The Social Geographies of White Masculinities

Abstract

Using a set of semi-structured intensive interviews, I analyze the narrative accounts of racial identity transformation among twenty-six white men as they move between mostly white and black social geographies. As the respondents moved into mostly black social geographies, they consistently noted that they felt “racial” or “white.” Feeling racialized in mostly black areas was a marked contrast to how the respondents' normally interpreted their identity. Apart from this context, the overwhelming majority of respondents often felt “nonracial,” or what I call the identity of sovereign individuality. To interpret this dynamic, context-specific process of identity transformation, I employ social cartography, postcolonialism, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis to provide a “map” of how racial identity is linked to broader productions of power and knowledge. The result of this interpretive framework demonstrates how such seemingly mundane acts of moving across physical space highlight the context-specific ways white men must periodically confront being interpreted as privileged, as their identity is transformed from “nonracial” to “racial.”