Whiteness, Measuring

One of the most striking developments in the field of racial and ethnic studies over the past 15 to 20 years has been work on the topic of whiteness. Research on White culture and identity is not entirely new. Scholars of color have a long and distinguished history of writing about White Americans and their problematic place in the racial hierarchy (in the 1940s, Richard Wright famously said, “There isn't any Negro problem, there is only a White problem”). And mainstream social scientists have tracked the racial attitudes and opinions of Whites for decades. What is new about “whiteness studies” is its attention to the understandings of Whites, or the lack thereof, of their own racial identities and culture and the privileges that go along with them.

The work, the bulk of which has been historical and qualitative, has provoked a good deal of controversy. Even among whiteness scholars, divisions have emerged between those who focus on White cultural practices and self-conceptions and those who emphasize broader social contexts and racial ideologies. [Page 1399]Many of the debates, both inside and outside of the field, stem from basic challenges of data and measurement. The dearth of broad quantitative information and analysis has left open many questions about the nature and pervasiveness of “whiteness” in contemporary U.S. culture. A somewhat more fundamental problem is the difficulty of specifying and operationalizing key concepts and ideas. How, for example, does one measure the salience of an identity that is assumed to be hidden or taken for granted? How can the claim that Whites don't see White advantage be documented without calling attention to these privileges in the first place?

To illustrate and address these measurement challenges, three key theoretical issues from the literature are posited and examined in this entry. The first two involve core propositions about the relative importance of White identity and the visibility and understanding of privilege among Whites. The third is a set of claims about deeper cultural ideologies and norms. Strategies for operationalizing and measuring these concepts and claims using traditional survey methodology are discussed. Then, data from a 2003 survey conducted at the University of Minnesota under the auspices of the American Mosaic Project are provided. The goal is to provide a basic conceptual framework, set of procedures, and recent findings to illustrate the challenges and possibilities of bringing empirical data to bear on the study of whiteness.