Applying Critical Whiteness Studies in College Student Development Theory and Research

Abstract

In recent years a host of scholars have considered the contributions of various critical and post-structural perspectives to the study of college student development. This body of work has drawn on critical race theory, intersectionality, and queer theory, among others, to advance more power-conscious approaches to student development. Critical whiteness studies (CWS), a body of scholarship that seeks to expose the ways in which whiteness functions to maintain racial oppression, has received far less attention in the study of college student development (Jones & Abes, 2013). Consistent with third wave theorizing, we considered the contributions of CWS to student development research and theory. First, we reviewed the ways in which whiteness has been conceptualized in race research and then traced the historical origins of CWS. Second, we considered three particular constructs associated with CWS: white complicity (Applebaum, 2010), epistemologies of ignorance (Mills, 1997), and white normativity (Yancy, 2018), and highlighted their applications to student development work.