Recently, critical scholars have challenged the White, masculine foundations of the maker movement. That challenge has inspired others to create avenues for marginalized individuals to join these spaces. However,
immediately jumping from critique to action often produces unintended consequences (Yancy, 2016). With this in mind, I pose the following research questions: How does diversity and equity–focused maker education literature position marginalized students in relation to making and makerspaces? And how does this positioning challenge or reinscribe Whiteness? To approach these questions, I conducted a critical discourse analysis on 14 different articles about equity in making. Findings show that these studies position marginalized subjects outside of the boundaries formed by maker culture and then invite subjects to either join in or redefine the boundaries of making. While beneficial, this process enacts what Ladson-Billings (2017) defines as the social funding of race and, in part, reinscribes Whiteness within making culture.
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