This review has been accessed times since January 1, 2005

Fine, Michelle; Weis, Lois; Powell, Linda C. and Wong, L. Mun (Eds.). (1997). Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society. New York: Routledge.

Pp. xii+366.

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Reviewed by Audrey Thompson
University of Utah

November 12, 1999

          Under the terms of mainstream U.S. ideology, racism is usually understood in one of two ways. Either it is viewed as an expression of personal prejudice, dislike, or hatred, or it is regarded as matter of racially biased rules. Insofar as racism is associated with overt dislike for members of other races, it is likely to be seen as a fringe ideology that, while common earlier in the century and lingering in the attitudes of some members of the older generation, is now so unacceptable that it is endorsed only by white supremacist hate groups. (Note 1) Well-meaning whites often note, for example, that it is no longer permissible in polite circles to make derogatory comments about blacks; their grandparents and even their parents may still talk that way, but they themselves are horrified by such talk. Seen from this perspective, racism is a kind of character flaw that infected many white people in the past but will have disappeared altogether by the time that white children of the present generation become adults. Indeed, some whites complain that racism-as-bigotry is now pretty much confined to people of color: "Look at all those angry blacks and Mexicans who hate whites. They're the ones stirring up resentment between the races." (Note 2)
          Alternatively, racism may be viewed as a system of rules based on irrelevant racial criteria. Typically treated as more or less interchangeable with "bias" or "unfairness," this second analysis of racism is often invoked in discussions of segregation. In visits to elementary schools, Herbert Kohl (1995) found that discussions of landmark events like the Montgomery bus boycott, for example, focused on the unfairness of racial segregation. By representing whites and blacks as responding with equal outrage to such unfairness, white teachers managed to suggest that race was almost an incidental issue. In any case, these teachers implied, discrimination against blacks was a thing of the past. Ironically, whites often see racism in the form of discrimination against whites as very much alive. The real issue with racism-as-unfairness, many whites believe, is "reverse discrimination." Not only in casual conversation but in scholarly and media discussions, complaints about how unfairly affirmative action treats white men are regularly offered up as sober, balanced commentary on a pervasive problem (Giroux, 1997).
          Both the personal-bias and the unfair-rules views offer colorblind accounts of racism; even though they are about race, they have been deracialized. A definition of racism is colorblind if it assumes that noticing race is itself racist. Colorblind definitions of racism usually assume that racism does not have a material or institutional form; instead, racism is considered to be a matter of personal attitudes or perceptions. Thus, under the terms of colorblind racism, Chicana/os or African Americans who call a policy racist may themselves be identified as racist because they have used race as a perceptual filter. Using colorblind frameworks, it is as easy to call people of color racist as it is to call whites racist. If anything, it may be easier to call people of color racist, since people of color are more likely than whites to challenge the terms of colorblindness.
          Whiteness theories not only refuse colorblindness as a generic framework but draw attention to the variety of ways in which supposedly universal, colorblind values are articulated to whiteness. The project of whiteness theorists is to problematize the normalization of whiteness as racelessness, to make "visible . . . what was previously unseen" (Foucault, 1980, p. 50). In psychologically oriented whiteness theories, the primary focus is on the development of a healthy white identity that is aware of but does not participate in racism. Racism, here, is usually understood as an attitude or belief system perpetuated by systematic cultural ignorance, on the one hand, and personal insensitivity, on the other. The solution to racism, as seen from this perspective, is for individual whites to confront and overcome their suppressed commitments to white supremacy and learn to embrace diversity as a shared good. For psychological theorists of whiteness, a healthy white racial identity will not become possible until whites confront and accept their whiteness (abandoning colorblindness), acknowledge the privileges of whiteness, and take a consistently anti-racist stance. The keys to developing a healthy white identity, then, are 1) developing an awareness of whiteness, including white privilege; and 2) acting in ways that make use of that knowledge to challenge personal and institutional racism.
          Most socially oriented whiteness theorists, on the other hand, are concerned less with the question of what counts as a healthy personal orientation to race and racism than with the question of how race and racism have come to take the form they do in the first place. Both discourse and material approaches to whiteness understand racism in terms of the social mechanisms that falsely legitimate whiteness as normative or superior. Inspired in part by Toni Morrison's (1992) brilliant Playing in the Dark, this literature characterizes whiteness as a purportedly neutral or normal condition that depends on materially and ideologically enforced contrasts to blackness or brownness for its normative status. In other words, it addresses whiteness and racism as social constructions (whether ideological or institutional). According to discursive and materialist perspectives, racism is not a personal deviation from egalitarian ideals but a specifically "normal"—because normalized—stance legitimated by the dominant society. If racism is structured into our very environment, as these theorists argue, then it cannot be dismantled through a change of heart. Either racism must be challenged by non-"normal" behaviors that disrupt whiteness (as self-proclaimed "race traitors" urge) or we must change the material and ideological constructions that privilege whiteness (as revolutionaries and reconstructionists argue).
          Despite the important differences between these three paradigms, psychological, discourse, and material approaches to whiteness theory agree in rejecting colorblindness as the solution to racism. Whereas colorblindness "leave[s] the assumptions of whiteness in place" (Billig, 1997, p. 155), whiteness theory challenges those assumptions. To alter the racial status quo, whiteness theorists argue, we must begin by unravelling and exposing the network of white lies about whiteness, blackness, and brownness. Because it refuses any acknowledgment of racism in the name of racial inequality, colorblindness is one of the most seductive of white lies. Whiteness theories demystify white lies, allowing us to see the costs of maintaining whiteness as an ideal.

Whiteness Theories and Off White

          For the most part, whiteness theorists' emphasis is not on whiteness as an announced value but whiteness as a suppressed, invisible privilege. (Note 3) In a racist society, whites are privileged by their color in ways they never notice. A white person may not feel privileged, but if she can walk into a department store and never think about whether the store detectives regard her as a probable shoplifter, she is privileged by her whiteness. African Americans, along with many other people of color, must be prepared to be stopped and asked to open their bags for inspection.
          Whiteness thus understood matters less because of its connections to the overt pro-white racism of white supremacists than because of its normalized status—its apparently generic and unbiased quality. It is powerful because so many of us do not know how to think about it. Kept unnamed and invisible, whiteness remains "just out of argumentative reach" (Billig, 1997, p. 152). Not surprisingly, what whiteness is and how it is related to racism are far from settled questions among theorists of whiteness. Despite considerable overlap, the different strains in the whiteness literature have taken quite distinct positions on what whiteness is and how it is to be problematized.

Discourse Theories of Whiteness

          Discourse approaches to whiteness theory focus on the privileging of whiteness in ideology, symbol systems, and popular culture. In a racialized and racist society, not only cultural but political, intellectual, and moral values are organized around whiteness as the center. Moral values such as generosity, cultural values such as femininity, political values such as equal opportunity, and intellectual values such as objectivity—although nominally colorblind—are articulated to how whites perceive themselves. Generosity, for example, is a virtue articulated to privilege (including class, gender, race, and other social privileges). In the U.S., we do not count the sacrifices and losses incurred by black slaves in service to whites as "generous," yet white slave owners who taught their slaves to read or who freed them as a reward for their loyalty may well be seen as generous ("given the context"). (Note 4) To say that such values are articulated to whiteness is not necessarily to say that they are values reserved for whites. On the contrary, they are likely to be treated as generic norms. But while individual members of non-white groups may be able to display these values, they cannot set new terms for what is to count as femininity, generosity, objectivity, or equal opportunity. Whiteness sets the terms for value.
          According to discursive theories of whiteness, the tools by which we construct meaning in a racist society—our language, symbol systems, fine art, science, and the popular media— teach us to think of value in relation to whiteness, with the result that competing values are automatically constructed as "other" and therefore as deviant or threatening. The Bell Curve, for example, used the purportedly neutral language of science to characterize white, suburban, middle-class values "as the epitome of wholesomeness and completeness" (McCarthy, Buendía, Mills, Meacham, Godina, Wilson-Brown, Seferian, & Souchet, 1996, p. 258), linking outsiders to "disease and degeneracy" (p. 259). Such constructions of value depend on dichotomies that definitively separate "us" from "them." Only insofar as we deconstruct and disrupt the prevailing, racialized organization of value, discursive theorists suggest, will whiteness lose its authoritative and normalized character, and thus its power to demonize blackness and brownness.
          The power whiteness has to shape our perception of value depends on its never being acknowledged as an organizing principle. Insofar as whiteness is normalized, its privileges are erased and whites can assume that "merit," "success," and other measures of value represent colorblind standards; if whites outperform non-whites according to these standards, then whites are demonstrably more deserving than non-whites. Indeed, the privileges of whiteness may be erased to such a degree that whiteness is characterized as an embattled position. Taking their entitlements for granted, whites shift attention from their own advantages to the threat that others pose to their way of life. An excellent example of such discursive theorizing in the Off White collection is Louise Kidder's (1997) description of the white, expatriate community in a South Indian city. The Europeans and North Americans whom Kidder interviewed were quite wealthy in comparison to the majority of Indians, yet they did not see themselves as privileged, for they focused on differences in privileges within the group of expatriates rather than comparisons to "the average person on the street" (p. 159). Since the comparisons in which the relatively privileged expatriates were interested concerned other whites, "their refrigerators, phones, and cars served not as the figure but the ground: what stood out for them was how vulnerable they were" (p. 161). Taking their whiteness and its privileges for granted, they worried about possible threats to those privileges.
          The mechanisms by which the expatriates legitimated their own privilege included gossip of the you-just-can't-get-good-help-nowadays variety. Foregrounding their own perceived vulnerability, the expatriate community continually circulated stories about being taken advantage of by Indians. "'They really know how to cheat you. . . . [T]hey'll try to cheat you as far as they can, but if you get smart and threaten 'em, they'll stop'" (Kidder, 1997, p. 161). We/them lines were so clearly drawn that new members of the expatriate community— coming in without any desire for servants—soon "slipped into positions that had been prepared by colonial rulers" (p. 158). From those positions, any question of deservingness looked clear-cut. When things went wrong in the household, the Indian servants were blamed, but when things went well, their white employers were most likely to "accept most of the credit because they were in charge" (p. 164).
          Another discursively oriented chapter in Off White demonstrates how movies, television news, weekly news magazines, and other popular culture media in the U. S. circulate "resentment" narratives that position the inner city as undermining everything that the white, suburban middle class has worked so hard to achieve. Resentment narratives characterize suburban needs as congruent with "national interests" while dismissing "the needs of the inner city . . . as a wasteful 'social agenda'" (McCarthy, Rodriguez, Meecham, David, Wilson-Brown, Godina, Supryia, & Buendía, p. 234). Movie versions of the resentment narrative often enact white fantasies of revenge. In some movies, white male vigilantes may take on the corrupt inner city single-handedly to restore moral order. In other movies, revenge is exacted indirectly, as black gangsters suffer the inevitable costs of their violence and lawlessness. Such narratives help to position whiteness as righteous, under siege, but in the end triumphant over the immoral forces associated with poverty and darkness.
          The discursive theorists represented in Off White emphasize the ideological mechanisms by which whiteness is maintained and affirmed as normal or superior. Deconstructing racial discourses, they suggest, allows us to identify the hidden workings of power. Some of the other whiteness theorists working in the discourse tradition, however, are interested less in deconstructing than in disrupting white privilege. For self-described "race traitors" such as Noel Ignatiev and John Garvey (1996), whiteness itself can be abolished if we disrupt the "normal operation" of "the institutions that reproduce race as a social category" (p. 3). If enough whites commit racial treason, Ignatiev and Garvey argue, the resulting anarchy will make it impossible for the mechanisms of white privilege to work.
          This latter position has come in for a good deal of criticism from structurally oriented whiteness theorists. Although structural analyses are usually compatible with the kind of discursive analyses found in Kidder (1997) and McCarthy et al. (1997), they are specifically opposed to "race traitor" approaches because of the tendency of race traitors to reject whiteness altogether. As Linda Martín Alcoff (1998) puts it, "whites cannot disavow whiteness." A white person may choose not to avail herself of her privileges, but she remains eligible for those privileges even if she "work[s] hard to avoid them" (p. 17). For structural or material theorists, what matters is how the system operates to serve whites even without their knowledge or consent.

Material Theories of Whiteness

          Whereas discursive approaches to whiteness theorizing emphasize the power of ideas and symbols to shape our perceptions of race, material approaches to whiteness insist on the structural character of white power and privilege. From such perspectives, it is not a question merely of the widespread perception of whiteness as normative or superior that is at issue but of the material inequality that characterizes race relations in our society. People of color are systematically excluded from the very real power, privileges, and entitlements attached to whiteness. In general, whites have access to more education, better-paying jobs, and a wider choice in housing than do people of color. As a group, whites also have better access to policies and programs that support their interests, including bank loans, insurance, health benefits, and police protection from physical violence. Supposedly, the arrangements that organize access to material goods are referenced strictly to individual merit; in fact, however, they systematically give preference to whites.
          Of course, not all whites enjoy the same privileges. Depending on one's class, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion, and ethnicity, whiteness may be wielded quite differently. Both discourse and material whiteness theories emphasize the multiplicity of whiteness. Discursive approaches to whiteness address the constant shifting of the discourse to reposition whiteness as normative or superior; structurally oriented theories point to the multiple material forms that white privilege may take. As Alcoff (1998) notes, the privileges of whiteness have always been "differentially distributed" in accordance with "class, gender, sex, ethnicity, age, and able-bodiedness" (p. 9). For most men, she observes, white privilege has meant getting a job, whereas for many middle- and upper-class women white privilege has meant not having to work.
          Most commonly, material or structurally oriented whiteness analyses focus on the ways in which whiteness is fractured by class divisions, leading to continual "rearticulations, representations, [and] reinterpretations of the meaning of race" (Winant, 1997, p. 40). Howard Winant's chapter in Off White offers an excellent example of such a structurally oriented analysis. Although "the deep structures of white privilege" have not been destroyed by the post-civil rights era's emphasis on racial equality, Winant says, the recognition of "counterclaims on behalf of the racially excluded and subordinated" has left white identities in a state of anxiety, confusion, and contradiction (p. 41). The "new politicization of whiteness" can be seen in the variety of "white racial projects" being pursued in the U.S. (p. 42): these include the projects of the far right, the new right, neoconservatives, neoliberals, and the "new abolitionists." (Note 5)
          According to Winant, only the last-named group— identified with David Roediger (1994) and with Ignatiev and Garvey (1996)—actively problematizes the privileges of whiteness or reinterprets social power relations from a standpoint that critiques the social construction of that privilege. Yet insofar as the project of the new abolitionists involves eradicating rather than rearticulating whiteness, Winant (1997) suggests, it reflects a limited understanding of whiteness. Racism cannot be overcome by getting rid of whiteness; instead, whiteness must be given new character and new meaning. "Like any other complex of beliefs and practices, 'whiteness' is imbedded in a highly articulated social structure and system of significations; rather than trying to repudiate it, we shall have to rearticulate it." Rejecting the notion of whiteness as nothing more than an idea—and thus something that can be abandoned "by a mere act of political will" (p. 48)—Winant suggests that we need to address the work that whiteness constructions do in maintaining race and class privilege. We have to "reinterpret the meaning of whiteness in such a way that it no longer has the power to impede class alliances" (p. 49).
          While the materialist discussion of the different ways in which white privilege manifests itself is often illuminating, a few of the chapters in Off White seem to insist on the fractured character of whiteness simply as a way to downplay the authors' own white privilege. Such authors invoke whiteness theorizing primarily in order to discredit it, displacing the question of whiteness by complexifying it. Part of the argument, in such cases, is that whiteness cannot be understood in essentializing terms but must be weighed against concurrent experiences of marginalization: one is never just white; one is white and working-class or white and female or white and gay, for example. In and of itself, problematizing whiteness as a unilateral category is not self-indulgent. Seizing upon a falsely monolithic reading of whiteness specifically in order to discredit it, though, seems to serve no other purpose than to absolve a particular author of any complicity in white privilege. As Gloria Anzaldúa (1990) has written, "Often whitefeminists [sic] want to minimize racial difference by taking comfort in the fact that we are all women and/or lesbians and suffer similar sexual-gender oppressions" (p. xxi). Whatever other forms of oppression whites may experience, however, our whiteness still needs to be addressed as a source of privilege. "While whiteness is clearly shaped by sexuality, religion, and class," as Becky Thompson and her colleagues (1997) acknowledge in their chapter, we cannot call upon "being lesbian, or Jewish, or survivors of sexual abuse as a way to distance ourselves from being white and the unearned privileges we have been granted along the way" (p. 359).
          Because whites want to avoid being associated with oppressiveness, they are often tempted to draw attention to any number of other modifiers that define them. We are not so much white, we say, as Italian or Jewish or working-class. Analyzing her own defensiveness about being identified as white, Faye Crosby (1997) notes that she feels compelled to complicate the category of whiteness by bringing to bear other aspects of her identity: "middle-aged," "middle-class," "divorced," and being of mixed heritage—"a Protestant midwesterner (father) and a Jewish French colonialist (mother)." This "rush toward complexity," Crosby suggests, is a function of whites' discomfort with the term "white" (p. 182). When we choose to label ourselves as woman or teacher or mother (or lesbian, gay, straight, middle-class, Northeastern, or Southwestern), by contrast, we usually do not feel a comparable need to modify the self-definition with the term "white."
          However reassuring our modified categories are to those of us who are white, they don't address how others see us. Remembering when she first "had to identify with white people," an anti-racist, white activist describes an encounter with an African-American woman who asked her, "Why are your people teaching your children to hate me?" The question came as a shock: "I don't think most [white] people ever think about other white people as 'my people.'" Her first reaction was to think that the people in question—"those white people in South Boston"—were not her people. "First of all, they were Irish and I am Italian, so we don't have to own them." But she came to "realize that they are my people" (Thompson et al., 1997, p. 359)—and that she needed "to be able to explain to people in my community that white supremacy and its ideology have screwed us up" (p. 362). Claiming her whiteness meant that she was able to address other whites as potential anti-racist allies—to take an activist stance from a "we" position, rather than addressing other whites as racist in a way that she herself was not.
          To the uneducated (or mis-educated) eye, structural forms of privilege are usually invisible. Embedded in standardized tests, college admissions requirements, teacher competency exams, rank and tenure policies, drug laws, police procedures, urban and suburban taxation practices, bank and insurance policies, hiring patterns, and social security laws, for example, structural forms of privilege appear impartial to those who benefit from them. Since these policies and practices appear fair to those who are best served by them, any attempt to correct for bias in the policies and practices will appear inherently discriminatory—hence the furious white, middle-class (and often male) backlash against affirmative action. It is when ideological and structural forms of racism meet that the latter are most likely to be visible. Combined materialist/discursive analyses of whiteness address issues such as how structural white privilege is protected by white discourses and how racist discourses are protected by colorblind institutional structures.

Combined Materialist/Discursive Approaches

          Among the important contributions of Off White are the chapters that reveal both the ideological and the institutional workings of whiteness, making visible the bias in what may appear to be fair and impartial ways of handling racial conflict. While few of the institutional analyses offered in Off White explicitly take up the theoretical paradigms set forth in the whiteness literature, they provide detailed analyses of just how whiteness operates as a normalizing principle. Playing by the rules, they suggest, tends to reinscribe whiteness as the norm. By examining institutional responses both to white racism and to solidarity initiatives taken by people of color, these analyses show us what whites (and occasionally people of color) may have to gain by insisting on white values as generic values. Virginia Chalmers's (1997) discussion of race dynamics at a predominantly white private school, for example, demonstrates how the insistence on progressive, anti-racist values such as openness and social harmony was used as a mechanism to prevent people of color from organizing amongst themselves to meet their children's needs, while a case study focusing on a year-long racial conflict at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Gilmore, Smith, & Kairaiuak, 1997) reveals how the administration's bureaucratic response to white racism alienated the Alaska Native community.
          In the University of Alaska Fairbanks case, controversy erupted over a professor's suggestion that Native students were being given inflated grades so that they could graduate. Adopting a "rational" policy of disinterested "attempts to sort out the 'facts,'" the University gave credence to the white professor's slander by allowing the question to be entertained as worthy of study for almost a year. Although in the end there was no evidence to support the claim that Native students were being given inflated grades, the University's bureaucratic stance put the Native community—rather than the professor making the racist claim—on the defensive. Institutional analyses such as these show us how, even in the absence of ill intent or overt discrimination, seemingly fair, impartial, and colorblind procedures may lend support to discourses or policies that are overtly racist. (Note 6)
          Another chapter intertwining structural with discursive analyses focuses more heavily on the discursive side, addressing the ways in which white, working-class men symbolically compensate for their loss of privilege in the 1990s. Because new economic conditions have substituted lower-paying service jobs for traditionally "masculine" working-class jobs, Lois Weis, Amira Proweller, and Craig Centrie (1997) argue, white, working-class men are unable to provide the same "family wage" that their fathers and grandfathers did or to claim "their once-certain advantage over white women and women and men of color" (p. 211). Rather than blame elite decision-makers "for the relocation of industries, closing of industries, and so forth" (p. 214), however, these men blame people of color, attributing their embattled economic position to people of color who have unfairly taken "their" jobs. Drawing on white discourses about affirmative action and welfare allows white, working-class men to position themselves as deserving people, in contrast to people of color. On the one hand, working-class people of color who have jobs are said to have secured them unfairly (through so-called quotas); on the other hand, people of color who don't have jobs are characterized as welfare cheats who exploit the system. In contrast to both people of color who have jobs, then, and those who don't, white, working-class men emphasize their own moral superiority.

Psychological Theories of Whiteness

          Some but by no means all of the psychological work in whiteness theory is consistent with discursive and materialist approaches. Although psychologically oriented work focuses on the personal identity of whites rather than the social construction of whiteness, psychological approaches that recognize racism as systemic and that acknowledge whites' investment in whiteness are consistent with discourse and material theories of whiteness. On the other hand, psychological approaches that focus on individuals unlearning racist patterns, and thereby leaving racism behind, make assumptions about the nature of racism that are very different from the assumptions found in the socially oriented literature. (Note 7)
          In psychological approaches that focus on the need to abandon behaviors that privilege whiteness, whiteness is recognized as leading to ethnic bias and ignorance but is not addressed as a privilege that whites have reasons to protect. Alcoff (1998) describes Judy Katz's (1978) sensitization approach to whiteness, for example, as ignoring the ways in which whiteness serves the material interests of whites. Throughout Katz's White Awareness, says Alcoff (1998), "racism is portrayed as a kind of macro-agent with its own agenda, operating separately from white people" (p. 12). Although Katz sees racism as debilitating to whites both intellectually and psychologically, she ignores its political and moral character, making "no reference to exploitation or the need for a redistribution of resources." Racism for her is simply "a psychological pathology that can be solved through behavior modification" (p. 13). (Note 8)
          By contrast, psychologist Janet Helms (1992)—known for her stage theory of healthy white development—pays considerable attention to the connections between white identity and social and institutional privilege. Although organizing her discussion around whites' personal growth and emphasizing the need for whites to "actively . . . increase the racial diversity" in their lives "as a way to learn and grow from such experiences" (p. 87), Helms does not regard anti-racism as merely a personal stance. Whiteness as Helms defines it has been institutionalized as a supposedly generic perspective that privileges whites. To dismantle the white bias in conventional questions like "Can fairness in education, hiring, and promotion be accomplished without quotas?", Helms recasts them in terms that draw attention to the historical privileging of whiteness. The correct version of this question, Helms indicates, would be: "Can fairness in education, hiring, and promotion be accomplished without ending White privilege?" (p. 80).
          Theorists drawing on Helms's stage theory of white identity have not always retained her political emphasis, however. In particular, Helms's unfortunate description of the fully healthy white person as "nonracist" (p. 87), implying that the mature white person is no longer affected by racism, seems to have been embraced by other theorists as a promise that really good whites, once they understand racism, can simply leave it behind. As described by Helms (1992), Carter (1997), and others, the stage theory of white growth in racial awareness and acceptance traces a trajectory that culminates in whites' ability to embrace an identity that is comfortable with all colors, including whiteness. In effect, this view of whiteness is an extension of mainstream multiculturalism, in that it puts all cultures and colors on an equal footing, embracing all without privileging any. By contrast, socially oriented approaches to whiteness theorizing emphasize the socially constructed character of whiteness: according to these analyses, we cannot escape the conditions that define whiteness, but we can try to change the conditions.
          Although the institutional, structural, and discursive analyses usually identified with whiteness theory had already made a considerable impact by the time that Off White was published in 1997, quite a number of the psychologically oriented chapters in Off White appear uninformed by that literature. Many of these essays rely upon theoretical tools drawn from the older tradition of "chilly classroom climate" analyses to document the ways in which the pervasive androcentrism, sexism, heterosexism, racism, ethnocentrism, and elitism of the academy serve to silence, devalue, intimidate, and exclude students and faculty from outside the dominant groups. Helpful though such illustrations of racial bias can be, they are not new framings of the issues. (Note 9) The study of whiteness is more than the naming of clearly racist practices. Theorizing whiteness means deconstructing the framework by means of which even seemingly neutral and non-racist practices serve to privilege whites (and occasionally a few people of color).

Off-Whiteness Theorizing in Off White

          Some chapters in Off White not only fail to grasp the distinctiveness of whiteness theorizing but confuse the project of deconstructing whiteness with liberal pluralism. One essay, for example, ends with the hope that we will "examine our viewpoints and the possibility that other viewpoints not only exist but have merit" (Jones, 1997, p. 257; emphasis in original). Whiteness theories, however, are by no means content with acknowledging other points of view—let alone with the mere acknowledgement that other points of view might possibly have merit. By discrediting the normative status of whiteness, whiteness theories actually undercut liberal pluralism's commitment to accepting multiple viewpoints, for they undermine whiteness's own claim to being a coherent point of view.
          In addition to rejecting the liberal pluralist conception of whiteness as simply one point of view among many, whiteness theorists reject the notion of whiteness as a raceless category to which other races may, in the name of colorblindness, be assimilated. Yet one of the psychologically oriented chapters in Off White relies on just such a notion, arguing that the solution to racism is to effect recategorizations of racial identification such that whites include blacks in the "we" category. "When recategorization changes 'Us and Them' to 'We,'" these authors report, "outgroup members are treated more favorably" (Gaertner, Dovidio, Banker, Rust, Nier, Mottola, & Ward, 1997, p. 176). Whites, in other words, demonstrate less biased attitudes towards non-whites when they see the latter as members of their own group, whether the "we" group in question is a sports team, a cooperative learning group in the classroom, or simply the category "Americans." For example,
white San Francisco Bay residents who identified themselves more strongly as Americans—a more inclusive group identity—than as caucasians had more positive attitudes towards policies intended to benefit disadvantaged black citizens. (pp. 176-177) (Note 10)
But in recycling colorblind we-ness as the solution to racism, such an analysis entirely ignores one of the central lessons of whiteness theories—namely, that whiteness serves as the unacknowledged norm by which "we-ness" is measured.
          When whiteness is the norm, non-whites are by definition not-like-us. Creating occasions when, contextually, certain non-whites appear to be "just like us" (in the classroom or on a soccer team) does nothing to dismantle the view that who "we" are is a reasonable reference point for judging others. Ironically, insofar as whites can point to occasions when they experience non-whites as "just like us," they may lose their awareness of the many ways in which racism structures who "we" are. The problem of racism thus seems to recede. As one of the structurally and discursively oriented essays in Off White points out, whites in a largely white neighborhood often will not object to families of color who live among them if the "families are considered settled." Particular people of color, in such cases, will be considered "just like us" (Weis et al., 1997, p. 220). But this acceptance of particular people of color does not alter the white commitment to keeping other people of color out of the neighborhood.
          Admitting outsiders to friendship may actually serve to bolster the racist's case that he judges people as individuals, not by color. Insofar as a white person can say (or at least think) that "some of my best friends are black" or "some of my best friends are Jewish," she is confirmed in her status as a non-prejudiced person. Having one or two friends in "the other" group is by no means inconsistent, however, with fearing or hating everyone else in the group. Not a few loyal members of the Nazi party helped Jewish friends escape Germany— occasionally at some risk to themselves. This willingness to help one exceptional friend does not mean that the Nazis in question were not also racist. While firmly believing in the inferiority of Jews, they were able to see their own friends as more deserving or as exceptions to the racial norm. Here, the very status of exceptionality confirms the norm as normative.
          The argument that recategorizing "'Us and Them' to 'We'" allows "outgroup members [to be] treated more favorably" not only tells us nothing new, it tells us nothing at all promising about the future of anti-racism. The comfortable conviction that whites can overcome their racism by assimilating "them" to "us" assumes that the problem with blackness or brownness lies in its difference from whiteness; in refusing to recognize that difference, colorblindness negates the negativity of blackness and brownness. Color, then, is still a problem— but only if one notices it. Colorblindness means refusing to see others as any different from oneself: one looks at others and sees oneself. Elizabeth Spelman (1988) calls this pattern of racial assimilation "boomerang perception." During her upbringing, Spelman says, "white children like me got early training in boomerang perception when we were told by well-meaning white adults that Black people were just like us— never, however, that we were just like Blacks" (p. 12). The difficulty with the assimilationist solution to racism is that it never questions the ground of racial meaning-making. Just as treating a woman as an honorary man confirms maleness as the highest value, treating non-whites as honorary whites assumes the normative status of whiteness. Extending whiteness to others reinscribes whiteness as the norm. It assumes that racism is a problem connected to blackness or brownness, so that blackness and brownness must be erased before racism will disappear. Yet if whiteness gains its preferred and normative status only by contrast to blackness or brownness, it is discursively impossible to extend whiteness to everyone. The racial hierarchy built into the white/other dichotomy means that whiteness only retains its value as normative insofar as there exist others who can be identified as not-white.
          In more or less bracketing the ways in which institutionalized race relations and discourses of whiteness are linked to whites' sense of themselves as white, much of the psychological theorizing of whiteness in Off White skirts the complexities of white racial identity. Because these chapters tend to focus on affirming the possibility of being a "good" white person, they are forced to isolate the person from the cultural and institutional context. Ironically, then, the very focus on whiteness for anti-racist purposes may in the end lend itself to a fetishization of "good" whiteness that obscures the systematic relation of whiteness to oppression.

Off White as Overview

          Despite some excellent work on the part of individual contributors, Off White makes only a very modest contribution to the academic literature. Less useful as a reference book than it might have been, Off White has no index and is careless with regard to references (including, in many cases, missing, incomplete, or erroneous notes and references). Some of the book's limitations are a matter of presentation. The writing, for example, is uneven. Some of the chapters are admirably clear, but others are merely workmanlike, and a few are embarrassingly pretentious. Many of the essays— despite their notable brevity—are also needlessly repetitive. If, to include all thirty-two chapters, some needed to be shortened, it would have been better to eliminate the internal padding rather than to cut whole sections out, as seems to have occurred in cases where the essays abruptly shift gears, introducing new points without any indication of how these points relate to the preceding analysis. In a number of essays, key ideas and arguments are mentioned but not theorized, and I was left wondering whether the authors had not bothered to develop these points or if, instead, those sections had been cut for the sake of space. Although the editors do not mention that any of the chapters are shortened versions of essays already published elsewhere, this seems to be the case for at least some of them, and may help to explain why those chapters end abruptly rather than coming to closure.
          The purposes that the collection is meant to serve are unclear. One declared purpose of Off White is "to fill th[e] space" left by scholarship that avoids scrutinizing whiteness (Fine, Powell, Weis, & Wong, 1997, p. viii). Yet it is hard to see how any one book could be expected to fill a gap so huge. Given that whiteness has enjoyed a normative status in countless books and articles published over the past several centuries, the space for critiquing whiteness would seem to be larger than what could be filled by one book. There is simply too much left to be reframed and retheorized.
          A second announced purpose of the collection is to demonstrate "the urgency, richness, and necessity of studying whiteness," opening the field for new, "provocative theory and research" (Fine et al., 1997, p. ix). Yet at the same time that the editors argue for further inquiry into whiteness, they suggest that "maybe this should be the last book on whiteness." The curious choice to open the field to new research only to at once close it again springs from a pivotal misunderstanding of the project of whiteness theorizing. Rather than pursuing whiteness theorizing any further, the editors say, we must "get back to the work of understanding and dismantling the stratified construction of race/colors, rather than [deconstructing] one group at a time" (p. xii). Whiteness theorizing, however, does not represent one stage in some serial deconstruction of racial groups, with whites just happening to precede all other groups in the line-up. Rather, whiteness theories reveal the ways in which whiteness organizes the perception of other races as deviant, thereby providing the lens through which we can understand the very concepts of race and racial stratification.
          Given the editors' misunderstanding of the central purpose of whiteness theorizing, it is not surprising that the book lacks a clear connection to the field it is meant to introduce and then leave behind. Indeed, the editors' preface obscures the status of the field as a field of theory and research, seeming to suggest that the editors of Off White had to more or less invent whiteness theorizing on their own. "While the analytic study of whiteness defines, for all of us, both our work and intimate lives, we have found ourselves with few intellectual resources upon which to rely" (Fine et al., 1997, p. ix). Although the editors name a handful of authors who have influenced them, they fail to acknowledge that whiteness theory was already a flourishing field by the time that Off White was published. David Roediger's The Wages of Whiteness had exploded onto the research scene in 1991, followed by the Toni Morrison's (1992) highly influential Playing in the Dark and Ruth Frankenberg's (1993) important and much-cited White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. So vital a field of inquiry was whiteness theorizing by 1997 that, in the same year that Off White was published, at least six major books appeared on the topic, along with any number of articles. And this is to mention only the contemporary literature that goes under the name of whiteness theory. Since the earliest part of the century, Latina/s, American Indians, African Americans, and other people of color have consistently challenged the normative status claimed for whiteness. The barest acquaintance with the work of W. E. B. Du Bois (1903/1990), Carter G. Woodson (1933/1972), Vine Deloria (1969), and Cherríe Moragu and Gloria Anzaldúa (1981/1983) would reveal that the critique of whiteness is not new.
          Failing as it does to locate itself in either the classic or the more recent scholarship on whiteness, Off White— taken as a whole—is disappointing. Newcomers to the field will find it difficult to know which of the book's thirty-two chapters take up contested points, which introduce new ideas, and which assume the very frameworks of analysis that whiteness theorists specifically reject. Since few of the authors argue for a particular conception of whiteness, moreover, even important insights tend to be embedded in less than satisfying analyses. Some of the chapters offer solid analyses of whiteness, but relatively few make a new contribution or move us beyond previous work in the area. Some merely repeat or summarize insights that are commonplace in the whiteness literature; others, adopting a conventional liberal view of whiteness, unknowingly work against the conceptualization of race found in whiteness theories. Not only does the editorial decision not to provide any overview of whiteness theory mean that readers who are new to the study of whiteness will have no way to determine what relation the chapters bear to the existing literature, but it renders a disservice to the authors whose work is represented in the collection. Without an editorial framework that clarifies what is at stake in the book, even the strongest chapters hang in a theoretical limbo.

Turning the Whiteness Lens on Anti-Racist Practices in Education

          Buried in the confusing organization of Off White is a scattering of essays that speak importantly to the pressing issues now facing education. In both pedagogy and research, far more work needs to be done to help us rethink the whiteness of our educational practices. A number of the essays in Off White focus on schools as institutions, and others suggest in passing that "education is a critical site" wherein struggles over "moral affiliation" are enacted (McCarthy et al., 1997, p. 234), but only a handful specifically address the pedagogical implications of whiteness theorizing. Among these is Crosby's (1997) provocative chapter noting the limitations of an anti-racist pedagogy that positions the teacher self-righteously against the student. "For those who study affirmative action, the attitudes of angry and frightened White males can provoke some impatience," she recognizes. She offers the insights of whiteness theorizing as a corrective to this us/them positioning. "To end the impatience and become sympathetic with aspects of the resistance to affirmative action, I need only remember how privilege has blinded me too" (p. 185).
          In a similar vein, Becky Thompson (1997) notes that white anti-racist activists cannot take the position of "experts" or "morality agents" but must approach other whites as potential allies. Because racism in our society is so unrelenting, it is easy for white anti-racist activists to get discouraged. "I really struggle to remember that we are all scared," one of Thompson's colleagues says. "Sometimes I get caught up in believing that this other white person is really different, really 'other,' really racist" (p. 362). As another colleague points out, though, "they don't even know they're doing it." Seen as ignorance, racism offers "room for growth" (p. 361). In not focusing on racist errors to be corrected but instead recognizing possibilities for growth, such approaches restore a student-centered ethic to progressive education, and resist the temptations to authoritative teaching found in many "liberatory" approaches to critical pedagogy. (Note 11)
          In research, too, as Aída Hurtado and Abigail Stewart (1997) point out in their chapter, conventionally liberatory methods may prove inadequate. "Analytic tools and research methods that helped us understand systems and experiences of oppression may not be as appropriate for understanding privilege" (p. 298). For example, they say, liberatory approaches to research that privilege the voices of the oppressed, keeping authorial commentary to a minimum, are meant to empower those whose perspectives have been excluded from academic research. Applied to the analysis of the racist views of those in power, however, the voice-centered method would have very different consequences, for it gives greater scope to the articulation of racism.
          Indeed, the voice-centered convention may be problematic even when used to affirm those who speak out against oppression. For example, Michael Apple's (1997) chapter in Off White borrows an analysis from a "close friend and former student" in an unnamed "Asian country for which I have a good deal of fondness" (p. 121), to provide a non-U.S.-centered account of why there are "no schools, no teachers, no hospitals, no infrastructure" in this country. In the words of his friend, "There's no schools because so many folks like cheap french fries" (p. 123). Under the conventional terms of progressive, liberatory research, Apple's use of his friend's story is unproblematic. From the perspective of whiteness theories, however, approaches to "collaboration" and "representation" in which the author speaks for the research subject look far more problematic, since they betray academic scholarship's investment in rationalized and mediated representation. In principle, approaches like the one Apple adopts allow an author to serve as a sympathetic or even invisible mouthpiece for those who otherwise might not have access to academic forms of representation. Taking up others' stories for one's own critical purposes, though, raises concerns about cooptation. Even in the interests of solidarity against racism, colonization, and xenophobia, borrowing others' stories raises questions about whether academics are constructing and maintaining their own intellectual and cultural authority at the expense of those for whom they claim to speak. As Ellsworth (1997) points out in a somewhat different connection, academics retain the right (even if they give it away) to have "the last word" (p. 265). Of course, the writer also gets the academic credit and the intellectual visibility.
          In effect, such research involves a laundered form of whiteness. Good intentions do not absolve authors of the privilege they assume in such transactions. Even if an author takes over someone else's story to protect the person's anonymity and to safeguard him from harassment, the problem of implicitly white authority remains, because the mechanism by which authority is granted to the story is specifically academic: it is through the author's expertise that the story is given legitimacy. In legitimating others' stories, whiteness-as-academic expertise launders its own cultural origins, bleaching out and rendering invisible the mechanism by which it manufactures cultural capital.
          Psychologically and socially oriented whiteness theories offer different advantages in problematizing the whiteness of our pedagogical and research practices. Depending on the particular whiteness project, reflecting on one's personal privileges as a white person might not always be useful, except insofar as such reflection undercuts the temptation to posture as a "good white," a white person who gets it—as in the pedagogical examples mentioned earlier. Reflecting on the institutionalized whiteness of one's academic position and intellectual practice, on the other hand, may prove to be an indispensable dimension of whiteness theorizing for intellectuals of all colors. (Note 12) Whiteness theorizing, after all, is not just about people of color being marginalized and/or exploited; the older structural theories already acknowledged that. Rather, whiteness theorizing concerns the particular mechanisms by which whites—including anti-racist theorists—are privileged. Most importantly, whiteness theories address the ways in which white privilege is actively maintained and reconstituted. Whiteness theories are positioned to deconstruct these mechanisms, but the question is whether they can deconstruct their own as well as other culturally and institutionally white meaning-making practices.
          Alternative approaches, Hurtado and Stewart (1997) suggest, might include involving "individuals with different views," two or more "interviewers from different social locations," and "focus groups [ . . . or] other participants" reflecting "multiple perspectives" (p. 309). (Some of these methods are taken up in the chapter by Lykes and Mallona [1997].) While such methods are worth exploring, they risk falling back upon a liberal pluralist paradigm. The inclusion of multiple perspectives is meant to counteract white hegemony—but liberal pluralism, as discussed earlier, has proved an inadequate corrective to normalizing constructions of whiteness.
          In "The White Girl in Me, the Colored Girl in You, and the Lesbian in Us," Medria Connolly and Debra Noumair (1997) offer an approach more distinctively inflected by whiteness theory. Accepting whiteness theories' insight that "the 'not me' and the 'not us' are used to define 'me' and 'us'," they reexamine "me" and "us" by acknowledging those aspects of themselves that the binary language of race and sexuality automatically excludes (p. 322). For example, the language of racial authenticity may cast a black woman who is successful in academia as "a wanna be white girl" (p. 326), while heteronormative constructions of the good white girl specifically exclude "erotic and powerful" forms of agency (p. 330). In order to claim both/and constructions of the self, the authors focus on those "aspects of the self or the group that are disowned or rejected" (p. 322). The result is an engaging and provocative reconceptualization of both "we" and "me."
          Other methods may serve well in other educational whiteness projects. Both standpoint approaches and deconstructive analyses, for example, help to illuminate the whiteness of particular discourses. But while these and other methods are often used to good effect in Off White, they cannot be assumed to be free of their own forms of privilege. For the most part, in any case, the authors represented in Off White do not interrogate the limitations of existing methodologies with respect to whiteness theorizing. Nor do they question their own academic privilege; perhaps they assume that writing on behalf of an anti-racist project speaks for itself. As Elizabeth Ellsworth's (1997) powerful essay points out, however, "antiracist scholarship is never only antiracist" (p. 263). Its anti-oppressive character never obliterates its scholarly character. However well-intentioned it may be, white anti-racist scholarship is still "scholarship—governed by rules that . . . produce and insure its own" investments in whiteness (p. 263). And because scholarly conventions are rooted in mainstream institutions, the scholarly character of whiteness theorizing risks reinscribing whiteness into the very discourses that the theories are meant to interrupt.
          Ellsworth's (1997) own recommendation is for whiteness theorists and pedagogues to "metacommunicate about how academic discourses and writing" profit from and reinscribe the privileging of whiteness. "What can paralyze an academic's ability to respond to racist uses of whiteness," she says, is an "inability or unwillingness 'to leave the field'" or to challenge the binaries that constrain what counts as an intelligible response to racism (p. 264). Refusing the academic authority to challenge racism from a position of knowledge means problematizing what we do as we do it: "Academe must be made to comment on itself directly" (p. 268) through metadiscourse. Yet Ellsworth's use of the passive voice here is rather telling, for who is to do the making? She herself, in fact, seems less than sanguine about this reflexive approach. As a result of working through these ideas, she says, "I want to leave academe" (p. 268). It is not clear, however, how leaving academe would solve the problem of reinscribing whiteness in challenges to whiteness. White art, white administrative politics, white journalism, white humor, white counter-cultural activism, and white literature, for example, are not free of their own whiteness-reinscribing conventions.
          In appealing to metadiscourse as a solution to the whiteness of scholarly theorizing about race, moreover, Ellsworth seems to revert to a faith in intellectualism as offering the most reliable challenge to racism. Even if we do not take Derrida at his word, that there is no "hors de texte"—personally, I am not inclined to see the recent Texas and Wyoming lynchings of a black man and a gay man as "texts"; I call those real events, real outrages, real injustices—it seems fair to say that there is no such thing as a discourse that is somehow outside of discourse. Metadiscourses are not more objective than other discourses. They cannot save us from the particularity of any particular discourse. One discourse can interrupt another, no doubt, but no discourse can set us "straight."
          In any case, white supremacist power relations are not simply a matter of how we think about whiteness but of how laws and institutions support those ways of thinking. While the critique of whiteness is an important contribution to racial activism, its power is limited if it is confined to more of the same kinds of descriptions and analyses at which academics are already adept. If we recall that problematizing whiteness is not a new project—that people of color have done so for years—then we are forced to recognize that for white academics to problematize whiteness is simply to take the project into the academy. It is an academic project, addressed to scholarly concerns—namely, rethinking what we know. And we have yet to rethink what it means to think in ways that might reconstruct or radically rearrange social practices, institutional commitments, or material relations.

Conclusion

          For too long, well-meaning whites have expected people of color to do the work of unraveling racism. Unfortunately, some of the most successful educational interventions aimed at challenging white privilege have been those that rely on having people of color describe "their pain, vulnerabilities, and strengths" (Zane, 1997, p. 349) as a way to engage whites in transformative discussions. "The cost (and gain)" of such "self- and group-disclosures," Nancie Zane says in her chapter in Off White, still need to be explored. While for some minority participants the experience is "cathartic," others feel "emotionally drained and exposed," or feel that they are "'left hanging' and 'used'" (p. 353). For most whiteness scholars, however, the issues in such cases are already clear: whites cannot look to people of color to teach them how not to be racist. Following the urgings of scholars of color not to "expect that people of color should teach you how to behave non-oppressively" (Yamato, 1990, p. 23), the majority of whiteness theorists have taken on the work of anti-racist learning as a white initiative.
          For many whiteness theorists, what being anti-racist means is still under (re)construction. Not only do the structural and discursive whiteness projects problematize several earlier traditions in white anti-racism, but they problematize some of the anti-racist recommendations of psychologically oriented whiteness approaches, as well. Among the influential but problematic recommendations now circulating is the argument that, while whites cannot escape their whiteness, they can find an honorable way to be white: they can be "allies" to people of color. In Off White, for example, Sandra Lawrence and Beverly Tatum (1997) suggest that "a more positive, less guilt-inducing definition of . . . white identity" is one that enables whites to think of themselves as "allies" (p. 338). Equating this stance with the highest stage of Janet Helms's (1992) six-stage white racial identity theory (also discussed in Robert Carter's [1997] chapter), Lawrence and Tatum urge teachers to create for themselves "a new identity, that of educator as ally, an advocate for students of color, and a much-needed antiracist role model for white students" (p. 341).
          There is much to be said for such a stance. While it seems excessive to describe the white person at this stage as having "freed self from racism" (Carter, 1997, p. 205) and having "abandon[ed] cultural, institutional, and personal racism" (p. 206)—how does someone "abandon" institutional racism?— clearly whites who aspire to be allies actively refuse racism and racial privilege insofar as that is possible. Among the important advantages to the ally argument are its pedagogical implications. Understandably, educators want to avoid giving their students the message that whiteness is always and everywhere bad. Offering white students and teachers the ally option is likely to be more effective than offering them nothing but critical tools, for it is difficult to accept one's white identity if this means seeing oneself simply as an oppressor. White guilt is usually counterproductive and, as our white students like to remind us, whites can't help being white. From a student-centered perspective, it is far from liberating to try to build student understanding on the "deficit" of their own racism. Yet assuring students that they can be allies or good whites keeps our attention focused on white anxieties and white value systems. It also tempts us with dichotomies that allow us to differentiate absolutely between good and bad forms of whiteness.
          As Ellsworth (1997) points out, the ally position is problematic both because an ally's "commitment, energy, vigilance, interest, [and] ability" may flag at any time and because allies, "positioned as helpers and legitimizers" of people of color, bear a paternalistic relation to people of color (p. 267). In effect, the position of ally reinscribes the traditional white, mainstream moral economy whereby those in positions of privilege gain moral credit for "helping" people of color, while the latter, in struggling to survive, may be positioned tragically or even nobly, but not morally. (Note 13) Under the terms of the white, middle-class moral economy, whites continue to hold themselves apart from questions of race. Although racism is not "our" problem, we are prepared to stand in solidarity with people of color. Addressing racism thus becomes an act of benevolence towards people of color rather than an act of responsibility on our own behalf.
          A conversation reported in Off White brings this point home. Jody, a white student, recalls what her brother's girlfriend, Tashia, who is African American, said to her after Tashia experienced racist treatment in a restaurant. When Jody "want[ed] to tell people off," Tashia told her, "Don't do it for me. If you're doin' it, make sure it's something you want to say for yourself" (Rosenberg, 1997, p. 82). The lesson Tashia teaches Jody is that anti-racism is not a favor white people do for people of color. For many whites, this lesson may be a hard one to learn. The notion that anti-racist work is "helping" work, a way of being a "good white" person, of getting racial "credit," has long been part of the moral make-up of benevolent whiteness. Yet to the extent that appeals to the ally position or other "nonracist" positions accept the conventional liberal dichotomy between good (nonracist) whites and bad (racist) whites, they continue to work within the terms set by the very conceptions of individual morality and political innocence that most whiteness theorists seek to challenge. Deconstructing whiteness helps to problematize some of the values that well-meaning whites may view as specifically moral responses to racism—including colorblindness, "blind" justice, and a "helping" stance.
          Until whites are willing to forego the helping-others "credit" earned for anti-racist work and take it on as their own work, the task undertaken by whiteness critics will not be complete. "The challenge," as African-Canadian author Sherene Razack (1998) argues, is to "build critical consciousness about how we, as subjects, position ourselves as innocent through the use of such markers of identity as the good activist" (p. 18). In a racist society, there is no escape from racism: no one is innocent. (Even the victims of racism are implicated in racism, as the "color struck" politics within the African-American community and the histories of black-on-black, brown-on-black, black-on-brown, and brown-on-brown racism remind us.) The temptation to be a "good white" assumes that we know what it is to be a good white, but the only way we can know that is in terms of where we are now—and where we are now is in the midst of a racialized and racist situation. Anti-racist whites can neither escape that situation nor entirely forego the advantages that they gain from it; they can only work to trouble and change the situation.
          Rearticulating whiteness is an emergent project. We know the racism of our whiteness in part through recourse to particular methods of inquiry but in part also by our own resistances to change and by our temptations to see ourselves in particular racialized terms. A temptation for progressive whites is to not only be a good white but to be recognized as a good white. Identifying oneself as an anti-racist ally or aspiring to a final stage of moral white development, however, evades the problematic character of whiteness. In a racist society, whiteness is an inherently problematic position. The challenge for anti-racist whites is not to become good whites in any of the ways that we now recognize as good. The challenge, rather, is to become white in ways that we cannot yet recognize, by changing institutions and by changing the rules of the game that at present define the good we know in terms of whiteness. (Note 14)

Notes

  1. The large body of research challenging this assumption makes it clear that white racism is alive and healthy; nevertheless, the popular perception of white racism as a fringe ideology persists. A recent contribution to the research on white prejudice is the "mammoth, seven-volume survey . . . sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation . . . and the Harvard University Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy." Released in the fall of 1999, "The Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality" looked at "9,000 households and 3,500 employers" in Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, and Los Angeles. The study found white racism to be "a pervasive influence at many levels, manifesting itself in everything from highly segregated housing to labor markets that prefer hiring some racial groups over others." Ironically, the Associated Press article summarizing the study avoided using the term "racism." Instead, it referred to "racial stereotypes and attitudes," "racial inequality," or, most often, simply "race" (Estrin, 1999, p. A1). http://www.sltrib.com:80/1999/oct/10021999/nation_w/33605.htm
  2. See, for example, Kailin's (1999) discussion of the comments that white teachers made about black students, parents, teachers, and administrators in their district. For their own part, white teachers in the progressive school district that Kailin studied thought racism was more or less a non-issue. However, they regularly identified African Americans as racist—usually when they did not support white attitudes and disciplinary measures regarding black students.
  3. Winant (1997) and Giroux (1997) note that, in the new racial politics of the nineties, many whites see themselves as besieged. Insofar as whites feel threatened as whites, they are made consciousness of their whiteness. Whiteness is no longer invisible in some of the ways that it had been, then; white privilege, however, remains invisible. Indeed, the insistence on whiteness as an embattled position renders white privilege even less visible.
  4. It is precisely the givenness of the context that is at issue for whiteness theorists. Treating a situation as given skews our understanding of the moral actions and relations at stake. When a situation is organized around oppressive or unequal relations, we cannot address those involved as if they merely happened to find themselves in that context, but must see them as part of the situation. A colorblind, individualistic morality that distributes moral credit and blame to individuals as if they were atomistic agents ignores the moral implications of individuals' shared situation, further privileging those who are already privileged by that situation. (Of course, this analysis does not only apply to racialized situations.)
  5. Although Winant does not explain this term, it is a reference to the periodical Race Traitor: A Journal of the New Abolitionism, which uses the slogan "Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity." The journal offers tips on dismantling whiteness by refusing the privileges attendant on whiteness. See Ignatiev and Garvey (1996).
  6. More traditional anti-racist theorizing calls our attention either to overtly discriminatory rules (such as Jim Crow laws) or to discriminatory applications of otherwise unproblematic legal, bureaucratic, and other rules. Speaking to current evidence that the South is "turning back the clock on voting rights" (Nixon, 1999, p. 11), a recent article in The Nation described the federal prosecution of fraudulently used absentee ballots only in counties "affiliated with majority-black groups" (Nixon, 1999, p. 14). In such analyses, what is at stake is not the actual system of rules but the selective appeal to such rules to intimidate black voters and thereby limit blacks'—but not whites'—voting power. Such analyses of racist practices perform a valuable and needed function, but one quite different from that of the analyses provided by structurally oriented whiteness theorists. The latter make visible the bias in the rules themselves— specifically, rules that appear to be generic.
  7. Most psychological whiteness theorizing is grounded in psychology as a discipline; however, other work focusing primarily on white identity would be grouped with the psychological whiteness literature. Philosophical work that emphasizes the development of a white, anti-racist character, for example, would fit under the psychological rubric insofar as its emphasis is on who the person is or is becoming. Some whiteness theorizing bridges psychological and other traditions. To the extent that the emphasis in Minnie Bruce Pratt's (1984) and Peggy McIntosh's (1989) work is on self-reflection and self-awareness regarding white privilege, for example, their analyses might be considered part of the psychological strain in whiteness theorizing. Insofar as their work focuses on the social construction of whiteness, though, it would be grouped with discourse and material theories of whiteness.
  8. It should be noted, however, that Katz does address various forms of institutional racism in her book. For Katz, institutional racism is a kind of cultural bias sedimented into institutionalized practices. Although she does not treat institutional racism as part of a racial economy that systematically favors white interests, she does recognize that racist assumptions and values are built into hiring practices, IQ tests, and other institutionalized patterns. Of course, Katz's work predates the research now being identified as whiteness theory. Since most of the mainstream literature of the seventies displayed very little awareness of whites' material investment in white privilege, it is not surprising that her version of healthy white identity should be decontextualized from the social and institutional conditions that organize white privilege.
  9. In describing the analysis used in some of the chapters as belonging to the older "chilly classroom climate" tradition, I do not mean to suggest that such analyses are no longer useful. On the contrary, they remind us that the distinctive pattern of exclusion that is the focus of such analyses has by no means disappeared. However, since Off White is offered to readers as a contribution to whiteness theorizing, and since whiteness theorizing has introduced new, distinctive tools of analysis, the chapters using tools drawn from already-established traditions of anti-racist theorizing make no real contribution to the project at hand.
  10. Their use of the term "Caucasian" is in itself an indication that the authors have not read whiteness theory. Whiteness theorists specifically reject the quasi-biological term "Caucasian." The term "white" highlights the socially constructed character of white identity.
  11. Some of the tensions between authoritative and student-centered approaches to critical pedagogy are explored in Gitlin and Thompson (1995).
  12. A few of the privileging functions of scholarly conventions of argumentation, description, and analysis are discussed in Thompson (1998). Breaking out of these conventions is by no means easy, and of course the present essay does not itself break free of such conventions.
  13. At a Philosophy of Education Society meeting in New Orleans in the spring of 1999, Nel Noddings pointed out that focusing on which partner in a relationship gets "moral credit"—for example, the teacher or the student—obscures the relational character of morality. It also tends to concentrate our attention on how something reflects on us morally instead of on what needs to be done. Resisting this analysis, Michael Slote argued that, ideally, one acts morally in a relationship without being conscious of acting morally—one cares spontaneously. Other people, however, can evaluate one's actions as praiseworthy. In my view, the position that insists on praiseworthiness as the moral standard but hopes to disguise the standard from moral agents is a sentimental and highly problematic view of morality. It institutes a moral economy based on praiseworthy individual action, for which one receives moral credit, but pretends that the real motive for moral action is unrelated to any awareness of how "moral credit" is awarded. It is significant that this is such a familiar stance in the discourse about white innocence and racism. According to that discourse, whites are non-racist—and get moral credit for their position—specifically because they are oblivious to racism as the context of action.
    The emphasis on individual praiseworthiness is no less problematic when applied to consciously anti-racist action. A moral economy that grants "good whites" individual moral credit for being allies, for example, obscures both the relational and the situational or systemic character of racism. In effect, the "allies" stance treats racism as something outside of white agents, something that they can join in solidarity against, together with non-whites. But white racism is not something apart from whiteness; it is part of the socially constructed and maintained make-up of whiteness. In a racist society, whites are situated by the institutionalized privileges of whiteness in ways that they cannot undo by any act of will. This is not to say that anti-racist whites are morally no different from pro-racist whites. Certainly it is better to be anti-racist than to be pro-racist. The point, however, is that a moral focus on blame and merit tends to direct attention away from the political conditions under which such blame and merit are allocated. Anti-racist efforts, if they are not to characterize whites as helpers who are somehow outside the problem of racism, cannot identify anti-racist whites as "good whites" or allies. Instead, they must position anti-racist whites as working on their own situation and relationships. One of whiteness theories' most important contributions to anti-racist activism may be in helping us to conceptualize this moral stance.
  14. I would like to express my appreciation for the very helpful readings I received on earlier drafts of this essay from Bryan Brayboy, Ed Buendía, Aimee Howley, and Ivan Van Laningham. I am also indebted to Eduardo Duarte, Elizabeth Moje, Charise Nahm, and Harvey Siegel for discussing particular points with me. For a discussion of the larger context of whiteness theorizing, see the companion essay review published in Educational Studies, 30 (2): 141-160.

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About the Author

Audrey Thompson

Thompson@gse.utah.edu

Audrey Thompson is an associate professor of philosophy of education and gender studies at the University of Utah. Her areas of study include feminist and anti-racist pedagogy and epistemology. Her publications have appeared in Educational Theory, Harvard Educational Review, Curriculum Inquiry, McGill Journal of Education, Journal of Thought, Educational Foundations, Educational Studies, and the Journal of Scholarly Publishing, as well as other journals and books.

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