For example, the mentioning of racialized issues such as crime, schools, and neighborhoods can heighten awareness of whiteness even if no other non-whites are present. This awareness can take the form of superiority or defensiveness, as whites become conscious of threats to their status or reinforcements of their dominant position in society. For example, whites who are prompted to think about or discuss the racial composition of neighborhoods or schools might feel threatened by the changing demographics of the US, worrying that white spaces and institutions are changing to be less the province of whites (Craig and Richeson 2014a). Alternatively, contexts in which crime is discussed might arouse in whites a sense of superiority over blacks and Latinos/as: in these contexts whiteness can be stereotypically equated with law-abiding, pro-social behavior, in direct contrast to the presumed criminal behavior of blacks and Latinos/as. It need not matter, for this experience of white racial identity, what the actual association between race and crime is; it is rather the perceptions and the attitudes that have such a powerful impact.
Some whites become so conscious of their whiteness that they actually seek to transcend it, to identify with an entirely different race. Some whites feel guilty about the unearned privileges they have and consciously try to counteract these advantages by affiliating themselves with non-whites, or by participating in anti-racist efforts. Others, who had long thought of themselves as white (and whom others thought of as white), “discover,” by taking a DNA test, that they are not white at all. The presence of American Indian or African origin DNA sometimes prompts such whites to leave their old race behind and adopt a new identity (Roth and Ivemark 2018), thus transcending their whiteness (although not their white privilege).
Regardless of whether white people’s identities are colorblind, stigmatized, defensive, or transcendent, these people’s ways of thinking about themselves shape their attitudes toward other racial groups. However, the connection between identities and attitudes is not straightforward. Among people who identify as white, it is not the case that those who are most likely to acknowledge that their white identity is important to them are the most (or the least) racist groups of whites. Instead, the ways in which whites think about the meaning of whiteness influences their orientations toward other groups. For example, an individual who does not consider his or her whiteness to be symbolic of anything and goes through life blissfully unaware of his or her own race is unlikely to understand the profound influence of race on the daily lives of many non-whites. On the other hand, an individual who fully embraces the social dominance associated with whiteness is much more likely to assert his or her identity as a mark of superiority, or even supremacy. Whites who acknowledge their social dominance and still find it problematic can engage in anti-racist activism or paternalistic behavior toward non-whites. In Chapter 4 there will be a review of the identity–attitude connection in survey responses, discussing how whites who have a strong sense of their identity are among both the most and the least likely to have positive attitudes toward blacks.
Attitudes expressed in survey data are only one way of measuring how whites understand the world around them. Whiteness is expressed culturally as well. If one thinks of culture as patterned behaviors and preferences, it can be a useful vehicle for understanding the relationship between structure and identity. While we often associate culture with forms such as music and film, it also applies to styles of relating to others, for instance to speech and dress, or to ways in which people enact their goals. The extent to which there is a “white” culture has been debated. Certain musical forms, such as country and, to a lesser extent, classical music, have been deemed to be a part of white culture on the basis of the themes and styles of their production as well as of the demographics of its audiences. More troubling, white supremacist groups have extolled the virtues and achievements of European culture as a reflection of the greatness of “white culture” (Dentice and Bugg 2016).
Different cultures can also be expressed within social movements that go well beyond a set of preferences and patterned behaviors. Such movements are goal-oriented, organized institutional forms, which can serve as bases for the realization of the interests of dominant groups such as whites. In some cases, such as that of the Ku Klux Klan, these goals are pursued through violence. In others, the attempted realization of the goals that serve white interests is non-violent and the articulation of whiteness’s role within the movement is subtler. Such organized movements can lay bare the ways in which whiteness is a major actor in the political and social arenas in America today.
Movements organized around racial goals are likely to become increasingly prevalent as the demographic changes occurring in the US continue. The white population is becoming a smaller part of the overall American population, with Latinos/as in particular making up a larger proportion. By the mid-century, whites are predicted to represent a minority of the country’s population. Much of this growth in the non-white population is fueled by immigration, although a not inconsiderable amount is also generated by a rapidly increasing multiracial population. Depending on the extent to which multiracial individuals and members of some immigrant groups racially identify as white in the future, the white population might not be declining that much, after all (Alba 2016). Just as the boundaries of whiteness expanded in the early twentieth century to include Jews, Italians and other European immigrants who were considered not quite white, so too might groups currently considered non-white be regarded as white in the near future. Alternatively, however, Fox and Guglielmo (2012) argue that European immigrants were never actually outside the white racial boundary; their experience, therefore, has little to tell us about the future white racialization of other groups.
In general, the story of whiteness is both one of structures of oppression that extend back to the founding of America and one of a rapidly changing set of complex identities, which lead simultaneously to conflict and cooperation in contemporary life. In order to understand the ways in which these rigid structures and complicated perceptions permeate American life, we must examine some of the many meanings of what it is to be white—including the racial privilege inherent to them all.
The rest of the book discusses the various manifestations and implications of whiteness in America. Chapter 2 presents the concept of “invisible privilege.” As mentioned earlier, many whites are unaware of how they benefit from their whiteness. How does this happen? The chapter describes the origins of beliefs about race and racial identity among whites by reviewing some of the ways in which white children learn about race. While most children are not directly instructed about the meaning of whiteness, they absorb many messages from their parents and from their school environments. They carry these messages into adulthood, where they apply the lessons to their own understandings of American society as basically “colorblind,” a place where race holds little relevance. Colorblindness often masquerades as a seemingly desirable belief about every individual being like every other individual, but this universalist belief actually hides a dismissal of the importance of racism in the lives of non-whites. If we are all the same and we all have equal chances to get ahead, then non-whites can be assumed to deserve having lower incomes and a lower educational attainment. “Not seeing color” can mean not seeing inequality. Finally, Chapter 2 reviews the concept of “hegemonic whiteness.” The theory behind this concept points out the ways in which whiteness is interwoven throughout American society such that it is not noticed. Furthermore, the use of whiteness to negatively influence the lives of most Americans—including many whites—is often accepted as a part of “normal” society.
While invisible whiteness is an important and perhaps dominant form of whiteness, Chapter 3 discusses the ways in which whiteness can be visible. In certain places and situations, whites are quite aware of their racial identity. One example of visible whiteness is that of stigmatized whites. These are individuals who have one or more characteristics that reflect a relative lack of power or standing. For example, the case of poor whites discussed earlier involves people who are both privileged through their whiteness and disadvantaged through their class status. Since one stereotype of whites is that they are affluent and successful, the racial status of poor
