How easy … by emphasis and omission to make children believe that every great soul the world ever saw was a white man’s soul; that every great thought the world ever knew was a white man’s thought; that every great deed the world ever did was a white man’s deed; that every great dream the world ever sang was a white man’s dream. (DuBois 1996: 498)
The books and lessons children of all races receive have been filled with white faces, the images representing America are white faces (such as that of Uncle Sam), and “white” is rarely used as a racial descriptor. One hears of a “black scientist” or a “Mexican actor” but not of a white scientist or white actor—the whiteness of scientists and actors is often simply assumed.
However, some whites have a strong sense of their own racial identity. Rather than assuming that they are simply people without any race, they are instead acutely aware of the role that whiteness plays in their lives. White identity can actually have a negative impact on individuals’ sense of self. For example, poor and working-class whites can be negatively affected by their racial identity when they are judged harshly by others for not capitalizing on the socioeconomic benefits of whiteness (Hartigan 1999; McDermott 2006). Indeed, social class can have a major impact on how whites understand their racial identities. The stigma of poverty attaches to every low-income person regardless of race, but poor whites must deal with an additional judgment. Since whiteness is associated with affluence and privilege, poor whites are often seen as being especially damaged or defective. If they were “real” whites, who work hard and are intelligent, they would have moved up and out of poverty. Whites are effectively seen as having no excuse for being poor, since their skin color should have guaranteed better socioeconomic outcomes (McDermott 2006). The combined stigma against poor whites is so prevalent that a special term—“white trash”—has emerged to dismiss and malign whites with little money or education.
Whites can feel stigmatized for their white identity from a quite different source—one not related to social class directly. As mentioned previously, “white guilt” can manifest itself when individuals confront the reality of their privilege and are aware of the undeserved advantages it has brought and continues to bring in their lives. Despite there being no mismatch between their socioeconomic status and their racial identity, these whites nonetheless attach a negative valence to the latter. Especially among non-whites and among white anti-racist activists, whiteness itself can be an inherently stigmatized identity. Some anti-racist activists actually engage in strategies in order to embrace this stigma (Hughey 2012a). The mixed-race women that Storrs (1999) interviewed took the opposite approach; although all the women had white ancestry, they were disgusted by whiteness as “oppressive, patriarchal and discriminatory” (Storrs 1999: 196).
At the same time, whiteness can be embraced as a marker of difference, a marker that many bitterly fight to keep distinctive. The construction of this difference extends back to the earliest period of European colonization of the United States, when it was a marker of status and power. While whiteness is often invisible to those who consider themselves whites, it is not always the case that it goes unnoticed. For example blacks, Latinos/as, American Indians and Asians often notice whiteness; for many of them, successfully negotiating the social and institutional worlds of America requires recognizing whiteness so as to avoid negative outcomes. But whites, too, are sometimes cognizant of their racial identity. When confronted with a perceived threat to their racial advantages—such as blacks moving into a white majority neighborhood—whites may consciously mobilize on the basis of race, in order to organize resistance to neighborhood change.
Such neighborhood characteristics, which influence white racial identity, are fairly stable, but the meanings of whiteness can also be shaped by the specific settings in which whites interact with others. For example, the mentioning of racialized issues such as crime, schools, and neighborhoods can heighten awareness of whiteness even if no other non-whites are present. This awareness can take the form of superiority or defensiveness, as whites become conscious of threats to their status or reinforcements of their dominant position in society. For example, whites who are prompted to think about or discuss the racial composition of neighborhoods or schools might feel threatened by the changing demographics of the US, worrying that white spaces and institutions are changing to be less the province of whites (Craig and Richeson 2014a). Alternatively, contexts in which crime is discussed might arouse in whites a sense of superiority over blacks and Latinos/as: in these contexts whiteness can be stereotypically equated with law-abiding, pro-social behavior, in direct contrast to the presumed criminal behavior of blacks and Latinos/as. It need not matter, for this experience of white racial identity, what the actual association between race and crime is; it is rather the perceptions and the attitudes that have such a powerful impact.
Some whites become so conscious of their whiteness that they actually seek to transcend it, to identify with an entirely different race. Some whites feel guilty about the unearned privileges they have and consciously try to counteract these advantages by affiliating themselves with non-whites, or by participating in anti-racist efforts. Others, who had long thought of themselves as white (and whom others thought of as white), “discover,” by taking a DNA test, that they are not white at all. The presence of American Indian or African origin DNA sometimes prompts such whites to leave their old race behind and adopt a new identity (Roth and Ivemark 2018), thus transcending their whiteness (although not their white privilege).
Regardless of whether white people’s identities are colorblind, stigmatized, defensive, or transcendent, these people’s ways of thinking about themselves shape their attitudes toward other racial groups. However, the connection between identities and attitudes is not straightforward. Among people who identify as white, it is not the case that those who are most likely to acknowledge that their white identity is important to them are the most (or the least) racist groups of whites. Instead, the ways in which whites think about the meaning of whiteness influences their orientations toward other groups. For example, an individual who does not consider his or her whiteness to be symbolic of anything and goes through life blissfully unaware of his or her own race is unlikely to understand the profound influence of race on the daily lives of many non-whites. On the other hand, an individual who fully embraces the social dominance associated with whiteness is much more likely to assert his or her identity as a mark of superiority, or even supremacy. Whites who acknowledge their social dominance and still find it problematic can engage in anti-racist activism or paternalistic behavior toward non-whites. In Chapter 4 there will be a review of the identity–attitude connection in survey responses, discussing how whites who have a strong sense of their identity are among both the most and the least likely to have positive attitudes toward blacks.
Attitudes expressed in survey data are only one way of measuring how whites understand the world around them. Whiteness is expressed culturally as well. If one thinks of culture as patterned behaviors and preferences, it can be a useful vehicle for understanding the relationship between structure and identity. While we often associate culture with forms such as music and film, it also applies to styles of relating to others, for instance to speech and dress, or to ways in which people enact their goals. The extent to which there is a “white” culture has been debated. Certain musical forms, such as country and, to a lesser extent, classical music, have been deemed to be a part of white culture on the basis of the themes and styles of their production as well as of the demographics of its audiences. More troubling, white supremacist groups have extolled the virtues and achievements of European culture as a reflection of the greatness of “white culture” (Dentice and Bugg 2016).
Different cultures can also be expressed within social movements that go well beyond a set of preferences and patterned behaviors. Such movements are goal-oriented, organized institutional forms, which can serve as bases for the realization of the interests of dominant groups such as whites. In some cases, such as that of the Ku Klux Klan, these goals are pursued through violence. In others, the attempted realization of the goals that serve white interests is non-violent and the articulation of whiteness’s role within the movement is subtler. Such organized movements can lay bare the ways in which