In the 1920s, W.E.B. Du Bois started binge-reading Karl Marx. by the time the Great Depression depressed the Black poor worse than the White poor, and he saw in the New Deal the same old deal of government racism for Black workers, Du Bois conceived of an antiracist anticapitalism. Howard University economist Abram Harris, steeped in a post-racial Marxism that ignores the color line as stubbornly as any color-blind racist, pleaded with Du Bois to reconsider his intersecting of anticapitalism and antiracism.

Despite the problematic nature of race, we offer as a first meta-proposition that race, unlike gender and class, remains untheorized (...) At the same time, Marxist and Neo-Marxist formulations about class continue to merit consideration as theoretical models for understanding social inequity. We recognize the importance of both gender- and class- based analyses while at the same time pointing to their shortcomings vis-à-vis race. Roediger points out that “the main body of writing by White Marxists in the United States has both ‘naturalized’ whiteness and over simplified race“.

The ghetto population of the United States constitutes such [revolutionary] a force. (…) the ghettos form natural geographical centers from which the struggle can be mounted against targets of vital economic and political importance (…) The racial conflict still separates the ghettos from the allies outside. While it is true that the white man is guilty, it is equally true that white men are rebels and radicals. (...) Class conflicts are being superseded or blotted out by race conflicts: color lines become economic and political realities - a development rooted in the dynamic of late imperialism and its struggle for (...)

Political scientists ponder voting strategies coined by critical race theorists. While women's studies professors teach about intersectionality (…) Ethic studies courses often include a unit on critical race theory, and American studies departments teach material on critical whatness studies developed by CRT writers. Sociologists, theologians, and health care specialists use critical theory and its ideas. Philosophers incorporate critical theory ideas in analysing issues such as viewpoint discrimination and whether Western philosophy is inherently white in its orientation, values, and method of reasoning.

Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has - a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites - to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and (...)

Racist ideas love believers, not thinkers. “So what you want to tell me?” Clarence asked. “I think I figured White people out”, I said.

Studying White identity development assists both White individuals and individuals from nondominant cultures with understanding internalized privilege/oppression, racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, and other “isms.” As emphasized by helping professional organizations (American Counseling Association, 2005; American Psychological Association, 2002; National Association of Social Workers, 1999), practitioners’ awareness of themselves increases their ability to see clients from the clients’ worldviews. White identity development may assist White practitioners’ understanding of their own identity development, and as a result, they may be able to better understand their clients’ identity development. Practitioners of color may understand why some White practitioners are color blind (...)

Concomitant with white privilege is white normativity and transparency. White normativity is the implicit belief that white ideas, practices, and experiences are inherently normal, natural, and right. White transparency is “the tendency of whites not to think about whiteness, or about norms, behaviors, experiences, or perspectives that are white-specific.” White transparency occurs when “the white point of view masquerades as colorless, raceless, and systematically devoid of bias.” The imposition of white norms is a form of implicit bias which differs from traditional discrimination law’s fixation with race-based animosity and impetus. White normativity and transparency inflict as much damage as overt (...)

Politically, the white supremacist, patriarchal state relies on the family to indoctrinate its members with values supportive of hierarchical control and coercive authority.

Whites today did not participate in slavery but they surely recreate white supremacy on a daily basis.

White domination is the responsibility of every white subject because her very being depends on it.

If racist relations were created only by people in the past, then racism would not be as formidable as it is today. It could be regarded as part of the historical dustbin and a relic of a cruel society. If racism were only problems promulgated by ‘bad whites,’ then bad whites today either outnumber ‘good whites’ or overpower them. The question becomes: Who are these bad whites? It must be the position of a good white person to declare that racism is always about ‘other whites,’ perhaps ‘those working-class whites.’ This is a general alibi to create the ‘racist’ as (...)

Ordinary White racists function as soldiers of racist power. Dealing each day with these ground troops shelling out racist abuse, it is hard for people of color not to hate ordinary White people. Anti-White racist ideas are usually a reflexive reaction to White racism. Anti-White racism is indeed the hate that hate produced, attractive to the victims of White racism.

White privilege manifests itself in everyone and no one. Everyone is complicit, but no one wants to take on responsibility.

The dimensions of racism benefiting white people are usually invisible to whites. We are unaware of, or do not acknowledge, the meaning of race and its impact on our own lives. Thus we do not recognize or admit to white privilege and the norms that produce and maintain it. It follows that to name whiteness, much less suggest that it has meaning and grants unearned advantage, will be deeply disconcerting and destabilizing, thus triggering the protective responses of white fragility.

One of the fundamental values of racism to White people is that it makes success attainable for even unexceptional Whites, while success, even moderate success, is usually reserved for extraordinary Black people.

Power and wealth in this country is still concentrated in very few, very white hands, and power never goes down without a fight.

There may be no more consequential White privilege than life itself.

Racial privilege is the notion that white subjects accrue advantages by virtue of being constructed as whites. Usually, this occurs through the valuation of white skin color, although this is not the only criterion for racial distinction. Hair texture, nose shapes, culture, and language also multiply the privileges of whites or those who approximate them (Hunter, 2002). Privilege is granted even without a subject’s (re)cognition that life is made a bit easier for her. Privilege is also granted despite a subject’s attempt to dis-identify with the white race. ‘Race treason’ or the renunciation of whiteness is definitely a choice for (...)

During his summative comments about racial privilege at a 1998 American Educational Research Association panel, James Scheurich described being white as akin to walking down the street with money being put into your pant pocket without your knowledge. At the end of the day, we can imagine that whites have a generous purse without having worked for it. Scheurich’s description is helpful because it captures an accurate portrayal of the unearned advantages that whites, by virtue of their race, have over people of color; in addition, it is symptomatic of the utter sense of oblivion that many whites engender toward (...)

Barack Obama wrote. “Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be non-racial”.

The lure of being a good white antiracist or a good male feminist is strongly linked to the desire for ontological wholeness, a form of metaphysical comfort

colorblindness is a form of race subordination in that it denies the historical context of white domination and Black subordination

Many critical race theorists and social scientists hold that racism is perversive, systemic, and deeply ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society is quite so innocent.

The repression of our racism is a crucial piece of the rhetoric of innocence. First, we sensibly can claim the mantle of innocence only by denying the charge of racism. We as white persons and nonracists are innocent; we have done no harm to those people and do not deserve to suffer for the sins of the other, not innocent white people who were racists. If we accept unconscious racism, this self-conception is unraveled. Second, the black beneficiaries of affirmative action can be denied “actual victim“ status only so long as racists are thought of as either historical figures or (...)

The decentering of whiteness or the implementation of race-based programs in higher educational contexts may cause white students to feel excluded; they may feel discomfort with the disruption in their everyday practices. At TWIs [Traditionally white institutions], this can lead to claims of reverse discrimination and calls for the continued centering of whiteness, including calls for “safe spaces” when engaging with racially minoritized students and/or race-based discourse. These safe spaces - environments that are conceived as protecting nondominant/marginalized students from discrimination and/or hostile ideas - tend to actually cater to and nurture white fragility and innocence by prioritizing the comfort (...)

If affirmative action is viewed through the prism of distributive justice, the claim of white innocence no longer seems so compelling, because a distributive justice framework does not focus primarily on guilt and innocence, but rather on entitlement and fairness. Thus, distributive justice as a matter of equal protection requires that individuals receive that share of the benefits they would have secured in the absence of racism. Conversely, and most significantly, Fiscus rejects white innocence for the following reasons: (...) The distributive justice lens, then, would refocus the question of affirmative action on what would have been the proper allocation (...)

Understood as a purposeful social construct that emerged in a very specific cultural, historical, and political context, childhood innocence takes on greater significance as a durable medium for the perpetuation of White supremacy.

As an advocate of courses addressing racism, Beverly Tatum (1992, 1997) insists that teacher education programs must educate White students about race and racism to change their attitudes and behaviors toward Blacks and other students of color in their classrooms. In the absence of antiracist curriculum, White teachers will continue to participate in the perpetuation of an educational system that reinforces White privilege and domination at the expense of people of color. It is therefore necessary to expand multicultural curriculum in teacher education to include antiracist instruction that raises social consciousness and encourages White teachers to play a more activist (...)

in order for white racial consciousness and practice to shift toward an antiracist praxis, a relational understanding of racism, the “self,” and society is necessary. We find that such understanding arises from a confluence of propositional, affective, and tacit forms of knowledge about racism and one’s own situatedness within it. We consider the claims sociologists have made about transformations in racial consciousness, bringing sociological theories of racism into dialogue with research on whiteness and antiracism. We assert that sociological research on white racism and “whiteness” tends to privilege propositional and tacit/common sense knowledge, respectively, as critical to shifting white racial (...)