Whiteness Theory

Whiteness and Invisibility

The first precept of Whiteness theory conceives of Whiteness as invisible, unremarkable, and unmarked—in other words, normal and normative. The notion of invisibility suggests that the workings of Whiteness, White supremacy, and/or White hegemony are not readily apparent, at least not to many White people. Research has shown that white U.S. Americans have a lower degree of self-awareness about race and about their own racial identity than do members of other racial-ethnic groups. Whiteness is often the unspoken, silent marker of normality; it just is. For example, when Whites refer to others, the race of the person referred to is generally not noted unless the person is not White. The assumption is that people are White unless otherwise noted.

Given that race scholarship in the academy has primarily been focused on persons of color, Whiteness as a system, as a discourse, and as an identity has escaped close scrutiny, especially among white scholars. Without a critical examination of Whiteness, we ignore the foundation on which race, racism, and racial inequality have been [Page 1008]built in the United States. As the invisible center, a major strategy of Whiteness scholars in communication has been to unmask, name, and critically examine Whiteness. These efforts include examination of how Whiteness functions in various forms of popular culture such as hip hop, how Whiteness pervades the ways in which we conceive of our intellectual traditions such as has been done in the field of intercultural communication, how Whiteness is performed and reproduced in everyday discourse such as in White families and classrooms, and how Whiteness informs the identities of those in predominantly non-White countries such as India and the Philippines that continue to struggle with post-colonial experiences of Whiteness.

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