Whiteness
The socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness: how it was created, how it changes, and how it protects and privileges people who are perceived as white.

This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness, tracing its creation, its changing formation, and its power to privilege and protect people who are perceived as white. Whiteness, author Martin Lund explains, is not one single idea but a shifting, overarching category, a flexible cluster of historically, culturally, and geographically contingent ideals and standards that enable systems of hierarchical classification. Lund discusses words used to talk about whiteness, from white privilege to white fragility; the intersections of whiteness with race, class, and gender; whiteness in popular culture; and such ideas as “colorblindness” and “reverse racism,” which, he argues, actually uphold whiteness.

Lund shows why it is important to keep talking and thinking about whiteness. The word “whiteness,” he writes, doesn’t describe; it conjures something into being. Drawing on decades of critical whiteness studies and citing a range of examples (primarily from the United States and Sweden), Lund argues that whiteness is continually manufactured and sustained through language, laws, policies, science, and representations in media and popular culture. It is often positioned as normative, even universal. And despite its innocuous-seeming manifestations in sitcoms and superheroes, whiteness is always in the service of racial domination.
1140672730
Whiteness
The socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness: how it was created, how it changes, and how it protects and privileges people who are perceived as white.

This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness, tracing its creation, its changing formation, and its power to privilege and protect people who are perceived as white. Whiteness, author Martin Lund explains, is not one single idea but a shifting, overarching category, a flexible cluster of historically, culturally, and geographically contingent ideals and standards that enable systems of hierarchical classification. Lund discusses words used to talk about whiteness, from white privilege to white fragility; the intersections of whiteness with race, class, and gender; whiteness in popular culture; and such ideas as “colorblindness” and “reverse racism,” which, he argues, actually uphold whiteness.

Lund shows why it is important to keep talking and thinking about whiteness. The word “whiteness,” he writes, doesn’t describe; it conjures something into being. Drawing on decades of critical whiteness studies and citing a range of examples (primarily from the United States and Sweden), Lund argues that whiteness is continually manufactured and sustained through language, laws, policies, science, and representations in media and popular culture. It is often positioned as normative, even universal. And despite its innocuous-seeming manifestations in sitcoms and superheroes, whiteness is always in the service of racial domination.
16.95 In Stock
Whiteness

Whiteness

by Martin Lund
Whiteness

Whiteness

by Martin Lund

Paperback

$16.95 
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Overview

The socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness: how it was created, how it changes, and how it protects and privileges people who are perceived as white.

This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness, tracing its creation, its changing formation, and its power to privilege and protect people who are perceived as white. Whiteness, author Martin Lund explains, is not one single idea but a shifting, overarching category, a flexible cluster of historically, culturally, and geographically contingent ideals and standards that enable systems of hierarchical classification. Lund discusses words used to talk about whiteness, from white privilege to white fragility; the intersections of whiteness with race, class, and gender; whiteness in popular culture; and such ideas as “colorblindness” and “reverse racism,” which, he argues, actually uphold whiteness.

Lund shows why it is important to keep talking and thinking about whiteness. The word “whiteness,” he writes, doesn’t describe; it conjures something into being. Drawing on decades of critical whiteness studies and citing a range of examples (primarily from the United States and Sweden), Lund argues that whiteness is continually manufactured and sustained through language, laws, policies, science, and representations in media and popular culture. It is often positioned as normative, even universal. And despite its innocuous-seeming manifestations in sitcoms and superheroes, whiteness is always in the service of racial domination.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780262544191
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 10/04/2022
Series: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 5.00(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Martin Lund is Senior Lecturer, Department of Society, Culture, and Identity at Malmö University. He is the author of Re-Constructing the Man of Steel: Superman 1938-1941, Jewish American History, and the Invention of the Jewish–Comics Connection.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii
1 Introduction 1
2 Whiteness and Its Discontents 17
3 White Words 59
4 It's a White World after All 91
5 Popular Whiteness 133
6 Don't Call Me White! 169
7 Whither Whiteness? 201
Acknowledgments 217
Glossary 219
Notes 221
Bibliography 237
Further Reading 249
Index 251
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