The "race" to theorize education: Who is my neighbor?

Abstract

The articles in this issue represent an effort to understand how whiteness as a social construct embodies unique characteristics, behavior, and collective enterprise in the context of schooling. The author's goal in this article is to discuss the notion of whiteness and when possible to comment on the articles of this special issue devoted to the topic. The examination of "whiteness" as a theoretical construct is a relatively new phenomenon in educational research. The fact that "whiteness" has gone unexamined for so long is a function of the power of paradigmatic thinking in the social sciences. The predominant viewpoint in the social sciences has been that people of color lack many of the characteristics associated with being white, thus the focus of scholarship has been on documenting these differences or examining interventions designed to remedy these so-called deficiencies. The articles of this special issue represent an intellectual challenge to this mode of thought.