By focusing on making whiteness visible, however, CWS risks the danger of recentering whiteness. 16 Sara Ahmed argues that “any project that aims to dismantle or challenge the categories that are made invisible through privilege is bound to participate in the object of its critique.” 17 This is not to imply that the project of critical whiteness studies should be suspended but rather that we must be vigilant about the ways in which projects of critique can be complicit with what they attempt to disrupt. This critical vigilance, I contend, is prominent in much of the CWS scholarship, as will become evident. Yet understanding the dangers of making whiteness visible does not lead to hopelessness. Instead, the significance of CWS is that the field has produced more nuanced and complex analyses of whiteness as a result of such vigilance. This type of critical self-reflection, I would argue, is one of the most important lessons to be learned from CWS, and I will frame this article with such vigilance in mind.

Cheryl Harris 15 suggests that whiteness is best understood as a form of property rights that is systemically protected by social institutions such as law. Thus whiteness involves a culturally, socially, politically, and institutionally produced and reproduced system of institutional processes and individual practices that benefit white people while simultaneously marginalizing others. The reference to property rights highlights that white people have an investment in whiteness, which can obscure how white people, even with the best of intentions, are complicit in sustaining a racially unjust system.

. . . a location of structural advantage, of race privilege. Second it is a “standpoint,” a place from which white people look at ourselves, at others, and at society. Third, “whiteness” refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed. 14

Whiteness is understood to be not just about a skin color, but intimately related to the construction of race. Whiteness is dependent for its meaning on the process of negation of what is outside its borders. For instance, whiteness means nothing without the existence of blackness. The center and periphery are mutually constituent. As Ruth Frankenberg puts it, “Whiteness comes to self-name . . . simply through a triumphant ‘I am not that.’” 12 In this sense, CWS explores the practices and policies involved in the social construction of race.

An important objective of CWS is to make whiteness visible, in order to disrupt white dominated systems of power. White norms permeate white dominated society, yet these norms appear to be common and value-neutral to the social groups that benefit from them. These norms create the standards by which “difference” is constructed. Scholars in the field seek to make explicit the ways in which whiteness is a determinant of social power and to demonstrate how whiteness works through its invisibility. Whiteness often goes unnoticed for those who benefit from it, but, for those who don’t, whiteness is often blatantly and painfully ubiquitous. Quoting from Hazel Carby, Richard Dyer argues that it is important to study whiteness, to “make visible what is rendered invisible when viewed as the normative state of existence” 10 in order to dislodge whiteness from its position of dominance. It is impossible, then, to gain an understanding of systemic racism without understanding how whiteness works, and Dyer claims that whiteness, because it is presumed neutral and normal, can only be studied by making it “strange.” 11

CWS is a growing body of scholarship whose aim is to reveal the invisible structures that produce and reproduce white supremacy and privilege. Some of the foundational research in CWS can be found in historical analyses that focused on the construction of whiteness and how some European-based groups “became white” (Italians, Irish, and Jews 8 ) in American society. 9 This scholarship demonstrated the contingent nature of whiteness by studying the fluidity and malleability of who was considered white or not throughout different eras, regions, and along other social group intersections within the United States and globally.

White Supremacy and the System of Privilege

A key concept often referred to in CWS is “white supremacy.” bell hooks writes that the word “racism” ceased to be a useful term for her, and she began to use the term white supremacy as a descriptor for the reality of the everyday experiences of people of color.18 White supremacy, in this sense, does not specifically refer to groups like the Klu Klux Klan, who proudly parade their overt belief in the supremacy of whiteness, and the racial hatred and prejudice that accompanies this belief (but which in no is way meant to minimize the danger of these groups). Instead the term has been appropriated to refer to the continual pattern of widespread, everyday practices and policies that are made invisible through normalization and thus are often taken for granted as just what is.

Charles Mills19 points out that white supremacy is to race what patriarchy is to gender. White supremacy, as a form of oppression, is to be understood, following Iris Marion Young,20 as a structural concept that is reproduced by the everyday practices of a well-intentioned liberal society. The outcome of white supremacy has deleterious impact on the lives of the racially marginalized, while simultaneously affording benefits or privileges for white subjects as a collective. David Gillborn defines white supremacy as “a comprehensive condition whereby the interests and perceptions of white subjects are continually placed centre stage and assumed as ‘normal.’”21 White supremacy, therefore, presumes a conception of racism as a system of privilege that white people, often unwittingly, perpetuate in what seems to white people as common, unremarkable, and sometimes even seemingly “good” practices and in the implementation of what seems to be racially neutral policies.

The concept of white supremacy facilitates our understanding of the ways in which these practices and policies may not seem deliberately racist and may even stem from “good” intentions, yet are what contribute to the maintenance of an unjust system. As bell hooks emphasizes,

When liberal whites fail to understand how they can and/or do embody white supremacist values and beliefs, even though they may not embrace racism as prejudice or domination, . . . they cannot recognize the ways their actions support and affirm the very structure of racist domination and oppression that they wish to see eradicated.22

It is important to distinguish white supremacy from racism understood as primarily about prejudice and mean-spirited acts of discrimination. Racism is often considered exclusively about having a set of prejudiced beliefs or stereotypes or negative attitudes towards racial groups. One problem with understanding racism as only about prejudice involves the fact that one can be complicit in the perpetuation of racism even if one does not believe one is prejudiced. Most significantly, one can be complicit even if one has good intentions.23

A classic illustration of how the reproduction of white supremacy can be cloaked behind the veneer of good intentions can be found in appeals to colorblindness or the idea that ignoring or overlooking racial difference will promote racial justice. A recent MTV survey24 of young people between the ages of 14 and 24 indicates that, although the respondents say that in comparison to previous generations they are more tolerant and have a deeper commitment to equality, a large majority of these “millennials” profess colorblindness and agree with the statement that if we just ignore skin color, racism will disappear. The ease and prevalence of white appeals to colorblindness was evidenced in the response of democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley to the rallying cry, “Black Lives Matter.” When demonstrators demanded that the former governor of Maryland address the issue of race, criminal justice, and police brutality, O’Malley’s retort was “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.”25

Such apparently well-intended gestures to universal humanity, using colorblind discourse, ignore the norm of whiteness and make it difficult to acknowledge institutional racism and one’s part in it. The problem of the rejoinder “All lives matter” is not that it is untrue. Rather, the problem is with the quickness and the ease with which one turns to such universal formulations. Colorblindness is assumed to stem from “good” intentions, yet such discursive moves allow one to “miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of ‘all lives.’”26

A related problem with limiting the concept of racism to individual thought and behavior is the focus on the individual rather than the deeper structural source of individual racist practices. If one does not acknowledge racism as a system of privilege composed of an interlocking web of institutional, cultural, and individual practices, racism can be reduced to just the bad behavior on the part of particular individuals who need to be removed or rehabilitated, while the system within which these individuals are embedded can remain unchallenged. Refusing to see police brutality against black youth as part of a system, for example, results in the focus being exclusively on the individual officer (or officers) and whether or not racist intent motivated the particular action. This diverts attention from the systemic problem, which can remain substantially intact.

If white supremacy is a system of privilege, does that entail that all white people are racist because they benefit from a racist system? Beverly Daniel Tatum explains when she hears her white students ask her this question, she wonders if she is being asked if all white people are bad. Feminist philosophers have been acutely aware of this problem. Marilyn Frye queries, “Does being white make it impossible for me to be a good person?”27 Similarly, Linda Martin Alcoff asks

What is it to acknowledge one’s whiteness? . . . [is] it to acknowledge that one is inherently tied to structures of domination and oppression, that one is irrevocably on the wrong side?28

The point, however, is not whether one is a good or a bad person. This concern just re-centers white interests and needs over the needs and concerns of people of color. Rather the relevant questions should be what are the privileged ways in which one is implicated in the maintenance of white supremacy, often unwittingly? How does benefitting from the system make one complicit in the perpetuation of white supremacy? One way to address these questions involves a critical analysis of the concept of white privilege. The recent critiques of white privilege pedagogy offer an excellent entry point to examine these questions. This scholarship explicitly studies how white people reproduce and maintain racist practices even when, and especially when, they believe that what they are doing is morally good.

Much research has studied how white norms are systematically enforced in schools.29 Topics include issues of whiteness and curriculum, whiteness and equity issues in higher education, educational policy, and the forms that institutional racism takes within the context of education. For example, white students and teachers often fail to consider the ways in which congruence with the culture of power contributes to academic achievement.30 As a teacher/educator, I have found that the critical whiteness theory is particularly important for white educators. The scholarship on whiteness in schooling is huge and continues to grow. Therefore, I will focus my review on one dimension of this scholarship that attempts to analyze and teach white teachers to understand the ways in which well-intentioned white people perpetuate and recreate white supremacy, often without knowing that they do so. Even when white teachers are committed to diversity and multiculturalism, if they do not deconstruct their own investments in whiteness, they will not be able to understand how their good intentions might be detrimental to their students of color.