Whiteness studies
Whiteness studies is the study of the structures that produce white privilege,[1] the examination of what whiteness is when analyzed as a race, a culture, and a source of systemic racism,[2] and the exploration of other social phenomena generated by the societal compositions, perceptions and group behaviors of white people.[3] It is an interdisciplinary arena of inquiry that has developed beginning in the United States from white trash studies and critical race studies, particularly since the late 20th century.[4] It is focused on what proponents describe as the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of "whiteness" as an ideology tied to social status.
Pioneers in the field include W. E. B. Du Bois ("Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization", 1890; Darkwater, 1920), James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time, 1963), Theodore W. Allen (The Invention of the White Race, 1976, expanded in 1995), historian David Roediger (The Wages of Whiteness, 1991), author and literary critic Toni Morrison (Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992), and Ruth Frankenberg (White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, 1993).
By the mid-1990s, numerous works across many disciplines analyzed whiteness, and it has since become a topic for academic courses, research and anthologies. Some syllabuses associate the dismantling of white supremacy as a stated aim in the understanding of whiteness,[5] while other sources view the field of study as primarily educational and exploratory, such as in questioning the objectivity of generations of works produced in intellectual spheres dominated by white scholars.[6]
A central tenet of whiteness studies is a reading of history and its effects on the present that is inspired by postmodernism and historicism. According to this reading, racial superiority was socially constructed in order to justify discrimination against non-whites. Since the 19th century, some writers have argued that the phenotypical significance attributed to specific races are without biological association, and that what is called "race" is therefore not a biological phenomenon.[7] Many scientists have demonstrated that racial theories are based upon an arbitrary clustering of phenotypical categories and customs, and can overlook the problem of gradations between categories.[8] Thomas K. Nakayama and Robert L. Krizek write about whiteness as a "strategic rhetoric," asserting, in the essay "Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric", that whiteness is a product of "discursive formation" and a "rhetorical construction". Nakayama and Krizek write, "there is no 'true essence' to 'whiteness': there are only historically contingent constructions of that social location."[9] Nakayama and Krizek also suggest that by naming whiteness, one calls out its centrality and reveals its invisible, central position. Whiteness is considered normal and neutral, therefore, to name whiteness means that one identifies whiteness as a rhetorical construction that can be dissected to unearth its values and beliefs.
Major areas of research in whiteness studies include the nature of white privilege and white identity, the historical process by which a white racial identity was created, the relation of culture to white identity, and possible processes of social change as they affect white identity.
Definitions of whiteness[edit]
Zeus Leonardo defines whiteness as "a racial discourse, whereas the category 'white people' represents a socially constructed identity, usually based on skin color".[10] Steve Garner notes that "whiteness has no stable consensual meaning" and that "the meanings attached to 'race' are always time- and place-specific, part of each national racial regime".[11]
Areas of study[edit]
Whiteness[edit]
Whiteness studies draws on research into the definition of race, originating with the United States but applying to racial stratification worldwide. This research emphasizes the historically recent social construction of white identity. As stated by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1920: "The discovery of a personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing,—a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed."[26] The discipline examines how white, Native, and African/black identities emerged in interaction with the institutions of slavery, colonial settlement, citizenship, and industrial labor. Scholars such as Winthrop Jordan[27] have traced the evolution of the legally defined line between "blacks" and "whites" to colonial government efforts to prevent cross-racial revolts among unpaid laborers.
Princeton professor Nell Irvin Painter, in her 2010 book The History of White People,[28] says the idea of whiteness is not just a matter of biology but also includes "concepts of labor, gender, class, and images of personal beauty".(p. xi) The earliest European societies, including the Greeks and Romans, had no concept of race and classified people by ethnicity and social class, with the lowest class being slaves, most of whom were European in origin.(p. xi) Race science, developed in Europe in the 1800s, included intense analysis of different groups of Europeans, who were classified as belonging to three or four different races, with the most admirable being from northern Europe.(pp. 215–6) From the early days of the United States, whiteness was a criterion for full citizenship and acceptance into society. The American definition of whiteness evolved over time; initially groups such as Jews and Southern Europeans were not regarded as white, but as skin color became the primary criterion, they were gradually accepted. Painter argues that in the 21st century the definition of whiteness – or more precisely the definition of "nonblackness" – has continued to expand, so that now "The dark of skin who happen to be rich ... and the light of skin from any (racial background) who are beautiful, are now well on their way to inclusion."(pp. 389–90.)
Academic Joseph Pugliese is among writers who have applied whiteness studies to an Australian context, discussing the ways that Australian Aboriginals were marginalized in the wake of the European colonization of Australia, as whiteness came to be defined as central to Australian identity, diminishing Aboriginal identity in the process.[29][30] Pugliese discusses the 20th-century White Australia policy as a conscious attempt to preserve the "purity" of whiteness in Australian society.[31][32] Likewise Stefanie Affeldt considers whiteness "a concept not yet fully developed at the time the first convicts and settlers arrived down under" [33] which, as a social relation, had to be negotiated and was driven forward in particular by the labour movement. Eventually, with the Federation of Australia, "[o]verlaying social differences, the shared membership in the 'white race' was the catalyst for the consolidation of the Australian colonies as the Commonwealth of Australia".[34]
Schools of thought[edit]
Critical whiteness studies[edit]
An offshoot of critical race theory, theorists of critical whiteness studies seek to examine the construction and moral implications of whiteness, in order to reveal and deconstruct its assumed links to white privilege and white supremacy. Barbara Applebaum defines it as the "field of scholarship whose aim is to reveal the invisible structures that produce and reproduce white supremacy and privilege", and "presumes a certain conception of racism that is connected to white supremacy".[72] Anoop Nayak describes it as underpinned by the belief that whiteness is "a modern invention [which] has changed over time and place", "a social norm and has become chained to an index of unspoken privileges", and that "the bonds of whiteness can yet be broken/deconstructed for the betterment of humanity".[73] There is a great deal of overlap between critical whiteness studies and critical race theory, as demonstrated by focus on the legal and historical construction of white identity, and the use of narratives (whether legal discourse, testimony or fiction) as a tool for exposing systems of racial power.[74]
Whiteness and architecture[edit]
In the early 21st century, architectural historians have published studies related to the construction of whiteness in the built environment. Studies have grappled with the exclusionary nature of the architectural profession, which erected barriers for nonwhite practitioners, the ways in which architects and designers have employed motifs, art programs, and color schemes that reflected the aspirations of European-Americans and, most recently, with the racialization of space.[75]