Three important notes about this file

***Three Tier Process***

AT Organic Intellectuals

No bright line for what constitutes an organic intellectual- no theorist or professor is wholly removed from political activism
Impossible to delineate who is an organic intellectual – inevitably fall prey to wishful thinking and academic pessimism

Hall 96 (Stuart, “Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies,” p. 266//MGD)

I tried on many occasions, and other people in British cultural studies and at the Centre especially have tried, to describe what it is we thought we were doing with the kind of intellectual work we set in place in the Centre. I have to confess that, though I’ve read many, more elaborated and sophisticated accounts, Gramsci’s account still seems to me to come closest to expressing what it is I think we were trying to do. Admittedly, there’s a problem about his phrase ‘the production of organic intellectuals’. But there is no doubt in my mind that we were trying to find an institutional practice in cultural studies that might produce an organic intellectual. We didn’t know previously what that would mean, in the context of Britain in the 1970s, and we weren’t sure we would recognize him or her if we managed to produce it. The problem about the concept of an organic intellectual is that it appears to align intellectuals with an emerging historic movement and we couldn’t tell then, and can hardly tell now, where that emerging historical movement was to be found. We were organic intellectuals without any organic point of reference; organic intellectuals with a nostalgia or will or hope (to use Gramsci’s phrase from another context) that at some point we would be prepared in intellectual work for that kind of relationship, if such a conjuncture ever appeared. More truthfully, we were prepared to imagine or model or simulate such a relationship in its absence: ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’.
This approach is idealistic and naïve- organic intellectuals have no advantage over traditional scholars or activists

Fischman and McLaren 5 (Gustavo and Peter, “Rethinking Critical Pedagogy and the Gramscian and Freirean Legacies: From Organic to Committed Intellectuals or Critical Pedagogy, Commitment, and Praxis,” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Volume 5 Number 4, 2005 425-447//MGD)

One of the main challenges of Gramsci’s (1971) framework, and one that is repeated by many in the field of education, is that of contesting the supposed categorical assumption that organic intellectuals must develop some sort of supranatural level of consciousness, avoiding or overcoming the contradictory personal and social struggles present in everyday life. At the same time, this valorization of the role of one small group of leaders and organizers replicates the heroic myths of romantic idealism of the past century, which in turn reflects its positivistic heritage, and a firm belief in the existence of a normal and teleological line of progress for all societies (i.e., from backward societies to capitalistic forms to socialist and finally communist societies).

Turn- organic intellectuals are not radical enough- makes overturning capitalism impossible

Fischman and McLaren 5- professor at Arizona State, prof at UCLA (Gustavo and Peter, “Rethinking Critical Pedagogy and the Gramscian and Freirean Legacies: From Organic to Committed Intellectuals or Critical Pedagogy, Commitment, and Praxis,” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Volume 5 Number 4, 2005 425-447//MGD)

One of the main goals of these diverse coalitions should be to suffocate the authoritarian power of the state and curb its ability to support other structures of oppression. To do so demands moving beyond localized radical struggles and the creation of networks of micropolitical struggles. This does not mean we reject community-based multiform politics, but rather stress the need to coordinate our single-issue and micropolitical efforts so that the power of the state’s apparatus is not underestimated and can be effectively challenged. Of course, we also acknowledge that the state is not the all-encompassing and indomitable structure of domination that orthodox Marxists have often claimed, as there exist fault lines than enable challenges from below. But we also recognize that state formations, whereas more fluid in the context of global markets and the internationalization of capital, have not become obsolete. In fact, they are functionally necessary to promote the reproduction of capitalist social relations and their transnational expansion. Although we agree with Boggs (1993) that a reconstituted definition of the organic intellectual emphasizes transnational social movements that are not necessarily linked to social identity or class formation, we worry that such a dialectical movement between intellectuals and social forces or movements is insufficiently powerful, at present, to overturn the highly integrated power structures of global capitalism associated with the economic exploitation of the masses, ecological genocide, and bureaucratic domination.

AT Personal Experiences Good For Debate

Their prioritization of experience as the starting point for all political action is a dangerous epistemological move which elevates identity over deliberation—their methodology is a breeding ground for violent factionalism, not progressive politics.

Ireland, 2002 [Craig , American Culture—Bilkent “The Appeal to Experience and its Consequences,” Cultural Critique 52 Fall 2002 p.87-89 //liam]

Once an arcane philosophical term, experience over the last three decades has become a general buzzword. By the 1970s, experience spilled over into the streets, so to speak, and it has since then become the stuff of programmatic manifestos and has been enlisted as the ground from which microstrategies of resistance and subaltern counterhistories can be erected. But for all the blows and counterblows that have carried on for over three decades between those who appeal to the counterhegemonic potential of experience and those who see such appeals as naive voluntarism, such debates show no signs of abating. On the contrary, they have become yet more strident, as can be seen by Michael Pickering's recent attempt to rehabilitate the viability of the term "experience" for subaltern historiography by turning to E. P. Thompson and Dilthey and, more recently still, by Sonia Kruks's polemical defense of experience for subaltern inquiry by way of a reminder that poststructuralist critics of experience owe much to those very thinkers, from Sartre to Merleau-Ponty, whom they have debunked as if in oedipal rebellion against their begetters. Such debates over experience have so far gravitated around issues of epistemology and agency, pitting those who debunk experience as the stuff of an antiquated philosophy of consciousness against those who argue that subaltern experience provides an enclave against strong structural determination. Lost in such debates, however, have been the potential consequences of appeals to immediate experience as a ground for subaltern agency and specificity. And it is just such potential consequences that will be examined here. These indeed demand our attention, for more is at stake in the appeal to experience than some epistemological faux pas. By so wagering on the perceived immediacy of experience as the evidence for subaltern specificity and counterhegemonic action, appeals to immediate experience, however laudable their goal, end up unwittingly naturalizing what is in fact historical, and, in so doing, they leave the door as wide-open to a progressive politics of identity as to a retreat to neoethnic tribalism. Most alarming about such appeals to [End Page 87] experience is not some failure of epistemological nerve—it is instead their ambiguous political and social ramifications. And these have reverberated beyond academia and found an echo in para-academia— so much so that experience has increasingly become the core concept or key word of subaltern groups and the rallying call for what Craig Calhoun calls the "new social movements" in which "experience is made the pure ground of knowledge, the basis of an essentialized standpoint of critical awareness" (468 n.64). The consequences of such appeals to experience can best be addressed not by individually considering disparate currents, but by seeking their common denominator. And in this regard, E. P. Thompson will occupy the foreground. It is safe to say that what started as an altercation between Thompson and Althusser has since spawned academic and para-academic "histories from below" and subaltern cultural inquiries that, for all their differences, share the idea that the identities and counterhistories of the disenfranchised can be buttressed by the specificity of a group's concrete experiences. Much theorizing on experience by certain cultural and historiographical trends, as many have already pointed out, has been but a variation on a persistent Thompsonian theme in which Thompson's "kind of use of experience has the same foundational status if we substitute 'women's' or 'black' or 'lesbian' or 'homosexual' for 'working class'" (Scott, 786).
Personal focus on race fails

Tonn ’5

(Tonn, Mari Boor, Professor of Communications at the University of Maryland, Fall 2005, “Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public”, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 8, Issue 3, Fall)FS

The Conversation on Race visibly demonstrates the inertia endemic in a discursive model lacking direction and mechanisms for closure. Five months into the racial dialogue, White House aides conceded no consensus had emerged even on fundamental goals: whether the initiative should formulate race related policy or merely explore racial attitudes.86 Moreover, Clinton himself expressed weariness over the failure in public meetings to move beyond the repetitive airing of personal opinion on issues such as affirmative action,87 concurring with critics that “we need structure for the discussion . . . so we can actually get something done.”88 Months more of racial conversation, however, produced few substantive results.

The University of New Hampshire’s extended dialogue over the proposed conversational forum engendered similar fatigue and inaction. Arguments forwarded by both camps centered on pivotal differences between “debate” and “conversation,” problem-solving tasks and relational aims, and formal and informal modes of gauging opinions. Ironically, more than one lengthy “conversation” over the conversational proposal produced no action, leading one exhausted participant to observe, “This [process] goes to the heart of my frustration with ever making this [conversational Forum] viable.”89 As Burke maintains, while some symbolic forms contain “a ‘way in,’ ‘way through,’ and ‘way out,’” others “lead us in and leave us there.” 90

Discussing social location creates a confessional format, privileging selfish apology over responsibility and reform

Tonn ’5

(Tonn, Mari Boor, Professor of Communications at the University of Maryland, Fall 2005, “Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public”, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 8, Issue 3, Fall)FS

Clinton’s Conversation on Race not only exemplified the frequent wedding of public dialogue and therapeutic themes but also illustrated the failure of a conversation-as-counseling model to achieve meaningful social reform. In his speech inaugurating the initiative, Clinton said, “Basing our self-esteem on the ability to look down on others is not the American way . . . Honest dialogue will not be easy at first . . . Emotions may be rubbed raw, but we must begin.” Tempering his stated goal of “concrete solutions” was the caveat that “power cannot compel” racial “community,” which “can come only from the human spirit.”72

Following the president’s cue to self-disclose emotions, citizens chiefly aired personal experiences and perspectives during the various community dialogues. In keeping with their talk-show formats, the forums showcased what Orlando Patterson described as “performative ‘race’ talk,” “public speech acts” of denial, proclamation, defense, exhortation, and even apology, in short, performances of “self” that left little room for productive public argument.73 Such personal evidence overshadowed the “facts” and “realities” Clinton also had promised to explore, including, for example, statistics on discrimination patterns in employment, lending, and criminal justice or expert testimony on cycles of dependency, poverty, illegitimacy, and violence.

Whereas Clinton had encouraged “honest dialogue” in the name of “responsibility” and “community,” Burke argues that “The Cathartic Principle” often produces the reverse. “[C]onfessional,” he writes, “contains in itself a kind of ‘personal irresponsibility,’ as we may even relieve ourselves of private burdens by befouling the public medium.” More to the point, “a thoroughly ‘confessional’ art may enact a kind of ‘individual salvation at the expense of the group,’” performing a “sinister function, from the standpoint of overall-social necessities.”74 Frustrated observers of the racial dialogue—many of them African Americans—echoed Burke’s concerns. Patterson, for example, noted, “when a young Euro-American woman spent nearly five minutes of our ‘conversation’ in Martha’s Vineyard . . . publicly confessing her racial insensitivities, she was directly unburdening herself of all sorts of racial guilt feeling. There was nothing to argue about.”75 Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson invoked the game metaphor communication theorists often link to skills in conversation,76 voicing suspicion of a talking cure for racial ailments that included neither exhaustive racial data nor concrete goals. “The game,” wrote Jackson, “is to get ‘rid’ of responsibility for racism while doing nothing to solve it.”77

Conversations about personal experience reinforce hierarchies while causing complacency

Tonn ’5

(Tonn, Mari Boor, Professor of Communications at the University of Maryland, Fall 2005, “Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public”, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 8, Issue 3, Fall)FS

In certain ways, Schudson’s initial reluctance to dismiss public conversation echoes my own early reservations, given the ideals of egalitarianism, empowerment, and mutual respect conversational advocates champion. Still, in the spirit of the dialectic ostensibly underlying dialogic premises, this essay argues that various negative consequences can result from transporting conversational and therapeutic paradigms into public problem solving. In what follows, I extend Schudson’s critique of a conversational model for democracy in two ways: First, whereas Schudson primarily offers a theoretical analysis, I interrogate public conversation as a praxis in a variety of venues, illustrating how public “conversation” and “dialogue” have been coopted to silence rather than empower marginalized or dissenting voices. In practice, public conversation easily can emulate what feminist political scientist Jo Freeman termed “the tyranny of structurelessness” in her classic 1970 critique of consciousness raising groups in the women’s liberation movement,15 as well as the key traits Irving L. Janis ascribes to “groupthink.”16 Thus, contrary to its promotion as a means to neutralize hierarchy and exclusion in the public sphere, public conversation can and has accomplished the reverse. When such moves are rendered transparent, public conversation and dialogue, I contend, risk increasing rather than diminishing political cynicism and alienation. Second, whereas Schudson focuses largely on ways a conversational model for democracy may mute an individual’s voice in crafting a resolution on a given question at a given time, I draw upon insights of Dana L. Cloud and others to consider ways in which a therapeutic, conversational approach to public problems can stymie productive, collective action in two respects.17 First, because conversation has no clearly defined goal, a public conversation may engender inertia as participants become mired in repeated airings of personal experiences without a mechanism to lend such expressions direction and closure. As Freeman aptly notes, although “[u]nstructured groups may be very effective in getting [people] to talk about their lives[,] they aren’t very good for getting things done. Unless their mode of operation changes, groups flounder at the point where people tire of ‘just talking.’”18 Second, because the therapeutic bent of much public conversation locates social ills and remedies within individuals or dynamics of interpersonal relationships, public conversations and dialogues risk becoming substitutes for policy formation necessary to correct structural dimensions of social problems. In mimicking the emphasis on the individual in therapy, Cloud warns, the therapeutic rhetoric of “healing, consolation, and adaptation or adjustment” tends to “encourage citizens to perceive political issues, conflicts, and inequities as personal failures subject to personal amelioration.”19
Unstructured dialogue focused on the personal causes inaction—it disincentivizes action and leaves participants without a mechanism to act

Tonn ’5

(Tonn, Mari Boor, Professor of Communications at the University of Maryland, Fall 2005, “Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public”, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 8, Issue 3, Fall)FS

Approaching public controversies through a conversational model informed by therapy also enables political inaction in two respects. First, an open-ended process lacking mechanisms for closure thwarts progress toward resolution. As Freeman writes of consciousness raising, an unstructured, informal discussion “leaves people with no place to go and the lack of structure leaves them with no way of getting there.”70 Second, the therapeutic impulse to emphasize the self as both problem and solution ignores structural impediments constraining individual agency. “Therapy,” Cloud argues, “offers consolation rather than compensation, individual adaptation rather than social change, and an experience of politics that is impoverished in its isolation from structural critique and collective action.” Public discourse emphasizing healing and coping, she claims, “locates blame and responsibility for solutions in the private sphere.”71
Discussions of social location are an ineffective format—they’re inherently inaccurate

Tonn ’5

(Tonn, Mari Boor, Professor of Communications at the University of Maryland, Fall 2005, “Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public”, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 8, Issue 3, Fall)FS

Contributing to the ineffectiveness of a therapeutic approach in redressing social problems is its common pairing with what Burke terms “incantatory” imagery, wherein rhetors invite persons to see themselves in an idealized form.78 Comparing a current conflicted self against a future self individuals aspire to become is a therapeutic staple, a technique Clinton mimics in his speech on race. In one breath, he acknowledges persistent racial “discrimination and prejudice”; in another, he overtly invites audience members to picture themselves in saintly fashion: “Can we be one America respecting, even celebrating, our differences, but embracing even more what we have in common?” 79 But outside private therapy, this strategy rarely results in honest selfdisclosure, especially regarding thorny issues such as race. Andrew Hacker argues that individuals seldom speak candidly about race in public; rather, they express an “idealized” self with ideas and feelings they desire or, more commonly, believe they should possess, a phenomenon evident even in anonymous polling.80 The hazard of blending the confessional with the incantatory, Burke writes, is a “sentimental and hypocritical” false reassurance that society is on the proper course, rendering remedial action unnecessary.81 This danger is compounded if the problem initially has been couched as essentially attitudinal rather than structural, as Clinton did: “We have torn down the barriers in our laws. Now we must break down the barriers in our lives, our minds and our hearts.”82 Indeed, in commenting on the therapeutic bent of the Conversation on Race, William L. Taylor argues that the late Bayard Rustin’s reservations about the social-psychological approach to race were prescient: “Rustin said he could envision America being persuaded figuratively to lie down on the psychiatrist’s couch to examine their feelings about race. They would likely arise, he said, pronouncing themselves either free or purged of any bias. And nothing would have changed.”83 Furthermore, identification intrinsic in narrative experiences is doubleedged; while identification can neutralize domination by creating empathy, identification also can fortify hegemony. As Cornell West warns, the privileging of emotional responses to racism and racial self-identities over other data can contribute to “racial reasoning,” which blacks employ to their peril. To illustrate, he points to the failure of black leadership to challenge the qualifications by typical measures of black Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, opting instead to submit to deceptive racial solidarity built upon premises of “black authenticity.”84 Because the problems plaguing contemporary black America,West writes, result from a complex amalgam of structural and behavioral factors,85 weaving solutions demands analysis of data beyond subjective personal narratives and performances of self-identity.
Don’t let them get away with playing the “all your evidence is a product of racism” card—their epistemological account is reductionist and empiricism is valid.  Personal insight is non-falsifiable and has no brightline—the rejection of all “Eurocentric” methods means they are too arbitrary to generate real discussion.

Niemonen 10 [Jack Niemonen, American Sociologist, 41(1), 48-81, “Public Sociology or Partisan Sociology? The Curious Case of Whiteness Studies” //liam]

Despite recognition that racial classification systems are not constant, proponents of whiteness studies treat whites as if they were an immutable, bounded, and cohesive category (Bonnett 2003; Eichstedt 2001; Gabriel 2000; Giroux 1997; Hartigan 1997; Keating 1995; Kincheloe 1999; Kolchin 2002; Levine-Rasky 2000; McCarthy 2003; Pugliese 2002; Sidorkin 1999; Yans 2006). They posit a generic white subject, both privileged and unaware of the extent of that privilege. However, even if whites coalesce at certain historical junctures, we cannot conclude that the category “white” is an entity that will continue indefinitely in the absence of antiracist initiatives (McDermott and Sampson 2005; Yans 2006; cf. Niemonen 2007). Reification has the unintended consequence of neglecting how the construction of racial identities is a negotiated, indeed manipulative, process (Bonnett 1998; Rockquemore 2002). In doing so, proponents of whiteness studies understate the contradictions, inconsistencies, and ambivalences within white and nonwhite identities. They assume before the fact that whites regard whiteness rather than nationality, ethnicity, religion, or class as the main factor that separates the civilized from the uncivilized. And, they oversimplify the challenges that nonwhites face by implying that their problems are largely race-related and hence attributable to racism (Croteau et al. 2002; Hartigan 2002; Kolchin 2002; Mansfield and Kehoe 1994; Warren and Twine 1997). Emphasizing the unifying interest in, and reproduction of, dominance minimizes how the boundaries of racial categories are negotiated, reinforced, or challenged in daily life (Alcoff 1998; Bash 2006; Perera 1999). Largely ignored are the complicated interactions between race, class, and sex, and the struggles of many whites to acquire privileges in a class-stratified society, especially economic security and some degree of self-autonomy (Bonnett 1997; Eichstedt 2001; Hartigan 1997, 2000b; Hubbard 2005; Kolchin 2002; Lee 1999; Winders 2003). Reifying the concept of race fails to capture the processes through which it acquires meaning, confers status, or exerts a “structuring effect” (Bash 2006; Lewis 2004). By suppressing intra-group divisions and contradictions, whiteness studies ignore how multiple statuses work together in people’s lives (cf. Brekhus 1998; Merton 1972) and perpetuate an “us-them” view of difference—the binary perspective that is at the core of racist discourses. The reification of racial categories endows them with causal potential and predictive ability, implying that all persons classified as white will exhibit the undesirable traits associated with whiteness, since being white is a condition with distinct, identifiable, but largely negative attributes that are in need of corrective attention (Alcoff 1998; Bash 2006; Hartigan 2000b; Keating 1995; Santas 2000; Scott 2000). In a reversal of the historical equation, “white” has become reprehensible whereas “nonwhite” has become virtuous (Gillborn 1996; Keating 1995). Whiteness studies posit racism as a mono-causal explanation for almost everything. All other forces, including the class struggle, are relegated to the margins. William Julius Wilson’s work is dismissed out-of-hand as a defense of the culture of poverty thesis (e.g., Harrison 1998; Ladson-Billings 1996; Welcome 2004). Racism is the problem. Therefore, whites either actively resist its reproduction or they perpetuate existing inequalities (Hartigan 2000b; Kolchin 2002; Moon and Flores 2000; Troyna 1994). This premise allows for the subsequent argument that whiteness is the source of oppression. If it is eradicated, then social justice will emerge (Moon and Flores 2000; Trainor 2002). Once whiteness is demonized, whites have no choice but to view their selves—ironically—in the context of a deficit model that identifies their failings, after which they may redeem themselves by becoming race traitors. Whites are required to renounce their whiteness but at the same time celebrate the alternatives. Such arguments inevitably result in anger and bafflement (Gillborn 1996; Kolchin 2002). The concept of racism suffers from conceptual inflation; it is used to mark any racially suspect attitude, behavior, policy, or practice (Blum 2002). It is defined as a property of whites who act against nonwhites (Gabriel 2000; Mansfield and Kehoe 1994; Pearce 2003). Whiteness studies proponents dodge the questions of whether or not whites can be victims of racism, and whether or not nonwhites’ atrocities against other nonwhites should be regarded as racist. They generally conclude that nonwhites cannot be racist, for the latter are not beneficiaries of a white-privileged world. Nonwhites lack the power to institutionalize the means that would disadvantage whites and advantage themselves (Eichstedt 2001; Gillborn 1996; Johnson et al. 2000; Ladson-Billings 1996; Tehranian 2000). Being cast as nonwhite means that one cannot escape thinking about race; it means being wounded, hurt, and hampered (Johnson et al. 2000; Leonardo 2004). Thus, in serving as a term of moral reproach, racism has joined vices such as dishonesty, cruelty, cowardice, and hypocrisy (Blum 2002). As opposed to recognizing that rationality, objectivity, and truth are themselves contested concepts that have been the subject of centuries of philosophical debate, whiteness studies conflate this history into a reductive, indeed monolithic, Eurocentrism. Painting Eurocentrism as the enemy creates the impression that it is static over time. It is caricatured as the claim thatWestern epistemology is omnipresent and wielded as a weapon of indoctrination against nonwhites. The struggle against Eurocentrism is transformed into an epistemological project in which the necessary, if not sufficient, condition for overcoming privilege is to disclose the truth about it (Kruks 2005). However, standpoint epistemologies may not constitute a satisfactory alternative (Aya 2004; Hammersley 1993). For example, on what grounds can the claim be made that one or more groups have privileged insight into reality? It cannot be declared before the fact; otherwise, all groups may make the same claim with no possibility of adjudication (Hammersley 1993). Although distinctive insights are possible—for example, as demonstrated in the work of Patricia Hill Collins—the claim that nonwhites have privileged access to the world whereas whites do not is Am Soc (2010) 41:48–81 65 implausible at best (Hammersley 1993; Srivastava 1996). Such an argument begs the question of how a correct perception of the world is achieved. In other words, the argument that personal experience occupies the same epistemological ground as social science is rife with logical and empirical problems. By grounding their framework on the epistemology of provenance (that only the oppressed can claim epistemic authority by virtue of their experiences), proponents of whiteness studies have blurred the distinction between scientific justification and folk beliefs. Personal experiences may be atypical or distorted by self-interest. Yet, to suggest so devolves into debates about the speaker’s authenticity and his or her right to speak. If an objective understanding of the world is impossible, then sociological concepts such as “concentration effects” may be more sophisticated, but no more valid, than the accounts offered by anybody else. If so-called higher values are little more than the hegemonic tactics of whites, and if the epistemology of provenance decides truth and falsehood, or right and wrong, then knowledge is local convention, and any outsider who disputes that claim is a racist (Aya 2004). Sociological research may not escape from normative concerns. However, this body of work is much more sophisticated than the proponents of witnesses studies claim (cf. Alba 1999; Bash 1979; Lee 1999; Lubienski 2003; Mckee 1993; Niemonen 2002). Even if the worth of this work should be evaluated by its public relevance, the claim on the part of whiteness studies proponents that its validity should be evaluated in the same way is questionable. Proponents of whiteness studies imply that true understanding is impossible across bounded groups because the latter construct discourses that—by virtue of the postulates of standpoint epistemology—cannot be communicated across boundaries without violating their authenticity (Sidorkin 1999). This premise creates a dilemma: How is it possible to appeal to social justice, while at the same time disavowing the possibility of authentic communication (Sidorkin 1999)? In fact, the boundaries between discourses are drawn too rigidly as a result of a conception of the social that is fixed, static, and homogenous (Merton 1972). In this context, whiteness is an arbitrary designation that underpins a political project that could not succeed in the absence of reification.