Pale/Ontology: The Status of Whiteness in Education

Abstract

Race scholarship is witnessing a shift. In the past two decades, Whiteness Studies has penetrated what arguably has been the home of scholars of color who write for and about people of color. Around 1990, Whiteness Studies burst onto the academic scene with three important publications, written by White scholars about, but not exclusively for, White people. In fact, we would not be far off to characterize Whiteness Studies as a White-led race intervention. Circa 1990, Peggy McIntosh’s (1992) essay on White privilege, David Roediger’s (1991) Wages of Whiteness, and Ruth Frankenberg’s (1993) White Women, Race Matters, arguably, represent the beginnings of a focus on whiteness and White experiences. Since then, there has been a veritable explosion of critical work on whiteness across the disciplines (Aanerud, 1997; T. Allen, 1994, 1997; Brodkin, 1999; Bush, 2005; Dyer, 1997; hooks, 1997; Ignatiev, 1996; Lipsitz, 1998; Morrison, 1993; B. Thompson, 2001; Warren, 2000; Winant, 1997; Wise, 2007). In education, the impact of Whiteness Studies has been no less (R. Allen, 2005; Apple, 1998; DiAngelo, 2006; Ellsworth, 1997; Gillborn, 2005; Giroux, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c; Howard, 1999; Kincheloe and Steinberg, 1998; Lee, 2005; Leonardo, 2002, 2004; McIntyre, 1997; McLaren, 1995, 1997; Richardson and Villenas, 2000; Sheets, 2000; Sleeter, 1995; A. Thompson, 2003). It should be noted that scholars of color previously took up the issue of whiteness, but as a secondary if not tertiary concern (see Du Bois, 1904/1989), insofar as studying the souls of White folk was an afterthought to the souls of Black folk. With Whiteness Studies, whiteness and White people come to the center in an unprecedented and unforeseen way. This is different from the centering that whiteness is usually afforded in Eurocentric curricula and writing. Indeed, it would be problematic to recenter whiteness as a point of reference for civilization, progress, and rationality in order to relegate people of color to the margins, once again. In Whiteness Studies, whiteness becomes the center of critique and transformation. It represents the much-neglected anxiety around race that whiteness scholars, many of whom are White, are now beginning to recognize.