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Shades of White: White Kids and Racial Identities in High School
What does it mean to be young, American, and white at the dawn of the twenty-first century? By exploring this question and revealing the everyday social processes by which high schoolers define white identities, Pamela Perry offers much-needed insights into the social construction of race and whiteness among youth.
Through ethnographic research and in-depth interviews of students in two demographically distinct U.S. high schools—one suburban and predominantly white; the other urban, multiracial, and minority white—Perry shares students’ candor about race and self-identification. By examining the meanings students attached (or didn’t attach) to their social lives and everyday cultural practices, including their taste in music and clothes, she shows that the ways white students defined white identity were not only markedly different between the two schools but were considerably diverse and ambiguous within them as well. Challenging reductionist notions of whiteness and white racism, this study suggests how we might go “beyond whiteness” to new directions in antiracist activism and school reform.
Shades of White is emblematic of an emerging second wave of whiteness studies that focuses on the racial identity of whites. It will appeal to scholars and students of anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, as well as to those involved with high school education and antiracist activities.
Through ethnographic research and in-depth interviews of students in two demographically distinct U.S. high schools—one suburban and predominantly white; the other urban, multiracial, and minority white—Perry shares students’ candor about race and self-identification. By examining the meanings students attached (or didn’t attach) to their social lives and everyday cultural practices, including their taste in music and clothes, she shows that the ways white students defined white identity were not only markedly different between the two schools but were considerably diverse and ambiguous within them as well. Challenging reductionist notions of whiteness and white racism, this study suggests how we might go “beyond whiteness” to new directions in antiracist activism and school reform.
Shades of White is emblematic of an emerging second wave of whiteness studies that focuses on the racial identity of whites. It will appeal to scholars and students of anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, as well as to those involved with high school education and antiracist activities.
280 pages, Paperback
First published January 24, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 3, 2012
I feel bad giving this only two stars, but I feel like it would be overreaching to say I "liked it." It's a really admirable effort, and an important subject of study, but I felt like it too often came up short. Perry is prone to letting her subjects more or less speak in their own voices for pages and pages at a time, and then summarizing or making attributions that feel questionable -- like you just showed me a bunch of your data, but I sure didn't see that in it, so I'm not inclined to trust you that it's there. It may also be that I think I am experiencing Berkeley High ethnography fatigue (come on, there's no way on earth "Clavey" is anything but), though it may just be Bay Area ethnography fatigue (yes, we all know how I feel about the Bay Area, about Cal, etc. South Park's "smug" episode actually summed it up pretty well).
In any event, throughout this I just kept thinking of other books, also by Cal PhDs, in similar (possibly the same) settings -- Clavey sounds just like C.J. Pascoe's... well, I don't even need to give the pseudonym, she told my husband in a class he took as an undergrad (yes, at Cal, I married into Cal) that she was doing fieldwork at Berkeley High. And Valley Groves sounds awfully like the site where Julie Bettie does her fieldwork. Both of those books were stronger than this one, though I feel like the subject matter here has so much potential. In the end though, the key takeaways -- things like racial/ethnic identity is socially constructed and relational -- just don't feel earth-shattering.
In any event, throughout this I just kept thinking of other books, also by Cal PhDs, in similar (possibly the same) settings -- Clavey sounds just like C.J. Pascoe's... well, I don't even need to give the pseudonym, she told my husband in a class he took as an undergrad (yes, at Cal, I married into Cal) that she was doing fieldwork at Berkeley High. And Valley Groves sounds awfully like the site where Julie Bettie does her fieldwork. Both of those books were stronger than this one, though I feel like the subject matter here has so much potential. In the end though, the key takeaways -- things like racial/ethnic identity is socially constructed and relational -- just don't feel earth-shattering.
September 7, 2009
Very, very good.
September 17, 2015
3 stars for nostalgic feelings it brought up for me, but her conclusions feel pat and many of her observations left me feeling like she stopped digging before she hit pay dirt.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews