Signified Honkey: Stories In The Key of White

Abstract

In Signified Honkey, I invite the reader into my personal history as a White emerging counselor and then provide a framework for thinking about my experience.  I have opted for an approach both personal and interdisciplinary as a means of exploring White privilege.  My approach can best be identified as auto ethnographic and in using this approach I have tried to discover and remain true to my own voice throughout the narrative.  The reader may find this voice to be sharp at times, including profanity and a degree of mercilessness that Tony Hoagland refers to as poetic or metaphysical meanness (Hoagland, 2003).  I have chosen this approach as a way to demonstrate my understanding of my personal journey through White privilege and to contribute my voice to the conversations around racial identity initiated and continued by previous academics and counselors both White and of color.   My hope is that after having read my paper, you, the reader will have a perspective of how this White thinker and professional approaches his life and work based on the study of White privilege and that White readers will be challenged to go beyond the identity models when thinking about their own history and life.