race&ethnicity 2-3 pages paper

Assignment 1: Reflections on Race and Racialization

This assignment asks you to produce 2 double-spaced pages of writing in which you share your beliefs, experiences, questions, suggestions, and/or reactions to issues of issues of race and racialization covered thus far in the lectures, sections, readings, and videos. This write-up must have a descriptive title (a specific title that captures its contents), but otherwise can be presented however you like.

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For example, it could be written as a reflection essay, a short autobiographical sketch, a journal entry, a social media post, a letter to a friend, or another style so long as what you submit addresses the basic prompt. It does not need to be formal and is not intended to take overly long to write. It is, however, intended to foster critical reflection on your part, and must be informed by ideas from the course. (It is fine to disagree with ideas presented in course lectures or readings; however, you should write about these ideas in a way which clarifies that you know what those course materials have stated, and that you are asserting a different opinion.) If you cite specific sources (not required), you should include citations following one of the major citational styles.

CHAPTER ONE

The Invisibility of Whiteness

A white boy who is very close with one of the authors of this text has been raised in a
predominantly white, small town in the Midwest. On a family trip to the big city in 2008, the
boy, then eight years old, enjoyed playing in an interactive water room at a children’s museum.
Always a gregarious and friendly child, the white adults who accompanied the boy—including
one of the authors of this text—enjoyed watching him play with other children as he enjoyed
the activities of the museum. Upon exiting the exhibit, in a crowded hallway filled with a
racially diverse collection of individuals, the white boy announced proudly and loudly, “I just
made an African American friend!”
The white adults accompanying the white boy were surprised by the boy’s exclamation and

by their own reactions to it. They wondered why the boy had been so cognizant of the race of
his new playmate, questioning what his understanding of race—his own and that of others—
might be. They considered where the boy had picked up the term he chose to describe the race
of the playmate, pondering how race might be addressed in the boy’s school or in media he
viewed. They wondered how often they themselves addressed race with the boy and how they
might have shaped—or failed to shape—his understanding of race. They were also disquieted
by their own sense of embarrassment at the loud announcement by this white boy, especially
because the bystanders who were likely to have overheard included many individuals of color.
How might the bystanders interpret the boy’s words? How did the announcement reflect on the
boy and his adult companions? How might the new friend have felt if he had overheard himself
being referred to as an “African American friend”?
The boy regularly makes friends whenever the opportunity is available, but he had never

before announced that he “just made a white friend.” He clearly noticed and categorized this
playmate based on race. We will explore what incidents like this reveal about whiteness and
about the visibility of race.

How Do We Come to Know Things?
In thinking about race, it is interesting to ask, how have we come to know what we know about
race? Indeed, how have we come to know anything about anything? What does it mean to
“know” something? How can we be sure that what we “know” really is true? People in
different cultures and times sometimes understand the world in very different ways. Who is
wrong and who is right?
People also learn about the world in different ways. Diverse cultures have different

authorities that they trust and different processes to access knowledge. Are they all valid?
As an example, we might consider feudal times in Europe. Most people in feudal Europe

were very poor (extremely poor by middle-class standards in the United States today). Most
people lived as farmers. They farmed land that belonged to someone else, to the aristocracy,

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the kings, queens, lords, and other nobility that ruled over the various geographic areas of
Europe. The Catholic Church existed in close connection with and strongly supportive of the
aristocracy. In exchange for being allowed to use the land, peasants paid a tithe (or rent) in the
food that they produced to the aristocracy. Historians Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen note,
“There was a vast chasm between the material abundance of the Church and aristocracy and
the scarcity experienced by the peasantry, and this system was represented as the immutable
order of things.”1
How did the aristocracy come to own all of that land? Well, today we know that they took it,

by force. Yet in feudal times, most people believed that the aristocracy owned everything and
ruled over everyone because God wanted it that way. People thought that “social inequality
was the way of God.”2 They believed God had chosen the aristocracy and that the aristocracy
was a distinct group of humans, almost a species. In this thinking, called the “Great Chain of
Being,” the peasants were also like a distinct species. People accepted as “truth” that humans
were born into the group where they belonged according to God’s will. Sharply distinct from
the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps and change-your-lot-in-life thinking common in the
United States today, people’s thinking in feudal times held that one should not, indeed one
could not, change one’s position in life. One was born a peasant much like a cow was born a
cow. As far as we know, cows do not dream of being horses someday; and in feudal times,
peasants did not dream of being kings and queens.
So how did people in feudal times come to “know” all of these “truths”—that the poor were

meant to be poor and the aristocracy was in control because God wanted it that way? How did
people come to “know” that this was God’s will? Who expressed God’s will in feudal times?
As you might guess, the aristocracy and the feudal Catholic Church (supported by the

aristocracy) dictated God’s will, claiming that God had appointed them to voice His wishes.
(During this time period in Europe, the Catholic Church understood God to be decidedly
male.) Who benefited from these dictates? The aristocracy and the Church. Ewen and Ewen
write about this political and economic system:
The Bible was the Word of God, the universal law, but its interpretation was kept in the hands of the privileged few who
were sanctioned to read it. Biblical interpretation tended to uphold the immense social and political landholding power of the
nobility and the Church. . . . Although feudal power was often held and defended by the sword, it was justified by the Word.
The monopoly over the Word, over literacy, and over the ability to interpret what was read, was a fundamental aspect of
rule.3

So in terms of the issue of knowledge and how we come to “know” something, we can see
from the example of feudalism that different cultures believe in different authorities. Feudal
society believed in the authority of God expressed through the aristocracy and the Church.
Today, in many places in the world, including Europe, the United States, and most western4
industrialized nations, we tend to turn to science for knowledge, instead of religion. Instead of
the aristocracy and the Church translating God’s wishes for us, scientists using the scientific
method work to gain what we understand to be truths about our world and ourselves.
It is interesting to note that, in the above example, someone benefited from the “knowledge,”

the “truth” that everyone believed in. The way of thinking in feudal Europe worked to reinforce

Halley, J., Eshleman, A., & Vijaya, R. M. (2011). Seeing white : An introduction to white privilege and race. ProQuest Ebook Central http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
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the economic and social power of the aristocracy and the Church. Social psychologists Don
Operario and Susan T. Fiske define power as “the disproportionate ability of some individuals
or groups to control other people’s outcomes.”5 Economic power entails control over
resources such as land or water, or even symbolic resources (like money today). In this book,
we use the term social power to mean economic power as well as the amorphous capacity of
dominant groups—groups who control economic resources—to control cultural production; in
other words, to establish their cultures and norms as the dominant ones. In this book, because
the term social power comes up repeatedly, we use the terms social power and power
interchangeably.
In reading our book, we ask that you keep the story of inequality in feudal Europe in mind.
Ideologies like the Great Chain of Being—ways of thinking and commonly held beliefs—in
feudal Europe benefited some over others. How might our ways of thinking about race in the
contemporary United States, and in our history, also benefit some over others?
In this book, we argue that critically examining the common ways of thinking in the United

States teaches us more about social power than about “objective facts.” (In chapter 2, we
question race as an objective fact and challenge you to consider the potential bias in science.)

(In)Visibility of Whiteness
The authors of this text challenge you to consider why the white eight-year-old boy announced
that he had made an “African American friend” when the boy had never announced the race of
a white friend. Legal scholar Barbara J. Flagg argues that white people are often not conscious
of being white.6 Often whites simply perceive themselves as “normal” or “just human” and fail
to notice their own race.7 While whiteness may be invisible to whites, whites tend to be aware
of the races of people of color.8
In this text, we seek to challenge readers to consider what it means for a white person to

perceive of himself or herself as “normal” while seeing others as having a race. We challenge
you to consider the extent to which whiteness is invisible and the implications of this. We
invite you to critically examine what it means to perceive oneself as normal. In the social
sciences, a norm is a social expectation9—a description of how one is expected to act or what
one is expected to believe within a given social setting.10 Scholars who study the experience of
being white in the United States and the concept of whiteness regularly note that whiteness is
often perceived by whites, who as a group hold more social and economic power than people
of color, as normative—ordinary, typical, what is expected. To be normative is not the same
thing as being “right” or “correct.” Normative aspects of a society typically reflect the culture
and values of the groups in power.
An Indian American woman well known to the authors of this text shared a story that revealed

normative assumptions of her white friends.11 The woman’s romantic partner, a white man,
delights in eating pickled lime, a common relish in Indian food. The woman has teased her
partner about his love of pickle because he eats it with an unusual array of foods. While people
in India would commonly eat a little bit of pickle as an accompaniment with some foods, her
partner has paired larger than normal servings of pickle with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and

snack foods. When this couple was having dinner with another couple, the Indian woman
playfully teased her partner about his use of pickle. The white man from the other couple
joined the friendly teasing, making an analogy that eating pickle with so many foods was like
putting catsup on almost everything. The white woman from the other couple then asked, “How
do you use normal pickles in India?” By “normal pickles” the white woman was suggesting
that pickled cucumbers are “normal” and that pickled limes are not. In India, “normal pickles”
are pickled limes. The comment revealed the white woman’s expectation that what is common
in the United States is normal; here she reflected normative white U.S. culture.
To perceive whiteness as normative is to see being white as normal.12 If whiteness is normal,

what does that communicate about the experience of other races? Sociologist Ron Nerio, the
son of a Mexican American father, details a story that reveals the normativity of whiteness. A
white woman who was a friend of Nerio’s family once tried to compliment Nerio’s father by
telling him that she did not perceive him as Mexican, but rather saw him as a Spaniard. For this
friend, the concept of Mexican was embroiled with racial and class stereotypes that she did not
think applied to her friend, whom she saw as being like a European, like a white person. When
Nerio’s father rejected her identification of him as like a white man, she assumed he was being
humble and continued to insist that he really “seemed white.” She thought she was
complimenting him and never realized how deeply she had offended him.13 We invite readers to
explore why a white woman would consider “seeming European” to be a compliment for a
Mexican American man. What did she reveal about her beliefs about whiteness and about
being Mexican? We encourage you to think about why the white woman did not realize that her
“compliment” was actually offensive. We argue that her obtuse reaction revealed a lack of
critical thinking about whiteness.
Social scientific research suggests that when a person gets to know another individual, one

stops seeing that person as a member of a category—such as seeing a person as Mexican
American or as male—and starts to see the person as an individual.14 The white family friend
seemed to conflate seeing Nerio’s father as an individual with seeing him as white. Rather than
basing a compliment on his individual character, she attempted to compliment him based on
being similar to her concept of whiteness. This suggests that the woman perceived whiteness
as normal, as normative and as better, and preferable to being of color.
Historically within the United States those who are considered white rarely have been

challenged to think about their own race. College campuses today are places where whites are
more likely to be asked to think critically about whiteness. Sociologist Charles A. Gallagher
notes that being prompted by college courses to think about whiteness can be disconcerting for
whites because whiteness is so often invisible.15 Throughout this book, we challenge readers to
think critically about race, especially whiteness. Making whiteness visible is a critical step in
thinking critically about race and addressing systematic inequality in the United States.
This text will reveal that whiteness is a shifting category that has been created by historical,

political, social, and economic events. Within the United States, the first people considered
white were Anglo-Saxon Protestants (an ethnic group with ties to England) and individuals
from northwestern Europe. In chapter 3, we explore specifically how Irish Catholics were

once considered non-white and how they became white. The history of Italians and Ashkenazi
Jews also reveal whiteness as a changing category. These groups, similar to the Irish, became
white based on historical, political, social, and economic shifts.

What Is Race?
Before you continue to read, we invite you to consider this question: What is race? How have
you understood race? If asked to define race, how would you put the concept into words?
Using evidence from anthropology and biology, we will explain that human physical traits

such as skin color and facial features vary on a continuum—slight gradations from one
individual to another—rather than differing in distinctly separate groups. As we explore in
chapter 2, from a biological standpoint, one cannot definitively group individuals into distinct
races that clearly differ from each other.
If race does not exist as biological category, you might be wondering why we have dedicated

an entire book to the subject. Although race is not an aspect of our genes, race is critically
important in the United States. Race exists as a social and political understanding of humans
that attempts to assign individuals into distinct groups in a way that systematically benefits
some—whites—while limiting opportunities for others—people of color.
Historian Nell Irvin Painter argues, “Race is an idea, not a fact.”16 Throughout this book, we

explore how powerful this idea has been in shaping human lives. Following influential
physical anthropologists such as George J. Armelagos and Alan H. Goodman, we argue that
while race is not a biological category, the important social implications of race and of racism
make this socially constructed concept a vital issue for careful study.17 Operario and Fiske
argue, “Racial categories exist because people and societies believe them to be true; they
derive from psychological and societal processes, rather than from biological or evolutionary
processes.”18
Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has distinguished race from ethnicity. As we will see in

chapter 2, race has traditionally been a category assigned to a group in a way that justifies the
subordination of groups of color by the group in power. Alternatively, ethnicity is a social and
cultural category.19 Ethnicity tends to be viewed as a subgroup of race; all members of a given
ethnicity will be viewed as belonging to the same race. As sociologists Michael Omi and
Howard Winant identify, social and cultural aspects of ethnicity encompass “such diverse
factors as religion, language, ‘customs,’ nationality, and political identification.”20 We will
explore ethnicities that have been included in whiteness, have moved into whiteness, and have
been excluded from whiteness.

The Modern World System
One of the authors of this text, Jean Halley, grew up in rural Wyoming in the 1970s believing
that there was something biologically distinct about different racial groups. This was why, it
was commonly “known,” Black and white people should not intermarry. In her childhood, this
was a basic, accepted “truth” that people around Halley believed much like they believed
women were naturally better, more loving parents than men; men were naturally more rational

than women; and the “Reds,” as one of her social science teachers called people living in
communist nations, were going to march on the United States at any moment.
Where did this idea about race come from? Why did people believe that different racial

groups are actually biologically different from one another? Was this thinking merely because
the different groups do seem to look different, at least somewhat different, some of the time?

For a moment let us move back in time to the period when feudalism slowly came undone and
a new system began to replace it. This new system, the “Modern World System,” came into
being in the mid-fifteenth century as people from different geographic locations increasingly
began to encounter one another. Africa, Asia, and the Americas had been “discovered” by
Europeans.21 These “new” worlds held new (to Europeans) resources as well as human beings
who looked and behaved in strikingly different ways.
Imagine being one of the first of your racial group to see another racial group. How might you

have made sense of the visual differences you witnessed? How might you have explained
cultures seemingly completely distinct from your own?
In Europe at this time, the beginnings of a system that we live with today called capitalism

began taking hold with a new class of people, the merchant class, who traded in increasingly
available luxury goods supplied by the new lands, including “gold, silver, precious gems, silk,
sugar, coffee, tea, spices, and tobacco.”22 As trade grew, “the merchant class, whose wealth
was built on such exchanges, followed the social lead of aristocrats and emerged as a prime
consumer of luxury items.”23 In Europe, being a peasant, a priest, or a king were no longer the
only options. Slowly, the various parts of the world became interconnected as never before.
The story of race is inextricably bound with this newly interconnected world.
In this interconnection, Europe began to develop as a powerful region by making use of the

labor and resources of other places. Not all global locations and peoples fared as well as
Europe in the Modern World System. Indeed, as sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein notes, the
development of this new and global community was deeply and fundamentally unequal. Today,
springing from this history, we continue to live in a deeply unequal global system. While some
places gained great power and wealth in the Modern World System, others lost power over
their land, labor, and other resources. Through brutally imposed structures of slavery and
forced labor, some even lost claim to their own persons. Indeed, the development of Western
Europe depended on the oppression, labor, and resources of peoples in Africa, Asia, and the
Americas. As Ewen and Ewen make clear,
For West Europe to triumph as a global center of commerce and industry, it was necessary for other regions of the world to
be maintained in a subservient position, their economies stunted to serve the needs of others. Even within Europe, for
certain sectors to emerge as masters of the universe, it was necessary that others live in varying states of immiseration. For
“progress” to come into being, it was also seen as necessary for certain indigenous populations to be subjugated or
extinguished. Others were systematically dislocated, enlisted into slavery, governed by the lash.24

Much like in feudal times in Europe, people worked to explain this inequality. Yet now,
Europeans had a new “religion” from which they claimed to study, understand, and know the
world; that is, science.

A Brief Introduction to Cultural Materialism
This text offers a criticism of science and challenges readers to consider other perspectives as
well. Cultural materialism is a way of thinking about the world often used by both
anthropologists and sociologists.25 Cultural materialists believe that the ways we think about
things—and what we “know” about the world—spring from the ways we produce our lives.26
What does it mean to produce our lives? Well, it can happen in a variety of ways. We humans
need food and shelter and to reproduce, bringing new humans into the world as the older ones
die. We can get and do these things in many different ways. Some people in some time periods
have lived, and many still do live, by farming. Others live by fishing for their food. Some
people build temporary shelters because they live nomadic lives, moving from place to place
as seasons change or as the animals they herd need new land to graze. Others build permanent
structures that last for hundreds of years. Cultural materialists believe that the way a given
people lives births, so to speak, the ways that people think about the world and themselves.
The culture, knowledge, and beliefs these people develop and refer to spring from their ways
of producing and reproducing, their ways of surviving, in life.
We have already seen an example of cultural materialism in our brief exploration of

feudalism. In feudal times, peasants farmed to make their living, and they gave a portion of
their produce to the aristocracy in exchange for being allowed to live on the land. As best we
can tell, most people did not explain this as we might today; that is, that a brutal and violent
ruling class suppressed the poor majority. Instead, people understood that situation as one
desired by God. People believed in the “Great Chain of Being,” where the powerful ruled
because God wanted it this way.
Cultural materialism helps us to understand our own, more recent history in terms of race. In

the United States, our historical thinking about race springs from our ways of living—during
slavery and during other important periods in the United States, such as reconstruction after the
Civil War, the early twentieth century when enormous numbers of people immigrated from
eastern and southern Europe, Jim Crow27 and legalized segregation, and the civil rights
movement. How might our contemporary thinking about race in the United States and Europe
spring from the ways we build our lives and survive—our material reality—today?

Whiteness and White Privilege
In chapter 3 we investigate the social construction of whiteness. The very concept of whiteness
was developed to include people from different ethnic backgrounds in a common category that
excluded other ethnicities. As we will see in our exploration of Irish Catholics becoming white
in chapter 3, ethnic groups who were accepted into whiteness were granted higher status and
privileges. As we examine in chapter 8, U.S. law such as the Immigration Act of 1924
systematically privileged whites. This immigration law specified that only white immigrants
were eligible to apply for citizenship. Before the concept of white as a race was created,
certain ethnic groups held greater social power than others—the most powerful of these ethnic
groups were the first to be perceived as white when the concept of white as a race developed.
Teutonic peoples (descendants of Germanic tribes), especially the Anglo-Saxons (composed of

two Teutonic tribes who invaded Britain during the Roman Empire and became the English),
were the first to be categorized as white. As we explore in chapter 3, working-class and
impoverished peoples of European descent joined Anglo-Saxons with strong economic
resources and social power. Across socioeconomic class, a common identity as white
emerged, creating a powerful ingroup—a shared identity with a feeling of belongingness to the
group and connection to other members of the group.28 The concept of whiteness helped to
solidify the social power of the economic elite by encouraging poor and working-class people
who became white to see themselves as part of an ingroup with the elite, a group that excluded
and subordinated people of color.29
Education scholar Zeus Leonardo identified that the concept of whiteness “depends on the

racial other for its own identity.”30 Whiteness only exists as an ingroup because it is contrasted
with outgroups—groups with which members of the ingroup do not identify, do not feel a
sense of connection, and might classify as “the other.”31
Often when one thinks in terms of “us” compared to “them,” one engages in binary thinking—

perceiving a matter as having two opposing sides. Whiteness is often perceived in contrast to
groups of color, as though people come in one of two distinct forms—white or of color.
Whiteness is one side of a false binary. In other words, today in the mainstream United States,
we tend to think about white people in contrast to the other position on this false binary, people
of color. Our book focuses on this binary way of thinking about race because it is so powerful
in our society, not because it is real in any biological sense.
Dualism is another term for a binary—suggesting there are two distinct, and only two,

positions on an issue. Historically and today in the United States, being white is juxtaposed
with being not white. This juxtaposition means that whiteness, as a frame for understanding
human beings, dictates and necessitates a dualism, a false dualism. As we explain in chapter 2,
careful analysis of race reveals that humans cannot be clearly separated into whites or any
other distinct group based on race. Human genetic diversity varies on a continuum, not as a
binary. Further, while we will use “people of color” throughout this book to reveal the false
dualism often used to think about race, we encourage you to think critically about the great
diversity among individuals classified as “of color.”
We, the authors of this text, do not support the false dualism of race. Indeed, we mean to

challenge it as a way of thinking that is both wrongheaded and deeply damaging. However, to
some extent in our challenge, we will seek to reveal the binary framework by contrasting
whites with people of color because that is the racial framework we live with in the
mainstream United States today.
Through critical analysis of the false dualism and insight into whiteness as it relates to social

power, scholars such as Peggy McIntosh, who was inspired by her work in feminist studies,
have identified ways that whites are systematically privileged over people of color. McIntosh
notes that some of these white privileges—such as not having to fear that one’s race may
contribute to one being stopped and frisked by police—are advantages that would be ideal to
share across all people. We challenge you to consider how social action might widen the
number of people who can share such privileges. Other white privileges—such as assuming

that whites are more deserving of admission to colleges and universities than students of color
—are unfair and biased against people of color. We further explore college admission as it
relates to white privilege in chapter 8.32
White antiracist activist Tim Wise argues that being white in the United States means

“defining ourselves by a negative, providing ourselves with an identity that [is] rooted in the
external—rooted in the relative oppression of others. . . . Inequality and privilege [are] the
only real components of whiteness. . . . Without racial privilege there is no whiteness, and
without whiteness, there is no racial privilege. Being white only means to be advantaged.”33
Revealing white privilege challenges the myth of meritocracy, the belief that people who
work hard in the United States will succeed and that success is the result of hard work.34
Critically examining white privilege exposes unfair advantages that make success easier for
whites while disadvantaging people of color.35 Chapter 7 explores the myth of meritocracy.

Racism
A common misconception equates racism with individual acts of intentional bigotry.36 As we
further discuss in chapter 5, racism can be perpetuated by white individuals who fail to realize
that they are acting in racially biased ways. Moreover, as we discuss throughout the text,
institutional racism is often propagated by social systems such as the criminal courts (see
chapters 4 and 7) and immigration law (see chapter 8). Institutional, or systemic, racism
consists of policies and practices that systematically favor powerful racial groups—usually
whites in the United States—while discriminating against others—groups of color.37 For
example, in chapter 6 we further explore institutional racism in public schools, including
unequal funding for education in different neighborhoods and biased expectations that may
influence which students are tested for gifted and talented programs.
Sociologists Joe R. Feagin, Hernán Vera, and Pinar Batur note, “Being white in this society

almost by definition means rarely having to think about it. Whites must make a special effort to
become deeply aware of their own and others’ racism.”38 Critical examinations of racism often
lead people to move from perceiving racism as a matter of intentional, individual acts to
seeing racism in the United States as including subtle and potentially unintentional behaviors
by individuals as well as systemic issues.39 Well-meaning white people may inadvertently
support racism by failing to challenge a racist system.40
Psychologist Raphael S. Ezekiel argues that it is essential for all whites in America to

examine race and racism:
If you visited South Africa and spoke with older White South Africans, you would expect to find their minds affected by
having grown up in a society that was intensely racist. White Americans grow up in a society in which race has been and is
profoundly important.
. . . If I am White and grow up in a society in which race matters, I inhale racism, and racism becomes part of my mind

and spirit. . . . There will always be layers of myself that harbor racist thoughts and racist attitudes. This is not to say that
those must remain the dominant parts of my mind and spirit. It is to say that it is mistaken to presume that I have no traces
of racism in me.
The task is to get acquainted with those layers of oneself—to learn to recognize them and not be frightened by them. It is

not a disgrace to have absorbed some racism. It is a disgrace not to know it and to let those parts of ourselves go
unchecked.41

To better understand racism, one must critically examine the relationships of race, especially
whiteness, with social, economic, and political power.42 Prejudice is a matter of favoring one’s
ingroup over outgroups,43 of disliking groups or individuals based on group membership.44
Social theorist Oliver Cromwell Cox identified that not all forms of racial prejudice carry the
same potential to “subjugate a people”; the racial prejudice of whites is potentially more
damaging because of social and political power.45 In 1970, Patricia Bidol, then school
superintendent in Baldwin, Michigan, worked to raise awareness of the special role of
whiteness in racism. Because whites hold important power in the United States, she argued that
only whites can be racist.46 Consistent with Cox and Bidol, clinical psychologist Beverly
Daniel Tatum argues that racial bigotry is open to everyone but that the term racism should be
reserved for “prejudice plus power.” Because of the disproportionate power held by whites in
the United States, we follow Tatum in arguing that anyone can be a racial bigot but that only
whites can be racist.47
We consider it important for readers to understand how we conceptualize racism—as

systemic as well as individual, sometimes unintentional, racial prejudice coupled with power.
Like Tatum, we invite readers to develop their own understanding of racism based on critical
reflection.
While it may be an interesting intellectual exercise to think of specific situations in which

whites are less likely to have power than people of color, we challenge you to consider how
frequently whites have greater power than people of color. Journalist Robert Jensen expresses
a concern that individuals who focus on the few situations in which whites have less power
than people of color may be trying to end a critical discussion of race before the discussion
can truly happen.48
Similarly, when white racism is raised, some individuals try to change the subject to focus on

how certain groups of color are prejudiced against other groups of color. Such discussions
have their place, but we encourage you to have them only if you truly want to understand the
social problems involved, not if you are simply trying to avoid focusing on whiteness and
white privilege.
We invite you to consider how having an African American president of the United States

may influence understandings of race and racism. We are heartened that many more
opportunities are open to people of color today than historically, but we continue to see strong
evidence that whites remain much more powerful as a group than any other.

In an occasional misconception of racism we have observed in our teaching, some students
have confused having a critical discussion regarding race with being racist. While we invite
disagreement about how to define racism, this particular misunderstanding of the concept
perplexes us. We have wondered whether strong discomfort regarding the discussion of race
could lead some individuals to have avoided thinking critically about race or racism, so much
so that they have equated discussions of race with racism.

Perspectives
Halley, J., Eshleman, A., & Vijaya, R. M. (2011). Seeing white : An introduction to white privilege and race. ProQuest Ebook Central http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
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We three authors of this text have been trained in distinctly different disciplines within the
social sciences—sociology, psychology, and economics. Throughout this text, we draw on the
theories and evidence within our respective fields while also critiquing these fields. We use
theories and evidence from biology, history, and anthropology. (We assume readers have a
working knowledge of biology and history but may be less familiar with anthropology, a social
science that examines the impact of culture, biology, and evolution on human groups.49
Anthropology has been an important field in challenging racist ideologies.)
Drawing on her expertise in sociology, Jean Halley infuses this text with a critical

examination of social history and cultural studies. As famously noted by C. Wright Mills,
sociology is the study of both social institutions and of the embeddedness of individual lives in
such institutions. Mills called on sociologists to explore the connections between seemingly
“private troubles” and “public issues.”50 Race is clearly a matter of both. In studying race,
sociologists commonly use theories to be discussed at length in this book, such as that of
cultural materialism (defined above) and the social construction of race (to be discussed in
chapter 3).
Amy Eshleman contributes her empirical approach to psychology, “the scientific study of

behavior and mental processes.”51 As a social psychologist, Eshleman focuses on how
individuals are influenced by their perceptions of social expectations. Social psychologists
seek to understand racism by carefully examining factors that seem to reduce or exacerbate this
social problem. We explore the empirical method in chapter 2 and applications of social
psychological work in educational settings in chapters 6 and 9.
Ramya Vijaya brings an expertise on economics to this text. Through economic analysis, we

explore the vast inequalities related to race and caused by racism. Chapters 5 through 8
provide critical economic concepts and evidence that serve as a foundation for our argument.
When Eshleman communicated to a recent college graduate that she was writing a textbook,

she was dismayed when this strong alumna admitted that she had never considered that real
people write textbooks. Although the student had read many textbooks throughout her
undergraduate career, she treated textbooks as truth rather than as a perspective created by
humans. While we authors have been careful to present information as clearly and accurately
as possible, we acknowledge that our work—like that of all thinkers—will be influenced by
our cultural understandings and ideologies. Political scientist Michael Freeden defines
ideology as “thought-patterns of individuals and groups in a society which relate to the way
they comprehend and shape their political worlds.”52
Ideologies tend to be taken-for-granted beliefs that both come from and work to reinforce

systems of social power. Because they are social, rather than individual, we share ideological
ways of thinking with others in our culture, and we usually assume these ways of thinking to be
correct without questioning them. In other words, we are born into our ideological frameworks
as we are born into communities. We tend to take on the ideological frameworks of our
communities, like the air we breathe, without questioning or even thinking consciously about it.
Ideologies play an important role in the production and reproduction of social power. These

are ways of thinking that justify social realities; we do not merely take for granted the thinking,

we take for granted the system it supports. The now-known-to-be-false belief that race is a
biological reality has been at the core of our shared ideologies of race. Much like the
ideological framework of the Great Chain of Being underlying feudalism, race as biology is a
way of thinking that is more than incorrect. This way of thinking supports and reproduces
social power, the power of white people over people of color.
Ideology influences all academic endeavors. Throughout the textbook, we authors refer to our

perspective and to how our personal experiences have helped us to see whiteness. We invite
you to critically reflect as you read and to formulate any disagreements you have. As you will
see in chapter 2, research is advanced by scholars challenging each other’s ideas and
evidence.
Like all authors of textbooks (or writing of any form), we present a particular perspective

and have selected specific issues on which to focus. For example, this text briefly explores
intersectionality—how important social categories such as race, gender, socioeconomic class,
and sexuality intersect and interact with each other in ways that influence human experiences
(see chapter 4). We then invest chapter 5 in exploring how race and socioeconomic class
intersect. To keep our focus on how sociology, psychology, and economics can be used to think
critically about whiteness, we have chosen not to explore gender and sexuality as deeply as we
might have explored these important intersections. We encourage readers to seek further
examples of how gender and sexuality interact with race, socioeconomic class, and other
important social categories.
Because of our focus on interdisciplinary perspectives on whiteness, we elected not to cover

the excellent work of Janet E. Helms on racial identity development.53 We encourage readers
with a particular interest in psychological approaches to studying individual experiences of
race to read Helms as well as Beverly Daniel Tatum’s review of Helms’s theory.54
As a genre, textbooks have a tendency to present material as though it is simple, objective

fact. We take issue with this tendency. Indeed, we argue there is no way out of opinion in
argument. Everyone’s arguments, ideas, and claims—including ours in this book—are just that,
arguments. We work to offer you the clearest argument possible with strong evidence to back it
up as we seek to problematize issues of race and racism, particularly whiteness. Our goal is to
challenge readers to consider how issues that might have seemed straightforward are actually
quite complex when one examines them critically. Given that these issues are complex, we
acknowledge that your perspective may differ from ours. We invite you to carefully consider
our perspective and to use this material to inform your own perspective. We recognize that
some will disagree with us, and we look forward to an ongoing conversation.

What Is in a Name?
Throughout our writing, we have carefully selected the terms we use to identify racial groups,
down to the details of capitalization and hyphenation. Here we highlight just a few of our
choices, which are driven by respect for these racial groups and their expressed preferences
regarding appropriate terms to identify them. We follow convention in capitalizing names for
racial and ethnic groups of color such as Latino, Asian, African American, and Native

American. Even if these terms were not routinely capitalized, we would have chosen to
capitalize them as a way of offering respect to these groups that have been traditionally
underrepresented in positions of power. In this line of thinking, we capitalize “Blacks.” While
other authors who critically reflect on whiteness may choose to capitalize both “Whites” and
“Blacks,” our intentional choice not to capitalize “whites” is a conscious decision to
distinguish the critical examination of whiteness in this text from how white supremacists may
refer to whites.
The terms African American, Black, and Black American are currently preferred terms for a

wide range of individuals who have lived in the United States for generations or emigrated
from places as diverse as the many countries of Africa and areas of the Caribbean. While we
recognize that individuals classified within this group may have strong preferences for one of
these labels, we use these terms interchangeably with the goal of esteeming all individuals who
may be classified by these terms.
When referring to individuals with cultural or family heritage ties to Puerto Rico, Cuba, the

Dominican Republic, Mexico, and the countries of Central America and South America, we
choose to use Latina or Latino. The term Hispanic was created for the 1970 U.S. Census to
classify individuals with ethnic ties to Spanish-speaking cultures. Our preference for Latina/o
over Hispanic is based on the connection of Hispanic “to internalized colonization because it
is strongly supported by politically conservative groups who regard their European ancestry as
superior to the conquered indigenous peoples of the Americas.”55 Further, “Many millions of
Spanish-speaking people—such as Native Americans—are not of true Spanish descent, and
millions of Latin Americans do not speak Spanish or claim Spanish heritage (e.g., Brazilians),
therefore, they are not Hispanics.”56 Latina/o is perceived by many, including the authors of
this text, as a more inclusive term that does not glorify or require European ancestry. For
clarity, we use Hispanic only when referring to research and public policy that has used that
term to classify individuals.57
We caution readers to think critically about the power of words that have been used to

derogate racial and ethnic groups. While there are multiple powerful epithets on which we
might focus, we briefly explore nigger because we believe it can be one of the most powerful
words spoken in the United States. Legal scholar Randall Kennedy shares the history and
complexity of this slur in Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. As a Black
man, Kennedy notes that his own relationship with the slur is complicated and nuanced but that
it was important to him to communicate clearly to whites that the word is “ugly, evil,
irredeemable.”58 Scholars of African American studies have explored the multiple ways the
word has been used in the Black community, and influential leaders have disagreed regarding
the possible utility of reclaiming the term in certain contexts within the community. While we
encourage all readers to learn more about social history and contemporary debates about the
power of words, we challenge non-Black readers to focus on the likelihood that use of the
word outside the Black community conveys “racial hatred or contempt for all blacks.”59 We
acknowledge that some readers from outside the Black community may be confused by the
many uses of this word within the Black community. Like Kennedy, we encourage readers to

consider the words of former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: “A word is
not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly
in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.” We argue that
there are no circumstances or times in which whites can use this word in an inoffensive
manner. While we encourage all readers to delve into explorations of matters of race, we
doubt that individuals who would not be targeted with this slur will ever fully understand it
(including the authors of this text). Therefore, we argue that people who are not Black cannot
use this powerful word from within a place of understanding or connection to it.
Did you notice our use of “non-Black” in the previous paragraph? If so, did you have any

reaction when reading it? Journalist Robert Jensen has chosen to use the term non-white
because he wants to make whiteness visible in discussions about race.60 While many scholars
prefer the term people of color, Jensen argues that what makes a group “of color” is that the
group has been excluded from the category of whiteness. Alternatively, one may argue that
people of color is a more respectful label than to focus on what a group is not. Choosing either
option consciously can be a political decision that conveys information about one’s thoughts on
race, especially if one notes why that choice has been made. (While person of color and
people of color are commonly used today as respectful terms, these terms are distinct from the
outdated use of describing a person as colored. While the outdated term was once considered
respectful, use of it today to refer to a person or groups of people reveals a lack of sensitivity
to language.)
We invite you to pay attention to the terms used to describe racial groups and to consider

what information is conveyed by these choices. In quotes used throughout the text, you will see
different ways that scholars have presented group names. We also encourage you to note the
choices made by media, peers, family members, and others. Consider what terms and form of
capitalization you want to use.
Throughout this text (including earlier in this chapter), we note key vocabulary terms from the

social sciences in italics. We invite you to reflect on these terms and to try to use them in your
discussions and writing about whiteness.

Discussion Questions
1. Did reading chapter 1 arouse any emotions for you? Common emotions during critical
explorations of race include anger, frustration, guilt,
discomfort, and confusion. If you had a strong emotional response to a certain aspect of the
chapter, identify the part of the chapter, describe the emotion that was aroused, and evaluate
this experience. If you did not have any emotional responses to any material in the chapter,
explore that.
2. Describe several issues considered to be “truths” in feudal times and in the 1970s that are
now understood to be false. Explore possible “truths” today that you predict will be
demonstrated to be false in the future.
3. What are social and economic power? Who held power in feudal Europe, and how did
they hold on to that power? Who holds power in the United States today, and how do those in

power hold on to that power? What is meant by the terms norm and normative? What has
been a common relationship between whiteness and these terms? How might this relate to
power?
4. What does it mean to claim that whiteness tends to be invisible to whites? When have you
been aware of whiteness? What might that reveal about whiteness?
5. Describe cultural materialism. How does it relate to race, particularly whiteness?
Evaluate Tim Wise’s argument (quoted within the chapter) that inequality and privilege are
essential aspects of whiteness.
6. What are ingroups and outgroups? What is the relationship of these terms to inclusion and
exclusion? Who is part of the white ingroup? Who is excluded from this group?
7. Have you ever had an experience when you were keenly aware of yourself as privileged?
If so, how did this awareness affect you? How did the privilege affect how others treated
you? If you have never been aware of privilege, reflect on why that might be.
8. Racism is described in this chapter as ranging from unintentional individual behavior by
whites to policies at an institutional level. It is also argued that racism is “prejudice plus
power,” such that only whites can be racist. How would you have defined racism before
reading this chapter? What are your reactions to the definition of racism in this chapter?
9. What do you think has been the effect of having a president of the United States who is
African American? Has this changed understandings of race or racism in the United States? If
so, how? If not, why not?
10. What is ideology? How does ideology shape understanding of important issues such as
race? Do individuals tend to be conscious of the influence of ideology?
11. Do you consider words, such as racial slurs, to be powerful? Why or why not?

Notes
1. Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen, Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality (New York: Seven

Stories Press, 2006), 19.
2. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 19.
3. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 19.
4. We follow intellectuals such as Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Freedom, Calif.: The Crossing

Press, 1984) in consciously choosing not to capitalize “western.”
5. Don Operario and Susan T. Fiske, “Racism Equals Power Plus Prejudice: A Social Psychological Equation for Racial

Oppression,” in Confronting Racism: The Problem and the Response, eds. Jennifer Lynn Eberhardt and Susan T. Fiske
(Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, Inc., 1998): 49.
6. Barbara J. Flagg, “‘Was Blind But Now I See’: White Race Consciousness and the Requirement of Discriminatory Intent,”
Michigan Law Review 91 (March 1993): 953.
7. Jessica T. Decuir-Gunby, “‘Proving Your Skin Is White, You Can Have Everything’: Race, Racial Identity, and Property

Rights in Whiteness in the Supreme Court Case of Josephine DeCuir,” in Critical Race Theory in Education: All God’s
Children Got a Song, eds. Adrienne D. Dixson and Celia K. Rousseau (New York: Routledge, 2006), 89–111, 93–94.
8. Tanya Kateri Hernandez, “‘Multiracial’ Discourse: Racial Classifications in an Era of Color-Blind Jurisprudence,”
Maryland Law Review 57 (1998): 97.
9. See Thomas F. Pettigrew, “Normative Theory in Intergroup Relations: Explaining Both Harmony and Conflict,” Psychology
& Developing Societies 3, no. 1 (March 1991): 3–16.
10. Robert B. Cialdini, “Crafting Normative Messages to Protect the Environment,” Current Directions in Psychological
Science 12, no. 4 (August 2003): 105–9.
11. Indian American refers to people with ancestry connected to the country of India. We distinguish this term from American

Indian, which refers to Native Americans.
Halley, J., Eshleman, A., & Vijaya, R. M. (2011). Seeing white : An introduction to white privilege and race. ProQuest Ebook Central http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
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12. Catherine Myser, “Differences from Somewhere: The Normativity of Whiteness in Bioethics in the United States,”
American Journal of Bioethics 3, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 1–11.
13. Ron Nerio, unpublished memoir, 2009.
14. Ziva Kunda, Paul G. Davies, Barbara D. Adams, and Steven J. Spencer, “The Dynamic Time Course of Stereotype

Activation: Activation, Dissipation, and Resurrection,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82, no. 3 (March 2002):
283–99.
15. Charles A. Gallagher, “White Reconstruction in the University,” in Privilege: A Reader, eds. Michael S. Kimmel and

Abby L. Ferber (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003), 299–318.
16. Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), ix.
17. George J. Armelagos and Alan H. Goodman, “Race, Racism, and Anthropology,” in Building a New Biocultural
Synthesis: Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology, eds. Alan H. Goodman and Thomas L. Leatherman (Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1998), 371.
18. Operario and Fiske, “Racism Equals Power Plus Prejudice,” 35.
19. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation,” American Sociological Review 62, no. 3

(June 1997): 465–80.
20. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd ed. (New

York: Routledge, 1994), 15.
21. Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European
World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974).
22. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 12–13.
23. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 13.
24. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 16–17.
25. Drawing from Karl Marx, Raymond Williams is commonly credited with developing the idea of cultural materialism. For

further information on cultural materialism, please do see Williams’s seminal book, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1977).
26. Maxine L. Margolis, True to Her Nature: Changing Advice to American Women (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland

Press, Inc., 2000).
27. “Beginning in the late 19th century, southern states codify a system of laws and practices to subordinate African

Americans to whites. The ‘new’ social order, reinforced through violence and intimidation, affects schools, public transportation,
jobs, housing, private life and voting rights. Cutting across class boundaries, Jim Crow unites poor and wealthy whites, while
denying African Americans equality in the courts, freedom of assembly and movement, and full participation as citizens. The
federal government adopts segregation under President Wilson in 1913, and is not integrated until the 1960s.” Public
Broadcasting Corporation, “1887: Jim Crow Segregation Begins,” Race: The Power of an Illusion 2003,
www.pbs.org/race/003_RaceTimeline/003_01-timeline.htm (June 30, 2010).
28. William Graham Sumner, Folkways (New York: Ginn, 1906).
29. See Nyla R. Branscombe, Michael T. Schmitt, and Kristin Schiffhauer, “Racial Attitudes in Response to Thoughts of

White Privilege,” European Journal of Social Psychology 37, no. 2 (March–April 2007): 203–15.
30. Zeus Leonardo, “The Color of Supremacy: Beyond the Discourse of ‘White Privilege,’” in Foundations of Critical Race
Theory in Education, eds. Edward Taylor, David Gillborn, and Gloria Ladson-Billings (New York: Routledge, 2009), 261–76.
31. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,

1963).
32. Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” in Race, Class, & Gender: An Anthology, 6th

ed., eds. Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2007), 98–102.
33. Tim Wise, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Soft Skull Press, 2005), 170.
34. Laurie T. O’Brien, Alison Blodorn, AnGelica Alsbrooks, Reesa Dube, Glenn Adams, and Jessica C. Nelson,

“Understanding White Americans’ Perceptions of Racism in Hurricane Katrina-Related Events,” Group Processes &
Intergroup Relations 12, no. 4 (July 2009): 431–44.
35. McIntosh, “White Privilege.”
36. Laurie T. O’Brien, Christian S. Crandall, April Horstman-Reser, Ruth Warner, AnGelica Alsbrooks, and Alison Blodorn,

“But I’m No Bigot: How Prejudiced White Americans Maintain Unprejudiced Self-Images,” Journal of Applied Social
Psychology 40, no. 4 (April 2010): 917–46.
37. O’Brien et al., “Understanding White.”
38. Joe R. Feagin, Hernán Vera, and Pinar Batur, White Racism, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 238.
39. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism.”
40. Glenn Adams, Laurie T. O’Brien, and Jessica C. Nelson, “Perceptions of Racism in Hurricane Katrina: A Liberation

Psychology Analysis,” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 6, no. 1 (December 2006): 215–35.
41. Raphael S. Ezekiel, “An Ethnographer Looks at Neo-Nazi and Klan Groups,” American Behavioral Scientist 46, no. 1

(September 2002): 51–71.
42. Jane Dickie, “The Unconscious Devil Within,” Church Herald: The Magazine of the Reformed Church in America 46,

no. 3 (March 1989): 12–15, 51.
43. Operario and Fiske, “Racism Equals Power Plus Prejudice,” 49.
44. Christian S. Crandall and Amy Eshleman, “A Justification-Suppression Model of the Expression and Experience of

Prejudice,” Psychological Bulletin 129, no. 3 (May 2003), 414–46.
45. Oliver Cromwell Cox, Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1948),

531.
46. Pat A. Bidol and Richard C. Weber, Developing New Perspectives on Race: An Innovative Multi-Media Social
Studies Curriculum in Race Relations for the Secondary Level (Detroit, Mich.: New Detroit, 1970).
47. Beverly Daniel Tatum, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”: And Other Conversations
about Race (New York: Basic, 2003).
48. Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege (San Francisco, Calif.: City

Lights, 2005), 9–10.
49. George J. Armelagos and Alan H. Goodman, “Race, Racism, and Anthropology,” in Building a New Biocultural
Synthesis: Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology, ed. Alan H. Goodman and Thomas L. Leatherman (Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1998), 359–77, 372.
50. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).
51. Douglas A. Bernstein, Louis A. Penner, Alison Clarke-Stewart, and Edward J. Roy, Psychology, 6th ed. (Stamford,

Conn.: Cengage, 2008).
52. Michael Freeden, “Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?,” Political Studies 46, no. 4 (September 1998): 748–65.
53. See Janet E. Helms, “An Update of Helms’s White and People of Color Racial Identity Models,” in Handbook of
Multicultural Counseling, eds. Joseph G. Ponterotto, J. Manuel Casas, Lisa A. Suzuki, and Charlene M. Alexander (Thousand
Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, Inc., 1995): 181–98; and also Janet E. Helms, “Racial Identity and Racial Socialization as
Aspects of Adolescents’ Identity Development,” in Handbook of Applied Developmental Science: Promoting Positive
Child, Adolescent, and Family Development through Research, Policies, and Programs, Volume 1, eds. Richard M.
Lerner, Francine Jacobs, and Donald Wertlieb (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, Inc., 2003): 143–63.
54. Tatum, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”
55. Lillian Comas-Díaz, “Hispanics, Latinos, or Americanos: The Evolution of Identity,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic
Minority Psychology 7, no. 2 (May 2001): 115–20.
56. Comas-Díaz, “Hispanics, Latinos, or Americanos,” 116.
57. The term Hispanic was created in 1977 as a U.S. Census category. “In response to civil rights legislation, the federal

Office of Management and Budget issues Directive 15, creating standard government race and ethnic categories for the first
time. The categories are meant to aid agencies, but they are arbitrary, inconsistent, and based on varying assumptions. . . .
‘Hispanic’ reflects Spanish colonization and excludes non-Spanish parts of Central and South America. . . .” Public
Broadcasting Corporation, “1977: Government Defines Race/Ethnic Categories,” Race: The Power of an Illusion, 2003,
www.pbs.org/race/003_RaceTimeline/003_01-timeline.htm (June 30, 2010).
58. Randall Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), xv.
59. Kennedy, Nigger, xiii.
60. Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege (San Francisco, Calif.: City

Lights, 2005), 2–4.

CHAPTER TWO

Scientific Endeavors to Study Race

Race Is Not Rooted in Biology

Early research on race often focused on the shape of human skulls in an attempt to scientifically
classify distinct races. In 1775, anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach published the first
work distinguishing races of human beings based on physical features. While he focused on the
shape of the skull, he also analyzed shades of skin color and facial features, such as the shape
of the lips. He classified humans into five races: “Mongoloids, Malays, Ethiopians (Africans),
American Indians, and Caucasoids.”1
Today most researchers who study race argue that distinct racial categories such as those

created by Blumenbach do not adequately explain how humans vary from each other. Rather
than distinguishing separate groups, human variation is seen as a continuum.2
Blumenbach sought to apply scientific principles to his study of race, but his interest in

grouping humans into separate races was influenced by the prevailing ideologies of his culture
and his historical time that perceived humans from different continents as distinct from each
other.3 Another bias inherent in Blumenbach’s work was his association of Europeans as the
most beautiful of humans. The Public Broadcasting Corporation’s Race: The Power of an
Illusion notes: “Although [Blumenbach] opposes slavery, he maps a hierarchical pyramid of
five human types, placing ‘Caucasians’ at the top because he believes a skull found in the
Caucasus Mountains is the ‘most beautiful form . . . from which . . . the others diverge.’ This
model is widely embraced, and Blumenbach inadvertently paves the way for scientific claims
about white superiority.”4
More than a century of racially biased research succeeded Blumenbach’s racial

classifications before the first scientific publication directly challenged racist ideology in
1912. Franz Boas, a founder of anthropology in the United States, used measurements of the
skull to challenge racism based on biased research. In the early 1900s in the United States,
prejudice existed against immigrants from eastern and southern Europe as well as from Ireland.
These immigrants were assumed to be inferior to individuals from northwestern Europe. (In
chapter 3, we will discuss the complex racial experiences of Irish Catholic immigrants.)
Immigration laws in the United States favored individuals from northwestern Europe.
Researchers claimed evidence of inferiority of eastern and southern Europeans in the shapes of
their skulls. Based on the work of Blumenbach and others, certain shapes of the skull were
seen as ideal, while other shapes were devalued.5
Boas and his students studied how the environment influences the shape of human skulls.

While the prevailing view focused on the heredity of the shape of the skull, aspects of the

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environment such as nutrition and exposure to illness also influence the formation and shape of
the skull. Using scientific methodology, Boas and colleagues focused on families who had
immigrated to the United States. The researchers could predict differences in skull shape
between individuals who immigrated to the United States and their siblings who had been born
in the United States. This information that cranial shape differed within families was
“revolutionary” at a time when differences in skull shape were assumed to be stable and
distinct across races.6
The study of the interplay between heredity and the environment can also be discussed in

terms of nature and nurture. Using this terminology, nature focuses on genetic variations,
heredity, and how genes predict differences across individuals, such as differences in skull
shape, intelligence, or likelihood of disease. Genetic differences between individuals—
differences based on nature—will be consistent across those individuals’ lives and may be
passed on to future generations. Nurture looks to the environment to predict differences across
individuals. Nurture includes all environmental influences from the conception of a person and
throughout one’s life. Nurture consists of every influence of physical and social experience,
including nutrition, exposure to toxins and pathogens, the safety of one’s environment, and all
social interactions. Throughout this chapter, we will explore how nature and nurture have been
used to explain differences between racial groups, focusing particularly on intelligence and
disease.
Prior to the work of Boas, in the 1800s, there were two competing nature-based theories

about race. While the monogenists believed that all human races were parts of the same
species,7 the polygenists argued that different races were actually different species. The
polygenist perspective suggests that white people are human while other races are not truly
human. From the polygenist perspective, any discussion of human equality or human rights
applies only to whites. Such beliefs were normative in a political setting, such as that of the
United States, during a time of slavery and of savage mistreatment of indigenous populations.8
In 1849, Samuel George Morton, a physician and the leading proponent of the polygenist

perspective, sought to objectively analyze racial differences. Harvard University science
professor Stephen Jay Gould’s critical reanalysis in 1977 of Morton’s research reveals that
ideology unwittingly, but distinctly, biased the decisions Morton made regarding whom to
select for inclusion in his research and how to conduct the research. Although Morton believed
he had found definitive evidence of important physical differences between races, Gould’s
reanalysis reveals that Morton’s prejudiced approach accounts for the differences Morton
thought he found. In fact, using the same data—pieces of evidence—as Morton, Gould found
no racial differences.9
Starting from the biased perspective that only whites were fully human, Morton sought to

objectively measure differences between races. He collected skulls of whites, Blacks, Asians,
and Native Americans. He attempted to carefully measure the cranial capacity of the skulls,
which would yield an accurate measure of the size of the brain that once inhabited the skull. He
tried filling each skull with mustard seeds to then measure the cubic inches of space when the
seeds were transferred to another container, but he found that the measure lacked reliability.

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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When retesting a given skull, the volume of seeds could be notably different from one attempt
at measurement to another. He later settled on using lead shot, specifically the size known as
BBs. These small spheres were consistently one-eighth of an inch in diameter and yielded
higher reliability when retesting a given skull. Based on his clear communication of his
research decisions, Morton seemed to believe he was engaging in a carefully conducted
scientific endeavor.
Gould’s reanalysis of Morton’s work reveals, “. . . a series of unconscious yet systematic

errors in the way Morton collected skulls and analyzed their cranial volumes.”10 Morton
published enough detail regarding his data that Gould was able to detect the errors. If Morton
had been aware of his errors, it is difficult to believe that he would have provided others with
the details that would expose them.
Gould revealed multiple ways Morton biased his data to fit his ideology. Morton’s decisions

regarding which skulls to include in his study were inconsistent, especially in that he failed to
account for the relationship between body size and brain size. While a rhinoceros has a larger
brain than a human, the rhinoceros is not considered more intelligent. Humans with larger
bodies have larger cranial capacities without this predicting greater intelligence. Because of
average differences in body size, women tend to have smaller brains than men. For races of
color, Morton included a greater number of smaller skulls, such as skulls of women and
individuals from ethnic groups who tend to have smaller bodies. For example, when measuring
skulls of Native Americans, Morton included a larger number of skulls from Inca Peruvians,
who tend to have smaller brains, and a smaller number of skulls from Iroquois, who tend to
have larger brains. When measuring the cranial capacity of Caucasians, Morton revealed his
choice to exclude data from a number of available skulls of Northern Indian Hindus, who tend
to have smaller brains than other Caucasian groups. (Hindus have been classified as Caucasian
in only some contexts. When researching for this book, author Vijaya was fascinated to learn
that according to some, like Morton, she is Caucasian. She has certainly never been treated as
white. As described in chapter 8, in the 1930s the Supreme Court denied citizenship to Hindus
on the confusing basis that they were Caucasian, but not white.)
Gould uncovered errors Morton made in calculating the average cranial capacity for each

group. These errors helped Morton to rank the groups consistently with prevailing racist
beliefs. Ethnically biased beliefs about Caucasians during the time of Morton’s work would
rank Teutons (Germanic whites) and Anglo-Saxons (English whites)11 above Ashkenazi Jews,
who would be ranked above Hindus. Morton believed he found evidence of cranial differences
to support this ranking.12 Across races, Morton claimed to have found that Caucasians had
larger brains than Asians, whose brains were larger than Native Americans, whose brains
were larger than Blacks. Morton’s research was lauded in its day as objective evidence of
group differences, but Gould’s work reveals that the groups actually do not differ. Gould
challenges readers to consider how unconscious bias may influence many areas of science:
“For if scientists can be honestly self-deluded to Morton’s extent, then prior prejudice may be
found anywhere, even in the basics of measuring bones and toting sums.”13
We challenge you to read all research critically, exploring the possibility of bias, and to

consider who might benefit from the ways of thinking reflected in the research. Much like
Blumenbach’s work predating Morton and discussed above, Morton’s research reflected
common ways of thinking in mainstream Europe and the United States. Cultural materialism
provides a strong perspective by which we can critique both of these researchers. As defined
in chapter 1, cultural materialism reveals how the way individuals within a culture live and
meet their needs influences how they understand the world, including how they conceive of
race. The racist beliefs proposed by Blumenbach, Morton, and other European and European
American scientists sprang from a global context of imperialism by Europe and the United
States. Imperialism refers to foreign policies where one nation or area of the world acts
aggressively to take over and control the resources of other areas. In this case, the western
areas of the globe in Europe—and eventually England’s former colony, the United States—
colonized and controlled, enslaved, or killed the people of those areas. (Please do see the
brief discussion of colonization in chapter 3.) Cultural materialism illuminates the racist ways
of thinking born from an imperialist economic order.

The Empirical Perspective
One of the authors of this textbook, Eshleman, strongly identifies with empiricism. Like all
three of the authors of this book, she is curious and engaged with ideas. The empirical method
for seeking answers to her questions provides a systematic set of rules and strategies based on
principles she deeply respects. To approach a research question empirically is to follow a set
of guidelines known as the scientific method. An empirical test of a research question requires
one to carefully observe evidence. One must be open-minded to ideas that are contradictory to
one’s own perspective while maintaining a healthy skepticism about one’s own expectations.14
Within the empirical method, scholars carefully describe their decisions regarding how to

conduct research. To illustrate the empirical approach, we will use evolutionary biologist R.
C. Lewontin’s classic 1972 study on human genetic diversity.15 The first step in an empirical
project is to frame one’s research question. A hypothesis—a testable prediction—should be
proposed such that the data—evidence—collected in a study will clearly support or refute the
hypothesis. While we do not believe it is possible for humans to approach any issue with true
objectivity, the empirical approach challenges researchers to share their approach with other
scholars. Ideally, different scholars will approach the same issue with distinct perspectives,
testing similar hypotheses in different ways. Disagreements between researchers about how to
study a research topic can enhance scholarship.
Lewontin sought to study genetic variation in humans. Specifically, he wanted to compare

variation between human groups to variation within groups. In other words, to explore the
extent of genetic difference between groups perceived as Asian and groups perceived as
European compared to the extent of genetic difference within Asians and within Europeans. He
acknowledges that scientific work on this issue has been influenced by ideology, noting that
changes in perspectives within evolutionary research on human groups “. . . have been in part a
reflection on the uncovering of new biological facts, but only in part. They have also reflected
general sociopolitical biases derived from human social experience and carried over into

‘scientific’ realms.”16 While researchers will not be able to identify all the ways they might be
biased, awareness of the potential for bias may lead researchers to communicate their
methodological decisions clearly so that another researcher, with a different set of biases,
might be able to identify flaws in a study.
To study genetic diversity across humanity, Lewontin selected samples from different

populations of humans. By carefully describing the choices he made, he allows other
researchers to critique his decisions or to replicate his work—repeating his procedures to
check whether similar results would be found.17 Lewontin clearly explains his decisions
regarding how to categorize race, noting that classifying humans into races is problematic: “No
one would confuse a Papuan aboriginal with any South American Indian, yet no one can give
an objective criterion for where a dividing line should be drawn in the continuum from South
American Indians through Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians, and Papuans.”18 The
concept of racial classification suggests that humans can be easily separated into distinct
groups, but Lewontin argues that observed physical differences within and across groups of
humans suggests a continuum of distinctions, rather than clear and separate groups.
One challenge to drawing lines around groups of humans and calling them different races is

that some groups are particularly difficult to classify. For example, Lewontin notes that the
Sami people19 of northern Europe, a nomadic group, are hard to assign to a race because a
focus on language suggests they should be classified as Asian, while a focus on physical
appearance is ambiguous because they share features with Asians and Europeans, and a focus
on genetic traits suggests consistency with Asians on some traits and with Europeans on other
traits.20
Lewontin carefully describes his decision to adhere to “classical racial grouping with a few

switches based on obvious total genetic divergence.”21 This results in seven “races,” but
Lewontin acknowledges that he might have drawn the lines between racial categories
differently. Do you agree with Lewontin’s classification of Belgians, Dutch, English, French,
Germans, Italians, Russians, and Welsh as “Caucasians”? What do you think of his
classification of Arabs, Egyptians, Hindi-speaking Indians, Irani, and Urdu-speaking Pakistani
as “Caucasians”? His category of “Black Africans” includes Gambians, Ghanaians, Kenyans,
and Liberians. It also includes Black Americans and Iraqi. We invite your perspective on each
of these “classic” categories of race. Lewontin uses the term “Mongoloids” to include groups
such as Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. After acknowledging the challenge of classifying the
Sami people, they are classified in the “Mongoloid” group, along with Turks. The remaining
“races” in the study were “South Asian Aborigines”; “Amerinds,” including among others
Apache, Chippewa, Eskimo, Maya, Pueblo, and Seminole; “Oceanians,” including among
others Easter Islanders, Fijians, Hawaiians, Papuans, and Tongans; and “Australian
Aborigines” (the only category without any subgroups).22 If you were asked to separate humans
into racial groups, how would you do so? Where would you fit Latina/os who are genetically
related to both the Spanish and Native American groups?
Focusing on seventeen genes (ABO blood proteins, Rh factor, and others), Lewontin clearly

explains how he used statistical techniques to seek an answer to the question, “How much of

human diversity between populations is accounted for by more or less conventional racial
classifications?”23 He tested whether classic racial categories are genetically different from
each other and found that only 6.3 percent of genetic variation between humans is accounted
for by race. Within a given group, such as the English, 85.4 percent of the diversity among
humans occurs. The greatest amount of genetic variability occurs within each of the groups.
The remaining 8.3 percent of variation occurred between groups that were classified together
into races.24 Lewontin concludes:
It is clear that our perception of relatively large differences between human races and subgroups, as compared to the
variation within these groups, is indeed a biased perception and that . . . human races and populations are remarkably similar
to each other, with the largest part by far of human variation being accounted for by the differences between individuals.25

The opening paragraph of the American Anthropological Association’s “Statement on
‘Race’” emphasizes this finding that there is greater genetic variation within human groups than
across human groups. Based on empirical evidence produced by Lewontin and by researchers
who conducted replications inspired by Lewontin’s research, the American Anthropological
Association has rejected race as a biological category.
Lewontin’s work provides a strong example of the empirical process. He carefully frames his

research question and transparently communicates his decisions regarding from whom and how
to collect, analyze, and interpret information. This is all communicated in a way that invites
criticism and replication of his work. Indeed, Lewontin’s work has been replicated multiple
times, yielding similar results across different researchers who have modified the procedure to
test for alternative explanations for Lewontin’s results. Across eight replications from
researchers working independently from Lewontin and testing different genetic markers, the
results repeatedly demonstrate that the greatest genetic differences are between individuals
within populations, with smaller differences occurring between groups that are classified
within the same race and between racial groups. The finding of greater diversity within races
than between races is upheld both when classical racial distinctions are used and when
researchers begin with genetic distinctions to try to classify distinct racial groups. After
reviewing Lewontin’s work and the replications of it, physical anthropologists Ryan A. Brown
and George J. Armelagos conclude, “. . . the amount of human genetic diversity that is
attributable to race is only about 5% to 10%.”26
Lewontin’s work has been highly influential in modern scholarship on race. Unfortunately,

biased research such as Morton’s flawed work on cranial capacity was also highly influential
in its time. All empiricists should be aware that the empirical method does not clearly reveal
what is true or what is false. Good empiricism requires that one keep the example of flawed
research in mind. One’s own work could also be revealed to have been foolish or even applied
in horrifyingly harmful ways.
Ideally, incorrect ideas will be ruled out: “Because scientists subject their propositions to

confirmation or disproof through empirical testing, science has the potential to be self-
correcting. It is assumed that the gradual accumulation of evidence from empirical research
will lead to the rejection of inaccurate conceptions and theories and to the construction and
refinement of better ones.”27 Anthropologist Alice Littlefield and colleagues note that this ideal

in empiricism is rare. Current culture, historical movements, and personal bias—all of which
often function outside of conscious awareness—affect empiricists’ choices of topic, approach
to asking questions, and readiness to accept others’ empirical work. For physical anthropology,
the termination of the concept of race as a biological category coincided with the civil rights
movement in the United States; the political movement prepared researchers to accept ongoing
scientific work that revealed that race was not viable as a biological category.
Empirical work, no matter how carefully designed, may be flawed because humans choose

what research questions to study and how to study them, including from whom to collect
information. Humans are influenced by pervasive ideologies in their culture that may lead to
faulty assumptions serving as the foundation for research.28

But Isn’t Race Clearly Rooted in Biology?
Why Do I Perceive Differences between Europeans, Asians, and Africans?
In 2001, Eshleman—a white woman—traveled in Europe with a good friend who is a Black
American woman and the friend’s first cousin, also a Black American woman. Eshleman’s
close friend has an appearance that one could argue is easily classified as being of African
descent, based on her deep brown skin tone and her choice to wear her hair in natural curls,
while her cousin may be difficult to quickly classify in terms of race based on her relatively
light skin tone and long, straight hair.
On a train traveling through Germany, a young, white German man from a small town

approached Eshleman’s friend and said words to the effect of “We have a Black woman in my
town.” He even shared the name of that woman. Eshleman’s friend responded politely but was
clearly surprised by this man’s declaration. Did he think that all Black people across the world
were socially connected to one another to the point of knowing all the other members of the
group by name? Her cousin was also disturbed by this exchange, but for a different reason. She
wondered why he had not addressed his statements to her as well as to her cousin, questioning
why he did not recognize them as the same race.
Shade of skin color, profile of nose, structure of eyes, shape of lips, texture and amount of

hair have been used to classify individuals in terms of race. Interestingly, these are the same
traits that are used to differentiate one person from another.29 These two women look distinctly
different from each other, yet they are considered to be the same race.
Clinical psychologist Marvin Zuckerman argues, “The answer to the question ‘What is race?’

seems simple to the layperson who makes judgments from prototypical images derived from
caricatures found in art, literature, and the media.”30 The man on the train focused his attention
on one Black woman who was prototypical of his concept of Black but ignored another Black
woman. Zuckerman challenges the concept of race as a biological category, noting that some
groups classified as Caucasian have darker skin than those classified as Black Africans.31 For
example, persons from India may have darker skin than individuals from Iraq. Historian Nell
Irvin Painter provides further evidence of the difficulty of defining race by physical features:
“We usually assume definitions of race as color to be straightforward, as though ‘black’
Americans were always dark-skinned.” Painter argues, “race as color and actual color of skin”

are not equivalent.32
People in the United States tend to perceive skin color as indicating distinct racial categories,

but an objective analysis of skin pigmentation reveals a continuum from pale to dark, rather
than distinct groups distinguished by color.33 Individuals tend to perceive different skin shades
for whites, Asians, or Blacks even when pigmentation is identical. Other indicators of race
such as shape of eyes and hair texture influence how skin color is perceived. Skin tone
distinctions between races can often be less distinct than the great diversity within a race. Two
white people may have remarkably different skin tones from each other, as may two African
American people.
Evolutionary biologist and African American studies scholar Joseph L. Graves Jr. notes,

“None of the physical features by which we have historically defined human races—skin color,
hair type, body stature, blood groups, disease prevalence—unambiguously corresponds to the
racial groups that we have constructed.”34 Within biology, “The term ‘race’ implies the
existence of some nontrivial underlying hereditary features shared by a group of people and not
present in other groups.”35 While such a biological definition of race has often been mistakenly
applied to humans, “. . . if race is defined as a population that has achieved the subspecies
level of genetic differentiation, no such divergence currently exists in our species.”36
In chapter 1, we explored different classes in feudal Europe being treated almost like

different species—the ruling class as one species while the peasant class would be a distinct
species. Given the biological definition of race, the different classes would have been
perceived as different races. Why would you or would you not perceive a king in England as a
different race than an English peasant who worked on the land owned by the king?
While there are certainly hereditary differences that occur in shades of skin tone, shapes of

facial features, hair texture and quantity, body shapes and sizes, and resistance or susceptibility
to disease, these hereditary differences are greater within groups classified as races than
across races. If we focus on all people who are Asian American, we will find great diversity
within the group on lightness to darkness of skin shade, shapes of noses or eyes, body
proportions, and health on many different variables.
Empirical work by anthropologists and biologists has convinced many researchers to reject

the concept of race as a biological category for humans. Indeed, today most researchers in
anthropology, biology, and sociology agree that race is not a biological category.
Anthropologists Littlefield and colleagues detailed the following major challenges to the
concept of race as biological.37

1. If race existed as a biological category, researchers should be able to clearly group
humans into distinct races based on biological criteria alone. Researchers should be able to
use a combination of dimensions to distinguish one race from another. Yet no such
combination—of shade of skin, hair texture, shape of eyes, body size, genetic blood markers,
or disease susceptibility—have clearly been able to distinguish races from each other as
distinctly different biological groups.38
2. Researchers may try to separate people into racial groups based on one hereditary
dimension (such as any of those listed above). If they then check to see if those groups are

also distinct on another dimension, the groups created with one biological marker do not
coincide with groups created from another biological marker. As Brown and Armelagos
explain, “A single trait such as skin color will result in a classification system that is easily
determined. Add another trait and classification becomes a more difficult task, and there
usually are groups that cannot be classified. As you increase the number of traits, the
problems in racial classification become insurmountable.”39
3. There are many human beings that do not fit into classic racial categories. Human groups
have shared genetic material by having children together for so many generations over the last
100,000 years that there are many people who cannot be classified according to race.40
4. Rather than distinct categories (e.g., white or Native American), human variation exists on
a continuum. Influential physical anthropologist Alan H. Goodman identifies, “Therefore,
there is no clear place to designate where one race begins and another ends.”41

We anticipate that challenging the concept of race as a biological category will be
disconcerting for some readers while it will comfortably fit the perspective of other readers.
Goodman recollects his first exposure to evidence that race is not a biological category, in

1973 in an anthropology course taught by physical anthropologist, George J. Armelagos.
I recollect that it made almost instant sense to me that human races are social constructions. . . . I had grown up in a
working-class family in a town composed mostly of second-generation immigrants from Italy and Ireland, and as a boy I
was aware of being perceived as Jewish and different from my Irish and Italian friends in some fundamental way. Yet
when I began attending a more diverse university, something striking happened: I became “White.” I was no longer
perceived as very distinct from other students of European descent.42

We invite you to reflect on how your personal experiences with race might influence your
reactions to the material in this chapter and throughout this text.

Using Cultural Materialism to Critique Eugenics and the Question of
Intelligence

As discussed in chapter 1, religion was once used to uphold the status quo. Science also has
been inappropriately used to “explain” why some people are on top and others deserve their
place at the bottom.
Cultural materialism offers a critical perspective by which we can evaluate eugenics, a

social and scientific movement in the United States and Europe popular in the late 1800s and
early 1900s. The eugenics movement was founded and supported by white elites and by
scientists and scientific research.43 (At that time, people considered white were primarily those
whose families came from England and northwest Europe.) Much like how the production of
“knowledge” and “truth” in feudal times was monopolized by aristocracy and the Church,
European and American elites monopolized the production and dissemination of scientific
“knowledge” in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And the knowledge they produced
benefited some—them—and harmed many, many others.
Elites used the “science” of eugenics to expose what they believed to be the inherent genetic

differences between different races. In other words, scientists in Europe and the United States
used eugenics to show that people inherited the supposed “characteristics” of their race and

social class. If one was a genius, one came from geniuses. If one was a criminal, one came
from criminals. And in this framework, geniuses were inevitably British, criminals and
“simpletons” always poor or of color. The eugenicists already “knew”—they believed they
knew—how things were in terms of race. They merely used the “science” of eugenics to
“prove” their—wrongheaded—thinking correct.
Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, invented the term eugenics in his 1883 book,
Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. By eugenics, Galton meant, “to describe
the application of scientific knowledge to stem the tide of racial deterioration and bring about
the perfection” of the British race.44 Galton, like many British and British American (also
called Anglo American) elites, believed that people understood to be of other racial groups—
including Jews, the Irish, Italians, and people from Africa, Asia, and the Americas—presented
a threat to the best, purest, smartest, strongest, and most civilized races—primarily themselves,
the British. Galton argued, “Human breeding could be systematically managed to ensure the
improvement of the British race, as well as other civilized peoples.”45
Galton believed objective scientists such as he could numerically measure differences

between races. And with this information, breeding policies could be implemented to support
the proliferation of the pure peoples (people like Galton) and to stem the growing populations
of impure peoples (people coming from backgrounds different from that of Galton and other
elites).
In a variety of venues, Galton managed to measure up a storm. He collected data on physical

characteristics such as height and weight. He gathered information on people’s medical
histories, and he even attempted to measure mental processes—“internal, subjective
experiences . . . sensations, perceptions, dreams, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.”46 Using the
immense amount of data he gathered, Galton leapt to interpret it in ways that fit his own racist
and classist philosophy. The logic was circular. Poor people were poor because they were
less fit than the middle and upper classes rather than because of a lack of economic and other
opportunities. And Black people were servile because they came from a race that is
genetically prone to slavery and servitude rather than because of a history of colonization,
slavery, and brutal oppression. After a trip to South Africa, Galton wrote, “These savages
court slavery. . . . They seem to be made for slavery, and naturally fall into its ways.”47 Graves
exposes Galton’s thinking on enslaved African Americans, noting, “In his zeal to classify
Africans as an inferior type, Galton failed to note or understand that most of the literature on
American slave intelligence was written by slaveholders.”48
Galton maintained a complete ignorance as to the actual lives, histories, and experiences of

the supposedly “unfit” that he studied. In other words, he was not interested in the ways
environment—nurture—influences people and their development, individually and culturally.
He never examined the brutality of colonization or slavery. Much like the nobility in feudal
Europe saw the situation of peasants as the will of God, Galton and other eugenicists argued
that the poor and non-Anglo lived as they did because of their own genetic makeup, or
biological nature. And the eugenicists called their thinking “scientific.”
Galton’s eugenics became a profoundly popular, international “scientific” movement, one that

reverberates through our society even today. In particular, we still struggle with the heritage of
the eugenic approach to intelligence. In 1905, a psychologist named Alfred Binet published an
article about his work on intelligence levels. From this work, a scale was developed on which
individuals could be ranked from “subnormal” to “very superior.”49 Binet did not argue that
intelligence was hereditary. Yet the eugenicists did. They jumped on his ideas and used them
for their own ends. For the eugenicists, intelligence was clearly an inherited characteristic.
Much like intelligence tests today, the early intelligence tests were highly problematic. For

one, they were deeply biased. Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen note that in a time when many
people, particularly poor people and marginalized groups like those of color and new
immigrants, had no electricity and thus knew very little about it, the test asked multiple-choice
questions like “The watt is used in measuring wind power, rainfall, water power, [or]
electricity?”50
The eugenicists categorized those who fell in the subnormal category as “feeble-minded.”

And they fine-tuned this category into “idiots,” “imbeciles,” and “morons.” Morons were the
high end, the smartest, of the feebleminded. They presented a special threat as “people who
were capable of entering into and functioning in mainstream society, often undetected, but
whose genetic flaws endangered the long-term vitality of the race.”51
Eugenicists recommended that supposedly feebleminded people be sterilized or isolated so

that they could not reproduce. Based on their (now understood to be completely bogus)
scientific studies, between “1907 and 1968, an estimated sixty thousand forced sterilizations
would take place in the United States.”52 Further, Ewen and Ewen note, “Eugenic sterilization
practices would also be exported to America’s new colonial holdings, most notably Puerto
Rico, where one-third of the female population was sterilized between 1920 and 1965.”53 And
in Germany, the Nazis revered the work of eugenicists. In 1934, they used it to justify the Third
Reich’s Sterilization Law and forced 350,000 unwilling people “under the surgeon’s knife.”54
In the United States and other places today, eugenicist ideas about intelligence grip and

influence us still. For example, in The Bell Curve, Harvard University psychologist Richard J.
Herrnstein and well-known conservative thinker and political scientist Charles Murray argued
in 1994 that intelligence is something we are born with (or without); it can be as measured
through intelligence tests like Binet’s; and it fundamentally shapes people’s lives. About this,
Halley argues that like the earlier eugenicists, “Herrnstein and Murray reify ‘intelligence’ by
assuming that it can be measured via intelligence tests.”55 This thinking “overlooks the fact that
intelligence tests are themselves a socially constructed artifact, not handed to us by God or
nature, but by psychometricians” such as Herrnstein and Murray.56 In this circular thinking,
“intelligence is that which is measured by . . . intelligence tests.”57 Yet in reality, as in the
example question above, instead of “intelligence,” intelligence tests might only measure things
such as how much access people have to resources like electricity.
Since The Bell Curve came out, innumerable studies have shown the book’s many mistakes in

and misuse of statistical data.58 There is, however, a deeper problem, one we examine again
and again in our book. As cultural materialists argue, the reason ideas such as those proposed
by eugenicists and later by Herrnstein and Murray keep deeply influencing our society is

because they justify and reinforce an extremely unequal and unfair material reality.
Much like the earlier eugenicists, completely ignoring historical and social evidence to the

contrary in addition to misreading and misusing statistical data, Herrnstein and Murray argued
that inequality happens in society due to a “fair process that sorts people out according to how
intelligent they are.”59 Like the earlier eugenicists, Herrnstein and Murray link their claims to
race (and in their case to gender). They argue that African Americans and Latina/os are “by
nature not as intelligent as whites; that is why they [do] less well economically, and that is why
little can or should be done about racial inequality.”60 Herrnstein and Murray base their claims
on the same old idea as the eugenicists, one born out of and supporting an economic reality that
greatly advantages some and deeply disadvantages others. According to this thinking, people
are rich (and white people are more likely to be rich) because they, the rich, are naturally
smarter than others, and people are poor (and they are more likely to be Black and Latina/o)
because they, the poor, are naturally dumber. In other words, this idea proposes that the
economic reality of inequality in our society is the way it is because it is natural.
In sharp contrast to the nature perspective on intelligence, including that of the eugenicists

and Herrnstein and Murray, innumerable studies indicate that nurture (or environment) shapes
intelligence. People’s intelligence varies based on the educational and nutritional resources
they have access to starting at a very young age. Studies even suggest that something as simple
as breast-feeding predicts intelligence and that breast-fed infants score better on intelligence
tests than formula-fed infants. Indeed, a Danish study concluded that the “longer infants are
breast-fed the higher they are likely to score on intelligence tests as adults.”61
In their important book on inequality, Claude S. Fischer and five other sociologists from the

University of California at Berkeley show that “even if intelligence exists, it is not a single,
unitary and fixed trait” as Herrnstein and Murray and the eugenicists assumed.62 Fischer and
colleagues illustrate that IQ or intelligence test scores “can, and have, historically changed
over time. Fischer et al. point to eastern and southern European immigrants whose test scores
were below average when first arriving” in the United States around 1900.63 Many saw this as
a sign that the new immigrants were less fit than the Anglo American middle and upper class.
“Yet a couple of generations later, the test scores of the new groups had risen dramatically,
matching or exceeding those of earlier-arriving white Americans.”64 A couple of generations of
this group living in the United States and gaining access to greater resources, nutrition, and
education and becoming insiders to the mainstream culture meant a significantly higher level of
intelligence, as measured by IQ tests. If intelligence truly were hereditary, these groups’
intelligence would have remained essentially the same over time.
The test scores of African Americans and Latina/os have also risen with access to greater

resources, but continued inequality continues to predict lower scores for these groups. African
Americans and Latina/os today “tend to score lower than do whites on standardized tests.”65
Unlike the European immigrants whose scores increased from below average to reach the level
of mainstream white Americans over two or three generations, Black and Latina/o scores have
not risen at the same pace. Inequality explains this discrepancy. While European immigrants
have gained equality within a few generations of arriving in the United States, Black and

Latina/o immigrants have been largely excluded in our society. As Fischer and colleagues
argue, “A racial or ethnic group’s position in society determines its measured intelligence
rather than vice versa.”66 In other words, a group’s average IQ scores measure the extent to
which that group has gained equality in the United States rather than the group’s actual level of
intellectual ability.
Historically and today, this phenomenon can be seen in innumerable societies. As discussed

above, Jews, Irish, and Italians in the United States became white and gained equality, and
their scores rose. And Koreans in Japan,
who are of the same “racial” stock as Japanese and who in the United States do about as well academically as Americans
of Japanese origin (that is, above average), are distinctively “dumb” in Japan. The explanation cannot be racial, nor even
cultural in any simple way. The explanation is that Koreans, whose nation was a colony of Japan for about a half-century,
have formed a lower-caste group in Japan.67

In particular, Fischer and colleagues argue that groups in an inferior position because of
“conquest or capture (e.g., the Irish in Great Britain, Maori in New Zealand, Africans,
Mexicans, and Indians in the United States) . . . suffer the most drastic and lasting effects of
subordination.”68 Fischer and colleagues claim that these subordinate groups face
socioeconomic deprivation (to be discussed further in chapters 5 and 7), segregation (to be
discussed further in chapters 5, 6, and 7), and a stigma of inferiority (to be discussed further in
chapter 6). As groups overcome these effects of subordination, their standardized
(intelligence) test scores rise.69
The fact that “in the early part of the twentieth century northern blacks did better in school

than did most white immigrant groups”70 exemplifies how the position of a group in society
determines the group’s test scores. In the early twentieth century, when African Americans
living in the northern United States experienced a similar level of equality compared to new
European immigrants, Black students performed better than the new immigrants in school. And
today Black test scores are rising as African Americans overcome the effects of subordination
(in spite of ongoing and profound racism and discrimination, as will be discussed in later
chapters). Indeed, in his research on standardized test scores, Jonathan Crane found that
observed underperformance of Black students in comparison to white students in math and
reading can be accounted for by equality-based variables such as income of the child’s family
and the wealth of the mother’s peers when she was in school. When Crane compared Black
and white students whose family lives were very similar, he found that their test scores were
similar.

Interpreting Empirical Evidence
In addition to the risk of bias seeping into research based on the way data are collected, the
interpretation of results can introduce bias. When eugenicist Charles Benedict Davenport found
evidence that Black Americans outperformed whites on a test of numerical calculations, he
perceived this as evidence of the intellectual inferiority of Blacks, downplaying the skill with
which Blacks performed better than whites. One may wonder what conclusion Davenport
would have made if the data were in the opposite direction, if whites had performed better than

Blacks on the same test. If one would interpret any finding as fitting one’s preconceived
notions, the interpretation becomes meaningless.71
Information can be interpreted in drastically divergent ways by different researchers. For

example, Elisha Harris, a white physician working in the late 1800s, was deeply concerned
about environmental conditions connected to poverty and crime. Harris appointed Richard
Louis Dugdale, who shared an interest in sociology, to study a white family from Ulster
County, New York. The family, given the pseudonym “the Jukes,” was believed to have an
unusual number of persons convicted of crime, of impoverished individuals seeking social
services, and of people engaging in behavior that was considered sexually promiscuous by the
standards of the time. Geneticist Elof Axel Carlson describes Dugdale’s 1875 publication, in
which Dugdale interpreted the information he collected as evidence of “a bad environment” for
the members of the Juke family, interpreting the data in terms of nurture.72 He argued that the
experiences of this family, including a lack of appropriate social support systems, was
responsible for their troubles. Further, he argued that the state of New York should invest in
higher-quality housing and enhanced education, suggesting that failure to provide adequate
resources was costly in terms of funding court fees and prisons when problems later arose.
Interestingly, others dramatically reinterpreted the problems of the Juke family in terms of

nature. In 1916, eugenicist Arthur H. Estabrook claimed that the pattern of criminal conviction,
poverty, and expression of sexuality within the Juke family provided evidence of a hereditary
flaw inherited through genes.73 From the perspective of eugenics, investing more in social
support would be worthless if problems are caused by genes rather than the environment.
(Eugenicists would prefer government spending to focus on sterilization of the downtrodden
and special opportunities for elites.) Notably, subsequent analyses of the Juke family have
revealed a number of upstanding citizens within the family, calling the data themselves—not
just the opposing interpretations—into question.74

Correlation Does Not Reveal Causation
Focusing on the original data that the members of the extended Juke family were found to be
more likely to have social problems, we cannot conclude from these data that the cause is
clearly an aspect of nurture or that it is clearly nature. Setting aside for a moment that the data
themselves may have been flawed, these data are correlational. A correlation is a relationship
between one dimension of interest (one variable) and a second dimension of interest (a second
variable) that allows us to make predictions.
Turning to an example previously used in this chapter, Galton argued that Black people were

servile because their race was genetically prone to servitude. Here Galton claimed to have
observed a correlation between race and level of servitude. Galton might have described the
variable of race as having several classifications, including Black, white, Asian, and
American Indian. He might have ranked servitude from high levels to low levels.
While correlational data allow prediction, one cannot determine cause or effect from

correlational data. Correlation does not reveal causation. In Galton’s time, he would have
been able to predict with some consistency how servile someone would act toward him based
on his assumptions about the person’s race. If he interacted with an enslaved Black person in

the United States, Galton would be likely to observe a high level of servitude. If he interacted
with a free white person, he would be likely to observe less servitude. In this example, our
modern perspective helps us to see the bias in Galton’s claim that Blacks were naturally more
servile. Galton clearly failed to account for the variables of slavery (and how it was
confounded with race) and of oppression (and how it was confounded with slavery).
Social psychologists Bernard E. Whitley and Mary E. Kite identify why correlation is

insufficient to reveal causation.75 While three criteria must be present to claim that one variable
has caused a change in another variable, correlation always fails to meet the third required
criterion. The first criterion necessary to claim causation is covariation—differences in the
first variable must be accompanied by changes in the second variable. Correlation meets the
criterion of covariation. In our example, covariation would mean that races would be observed
to have different levels of servitude.
The second criterion for causation is that the cause must occur prior to the effect. While this

can sometimes be determined for correlational data, it is often difficult to determine because
many correlational studies measure both variables at the same time. In our example, Galton
observed races as he understood them at the same time as observing level of servitude.
Because Galton did not examine evidence of levels of servitude among races prior to
colonization or systems of slavery, he cannot conclude which variable might have preceded the
other.
The third criterion for causation is that one must be able to rule out other possible causes of

the relationship between the two variables of interest. In correlational research, the researcher
simply measures the variables of interest without controlling how one variable may influence
another. Therefore, other possible causes cannot be eliminated with correlational research.
The experimental method is the only technique that allows a researcher to control one variable
—an independent variable—to see the effect it may have on a second variable—a dependent
variable.
We are dumbfounded that Galton failed to consider the brutal oppression that accompanied

colonization and slavery. Focusing on oppression could explain why there appeared to Galton
to be differences in servitude related to race. Correlational data can never rule out all the
possible alternative causes that could explain the relationship between two variables because
the researchers lack the control that is necessary to eliminate other explanations. This is why
correlation does not reveal causation.76
All data used by eugenicists will be correlational because researchers will not be able to

ethically or realistically control heredity for human groups. An experimental design that would
allow a test of genes as a causal variable could only occur in a horrifying scenario in which
humans were bred for specific genes. (Although breeding plans of elites with elites were a
goal of the eugenics movement, it is unconscionable to imagine conducting a human experiment
based on selective breeding.) Alternatively, researchers can ethically study certain nurture-
based hypotheses, studying how controlled changes to specific elements of the environment
affect behavior. Returning to the example of the Juke family, Dugdale called for prison reform
so that individuals convicted of crime would be rehabilitated and less likely to engage in

further crime. One can imagine an ethical nurture-based hypothesis in which some prison
inmates would be given access to vocational education while others would be given access to
literacy-based education. In a true experiment, rather than a correlational study, researchers
could examine the impact of the type of educational opportunity on recidivism, the likelihood
of inmates returning to criminal activity.
Science is often treated like proven fact. Scientists are humans who are influenced by cultural

understandings, personal experiences, and social ideology. They seek to provide objective
evidence, but they may unintentionally engage in biased evaluation of data. No matter how
carefully one tries to frame a research question objectively, one might act in biased ways.77 We
challenge you to think critically about how and by whom research questions are framed, how
information is collected, from whom information is collected, and how information is
interpreted.
Although some scientific work has promoted racism, science also has been valuable in

critiquing racism and promoting greater social justice across races. Through empirical work,
modern researchers have been able to explain that race is a social and cultural concept, not a
biological category.

Studying Racial Health Disparities: How the Social Construct of Race
Influences Biology

In the United States today, a racial disparity exists in rates of multiple health problems,
including cardiovascular disease, specific cancers, and diabetes.78 (See box 2.1 at the end of
the chapter for a description of sickle cell disease as a historical case of biased racial
thinking.) Whites are less likely to experience each of these health problems than are Black
Americans. Given that there is greater genetic diversity among whites and among Blacks than
there is genetic difference between these groups, nature fails to provide a strong explanation
for the health disparity. Alternatively, if one focuses on nurture when seeking an explanation,
one may look at environmental variables that tend to differ by racial groups, such as likelihood
of experiencing poverty,79 exposure to environmental toxins,80 nutrition based on the quality of
produce in grocery stores located within neighborhoods,81 and availability of park spaces
perceived as safe places for exercise.82 Socioeconomic class better predicts disease than does
race.83
Sociologist Michael S. Kimmel argues that a perspective focusing on nurture will explore

how different environmental experiences create unequal situations. His criticism of the nurture
perspective is that it does not focus appropriately on inequality as the cause of the differences
between groups.84 The unfair advantages that whites as a group experience in the United States
in comparison to Black Americans create different economic opportunities, safer
environments, better access to quality nutrition, and more opportunities for healthy physical
activity. While the nurture perspective will simply list the disparities, in the following chapter
we will further explore the theory of social construction, which focuses on how inequality
creates difference. Rather than simply cataloguing disparities, focusing on injustice is more
likely to lead to appropriate calls for social action.85

Anthropologist Clarence C. Gravlee advocates for a focus on social inequalities. While
emphasizing that race is not a genetic category, Gravlee challenges readers to consider “. . .
how racial inequality becomes embodied—literally—in the biological well-being of
racialized groups and individuals.”86 There are biological consequences to the unequal
treatment of groups that are socially understood as races in the United States. Individual
experiences of discrimination87 and institutionalized racism predict greater health problems.88
For example, institutionalized racism predicts the greater likelihood of landfills and other toxic
spaces being located closer to neighborhoods traditionally inhabited by African Americans
than by whites.89 Larger historical and political events also predict health disparities. For
example, epidemiology scholar Diane S. Lauderdale found that women in California with
Arabic names (but not other women) were more likely to experience health problems when
giving birth in the six months following September 11, 2001, compared to the six months that
preceded the attack.90 We invite you to consider other major events that could predict
differential health outcomes based on discrimination.
Race is not a biological category, yet the impact of political, historical, cultural, and

environmental events that target specific populations do influence biology. For example,
Ashkenazi Jewish women who have a specific mutation on a gene thought to suppress tumors
are more likely to develop breast cancer. In a 1999 study, a comparison sample of British
women with the same mutation who were not Ashkenazi Jews were no more likely to develop
breast cancer than women without the mutation. If we recognize that race is not biological, we
will seek an explanation based on how culture, history, or environment may have affected this
gene’s relationship with disease in different groups. Graves argues that the Holocaust limited
genetic diversity among Ashkenazi Jewish people. This mutation may predict breast cancer
similarly in any group exposed to such genetic trauma.91
When comparing Ashkenazi Jews to a group that has not experienced a catastrophe such as

the Holocaust, we may be viewing the effects of horrifying political decisions that eliminated
over 60 percent of the people in a genetic pool (in 1933, an estimated 9.5 million Jews were
living in Europe;92 5,721,000 of these individuals were murdered in the Holocaust).93 Graves
notes, “The problem is that many biomedical researchers and clinicians are still working under
the yoke of the biological race concept. Hence, they see all biological differences between and
within populations as potentially due to racial genetic composition.”94 If research begins with
an incorrect assumption that race is genetic, researchers may fail to seek cultural, historical,
political, or environmental explanations that could lead to a better understanding of how
disease affects all humans.

Conclusion
Contrary to much past and present popular thinking, we now understand that race is not
biological. Further we see that “western attempts to [examine, measure, and quantify human
biological diversity] have historically been both motivated by racist social agendas and
infused throughout with racist ideology.”95 Yet this does not mean there is no such thing as race.
Indeed, race exists and profoundly shapes our lives. As Goodman claims, race “is not

biologically based; rather, it is social with biological consequences.”96 Race is, as we argue in
the following chapter, socially constructed. And because of its powerful influence, it is deeply
important that we recognize race and understand its impact on us as individuals and as a
society.

Box 2.1

Sickle Cell Disease: Biased Assumptions about Race
Imagine that you were a researcher in the 1920s in the United States studying sickle cell disease, a hereditary blood disorder in
which a double-recessive pairing of a section of one gene causes the shape of red blood cells to obstruct the flow of blood,
leading to injuries of the lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and eyes.1 The initial cases of sickle cell disease were observed in African
Americans. You, like other researchers at the time, perceived race as a clear and important biological category and therefore
followed the lead of other researchers in understanding sickle cell disease as linked to this biological concept of race, as a
disease that affects people from Africa. Then you were confused when people of Greek descent were also diagnosed with the
disease—surely these individuals must have some African heritage if they are found to have a racial disease that affects
Africans.2
The initial, and highly influential, claim that sickle cell disease was a racial disease was based on only four observed cases of

the disease. The researchers at the time believed race was biological—after all, they might argue they could clearly perceive
racial differences between whites and Blacks and Asians. They perceived evidence of a newly discovered disease with cases
in only four Black Americans as sufficient evidence that the disease was racial. (By common standards in medical research
today, grounding such a claim on only four cases would be considered ludicrous.)3
In the late 1940s Anthony Allison, a British student in his twenties, was studying the sciences before beginning his medical

training. Allison had grown up in Kenya and sought to become a physician and return to the land of his childhood. In 1949, he
traveled with a team to Kenya to research genetic traits related to malaria—a potentially lethal parasitic disease carried by
mosquitoes. The researchers discovered that in regions affected by malaria, 20 percent to 30 percent of individuals carried the
gene for sickle cell disease. Interestingly, in other areas of Kenya that were not affected by malaria, not even 1 percent of
individuals carried the gene.4
Today researchers understand sickle cell disease to be related to malaria resistance. Individuals who inherit the gene that

produces the sickle cell protein from one parent, but not the other, are resistant to malaria without experiencing sickle cell
disease.5 When individuals inherit the gene that produces the sickle cell protein from both parents, they are also resistant to
malaria but suffer from sickle cell disease.
Physical anthropologist Frank B. Livingstone’s research on sickle cell disease and malaria helped to develop a theory that

sickle cell disease was not linked to race but to natural selection within environments where malaria was a threat. Livingstone
studied land in equatorial Africa where tropical forests had been cleared for agriculture. The human alterations of the land
created areas where water pooled and mosquitoes flourished. Individuals who were resistant to malaria because they were
heterozygous for the sickle cell gene had an advantage of being resistant to the potentially deadly parasitic disease while not
suffering from sickle cell disease. Given that such individuals were more likely to survive, they were also more likely to have
children and to pass on the sickle cell gene.6 Modern research reveals that the sickle cell gene is more common in places where
the risk of malaria is high, including areas of southern Europe, the Middle East, and southern Asia.7

Notes
1. American Anthropological Association, “Race: Are We So Different?” www.understandingrace.org/humvar/sickle_02.html

(June 17, 2010).
2. Melbourne Tapper, In the Blood: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 1998).
3. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 142–43.
4. Larsen, Our Origins, 85–86.
5. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 143.
6. Larsen, Our Origins, 103–6.
7. American Anthropological Association, “Race: Are We So Different?”

Discussion Questions
1. List and evaluate multiple explanations for why race is not a biological category. Explore
how your personal experiences with race may have influenced your reaction to the evidence
that race is not based on genes.
2. How did Franz Boas’s research on the skulls of immigrants and their children challenge
racism?
3. Define nature and nurture. How have nature and nurture been used to interpret evidence
about intelligence of different racial groups? What biases have occurred in attempts to
scientifically study intelligence?
4. What biases were present in Morton’s analysis of cranial capacity? Explore the possible
role of ideology in Morton’s work. How did Gould expose Morton’s bias?
5. What did Lewontin’s research reveal about human genetic variation and race?
6. How has science been used to justify social inequality? Describe the eugenics movement.
What were the goals of the movement? What social policies did the movement promote?
How was the movement connected to racism?
7. Why does correlation not reveal causation? Choose an example of correlational research
from this chapter. Explore how nature or nurture could be used to suggest a causal
explanation for the evidence in the study. How do competing explanations relate to the
inability to conclude causation from correlational research?
8. If race is not genetic, how can race become embodied? Explore Gravlee’s argument and
connect it to the evidence on sickle cell disease.
9. The website for the Public Broadcasting Corporation’s (PBS’s) Race: The Power of an
Illusion includes a number of activities that challenge the concept of human races as
biological. The website can be found at www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm.
One exercise invites participants to sort twenty people into racial categories:
www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm. After doing the activity, reflect on
the extent to which the activity confirmed or disconfirmed the arguments and evidence in this
chapter.
10. Read the American Anthropological Association Statement on “Race”
www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm. Respond to the way the statement (a) describes research
such as that of Lewontin, (b) explains the ambiguity of racial groups, (c) describes the role of
inequality in attempts to understand race as biological, and (d) notes the roles of nature and
nurture in descriptions of differences among human groups.
11. Interview someone whose racial interactions in childhood or adolescence were different
from your own. If you were raised in a town that was fairly racially homogenous, seek out
someone whose high school was more diverse than yours. If you had the experience of being
perceived by others as being racially distinct, interview someone whose race did not
distinguish him or her.

Notes
1. Clark Spencer Larsen, Our Origins: Discovering Physical Anthropology (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008),

121. See also Joseph L. Graves Jr., The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002).
2. Alan H. Goodman, “Why Genes Don’t Count (for Racial Differences in Health),” American Journal of Public Health 90,

no. 11 (November 2000): 1699–700.
3. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 40.
4. Public Broadcasting Corporation, “1776: Birth of ‘Caucasian,’” Race: The Power of an Illusion, 2003,

www.pbs.org/race/003_RaceTimeline/003_01-timeline.htm (June 30, 2010).
5. George J. Armelagos and Alan H. Goodman, “Race, Racism, and Anthropology,” in Building a New Biocultural
Synthesis: Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology, eds. Alan H. Goodman and Thomas L. Leatherman (Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1998), 359–77, 362–63.
6. Clarence C. Gravlee, H. Russell Bernard, and William R. Leonard, “Boas’s Changes in Bodily Form: The Immigrant Study,

Cranial Plasticity, and Boas’s Physical Anthropology,” American Anthropologist 105, no. 2 (June 2003): 331.
7. In the 1996 statement of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists on “Biological Aspects of Race,” the

monogenist perspective is clearly stated, see American Association of Physical Anthropologists, “AAPA Statement on
Biological Aspects of Race,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 101, no. 4 (December 1996): 569–70.
8. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), 71.
9. Gould, Mismeasure of Man.
10. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 46.
11. William H. Mace and Edwin P. Tanner, The Story of Old Europe and Young America (New York: Rand McNally &

Company, 1915), 142–45.
12. Gould, Mismeasure of Man, 86.
13. Gould, Mismeasure of Man, 88.
14. Paul C. Cozby, Methods in Behavioral Research, 10th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009), 4–6.
15. R. C. Lewontin, “Apportionment of Human Diversity,” Evolutionary Biology 6 (1972): 381–98.
16. Lewontin, “The Apportionment,” 381.
17. Lewontin, “The Apportionment,” 383–85.
18. Lewontin, “The Apportionment,” 385.
19. While Lewontin used the now derogatory term “Lapps,” we have chosen to describe this group as the Sami people. See

the Minnesota State University Mankato electronic museum website for a brief description of the Sami people.
www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/europe/lapps.html (June 18, 2010).
20. Lewontin, “The Apportionment,” 385.
21. Lewontin, “The Apportionment,” 386.
22. Lewontin, “The Apportionment,” 387.
23. Lewontin, “The Apportionment,” 386.
24. Lewontin, “The Apportionment,” 396.
25. Lewontin, “The Apportionment,” 397.
26. Ryan A. Brown and George J. Armelagos, “Apportionment of Racial Diversity: A Review,” Evolutionary Anthropology

10, no. 1 (February 2001): 34–40.
27. Alice Littlefield, Leonard Lieberman, and Larry T. Reynolds, “Redefining Race: The Potential Demise of a Concept in

Physical Anthropology,” Current Anthropology 23, no. 6 (December 1982): 641–55.
28. For a brilliant critique of social scientific methodology, and in particular, ethnography, please do see Patricia Ticineto

Clough’s The End(s) of Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1998).
29. Lewontin, “The Apportionment,” 382.
30. Marvin Zuckerman, “Some Dubious Premises in Research and Theory on Racial Differences: Scientific, Social, and

Ethical Issues,” American Psychologist 45, no. 12 (December 1990): 1297.
31. Zuckerman, “Some Dubious Premises,” 1298.
32. Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), ix.
33. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 29.
34. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 5.
35. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 5.
36. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 6.
37. Littlefield et al., “Redefining Race,” 646.
38. See also American Anthropological Association, “American Anthropological Association Statement on ‘Race,’” American
Anthropological Association 1998, www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm (July 1, 2010).
39. Brown and Armelagos, “Apportionment of Racial Diversity,” 34.

40. Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics Working Group, “The Use of Racial, Ethnic, and Ancestral Categories in Human Genetics
Research,” American Journal of Human Genetics 77, no. 4 (October 2005): 519–32.
41. Goodman, “Why Genes Don’t Count,” 1700.
42. Goodman, “Why Genes Don’t Count,” 1699.
43. Robert V. Guthrie, Even the Rat Was White: A Historical View of Psychology, 2nd ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2004), 43.
44. Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen, Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality (New York: Seven

Stories Press, 2006), 269.
45. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 269.
46. David Myers, Psychology, 9th ed. (New York: Worth Publishers, 2010), 6.
47. Francis Galton quoted in Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 270.
48. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 96–97.
49. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 285.
50. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 303.
51. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 285.
52. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 299.
53. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 299.
54. Ewen and Ewen, Typecasting, 299.
55. Jean Halley, “Book Review of Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth” in Theoretical Criminology

(1998), 136.
56. Halley, “Book Review of Inequality by Design,” 136.
57. Halley, “Book Review of Inequality by Design,” 136.
58. Claude S. Fischer, Michael Hout, Martin Sanchez Jankowski, Samuel R. Lucas, Ann Swidler, and Kim Voss, Inequality
by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 10.
59. For more information on the misuse of statistics and data in Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve:
Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), please do see, for example, Fischer
et al., Inequality by Design.
60. Fischer et al., Inequality by Design, 6.
61. Jean Halley, Boundaries of Touch: Parenting and Adult-Child Intimacy (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007),

6. For analysis of the complex relationships among race, social class, breast-feeding, and intelligence, please do see Jean
Halley’s Boundaries of Touch.
62. Halley, “Book Review of Inequality by Design,” 136.
63. Halley, “Book Review of Inequality by Design,” 136.
64. Fischer et al., Inequality by Design, 190.
65. Fischer et al., Inequality by Design, 172.
66. Fischer et al., Inequality by Design, 173.
67. Fischer et al., Inequality by Design, 172.
68. Fischer et al., Inequality by Design, 173.
69. Fischer et al., Inequality by Design, 172–203.
70. Fischer et al., Inequality by Design, 180.
71. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 123.
72. Elof Axel Carlson, The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (Woodbury, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001),

168.
73. Arthur H. Estabrook, The Jukes in 1915 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916).
74. Scott Christianson, “Bad Seed or Bad Science: The Story of the Notorious Jukes Family,” New York Times, February 8,

2003, www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/arts/08JUKE.html (June 29, 2010).
75. Bernard E. Whitley and Mary E. Kite, The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.:

Wadsworth, 2009), 49–50.
76. Empiricists focus on the experimental method as the only research technique with the potential of revealing cause and

effect. We have elected not to delve into research methodology of our three disciplines in this text, but we strongly encourage
students to explore the research methodologies used in the fields they study.
77. John Shaughnessy, Eugene Zechmeister, and Jeanne Zechmeister, Research Methods in Psychology, 8th ed. (New York:

McGraw-Hill, 2008).
78. Clarence C. Gravlee, “How Race Becomes Biology: Embodiment of Social Inequality,” American Journal of Physical
Anthropology 139, no. 1 (February 2009): 47–57.
79. See chapter 5 for evidence supporting this claim.

80. Bunyan I. Bryant and Paul Mohai, Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 1992).
81. Shannon N. Zenk, Amy J. Schulz, Teretha Hollis-Neely, Richard T. Campbell, Nellie Holmes, Gloria Watkins, Robin

Nwankwo, and Angela Odoms-Young, “Fruit and Vegetable Intake in African Americans: Income and Store Characteristics,”
American Journal of Preventive Medicine 29, no. 1 (July 2005): 1–9.
82. Dawn K. Wilson, Karen A. Kirtland, Barbara E. Ainsworth, and Cheryl L. Addy, “Socioeconomic Status and Perceptions

of Access and Safety for Physical Activity,” Annals of Behavioral Medicine 28, no. 1 (August 2004): 20–28.
83. Armelagos and Goodman, “Race, Racism, and Anthropology,” 370.
84. Michael S. Kimmel, The Gendered Society, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
85. Kimmel, The Gendered Society.
86. Gravlee, “How Race Becomes Biology,” 47.
87. See also Louis A. Penner, John F. Dovidio, Donald Edmondson, Rhonda K. Dailey, Tsveti Markova, Terrance L. Albrecht,

and Samuel L. Gaertner, “The Experience of Discrimination and Black-White Health Disparities in Medical Care,” Journal of
Black Psychology 35, no. 2 (May 2009): 180–203.
88. Gravlee, “How Race Becomes Biology,” 52.
89. Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, 3rd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview

Press, 2000.)
90. Diane S. Lauderdale, “Birth Outcomes for Arabic-Named Women in California Before and After September 11,”
Demography 43, no. 1 (February 2006): 185–201.
91. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 186.
92. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Jewish Population of Europe in 1933: Population Data by Country,”
Holocaust Encyclopedia 2010, www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005161#RelatedArticles (June 22, 2010).
93. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 139.
94. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 174.
95. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 8.
96. Goodman, “Why Genes Don’t Count,” 1699.

CHAPTER THREE

Race and the Social Construction of Whiteness

In Gregory Howard Williams’s extraordinary memoir, Life on the Color Line: The True Story
of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black, Williams offers a powerful account of race in
America. Williams was born in the southern United States and raised until ten years of age as
white, the child of a white mother and supposedly white father. Williams grew up thinking his
father’s “deeply tanned” skin, “heavy lips and dark brown eyes” came from his Italian
heritage.1
At around nine years of age, Williams’s family’s fortune took a turn for the worse. They lost

their restaurant and with it, their income. At this point, Williams’s mother left his alcoholic and
physically abusive father. She took the two youngest children with her and abandoned the two
older children, Williams and his brother, Mike. Williams and his brother traveled with his
father to the northern town of Muncie, Indiana, to live with his father’s family, ostensibly until
they got on their feet again. As they traveled, Williams’s father, James A. “Buster” Williams,
stunned his two sons. He confessed to Gregory, nicknamed “Billy,” and Mike that he was
actually a Black man, and thus, that they were Black, too. “Remember Miss Sallie who used to
work for us in the tavern?” Williams’s father asked them about a Black woman who had
worked with the family in the restaurant and bar they had owned and lost in the early 1950s,
the Open House Cafe.2

“It’s hard to tell you boys this.” He paused, then slowly added, “But she’s really my momma. That means she’s your
grandmother.”
“But that can’t be, Dad! She’s colored!” I whispered, lest I be overheard by the other white passengers on the bus.
“That’s right, Billy,” he continued. “She’s colored. That makes you part colored, too.”3

Buster Williams tells his sons that they are “part colored,” but as Williams finds out when he
is suddenly transformed into a Black boy growing up in Muncie, Indiana, there is no “part
colored” or, for that matter, part white, at least not in the 1950s in the United States. A person
is one or the other, Black or white, and these categories are understood to be opposites. They
are opposing sides of a false binary. People of color are on one side, and white people on the
other. Each side, our society tells us, has its own characteristics, traits that exist in opposition
to the other side of the binary.
Of course, in reality there is no such thing as a human binary. Human beings are human

beings, each with the human capacity for myriad abilities, characteristics, and faults. With
gender, men are not the opposite of women. Men and women do not each contain one half of all
human characteristics, opposing each other. And with race, people of color are not one type of
human completely distinct from the other, white type. However, even though our biology does
not determine our race, even though our traits are neither fundamentally Black nor white, our
cultures and our societies do shape our internal and external realities and the possibilities that
exist for us in life.

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In other words, if people understand race to be a real, fundamental, and biological fact of
human life, the consequences for this thinking about race will shape our lives in multiple,
profound, and very real ways. As sociologist W. I. Thomas said, “If people define situations as
real, they are real in their consequences.”4 We can see those consequences in, for example, the
gap between Black and white earnings5 (as will be discussed in chapter 7) and the segregation
of Black from white communities.
Societies springing from and influenced by western civilizations have long thought about and

understood much of life in terms of binaries or dualisms. This either/or framework patterns
western individual lives and western societies and cultures. We tend to think of people in
either/or terms, Black is one thing, white another, men are one way, women another. Our
understandings of race both come from and reproduce these dualisms that exist in our cultures
and in our thinking.
What is perhaps most fascinating about Williams’s story is that he carries those of us who are

white over the “color line” into the “other” group, the other side of the dualism, where most
white people will never, ever go. In the first part of the book, we who are white identify with
this white boy, as we read his story of growing up with lower-middle-class white parents who
have to work too hard to make ends meet. At the beginning, around the edges of his story we
encounter other people, Black people, whose lives are not ours. White people, much like the
storyteller, watch but rarely enter the lives of people of color. It need not be malicious that
most of us—us who are white—will never go to the other side of this racial binary. We have
no reason to go there. Many of us do not even realize that there is a “there” to go to. Indeed
today, this lack of knowledge is one fundamental piece of what it means to be white. We do not
know the other side of the color line simply because we do not have to, we do not need to
know it. We live our lives and benefit from our privileged position without ever having to
recognize that there are other positions, other places on the other side of whiteness.
Halley experienced this privileged lack of knowledge in multiple ways as she read

Williams’s book. Muncie, Indiana, is a town Halley, like many sociologists, had read quite a
bit about. It is the subject of Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd’s famous and highly
regarded sociological study, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture.6 Lynd and
Lynd investigated what they considered a typical small American city and the “typical”
Americans who lived there. For Lynd and Lynd, as for many Americans, typical means white.
In this book there are very few references to the lives of people of color. Indeed, in the index,
one finds three pages noted where the book addresses Black people, under the heading
“Negroes” (as would be common language of the time). Early in the book, Lynd and Lynd state,
“In the main this study confines itself to the white population and more particularly to the
native whites, who compose 92 per cent of the population.” Lynd and Lynd explain their
decision:
In a difficult study of this sort it seemed a distinct advantage to deal with a homogeneous, native-born population, even
though such a population is unusual in an American industrial city. Thus, instead of being forced to handle two major
variables, racial change and cultural change, the field staff was enabled to concentrate upon cultural change.7

Reading Lynd and Lynd, Halley nearly forgot that a Black community existed in Muncie. As a
Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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white person, she forgot about race, and whiteness became invisible to her. Reading Williams
pushed Halley to see Black lives in all of their stark contrast from the white “Middletown”
reality.
After having been white for ten years, when Gregory Williams finds out that he is Black, he is

shocked. “The unsettling image of Miss Sallie flashed before [him] like a neon sign. Colored!
Colored! Colored!” In the 1950s, much of the United States and particularly the South lived in
a sharply segregated society. So while Williams never needed to know the Black side of the
color line, he did know that as a white boy, he was on the “right” side, the side with the power.
After his father’s disclosure, Williams’s brother, Mike, asked his father, “Daddy, we ain’t
really colored, are we?” And Williams answered for his father, “No!” Williams thought
fiercely, “I’m not colored, I’m white! I look white! I’ve always been white! I go to ‘whites
only’ schools, ‘whites only’ movie theatres, and ‘whites only’ swimming pools! I never had
heard anything crazier in my life! How could Dad tell us such a mean lie?”8
In the first ten years of Williams’s childhood, his father, Buster, “passed” as a white man. In

our society, we use the term passing to describe the phenomenon when a person lives with an
identity other than the one socially assigned to her or him. Buster was Black by the standards
of his social world. Because being Black in that racist society limited his life in so many deep
ways, Buster chose to hide his African American heritage and live as a white man. Being white
opened up many life opportunities for Buster and his children. Stigma is a socially constructed
phenomenon and tends to involve a characteristic that is devalued in a specific social setting,
including within a culture at a specific historical time. For Buster, his identity as a “colored”
man was stigmatizing in the United States as he reached adulthood in the early half of the
twentieth century. At that time in the United States, Buster’s opportunities as a Black man were
deeply limited. While many never face the level of oppression faced by Buster, most of us will
find ourselves experiencing stigma of some kind. Stigma exists on a continuum; it might cause
mild discomfort at one end and profound oppression at the other. For example, this experience
can range from a temporary embarrassment (such as a breakout of acne right before an
important social event) to something more encompassing, like having to carefully manage
social situations in which others’ knowledge of a trait one holds might deeply discredit the
individual (such as a lesbian woman who works in a daycare setting where parents might have
misperceptions about how her sexuality may affect her care for their children).
When an individual has concerns about how a stigma may influence his or her opportunities

or social interactions, it can be very tempting to pass. The famous sociologist Erving Goffman
explores “passing” as a social phenomenon in his book, Stigma: Notes on the Management of
Spoiled Identity.9 Some experiences of stigma are so life-altering that it would be challenging
to choose not to pass, given the potential benefits of others perceiving one as “normal” rather
than as stigmatized. In seeking to understand stigma and passing, it can be helpful to recognize
that, as Goffman argues, most people pass and hide a stigmatizing aspect of their identity at
some point in their lives. Goffman writes that “the problems people face who make a
concerted and well-organized effort to pass are problems that a wide range of persons face at
some time or other.”10 Even when an aspect of one’s identity seems to be always apparent, often

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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one finds that there are exceptions. For example, a young woman with disfiguring burn scars,
who regularly deals with managing the discomfort of others in face-to-face interactions as
casual as approaching a cashier in a store, may choose to create a new, nonstigmatized identity
for herself on the Internet by selecting a nonhuman icon for herself and passing as a “normal”
person, one who is not disfigured. Passing can be a continuum from something one does
occasionally to a fundamental change of life, as in the case of Buster. Buster passed even in his
own family such that his mother lived with his family for a period of time and the children
never knew she was their grandmother.
Passing can even be unintentional. For example, Goffman points to a child with a physical

disability and limited use of one leg. When the child meets new people, they might at first
assume that the child was in an accident and that the disability is temporary. Someone who is
visually impaired might be thought to see by strangers sitting around her in a dark restaurant.
Or Goffman writes, African Americans with dark skin who have never intentionally passed
“may nonetheless find themselves, in writing letters or making telephone calls” passing as
people with light or even white skin.11 And of course, people who are gay or lesbian live in a
constant process of coming out (or not). They have to decide in each situation—when they
apply for a job, get their partner’s check cashed, wish to hold hands at the movies, and so on—
whether they want to “come out” as gay or lesbian in that moment and place. For a whole
variety of reasons, sometimes they might decide to “pass” as heterosexual.
Being able-bodied, having sight, being heterosexual, or having white skin is normative, and

not only understood to be “normal” but also valued as better than other possibilities. As
Goffman claims, “Because of the great rewards in being considered normal, almost all persons
who are in a position to pass will do so on some occasion by intent.”12 Nonetheless, because
white people are considered “normal,” white people have the profound privilege of not
needing to pass in terms of race.
When Buster lost everything and needed to return to his childhood home—home where he

could no longer pass as white because people knew him, his family, and his race as Black—he
and his children became Black. Williams spent the rest of his childhood growing up in utter
poverty in the African American community in Muncie, Indiana. For most of those years, he did
not have enough to eat. His clothes were tattered and worn. He lived in tiny, ramshackle
housing, sleeping for one period crammed between his grandmother’s toilet and the wall in her
minuscule house. Deeply impoverished, Williams and his brother lived through their first bitter
cold Muncie winter with no heat—the stove did not work—and almost no food.
Williams experienced ongoing discrimination. Williams was harassed and humiliated by

white students and white teachers at school and by white members of the Muncie community. In
spite of his athletic prowess, he was overlooked for the best positions by football and
basketball coaches.
Although he faced profound racism, Williams excelled as a student. Indeed, upon graduating

from eighth grade, Williams almost received the honor of being the top student in his class. A
well-meaning teacher, who did not understand the way race worked in Muncie, told Williams
that he would be recognized as the top student at their school’s graduation ceremony. Williams

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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invited his father, who even managed to get some new used clothes for Williams to wear at the
graduation ceremony. Williams and his teacher were reminded of the power of race when the
school awarded the honor to another—white—student who had performed academically
significantly below the level achieved by Williams.
Williams’s story begs the question of what it means to be a raced human being. What does it

mean to “have” a race? And how do we become this race? Williams’s story exemplifies the
argument we make in this book. Williams is no more Black or white than his society defines
him and his culture shapes him. When he was in the South with his two white parents and three
white siblings, he and the world believed him to be white. And so he was. When he lived in
Muncie, Indiana, where his father was known to be Black, then Williams became Black. In
other words, race most fundamentally is neither fixed in one’s biology nor psychology.
Ultimately, race is born from and reproduced by the social, or in other words, by the “chaotic
cofunctioning of the political, economic and cultural dimensions” of human life.13 Race has
everything to do with power, social power. As discussed in chapter 2, and as historian Noel
Ignatiev identifies, race cannot be defined in biological terms. Biology has never
been able to provide a satisfactory definition of “race”—that is, a definition that includes all members of a given race and
excludes others. Attempts to give the term a biological foundation lead to absurdities: parents and children of different races,
of the well-known phenomenon that a white woman can give birth to a black child, but a black woman cannot give birth to a
white child. The only logical conclusion is that people are members of different races because they have been assigned to
them.14

Whereas the origins of race are neither biological nor psychological; nonetheless, in some
sense, race becomes both psychological and biological due to the social. The social and those
who wield social power mandate social phenomena—like segregation—that result in other
phenomena like physical characteristics. Segregation, for instance, limits who interacts with
whom in a human community in a particular place. In the United States, through laws, social
customs, and sometimes, even outright terrorism (as in the case of organizations like the Ku
Klux Klan), white people have perpetrated ongoing and profound racial segregation of Black
from white communities for centuries. Thus, for example, African Americans have largely
lived only with other African Americans, and largely gone to school, worked, made friends,
married, and had children only with other African Americans. To a great extent this segregation
exists still today, albeit no longer mandated by law. This social phenomenon, segregation, has
meant that the physical characteristics of the Black community have been reproduced and
passed on largely just to other members of the Black community.
The social even mandates how we decide who qualifies for the white community and who for

the Black. Historically, numerous states defined race by the “one drop of blood” rule, also
known as hypodescent.15 Legal scholar Ian F. Haney López writes, “Under this rule, historically
given legal form in numerous state statutes, any known African ancestry renders one Black.”16
In other words, if you had “one drop” of Black blood, someone who was Black in your family
ancestry, even someone very remotely related to you, then you were Black. In 1970 Louisiana
made this more specific by passing legislation that anyone with 1/32 African ancestry or more
was legally Black. If you had less than that 1/32 part, then you were not Black.17 Being 1/32

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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part Black means that a person has one great-great-great grandparent of African descent.
In Fannie Flagg’s novel, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! her character Marguerite Le

Guarde, who has spent years passing as a white woman in order to bestow whiteness and
white privilege on her daughter, ends her life delusionally, yet unintentionally, by cutting her
wrists and ankles to bleed out that one drop of Black blood. “Where was it, she wondered?
Was it on her left side? Where was it lurking? Did it stay in one place or did it travel
throughout her body, running and hiding, determined to haunt her year after year? She would
just get rid of it once and for all. First the left side, the ankle, then the wrist. She must let it
escape. Then the right side. . . . Soon it would be gone. Oh, what a relief to finally get it out.
Then she and Dena [her daughter] would be free.”18 Race is, of course, not one drop of
somehow distinct blood.19 Race is socially made; it is socially constructed.
López shows that in U.S. history whiteness was defined only by its negation. In other words,

U.S. “courts defined ‘white’ through a process of . . . systematically identifying who was non-
White.”20 Legal scholar Neil Gotanda writes, “The metaphor is one of purity and
contamination: White is unblemished and pure, so one drop of ancestral Black blood renders
one Black. Black is a contaminant that overwhelms white ancestry.”21

Social Construction of Race
In this chapter, indeed in this book, much like sociologist Michael S. Kimmel in his work on
gender, we intend to unsettle racial categories, to problematize whiteness. In doing this, we use
the theory of social construction. Social construction theory builds on the idea that social
norms change over time (in history) and place (through culture). Social construction theorists
argue that the unequal distribution of economic and social power reinforces (and helps to
create) differences between groups and their cultural norms. In turn, the norms shift and change
over time and place, again deeply influenced by power.
In his exploration of our “gendered society,” Kimmel defines the theory of social construction

in terms of how the theory has been applied to gender. His definition is useful to us as we
explore race, like gender, as a socially constructed phenomenon. For Kimmel, “Social
constructionism builds on the other social and behavioral sciences, adding specific dimensions
to the exploration,” in our case, of race.22 Sociology adds to our investigation of race through
the sociological analysis of differences between (and among) social groups such as Black and
white people. Sociology helps us see the role of social power in action. With sociology we
begin to understand the ways that race is not a fixed fact that we are born with but rather a
lived experience perpetually changing in the midst of our societies, families, schools,
governments, and so on.
Social construction theorists also use disciplines outside of sociology such as anthropology

to explore differences between cultures; history to examine changes within cultures over time;
and developmental psychology to investigate differences and similarities in individual human
beings’ lives from younger to older, from one developmental stage to another. Finally, returning
to sociology, Kimmel reminds us of variation that occurs within a culture in a particular time.
For example, a poor, young, white woman who is homeless probably experiences her race

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differently than a rich, highly educated, elderly white woman. Definitions and understandings
of whiteness “will vary within any one culture at any one time—by . . . class, ethnicity,
[gender,] age, sexuality, education, region of the country, etc.”23
Evidence supporting a social construction explanation of race is revealed by the historical

disagreements among scholars when attempting to classify races and by the changes in these
classifications within disciplines across time. While evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin
argued that there is only one race of humans, he noted in 1871 that others had attempted to
identify up to sixty-three distinct races. The fact that scholars could not agree on racial
distinctions, creating their own categories of race separate from each other, reveals that race is
not an obvious biological fact, but is, instead, socially constructed. Many anthropologists
historically classified humans into multiple races, but the majority of modern anthropologists
argue, like Darwin, that there is only one race of human beings. This shift in thought about race
across time reveals that race is not fixed and apparent for anyone to observe. Race is
constructed within historical and cultural contexts, based as much on prevailing ideology as on
empirical evidence.24
Kimmel identifies a major distinction between a nurture-based perspective and a perspective

based on social construction. Someone using nurture to explain racial differences would argue
that experiences throughout life create differences between racial groups and that these
differences lead to unequal treatment and experiences of inequality. The nurture perspective
argues that racial groups truly become different through experiences and that inequality is a
response to those true differences. A social construction argument challenges the nurture
perspective. Social constructionists would argue that inequality creates differences. Different
racial groups are treated in unequal ways because of societal and individual expectations of
the groups; in other words, because of stereotypes. That unequal treatment is responsible for
many of the differences between the groups. For example, white people are more prone to
certain diseases and less prone to others (such as asthma) than Black people. These biological
differences spring from inequality. For example, as we note in chapter 2, Black people are
more likely to be exposed to toxins in the environment. These toxins predict the development
of asthma.
For social constructionists, the key to any understanding of social phenomena is power,

social power. By way of comparison to another point of view, multiculturalism, like the nurture
perspective, offers yet one more way of understanding race and difference in the United States.
While social constructionists think about race in terms of power, multiculturalist thinking tends
to ignore or even deny the relevance of social power, often portraying every group as equal but
different. For multiculturalists, the answer to social problems involves respect for each other
and the celebration of our differences. In contrast to multiculturalism, social constructionists
argue that we should be equal (and that all cultures are worthy of celebration); however, when
it comes to social power, we are not equal.25
When explaining the social construction of gender, Kimmel emphasized the importance of

understanding power. Focusing on power is essential to understanding whiteness. Applying
Kimmel’s argument on social construction to race, we argue that race “is about inequality,

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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about power. . . . [race] is about the power that [white people] as a group have over [people of
color] as a group.”26 As noted above, power produces what we observe as distinctions
between the groups we consider to be racial groups.
The focus on power is what makes the theory of social construction markedly different from

approaches to race that accentuate multicultural celebration. While we fully agree that each
ethnicity and culture has significant aspects worth celebrating, we are concerned that the
multiculturalist approach fails to create a critical analysis of race because it fails to recognize
the power of whiteness over all other groups in the United States. Like Kimmel, we
acknowledge that focusing on power is controversial, yet we insist that focusing on power is
critical to a fully honest exploration of race. (In chapter 6, we address alternative ways of
learning about difference and the importance of curiosity.)
Unfortunately, because the multiculturalist approach fails to focus on power, it often feels

safe to white people. Multiculturalism might entail a superficial investigation of the foods,
clothing, language, and public customs of different cultures or subcultures. For example, at one
such event when Eshleman was a college student, a young Japanese woman, an international
student, kneeled before her white peers serving them tea. The event included no critical
examination of culture or of power. Students and teachers alike might find an uncritical
multiculturalist celebration delightful, but in the absence of an exploration of power, a shallow
approach to multiculturalism is unlikely to move individuals to a greater understanding of how
social injustice or inequality create many differences, differences considered racial
differences. Worse yet, a multiculturalist approach can reify the power of whiteness over
people of color in a setting purported to be a multicultural celebration. In other words, the
presentation of those who are “ethnic” to those who are understood to be not ethnic and thus
“normal”—white—is also a problem at many such events. These celebratory multicultural
events can be eerily similar to visiting a carnival freak show.
In a freak show, a barker encourages others like himself to “Step right up!” and marvel at the

curious appearance and behaviors of the “freaks” in the show. The “freaks” have volunteered
to be on display because they desire to share their distinctiveness with members of the
dominant group. Without a critical inspection of power, a well-meaning, predominantly white
institution might appoint one or more whites to work with people of color to create an event in
which other whites gawk at the unusual (to mainstream white people) clothing, music, dance,
and food of other cultures. If power is not addressed, the event reinforces the power of
whiteness as the whites amuse themselves in a position of comfort as people of color work to
entertain them.
Outside of multicultural events, yet living still in this framework of white, unrecognized

power, white people sometimes feel free to ask the race and ethnicity of people of color, as
though there is nothing intrusive or inappropriate about putting another person on center stage
regarding his or her cultural background. Not only does the questioner come from and situate
herself in a position of power when asking the question, the assumption behind the question for
white people is “Because I am white, I am normal. Because you are not white, you are not
normal and I, from my privileged position of normalcy, want to know what you are.”

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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On a weekend trip that brought together friends of friends, Eshleman overheard a new white
acquaintance ask a friend, and the only man of color in the group, “What language do you
speak?” The Chinese American friend politely tried to dispel the question: “American.” The
new white acquaintance seemed frustrated and did not accept that answer, “No, like do you
speak Mandarin?” Eshleman wondered why the white woman did not accept the man of color’s
respectful attempt to discourage her question about his ethnic background. Was this white
woman aware of her relative power in this situation? Was she aware of making this man of
color feel uncomfortable? Eshleman concluded with some horror that the white woman seemed
clueless about her relative social power when Eshleman heard the woman later teasing the
friend about eating bok choy.
The incident reminded Eshleman of a family story in which a cousin’s young, modern, three-

year-old daughter was introduced to three similarly aged Amish girls wearing traditional
dress. The young relative asked aloud, “What are these?” We may all have curiosity about
others who are distinct within any given situation, but racial awareness requires that we
develop beyond a young child’s demand for information to be able to quickly categorize.
Halley recently overheard a group of college students sharing their ethnic and religious

background during a discussion. One young woman turned to a young man who had not
volunteered any information and pointedly asked the Latino man with a light complexion,
“What are you?” On Eshleman’s trip, the acquaintance also, essentially, asked, “What are
you?” And in a Newsweek article entitled “Please Ask Me Who, Not ‘What,’ I Am,” journalist
Jordan Lite writes about her regular experience as a biracial person of being asked, “What are
you?” She notes, “Isn’t it rude to ask ‘what’ someone is when you’ve just met? Common
courtesy would suggest so. But many people seem to feel uncomfortable if they can’t
immediately determine a new person’s racial or ethnic background.”27 Indeed, many of us have
heard (or asked) some version of the “What are you?” question. What makes each of these
individuals feel she has a right to demand to know the race or ethnicity of someone who
chooses not to volunteer that information?
While it is much more comfortable for white people to avoid addressing power, such an

analysis of race without exploring social power will fail to lead to greater justice in our
society. One challenge of addressing power is arousing “white guilt.” If such feelings of guilt
cause whites to avoid thinking critically about race, then the guilt will be ineffective and
unhelpful. Beverly Daniel Tatum offers an important argument related to white guilt. No one is
responsible for the actions that occurred within one’s group before a person had power to
affect those actions. In other words, no one should feel guilt regarding the injustices committed
by one’s group in the past. But everyone is responsible for addressing the injustice that
currently exists in our world. We should feel responsibility to understand the injustice and to
act within our spheres of influence to combat it.
Further, Tatum argues that whites have a choice—they can fight against racism or they can be

racist. This is another controversial line of reasoning. A white person can be actively
antiracist, working within his or her social network and within his or her means to reduce the
impact of racism. A white person can be passively racist, doing nothing to address racism. Or

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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a white person can be actively racist. When reading Tatum’s options, many white students in
Eshleman’s classes have responded that they want a passively antiracist option. They do not
want to take any action, and they want to be absolved of responsibility. Tatum notes that doing
nothing supports racism. In a racist society, going with the flow allows racism to continue. To
be passive in regard to racism is to be racist.
We acknowledge that some white readers may feel uncomfortable processing this argument.

Many whites (including the two white authors of this book!) have been passive at some point in
our lives with regard to race. Tatum acknowledges that being called a racist feels like a slap
across the face. Eshleman and Halley admit that they have felt this sting when others have
pointed out their own racism. It feels awful. It takes a moment to recover. But Eshleman and
Halley would much rather be called on their unintentional racism (even though it smarts!) than
to be unaware and inadvertently harming others in ways much more devastating.
Tatum and Kimmel both address the fact that individuals with power are unlikely to recognize

the power and may feel uncomfortable when someone tries to reveal it. Because white
privilege tends to be invisible, Tatum notes that any given individual white person is unlikely
to be aware of racial advantage. Kimmel identifies that white people might not feel personally
powerful, and that because of this, arguments about power in the theory of social construction
might not resonate with them. If the focus is shifted from individuals’ feelings of power to an
analysis of who tends to hold power as a group, it becomes clear that whites are highly likely
to be overrepresented on corporate boards and in legislative bodies. When an important
decision is made that affects many others, it is disproportionately more likely to be made by a
white person than a person of color. “Power is not the property of individuals—a possession
that one has or does not have—but the property of group life, of social life. Power is. It can
neither be willed away nor ignored. . . . And it is so deeply woven into our lives that it is most
invisible to those who are most empowered.”28
Social constructionists argue that the phenomenon of race springs from social relations that

both enact and reproduce social power. White people as a group have power over people of
color as a group. As we explore in other chapters, white people make more money and have
access to better educations; better housing; more interesting, higher status and professional
careers; better health care; and more leisure time and leisure activities. This very real lack of
equality between white people and people of color must be addressed for any meaningful
social change to happen. Celebrating and respecting each other is, quite simply, not enough.

How the Irish Became White: A Case Study of the Social Construction of
Whiteness

Since 1492, every group that has immigrated to the United States (including recent African
immigrants) has struggled with the issue of race. Many groups came to the United States with
one “race”—Italian, for example—and slowly changed into another, in the case of Italians,
white. Such change, such transformation enacts social construction. Society constructs race
through particular phenomena like the cultures of groups and the social systems that produce
and reproduce the power that some groups have over other groups. In part, white people

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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become white and maintain their whiteness through white and middle-class culture and social
power. Assumptions about “normal” manners, child-rearing practices, physical contact,
sexuality, and norms around physical space, education and governmental systems, and cultural
ideals like that of individualism all play a part in the production of whiteness.
As Ignatiev explains in his seminal book, How the Irish Became White, when the Irish first

emigrated from Ireland, they were one race, Irish.29 Over the ensuing century, they shifted from
Irish to white. Halley’s Irish American family took part in this transformation. Prior to
immigrating in the nineteenth century, when Halley’s family came to the United States, most
Irish in Ireland were Catholic and lived as agrarian peasants. Deeply disempowered in a
feudal society, Terry Golway notes that Ireland was “a country of landless peasants and farm
laborers who worked fields they did not own and raised crops they could not eat.”30
Although they grew and raised many things, the Irish Catholic majority themselves ate

potatoes. Other crops, crops more desirable to elites, were paid as rent to landlords who were
neither poor nor Catholic. Crops such as wheat, oats, and barley, and livestock such as pigs,
cows, sheep, and chickens thrived in abundance, even in the worst years of the infamous potato
famine. How strange for Halley’s Irish ancestors—in the midst of a famine when at least one
out of every eight Irish died—to have enough food all around and to have grown this food
through their own backbreaking labor, and nonetheless, to starve. No one was prepared for the
six years of famine in Ireland from 1845 to 1851. The loss of potato crops was immense,
producing only “20 percent of its pre-Famine yield” in 1846.31 The loss of human lives was,
also, vast. The figures vary. Yet most believe that during the six-year famine, Ireland lost one
million to immigration and one million to death.
Here it is important to note that most of us know this history, that of the potato famine,

because the Irish did become white. Groups in power, like white Americans, tend to be the
ones most studied in school, written about, researched, celebrated, known, and
understood. Indeed, Vijaya learned about the Irish potato famine as a child in school in
India. In contrast, growing up in the United States, Halley and Eshleman knew nothing about the
Bengal famine of 1770 in which the death toll was so extensive the full population of Ireland
would have been killed twice over. In the Bengal famine, approximately fifteen million people
died. If the Irish had not become white, their history as a colonized people would probably
have remained unknown to most of the world.
The issue with both the Bengal famine and the potato famine was not a lack of food (or of

laziness on the part of the Indian or Irish “races”). As with most human catastrophes, the issue
in both cases was social power—and powerlessness. Robert Kee, a British historian and
journalist, noted the profuse amounts of food shipped out of Ireland for profit by Irish
landowners during the potato famine. In the Bengal famine as well, there were plenty of crops
being grown. Yet those in power appropriated the food for trading purposes rather than local
human consumption. About the situation in Ireland, Irish immigrants to the United States, years
later, told their children, “of the sight of food convoys under armed guard making their way
past hollow-eyed men, women, and children whose mouths were green from eating grass.”32
Devastating effects of colonization similar to those documented in Ireland and India have

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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been observed around the world. Evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves Jr. notes the
“evidence for the negative biological impact of colonialism on the colonized.”33 Under
colonization from 1832 to 1872, the Hawaiian Islands lost two-thirds (68 percent) of its
population. Like in India and Ireland, colonization in Africa and Latin America forced systems
of producing crops for export rather than food for local consumption. “Thus, the contradiction
of these colonial agricultural economies was that although their agricultural productivity was
high, they produced little food for the indigenous populations.”34 Malnutrition and reductions in
population were common results. Near complete elimination of native populations also
occurred under colonization, as happened post–Christopher Columbus in large areas of the
Americas.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Ireland was a colony under England. This meant

that England controlled all Irish resources. As in many other colonial situations—many of them
British—England did not do the work of being a colonial power on its own. Middlemen were
effective tools of colonization. Underneath the British but above Irish Catholics in Ireland
were “the Dissenters.” These Irish non-Catholic Dissenters, “who were mostly Presbyterian
farmers, mechanics, and small tradesmen,” helped maintain the oppressive hierarchy imposed
by Britain.35 They saved the English labor and trouble, often receiving relatively little in return.
They did gain one important benefit from their social position. Like Irish Catholics, they
themselves might live in terrible conditions, but as Protestants, they could at least consider
themselves part of the dominant—the better—race. In other words, in terms of their “race,” all
Protestants benefited from the British-imposed hierarchy. No matter how poor they might be,
Protestants gained a psychic power from being Protestant Irish, not Catholic.36
On the other hand, Halley’s Irish Catholic ancestors living in Ireland under what were called

the Penal Laws were not allowed to: “vote; . . . practice law; hold a post in the military or
civil service; teach in a school; . . . attend the university; educate their children abroad;
manufacture or sell arms, newspapers, or books; own or carry arms; own a horse worth more
than five pounds; take on more than two apprentices (except in the linen trade); be apprentices
to Protestants; rent land worth more than thirty shillings a year; lease land for longer than
thirty-one years; [or] make a profit from land of more than one-third of the rent paid.”37
Through the six years of the potato famine, the English—Anglo-Saxons—ruled Ireland. They

believed (like many elite conservatives in the United States today) that no one should hinder
the supposedly natural movement of “free” trade and the “free” market. In other words, they
thought that if people and nations were allowed to trade food and other goods without
restrictions imposed by governments, then a natural balance would be found in this “free”
global market. They held that this “free” market, unencumbered by laws and restrictions,
would be fair, just, and balanced. The reality behind this thinking was that the relatively
wealthy landowners in Ireland, as well as the British government, depended on the exporting
of crops to maintain their powerful position and wealth. In other words, the ideology of a
“free” market supported the reality of elite power (again, not unlike the thinking of global
elites today). Ideas about race played an important role in Anglo-Saxon thought. Because
Anglo-Saxon elites believed Irish Catholics to be a race, and a less civilized, more animalistic

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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race at that, Anglo-Saxon elites justified their exploitation of Irish Catholics. Anglo-Saxons
and Irish Catholics alike also considered Anglo-Saxons a race, and an idealized one. In reality,
Anglo-Saxons held power over Irish Catholics through colonization and exploitation. The
ideology of those in power maintained that Anglo-Saxons held power because they were
racially superior.38
In spite of British greed sitting at the heart of the famine, British ideology held that the real

problem sprang from the Irish character. Charles Trevelyan, appointed by the British prime
minister to oversee relief operations in Ireland during the potato famine, wrote about the Irish,
“The great evil with which we have to contend [is] not the physical evil of famine, but the
moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”39
The Irish, of course, are no more a race than any other group of human beings. As discussed

above, race is an idea born out of culture, the manifestation of structures of social power. As
described in chapter 2 and by Ignatiev, outside of the cultural labels regarding race “and the
racial oppression that accompanies them, the only race is human.” Yet the Irish, or more
specifically, the Irish Catholics, have been in a variety of positions when it comes to ideas
about race, and when it comes to oppression. In other words, Irish Catholics have been raced
in diverse ways at different times. When Halley’s family and other Irish Catholics immigrated
to the United States in the mid-1800s, “they were fleeing caste oppression and a system of
landlordism that made the material conditions of the Irish peasant comparable to those of an
American slave.”40 (The material conditions were the actual, concrete circumstances of their
lives.)
Most Irish immigrating to the United States up until the 1830s were Irish Presbyterians who

came to be called “Scotch-Irish” or Irish Protestants. This group was originally known in the
United States as simply “Irish.” However, over time, the Scotch-Irish worked to disassociate
themselves from the poorer and Irish-speaking Catholic immigrants who came to the United
States just before and during the potato famine. These Irish Catholics who came later were so
poor that most could not pay their own ticket for the trip. During the potato famine, for many of
the destitute Irish Catholics, their only option was to die of starvation on the land they farmed
(but did not own). Yet, the Irish landlords paid the cost of travel for some as a means to get
them off the land.
When Irish Catholics arrived in the United States—before becoming white—many lived and

worked in and among impoverished and free Black communities. The Moyamensing district in
Philadelphia was one such Irish and African American neighborhood. Black and Irish people
had children and made families together as well as lived and worked in the same places. The
African American and Irish communities also played and worshipped together. For instance,
Ignatiev writes that a church “in Philadelphia was presided over after 1837 by an Afro-
American minister; baptismal records for the next twenty years suggest that one-third of the
members were Irish.”41
The Anglo-Saxon middle class witnessed Irish and Black intermingling with anxiety and

disapproval. For example, a contemporary newspaper article described the multiracial
inhabitants of a Philadelphia lodging house in horror:

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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The walls were discolored by smoke and filth, the glass was broken from the windows, chinks in the frame work let in the
cold air, and every thing was as wretchedly uncomfortable as it is possible to conceive. Yet in every one of these squalid
apartments, including the cellar and the loft, men and women—blacks and whites by the dozens—were huddled together . .
. keeping themselves from freezing by covering their bodies with such filthy rags as chance threw in their way.42

While the Irish in the 1800s United States were not Black, they were also not white; so such
mixing of communities was not seen by the middle class to be as terrible as it would have been
for Anglo-Saxon and Black people to live and build families together. About the question of
whiteness, Ignatiev writes,
The first Congress of the United States voted in 1790 that only “white” persons could be naturalized as citizens. Coming as
immigrants rather than as captives or hostages undoubtedly affected the potential racial status of the Irish in America, but it
did not settle the issue, since it was by no means obvious who was “white.” In the early years Irish were frequently
referred to as “niggers turned inside out”; the Negroes, for their part, were sometimes called “smoked Irish.”43

Irish Catholics arrived in the United States as—and understanding themselves as—an
exploited and oppressed “race,” akin to African Americans. Of course, there is an enormous
difference between being a slave and not being a slave. Yet the work, life, and material
conditions of these two groups were not so distinct. The new Irish immigrants found a set of
diverse work relationships that further complicated the experience of race in the United States.
Prior to the American Revolution, in the eighteenth century “the range of dependent labor

relations had blurred the distinction between freedom and slavery. The Revolution led to the
decline of apprenticeship, indenture, and imprisonment for debt.”44 The decline in these
slavery-like work relations, along with the growth in slavery itself as the foundation of
Southern life, “reinforced the tendency to equate freedom with whiteness and slavery with
blackness.”45 Because race is a social construction, not a biological reality, people consciously
and unconsciously construct racial groups in a particular society, place, and time. And these
social constructions change.
The Irish who migrated to the United States went from a preindustrial society to one rapidly

industrializing. “In America, where domestic manufacture had grown as a result of the
Napoleonic Wars, there was a shortage of wage laborers. The country scooped up the
displaced Irish and made them its unskilled labor force.”46 The new industrial work that was
available tended to involve brutal, unsafe conditions and long hours. The Irish Catholics and
others who took up this industrial work recognized that their lives were in many ways not so
different from those who were enslaved. Indeed, early on, factory workers often called their
work “wage slavery.” Nonetheless, the Irish moved from being Irish and akin to people of
color to being white and understanding themselves as different from, and better than, people of
color. They took the “wages of whiteness” instead of the greater bargaining power of
organizing together with all working-class people.47
As historian David R. Roediger points out, past and present-day white, working-class people

and working-class people of color share many interests economically in the United States.48
Together they could have organized around their shared power as workers, or in other words,
as “labor.” When workers (labor) join together, they have the power of their numbers to help
them make demands on those who hire them (in sociological and economic terms, the
owners/employers are also called “capital”). Coming together as a large group, workers have

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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greater bargaining power; with this, they are in a better position to demand higher wages,
shorter working hours, better working conditions, and so on. However, in spite of sharing many
concerns, historically white working-class people have organized against working-class
people of color by joining white working-class movements and workplaces. And due to this,
the working class in general has been less powerful and more vulnerable.
Why would the white working class shoot itself in the foot, so to speak, by keeping people of

color out of white working-class movements? Drawing from the seminal work of the famous
African American labor historian W. E. B. Du Bois and his idea about the “psychological
wages of whiteness,”49 Roediger argues that instead of organizing together across racial/ethnic
groups to gain greater working-class power, “the white working class [settled] for
whiteness.”50 In other words, in their racism, the white working class gained something in
exchange for their loss of shared working-class power. They settled for the gains of whiteness,
or what Roediger, following Du Bois, calls a “psychic wage”; that is, “status and privileges
conferred by race . . . to make up for the alienating and exploitative class relationships” within
which they lived and worked. Roediger writes, “White workers could, and did, define and
accept their class positions by fashioning identities as ‘not slaves’ and as ‘not Blacks.’”51 This
is perhaps similar to the situation and choices of the Protestant Irish in Ireland. The Protestant
Irish, like the white working class in the United States, chose greater psychic power instead of
opting for the potential power of greater numbers—bargaining power—had they organized
together with the least powerful in their society.
Again drawing from the work of Du Bois, Roediger argues, “White labor does not just

receive and resist racist ideas but embraces, adopts and, at times, murderously acts upon those
ideas. The problem is not just that the white working class is at critical junctures manipulated
into racism, but that it comes to think of itself and its interests as white.”52
Irish Catholic immigrants like Halley’s ancestors took part in a process where they

increasingly distanced themselves from African American and other members of color of the
working class. Indeed, Roediger argues that “working class formation,” the development of an
identity as working class, and “the systematic development of a sense of whiteness went hand
in hand for the U.S. white working class.”53 As the United States industrialized and a class of
people—the working class—developed in and around that industrialization, for those among
this group that were white, their new identities as working-class people were inextricably
bound with their developing identities as white people.54
Karl Marx developed the concept of false consciousness to reveal beliefs that are

inconsistent with the interests of a group, such as working-class white people preferring to
exclude people of color from workers’ movements when inclusion may have created greater
bargaining power. While false consciousness may be caused by multiple factors such as failing
to recognize an unjust situation or resisting social change,55 social psychologists John T. Jost,
Mahzarin R. Banaji, and colleagues have focused on explaining false consciousness.56 Across
fifteen years of research, these scholars have acknowledged three ways that people justify their
support for discrimination. Ego justification is the first label—extensive evidence reveals that
individuals whose self-esteem is threatened are more likely to use stereotypes and act in ways

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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that disadvantage other groups.57
Group justification, the second label, is highly relevant for explaining white working-class

discrimination against workers of color. Group justification is the term used to identify people
who seek to distinguish their own group—their ingroup—from other groups—outgroups.58 In
the case of white workers, they perceived their ingroup as white rather than as being a worker
in solidarity with people of color. By identifying as white, people of color became an
outgroup.59 Through group justification, people may seek to separate their ingroup from an
outgroup, even at the expense of the ingroup. When one perceives oneself in competition with
an outgroup, one may sacrifice the gains of the ingroup for the sake of clearly distinguishing the
ingroup from the outgroup. In a classic study by Henri Tajfel, when one faces a choice either to
allocate a large amount of reward to one’s ingroup along with a nearly-as-large amount of
reward to an outgroup or to allocate a moderate amount of reward to one’s ingroup along with
a small amount of reward to an outgroup, individuals are likely to choose to take less for the
ingroup in order to make sure to give the least to the outgroup.60 Such research may provide
insight into situations such as Protestants in Ireland supporting a social system that treated them
unfairly while the system treated Irish Catholics even more unfairly.
System justification highlights a third type of justification for discrimination that offers an

explanation for some instances of false consciousness. “According to system justification
theory, there is a general ideological motive to justify the status quo and bolster the legitimacy
of the existing social order. People want to believe that the social system affecting them is fair
and legitimate and they are willing to sacrifice personal or group interests to bolster such
beliefs.”61 People tend to want to believe that justice is the norm in the world and that people
are treated fairly, that “we get what we deserve and deserve what we get.”62 Believing in a just
world can create a false sense of security at the expense of failing to acknowledge injustice,
even when that injustice targets you. System justification reveals an ideology that validates
social systems, encouraging individuals to “accept existing inequality as fair and legitimate.”63
Social justice movements must first recognize injustice and overcome the tendency to

perceive injustice as inevitable. Personal or group needs can become so great that they
overwhelm inclinations that favor system justification.64 Chapter 4 identifies movements that
have been inspired by the recognition of injustice. Moving toward social justice can also be
sparked by empathy toward an outgroup. In chapter 9, we will explore how a more inclusive
ingroup identity could lead to social justice work that is inclusive across race.

Discussion Questions
1. How do we become/get/be a race? And how can one race change into another?
2. Why are individuals sometimes motivated to pass? How is passing related to stigma?
Explore the difference between intentionally passing and unintentionally passing. Intentional
passing will range from being pointedly dishonest about one’s identity to consciously
allowing others to make an assumption about one’s identity. Do you perceive these different
forms of passing as relatively similar or as distinct from each other?
3. Why did only one drop of Black blood make a person Black? Why did the reverse not

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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work? Why did not one drop of white blood make a person white? In this (racist) thinking, is
whiteness an exclusive club easily “tainted” by other races? Or is whiteness fragile and
Blackness powerful? What is the meaning behind the one-drop rule?
4. Who decides someone else’s race? When asked to think of an African American person,
what family history do you picture for that person? Who would you include or exclude? What
race would you ascribe to a man who was raised primarily by his white mother and white
grandparents and whose father was an international student from Kenya, such as Barack
Obama? To what extent does Obama share a common social history with other African
Americans? To what extent is this true for any race? If author Jane Lazzare claims that
because she is a white mother of Black sons, she is no longer merely white, is she?65
Historically, some people of color have passed and lived as white. Does this mean that they
and their descendants today are now white?
5. Is it ever okay to ask someone about his or her racial/ethnic background? Is it okay to be
curious about people, about their culture and heritage? Conversely, is not asking or
discouraging curiosity similar to doing nothing when it comes to racism? Does asking about
someone’s racial/ethnic background perpetuate racism? If one is curious about another
person’s race or ethnicity, what might be a socially sensitive way to inquire?
6. If one feels uncomfortably placed in a spotlight when another person asks, “What are
you?” in terms of race or ethnicity, what sort of response would be appropriate from the
person in the spotlight? In other words, if one feels that a question was asked in an
insensitive way, what would be an apt response?
7. Describe the social construction explanation of race. What evidence supports this
explanation of race?
8. Have you ever attended an event intended to celebrate multiculturalism? If so, did it
address social power? How might such events move from ones that do not address social
power to being ones that do address social power? Argue for or against the importance of
addressing social power at multicultural events. What do you think the effects might be of
multicultural events that do, and that do not, address social power?
9. Think of a time you or someone you know intentionally or unintentionally “passed” as
something you/they are not. What were the circumstances? How can you explain or
understand why “passing” was important (or even necessary) given current ways of thinking
about race, ethnicity, or/and sexuality in our culture? If you were in charge of organizing a
major social event that was mixed in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability,
what could you do to reduce or eliminate individuals feeling compelled to “pass”?
10. Suppose a good friend asked you to explain the concept of the “social construction of
race” and how the concept is useful for understanding our culture. Using chapter 2, contrast
the theory of social construction with the eugenic perspective on race.
11. Suppose you were asked to design a “multicultural” event for your school or some other
organization of your choice. How would you avoid doing this in a superficial way? What
would you do to take issues of social power into consideration?

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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Notes
1. Gregory Howard Williams, Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black

(New York: Plume, 1995), 33.
2. Williams, Life on the Color Line, 33.
3. Williams, Life on the Color Line, 32–33.
4. W. I. Thomas in Lisa J. McIntyre, The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008), 3.
5. For example, Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins write that in 2007, the “median income for non-Hispanic white

households was $54,920 (meaning half of such households earned more than this and half below); this is the ‘middle.’ Black
households had a median income of $33,916” (Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology, Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Cengage
Learning, 2010, 71).
6. Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich, 1929/1957).
7. Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 8–9.
8. Williams, Life on the Color Line, 33–34.
9. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,

1963), 74.
10. Goffman, Stigma, 74.
11. Goffman, Stigma, 74.
12. Goffman, Stigma, 74.
13. Brian Massumi, “Requiem for Our Prospective Dead (Toward a Participatory Critique of Capitalist Power),” in Deleuze
and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture, eds. Eleanor Kaufman and Kevin Jon Heller
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 40–64.
14. Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995), 1.
15. Joseph L. Graves Jr., The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium (New Brunswick,

N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002).
16. Ian F. Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996),

27.
17. David L. Brunsma and Kerry Ann Rockquemore, “What Does ‘Black’ Mean? Exploring the Epistemological Stranglehold

of Racial Categorization,” Critical Sociology 28, no. 1–2 (2002).
18. Fannie Flagg, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), 440.
19. Halley’s grandfather’s brother, her great-uncle, was an avid racist and a medical doctor who in the 1960s argued to

Halley’s mother that Black people’s blood was different from white people’s blood. Unfortunately, this racist thinking was
probably not unusual among white people of his generation, even white health professionals.
20. López, White by Law, 27.
21. Neil Gotanda in Ian F. Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University

Press, 1996), 27.
22. Michael S. Kimmel, The Gendered Society, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 95.
23. Kimmel, The Gendered Society, 95.
24. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes.
25. Please do see chapter 6 for a discussion of critical multiculturalism.
26. Kimmel, The Gendered Society, 99.
27. Jordan Lite, “Please Ask Me Who, Not ‘What,’ I Am,” Newsweek (July 16, 2001), www.newsweek.com/id/78724/page/1.
28. Kimmel, The Gendered Society, 100, emphasis in original.
29. Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White.
30. Michael Coffey and Terry Golway, The Irish in America (New York: Hyperion, 1997), 4.
31. Coffey and Golway, The Irish in America, 5.
32. Coffey and Golway, The Irish in America, 5.
33. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 68.
34. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 68.
35. Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 35.
36. For further exploration, also see David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American
Working Class, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991).
37. Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 34.
38. For further explanation of similar ideologies, read about social Darwinism in Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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39. Charles Trevelyan quoted in Coffey and Golway, The Irish in America, 14.
40. Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 1–2.
41. Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 41.
42. Quoted in Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 40–41.
43. Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 41.
44. Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 95.
45. Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 95.
46. Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 38.
47. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness.
48. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness.
49. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in the United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935).
50. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness, 6.
51. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness, 13.
52. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness, 12.
53. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness, 6.
54. For an insightful critique of Roediger’s Wages of Whiteness, please do see Theodore W. Allen, “On Roediger’s Wages of
Whiteness,” Cultural Logic 4, no. 2 (Spring 2001).
55. John T. Jost, “Negative Illusions: Conceptual Clarification and Psychological Evidence Concerning False Consciousness,”
Political Psychology 16, no. 2 (June 1995): 397–424.
56. John T. Jost and Mahzarin R. Banaji, “The Role of Stereotyping in System-Justification and the Production of False

Consciousness,” British Journal of Social Psychology 33, no. 1 (March 1994): 1–27.
57. For a classic example, see Steven Fein and Steven J. Spencer, “Prejudice as Self-Image Maintenance: Affirming the Self

through Derogating Others,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73, no. 1 (July 1997): 31–44.
58. John T. Jost, Yifat Kivetz, Monica Rubini, Grazia Guermandi, and Cristina Mosso, “System-Justifying Functions of

Complementary Regional and Ethnic Stereotypes: Cross-National Evidence,” Social Justice Research 18, no. 3 (September
2005): 305–33.
59. Classic theory on group justification is presented by Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, “The Social Identity Theory of

Intergroup Behavior,” Psychology of Intergroup Relations 7 (1986): 7–24.
60. Henri Tajfel, “Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination,” Scientific American 225, no. 5 (May 1970): 96–102.
61. Jost et al., “System-Justifying,” 308.
62. Don H. Hockenbury and Sandra E. Hockenbury, Psychology (New York: Worth, 2008), 505.
63. Jost et al., “System-Justifying,” 310.
64. John T. Jost, Mahzarin R. Banaji, and Brian A. Nosek, “A Decade of System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence

of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo,” Political Psychology 25, no. 6 (December 2004): 881–920.
65. Jane Lazzare, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons (Durham, N.C.: Duke

University Press, 1996).

Halley, Jean, et al. Seeing White : An Introduction to White Privilege and Race, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucr/detail.action?docID=718698.
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