Question, process, challenge, and think deeply about how this week’s readings relate back to you. This is a place to share your thoughts and feelings: let them be raw and vulnerable. In 500 words minimum (2-3 pages), write a personal reaction about how the core arguments or stories of the readings relate to your understanding of identities, privilege and systems of oppression. Choose and include 1 quote from each of the assigned readings/sources and write 2 dialogic questions. Be sure to talk about each of the assigned readings/podcasts in your contemplations.  This assignment can also be submitted as a video, but we will be looking for the same amount of depth in what you say as we are in a written reflection.

Use these questions as a guide:

• What feelings came up for you as you read the readings/sources?  What stories and personal experiences may be connected to those feelings? 
• How did the readings/sources raise your level of consciousness around your identities, privilege and larger systems of oppression and your role in them?
• What questions do you still have or want to continue thinking/talking about with others?

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Western Journal of Communication

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“Be/coming” White and the Myth of White
Ignorance: Identity Projects in White Communities

Dreama G. Moon

To cite this article: Dreama G. Moon (2016) “Be/coming” White and the Myth of White Ignorance:
Identity Projects in White Communities, Western Journal of Communication, 80:3, 282-303, DOI:
10.1080/10570314.2016.1143562

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“Be/coming” White and the Myth of
White Ignorance: Identity Projects in
White Communities
Dreama G. Moon

Communication studies of White enculturation practices are almost nonexistent despite
the centrality of discursive fields in building Whiteness as an embodied way of life. The
process of becoming White is investigated via exploration of racial enculturation
practices. Data are 124 racial epiphany stories of Whites responding to the question:
“When was the first time you became aware that you had a race and what that meant?”
Two themes emerged: Performances of Whiteness by Family/Friends and Public Per-
formances of White Privilege.

Keywords: Enculturation; Epiphany; Intercultural Communication; Race; Whiteness

Constructing whites as knowledgeable about race has two advantages: one, it holds
them self-accountable to race-based decisions and actions; two, it dismantles their
innocence in exchange for a status as full participants in race relations. (Leonardo,
2009, p. 108)

In studies of race, a commonly accepted idea is that Whites do not know much
about race (Jensen, 2002; Leonardo, 2009; McIntosh, 1988; McKinney, 2006). The
thinking goes that due to their racial advantage, Whites seldom think or talk about
race and have relatively no experience in doing so. Scholars suggest that Whites are
not exposed to racial discourse early in life, that they do not think about life choices in
racialized ways, and that they do not consider themselves as “having” a race or view

Dreama G. Moon is a Professor in the Department of Communication at California State University, San Marcos.
The paper was presented at the National Communication Association, 2015, for the Intercultural and Interna-
tional Communication Division. Appreciation is extended to the anonymous reviewers, to Dr. Sharon D.
Downey, Dr. Michelle A. Holling, and the CSUSM Faculty Writing Group for their insightful editorial sugges-
tions. Gratitude is extended to students of COMM 454 who have taught me so much about Whiteness.
Correspondence to: Dreama G. Moon, Department of Communication, California State University, San Marcos,
San Marcos, CA 92096-0001, USA. E-mail: dmoon@csusm.edu

Western Journal of Communication
Vol. 80, No. 3, May–June 2016, pp. 282–303

ISSN 1057-0314 (print)/ISSN 1745-1027 (online) © 2016 Western States Communication Association
DOI: 10.1080/10570314.2016.1143562

themselves as members of a racial group (Jackson, Warren, Pitts, & Wilson, 2007;
Martin, Krizek, Nakayama, & Bradford, 1996; Miller & Harris, 2005). Yet other
studies have shown that Whites tend to assert race quite vehemently in particular
situations such as in discussions of affirmative action, racial profiling, and immigra-
tion (Ditomaso, Paks-Yancy, & Post, 2003; Gallagher, 2003). In addition, Whites’
personal and social investment in Whiteness has been well documented (Lipsitz,
1998). So how are we to account for this seeming contradiction? What interests are
served by supporting what Leonardo (2009) calls the myth of White ignorance?

Rather than view these two claims as paradoxical, conceptualizing White racial
knowledge and White ignorance in dialectical tension seems more fertile ground for
theorizing Whiteness. In many situations Whites do appear extremely naïve about
and/or indifferent to racial matters, while in others Whites display substantial racial
knowledge and assert their views forcefully. I argue that Whites know much more
about race as both lived experience and a structural system of privilege than typically
acknowledged. In order to understand race more fully and to better advocate for racial
justice, we must delve deeper into understanding the limits and possibilities of White
racial knowledge so potentialities for disruption can be more fully identified. One
avenue for doing so is through scrutiny of White enculturation processes. In other
words, by what discursive processes do Whites come to embody a White racial
epistemological frame? Given the proliferation of Whiteness studies in our discipline,
one wonders how is it that we know so little about the processes by which one is
encouraged to become White (which requires learning and to varying degrees inter-
nalizing the “truth” of White racial knowledge). I argue that understanding White
racialization processes is a key element in developing social interventions into White
hegemonic reproduction.

I proceed with a brief overview of the current state of Whiteness scholarship in
communication, and then turn to research that examines White experience specifically.
I then identify racial enculturation practices aimed at helping young Whites learn to
embody Whiteness and conclude with a discussion of implications for thinking through
Whiteness.

“SEEING” WHITENESS

Since the country’s inception, White domination has been a regular and consistent
part of the lives of those residing within the United States (Bonilla-Silva, 2006; Elise,
2004; Lacy, 2008; Lipsitz, 1998). Historically, Whiteness has been explicitly articulated
and performed by Whites, both publicly and privately as well as deliberately encoded
in law, social policies of all sorts (e.g., immigration, housing, education), Christian
rhetoric, and science, to name but a few (Lipsitz, 1998). For hundreds of years, White
people knew that they were White and were quite clear on the social, political, and
material benefits attached to that subject position and often were willing to kill (and
did so) to protect them. With the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that attempted to introduce
a “color-blind” standard into hiring and college admission practices, Whiteness

Western Journal of Communication 283

apparently “disappeared.” We then entered a new phase of White hegemony fueled by
color-blind discourse which has produced a generation of Whites who seemingly do
not think much about being White and who have a difficult time understanding how
that racial position is central to social, material, and psychological advantages for
themselves and lack thereof for others. This seems a peculiar turn of events to be sure,
but one that Nakayama and Krizek (1995) name as “strategic,” which must be
addressed tactically through mapping practices.

Heeding the call of Nakayama and Krizek (1995), communication scholars turned
to the task of marking the cultural space of Whiteness (Flores & Moon, 2002; Flores,
Moon, & Nakayama, 2006). Mapping requires careful analyses of how Whiteness
reinforces existing racial understandings and the racial order which in turn, some
hope, will encourage Whites to acknowledge (and perhaps reject) their beneficiary
status under White hegemony (Doane, 2006). In the two decades since Nakayama and
Krizek’s seminal work, communication scholars have examined Whiteness across a
wide array of social, political, and cultural milieus in both national and international
contexts.1 This work is imperative if we are to call Whiteness into account and
effectively disrupt its hegemony. While we have advanced theoretical understandings
of Whiteness—most notably Whiteness as strategic silence (Crenshaw, 1997); White-
ness as performance (Cooks & Simpson, 2007; Martin & Davis, 2001; Warren, 2001a,
2001b, 2003); White discourse (Gunn & McPhail, 2015; Holling, 2011; Holling, Moon,
& Jackson Nevis, 2014; Lacy, 2008; Moon, 1999; Simpson, 2008); White identity
(Brown, 2009; Collier, 2005; Jackson, 1999; Jackson & Heckman, 2002; Jackson,
Shin, & Wilson, 2000; Martin et al., 1996); representational Whiteness (Chidester,
2008, 2012; Dubrofsky & Ryalls, 2014; Griffin, 2015; Projansky & Ono, 1999; Yous-
man, 2003); postcolonial Whiteness (Lee, 1999; Milazzo, 2015; Rowe & Malhotra,
2007; Shome, 2011; Steyn, 2001, 2004); Whiteness and pedagogy (Chen, Simmons, &
Kang, 2015; Cooks & Simpson, 2007; Warren, 2003); and spatial Whiteness (Hoops,
2014)—more needs to be done.

While racialization processes generally have not been a primary focus in inter-
cultural communication scholarship (e.g., for an exception see Moon, 1999), a small
number of studies do explore Whiteness from the standpoint of Whites. Asking
Whites, “What is Whiteness” and/or “What does it mean to be White?” (Jackson,
1999; Jackson & Heckman, 2002; Martin et al., 1996; Nakayama & Krizek, 1995),
Nakayama and Krizek (1995) opened up an emic avenue of interrogation around
racial labeling, and positioning White label choices as more than mere preference, but
strategies of avoidance and denial. A number of scholars have pursued similar lines of
inquiry confirming and extending Nakayama and Krizek’s findings (Jackson, 1999;
Jackson & Heckman, 2002; Martin et al., 1996). In such studies, Whites generally
appear to eschew racial labels and often find them meaningless, especially in reference
to themselves. A second strand of research has explored instructor and/or student
performances of Whiteness in multicultural classrooms (Jackson et al., 2007; Johnson,
Rich, & Cargile, 2008; Miller & Fellows, 2007; Miller & Harris, 2005). These studies
evidence common threads in their conclusions: Whites view being White as both a
liability and as privilege, fear being thought a racist, do not think about their race,

284 D. G. Moon

experience White guilt, perceive themselves as victims of reverse discrimination, need
to position themselves as “good Whites,” eschew the historical legacy of White
domination, feel judged unfairly as “Whites” rather than seen as individuals, divert
conversation away from White responsibility, feel silenced in discussions about race,
and are often hesitant to participate in or invoke discussions about race in mixed race
contexts.

A last line of scholarship invites young Whites to speak more broadly about White
experience. Interviewing Whites about their racial experiences, Foster (2009) asked
questions about their interracial relationships, their racial experiences on campus,
their ideas of ways to achieve racial equality, and emotions associated with various
experiences involving race. Although respondents were more than willing to discuss
their (often negative) experiences with people of color (usually Blacks), their responses
became strangely incoherent when explaining their own relationship to race. Asking
White students to write about their reactions to classroom discussions of race, Cooks
(2003) found that many wrote about how the coursework had influenced their
thinking (e.g., “I never thought of this before”) but did not provide insight into how
their learning affected understandings and performances of their racial identities. In
sum, extant scholarship has enabled us to understand basic notions about how White
people experience identity and race, primarily focusing on racial labeling preferences,
White resistance, and White privilege.

Perhaps due to their unwillingness or inability to discuss their Whiteness in
mixed race contexts, Whites often are not viewed as participants in an overt
socialization process that teaches them what it means to be White, including
racially appropriate ways of embodying race. Plainly, the reproduction of racial
dominance is not left to chance as this would fly in the face of how we understand
hegemonic identification processes to be produced and reproduced. In fact, both
the explicit and implicit reproduction of a White epistemological frame among
Whites is necessary to the continuation of White domination thinking and prac-
tice. Given the importance of their role in the reproduction of White hegemony,
careful attention is dedicated to molding the minds and bodies of young Whites
into acceptable members of their racial communities. This molding requires that
young Whites come to adopt a White racial frame. As a perspectival lens, the
White frame2 is a comprehensive script, containing aspects related to beliefs,
interpretation, emotionality, and behavior, and is both unapologetically ethno-
centric and self-aggrandizing (Feagin, 2013; Leonardo, 2004, 2009). As racialization
occurs, young Whites learn culturally specific ways of seeing and interpreting the
world, and this frame influences to a large degree what it is they do “see” in the
social sense (Feagin, 2013; McIntosh, 1988; Moon, 1999).

That studies of White enculturation practices in communication are almost non-
existent seems odd given the centrality of discursive fields in the building and
maintenance of White domination as an ideological, materially manifested, and
embodied hegemonic way of life. A potentially useful line of inquiry into becoming
White is through the exploration of Whites’ racial enculturation experiences. As
McKinney (2008) notes: “Although we know historically, politically, and socially

Western Journal of Communication 285

what ‘whiteness’ means, we must also know what it means as part of the identities,
experiences, and ideologies of white people” (p. 1305). The value of an emic approach
to understanding life from the perspectives of those inside a group has been long
understood in intercultural communication (Broome, 1986), although few intercul-
turalists have pursued this line of inquiry in regards to Whites. Consequently, I begin
with interrogating the process of “becoming” White.

UNRAVELING WHITENESS

Denzin (1989) points out, “The biographical method [is] the studied use and collec-
tion of life documents that describe turning-point moments in an individual’s life”
(p. 69). Race is an area especially suited to stories, because how we come to under-
stand ourselves as racialized beings often occurs in fits and starts and in moments of
epiphany. Such epiphanies or turning-point moments are rich events to mine for
understanding. As McKinney (2006) submits, Whiteness as an identity is difficult to
tap into through explicit verbal messages but crystallizes in significant remembered
experiences.

Participants

The stories analyzed here were gathered in an upper-division elective course that
studies Whiteness. With IRB approval, over a period of 3 years I collected and
analyzed 124 racial epiphany narratives written by young Whites (37 males, 87
females in their early to late 20s) at a public university in the western United States.
The prompt for the narrative asked students to write a story about “the first time they
realized that they had a race and what that meant.” The narrative was submitted
credit/no credit; students were told that the only requirements were that they must
write a story and share it with their peers orally. The narrative was assigned about
midway through the course after students had been engaged in a detailed study of the
history of institutionalized White hegemony in the United States.

Participants were young Whites in their 20s, most of whom had grown up in
California. Despite California’s status as a minority-majority state, a significant
number of students describe growing up in “all or predominantly White” environ-
ments. Although the narrative prompt did not ask students to write about the racial
landscape of their early years, about half did so and the outcomes were enlightening.
A little less than one half (58) of the students reported spending most or all of their
formative years in all or predominantly White environments, and only 15 explicitly
mentioned growing up in diverse areas. I was struck by the unnoticed contradictions
and absences. One student, Martin, captures a frequently expressed sentiment: “Grow-
ing up I figured out my racial identity as being white at a young age not from living in
the racially diverse state of California, but from traveling to other states. As a child I
grew up in a predominantly white community.” Although Martin, like many other
students, noted that California is racially diverse, his childhood experiences were not.

286 D. G. Moon

Martin had to go “elsewhere” to learn about his Whiteness and, more importantly, he
did not notice the contradiction between living in a racially diverse state yet having a
White experience there. Student after student shared similar beginnings: “When I was
younger, I lived in a mainly white neighborhood”; “I was never confronted with race
growing up in predominantly white neighborhoods and schools”; and “I grew up in a
small town which consists of a large white population.”

These students’ stories should not surprise us given that residential preferences
among White Americans are well documented with studies indicating that White
residential self-segregation is on the increase (Kimelberg & Billingham, 2012). With
residential segregation comes educational segregation with the average White student
attending schools that are nearly 73% White (Childress, 2014; Orfield & Gordon,
2001). In short, we continue to note White preferences for living and schooling White
children with primarily other Whites, a practice that is likely to ensure another
generation of Whites who will have learned to define “community” in White terms.

Forgetting Whiteness

The assignment typically generates much anxiety for White students who often
rush to my office to assure me that they have no race stories to tell. After repeated
assurances that indeed they do, frequently more than one comes to the surface.
Martha wrote, “Remembering these experiences was not easy. I had to dig in my
memory for a long time.” Kevin echoes Martha’s experience: “It took a bit of
digging through my memory banks to dig up the first time I had a racial epiphany,
but now that I can recall it, the memory sticks out clear as day.” The process of
“digging” for a story that many White students experienced stood in stark contrast
to students of color in the class whose copious stories tumbled out easily, one after
another with the question being which story to share. The continued prompting of
White students and the digging required to unearth the memories suggests that
meaningful racial experiences for many Whites are buried deep, perhaps even
repressed until prompted (Thandeka, 2002). As student Terry captures, “Trying
to think of a time when I realized who I was racially was hard at first but the more
I critically thought about my experiences, I started to realize many moments in
elementary school where it was clear that I was a white male.” The “forgetting” of
racial learning moments among these young Whites parallels experiences discussed
by McIntosh (1988) in her seminal article on White privilege, where she found
that each time she would think of a racial privilege afforded her, she would
promptly forget it unless she wrote it down. Given the impulses in Whiteness
towards color-blindness and in perceiving racial identity as insignificant, not
surprisingly prodding is needed to encourage Whites to “remember” (in)significant
moments in their racialization process. Norquay (1999) suggests that “forgetting
produces a form of ignorance” and ignorance may be a necessary part of being
able to occupy a White racial identity comfortably (p. 2).

Western Journal of Communication 287

Trustworthiness

In contemplating the trustworthiness of the data, one might be inclined to think that
social desirability bias would direct White students to tell stories that painted them-
selves as “good Whites” and as innocent victims of prejudice by people of color; in
fact, a handful did so. Interestingly, social desirability bias may have actually worked
against the propensity toward White innocence stories given that students were aware
that their stories would be shared with and perhaps evaluated by their peers. From the
narrative content received from students, peer pressure appeared to have been useful
in limiting the likelihood of White students’ provision of “safe” stories. In addition, I
demonstrated story-telling for students early on, detailing my own race stories in
which I was a victim of family and peer pressures to conform to White norms, a
perpetrator of racism, and someone who has adopted an anti-Whiteness epistemology.
As Locke and Kiselica (1999) point out, to inspire thoughtful engagement with issues
related to race, it is necessary that the instructor model vulnerability and risk-taking.
In the next section, I explore two themes regarding racial enculturation processes that
emerged in the narratives.

LEARNING TO EMBODY WHITENESS

Being white [is] a matter of survival, … the pound of flesh exacted for the right to be
excluded from the excluded. (Thandeka, 2002, p. 8)

Participants’ stories suggest that many young Whites receive overt and implicit
instruction about appropriate racial norms—both in terms of beliefs and behaviors—
from significant others in their lives (McKinney, 2006). Thinking about being White as a
“pound of flesh” may initially seem counterintuitive as the “knapsack” of benefits that
accrue to Whites simply as a result of their racial membership has been well documented
(Lipsitz, 1998; McIntosh, 1988). However, following Gramsci (1983), when we recall that
hegemonies are maintained by both elements of concession (at minimum Whites are
awarded what Roediger [1999], calls the psychological wages of Whiteness) and repres-
sion (consequences for failure to adhere to hegemonic epistemologies), the idea gains
more traction. In the participants’ narratives, elements of both concession and repression
were present in the racialization processes they experienced. White families and friends as
well as strangers played pivotal roles in socializing these young Whites into “becoming
White” in two central ways: through performances of Whiteness by family and friends,
and public performances of White privilege.

Performances of Whiteness by Families and Friends

According to participants, family and other members of their social network play a
crucial role in enculturating children into a “White frame” (Feagin, 2013). While the
elements of the White script have remained fairly consistent over the country’s
history, in the post-Civil Rights era a frame of color-blindness has been added
asserting that race no longer matters. In an alleged “post-racial” society, color-

288 D. G. Moon

blindness is an extremely difficult ideology to disrupt. Debates about the viability of
color-blindness as a useful principle in combatting racism aside, participants came of
age in this ideological environment; thus they are often wedded to this discourse, even
as it often coexists alongside White hegemonic thinking. As observed in the data,
when young Whites raised under a color-blind philosophy encounter a discursive
contradiction within their family, frequently a crisis results. Reared in color-blindness,
young Whites are unprepared to deal with overt expressions of racism within their
close social networks.

While much socialization undoubtedly occurs through role modeling and other
nonverbal behaviors (i.e., the racial composition of parents’ social networks, neigh-
borhood, place of worship, school), two situations of perceived racial threat
emerged in the data that provoked direct intervention by White family and friends.
Both reference a Brown/Black body perceived as a racial threat. In the first
subtheme, preemptive strategies, this body is metaphorical and inferred from com-
ments made by and/or actions taken by participants. In the second subtheme,
sanctioning strategies, the threatening Brown or Black body is materially present
in the lives of the participants as potential romantic interests or as friends. While
responses in both were intended to communicate racial inappropriateness to young
Whites, the precipitating “offense” varied from admiration to romantic dating.
These interactions comprised some of the earliest childhood memories of partici-
pants and were often traumatic.

Preemptive Strategies

In socializing young Whites into racially normative ideological systems, energy is
devoted to policing their attitudes about racial others. As an epistemology, a coherent
White racial frame must incorporate race-appropriate beliefs about racial others and,
by association, self, for if the frame is not formed coherently, then breaches may be
more likely to occur. A common racial behavior likely to engender preemptive
responses is when the young child had done or said something that suggested to
caretakers that a behavioral violation could take place if misconceptions in racial
thinking were not addressed. Such “early warning signals” were sometimes as mild as
a child expressing admiration for a person or group of color. Racial interventions were
usually delivered by parents or other close family members and often occurred when a
family member perceived the potentiality of a future interracial relationship for their
child. Hannah’s story reflects this dynamic even though at the time of the conversa-
tion, Hannah was too young (5 years old) to have romantic relationships of any sort.
Hannah recollects:

I remember telling my grandfather that I was going to marry a basketball player
when I grew up because they made a lot of money and I wanted to be rich. He said
that I couldn’t marry a basketball player because then I would have Black babies. It
was the first time I really realized that me having a Black baby was not “normal”
and wouldn’t be accepted by my grandfather.

Western Journal of Communication 289

In a similar story, Karen shares that her gender socialization was really tied up with
being a White female. Specifically she would listen to her brothers make derogatory
comments about White women who slept with Black men and how they would never
date a White woman who had been with a Black man. She recalls: “It was always in
the back of my head that I might be judged or treated differently if I ever dated an
African American.”

The lessons here are both direct and rife with subtext. Both Hannah and Karen
received clear messages that to form relationships with Black men would jeopardize
their family’s acceptance. For young people, it can be incredibly threatening to realize
that the love and acceptance of one’s family is conditional and, in this case, in
compliance with racial norms (Kohn, 2009).

Although the possibility of forming interracial romantic relationships can elicit
swift and negative responses in White families, at other times simply expressing
admiration for a person of color necessitates a racial lesson as Jay learned:

My grandpa would always ask me questions like “are there many Black kids at your
school?” I didn’t really think too deeply about questions like that but I was really
shook up when my brother and I were collecting basketball cards. My brother’s
favorite player was Karl Malone and mine was Shaquille O’Neal, both of which are
Black players. While we were trading cards my grandpa who was watching asked
why our favorite players were “n—-rs.” He continued to say that I shouldn’t have a
Black role model because that wouldn’t get me anywhere. Later I asked my dad why
my grandpa was so angry at Black people; he just said that I should ignore him
because that’s just how he is.

The grandfather’s claims imply to Jay that admiring Black people for their skills
and abilities is somehow problematic, an idea that flies in the face of popular color-
blind discourse that maintains that race does not matter. Certainly, race does matter to
Jay’s grandfather and when a confused Jay searches for understanding from his
parents, he is given a stock answer in White families to explain a member’s racism:
“That’s just how he is.” Such statements work to normalize racism and relegate it to a
matter of perspective or personality.

In her story, Eileen ups the racial ante when she tried to protect a young Black peer
from being verbally taunted in elementary school. When overhearing a White school-
mate call Roxanne “Blackie,” Eileen confronted her and, in response, the White girl
called her a “n—-r lover.” Eileen “lost it, climbed on her chest and began hitting her
with the bottom of her shoe repeatedly.” She was taken to the principal’s office and
the following transpired:

My grandmother was called to pick me up … and when she came out of the
principal’s office, her eyes were filled with tears. We went for ice cream and she
said it was time for us to have a talk. She said it was my mother’s fault for not teaching
me that people are different . . . . She said it was important for me to make friends with
people who looked like me and that when people said mean things to people like
Roxanne, it wasn’t my job to stick up for them. She explained that “n—-r” is a bad
name for Black people and that if I wanted to fit in at school, I needed not to act or
dress like them or make friends with them.

290 D. G. Moon

From this talk with her grandmother, Eileen learned that she is not supposed to
stand up against racism, that if she befriends Black people she won’t fit in, her mother
has done something wrong by failing to give her this information, and likely most
importantly, that if she chooses to do otherwise, her grandmother will be deeply
disappointed and may withdraw her love.

I close this section with Cheyenne’s story. She grew up in a home where racist
epithets were common; there was no pretense at color-blindness. Within that context,
a brutal family “racial joke” is perpetuated:

… I learned I had a race was when I was 5 years old when my brothers began an evil
joke that made me question my race. They were playing a game and I wanted to join
in but was told that I was not allowed to play because I was adopted. . . . [H]e said
that Mom and Dad adopted you and you are actually Black and they painted you
white. I ran to my dad to ask him, and he said “yup.” I went crying to my mother
and she said to ignore them. This joke continued well into the fifth grade. I
remember being more angry at the fact that I might actually be a different race
than my family than I was with being adopted.

While her story may seem extreme, rather cruel treatment at the hands of family
members was not uncommon in students’ narratives. For participants, such interac-
tions were traumatic on two levels: First, for many it was the first time they realized
that their families were racist and not color-blind, and second, it was the first time
they learned that love and acceptance in their families and racial communities was
conditional. Thandeka (2002) terms such experiences as “racial abuse.” Elaborating
Thandeka argues that the White child:

… is a racial victim of its own white community of parents, caretakers, and peers,
who attack it because it does not yet have a white racial identity. Rather than to
continue to suffer such attacks, the … child defends itself by creating a white racial
identity for itself. It begins to think and act like its community’s ideal of a white self.
(p. 13)

This sort of racial abuse intensifies as White children get older, and form (or
consider forming) an intimate relationship with people who happen to be of color.3

Sanctioning Strategies

Sanctioning is an act of power where the more powerful party employs some strategy
designed to bend the offending party to its will. In participants’ stories, sanctioning
strategies frequently emerged when a young person entered into a serious and/or
intimate engagement with a person of color. Such strategies involved communication
of strong disapproval, implying some wrongdoing on the child’s part, and clear
demonstrations of the conditionality of familial love. Intimate or close relationships
with people of color posed a “high alert” racial threat in that they violate White norms
and raise concerns about “White purity.” Respondents quickly learned that interracial
dating relationships frequently receive harsh censure in White communities. Leeann
recalls, “My white friends thought it was weird that I was getting so close to a Mexican
guy.” Whites frequently receive messages from their racial communities that strongly

Western Journal of Communication 291

discouraged racial mixing of any sort. Mary’s story is an exemplar. Meeting a boy in
middle school that she liked, she brought him home to meet her parents who reacted
poorly to this event. She recalls:

I was shocked that my parents were so upset. . . . When my grandmother found out,
she called me crying and was so upset because I was dating someone who was not
white, especially a Black guy. She said, “Nana just does not agree with interracial
relationships. You are white and he is Black. You’re too pretty to be with a n—-r.”
Instantly my heart dropped and I hung up on her crying.

Socialized into a color-blind frame, Mary was shocked at the severity of her family’s
responses to even the possibility of dating Black men. She also understands that her family
was drawing a racial line where crossing it could have dire consequences for familial
relationships. Laura articulates this idea more explicitly in her story of interracial dating.

I knew that I couldn’t bring him home to meet my dad because he wouldn’t have
accepted him and would have made us feel extremely uncomfortable because my
father was a racist. Somehow I knew that his love for me would have been
conditional if I had brought Jeremy home to meet him.

Although interracial dating relationships elicited the strongest responses from
family and friends, interracial friendships also sparked controversy. Such relationships
presented respondents with challenges about racial loyalty and “having to choose”
between White support groups and one’s values, a common experience in White
communities where conditional racial acceptance is a fact of life that many Whites
learn early and often (Moon, 1999). For example, Tray tells of a new friend made in
elementary school and the consequences incurred as a result:

Jack was treated differently because of the color of his skin, but I became friends with
him. At recess I started to get made fun of and pressured to pick sides, to choose
between my old friends and my new friend. Up until this point I was kind of in the
cool clique and never had to worry about fitting in or being accepted. Now I had to
choose: take the easy road and make him an outcast or be an outcast with him.

With disbelief, Tray writes, “I couldn’t understand how people I had known since
birth would turn on me at the drop of a hat.” Although peer pressure can be an
effective social control mechanism, Tray reports that Jack and he remained friends.
Barbara had a similar situation with White friends she had known since preschool
when she developed a friendship with a Mexican young man, but she was not able to
withstand racial pressure: “I started hiding our relationship from my white friends.
Although I felt ashamed of doing this, I didn’t want to risk losing my friends because I
was hanging out with someone that they did not approve of so I began avoiding him.”

In addition to conditional acceptance, another strategy common in White families
is to infer wrongdoing on the part of the White child when s/he befriends a person of
color. Desiree writes, “About high school I became friends with a diverse group of
people. My parents never spoke to me about race—maybe they preferred me to be
color-blind. Once my mother found out about my new group of friends she looked
confused and asked me, “Why aren’t any of your friends white?” Another student,
Bobby, writes about a time when his parents asked probing questions about his

292 D. G. Moon

friendship with an Asian American girl after he had brought her home: “I will never
forget being so uncomfortable and feeling like I did something wrong. I was embar-
rassed but knew I could never do that again.” Unmistakably, young Whites in these
stories experienced strong messages about racially appropriate relationships from
family and friends from whom they needed love and/or acceptance.

Public Performances of White Privilege

White racial knowledge is conveyed in every imaginable context, thus racial lessons
for Whites are widely available in everyday life. This theme delineates the ways in
which public performances of White privilege illustrated to participants the benefits of
being White. Young Whites reported learning racial norms from observing situations
involving people of color and Whites from which they gleaned ideas about White
privilege, appropriate racial behavior, and the worth of people of color (and, hence,
self); and from being participants in a situation where the outcome demonstrated
White advantage. Color-blind discourse was also implicated in many of the stories,
usually in terms of its violation. In this way, young Whites began to piece together a
rudimentary understanding of racial hierarchy and its implications. Participants’
stories occurred in a wide array of spaces, thus young Whites were exposed to similar
racial messages across myriad contexts. As opposed to previous family and friend
performances that focused on individuals’ attitudes and behaviors, these stories
illustrate White structural advantages and evidenced two subthemes: discriminatory
practices in institutional spaces, and racial profiling in public spaces.

Discriminatory Practices in Institutional Spaces

Students described discriminatory practices across an array of institutional settings,
with school being a primary context. The differential treatment of White children
and children of color in public schools is well documented, indicating that racial
bias exists in school discipline in terms of frequency of infractions given and
harshness of penalties imposed, number of expulsions, and representation in
advanced placement and gifted courses (Lewin, 2012; Rocque & Paternoster,
2011; Vagins, 2014). While school is one of the first institutions where children
learn racial inequity, it is also one of the first arenas where White children’s racial
advantage pays off in visible ways. Harry’s story connects race, academic opportu-
nities, and institutionalized White privilege beginning in elementary school. His
school was unique among the narratives in that Whites comprised a minority of
the student population—something he first found unsettling. After making friends
and beginning to fit in, he was moved, along with a number of other White kids,
into an accelerated program. He notes:

Over the next 3 years in this program with all the same white kids, I finally understood
what was going on and knew that it was unfair. When discussing it with my mother,
she said it was because the school wanted us to do well and succeed. What she meant

Western Journal of Communication 293

was that the white children would do better and succeed because we were given extra
privilege. . . . This was when I realized that I had a race and it was more privileged than
others. It was perfectly clear that we were given opportunities to succeed in life over
others, and it was because of the color of our skin.

Harry understands that something unfair is happening, something with which the
adults in his life—teachers, principals, and his own mother—are complicit. Although
Harry recognizes that he is the recipient of unfair advantage, the benefit is received
nevertheless and he learns that this undue advantage is a part of (White racial) life. In
addition to racial bias in academic opportunities, school discipline is also subject to
racial discrimination and White children learn early on that they are able to escape
punishment even when they have been the instigators of a conflict. Tom tells an all
too common story:

In the 5th grade, a bunch of us were going to play soccer and I heard my friend
shout, “Whites vs. Mexicans!” I remember feeling hesitant but obligated to play or
else my friends wouldn’t want to hang out with me anymore. I recall hearing a lot of
racial slurs towards the Mexicans like “go back to your country” and “I need you to
landscape my yard.” Eventually a fight broke out. The noon duty person didn’t
punish any of the white kids but the people of color were sent to the principal’s
office. That was the first time I realized I had leverage over people of color. It wasn’t
that I felt superior to them but I knew I could get away with certain stuff over them.

Like Harry, Tom realizes that he is able to escape deserved punishment due to
White privilege. He too comprehends this as unfair and felt “terrible” for the Mexican
children who were punished. Noting and accepting unfairness that benefits them is an
important life lesson White children learn, one to which they can grow to feel entitled
or they can choose to contest.

The workplace is another space in which respondents learned about White advan-
tage through participation in discriminatory hiring practices. In Jayme’s story, after a
promotion, she was given the responsibility for hiring. The supervisor advised Jayme
to have the applicants drop off their applications in person “to save us all a lot of
time”; however, the latent meaning of her suggestion escaped Jayme, thus she pro-
ceeded in what might be viewed as a “color-blind” manner. Having whittled the list
down to three “extremely qualified applicants,” Jayme was convinced her supervisor
would hire at least one of them. Jayme relays what happened next:

My boss went to introduce herself to the applicants and came back looking irritated.
She asked who was sitting in the waiting room and I told her that those were the
applicants. Then she told me to “tell them the positions have been filled.” I quickly
realized what was going on—prescreening wasn’t about assessing their skills; it was
more about finding out what color their skin was. At that point, we did not have any
people of color employed at my job—was this a coincidence? No, here I was with
three excellent applicants and the fact of the matter was that she wasn’t going to hire
any of them. I haven’t been in charge of new hires since. I obviously didn’t under-
stand “what made a good addition to the company.” I started to wonder how many
people have tried to get a job at this place in the past and had been turned away. I’m
sure that the owner could find any list of reasons why she didn’t bring those girls on
staff other than the color of their skin, but I know and she knows that was exactly

294 D. G. Moon

why. If I had to do it again, I would like to think that I wouldn’t have done the
owner’s dirty work and enforced her discrimination on other people.

New to the workforce, young Whites are frequently faced with unwritten rules
about their expected participation in racial gatekeeping. At that point, they have
decisions to make: participate, keep their jobs, and reproduce White supremacy, or
contest unfair racial practices at work and perhaps risk losing their jobs. While one
can appreciate the difficulty of such decisions, there are laws and processes in place to
help workplace discrimination if Whites choose to utilize them. In the narratives,
young Whites often found themselves going along with such practices even though
they knew they were wrong and/or illegal. In a second example, Marcus too is taught a
lesson about White advantage when his best friend who was Black suggested that he
apply for a job at a country club. With no previous experience as a waiter, Marcus was
hired “on the spot” as a server, “a more prestigious and lucrative position” than being
a busser as was his friend. When Marcus told his friend the good news he recalled,

I could tell he was a little put out by the fact that I got a job as a server with no prior
experience. He had been there over a year and had not been given that opportunity.
That’s when I realized the power of white privilege.

Schools and workplaces are common arenas in which young Whites witness and
learn to participate in racial discrimination. Although many realize that such practices
are at best unfair and at worse illegal, they fail to take action. This failure illustrates
the challenge of acting outside of White norms even when Whites recognize that
unfairness is occurring. This fact suggests that the development of White racial
consciousness does not ensure, nor necessarily lead to, counternormative behavior.

Racial Profiling

The participants like many millennials tend to be aware of the notion of racial
profiling given hate crimes against Middle Easterners or Middle Eastern-appearing
people following 9/11, “stop and frisk” practices, and increased border scrutiny. A
number relayed stories involving heightened security at airports. Incidents of racial
profiling were commonly observed and young Whites recognized that being White
had definite advantages in such situations. Dom’s story involved racial profiling at an
airport. Waiting to get through security, Dom decided to “count how many white
people were stopped versus how many colored [sic] people. I remember it being
something like 13 colored [sic] and 5 whites.” Understanding racial profiling in a new
way, he notes that

I am a white male and because of that, I will be subject to certain privileges.
Whether I condone it or not, I will more than likely be waved through the border
checkpoints, looked at differently in job interviews, not subjected to the thought that
I committed the crime, not looked at as dangerous.

Like Dom, Steve noticed that White families were treated differently than others in
high alert situations. In his case, his mother chose to maintain restricted items such as
lipstick and lotions despite repeated announcements that they were to be discarded.

Western Journal of Communication 295

When his family reached the security checkpoint, his mother was able to successfully
maneuver the (White) guard into allowing her to keep the banned items. Shortly
afterwards he saw a Black woman traveling with two young boys stopped and asked
for banned items. According to Steve:

She, like my mom, pleaded to keep her belongings; however, she was unsuccessful.
When she kept begging, a few other white male guards got involved and made her
—in front of her boys—stand against a wall with her legs spread as they searched
her. . . . It makes me sick to my stomach that this kind of thing happens every day
and nobody stands up to it. It was at that moment that I became aware of what it
meant to be white.

Interactions with agents of authority have vastly different implications for Whites
and people of color. “Death while Black” is a common theme in stories within
communities of color, thus interactions with representatives of the criminal justice
system are never to be taken lightly. Nicky’s story is a case in point. In her story, kids
were hanging out in front of school waiting for their parents to arrive when two White
police officers showed up and told the Black kids that they could not wait for their
parents on school premises. As one child attempted to explain that his mom would be
there in 5 minutes, the officers became aggressive and threatening. His mother arrived
to find her young son handcuffed in the back of a police car. As Nicky describes:

The cop threw the mother chest first on the cop car, and her son was screaming
from the back seat and kicking the window. . . . The cops started pepper spraying all
the Black kids and told me to get off campus. What got me the most was that my
friend Eddie got pepper sprayed. . . . When he walked out of school with two girls—
one white and one Hispanic—the cops ran up and sprayed both him and the
Hispanic girl, pushing the white girl out of the way. It finally hit me that this was
a race thing. . . . Something as small as waiting for a ride turned into an all-out war.

Beth’s story closes out this section by offering insight into how often Whites gets
what she calls “the benefit of the doubt” when they are guilty of wrongdoing. Coming
from a family in which law-breaking among other problems was common, Beth
recounts her experience:

I’ll never forget the words that came out of the officer’s mouth as he read me my
Miranda rights: “you don’t look like the type of person I’m usually arresting on a
felony.” I was the 4th person in my immediate family to be convicted of a felony. It
wasn’t really a surprise to me that I got arrested at such a young age, yet to him I
was a young white girl and because of this, I got the benefit of the doubt. Rather
than being thrown in Juvenile Hall, I was offered … a probation program which
would help wipe the felony off my record once I turned 18. Even more exceptions
were made for me once I got into the program. . . . I learned that despite that I grew
up with many disadvantages, I was white and this meant above all else, I’ll be a
privileged member of society—whether or not I even wanted those privileges.

Participants encountered any number of situations in which performances of
Whiteness made them privy to racial realities around racial (dis)privilege.4 In these
situations, they became clearly aware that they had a race and that it was meaningful

296 D. G. Moon

in important ways. These stories belie notions that Whites do not see themselves as
racialized or as having racial benefits.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: TAMPERING WITH THE WHITE RACIAL
FRAME

Leonardo (2004) cautions that White experience cannot stand on its own nor be
examined through a White epistemological lens. In other words, when we address
racial analyses through a White imaginary, we often fall into catering to a racial
epistemology based on denial of certain racial facts (Leonardo, 2004). Doing so
impedes the analytical process for as illustrated by these epiphanies, these young
Whites are just now admitting the most basic racial fact: White domination exists.
Drawing on an analytics of the oppressed, we can interrogate these narratives for what
they both reveal and obscure about Whiteness.

First, the stories illustrate how Whites are taught racial norms quite explicitly
within their families, among their peers, and through public performances of
White advantage. Many White families draw on explicit discursive strategies
designed to encourage young Whites to internalize a White racial frame, and
undoubtedly everyday institutional performances of racial (dis)privilege help to
extend, refine, and sediment this process. Student experiences call into question
the alleged pervasiveness of color-blindness said to represent the so-called post-
racial era during which these young Whites came of age. For these participants,
the illusion of color-blindness was shattered relatively early in life as family,
friends, and institutions implicitly and explicitly educated them into White epis-
temology; yet when asked to write a story about their awareness of race, many
initially denied that one existed. This peculiar turn of events evokes McIntosh’s
(1988) essay in which she details how she kept forgetting the racial privileges she
enjoys until she wrote them down. The process of forgetting may be integral to
becoming (and remaining) White. If “forgetting” is a “socially organized” and
active part of identifications processes, then “what we choose to forget, to exclude,
to keep silent, and private is also key to that identity” (Norquay, 1999, p. 3). In
terms of disrupting White epistemologies, the development and deployment of
strategies of “remembering” are essential.

While White students’ admissions that they are aware of the racial world they
occupy is a huge step for them, alone it is insufficient to ending White supremacy.
Given young Whites’ social immersion in color-blind discourse, racial pressure to
forget looms large. Perhaps the racial acknowledgements detailed in their stories are
first steps in ongoing efforts to push Whites to additional insights that undermine the
White frame. Given that White epistemology constantly encourages Whites to “for-
get” what they come to know, interruptions offered by counterepistemologies are vital.
Counterepistemologies include both exposure to the counternarratives of people of
color and White awareness narratives such as the ones presented here. Despite their
course exposure to the history and institutionalization of White supremacy over four

Western Journal of Communication 297

centuries, becoming “believers” in racism for White students was primarily accom-
plished after hearing the stories of their peers, especially (but not only) those of color.

One wonders, what (if anything) have these young Whites decided to do about/
with their Whiteness? Almost every narrative written by White students ended with a
“and now I know” theme absent any urgency or reflections on future actions to
pursue. This differs substantially from those written by students of color which were
more likely to delve deeply and analytically into the stories they heard and to connect
individual experiences to structural inequality. The narratives of students of color
indicated that these stories are seen as part of an ongoing racial dialogue in which all
students, White and of color, are implicated. Students of color narratives also
acknowledge that disruption of White hegemony requires collective action.

Often, the clarity of vision observed in narratives of students of color was missing
in White stories. For example, given that most of the stories shared occurred when
participants were very young, why did the “knowing” not occur much earlier in their
lives? Why now in this class and not then? In addition, the finality of the tone—“and
now I know”—raises other questions: Do Whites believe that once they “see” it, they
are done with race? Do Whites grasp that once they “know” they incur an obligation
to act? Further, the passive tone evident in many stories is worthy of note. Many
stories involved what people did to them. Almost never do participants acknowledge
their conscious decisions to comply with parental racism, racial profiling, or discrimi-
natory hiring practices. That admission is vital for White transformational
possibilities. This silence around one’s complicity in enactments of racism highlights
the tenaciousness of White enculturation norms against denouncement of or inter-
vention into racism.

Yet there were signs of hope. Some participants clearly understood that racism was
occurring and made connections to institutionalized White domination. For example,
in Jayme’s story regarding illegal hiring practices, she understood that she was
expected to participate in racial discrimination and was able to connect this incident
to historical and systemic patterns of discrimination when she noted that no people of
color were employed in her workplace and understood this as deliberately orche-
strated rather than an accident of “meritocracy.” Likewise, Beth’s insights into how as
a felon, she was advantaged by the criminal justice system and how White privilege
continues to benefit her in current job-seeking efforts are noteworthy. A handful of
other stories indicate a grasp of the racial dynamics inherent in the situation encoun-
tered where participants clearly saw that something wrong was occurring, and that the
races of the beneficiary and of the target were patterned. Other narratives indicate that
the person has become more self-reflexive, and now consciously monitors his or her
thoughts and language for racist stereotypes. Several students reported actively chal-
lenging the racism within their families, pushing loved ones to think differently about
race and racism. Almost all give at minimum a head nod to their increased awareness
that racism exists, that they benefit from it, and that their behavior can help maintain
or challenge it.

Whether Whites choose to adopt White epistemologies or to what degree they do
so is an open-ended, fluid process. As Leonardo (2009) notes, while structure may

298 D. G. Moon

heavily influence worldviews, it does not determine them. Although the task of
“tampering with the white frame” can seem daunting, White thinking is not a fait
accompli and is capable of being unsettled. As Mendoza, Halualani, and Drzewiecka
(2002) elucidate, identification is never foreclosed or a “done deal” but is always a
project in process. They go on to assert that “even within a hegemonic order, the
successful achievement of an ‘identity’ within the shaping power of ideology (whether
cultural, religious, or political) or of any disciplinary regime can never serve as a final
guarantee of victory” (p. 317). In other words, since identities are not preconstituted
nor static, critical study of White enculturation processes can enable us to find points
of dis/rupture of hegemonic identification practices.

To broaden our understanding of Whiteness, it is crucial to understand the ways in
which racialized forms of social control are utilized in White communities to produce
the next generation of “White-thinking” Whites.5 Social control sanctions are
deployed to discourage racial norm violation among Whites while simultaneously
encouraging their dependence on White communities. Eliciting stories like the ones
provided by these young Whites can aid us in identifying social control measures
employed in White communities and the stories themselves can function as a counter-
strategy to claims of White innocence and invisibility.

Notes

1. For example, see (Alexander, 2004; Chidester, 2008; Collier, 2005; Cooks, 2003; Crenshaw,
1997, 1998; Endres & Gould, 2009; Grimes, 2002; Holling, 2011; Holling et al., 2014; Jackson,
1999; Jackson & Heckman, 2002; Liera-Schwichtenberg, 2000; Mayer, 2005; Miller & Harris,
2005; Moon, 1999; Moon & Flores, 2000; Nakayama & Martin, 2007; Poniatowski & White-
side, 2012; Rowe & Malhotra, 2007; Shome, 2000; Simpson, 2008; Steyn, 2001; Warren, 2001a,
2001b; Yousman, 2003; Zhang, Gajjala, & Watkins, 2012)

2. By White racial frame, I refer to those sets of cultural beliefs that come to define racial
identity/reality for Whites (Feagin, 2013). Historically the White racial frame, as it operates in
the U.S. context, has remained fairly consistent in its delineations, and is inherently White
supremacist. Putting aside the “White pointy hat” version of White supremacy, I conceive,
following Cheryl Harris (1993), that White supremacy is a normative part of American
everyday life, comprised of three interrelated elements: White ideologies of superiority/infer-
iority manifested in countless ways, White privilege (a system of racial advantage invented by
Whites to serve Whites and prevent peoples of color from fully accessing social and political
equity thus challenging White dominance), and institutionalized Whiteness (social and
political institutions, laws, social policy, everyday racialized practices, etc.) that support and
help to form a White ideological script. Also noted is that I use White racial knowledge,
White epistemology, and White racial frame as interchangeable notions.

3. It is worth noting that all of the stories in the Preemptive Strategies section reference Black
bodies, especially males. Given the long history of White animosity towards Blackness, this is
not surprising; however it is worth thinking about how these early negative references to
Blackness form the foundation of the development of a White self among young White
children. For more on the notion, see, for example, Flores & Moon (2002).

4. I use the term “dis-privileged” to denote an active process of systematically stripping margin-
alized groups of rights rather than what the more popular term “unprivileged” conveys.

Western Journal of Communication 299

5. By “White-thinking Whites” I refer to those Whites who are uncritically entrenched in a
White epistemological worldview.

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https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/race-discrimination-school-discipline-real-problem

• Abstract

“SEEING” WHITENESS
UNRAVELING WHITENESS
Participants
Forgetting Whiteness
Trustworthiness
LEARNING TO EMBODY WHITENESS
Performances of Whiteness by Families and Friends
Preemptive Strategies
Sanctioning Strategies
Public Performances of White Privilege
Discriminatory Practices in Institutional Spaces
Racial Profiling

• CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: TAMPERING WITH THE WHITE RACIAL FRAME

Notes
References