Whiteness and Education

White studies became popularized in the mid-1990s as an effort to understand and critique the role of White identity in society and across disciplines. The groundbreaking work of Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (1993), explored and defined Whiteness in relation to White women's experiences with power and privilege. It was the first study that examined Whiteness from the perspectives of Whites. Previously, notions of race were primarily explored and discussed by scholars of color, in particular Afro-centric (Black critical) scholars of color as a way of legitimizing experiences of oppression in relation to Whites. White studies has its roots in social sciences and has been engaged more recently as a tool for understanding the continued racial inequities in education.

Whiteness ...