UTOPIAN ANTIRACISM IN THE UNITED STATES: THE PSEUDO-PROGRESSIVISM OF WHITE PRIVILEGE DISCOURSE

Utopian Antiracism in the United States: The Pseudo-progressivism of White Privilege Discourse discusses the history, principles, and consequences of “white privilege discourse.” I use this phrase to denote a diffuse body of work united by a common thesis: that white people must recognize and renounce their social, political, and economic privileges to further racial justice in the United States. Since the late 1960s, an increasing number of activists, pundits, and scholars have advanced this thesis. However, in Utopian Antiracism, I argue that white privilege discourse is a pseudo-progressive smokescreen that protects the laws, policies, and interests perpetuating racial inequality in the United States today. Whereas most other academic critics of white privilege discourse have addressed a small sample of white privilege scholarship or repudiated the discourse while broadly disparaging identity politics as illiberal, this dissertation offers a meta-analysis methodologically anchored in critical theory and pragmatism. Together, these traditions encourage interdisciplinary scholarship that exposes inegalitarian ideologies and power structures to facilitate effective egalitarian organizing. Employing these traditions, I show that rather than promoting the interests of nonwhites, white privilege discourse buttresses the racially inegalitarian status quo by encouraging moralizing over political organizing and reinforcing racial essentialism. Moreover, white privilege discourse decouples the fight for racial justice from the fight for economic justice and thereby undermines demands for universal public goods and the cross-racial working-class coalitions needed to advance racial equality.