Whiteness Feminist Philosophical Reflections

Written in an engaging narrative style, this book contains reflections on the meanings of whiteness in racist contexts. By considering whiteness as it shapes and is infused by gender, class, sexuality, and culture, these philosophical investigations undermine racist hierarchies along with false naturalistic conceptions of the meanings of race and universalistic understandings of gender. Central to this project are questions about how it is that culture and the state create such a wide range of different people who understand themselves as white. The essays collected here discuss how one learns to be a good white Southern woman, what it means to pass as white, and whether there really is a dilemma that accompanies white privilege. At the heart of this collection are analyses of the relationships between the construction of whiteness and the realities of racism, and politics that hope for a connection between understanding racial formations and resisting racisms.