NO ONE QUESTIONS MY PRESENCE HERE: WHITE WOMEN IN HIGHER EDUCATION

This dissertation examines the intersection of whiteness and womanhood in higher education learning spaces, analyzing how white women uphold and reproduce patriarchal white supremacy culture in racially diverse academic environments. Using an ethnographic and autoethnographic approach, this study explores the norms of white womanhood that shape culture within learning groups while grounded in Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, and feminist theory. Through qualitative methods, findings indicate discursive and relational patterns reinforcing whiteness through performative allyship, racial distancing, and the reproduction of maternalistic care, while also highlighting moments of rupture that create possibilities for critical consciousness. By situating white womanhood within historical and theoretical frameworks of race, gender, and power, this dissertation hopes to contribute to scholarship on whiteness in education, offering insights into how anti-Blackness, parasitic othering, and moral innocence function as central mechanisms in white women’s engagement with racial discourse in academic settings.