While race and ethnicity, as socially and culturally constructed categories, have often been considered meaningful variables for understanding the experiences and identities of “others”, the normative status of whiteness has continued to protect white people from being identified and explored racially and ethnically. As noted by Walton and Butryn (2006), just as gender is often a code word for referencing women, race and ethnicity are often used synonymously for non-white
people. However, these aspects of culture need to be considered in the context of how white people construct and perpetuate whiteness as an invisible norm that not only affects their lives in the form of privilege, but also intrudes into the lives of other groups in the form of oppression (Butryn, 2010; Sue, 2004). This need has opened up to large amounts of interdisciplinary scholarship conducted in the field of whiteness studies, produced since the early 1990s. The collective aim of critical whiteness studies has been to make whiteness visible and thus more immediately subject to critical analysis and deconstruction, through an explicit focus on power dynamics (Bonnett, 1996; Butryn, 2010; King, 2005; Sue, 2004). Of concern is the ways in which inequalities are reproduced and experienced in modern forms of racism that are much more subtle than in the past (e.g., the modern avoidance of racial terminology that promotes a “colour blind” perspective versus the racial segregation of the past). Through a better
understanding of the ways in which whiteness operates, questions are opened up about what to do about white privilege and racism, and how we can move towards equality and social justice - an outcome congruent with CSP.
However, as whiteness studies is an epistemologically divided terrain, comprised of diverse and divergent projects that are tied to shifting sociocultural formations and ongoing struggles over meaning, there is no coherent definition or agenda aligning the domain, and thus there is no agreed upon process for making whiteness more visible and subject to critical analysis (Bonnett, 1996; Butryn, 2010; McDonald, 2005). Scholars have assumed various paradigmatic standpoints in their work (including various strands of cultural studies, poststructuralism, feminism, and queer theory), which have resulted in ambiguities, inconsistencies, and contradictions. Yet, as Riggs (2004) noted, critical studies of whiteness “require a range of approaches to both epistemology and ontology to prevent the subject areas from solidifying into
a homogeneous, institutionalized subject area, an outcome that would thus only serve to reinforce the hegemony of whiteness” (para. 5). McDonald (2005) further indicated how competing understandings help scholars to recognize that whiteness is multiple and dynamic in its meaning and uses, as it is a social construction rather than a fixed race or ethnicity.2 This view of whiteness aligns with the way culture is conceptualized within CSP, as a part of multiple and shifting discourses that are always under dispute across social spheres and tied to struggles over power (McGannon & Spence, 2010). Through this point awareness, it became apparent that the culture of the Aboriginal community members was not the only culture that needed to be accounted for in the current research. I needed to examine and become more sensitive about my white, Euro-Canadian cultural identity and educational/ researcher positioning in relation to the Aboriginal community, given that these sociocultural locations were shaping how I engaged in the research and co-produced knowledge around Aboriginal peoples’ lives.
The processes and effects of whiteness have also been found to extend into sport and the way it is experienced by both white and non-white people. Accordingly, whiteness studies has become a major area of focus for sport sociologists (e.g., Burdsey, 2011; Cooky & McDonald, 2005; Douglas, 2005; Fusco, 2005; Hartmann, 2007; King, 2005; King, Leonard, & Kusz, 2007; McDonald, 2005; Walton & Butryn, 2006), and to a much lesser degree amongst sport
psychologists (e.g., Butryn, 2002, 2009, 2010; Hall, 2001). This body of literature must be considered in relation to the relocation experiences of Aboriginal athletes, as it reveals how the participants’ lived sport experiences are shaped by the whiteness that circulates around them. For
2 A number of critiques have been leveraged regarding whiteness studies (see Bonnett, 1996; Butryn, 2010; King,
2005), particularly relating to the issue of whether whiteness studies can really “do” anything other than re-center whiteness and empower white academics via the tenure process. Thus, there are weaknesses and tensions within the field that scholars continue to grapple with.
instance, Burdsey (2011) examined British Asian cricket players’ experiences of racism, and found amongst the players a tendency to downplay the repercussions of some forms of prejudice. The authors argued that this demonstrated that the colour blind ideology is so entrenched in contemporary Western sport that it is not only preserved by white groups, but actually has the capacity to compel minority ethnic participants to downplay their experiences and endorse dominant claims that the effects of racism are overstated. Drawing upon another example, Fusco (2005) conducted a spatial ethnography of the locker rooms in a Canadian sport and fitness center and found that it was characterized by a modern architectural design that represented the normative and idealized white male body. Fusco concluded that whiteness is an invisible presence that underpins the very (built) foundations of sport spaces, forming a backdrop against which non-whiteness becomes alienated. Taking a different approach, Butryn (2009) developed autoethnographic vignettes to illustrate moments of tension related to whiteness and white privilege in his academic career, using the accounts to highlight how race and whiteness operate in the various spaces of sport psychology (e.g., in athletic departments, teaching settings,
research settings, conferences, sport organizations, etc.).
Taken together, these works offer important implications for CSP research and the current dissertation. They reveal that as much as marginalized sport participants’ experiences are shaped by their own cultural background, they are also shaped by the whiteness that circulates around them and intrudes into their lives (e.g., Schinke, Peltier, Hanrahan, Eys, Recollet- Saikkonen, Yungblut et al., 2009). The perpetuation of whiteness within sport psychology research affects how the experiences and identities of diverse sport participants come to be understood and represented within a larger system of racial and ethnic hierarchies that uphold white domination (Butryn, 2009, 2010). Thus, rather than attempting to examine the sport
experiences of Aboriginal athletes through an explicit focus on the cultural context in front of the academic lens, there was an equal need to focus on my white, Euro-Canadian cultural identity (as the academic researcher) and the white context of sport psychology. These latter cultural aspects are traditionally hidden behind the academic lens. By engaging in an introspective, reflexive process in the current research, I aimed to understand my role in co-producing knowledge about the lives of Aboriginal community members. In particular, I wanted to explore the ways in which I could better facilitate knowledge production that was culturally supportive and empowering rather than culturally oppressing. I took up a reflexive agenda in order to work more consciously against the social injustices that have accrued from the imposition of white paradigms and epistemologies into diverse (non-white) research contexts, in keeping with the spirit of CSP (Butryn, 2009; McDonald, 2005; McGannon & Johnson, 2009).