Leveraging from Racism: A Dual Structural Advantages Perspective

Abstract

Drawing on the autobiography of an immigrant Black African female scholar, we introduce and conceptualize the notion of dual structural advantages that racism potentially affords elite White male academics. These hegemonic scholars enjoy two types of possible advantage. First, as gatekeepers to a racist academic system, powerful White male scholars protect their interests by epistemically excluding the ‘Other’ from knowledge production. Second, these hegemonic agents ironically utilize racism as a hermeneutical resource for ‘impactful’ research output, grounded in progressive, anti-racist theorizations in collaboration with Black male scholars. Such work is disseminated and perpetuated through elite academic outlets, thus substantially leveraging the agents’ careers and university rankings. Foregrounding double advantages in debates on racial equality accentuates the necessity of changing the agential practices of elite White male scholars in order to transform racist institutions.