Writing Whiteness (Uprooting White Language Supremacy in First-Year Writing Programs)

Writing Whiteness invites readers to reimagine writing program practices that center equity, inclusion, diversity, and justice. Drawing on data from more than one hundred institutions to identify practices and language patterns that prevent educators from enacting racial linguistic justice, Bethany Davila lays out the ways that White language supremacy (WLS) takes root, proliferates, and obstructs growth in college writing programs.

The book challenges these barriers to achieving racial linguistic justice, including institutional representations of students and writing, ubiquitous key concepts valued by the field, and ways that people may unknowingly mask or justify inaction. Davila then offers a disruptive reading practice (for writing programs, materials, and values) that readers of this book can use to uproot WLS in their own institutions and programs. The book also includes a heuristic and multiple approaches for uprooting whiteness in various contexts and situations.

Davila urges readers to disrupt the status quo, challenge dominant narratives, and create opportunities for marginalized voices to be heard and respected.

CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric Series