Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: situating the present
- Part I Debates
- Part II Perspectives
- Introduction to Part II
- 8 Superseding race in sociology: the perspective of critical rationalism
- 9 Critical race feminism
- 10 Performativity and ‘raced’ bodies
- 11 Racism: psychoanalytic and psychosocial approaches
- 12 The sociology of whiteness: beyond good and evil white people
- 13 (Sexual) whiteness and national identity: race, class and sexuality in colour-blind France
- 14 Racial comparisons, relational racisms: some thoughts on method
- 15 Conclusion: back to the future
- Index
- References
12 - The sociology of whiteness: beyond good and evil white people
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: situating the present
- Part I Debates
- Part II Perspectives
- Introduction to Part II
- 8 Superseding race in sociology: the perspective of critical rationalism
- 9 Critical race feminism
- 10 Performativity and ‘raced’ bodies
- 11 Racism: psychoanalytic and psychosocial approaches
- 12 The sociology of whiteness: beyond good and evil white people
- 13 (Sexual) whiteness and national identity: race, class and sexuality in colour-blind France
- 14 Racial comparisons, relational racisms: some thoughts on method
- 15 Conclusion: back to the future
- Index
- References
Summary
It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things – perhaps even in being essentially identical with them.
– Friedrich W. NietzscheRecent discourse on white racial identity centers on the contemporary ‘crisis’ of whiteness – the progressive movements and their corresponding neoconservative backlashes. Taken at face value, whites are splintering into antagonistic groups, possessive of differing worldviews, resources and ideological stances. This perspective assumes a social continuum polarized by ‘racists’ and ‘anti-racists’. Additionally, our dominant narratives frame whiteness as a uniform racial category replete with social privilege and material power. This arrangement poses a puzzle: How do we conceptualize an understanding of white identity that accounts for the long-term staying power of white privilege alongside the heterogeneity and fracturing of whiteness? Animated by this background, this chapter presents a new theory of white racial-identity formation.
In what follows, I first present an abbreviated overview of the extant debates in contemporary sociological theory concerning white racial identity. Next, I advance my theory of ‘hegemonic whiteness’: how an ideal type of whiteness is actually shared between and across white racial actors in divergent social worlds. And third, I demonstrate how members of two white organizations commonly thought to be opposed and entirely different – a white nationalist group and a white anti-racist group – attempt to embody a shared ideal of white identity formation. They pursue that ideal through an ongoing process of inter- and intra-racial boundary construction. Members of both groups (1) use racist and reactionary narratives to make inter-racial boundaries (‘whites’ from ‘non-whites’) and (2) mark certain whites’ inability to adhere to dominant white expectations to make intra-racial boundaries (‘hegemonic’ or ‘ideal’ whites from ‘lesser’ whites’).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Theories of Race and EthnicityContemporary Debates and Perspectives, pp. 214 - 232Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
References
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