Whiteness and Masculinity

The Invisibility of Privilege

Oppressed groups have fought for analyses of race and gender inequality to create social change and greater equity. Traditionally, studies of race have focused on the victims of inequality: people of color. Similarly, studies of gender have focused on women and arose in part to make up for distortions in various disciplines in which the experiences of men had been taken to represent all of humanity. In literature, history, psychology, medicine, and other fields, men were seen as universal, abstract, and normal, and women as the particular. Understandably, early research on gender focused on bringing women into the analysis rather than generalizing from studies of and observations by men alone.

Traditionally, whiteness and masculinity were treated as the invisible norms by which others were measured. Just as men's lives had not been examined through the prism of gender, the lives of Whites had not been viewed through the prism of race. Whites, as the beneficiaries of privilege, were not confronted with the issue of race on a daily basis; it is something they could choose to ignore or recognize. According to new scholarship in race and gender, one of the greatest privileges experienced by Whites and men is the invisibility of their race or gender; instead, they are seen as the measure of humanity: generalizable, abstract, universal humans. For example, whereas White actors are traditionally described simply as “actors,” women and people of color are commonly pointed out, as in “Black actor” or “female scientist.” Scholars argue that this invisibility reinforces privilege, so that men's violence against women becomes a “women's issue.” The possible role of men's privilege and dominance is excluded from focus.

It is only recently that sustained analyses of men or White people have made gender and race central to the analysis. Antiracist and feminist scholarship have made analyses of race and gender central to an understanding of society and all social institutions, holding that relations of inequality permeate and organize society at every level, shaping everyone's experiences. The growing new fields of whiteness studies and masculinity studies have attempted to bring the experience of the privileged under the microscope, to understand the ways in which their lives are shaped by race and gender dynamics as well.

New Scholarship Highlights Whiteness and Masculinity

In its beginnings, the field of masculinity studies took the experiences of White men to represent all men. Focusing primarily on gender, the research assumed a commonality among all men, regardless of race, class, age, ability, and so forth. These assumptions were challenged by people of color, gay men, disabled men, and others. More recent research examines the diverse experiences of men, pointing out that they do not necessarily share the same ideals of masculinity or have the same access and opportunities to achieve them. There is no single, monolithic masculinity.

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