White Out: Understanding White Privilege and Dominance in the Modern Age

by Christopher S. Collins, Alexander Jun

Colleges across the country, and the nation as a whole continue to be divided along racial lines. White Understanding White Privilege and Dominance in the Modern Age is about the role of Whiteness and a defense of White dominance in an increasingly diverse society. Whiteness is socially constructed, just as race is undoubtedly a social construct, documented through various periods in history. This book proposes that White Out is a learned habit that serves to defend White dominance in a multicultural age. White Out is a strategy that covers systems, dispositions, and actions that cannot cover the full indentation or impact. However, the action of blotting, either intentional or unintentional, serves to obscure experiences of people of color in lieu of a competing definition of reality. The authors introduce the White Architecture of the Mind as a metaphor highlighting the mind as a collection of walls, doors, windows, and pathways that influence individuals to react based on a systemic logic that was socially constructed reason. White Out, a byproduct of a White architecture of the mind, is a set of individual actions, choices, behaviors, and attitudes that are guided by a system that predisposes these attitudes and perpetuates privilege for core members of a dominant majority. The often-unconscious purpose in denying privilege and articulating colorblind ideology is to support a larger system and view of reality. The concepts covered in this volume White Pain, Whitefluenza (privilege as a virus), White 22 (White if you do, White if you don’t), Whitrogressions, Angry White Men, White Pilgrims, and Good White Friends.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, Social Justice, History

124 pages, Paperback

Published March 9, 2017

Reviews

[Scott Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

“White out, the action of intentional or unintentional blotting, serves the purpose of trying to obscure other experiences in lieu of a competing definition of reality.” Authors Christopher Collins and Alexander Jun (a long-time friend) authored this work as a means to “bring new language to longstanding ideas” regarding race as it relates to America's dominant culture of Whiteness. However they also hope to transform conversations surrounding racial justice. This has been a topic that has interested me since reading Thomas Sowell’s “The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective” in the late 1980’s. Dr. Sowell, a scholar at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, researched differences of groups in more than a dozen countries, with an analysis of patterns found in dominant cultures as it related to minorities. Dr. Collins and Dr. Jun have attempted a similar analysis (albeit more localized, not international in scope) using basic tenets of Critical Race Theory, a “system of dominance and subordination that is deeply rooted in our society.” One of their most poignant propositions is that racism is systematic or institutional prejudice involving the need of the dominant (White) culture to retain power and dominance. They argue that claims to reverse discrimination are posited through “a dominant lens . . . that presupposes an already post-racial and post-civil rights leveled playing field.” This hardly seems the case given that days of Jim Crow laws i.e. keeping African Americans out of schools, jobs, and neighborhoods, are still within current memories of many. Most hopeful was the author’s delineation of how to make progress in this area. They posited three stages: (1) initial stage – charity – helping others because it is the right thing to do, (2) emerging stage – caring – learning to empathize with others, and (3) developing stage – a committing to social justice. This is a challenging work, not only because of the subject matter, but also because of the surfeit of postmodern constructs and vocabulary. However our society needs to be challenged by the author’s thesis because many in our nation continue to hurt, and be hurt by racism. In summary, I cannot help but reflect on the prophet Isaiah’s imperative “Learn to do what is good, seek justice, alleviate oppression” (Isaiah 1:17).

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

White Out briefly covers major arenas in whiteness. White people deflecting pain of people of color by bringing up their own pain stories, white privilege, white people getting stuck in a damned if you do, damned if you don't, microaggressions, etc.

If you're new to discussions on whiteness and race, this isn't thorough enough as a first read. I suggest Me and White Supremacy (Saad) or Uprooting Racism (Kivel), then come back to this one.

[Mills College Library]

305.80097 C7122 2017