Publications

Ferguson, Annie. 2025. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 

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Abstract

Antiracist movements have repeatedly called for increased support from whites. However, white participation has often been fickle and/or harmful. Based on 61 interviews and 17 months of ethnography with whites who support racial equity, this research explores how antiracist white people’s emotions impact their engagement. Among white activists, the factor most often described as demotivating participation is white gatekeeping, defined here as white activists harshly holding themselves and other whites to extreme and perfectionist standards for involvement, perpetuating the sense that if one makes a mistake, they will be judged harshly, shamed, and removed from the community. Participants describe white gatekeeping as grounded in internalized forms of white supremacy such as superiority, individualism, binary thinking, perfectionism, competition, and violence. Positive interventions that dismantle internalized white supremacy and support more effective emotion management also emerged, including development of specific forms of antiracist community and a more authentic individual sense of self.

Ferguson, Annie. 2023. Sociology Compass. 17(1). 

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Abstract

People have fought against racism for as long as it has existed and yet it persists in diverse and materially impactful ways. The primary challenge to eradicating racism is likely the power of white privilege. This paper argues that another important obstacle to progress has been the lack of a clear definition of antiracism that movement activists and scholars can collaboratively use to ensure that antiracist scholarship and efforts meet the full measure of the term’s intention. While academia has struggled to converge on a definition, “lay race theorists” (Randolph, 2018) and movement activists – Black women in particular, have been participating in discourse online and through other venues where consensus appears to be developing around a definition. This article attempts to summarize activist discourse in defining antiracism as “the commitment to eradicate racism in all its forms” (paraphrasing Oluo, 2019) and individual antiracism as “the commitment to eradicate racism in all its forms (Oluo, 2019), by (1) building an understanding of racism and (2) taking action to eliminate racism within oneself, in other people, in institutions, and through actions outside of institutions,” noting that “antiracism is an ongoing practice and commitment that must be accountable to antiracist Black people, Indigenous people, and other People of Color and consider intersectional systems of oppression.” While research on the public conversation benefits from its easy access and limited additional burdens on movement activists, future research should test these definitions with movement activists to ensure that definitions and metrics are as relevant to the antiracist movement as possible.

McDermott, Monica and Annie Ferguson. 2022. Annual Review of Sociology, 48(1), 257-276. Link

Abstract

The past 20 years have witnessed a tremendous accumulation of research in whiteness studies in general, and in the sociology of whiteness in particular. In contrast to the earliest days of research in this subfield, much recent work has moved beyond preoccupations with whiteness as a seemingly invisible, default racial category to instead consider whiteness as a complex identity and basis of structural privilege and neocolonial dominance. Predominantly autobiographical and strictly theoretical work has been augmented by sophisticated empirical studies from a variety of methodological traditions. Contemporary scholars continue to grapple with epistemological concerns and the issue of how to dismantle that which is totalizing and hegemonic.