The sociology of white America: A teaching and learning guide

Abstract

Torkelson, J., & Hartmann, D. (2021). The heart of whiteness: On the study of whiteness and White Americans. Sociology Compass, e12932. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12932 A new era of polarization, identity awareness, and emboldened supremacist movements has focused renewed attention on the cultural orientations and political preferences of white Americans, as well as the boundaries of whiteness itself. Although the shapes of white America have long been central to casting American race, racism, and racial hierarchies into their fullest light, direct analytic focus upon whiteness itself proved relatively scant until an explosion of canonizing interdisciplinary critical scholarship in the 1990s. These 1990s movements, at their core, valuably highlighted ways in which whiteness operates as a normative or unmarked force within American racial politics, and in corresponding ideologies of racial denial that perpetuate contemporary forms of institutional racism. The 21st Century, however, has featured prominent movements from both the Left and Right (e.g., the Alt Right, Black Lives Matter) that have brought whiteness more to the fore of the public consciousness, and indeed into the politics, identities, and understandings of racial privilege held by increasing numbers of white Americans. More whites are becoming aware of their own status as raced, and orientations toward whiteness may now cover a widening array of political implications and positions, ranging from those (re)investing in white pride, harboring more open racial resentments, to those more explicitly interested in racial justice, among others. Deeper in this fold reside questions of dominant group incorporation—or, the boundaries of who is now considered “white” in the first place—through tremendous demographic and economic transformations. On all such fronts, how this developing 21st Century racial-political landscape collides with the longstanding purported heart of whiteness itself—ostensibly blank, normative, relatively insulated from racial issues—will be essential to grappling with the fuller complexities of race, racial formation, and forms of racism shaping across (white) America for years to come. This course is designed to address numerous relevant domains, persisting themes and new issues now emerging within white America. We especially pay attention to the tensions—and prospects for moving toward nuanced articulations of white America when mindful interchange is forged—between predominant analyses of (1) whiteness as a cultural condition (or set of cultural practices) and (2) various subgroups (or demographics or populations) of white Americans. Waters, M. C. (1990). Ethnic options: Choosing identities in America. University of California Press. This book provided a groundbreaking articulation of ways occupying white racial and ethnic identities are unique. Ethnicity and race for whites, in short, is frequently fundamentally voluntary, and whites are afforded an almost exclusive leeway to assert and experience these positively. A necessary “cost” of this otherwise ostensibly “costless” condition is that it may render whites less (if not fully un)able to understand the experiences and plight of non-whites contained in more rigid, ascribed markings. Additionally, by being focused on white “ethnicity,” this work also firmly established white subgroupings as a track of sociological inquiry within white America. Roediger, D. (1991). The wages of whiteness: Race and the making of the white working class. Verso This book demonstrates Du Bois' bedrock principle that whiteness in America pays whites a “psychological” wage for identifying with wealthy elites, and one another, over their material interests. Roediger indeed documents the operation and allocation of such wages via the struggles, racial politics, and ultimate “whitening” processes navigated by certain European immigrant groups over the 20th Century. This work also significantly grounds contestation and shifts in the boundaries of white dominant incorporation—or, the white color line—as central to the study of whiteness. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (Eds.) (1997). Critical white Studies: Looking behind the mirror. Temple University Press This edited collection uproots, interrogates, and problematizes whiteness as a socio-historical construct from an array of disciplinary backgrounds, including literature, law, cultural studies, sociology, legal studies, and history, among others. These essays serve as hallmarks of, and remain essential to contextualizing, foundational 1990s interdisciplinary movements toward understanding whiteness as a blank and normative cultural form, and unpacking related consequences. This volume is further significant where it lodged whiteness studies as a part of then-developing critical race theory and scholarship, and can continue to serve as a valuable resource as attacks against these tracks of inquiry are redoubling in public culture. Lipsitz, G. (1998). The possessive investment in whiteness: How white people profit from identity politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press One of the first and still most influential book-length syntheses of the contemporary era. The book employs Lipsitz's distinctive voice and creative, synthetic approach to ideas. Lipsitz draws upon scholarship from critical theory, social history, and empirical social science, and takes on topics ranging from politics and housing policy to popular culture. Among its many contributions, the book frames whiteness as a form of identity politics—indeed largely underappreciated and hidden, and therefore perhaps the most successful such form—in the United States today. Doane, A.W. & Bonilla Silva, E. (Eds.). (2003) White out: The continuing significance of racism. Routledge. This is another interdisciplinary edited volume that marks an empirical (though generally still qualitative) turn in the field aimed at developing what it means to be white. Chapters range in focus, but generally foreground two substantive contributions that continue to serve as hallmarks of the field. For one, attention is drawn toward contextualities of white racial awareness, assertion, identity, or subgroup demographic or cultural locations. For another, the relationship of whiteness with liberal individualism and theories of racism rooted in denial, or “colorblindness,” often assume center stage. Feagin, J. (2009). The white racial frame: Centuries of racial framing and counter-framing. Routledge This book importantly foregrounds the ways that whiteness is embedded within the psyche of the nation, as well as in outward globalization movements and neocolonial projects. The “white racial frame” is conceptualized as encompassing all racialized phenomena (from narratives, emotions, actions) and its deep connections with cherished ideals of liberal historical progress and democracy, all which uphold white privilege and cultural imperatives, are ably articulated. White framing is meticulously detailed across history, and this work is especially instructive with respect to uprooting and pinpointing the operation of whiteness and white privilege in any institutional context. Hughey, M. (2012). White bound: Nationalists, antiracists, and the shared meanings of race. Stanford University Press The fieldwork in this book is emblematic of what Twine and Gallagher (2008) have labeled the “third wave” of whiteness studies in its detailing multiple forms of whiteness that are politically manipulated and intersectionally constrained. This work also definitively solidifies a needed focus on white racial consciousness or awareness in 21st Century social science via its concerted engagement with “strong white identities” across seemingly opposed camps of “anti-racist” and “white nationalist” organizations. Shared meanings, dispositions, and investments in white identities are documented across organizational contexts as are their replication in daily interactional meaning-making. This book is also important in its helping to move discourse beyond categories like “good” versus “bad” whites. Indeed, despite good intentions, many racially conscious whites who may be interested in racial justice ultimately contribute to, rather than upend, racist structures and essentialist racial logics. Metzl, J. (2019). Dying of whiteness: How the politics of racial resentment is killing America's heartland. Basic Books This book contains pioneering and often heart-breaking original research about recent, troubling social changes in Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas and how they are understood—or misunderstood—by white Americans in these Midwestern states. Metzl brings together interviews and focus groups, public health data, and extensive secondary research to reveal the power of whiteness as a combination of ideology, ignorance, and racial resentment that is dangerous and deadly to those who cling to it most uncritically. Jardina, A. (2019). White identity politics. Cambridge This book comprises among the more comprehensive, large-scale and systematic attempts to map rising 21st Century white identity, consciousness, awareness, and the implications of these. It crucially documents numbers of whites now identifying with aspects of their race or whiteness. These phenomena are furthermore usefully connected with attitudes toward immigration, foci for racial resentment, ingroup/outgroup boundaries, various demographical and social contextual measures, and perhaps most significantly, possible correspondences or affinities with potentially mainstreaming white nationalist movements. This work is most broadly significant insofar as it establishes the scope of white identity transformations of recent times. Alba, R. (2020). The great demographic illusion: Majority, minority, and the expanding American mainstream. Princeton University Press Central to many concerns over contemporary white racial resentments and potentially mainstreaming white nationalist projects are prevalent narratives of the United States becoming a “majority minority” nation. Using Census data, this work meticulously charts relevant demographic trends and surrounding issues that shed light on the possible emerging futurities of the white color line itself. Rather than a foreclosed demographic inevitability (as much popular conventional wisdom would have it), the contained argument points toward a reshuffled and diversified mainstream, though arguments for a third alternative in which certain traditional minority categories (e.g., Latinos, Asians) whiten is also valuably detailed. This sample syllabus is designed to serve as a resource for others in building their own successful courses or course units pertaining to whiteness at both the undergraduate and graduate level. We therefore include introductory texts as well as those more in-depth and theoretically robust. Where we deem it particularly significant, we highlight what we believe to be “essential” or ideal “lead-in” chapters for connecting with various (sub)topics when including full books. Weeks are generally designed to build upon, and further develop, one another. Roberts, D. E. (2011). Fatal invention: How science, politics, and big business re-create race in the twenty-first century. New Press. (Chapter 1: “The Invention of Race”) Du Bois. W. E. B. ([1935] 1998). Black reconstruction in America 1860–1880. The Free Press DuBois, W. E. B. ([1920] 2003). “The Souls of White Folk” Darkwater: Voices from the veil. (pp. 55–75). Humanity Books Roediger, D. (1991). The wages of whiteness: race and the making of the working class. Verso Focus Question: While racial categories are a collective fiction, they matter a great deal. How? And why do you think we can't just “move beyond race?” (Don't worry about not having a concise answer to the latter question—we will return to it many times in the course. The point is to begin to think critically about this question). Blumer, H. (1958). “Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position.” The Pacific Sociological Review, 1, 3–7 Merton, R. (1970). “Discrimination and the American Creed.” In PI Rose (Ed.), The Study of Society (pp. 449–457). Random House McIntosh, P. (1989). White Privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Peace and Freedom, 10–12. Moss, K. (2003). The Color of Class: Poor Whites and the Paradox of Privilege. University of Pennsylvania Press (Chapter 2: “School: Learning to Live up to the Paragon”; Chapter 3: “Encounters: Intersections and Collisions”). Focus Question: Consider how the forms of privilege that McIntosh identifies relate to poor whites. How do white people in poverty experience white privilege? At the same time, how do class disadvantages interact with racial privileges? Brekhus, W. (1998). “A Sociology of the Unmarked: Redirecting our Focus.” Sociological Theory, 16, 34–51 Frankenberg, R. (1997). Introduction: Local whitenesses, localizing whiteness. In R. Frankenberg (Ed.), Displacing whiteness: Essays in social and cultural criticism (pp. 1–33). Durham, NC: Duke University Press Bonnett, A. (2000). White identities: Historical and international perspectives. Pearson/Prentice Hall Bonilla Silva, E., Goar, C., & Embrick, D. G. (2006). When whites flock together: The Social psychology of white habitus. Critical Sociology, 32, 229–253 Feagin, J. (2013). The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing. Routledge. (Chapter 1: “The White Racial Frame”) Lipsitz, G. (1998). The possessive investment in whiteness: How white people profit from identity politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press Focus Question: What is your race? If white, what are some ways or social contexts where you have become aware that you possess a race, or feel your “whiteness”? If non-white, what are some ways or social contexts where you have become aware that you possess a race, or feel your “non-whiteness”? If the script was flipped for you here between whiteness/non-whiteness, in what ways, if any, do you speculate your experiences might differ? Mixed white/non-white identifying students: How do you navigate any of these dynamics? Exchange with others and discuss as a class. Oliver, M., & Shapiro, T. (2006). Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. Routledge, 2nd Edition. Ray, V. (2019). “A theory of racialized organizations.” American Sociological Review 84, 26–53 Rothstein, R. (2017). The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. ‎Liveright (Preface; Chapter 6: “White Flight”). Lipsitz, G. (1998). The possessive investment in whiteness: How white people profit from identity politics. Temple University Press (If not used in Week 3) Oliver, M., & Shapiro, T. (2019). “Disrupting the Racial Wealth Gap.” Contexts. 18, 16–21. Seamster, L. (2019). “Black Debt, White Debt.” Contexts 18, 30–35. Loewen, J. W. (2018 [2005]). Sundown towns: A hidden dimension of American racism. The New Press. (Preface to the 2018 Edition). Focus Question: The origins of racial inequality are in the past. However, the effects of past policies continue in the present. To the extent that we examine this past and its impact on the present, we also seem, as a society, more comfortable recognizing accumulated disadvantages rather than accumulated privileges. What policies might emerge from an acknowledgment of the link between accumulated disadvantages and privileges? Waters, M. C. (1990). Ethnic options: Choosing identities in America. University of California Press. (Chapter 7: “The Costs of a Costless Community”) Brodkin, K. (1998). How Jews became white folks and what that says about racism in America. Rutgers University Press. Gans, H. J. (1979). Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in America. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2, 1–20 Ignatiev, N. (1995). How the Irish Became White. Routledge Perry, P. (2002). Shades of white: White kids and racial identities in high school. Duke University Press Focus Question: One way sociologists interrogate the social world is to ask what function some phenomena serves. With that in mind, what function(s) do you think claiming ethnic identities serves for white Americans? For white racial dominance generally? Lowen, J. W. (2005). Sundown towns: A hidden dimension of American racism. The New Press. (Chapter 1: “The Importance of Sundown Towns”; Chapter 11: “The Effect of Sundown Towns on Whites”) Combs, B. H. (2021). How ingrained racism became invisible. Contexts 20, 61–63 Bonilla Silva, E., & Embrick, D. G. (2007). “Every place has a ghetto”: The significance of whites' social and residential segregation. Symbolic Interaction. 32, 323–345 Anderson, E. (2022). Black in White Social Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life. University of Chicago Press. (Chapter 1: “The White Space.”). Focus Question: Why do you think few people consider how racial segregation came to be? In other words, what function does not considering this question serve? How would you explain “white social space” to someone who has not taken this course? Bobo, L., Kluegel, J., & Smith, R. (1997). Laissez faire racism: The crystallization of a “kinder, gentler” anti-black ideology. In S. Tuch & J. Martin (Eds.), Racial attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and change (pp. 15–44). Praeger. Sears, D. O. (1988). Symbolic Racism. In Katz, P. A. & Taylor, D. A. (Eds.) Eliminating Racism: Perspectives in Social Psychology (pp. 53–84). Springer Bonilla Silva, E. (2003). Racism without Racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of inequality in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield Doane, A. W. & Bonilla Silva, E. (Eds.). (2003) White out: The continuing significance of racism. Routledge Bell, J., & Hartmann, D. (2007). Diversity in everyday discourse: The cultural ambiguities of “happy talk.” American Sociological Review, 72, 895–914 Mayorga-Gallo, S. (2019). The white centering logic of diversity ideology. American Behavioral Scientist, 63, 1789–1809 Berrey, Ellen. (2015). “Diversity is for white people: The big lie behind a well-intended word.” Salon Focus Question: Where and in what contexts, if any, have you encountered ideologies such as “color blindness,” “happy talk,” or “diversity discourse”? And to what consequence? What are the relative strengths and weaknesses, overlaps and departures, of these frameworks, and how do you think they can be most profitably applied to studying whiteness and race more generally? Are there any ways racial denial (e.g., colorblind ideology) connects with the recognition or celebration of the racial other (e.g., diversity discourse)? Hartigan, J. (1999). Racial situations: Class predicaments of whiteness in Detroit. Princeton University Press Croll, P. (2007). Modelling determinants of white identity: Results from a new national Survey. Social Forces, 86, 613–642 Hartmann, D., Gerteis, J., & Croll, P. (2009). An empirical assessment of whiteness theory: Hidden from how many? Social Problems 56, 403–424 Hughey, M. (2012). “Color capital, white debt, and the paradox of strong white Racial identities.” Du Bois Review, 9, 169–200 Mueller, J. (2020). Racial ideology or racial ignorance? An alternative theory of racial cognition. Sociological Theory, 38, 142–169 Jardina, A. (2019). White identity politics. Cambridge University Press Coates, T. (2017). “The First White President.” The Atlantic. Focus Question: Given the recent movements toward white racial awareness in America, what might be some of the implications for foundational conceptualizations of post-Civil Rights American whiteness (blank, normative, relatively insulated from sensing race or racial issues) itself through the 21st Century? In what ways versus not does the longstanding purported “heart of whiteness” remain a worthy object of study? Frankenberg, R. (1993). White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. University of Minnesota Press Twine, F. W., & Gallagher, C. (2008). The future of whiteness: A map of the “third wave.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31, 4–24 Garner, S. (2017). Surfing the third wave of whiteness studies: Reflections on Twine and Gallagher, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40, 1582–1597 Breines, W. (2007). Struggling to connect: white and black feminism in the movement years. Contexts, 6, 18–24. Maghbouleh, N. (2017). The limits of whiteness: Iranian Americans and the everyday politics of race. Stanford University Press. Choo, H. Y., & Ferree, M. M. (2010). “Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research: A Critical Analysis of Inclusions, Interactions, and Institutions in the Study of Inequalities.” Sociological Theory, 28, 129–149 Focus Question: What are the limits versus analytic benefits of conceptualizing whiteness as a force of its own, versus a highly differentiated social space containing multiplicities of experiences, social locations, and relationships to whiteness itself? Wray, M. (2006). Not quite white: White trash and the boundaries of whiteness. Duke University Press Hughey, M. (2012). White bound: Nationalists, antiracists, and the shared meanings of race. Stanford University Press Metzl, J. (2019). Dying of whiteness: How the politics of racial resentment is killing America's heartland. Basic Books Hochschild, A. (2018). Strangers in their own land: Anger and mourning on the American Right. The New Press Focus Question: Indeed, one way to look at white America is through the lens of “whiteness” (or a certain cultural condition), and another is through “white subgroups” (or actual populations or groupings of whites) as reflected in this week's sampling of readings. What are some strengths and weaknesses of each approach? How can—and how do—these complement one another? In what ways do studies of empirical subgroups of white Americans inform formulations of cultural whiteness? Correspondingly, in what ways does cultural whiteness cast normativities and variations within subgroupings into proper or beneficial lights? Alba, R. (2020). The great demographic illusion: Majority, minority, and the expanding American mainstream. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (Chapter 4: “The Demographic Data System and the Surge of Young Americans from Mixed Family Backgrounds”; Chapter 5: “What we know about Americans from Mixed-Minority White Families”; Chapter 6: “Some Ideas and History for Understanding Today’s Ethno-Racial Mixing”) Jiménez, T. (2010). Affiliative ethnic identity: a more elastic link between ethnic ancestry and culture. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33, 1756–1775 Morning, A. (2018). Kaleidoscope: Contested identities and new forms of racial membership. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41, 1055–1073 Roth, W. D., and Ivermark, B. (2018). Genetic options: The impact of genetic ancestry testing on consumers' racial and ethnic identities. American Journal of Sociology, 124, 150–184 Anderson, E. (2011). The cosmopolitan canopy: Race and civility in everyday life. Yale University Press Saperstein, A., & Penner, A. (2012). “Racial fluidity and inequality in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology, 118, 676–727 Focus Question: Many Americans no longer identify as a single race. However, the racial structure (e.g., segregation, stereotypes, and inequality) remains intact. How are individuals able to sort themselves into racial categories where they feel comfortable? And how are such individual choices constrained? Hosang, D. M., & Lowndes, J. (2019). Parasites, patriots: Race and the new right-wing politics of precarity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press (Introduction: “The Changing Labor of race in the New Gilded Age”; Chapter 3: “‘The Incomprehensible Malice—of Poor White America’: New Racializations of White Precarity”; Chapter 5: “‘A Brown Brother for Donald Trump’: The New Multiculturalism on the Far Right”) Hughey, M. (2012). White bound: Nationalists, antiracists, and the shared meanings of race. Stanford University Press Hartzell, S. L. (2020). Whiteness feels good here: Interrogating white nationalist rhetoric on Stormfront. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 17, 129–148 Hawley, G. (2017). Making sense of the alt-right. New York, NY: Columbia University Press Fording, R. C., Schram, S. F. (2020). Hard white: The Mainstreaming of racism in American politics. Oxford University Press Blee, K., & Yates, E. (2015). The place of race in Conservative and far Right movements. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1, 127–136 Cherlin, A. J. (2021). White working-class support for Trump. Contexts, 20, 30–35 Gorski, P., & Perry S. L. (2022). The flag and the cross: White Christian nationalism and the threat to American democracy. Oxford University Press Focus Question: To what extent and in what ways has white nationalism been witnessing a resurgent mainstream penetration? Correspondingly, what is the position of individuals from traditional minority backgrounds in contemporary white nationalist movements between axes of tokenism and genuine incorporation? And how does this connect with (vs. not) possible shifts within the boundaries of whiteness itself, or potential idealizations of diversified domination within mainstream culture? Roediger, D. (1994). Towards the abolition of whiteness: Essays on race, politics, and working class history. Verso Hughey, M. (2012). White bound: Nationalists, antiracists, and the shared meanings of race. Stanford University Press Ignatiev, N., & Garvey, J. (Eds.) (1996). Race traitor. Routledge Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. One World Finnegan, A. C. (2013). The white girl's burden. Contexts 12, 30–35 Hagerman. M. (2017). “White racial socialization: Progressive fathers on raising ‘antiracist’ children.” Journal of Marriage and Family 79: 60–74 Hughey, M. (2021). How blackness matters in white lives. Symbolic Interaction, 44, 412–448 Focus Question: What does “anti-racism” look like? And how should it be conceptualized? What should white anti-racism look like within white communities—within white families, friendships, and neighborhoods? How can white people seeking racial justice avoid the mistakes/problems cited in articles and books presented in class? Bonilla Silva, E. (2004). From bi-racial to tri-racial: Towards a new system of stratification in the USA. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27, 931–950 Gans, H. J. (2012). Whitening and the changing American racial hierarchy. DuBois Review, 9, 267–279 Alba, R. (2020). The great demographic illusion: Majority, minority, and the expanding American mainstream. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (Chapters 3, 7–9: The Power of the Demographic Imagination,” “Assimilation in the Twenty-first Century,” “Social Policies to Broaden the Mainstream,” “Toward a New Understanding of American Possibilities”). Kim, C. J. (1999). The racial triangulation of Asian Americans. Politics & Society, 27, 105–138 Lee, J., & Bean, F. (2004). America's changing color lines: Immigration, race/ethnicity, and multiracial identification. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 221–242 Focus Question: Is the road ahead biracial or triracial, or other? And how does the maintenance of white supremacy factor into this trajectory? Will the “majority minority” demographic narrative come to fruition, or are new traditional minorities becoming absorbed into whiteness as was the case with Euroethnics? Still yet, are there any ways a reshuffled and diversified mainstream majority may be sedimenting? Broadly, how do lessons from the course as a whole inform your own extrapolations?