What is Whiteness?
Critical scholars define racism as a systemic relationship of unequal power between White people and peoples of Color. Whiteness refers to the specific dimensions of racism that elevates White people over all peoples of Color. Basic rights, resources, and experiences that are assumed to be shared by all, are actually only available to White people. Although many White people feel that being White has no meaning, this feeling is unique
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to White people and is a key part of what it means to be White; to see one’s race as having no meaning is a privilege only Whites are afforded. To claim to be “just human” and thus outside of race is one of the most powerful and pervasive manifestations of Whiteness.
STOP: Racism is about a relationship of unequal power. As we recall from Chapter 5, relationships of unequal power do not flip back and forth; they are deeply and historically embedded in one direction.
People of Color, among them W. E. B. Du Bois and James Baldwin, wrote about Whiteness as early as 1900. These writers urged White people to stop studying racial Others and turn their attention onto themselves to explore what it means to be White in a society that is so divided by race. Finally, by the 1990s, White scholars began to rise to this challenge. These scholars examine the cultural, historical, and sociological aspects of being White and how they are tied to power and privilege.
White power and privilege is termed White supremacy. When we use the term White supremacy, we do not mean it in its lay usage to indicate extreme hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or the dozens of others like it. Rather, we use the term to capture the pervasiveness, magnitude, and normalcy of White privilege, dominance, and assumed superiority.
STOP: When we use the term White supremacy, we are not referring to extreme hate groups or “bad racists.” We use the term to capture the all-encompassing dimensions of White privilege, dominance, and assumed superiority in mainstream society.
The life and activism of Fred Korematsu (Figure 9.1) illustrate the power of institutional racism.
White Supremacy in the Global Context
Although commonsense understandings about social power often have us thinking in terms of numbers, as we have argued, power is not dependent on numbers but on position. In other words, power is dependent on what position a group holds and their ability to affect other groups from that position. Through movies and mass media, corporate culture and advertising, and Christian missionary work, White supremacy is able to circulate in the global context. In addition to specific political practices, policies, and military control, White supremacy is also a powerful
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ideology that promotes the idea of Whiteness as the ideal for humanity. Consider how White supremacy (invisible and universalized White
cultural practices and structural privileges) circulates globally in each of these instances:
European (most notably English, French, and Spanish) discovery myths of Africa, Middle East, North/Central/South Americas