White Folks: Race and Identity in Rural America

115 Pages·2017·0.93 MB·English

by  Timothy J. Lensmire

WHITE FOLKS
White Folks explores the experiences and stories of eight white people from a
small farming community in northern Wisconsin. It examines how white people
learn to be ‘white’ and reveals how white racial identity is dependent on people
of color—even in situations where white people have little or no contact with
racial others.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with Delores, Frank, William, Erin, Robert,
Libby, and Stan, as well as on his own experiences growing up in this same rural
community, Lensmire creates a portrait of white people that highlights how their
relations to people of color and their cultures are seldom simple and are characterized
not just by fear and rejection, but also by attraction, envy, and desire. White Folks
helps readers recognize the profound ambivalence that has characterized white thinking
and feeling in relation to people of color for at least the last two hundred years.
There is nothing smooth about the souls of white folks.
Current antiracist work is often grounded in a white privilege framework that
has proven ineffective—in part because it reduces white people to little more
than the embodiment of privilege. Lensmire provides an alternative that confronts
the violence at the core of white racial selves that has become increasingly visible
in American society and politics, but that also illuminates conflicts and complexities
there.
Timothy J. Lensmire is Professor in the Department of Curriculum and
Instruction at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses in literacy,
critical pedagogy, and race. His early work focused on how the teaching of
writing might contribute to education for radical democracy. His current research
seeks to build descriptions of, and theoretical insights about, how white people
learn to be white in a white supremacist society.
Writing Lives
Ethnographic Narratives
Series Editors: Arthur P. Bochner, Carolyn Ellis and Tony E. Adams
University of South Florida and Northeastern Illinois University
Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives publishes narrative representations of
qualitative research projects. The series editors seek manuscripts that blur the
boundaries between humanities and social sciences. We encourage novel and
evocative forms of expressing concrete lived experience, including auto-
ethnographic, literary, poetic, artistic, visual, performative, critical, multi-voiced,
conversational, and co-constructed representations. We are interested in
ethnographic narratives that depict local stories; employ literary modes of scene
setting, dialogue, character development, and unfolding action; and include the
author’s critical reflections on the research and writing process, such as research
ethics, alternative modes of inquiry and representation, reflexivity, and evocative
storytelling. Proposals and manuscripts should be directed to [email protected],
[email protected] or [email protected]
Other volumes in this series include:
Evocative Autoethnography
Writing Lives and Telling Stories
Arthur P. Bochner and Carolyn Ellis
Bullied
Tales of Torment, Identity, and Youth
Keith Berry
Collaborative and Indigenous Mental Health Therapy
Tātaihono – Stories of Maori Healing and Psychiatry
Wiremu NiaNia, Allister Bush and David Epston
Searching for an Autoethnographic Ethic
Stephen Andrew
Autobiography of a Disease
Patrick Anderson
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit:
https://www.routledge.com/Writing-Lives-Ethnographic-Narratives/book-
series/WLEN
WHITE FOLKS
Race and Identity in
Rural America
Timothy J. Lensmire
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Timothy J. Lensmire to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lensmire, Timothy J., 1961- author.
Title: White folks : race and identity in rural America / Timothy J. Lensmire.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Writing lives :
ethnographic narratives
Identifiers: LCCN 2017001423| ISBN 9781138747012 (hardback) | ISBN
9781138747036 (paperback) | ISBN 9781315180359 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Whites--Race identity--United States. | Racism--United
States. | United States--Race relations. | United States--Rural
conditions. | Whites--Wisconsin--Interviews. | Ethnology--Wisconsin. |
Lensmire, Timothy J., 1961---Childhood and youth. | Wisconsin--Biography.
| Wisconsin--Race relations. | Wisconsin--Rural conditions.
Classification: LCC E184.A1 L4446 2017 | DDC 305.800973--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001423
ISBN: 978-1-138-74701-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-74703-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-18035-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
To my passionate, brilliant, and ridiculous children—John, Sarah,
Isabelle, and Jacob—and to my parents, Lynn and John Lensmire
(who are all those things, too)

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
The Forethought 1
1 How I Became White While Punching de Tar Baby 5
2 We Learned the Wrong Things and Went Underground 24
3 We Use Racial Others … 45
4 … And Hope and Stumble 66
The Afterthought 89
Methodological Appendix 91
References 96
Index 100

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I relied on the intellectual and emotional support of a number of friends and
colleagues at the University of Minnesota as I worked on this book. Thank you,
especially, to Vichet Chhuon, Cynthia Lewis, Bic Ngo, Thom Swiss, Mark
Vagle, and Martha Bigelow. I also want to acknowledge James Ysseldkye, the late
Ruth Thomas, and Deborah Dillon, who in their administrative roles provided
support for my initial research and writing.
I have been fortunate to be part of the Midwest Critical Whiteness Collective.
For the last seven years, we have been telling stories to each other and trying to
figure out what they mean—thank you to Audrey Lensmire, Zachary Casey,
Mary Lee-Nichols, Shannon McManimon, Bryan Davis, Jessica Tierney, Sam
Tanner, and Christina Berchini. Thanks also to Nathan Snaza, Jim Jupp, and Erin
Miller for what I’ve learned writing with you; to John Wright for help with
Ralph Ellison; and to Patty Loew for early conversations on the history of the
Ojibwe in Wisconsin.
Some conversations stretch over decades, constitute you, continue whether or
not the other person happens to be with you at the moment. I’m grateful to Jim
Garrison and Garrett Duncan for these. And to Emmanuel Harris II, my brother.
Finally, it’s nice living with a sophisticated race theorist when you are trying
to write a book like this. But I am thankful to Audrey Lensmire for more than
reading my work, commenting, encouraging, and reading some more. We write
and teach and holler and laugh. I am grateful for the very life we live together.
__________
The author expresses his appreciation for permission to adapt and reprint his
previously published material in the following chapters: