White Innocence Heroes: Recovery,Reversals, Paternalism,and David Duke |
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| Abstract: | Abstract For over a decade, critical scholars have exposed antiracist white heroes in popular discourse who reproduce white innocence, superiority, and privilege. This essay exposes claims of antiracist white heroics by former Klansman and Nazi sympathizer, David Duke. Critical analysis of Duke's letter to the editor, published 11 days before his Louisiana State Senate victory in 1989, reveals that Duke used implicit whiteness strategies of mythic recovery to justify his infamous civil rights reversals and white paternalism to rescue blacks from welfare and whites from affirmative action by restoring rugged individualism. Duke's rhetoric models ways for whites to sanitize personal and cultural histories of white supremacy, while reproducing white privilege. The recovery of white masculine heroes and rugged individualism myths is also found in the 2008 McCain-Palin presidential campaign. Critical analysis of such rhetoric challenges our scholarly knowledge about whiteness and exposes persistent constructions of white innocence. |
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| Keywords: | Whiteness Mythic Hero Individualism David Duke McCain-Palin |
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