Salt of the Earth: Rhetoric, Preservation, and White Supremacy

Salt of the Earth is an autoethnography and cultural rhetorics case study that examines white supremacy in the author's hometown of Grand Saline, Texas, a community long marred by its racist culture.

James Chase Sanchez investigates the rhetoric of white supremacy by exploring three unique rhetorical processes―identity construction, storytelling, and silencing―as they relate to an umbrella act: the rhetoric of preservation.

Sanchez argues that we need to better understand the productions of white supremacy as a complex rhetorical act and that in order to create a more well-rounded view of cultural rhetorics as a subfield, we need more analyses of the way cultures of the oppressor survive and thrive.

About the CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) Series:
In this series, the methods of studies vary from the critical to historical to linguistic to ethnographic, and their authors draw on work in various fields that inform composition—including rhetoric, communication, education, discourse analysis, psychology, cultural studies, and literature. Their focuses are similarly diverse—ranging from individual writers and teachers, to classrooms and communities and curricula, to analyses of the social, political, and material contexts of writing and its teaching.

Dr. James Chase Sanchez is an Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Middlebury College and the producer of the award-winning documentary film Man on Fire. His research and films explore culture in American society–exploring issues of race and racism, cultural and racial rhetorics, public memory and countermemory, and institutional abuse.