Resistance to simple narratives in education research comes from the stance that they render findings useless for the political work of understanding contexts of education as they exist today. This paper interrogates three stories of masking choices from a four year postcritical ethnographic study in the rural rustbelt Midwestern United States. These stories make visible how masking operates as both process and product within and part of white supremacist and colonizing systems. The author calls critical qualitative and postcritical researchers to interrogate the role of protection, answerability, and specificity in their work towards justice in terms of masking.