Introduction: Intersecting whiteness, interdisciplinary debates (original) (raw)

Critical race and whiteness studies: What has been, what might be (Editorial)

2019

After a hiatus of several years, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Journal is reemerging. We do so in recognition of the exceptional scholarship the Journal has produced in the past with writers like Nicoll, Moreton-Robinson, Randell-Moon, Riggs, Watson, Ahmed, Heiss, and countless others providing incisive renderings of the social cartographies, discursive and non-discursive manifestations of race, which have parsed new ground. We acknowledge the important impact the Journal and its contributors have made to social practice and debate worldwide, and the ‘large shoes’ consequently sitting before us. The Journal, then, is returning to engage in debate and efforts that have aimed to ameliorate the effects of racism and interrupt the reproduction of race and racialised hierarchies. Yet the passing of time not only serves to remind us that there remains much to do if this is to be achieved. Within the contemporary geopolitical environment, these concerns loom somewhat larger and more ...

The Contentious Field of Whiteness Studies

The field of whiteness studies is relatively young compared to other well-established disciplines, including critical race theory. On its trajectory to carve out a new academic niche, whiteness studies is challenged with, and must therefore negotiate, a wide range of criticisms intended to dismantle the enterprise. This synthesis paper inspects the literature on whiteness as an analytical concept and showcases a catalogue of critiques against the field. Despite various complaints that cast doubt upon the legitimacy of the subject, whiteness studies does make a substantial contribution to the study of contemporary racism and the processes of racialization, albeit usually from a white person's perspective. The paper concludes with a discussion on the relevance of whiteness studies in today's context and future prospects for racial equality. I suggest that whiteness studies offers a distinctive epistemological standpoint to explore racism, which provides the potential for this field to contribute to our understanding of racial justice in ways that warrant its emergence.

NEW TERRITORIES IN CRITICAL WHITENESS STUDIES Editorial

2013

The impetus for this special issue can be traced back several years, when members of this issue’s editorial team—Madeline-Sophie Abbas, Say Burgin and Julio Decker, then MA and PhD students—organised the ‘New Territories in Critical Whiteness Studies’ postgraduate conference at our home university, the University of Leeds, in August of 2010. The conference launched the postgraduate/early career researcher arm of the international, interdisciplinary White Spaces Research Network, established in 2009 by Dr Shona Hunter (also University of Leeds). This special issue represents one of the many collaborative projects sustained through the postgraduate network (see for instance, Pederson & Samaluk 2012).

Unsettling Whiteness: disruptions and (re)locations

2014

Unsettling Whiteness brings together an international collection that considers anew the politics, practices and representations of whiteness at a time when nations worldwide continue to grapple with issues that are underwritten by whiteness. It draws together case studies of the performance of whiteness from significantly different political and social contexts with shared purpose; to investigate (re)constructions of whiteness, to explore the mechanisms which give whiteness power (and make power itself whitened), and to dissect the social processes through which whiteness is made visible and invisible. The collection makes a significant contribution to contemporary debates on whiteness by unsettling historical definitions and examining artistic, intimate and institutional attempts to reinforce or dismantle white norms and privileges. The case studies and analyses offer insightful reading on their own, but together offer a unique transdisciplinary approach to the complex task of exp...

The Dominant Ethnic Moment: Towards the Abolition Of'whiteness'?

Ethnicities, 2006

In the past decade and a half, the study of the American white majority has blossomed into a major academic endeavour. So-called 'White Studies' provided an important service in opening up a 'hidden' field of study that remained neglected as recently as the early 1990s. However, in this article, I suggest that while the study of whites and white racial systems is important, the White Studies approach possesses little heuristic value for scholars attempting to explain majority responses to multicultural politics. 'Whiteness' is a colloquial term used by local actors to describe the lived reality of dominant ethnicity as it appears from the 'inside' of American society. Scholars should be more critical, comparative and discerning than their subjects: 'white' is the particular racial boundary marker which distinguishes dominant ethnic groups from subaltern ones in a small proportion of the world's nations. Whiteness informs, but does not constitute, dominant ethnicity and we should not mistake the content of group boundary markers for the essentials. Particular cultural markers are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for ethnicity.

Problematic White Identities and a Search for Racial Justice

Sociological Forum, 2001

Blauner (1995, Racism and Antiracism in World Perspective. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), Winant (1998, Ethnic and Racial Studies 24(4): 755–766) and Bonnett (1997, New Communities 22(1): 97–110) all express concern over the construction of “racism” as a white-only phenomenon and the corresponding degree to which whiteness is essentialized as a negative identity. This paper explores how white antiracism activists mediate between a static construction of “white racism” and a more contextual understanding of racism and possibilities for white activism. While whiteness is clearly hegemonic in the larger social world, within movements for racial justice, whiteness is often seen as suspect. Given this, white antiracism activists spend a fair amount of their activist hours negotiating a problematic identity. This paper explores the mechanisms by which such an identity is negotiated. I conclude that while white activism is complicated by a definition of racism that tends to essentialize whiteness, the activists have found ways to empower themselves and to conceptualize their relationship to racism and antiracism activism in a less rigid way. All of this contributes to our understanding of the complexity of white identity and efforts to demonstrate how it is an identity that, like other identities, is always in formation.

Whitening Intersectionality. Evanescence of Race in Intersectionality Scholarship

Racism and Sociology. Racism Analysis Yearbook, 2014

Taking issue with the erasure of the race in much of the contemporary (feminist) intersectionality scholarship, this essay examines a number of troubling patterns and trends which contribute to whiten, discipline and dilute an initially insurgent knowledge firmly rooted in black feminist thought and activism. The analysis reads these makeover efforts of intersectionality against the backdrop of the broader incorporation of various progressive struggles into the neoliberal governance of ›diversity‹ and minority difference, to which the questions of knowledge production and dissemination are integral. Special attention is given to sociology, as sociology stands out by its disciplinary defensiveness against minority generated counter-hegemonic knowledges, by its eagerness to restate the adequacy of its disciplinary structure and fundamental categories. (Published in Racism and Sociology, Wulf D. Hund & Alana Lentin eds., Berlin: Lit. Verlag, 2014, pp.175-205). ISBN: 9783643905987 PLEASE USE THIS REFERENCE WHEN QUOTING.

Whiteness Studies and the Erasure of Gender

Sociology Compass, 2007

In recent years, the study of race and ethnicity has expanded, and there is now a growing field of research that examines whiteness and racial privilege. This article provides an overview of theories of privilege and whiteness studies, and argues that these analyses should incorporate an intersectional approach. Intersectional theories argue that race and gender are intertwined, and neither can be fully comprehended on its own. An intersectional approach sees race and gender as interacting and inseparable. Two specific contemporary racial projects are examined: the ideology of color blindness, and organized white supremacist discourse, and argues that gender is essential to understanding both. Finally, the consequences of the erasure of gender from our analyses of whiteness are examined.