Discouragement, delay, and doublespeak at southern universities: considerations and context for scholars of cultural studies

ABSTRACT Delay and doublespeak have long been effective ways to communicate discouragement to those seeking change within white supremacist systems. Indeed, white Southerners in power have deployed these strategies of resistance at every turn during the decades since the Civil War. This has certainly been true in education. My essay explores examples of these rhetorical strategies still at work to undermine racial progress at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) in the U.S. South.