Whiteness

Part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, this short book treats whiteness as a social construct. It asks how whiteness came to exist, how its form has changed over time, and how it gives protection and advantage to people who are seen as white. Martin Lund rejects the idea that whiteness is a single fixed concept. Instead, he describes it as a loose and shifting set of standards and ideals, shaped by particular histories, cultures, and places, that supports systems for sorting people into hierarchies.

Lund works through the vocabulary surrounding the subject, including terms such as white privilege and white fragility, and examines how whiteness overlaps with race, class, and gender. He also turns to popular culture and to ideas often offered as answers to racism, such as colorblindness and the charge of reverse racism. In his account, these notions end up reinforcing the very thing they claim to challenge.

The author makes the case that talking about whiteness matters, since the word does not simply label something that already exists but helps bring it into being. Drawing on decades of critical whiteness studies, he illustrates his points mostly with examples from the United States and Sweden, showing how language, law, policy, science, and media representations keep whiteness in place. He notes that it is often treated as the default or even as universal, and that its most harmless-looking appearances, in sitcoms and superhero stories, serve to maintain racial domination.