Whiteness Beyond (Just) White People: Exploring the Interconnections Among Dimensions of Whiteness in Higher Education

"I don't think there is much racism left": A critical analysis of White adolescents' (un)awareness of white privilege.

“…In 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement was reignited, and ongoing acts of white supremacist violence have brought systemic white supremacy and anti-Blackness to the fore and, along with it, new ways of talking about whiteness (Embrick et al, 2020). In particular, white privilege has become increasingly common in public discourse (Sullivan, 2019). The shift from white privilege being a mostly academic term known by few outside of the academy to now surfacing in everyday discourse underscores the ways in which whiteness, and race discourse, transforms itself.…”

“…To investigate these questions, we used qualitative data from semistructured interviews with white youth. Given that white privilege has increased in common discourse about race and racism (Sullivan, 2019), we were interested in the extent to which the concept surfaced spontaneously in white youth's racial narratives. Additionally, as developmental models of antiracism have put forth "understanding white privilege" as pivotal to antiracist action (e.g., Woolverton & Marks, 2022), we wanted to examine such awareness empirically.…”

“…However, as Ozias and Pasque (2023) note,What good is describing white people’s racialized identities and racial consciousness if larger institutions, social systems, and norms continue to exclude and harm People of Color while benefitting whites? (p. 29)Indeed, psychologists’ tendency to locate whiteness as primarily an individual attitude or identity belies how whiteness percolates beyond white bodies in structures, discourse, and ideology to produce material consequences on the lives of people of color and maintain a system of white privilege (Tevis et al, 2023).…”

“…To be clear, white people do have a responsibility to challenge and resist white supremacy, but white people cannot "grow beyond racism" unless the system of racism itself is dismantled. White people are "never outside social structures" that systemically privilege and oppress regardless of one's good intentions; to believe otherwise is an act of white supremacy (Applebaum, 2010;Sullivan, 2019).…”

“…15-16). Remaining aware that one is always implicated in a system of racial injustice redirects attention from efforts to defend racial innocence as a "good" white person toward continual actions to disrupt and resist systems of white supremacy (Sullivan, 2019).…”