un)common white sense whereby she apparently felt threatened and thus forwardedmy email to the associate dean of doctoral programs. There was no threat. I did notengage unprofessionally. I simply disagreed with her decision and made that known.This is when the associate dean, a white male who is also a professor in the doctoralprogram, emailed me to assure me that their ‘overall goal as a school is to be open tomultiple perspectives’, and that the decision to reject my submission ‘had nothing to dowith the message’. It was clear to me that this person (whom I had no interaction withregarding the testimonies thus far, and had never before met) was engaging whitenessand patriarchy by coming in to rescue the victimized white damsel in distress. I haveseen this all too often both in my personal life whenever white women (and men) feel abit threatened by my Blackness and in broader society, from Emmett Till to the CentralPark Five. Indeed, every Black man has at least a story. So I knew this was not aninnocent encounter; indeed, it was laden with racial presuppositions and postdigital(un)common white sense.

Additionally, though this encounter is a racial microaggression, the interesting aspectis that it is so veiled with false niceties, which read eerily similar to experiences I havewitnessed as a Black K-12 classroom teacher. For example, I have observed white highschool students denying that their decision to sit near only other white students everyday, rather than Black classmates, ‘has nothing to do with race’ and pointing theirfingers accusedly at their Black peers. When pressed on the logic of such a belief,students have come to tears of shame and guilt, an emotional patterning well habituatedby high school age. This process, as documented earlier, is typically characterized by aneurotic projection of inter-generational shame that gets hurled onto the teacher asthough they are the guilty party for merely bearing witness to the processes of race.And getting back to the postdigital debacle at hand, when my supportive white malecolleague (also a doctoral student in the same program) told the director of marketingthat he, too, was withdrawing his submission due to their actions, she responded bystating that her decision, in short, ‘had nothing to do with race’. There it was again. The(un)common white sense to a tee; that is, a healthy common sense would likely be to

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self-reflect on one’s own anxiety about why both students did not want to include theirtestimonials. Yet in her deep feeling of shame about her own race she engaged inneurotic behaviours and projected her racial angst onto us by quickly interjecting that itwas not about race as a way to ostensibly distance herself from being labelled a racist.

Touting the desire to diversify in thought while refusing to entertain my approach tothe student testimonial—a common practice of (un)common white sense—the associ-ate dean’s message read further:

[the school rep] shared your e-mail with me, and I wanted to jump in – myimmediate reaction to your submission had nothing to do with the message, butthat it seems inappropriate to offer as a student quote a quote from someone elsethat the student provided. In any case, your perspective is valuable and we wantto encourage you to continue developing this perspective and inform it throughyour critical scholarship. In this case, the website’s primary purpose is to inform,however, as a marketing tool for the concentration area. Our overall goal as aschool is to be open to multiple perspectives and encourage interest amongapplicants who are thoughtful and inquisitive, not always like-minded (...folkswho are open and willing to challenge conformity and think openly and critically,which is often quite different than everyone thinking the same way, just differ-ently than before).

Anyway, thanks for sending it, and I hope you can appreciate the basis for ourdecision, even while you disagree with it.

This associate dean, in addition to playing white male saviour for the presumed‘attacked’ white female associate, positioned himself as the arbiter of appropriatemeans through which students express their views about the program. He told me, inshort, you can entertain this critical race scholarship, but in the realm of theory only—meaning, do not dare actually apply it, and definitely not here. To this I responded:

It appears from your email that the basis of your decision to reject my submission,was one of disagreement with my methods, in preference of a method you deemmore suitable. Perhaps you’ve yet to consider that the methods are part of themessage. You certainly have the freedom to have your opinion of my submission,but under what authority are you assuming that your opinion determines whetheror not it is published? If your opinion has not driven the decision, I have yet tohear how it was determined otherwise, and would readily listen to what infor-mation you will provide me. Perhaps a more critical understanding of why Iwould choose to center a black woman’s voice above my own could help youunderstand a bit more of the chosen approach. In line with the name ‘criticalstudies in education’ - theory without application will only perpetuate, throughnavel-gazing, the very institutional white male privilege and power a [program]concentration with such a name ought to aim to deconstruct. If that is not the aimof the program, then I would encourage a change in the name and focus of theprogram. Lastly, I would like to invite you to consider the naked hypocrisy withinyour email to me, in which you put forth the merits of thinking ‘openly andcritically’, while making no apparent attempt yourself to understand the issue at

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hand from a differing perspective. If that is untrue, please correct me and tell mewhat effort have you made? What questions have you asked me surrounding mydecision to send you what I sent you? I have not received any communicationfrom you that would indicate you are aligning yourself with the goal of theschool, which is to as you state, ‘be open to multiple perspectives’. I look forwardto hearing from you, and resolving this matter alongside you.

Subsequently, the associate dean never responded, thereby refusing my invitation forfurther inter-ideological engagement—a sabotage with grave implications for a multi-racial society in a postdigital era. As a result of my intentional subverting of the(un)common white sense imperative, the director of marketing who had her emotionalequilibrium disrupted to the point that she passed on my response to her ‘superior’never responded to me either. My uncommoning of the institutionalized common whitesense was met with a ‘professional’ dismissal—an indignity cloaked in the ineffablesupremacy of whiteness and white (un)common sensibilities.

Not only was the associate dean pretending to be the arbiter for me as a student, butalso for all the ‘thoughtful and inquisitive’, as he called them, would-be applicants tothe doctoral program. He declaratively presupposed what would be attractive for them,meaning students who could be more like me. By positioning his interpretation overmine and theirs, the associate dean was acting to maintain the HWU’s interests inbringing in white students, or students who would uphold whiteness. In short, theassociate dean was incongruent by declaring one thing and doing its inverse. Hisprofessed magnanimity (i.e. ‘your perspective is valuable and we want to encourageyou to continue…’) was uncloaked by his action of dismissing my intentional contri-bution. As I identified in the email, the ‘naked hypocrisy’ in the associate dean’s emailwas a positioning of himself and the university as stationary, infallible, hegemonicallycommon-sensical, and above all, white.

Implications to Postdigital Discourse and Education

Though this is just one counterstory of how un(common) white sense operates andtherefore cannot be generalizable, there is something instructive to be learned.That the dynamics of whiteness and postdigitalism operate in similar ways to howwhiteness works in the physical world is nothing novel. However, the larger racialpolitics about how postdigital media is used by and for the university is not. Thepostdigital media becomes both the medium for propelling and reifying whitenesswhile also being the site of its interpellations. In other words, whiteness ismediated through postdigital media qua content, images, and information, but itis also reified because postdigital media becomes a tool to further surveil, control,and manipulate the labour, intellectual property, and bodies of people of colourbeyond the physical world. Suffice it to say, postdigital media can be used toenslave people of colour in another dimension. Therefore, there are huge impli-cations for the field of education and for the hope of racial justice.

Firstly, if the university is truly interested in enacting diversity and inclusion, thenthe honest truths of how students, faculty, and staff of colour survive in academicspaces that are predominantly white must be heard and not propagandized. Too often,

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universities want a Horatio Alger story of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. Yetinstead of learning from the stories to alleviate some of the barriers that exist forindividuals, they want the content and the body to market on their websites. Further-more, when individuals divulge their discontent with how they are experiencing theacademy, universities are quick to shun them. In fact, some go so far as to paint themnegatively to avoid future potential litigations. In the end, only certain stories and truthsare harvested from the universities as a means to attract more students; others aresilenced. In order to satiate their thirst for more profits in the capitalistic market, thesestories are then pimped out like content whores looking to attract more Johns into theirhouse. But we digress. Although we understand that such imagery can be interpreted assalacious, it is nonetheless relevant in truly understanding how folks of colour, partic-ularly Black folks, feel about being put on display.

During one of the author’s university courses, the same biracial (Black and white2)student who shared that her white mom paraded her Blackness around theneighbourhood later described how she felt about the whole situation. At first she toldthe class that she felt ‘disgusted’, but later she shared that that word did not fullyencapsulate how she felt. As such, she refined her description, stating that it was likeshe had been sexually violated. In fact, she used the word ‘raped.’ This is a hugedistinction. Using people of colour for purposes not of their own but rather for the sakeof others’ profit or image-driven desires makes one feel like their body and mind havebeen raped. Circling back to the university, what is the underlying role they need toplay to ensure that honest approaches to diversity and inclusion are being taken?

Secondly, in acknowledging postdigitalism and whiteness in the academy, thereneeds to be further studies to undergird policies that lead to details on how to holduniversities accountable. These types of practices are so commonplace that it rendersthe intrusiveness of whiteness undetected and unchecked. In fact, when one points outideologies and actions rooted in hegemonic whiteness, they are immediately deemedthe problem and silenced. In fact, their stories, truths, and/or experiences are not onlysilenced, but they are construed as illegitimate because certain administrators go out oftheir way to paint these folks as problem people. By engaging in this strategy, theuniversity is able to paint a rosy picture by silencing the opposition and furtherdamaging the credibility of their truths by generating a narrative that frames thosewho protest as the problem. This is the same operating mechanism that is applied towomen who object to patriarchy. Not only does patriarchy silence women’s oppositionto and experiences with sexism but it also attempts to discredit the women themselvesby claiming that they are crazy and thus unworthy of consideration. This strategic, two-pronged approach of whiteness becomes more complexified when engaging inpostdigital media, for instead of harassing victims directly in the physical world, theyoperationalize this treatment postdigitally.

Thirdly, the study of racism and whiteness is typically linear with respect to racialmicroaggressions, meaning there is an aggressor who directly or indirectly aggressesonto another living being. This is not to say that the complexities of race are linear butthat the act of racial microaggression is. However, when realizing the realities ofpostdigitalism, the linearity of the situation complexifies. One can now engage inmicroaggressions in multiple dimensions: face-to-face, online, face-to-online, online-

2 In solidarity with CRT scholarship, this article strategically capitalizes Black and lowercases white.

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to-face, etc. The transmission of racism becomes more nuanced in that it requiresmultiple angles and examinations. Take, for instance, the recent attacks on faculty whoresearch race and more specifically whiteness. Every month, there are more Twitterfeeds, hashtags, posts, and online buzz about the mistreatment of race scholars,particularly if they are women of colour. One of the authors of this article is notexempt. She, too, receives constant hate mail. Yet although this hate mail is typicallysent from some anonymous IP address to a faculty member’s email or social mediaaccount, it becomes a more complex transmission when hate mail is being physicallymailed to the faculty member’s university office and home address. Thus, the trans-mission moves from online to the physical world. In fact, one of the authors hadpackages mailed to her university, one of which contained a stack of photosdocumenting ‘Black on Black crime’ and pictures of veterans (claiming she did notcare for veterans because she studies whiteness). The absurdity of this claim is asobtuse as the rhetorical incoherence of colourblind racists (per Bonilla-Silva 2006). Inany respect, the point here is that instead of fighting racism against a human body whoexhibits racist behaviour, the mode of transmission and how it impacts both realmsbecome more complex and thus are worthy of further investigation, lest we beunprepared for attacks by whiteness.

Finally, leaving the (un)common white sense intact further mystifies the real-ities of race and racism and, in doing so, allows for further perpetrations of them.When coupled with the increasing digital age, these perpetrations become evermore nuanced—and they are meaningful to understand because continuing tosweep this under the rug or minimizing it allows for it to be bolder in itsperpetuation. For if cyber bullying can influence teenager suicide rates, so, too,can it impact the wellbeing of people of colour. Perhaps in this postdigital era, the(un)common white sense becomes a way of turning racial microaggressions intoconstant macroaggressions. And under these conditions what is to be said aboutracial justice and the humanity of folks of colour?

Making Sense of Nonsense: a Conclusion

Leonardo (2009) writes, ‘whiteness studies is both a conceptual engagement and a racialstrategy’ (91). In a similar fashion, to the point in the email to the associate dean, what usecritical studies have if not applied? In other words, why learn criticality in educationalstudies if we can never engage in it to push a school of education, let alone society, to thinkand act anew? And what better place to start than in the very institution in which thestudies are being pursued—that is, of course, if there is a shared understanding that criticalgrowth can and needs to occur at the institution to meet the needs of all students, faculty,and members of the community. We hope one can behold how ideology, like whiteness,can strategically embed itself even before the posting of digitized content. Suffice it to saythat a lot goes on behind, during, and as a result of a single post, and the actual post,website, or brochure can reveal a contested battle to keep white interests paramount.Everything from the glittering of smiley-faced doctoral students on a doctoral programwebpage claiming to love everything about the program, to the free pens that neatlyannounce the doctoral program, to the semester tuition, ought to be suspect. In theStepford wife depiction of doctoral programs, what is left out is the ugly truth of how

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racialized traumas, voices, and truths of students and faculty of colour alike are suppressedbehind the HWU’s false pontifications about diversity and inclusion. Perversely, asAhmed (2012) describes in her dialectical theories on diversity, the university’s actionto pimp out happy Black and Brown bodies on their websites and brochures is how theyprove that they are, indeed, engaging in diversity. The smiling faces are no different thanBaldwin’s (1963) point that his ancestors were not ‘happy, shiftless, watermelon-eatingdarkies who loved Mr. Charlie and Miss Ann’ (1) but were often depicted this way tomask the atrocities that happened on the plantation. This is not to say that the universitieshave no place or that the universities are nothing but racist plantations. However, there is areason why they are called the ivory towers and not the ebony and ivory towers. If anHWU truly wants to reflect and respect the voices of diverse students and faculty in itsdigital and print content, then perhaps it should take an earnest look at the (un)commonwhite sense they use to undergird policies, investigations, and curriculum. To not do soforever traps all of us in an illogical, nonsensical state of whiteness perversely renderingthe (un)common common.

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Special Note:

To students and faculty who do not believe in nonsensical rumours both digitally and physically.

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