How and When Anti-Racists Should Talk About Whiteness

Most white people will say they do not see color. However, it is apparent from data on voting patterns, residential patterns, dating practices, and other decisions grounded in individual choices that white Americans as a group are indeed making choices with race in mind.

How does one explain the paradox of the individual white person proclaiming that they do not see or act on race, yet when we look broadly at white people’s behavior, we detect clear and consistent patterns?

The straightforward answer is that white is the default racial identity in the United States and other multiracial European countries. Because it is the default identity, it is seen as neutral and non-racial. Therefore, while we can observe at a group level white people acting in racialized ways, the individual white person is often not cognizant they are acting racially.

Diversity training has become a means of communicating the concept of whiteness and its implications. Image from TownHall.Com

Scholars of race have developed this casual observation further. There is a vast amount of literature on what is called “whiteness.” A simple description of whiteness from the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is sufficient for our purposes:

“Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups of are…