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Locating Traitorous Identities: Toward a View of Privilege-Cognizant White Character

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Alison Bailey
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Abstract

I address the problem of how to locate “traitorous” subjects, or those who belong to dominant groups yet resist the usual assumptions and practices of those groups. I argue that Sandra Harding's description of traitors as insiders, who “become marginal” is misleading. Crafting a distinction between “privilege-cognizant” and “privilege-evasive” white scripts, I offer an alternative account of race traitors as privilege-cognizant whites who refuse to animate expected whitely scripts, and who are unfaithful to worldviews whites are expected to hold.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 13 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Border Crossings: Multiculturalism and Postcolonial Challenges, Part 2 , Summer 1998 , pp. 27 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by Hypatia, Inc.

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