The Challenge of Making Whiteness Visible: Reactions to Four Whiteness Articles

Abstract

In a series of four articles, the authors described the experiences of White researchers, teachers, and practitioners in addressing multicultural issues, which sometimes included racism. Yet, the authors focused very little attention on the benefits of their internalized Whiteness as impediments to fulfilling their scholarly and professional goals. Moreover, the authors did not use any theoretical formulation to guide their examination of White multicultural experts who seek to intervene in contentious topic areas. In this reaction, I suggest that the authors use White racial identity theory to examine some of the racial dynamics that they encounter and to deconstruct Whiteness as it occurs in the types of situations that they described. Examples illustrate the implicitness of White identity theory in virtually all of the articles. In addition, while acknowledging that White people are the ultimate authorities on Whiteness, the author proposes some initial ideas for how White allies might begin to deconstruct Whiteness.