Writing Whiteness: Uprooting White Language Supremacy in First-Year Writing Programs (CCCC Studies in Writing and Rhetoric)

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

Bethany Davila is an associate professor of rhetoric and writing at the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on exposing whiteness in first-year writing programs and exploring the relationship between language and identity, particularly through a lens of raciolinguistics. Her teaching reflects this interest, and she is honored to learn from so many students who are willing to challenge the conventions of academic writing.