Whiteness

A year ago, when I was teaching in California, some of my high-school students hosted affinity group discussions on ethnic and racial identity. Signs were posted in the lunchroom telling students where their affinity group would meet. A white student leader and I waited patiently in the classroom designated for Euro-American/white students and teachers. No one else came to this meeting. After lunch, as I was debriefing with the student leaders, one of my students of color turned to me and said with a look of disbelief: "Do white people know they are white?" It was an excellent question, and we spent the next half hour trying to think of ways we could help white people see their race as an essential part of diversity and multiculturalism.

As I learned from my experiences as a white teacher and from my Ph.D. research on adolescent ethnic identity development, if we are to help independent schools become truly multicultural communities, we have to begin to talk about what it means to be white in our schools.

It's important to take a close look at white identity in the hopes of uncovering and naming what usually passes for "normal." Just as with other racial groups, whiteness is not a monolith; it is a process of cultural development that is socially constructed and that encompasses many different ways of being white. By "socially constructed," I mean that race is not an essential characteristic but rather a social category. We understand whiteness in relation to other people, and whiteness is produced or constructed by our interactions with friends, the media, literature, family, and teachers. Notions of biological racial categories were made popular in the late 19th century, but scientific racism has nothing to do with biology. The gene that makes my hair curly and someone else's straight is the same gene that makes my eyes brown and someone else's blue. But the myth of essential racial characteristics is still part of our culture, and so it is important to begin by locating race as a social, and not a biological, identifier.

That said, it is then necessary to understand race in a historical, social, and political context. The term "white" did not emerge until the latter part of the 19th century in American society. James Banks, a leading scholar of multiculturalism at the University of Washington, writes about new immigrants from Ireland, Eastern, Southern, and Central Europe who challenged notions of whiteness upon their arrival in the U.S. In an effort to experience the American dream, many white ethnic groups assimilated and their distinct ethnic characteristics, such as language, were abandoned or erased in order to become "American." Some immigrants, moving through Ellis Island, changed their names (or had their names changed for them by immigration officials) so they sounded more "American," further contributing to the homogenization of white ethnics. By the early 20th century, multiple ethnic categories had become one racial category.

Valerie Babb writes about the development of the term "white" in her book Whiteness Visible. She states, "For the different ethnicities and classes who left Europe to come to an unfamiliar wilderness where new structures had to be devised to meet new needs, whiteness furnished a social order that forged a nascent national identity and minimized potential class warfare." To create this exclusive national identity, it was necessary to fabricate a shared Anglo-Saxon past that would give a variety of whites a common heritage even if this past was in direct conflict with the multiple ethnicities and classes that made up American society. By creating a white racial identity, as opposed to an English or Irish one, a nation of white ethnics could become a race that would create an identity and, at the same time, serve as a rationale for excluding non-whites. English superiority and domination in the colonies was replaced by white superiority.

It is not unusual for a new group to develop a norm that represents the group's character, and here the norm was established by rejecting other groups with a different character. In a time of rapid social transformation, Babb writes, whiteness was a unifying force that diffused social tensions, consolidated social and economic power, and integrated new white immigrants into a "white American fabric." Babb exposes a great American irony: With whiteness as a naturally superior racial identity, whites could reconcile undemocratic principles like slavery and limited voting rights with higher democratic ideals. This means of creating white hegemony brings us back to identity, but it is an identity created through difference. Here exclusion is not the ability to say who is white, but rather the power to determine who is not white. Colonists were the chosen white people who solidified their identity by being different from Native Americans and enslaved blacks. Thus, another irony emerges: Even though cultural mixing was a huge part of the formation of an American identity, there was this desire for racial purity that would privilege one group over another. Babb writes that by the mid to late 19th century "the social label of whiteness mitigated potential class strife among white ethnics and that, more and more, whiteness became synonymous with American-ness as the identity of the nation was cemented to the identity of a single created race. The question of who was a 'real' American was increasingly answered with the response that it was one who was white, thus giving this race a position of national privilege."

In the first quarter of the 20th century, obvious and pervasive cultural rituals and institutions sustained whiteness as the American norm along with white superiority. Cultural images erased racial plurality and established whiteness as a privileged social category, again illustrating the irony of a multiracial country portraying itself as monoracial. Even though whiteness is often veiled and hidden as the norm, we need an awareness of whiteness as a system and ideology that has privileged some and not others if we are to exist and thrive as a multiracial, multiethnic society. Without a thoughtful investigation of white identity and white privilege, their roots and present meaning, we will continue to perpetuate an illusion of a unified, democratic society.

So then, what is whiteness? What does it mean to be white in this country? As I was growing up, I never heard these questions asked. I grew up in Silicon Valley as it was coming into being, and everyone looked, talked, and sounded like me. I was raised in an Italian- and Irish-Catholic family, and both sides of my family immigrated to the U.S. around the turn of the century. I remember very little religious diversity in my hometown; the Christian kids envied the handful of Jewish kids who got to miss extra days of school. In my senior class of 550 students, we had one African American. When I went to college just outside of Chicago, my university was very segregated, and it was not until I attended graduate school in New York City that I really experienced a diverse living environment. I had the privilege to work with some very distinguished American historians who helped me see the blind spots in my own education. When I worked with Eric Foner, one of the leading scholars of 19th century American history, I realized that I had never really studied slavery. I, who had supposedly received an excellent education, did not know that Japanese-Americans had been interred during World War II. As I was working on a project and talking to my family about this chapter in American history, my mom told me an incredible story. In high school, Toro, one of my father's best friends, was Japanese-American. When his family was ordered to Idaho for internment during World War II, my dad and the rest of his friends took turns guarding Toro's house. It was both shocking and sad to me that I had never heard this story. So the understanding of my position and privilege began as an intellectual transformation, and it was not until I returned to teaching that my emotional transformation began.

In the fall of 1996, I moved back to Silicon Valley, and my first year there was wonderful. I started teaching Ethnic Voices, an advanced-placement English elective for juniors and seniors, and the first group of young women I worked with was incredible. The following school year, I had a very different experience. The class was split evenly along racial lines: eight white students and eight students of color. What I didn't realize was that I tipped the balance; my whiteness counted. The students of color were experiencing many different levels of racism, and I was having a very difficult time managing the class. My attempts to address white privilege were unsuccessful because I had not figured out what being white meant for me. Because I had not done my own work, it was impossible for me to guide my white students, and their resentment turned to anger. They went after the kids of color with cries of reverse racism and denouncements of quotas that prevented white kids from being accepted to elite universities. I was in way over my head. About six weeks into the term, the eight students of color showed up at my desk. They told me they had decided to drop the class, and they were willing to get an F and risk college acceptances because the racism they were experiencing was intolerable. They were thoughtful, composed, and serious. I was rocked to the core. They said that they were not blaming me, but in essence, it was about my accountability. Because I had not come to terms with my identity, the class was facing its own crisis. They looked at me intently and asked what I could do. What could I do? I told the students I would find a way to make it better. I asked them to give me two weeks, and they agreed. Then I cried for three days. I sat in the dean of students' office, and together, we found a way to finish the semester. Did I fix things? Of course not, because I couldn't. I performed triage. I got us through, but it was by no stretch of the imagination a successful semester. But I learned the most valuable lesson of my teaching career: As Parker Palmer states, you teach who you are. How could I confront white privilege and racism when I did not know who I was? At this time, I knew I had to go back to school to try to understand what had happened in my class and to begin my own personal identity exploration.

Once I realized that I needed to figure out what being a white, upper-middle-class woman meant for me, I began to look for some narratives that might help my own exploration. Ruth Frankenberg's study of 40 white women, in a text called White Women, Race Matters, significantly impacted my understanding of whiteness. In describing how race shaped the lives of women, she offers a very helpful definition of whiteness with three dimensions. "First, whiteness is a location of structural advantage, of race privilege. Second, it is a 'standpoint,' a place from which white people look at [themselves], at others, and at society. Third, 'whiteness' refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed." This definition establishes an important frame that locates privilege as one central aspect of whiteness. In addition, whiteness is a standpoint or perspective, a lens through which white people view the world, which means that my experience as a white person directly affects how I see and understand my surroundings and interactions with others. Finally, whiteness is positioned as the norm, so it has not been necessary to look explicitly at whiteness, leaving it as undiscovered territory.

Once we have this understanding of what whiteness is, we can begin to look at how whiteness functions in forming views on race. Frankenberg offers three such modes. She begins with the "essentialist mode," which refers to the idea that people of color, biologically speaking, are different, inferior, less human, less civilized than white people. The second mode is "color evasiveness," also known as color-blindness, which says we are all the same under the skin, so any failure to achieve on the part of people of color is the fault of people of color themselves. The final mode she calls "race cognizance" or "the autonomy of culture." In this mode, any inequality refers not to ascribed or essential characteristics, but to the social structure. Looking at the history of racial discourse in the U.S., these three phases of racial development emerged chronologically in this order, but in today's society, given different contexts, one or all of these phases might rise to the surface.

Of the three phases Frankenberg examines, color evasion, the second phase, offers great insight for those white students and educators trying to come to terms with a white identity. As she interviewed white women from across the country, she found that most of the women expressed a desire not to see race, or at least not to acknowledge racial differences. Frankenberg probed this issue and found that this was a way for these women to distance themselves from essentialist racism. If they didn't notice race, then they couldn't be racist: "Very frequently," she writes, "race privilege is a lived but not seen aspect of white experience, given socially segregated material environments and discursive environments that militate against conscious attention to racism." This, then, suggests that noticing color is a bad thing to do, suggesting that non-whiteness or "color" is bad. Here is where color evasiveness becomes so perilous: "The sharp cutting edge of color-blindness is revealed here: within this discursive repertoire, people of color are 'good' only insofar as their 'coloredness' can be bracketed and ignored," Frankenberg points out. "Colorblindness, despite the best intentions of its adherents, in this sense preserves the power structure inherent in essentialist racism."

To deny difference is to deny the impact that race has on people's lives. As opposed to saying there are no differences at all among people, color evasion is a selective attention to difference, saying that color does not matter. In this way, a white woman who is not comfortable talking about race can selectively avoid the topic and instead focus on differences that she is comfortable with. This is simply another kind of oppression disguised as a polite discourse. It is this selective engagement with difference that exposes color-blindness as a way of maintaining the power and privilege of the dominant group. Here, these white women had the privilege of not seeing their color, and, subsequently, denying others their racial identity.

Color-evasion can play a role in a subtle but insidious kind of racism termed "aversive racism," and as Beverly Tatum notes, aversive racists have "internalized the espoused cultural values of fairness and justice for all at the same time that they have been breathing the 'smog' of racial biases and stereotypes pervading the popular culture." Color-blindness masks itself as non-biased, but since one group is free to ignore the racial identity of another, discrimination exists. Thus, a seemingly nonprejudiced stance has major power implications. Here the denial of race locates a desire to be fair next to the power to discriminate. If it is clear what the right thing to do is, aversive racists will act in a way that supports their non-prejudiced view of themselves. However, if a situation is not clear and an action can be justified on the basis of some factor other than race, prejudiced feelings towards African Americans will surface.

Tatum gives an excellent example of how this subtle form of bias manifests itself. White college students were given transcripts and asked to evaluate candidates for admission to their college. When the transcripts were presented to the white students, all of the qualifications were equal; the only difference was the race of the candidate. The study found that when the students were not qualified, black and white students were both rejected, irrespective of race. When the candidates were somewhat qualified, white students were favored over black students by a slim margin. However, when the candidates were highly qualified, the white students overwhelming chose white candidates. So, even when all qualifications are equal, applicants were not perceived as equal, especially when both black and white applicants were highly qualified. Blacks were good, but whites were better.

Paul Kivel, a social activist and writer, states, "We must begin here -- with this denial of our whiteness -- because racism keeps people of color in the limelight and makes whiteness invisible." To turn our attention to whiteness using Frankenberg's definition, we must begin by acknowledging that whiteness is a privileged way of seeing the world that is usually not talked about. In 1989, Peggy McIntosh published White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, and still, to this day, it is one of the best pieces on the topic of white privilege. Her central thesis is that white people have not had to acknowledge how they benefit from racial discrimination. White people might understand the disadvantages of racism, but they deny the advantages they receive because of white privilege.

It is disconcerting to realize that privilege and prejudice exist side by side; one informs the other. As I elevate myself, someone else is disadvantaged. As with racism, whites are taught not to see their privilege, but, nevertheless, we carry around an invisible knapsack filled with unearned privileges. McIntosh lists over 40 ways she experiences white privilege daily. For example, she usually does not have to speak for her entire race; she can move and be assured of finding fair housing; if she is pulled over by the police, she can be relatively sure she was not singled out due to race; she can swear, dress down, or not return a phone call without people attributing her choices to the poverty, illiteracy, or bad morals of her race. It was difficult for McIntosh to recognize her white privilege, and she literally had to keep a tape recorder next to her bed in order to capture the semiconscious thoughts that helped to illuminate her privilege. I encourage all white educators to make their own lists, to write down the ways they receive unearned benefits. In this way, they can begin to recognize the role that race plays in their lives and how race is one lens through which all of us view the world.

Valerie Babb notes that, in reality, the privilege of whiteness benefits no one. It distances and segregates people and fosters pain and resentment. The inequities in such privilege are obviously painful to people of color. But they can also be painful to white people, many of whom feel that it strips them of their individuality and turns them into unappealing stereotypes. Because the culture that creates white privilege convinces many whites that certain cultures or topics are not worthy of study (non-Western literature, for instance), whites often struggle with their ability, and willingness, to participate in a diverse world.

To the students in my Ethnic Voices class who had difficulty with the ethnicity writing assignment, I assigned McIntosh's essay. For these white students who previously had no awareness of their whiteness, the article gave them insight into their racial identity. They could read McIntosh's list of unearned privileges and begin to construct their own lists, and this affected the way they saw themselves because they began to see with different eyes. And some even began to comment on a concept I refer to as the "double-edged sword" of white privilege. As students are granted their privileges, they are often denied aspects of their identity. This privilege cuts both ways. For example, one student wrote that white privilege isolated her; people judged her, and even if there was an inherent benefit to that judgment, she felt that she was never really known in the process. Often, when she says where she is from, people just assume she is rich, snobby, and spoiled. Yes, this provides her with a kind of privilege, but at the same time, the person judging her may not be able to really know her because of her privilege. This leads to the question of what happens to the white student who receives the benefits, but is not seen for who she really is. Where does she have the opportunity to move beyond assumptions, especially if the assumptions are incorrect?

A second aspect of the "double-edged sword" of white privilege is cultural disconnection. Many of the white students I have taught talk about the guilt, embarrassment, and shame they feel when they think about their racial and ethnic identity. Where do these feelings come from? And can these feelings be mitigated by class status or strong ethnic identity? Gary Howard, president and founder of the Reach Center, a nonprofit organization in Washington working to help people understand diversity, says that sometimes it is difficult for white people to feel good about their history. As the limitations of privilege and membership in a dominant group become apparent, many whites will turn away from their heritage and towards other traditions and cultures in order to create a sense of belonging. For many, the first recognition of white privilege can bring on intense feelings of guilt, but there is something else present for my students. It may be a feeling of loss, of not having a culture to celebrate during Multicultural Week.

It seems as if there is no counterbalance to the privilege, no firm identity to return to -- only feelings of emptiness, sadness, and shame. To suddenly have to acknowledge you are white, and that you have benefited from that identity while others are excluded, is difficult. The privilege maintains itself by locating itself as normal, and it can grow and strengthen because it is never examined or called into question. If I am just a regular kid, what's the problem? Yet, when I suddenly understand that I am white, and understand the full implications of that whiteness, and I'm seeing this aspect of my identity for the first time, the exposure is intense, difficult to grapple with. Henry Giroux, author and professor of cultural studies at Penn State University, writes that it is difficult for white students to see themselves as both antiracist and white; the terms seem mutually exclusive.

In schools, what is needed is a space for white kids to move beyond polarized notions of race to the development of a continuum of white identity. Instead of either drowning in guilt or accepting whiteness as the norm, Giroux says that students need to be "part of a broader new discourse of ethnicity, so that white youth can understand and struggle against the long legacy of white racism while using the particularities of, as Stuart Hall puts it, 'their own culture as a resource for resistance, reflection, and empowerment.'"

So once we have recognized white privilege, how can we move towards acceptance, accountability, and action to promote equity? I often have students who are empowered by the recognition of white privilege. They can separate their individual identity from their group membership. They can recognize their privilege and begin to think about ways of sharing their power, of giving up some of those privileges to gain something greater: a better sense of community, less prejudice, and a clearer sense of who they really are beyond the color of their skin. In short, they need the space to talk about being white, what it means to them, and how they can use their privilege to confront racism and class barriers.

What we need to do today is to expand our notion of what it means to be white. Current conceptions of whiteness are stereotypical, narrow, and constricting. We also have to separate myths from realities so we no longer allow people to assume unearned superiority, and we can do this by rejecting racism and developing a white racial identity that is not based on racial supremacy. Quoting Janet Helms, Tatum writes: "He or she must accept his or her own whiteness, the cultural implications of being white, and define a view of self as a racial being that does not depend on the perceived superiority of one racial group over another."

Feeling guilty about white privilege creates paralysis; what white people need is a firm commitment to their own identity development and a willingness to confront the legacy of white racial domination. Paul Kivel, author of Men's Work and Uprooting Racism, provides an excellent analysis of the need for white accountability: "When we talk about unequal distribution of benefits and disadvantages, we may feel uncomfortable about being white. We did not choose our skin color. Nor are we guilty for the fact that racism exists and that we have benefited from it. We are responsible for acknowledging the reality of racism and for the daily choices we make about how to live in a racist society. We are only responsible for our own part, and we each have a part."

If you're a white educator, what is your part? For 25 years of my life, I did not know I had a role. I experienced life through the lens of white privilege, and it was not until I was asked by my students to step up to the challenge that I realized how hindered I was by my privilege. I was isolated from communities of people whom I needed to learn from and who had something to gain from me. I was distanced from an immigrant past that has so much to teach me about my family and how I am a part of a larger history. I was disconnected from my students, and this made my job more difficult. I could not be the teacher I wanted to be until I could take an in-depth look at my own racial and ethnic identity to be able to teach who I am. Finally, I was not the human being I strive to be because of my unconscious and sometimes conscious participation in a system that benefits me at the expense of others. The resistance to acceptance and accountability is real: the fear of losing something, of giving up certain advantages with the risk of not getting anything in return. What will happen if we lose what we have? I have worked so hard to get where I am, and now that will be taken away? Yet white educators have to be willing to take the risk because the consequences of white privilege are too great. It is not enough for mainstream society to just accept more people of color. White people have to accept their history and their role, and work to create a society that is free of racism. This is an extraordinary moment. The opportunity awaits us all.

Elizabeth Denevi is codirector of multicultural seminars at St. Stephen's and St. Agnes School(VA). In addition, she is an associate with the Eastern Educational Resource Collaborative (East Ed), and an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia.

References:

Babb, Valerie. (1998). Whiteness Visible. New York: New York University Press.

Banks, James. (2000). "The Social Construction of Difference and the Quest for Educational Equality." Education in a New Era.

Frankenberg, Ruth. (1993). White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

--. (1997). Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Giroux, Henry A. (Summer 1997). "Rewriting the Discourse of Racial Identity: Towards a Pedagogy and Politics of Whiteness." Harvard Educational Review. Vol. 67:2.

Howard, Gary. (Sept. 1993). "Whites in Multicultural Education: Rethinking Our Role." Phi Delta Kappan.

Kivel, Paul. (1996). Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice. New Society Publishers.

McIntosh, Peggy. (1988). White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies. Wellesley, MA: Center for Research on Women.

Palmer, Parker. (1998). The Courage to Teach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Tatum, Beverly Daniel. (1992). "Talking about Race, Learning about Racism: The Application of Racial Identity Development Theory in the Classroom." Harvard Educational Review. Vol. 62:1.

--. (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Basic Books.