Abstract
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the backlash against it have once again brought questions around white privilege and racial inequality to the forefront of public debate in the United States. Amid the heat generated by these debates has arrived a timely book by the sociologist Monica McDermott that puts into perspective the dynamics of white racial identity in the contemporary United States. Pithy and lucidly written, Whiteness in America sets out the parameters of whiteness both as a structural location and as a racial identity in the United States and explores its role in shaping the life experiences of all Americans.
The book is laid out in six readable chapters that take the reader on a journey through various manifestations of whiteness as well as the way white racial identity maps onto social attitudes and movements. McDermott distinguishes between invisible privileges that come with white identity and visible forms of whiteness. Social practices that equate whiteness with positive attributes without naming race and colorblind ideologies that refuse to see racial difference—thus failing to recognize one's own racial privilege or the extent of racial inequalities—engender some instances of invisible forms of whiteness that are built into social institutions and continue to pervade every aspect of social life.
For many white people in the United States today, race is something that Blacks, Asians, Latinx, and Indigenous people have; in contrast, whites are seen as just “normal” people, inhabiting the default category of Americanness bereft of race. These ideas buttress the hegemonic nature of whiteness, which continues to confer a whole host of advantages to those seen as white. McDermott is quick to remind us that the boundaries of whiteness are not fixed but are historically constructed by social institutions. She cites the example of Jewish people, who were until less than a century ago considered “nonwhite” solely because of their religious identity; there were even restrictive quotas in colleges and universities for Jewish students.
Although anti-Semitic movements are still alive and kicking in the United States, the boundary of whiteness in this regard has shifted. But one aspect of whiteness, McDermott contends, has remained constant: it is a marker of privilege. All whites have an unfair and systemic advantage over racial minorities. Notwithstanding the personal difficulties faced by any individual white person, she goes on to assert, they are still a beneficiary of the dominant status of their racial group. That is to say, relative to racialized groups, whites have greater access to resources and opportunities irrespective of whether a particular white person is able to tap into these advantages or not.
Based on their privileged position in society, the lived experiences of whites are distinct from others, and these experiences color their attitude toward social issues as well as their cultural tastes and preferences. Understanding these relationships between racial identity and social attitudes is far from straightforward, however. Attitudes toward LGBT people have been found to be roughly similar among whites and Blacks; on the other hand, when it comes to criminal justice issues, the disparities are very stark. Whites hold much more punitive attitudes in this regard and are much more likely than others to favor the death penalty. Dwelling on whites’ attitudes toward immigration, politics, and cultural consumption, McDermott argues that when “whites think and behave differently from non-whites” (p. 91), racial differentiation between groups is aggravated, which fuels racial inequality. The book resonates with McDermott's repeated assertion that “Whiteness has been thought of as the neutral, default category against which all other racial groups are compared” (p. 39)—a tendency she vehemently protests against and rejects. However, by consistently using the term “nonwhites” to refer to minoritized racial groups throughout the book, McDermott runs the risk of centering whiteness and understanding BIPOC solely in reference to a “lack.”
Given the way debates around political mobilization of whiteness and institutional racism have been reinvigorated since the election of President Trump, it is indispensable to identify the way whiteness is directly or indirectly used as the basis for social movements. The book delivers on this front. It demonstrates that white racial identity is explicitly wielded for political ends not only by the infamous KKK, neo-Nazi or neo-confederate groups but also by antiracist organizations such as Whites for Racial Justice. There are other outfits that, despite not naming race explicitly and even at times including some racial minorities within their folds, campaign for issues that serve the interest of white Americans and advocate cuts to social welfare programs that are more likely to benefit BIPOC. The political mobilization of whiteness therefore has wider ramifications for the direction of U.S. society and polity.
While recognizing the global dimension of white privilege and dominance, the arguments in this book are built on the premise that the articulation of whiteness in the United States is “relatively unique” (p. 2)—something that merits systematic attention. And since whiteness has been key to the colonization and evolution of America, understanding its social dynamics is fundamental to the understanding of the country itself. These points are well made, and McDermott follows them through by drawing on exclusively U.S.-based empirical studies to illustrate her arguments. Aside from very brief references to slavery, colonialism, and Jim Crow laws, this “relative uniqueness” is not fully unpacked, which is a missed opportunity.
Many of the central arguments in this book—around visible and invisible white privilege, racial differences in social and political attitudes, and the explicit and implicit mobilization of whiteness in social movements—are neither particularly novel nor that surprising. Indeed, they are quite well established within critical race theory and critical whiteness studies. Nonetheless, when gathered together in the same place and illustrated with relatable examples and copious secondary data, McDermott's arguments in this book serve their purpose. The book can be an ideal springboard for students, and others interested in this subject, to unlearn commonly held myths about the neutrality of the white racial identity and the fallacy of post-racial thinking and thus begin to grapple with the heterogeneous and multifaceted nature of whiteness in America. Having an informed understanding of what “white privilege” means, what its structural moorings are, and how it inflects social institutions, processes, and interactions is crucial for taking anti-racist struggles forward and dismantling racial hierarchies. Although McDermott speaks explicitly of the American case—and justifiably so—the questions she raises and the explanations put forth are valuable to scholars and activists working in other white-majority and settler-colonial societies across the globe.