The souls of white folk beyond formation and structure: bound to identity

Abstract

Omi and Winant's Racial Formations (1994) and Feagin's Systemic Racism (2006) and White Racial Frame (2010) provide robust analyses of race, racism and racial inequality. Yet, both models hold distinctive, even antagonistic, assumptions on how white racial identities are formed and their relationship to (anti-)racism. We point to a theoretical synthesis of the strengths of both paradigms that centres on ‘hegemonic whiteness’ (Hughey 2010, 2012a) – namely the role that interactional accountabilities and expectations of racial identity performance have to play as both product and cause of the racialized social order. The ongoing pursuit of an idealized white racial self is thus illuminated as the point of suture between Feagin's focus on the relative uniformity of white privilege and Omi and Winant's attention to the political and ideological heterogeneity of whiteness.