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This review has been accessed  times since February 11, 1999
Kincheloe, Joe L.; Steinberg, Shirley R.;
Rodriguez, Nelson M. and Chennault, Ronald E. (Eds.) (1998).
White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America. New
York: St. Martin’s Press.
xiii + 354 pp
$27.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-312-17716
Reviewed by Barbara Applebaum
Ohio University
February 11, 1999
Blindness and invisibility have traditionally
characterized the production of white identity
(Frankenberg, 1993; McIntosh, 1995), and, as a result,
awareness must be the first and fundamental element in
reconstructing whiteness. But then what?
For those educators who are becoming increasingly
aware of the crucial role deconstructing whiteness plays in
challenging social injustice and who appreciate the
importance of reconstructing a positive but moral white
identity for their students, White Reign: Deploying
Whiteness in America is an important and useful book.
This collection of articles focuses on what whiteness is
and does, analyzes different types of white responses to
this knowledge, and offers a penetrating critique of the
cultural terrain in which whiteness is subtly embedded and
reproduced (as bell hooks puts it, "the normalization of
Whiteness"). Moreover, the overriding concern of all the
contributions is the articulation of a constructive
pedagogy of whiteness. Indeed, the book's unique feature
and the one that, I believe, has important educational
implications is the positive stand it takes regarding the
possibility of reconfiguring white identity.
We are living in a time when white anger is
fueling conservative attacks on affirmative action and
other social justice initiatives. White anger is, in fact,
reinscribing whites as victims. At the same time, guilt-
producing anti-racist, anti-dominance education has
immobilized many whites whose commitments might, under
other circumstances, compel them to work for social
justice. Not only educators but critical theorists as well
are beginning to recognize the need to move beyond self-
criticism and deconstruction to a more proactive and
constructive position (Alcoff, 1998). As author Ronald
Chennault explains, one of aims of White Reign:
Deploying Whiteness in America is "to redefine what
whiteness should be or to spell out ways to combat the
oppressiveness that is a part of whiteness, thus trying to
rescue its productive content" (p. 300).
The book presents sixteen articles by various
scholars working in critical theory, critical pedagogy, and
cultural studies. Although these articles are subsumed
under the two major sections of the book (Theory and
Pedagogy and Culture and Pedagogy), to me they are better
classified under three categories of inquiry: analysis of
the meaning of whiteness, examination of the different
types of responses that white people have to learning about
their whiteness, and cultural critique focusing on the
various ways that whiteness becomes normalized.
Almost every paper in the collection added
something to my understanding of whiteness and thereby
contributed to my understanding of the effects of my white
social location. Moreover, almost every paper helped me to
see effective ways to encourage my students' self-
reflection about their whiteness. In the limited space of a
review, however, I cannot describe all of the papers nor
can I recount all of the insights I gained from them.
Instead I will focus on the papers that had the most
significant impact on me, raising difficult but important
questions about the pedagogy of whiteness.
The lead article, "Addressing the Crisis of
Whiteness: Reconfiguring White Identity in a Pedagogy of
Whiteness," serves as a superb introduction to the topic.
In this article Joe Kincheloe and Shirley Steinberg
deconstruct the meaning of whiteness and its function in
the self-definition of white people. Lucidly describing the
debilitating consequences of the contemporary identity
crisis that white people are facing, they reconfigure white
identity more constructively, rendering it capable of
guiding a "pedagogy of whiteness." A powerful claim opens
the discussion and delineates the crucial linkage between
positionality and the social construction of knowledge:
“Individuals cannot separate where they stand in the web of
reality from what they perceive”(p. 3). Fundamental to an
understanding of whiteness, the concepts of "positionality"
and the "social construction of knowledge" form a framework
that enables understanding of how social inequality in our
society develops and is sustained. Because position
partially determines what one sees, one's own positionality
often seems transparent. This is all the more so when,
structurally, whiteness is naturalized and universalized.
To reveal white positionality to white people, it must be
brought out from behind its naturalized invisibility.
Kincheloe and Steinberg attribute the formation of
whiteness to the Enlightenment ideology that cast Reason at
the apex of human progress. Whiteness came to be synonymous
with rationality, and rationality came to be synonymous
with "the good." Similarly, non-whiteness became
identified with irrationality and deficiency. For this
reason, Kincheloe and Steinberg claim that a constructive
pedagogy of whiteness depends upon a reconfiguration of
Reason.
But what exactly about Reason needs to be
reconfigured--its content and structure or the uses to
which it has been put? If we were to demote Reason,
construing it as just one among a multitude of different
human accomplishments, would this be change enough?
Moreover, what is the role and value of rationality in a
reconfiguration of white identity? Should we (indeed, can
we) reconfigure Reason without making use of it? Finally,
how guilty ought each of us to feel for our (irrational?)
attachments to Reason?
Despite their neglect of these questions,
Kincheloe and Steinberg contribute an important insight by
describing the situational and historical construction of
whiteness, which is “always shifting, always reinscribing
itself around changing meanings of race in the larger
society.” (p. 4) Whiteness, as Kincheloe and Steinberg
argue, is a social construction. It is not fixed; it
has no essential character. Rather, whiteness
undergoes change and, for that reason, whiteness can
be changed!
Nelson Rodriguez's paper, "Emptying the Content of
Whiteness: Toward an Understanding of the Relation between
Whiteness and Pedagogy," both focuses and elaborates upon
many of the points made by Kincheloe and Steinberg.
Rodriguez's unique contribution is his discussion of the
need to base a pedagogy of whiteness on a map of the
content of whiteness. Rodriguez maintains that
whiteness, although always changing and seemingly
invisible, has content. And the content of whiteness must
be recognized and taken into account if one is to
understand how social inequalities are perpetuated. In a
trenchant quote from Coco Fusco, Rodriguez underscores this
point, “…to ignore white ethnicity is to redouble its
hegemony by naturalizing it.”
Whiteness comes to be seen as natural by
constituting and at the same time adhering to certain
norms. These norms make particular social relations appear
timeless and natural so that people accept them without
question, Rodriguez argues. To name these socially
constructed norms, for example, the norm of
heterosexuality, is one way to interrogate whiteness,
unmasking its content and destabilizing its power. Such a
critical interrogation of the content of whiteness,
Rodriguez contends, is a necessary aspect of a pedagogy of
whiteness.
Whiteness itself, Rodriguez maintains, concerns
more than race and racism. Rather whiteness cuts across
various axes of social categorization, including race,
class, gender, sexual orientation, and age. For this
reason, whiteness should be considered broadly as a
"normalizing technology, " that is, as a vehicle for the
production and perpetuation of oppressive standards and
norms. This is an important point because whiteness has
often been viewed--and sometimes with deleterious effects--
only as a feature of identity politics, as a facet
of individuality on a par with ethnicity or skin-color.
The concept "reverse discrimination" exemplifies this
misconstruction, relying on the false equation between
racism and the purportedly discriminatory effects of
affirmative action. Rodriguez describes this dynamic well
in his discussion of the "strategic rhetoric of Whiteness"
and its "everydayness." A pedagogy of whiteness must take
pains to explicate the connections between whiteness (or
more specifically white identity) as just one
identity marker among many and whiteness as a normalizing
mechanism. The distinction between whiteness as a
structural mechanism and whiteness as an identity marker,
and the relationship between the two, is crucial for
pedagogy. Without such a distinction the eradication of
whiteness may be conflated with the possibility of
transforming white identity in a way that does not demolish
it.
One of Rodriguez's original and stimulating
contributions is his discussion of the role of trauma in
getting students and other individuals to question their
whiteness. Although he recognizes the problems with this
approach, especially the fact that trauma may produce guilt
and anger, I think Rodriguez is pointing to an important
issue here. As he correctly points out, trauma
(particularly in its less intense forms of bafflement and
confusion) may be necessary to shake students up and to
decenter their taken-for-granted understanding of
whiteness. It may motivate them to reflect about themselves
and rework their identities in ways that are constructive
and progressive. "Constructive" and "progressive" are the
operant words here. How do we determine when trauma will be
constructive and when it will be immobilizing? Is it a
matter of quality, quantity or timing? Inquiry into these
questions is sorely needed; hopefully Rodriguez’s paper
will stimulate further scholarship on this approach to
pedagogy.
Echoing Iris Marion Young (1990) and others who
have underscored the white/non white bianarism, Peter
McLaren, in "Whiteness is...: The Struggle for Postcolonial
Hybridity" elaborates upon the normalizing mechanism
underlying the meaning and performance of whiteness:
People do not discriminate against groups
because they are different; rather, the act of
discrimination itself constructs categories of
difference that hierarchically locate people as
"superior" or "inferior" and then universalizes
and naturalizes such differences. (p. 64)
Whiteness not only is, whiteness does. In a
symbiotic way, whiteness reinforces itself as it creates
"Others" by exclusion and subordination. But, as McLaren
points out, the "them" is always located with the "us" (p.
68). The only way whiteness can be undone is if this
symbiotic binarism is demolished--not just ignored or
overlooked--but actually eradicated. Doing this will
require much hard work at both the personal and the
cultural and institutional levels.
It was particularly valuable for me to see a
number of articles dealing with types of white reaction to
white discourse. As a white educator who teaches
predominantly white pre-service teachers, categorizing
these responses and examining how they function to maintain
the status quo helps me understand myself as well as my
students. For example, in "Is the Benign Really Harmless?
Deconstructing Some 'Benign' Manifestations of
Operationalized White Privilege," Frances Rains discusses
what she refers to as the "vaccination effect," the process
of self-protection that enables academics to avoid the
implications of their theories for their everyday lives.
Recognizing that theory is important, she cautions us that
"awareness can too easily become an endpoint rather than a
beginning" (p. 79) and underscores the importance of taking
action in ways consistent with what we teach. Rains also
points out a number of reactions that academics have to the
accusation that racism in academia is endemic. She
delineates five different reactions and argues that such
responses are far from benign. Rather, they sustain the
invisibility of social inequalities in academic
institutions. As Rains contends, it is extremely important
for academics to get their own house "in order." If they
fail to do so their hypocrisy will serve as a bad example
for students.
In a similarly self-reflective piece, Connie
Titone recounts her professional development as a white
teacher, identifying two stances toward "Others." First,
she recalls responding as the "White Savior," a response
also quite common among my white pre-service teachers.
Then, Titone discusses her years intellectualizing about
multiculturalism in a doctoral program at a highly esteemed
university. Titone explains how both of these stances are
flawed, functioning to keeps social injustice in place.
Without deprecating the value of intellectual work on
racism, Titone is cognizant that the type of self-
reflection that white teachers need is more than
intellectual work. What is needed, in her view, is a
paradigm shift, which requires "a work of the spirit" (p.
168).
Borrowing from and elaborating upon Beverly Daniel
Tatum's (1994) notion of "White Teacher as Ally," Titone
outlines some guidelines for teaching white pre-service
teachers. Among the many useful insights she provides is
her identification of the need for college teachers
themselves to acknowledge and continuously work through the
implications of their social positionality. She exemplifies
this principle in the story of a class in which fertile
moments of educating for whiteness were lost because the
teacher became uncomfortable with and could not handle the
emotionally charged discussion that arose. Knowledge of the
self, knowledge of the "Other," and knowledge about how to
take action--how to lead--are the characteristics of the
anti-racist, white teacher as ally.
Since racism is embedded in the institutional,
cultural, and symbolic aspects of everyday living, it is
not enough to base a pedagogy of whiteness on the personal
reactions--however transformative--of the white teacher as
ally. An essential part of a pedagogy of whiteness must
also involve activities to deconstruct culture. In an eye-
opening article entitled "Developing a Media Literacy of
Whiteness in Advertising," Daniel Nicholson explains how
racism and sexism are manifest in advertising, not only in
what we see but also in what is not there to be seen.
Nicholson argues that students require a certain type of
"media literacy" from which to understand how, as
consumers, their choices can indirectly exact their
complicity in perpetuating social injustice. Deconstructing
Diesel Jeans and Workwear advertisements, Nicholson reveals
how these two companies deceptively use the notion of
"resistance"--not to advance democratic aims but, rather,
to promote the commodity fetishism on which capitalist
production depends.
There are five other articles, included in the
last part of the book, that deal with cultural
deconstruction. These articles demonstrate how whiteness
is implicated in all facets of daily life. These articles
trouble me, however, because they fail to recognize the
important distinction between exposing dominance and
teaching in order to raise awareness of dominance
(Applebaum, 1997). The former task strives to reveal the
subtle places where whiteness hides. Those who are already
cognizant of their social location and who understand
relations of dominance and oppression will find this type
of work invaluable. But the latter task is a different
type of work, requiring sensitivity to the level of
awareness of one's audience.
Recognizing that many pre-service teachers are
naďve about the cultural messages they receive, I strongly
believe students must be encouraged to identify and
interpret the implicit messages that are conveyed to them
through popular culture. These messages in part shape the
ways they see themselves, others, and the world around
them. Nevertheless, as an educator, I am concerned both to
expand my students' awareness of social injustice and, at
the same time, to support their efforts to reconfigure
white identity. This double purpose of teaching--
challenging and supporting--makes me worry about the
possible unwanted consequences that may result from
exposing students who may not be ready to handle it to such
an exhaustive treatment of whiteness. This treatment may
have the effect of alienating or immobilizing those readers
who are still struggling with their white identity.
Whereas each article in this part of the book works to
deconstruct whiteness, the overall negativity of the
section may have the opposite effect--actually impeding
rather than supporting whites' attempts to construct
positive, anti-racist, white identities and nurture bonds
of solidarity with people of color and other oppressed
peoples. I think positive suggestions, giving white people
a picture of a progressive white identity, must be offered
at the same time that whiteness is deconstructed.
In the foreword to the book Michael Apple
underscores the significance to education of deconstructing
whiteness. As Apple claims, "...issues of whiteness lie at
the very core of educational policy and practice. We ignore
them at our risk" (p. xii). Moreover, Apple reminds us of
another risk associated with a pedagogy of whiteness, a
risk that also must not be ignored. In turning attention
toward whiteness and its deconstruction, white people must
take care not to buttress its centrality and, thereby, turn
their attention away from the palpable concerns of Others
for social justice.
References
Alcoff, Linda Martin (1998). What Should White People Do?
Hypatia, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer) pp. 6-26.
Applebaum, Barbara (1997). Good, Liberal Intentions are
Not Enough: Intention, Racism and Moral Responsibility.
Journal of Moral Education, 26/4, pp. 409-421.
Frankenberg, Ruth (1993). The Social Construction of
Whiteness: White Women, Race Matters. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
McIntosh, Peggy (1995). White Privilege and Male
Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See
Correspondence Through Work in Women’s Studies. In M.
Anderson and P. Collins (Eds.), Race, Class, and Gender: An
Anthology. Belmount, CA: Wadsworth.
Tatum, Beverly Daniel (1994). Teaching White Students
about Racism: The Search for White Allies and the
Restoration of Hope. Teachers College Record Vol. 95
No. 4.
Young, Iris Marion (1990). Justice and the Politics of
Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
About the Reviewer
Barbara Applebaum is Visiting Assistant Professor at Ohio
University teaching courses in Education and Cultural
Diversity. Her research focuses on the point where ethics,
education and commitments to diversity converge, and is
heavily informed by feminist ethics and philosophy. Barbara
Applebaum has published papers on respect for diversity, the
meaning of dominance (with Dwight Boyd), and multicultural
and anti-racist education in such journals as the Journal
of Moral Education and Educational Theory. She has
a special interest in teachers' self-reflections on their own
teaching process and in this area, has written articles on
caring, building trust, and the role of authority in the
classroom.
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