Whiteness Studies

As an academic field, whiteness studies began in the 1990s for the purpose of critically examining what it means to be White in the United States. Black writers such as James Baldwin and W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about whiteness much earlier. Du Bois defined whiteness as ownership of the earth. David Roediger defined whiteness as a destructive ideology exercising political force despite its discrediting as a culture, meaning that though many White people do not recognize that they have a race, they have been given profound systematic advantages. In fact, Ruth Frankenberg found that her research participants experienced being White as unmarked and unnamed. Christine Sleeter wrote that characteristics of whiteness include ravenous materialism, competitive individualism, and a way of living characterized by putting acquisition of possessions above humanity.

Because naming White as a racial category with advantages was not previously included in the academic curriculum, whiteness studies is considered a suppressed history. Though whiteness studies is often traced to the writings of Black intellectuals as early as David Walker's Whites as Heathens and Christians in 1830, its inclusion in the academic curriculum was spurred by mostly White writers and intellectuals who study history, literature, labor movements, economics, popular culture, identity development, and communication. Because of its interdisciplinary nature, whiteness studies has no specific journals, professional associations, book series, or academic departments in the United States, though a professional association exists in Australia. Nonetheless, the field has offered provocative scholarship exposing the problem of whiteness. There is an international whiteness studies movement with scholarship coming from [Page 882]Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia as well as the United States. This entry focuses on whiteness studies as it pertains to the United States.