2

SEHIND THE .WHITE, CURTAIN

All around me the white man, above the sky tears at its navel, the
earth rasps under my feet, and there is a white song, a white song.
All this whiteness that burns me. (Fanon 1967: I 14)

Whiteness of a ffirmt Colour; Tbwards the Abolition of Whiteness; The Social

lonstrucion of Witenus; Whiteness: The Communication of Social ldentiE; Outing
f4hitmess. Each title speaks to a concept called "whiteness." From labour
ristory to critical race theory cultural studies, feminist studies and sociqlogy,
.he critical interrogation of whiteness has grown enormously over the last
ruenty years. However, it is not a new topic of investigation. Scholars such
rsJames Baldwin (1955), W.E.B DuBois (1975), Frantz Fanon (1967),Joel
fuvel (1970) and Ida B. Wells (1991) explored and theorized "whiteness" long
rcfore this current vogue. In the late nineteenth century Wells (1862-193 l)
.heorized how an ideology of 'white 'womanhood was used to rationalize the
ynching of African American men. In the early 1900s, DuBois argued that
r social and psychological wage of 'white'privilege prevented the European
vorking classes from fulfilling their revolutionary potential.' These works,
lowever, did not take firm hold in the social sciences. Significantly, with the
rxception of Kovel, the above scholars are of African descent. The fact that
he principal legitimators of social knowledge to date have been men of
iuropean descent, and more recently women of European descent, points
o a possible reason. But this does not explain the renewed interest in white-
less, nor why it is now receiving so much attention.
Thomas Nakayama andJudith Martin (1999: vii) argue that the growth
rf public and academic discourses on multiculturalism, racial diversity and
nternationalism have laid the foundations for the rise of interest in white-
ress. While not disputing their argument since they allude to it, I believe the
rnswer lies in a deeper arialysis of the struggles over knowledge production
n the Western academy. David Roediger (1994) states that much of the
inest work over the past few years in labour history for example, has been
L result of the partial democratization (i.e., employment equiry affirma-
ive action) of universities. Groups that were formerly blocked access into
Lcademic institutions have struggled and gained entry. Consequently, their
'adicalization of academic scholarship has provided multi-faceted, dynamic
rnd erudite contributions to knowledge production across all disciplines. For
o'colour" and
:xample, the critiques and standpoint theories of feminists of

WHITE FEMININITY
the unrelenting challenges posed by African-centred studies have stretched
the boundaries of the social sciences and challenged the limitations of tra-
ditional European knowledge production. In fact, several African scholars
have called upon European scholars to interrogate their own culture rather
than the perpetual colonialist examination of the exotic Other. Bell hooks
(1990: 54), in a much quoted phrase, states:
One change in direction that would be real cool would be the
production of a discourse on race that interrogates whiteness.'It
would be just so interesting for all those white folks who are g"i"g
blacks their take on blackness to let them know what's going on
with whiteness.
Many of the works on whiteness are informed by hook's challenge. Ruth
Frankenberg (1993: 2-3) discusses the impact critiques from feminists of
colour have had on her seminal book, l4hite Women, Race Matters: The Social
C onstruction of Whitene ss:
This book emerged out of the l980s, the decade in which white
feminist women like myself could no longer fail to notice the critique
of white feminist racism by feminist/radical women of colour....
More specifically, the research project had as its own inception my
own passage through that decade, and my own despair over the
confused mess that white feminist women's response to charges of
racism has collectively become... increasingly, this generated for
me a need to know more.
The need to know more resulted in Frankenberg asking the follow-
ing questions about whiteness and gender: "How does racism shape white'
women's lives? What are the social processes through which white women
are created as social actors primed to reproduce racism within the femi-
nist movement?" (5). Ultimately this inquiry led to her book. The work of
Frankenberg and others reflect still deeper reasons for the renewed interest
and attention to whiteness.
Troy Duster believes that the remarkable demographic shift in the
American urban landscape is one of the primary reasons for the current
interest. He states that in the last twenty years U.S. cities have witnessed the
largest racial transformation in their entire history i
In the 1970s almost every major metropolitan area- certainly the
top twelve were primarily white ('Anglo" by those classifications).
-
By 1990, however, the census revealed that of those top twelve,
ten now have majority "minority" populations, Indeed, in some
jurisdictions, most notably Los Angelcs, thc ratio had gontr llom 75
.WHITE,
BEHIND THE CURTAIN 17
percent white to about 37 white. In New York City we witnessed a
similar kind of transformation and the shift was occurring all over
the country. (Duster 2001: 129)
A similar demographic trend, although not on the same scale, has oc-
curred in Canada, cBrtainly for the largest metropolitan areas Toronto,
and Wilkinson 1999). In
-2001, about
Montreal and Vancouver (\Mieinfeld
one in eight Canadians was a "visible minority." A Statistics Canada study
(2005)projects the "visible minority" population to be one in five by 2017.
For Toronto, it is expected that 5l percent of all residents will be "visible
minorities" (T6ronto StarMarch23,2005: Al). Those groups comprise South
fuians (the largest group more than one million), those of Chinese an-
-
cestry (the second largest group at 735,000) and those of 'black' and
increasingly Arab and other West
-
Asian groups. These current and projected
demographic transformations in North America have resulted in European
descent populations experiencing their "whiteness." Duster (2001: 129)
explains that European people have begun to "feel marked by 'race,' and,
once marked, there's something to observe, to study, to account for'" As a
result of these transformations, European people, particularly in academia,
have. been compelled to look at and interrogate their whiteness.
To the extent that this inquiry has received legitimacy from European
people, the role of whiteness in self-inquiry knowledge production must itself
be critically examined. We must remember that, for the mostpart, European
people as a group have remained a largely unexamined category in sharp
contrast to their many studies of First Nations, African, Middle Eastern and
Asian peoples. Now for the first time, Europeans as a"tacial" group are study-
ing themselves. Thus, while many European scholars have responded to the
challenge of refocusing their gaze inward and interrogating whiteness, we
need to also remember that European scholars have the power to construct
knowledge production largely as a consequence of atacial hierarchy that
positions their group on top. The proliferation of European scholars in the
area of whiteness studies exemplifies this hierarchy, and it is therefore not
surprising that there is so much attention and "brtzz" in this area.
What this phenomenon illustrates is that past and present struggles
over concepts and theories are indicators, not only of cultural biases and
assumptions, but also of political struggles. The fact that European academ-
ics have engaged in an interrogation of whiteness as a result of social and
demographic pressures is an indication of this political struggle. Put another
way, while whiteness as a legitimated concept did not exist in the social sci-
ences prior to the l9B0s, this does not mean that whiteness as a social reality
did not cxist. The works of DuBois, Wells and Fanon clearly illustrate that
it did, Givcn this, the concepts and theories that emerge as authoritativc in
ix:adcmia arc not immrrnc from tltc largcr political strugglcs outsidc thtl uni-
18 WHITE FEMININITY
versity. They are in every sense reciprocal to the reality they seek to explain.
In fact, in many instances, theory explicitly influences political struggles.
Robert Alford and Roger Friedland (1985) suggest that theories can be used
to interpret the causes and potential consequences of political, Iegislative and
administrative acts. Theories can influence the interpretation of state actions
and also shape the consciousness of social groups, informing them which
actions are likely to be treated as legitimate or illegitimate. Given the power
associated with knowledge production, who gets to do the conceptualizing
and defining is of particular importance. Would it not then be fair to say
that whiteness studies are new, legitimate, exciting and "objective" because
it is predominantly 'white' scholars who dominate the field?
My attempt is not to diminish the works of European scholars, 2 many
of whom have contributed greatly to critical race studies.Rather, I highlight
the insidiousness of racial politics in North America and how whiteness even
appropriates the very criticism that challenges its centrality. To put it another
way if European scholars have the power to inject their ideas into aca-
-
demic and political discourse then they have the power to construct whiteness
studies largely as a consequence of a hierarchy of race. Knowledge produc-
tion, thus, is always mediated by a host of factors related to an individual's
particular position in a determinate socio-political formation (Hawkesworth
1990). As such, it appears that the knowledge production of 'white' identity
is increasingly the purview of European scholars themselves, a tendency that
can keep whiteness focused in the centre, where it has always been. Richard
Dyer (1997: l0), himself of European descent, is conscious of this danger:
My blood runs cold at the thought that talking about whiteness could
lead to the development of something called "white studies".. . the
point of looking at whiteness is to dislodge it from its centrality and'
authority, not to reinstate it.
Regardless of who are the principal legitimators of knowledge produc-
tion, we now have a concept called "whiteness" and disciplines devoted to
studying it. But what is whiteness and what are theorists trying to convey
when they use the term? Furthermore, is it useful for the analysis of race
relations and the process of racialization? Does it have the analytical depth
and clarity that is essential to the struggle for social change?
In the burgeoning literature, a variety of interpretations have emerged
on what constitutes whiteness. Several scholars debate the usefulness of the
concept itself. Interpretations range from whiteness being European cultural
nationalism (Ani 1997), to a communication of social identity (Nakayama
and Martin 1999), to a location of structural advantage and a standpoint
(Frankenberg 1993), to a membership process (Fryc 1992) and to'white ' racial
rcpresentation (Dycr 1997). Whilc tht: interpretations ol' wliltcncss vary, it
BEHIND THE
.WHITE,CURTAIN 19
generally emerges that whiteness, as a conceptual framework and category
of analysis, involves the following:
. whiteness as positional superiority;
. whiteness as an ideological and relational category crosscut by gender,
class, ethnicity and sexuality; and
. whiteness as an "unlmarked" category.
This overview of whiteness is not exhaustive and does not necessarily
constitute an intellectual genealogy. It does, howeveq reflect the Iarger salient
conceptualizations, contributions and tensions of whiteness thus far in the
social sciences. In addition, many of the scholarly works referenced in these
themes predate the inception of whiteness studies. The works of Edward
Said, Franz Fanon andJoel Kovel, for example, laid the theoretical foundation
for such critical work and, as such, have found a place in these themes.
WHITENESS AS POSITIONAL SUPERIORITY
According to Said (l 979), "positional superiority" is a privileged location that
arises from having structural advantage within systems of white supremacy.
It allows Western culture to construct ideological representations in ways
that privilege European materialiry psychological well-being and worldviews.
Thus, according to Said, whiteness is a location of structural and ideologi-
cal advantage. Through a complex interplay of imperialism, colonialism,
capitalism and European cultural practices, including science, religion and
law (Harris 1993), Europeans, including the Spanish, Portuguese, French,
British, Dutch, Germans, came to occupy positional superiority on a world
scale. In 1914, Europe occupied about 85 percent of the globe as colonies,
dominions, com'monwealths and dependencies (Said 1994: B). The British
Empire grew to be the largest in history. In the sixteenth century England
Iooked overseas for its colonial enterprises and by the 1920s established it-
self as a global power dominating approximately one quarter of the world's
population. As a result, the political and cultural legacy of Anglo-Saxon
whiteness is widespread.
Several race scholars have examined horar whiteness or being 'white'
was specifically created as a special property interest unique to European
people (see Saxton 1990; Allen 1994; Roediger 1994). They argr.re that
European people became an invented'white'race made up of ethnic groups
perceived to have a common ancestry in Europe. This interethnic conflation
and fabricated racial appellation of 'white' was not only constructed as a
unique category belonging to European people, it became a legal category
for detcrmining who could own properfi and who would be properfi.It deter-
mincd who could votc, who could own a trusiness, who could ridc on a bus,
 20 WHITE FEMININITY
who could marry whom and who would live or die. In other words, 'white'
became (and still functions today as) a political, cultural and psychological
fiction used to exploit and oppress groups of people not defined as 'white'
for the mass accumulation of wealth, power and psychological advantage.
While it is a fiction, it is a fiction that translates into a powerful reality that
benefits people of European descent. Ruth Frankenberg (2001: 72) argues:
"Race... emerges as an awful make that awe-ful fiction, arguably the
- -
most violent fiction in human history." This fiction rationalized who would be
the slave labour to provide the foundations of a capitalist economy (Africans),
who would be exterminated or displaced for the appropriation of land for
capitalist accumulation (First Nations), who would be the "free" benefactors
of this system of exploitation (Europeans) and, even for a time, who would
work the land as indentured labourers (for example, primarily the English
and Irish in the United States and the Chinese and Indians in the Caribbean).
In this way whiteness is a social relation dependent on Others.
If positional superiority is the privilege of membership, a vital question
whiteness studies addresses is who is or can be 'white.'Who are the primary
definers of whiteness and what are the historical and material contingencies
and criteria that bear on being'white'? Given the overwhelming advantage
of power, privilege and material well-being associated with being 'white,'
who counts as'white'is important. There are powerful social and economic
forces compelling and militating against its selective inclusiveness. Historically,
'white'has been both a disputed and guarded category. It has been so central
to the history of European immigration and settlement in North America
that in Wltiteness of a Difftrent Colour,Matthew FryeJacobson (2000: 7) ar-
gues that the history of whiteness in the United States can be divided into
"three great epochs." The first epoch was around 1790, when America's
first naturalizationlaw (which limited naturalized citizenship to "free white
persons") demonstrated an unambiguous boundary of whiteness. This rigid
boundary of whiteness conflated race ('white') with fitness for self-government
(citizenship) and Anglo-Saxon-hood (conversely, blackness converged with
being an African slave).Jacobson identifies the second epoch around 1830,
when whiteness became subjected to new interpretations resulting from "the
massive influx of highly undesirable but nonetheless 'white' persons from
Ireland" fiacobson 2000: 7). He explains rhat from lB40 to 1924, aperiod
of mass European immigration (from Germany, Russia, Norway, Hungary
Italy, etc.), America saw a "fracturing of whiteness." This fracturing resulted
in a "hierarchy of plural and scientifically determined white races" (7).
Vehement debates ensued over who was "truly fit for citizenship in the good
old Anglo-Saxon sense" (8). The third epochJacobson identifies is around
the 1920s, when the crisis of who was really'white'was rcsolved by "restric-
tive legislation and partly in responsc to a ncw racial alchcmy gcncratcd by
African Amcrican migration to thc North and Wr:st" (tl). Whitt:ncss wiut
BEHIND THE .WHITE, CURTAIN 2'I
reconfigured and the former "in-between people" (Barrett and Roediger
1997) the Celts, Slavs,Jews and Mediterraneans were granted the
- -
"scientific" stamp of authenticity as to their rightful place in the Caucasian
race. Importantly,Jacobson notes that the current stability and recognition
of whiteness among these European immigrant groups came not only at the
expense of, but also in part as a response to, "non-white" groups:
In racial figuration in the United States, [the] rise of "European
civilization" was compressed, as it were, and tortuously convoluted,
in the years between the l840s and the 1920s. During that time,
continual expansion and conquest pulled for a unified collectivity
of European "white men," monolithic and supreme, even while
nativism and the immigration question fractured that whiteness
into its component "superior" and "inferior" parts' flacobson
- -
2000:204)
In other words, European people developed a more unified group identity,
a sense of who they were by defining who they were not. The Irish, Italians,
Jews, etc. may have been "inferior" to the "superior" Anglo-Saxon race, but
at least they were not African, Asian or Aboriginal.
Clearly, a fundamental part of this 'white'-nation-building exercise was
not only the strict control of citizenship that produced restrictive immigration
policies, but also entailed the "othering" of specific undesirable groups. Steve
Martinot (2003) identifies this othering process as central to the formation of
European ('white') capitalism and the creation of whiteness (and blackness).
More specifically, he identifies the seventeenth century (1690) in the Virginia
colony as a pivotal time in the historical processes of race and racializaion.
Prior to that time, Europeans, as a group, did not conceptualize themselves
as a 'white' race. The "codification of slavery" (\4artinot 2003: 66) and all
its attendant material and psychological practices, the legislation of intimate
relations (anti-miscegnation) and the scientific theorization of human hierar-
chy created one of the most enduring and phantasmatical systems of social
stratification, di{Ierentiation and categorization. This social categoizaion
that marked people as 'white' and 'black' not only set in motion "subsequent
expansions of European colonialism, [and] invasions of other lands" (72),it
also informed all levels of European social/cultural discourse. As Martinot
(2003: 73) states about this racialization process: "It washed over them, and
the slave economy that powered the capitalist economy, which carried all this
with it as it spread over the world." Race, racism and processes of racialization
were not only determined by capitalistic imperatives, the economic disparities
resulting from these economic imperatives were justified by ideologies of race.
Canadian history mirrors some of the racial history of the United States.
A centrol point is that both countrics converged whitencss with Angkl-
f

22 WHITE FEMININITY

Saxon-hood. One of the major distinctions, however, between American and

canadian racism is that canada has cultivated a national persona ostensibly
free of systemic racial exploitation and as a "raceless"3 society. Constance
Backhouse (1999: l3) states:

One of the features that is discernible right at the outset is the largely
erroneous presumption that our country is primarily "raceless." The
sense of "racelessness" that pervades Canadian thought is, in part, a
reflection of our unique position injuxtaposition to the United States
and Britain. Given the centrality of Black-white racial divisions, past
and present, in the United States, historians and contemporary com-
mentators rarely characterize the American nation to the south of
us as "raceless." Prior to 1950, Britain had more of a claim to racial
homogeneity in its population at home, but the imperial mission of
the British Empire irresistibly drew matters of race into the forefront
of national consciousness. In contrast with these two countries, who
share much of our culture and legal tradition, Canada maintained
a strong sense of its "racelessness."

Backhouse states that despite stark racial distinctions and the legal sys-
tems' use of racial constructs to assess legal rights and responsibilities, the
Canadian legal system relied heavily on the mythology of "racelessness.,,
Consequently it "contributed to the fostering of the ideology of Canada as
a 'raceless' nation" (13), now a defining feature of Canadian history. This
ideology of racelessness, Backhouse argues, is also consistent with canada's
national persona of not being racist or at least not as racist as the United
States. An examination of Canada's history however, reveals evidence quite
to the contrary.
Backhouse argues that, while Canadian legislation did not mirror U.S.
legislation in passing laws that would, for example, prohibit interracial
marriage or enact statues mandating racial segregation in public places, it
was able to do so by far more insidious, informal and eminently successful
measures. These measures varied historically across Canada depending
on regional and local propensities of European business owners and their
European clientele. sometimes European canadians used indirect means
of ensuring the perpetuation of 'white'privilege. For example, in 1912,
Europeans enacted legislation known as the "white women's labour law,,,
which prevented Asian men from hiring European women to work in their
establishments. This legislation was an attempt to prevent marriages between
European women and Asian men. According to Backhouse, this law appears
to be the first explicit legal recognition of whiteness in canada. Prior to this,
whiteness was inferred, but rarely stated in law (Backhouse lg99: 136).
In contrast, masures taken against marriages hetwecn A{iican men and
 BEHIND THE'WHITE' CURTAIN 23

iuropean women were far less indirect. In one case, seventy-five members of
he Kanadian Knights of the KKr (who were business owners in Hamilton,
)ntario) marched through the town of Oakville on February 28, 1930, in
rrder to prevent an interracial marriage between a European woman and
. man whom they believed to be of African descent (Backhouse 1999: 175).

[s the man was forcibly removed from his home, a large cross was nailed
rn his front lawn and set on fire. In another case, a group of European men
lragged a newly wed African man along railway tracks until he died.a These
rxamples are but a few of how white supremacy was enacted to protect and
rerpetuate the building of a'white' Canadian nation-state. Fundamental to
his nation-building endeavour was a legal system utilized for the creation
Lnd perpetuation of racial inequality and the aggrandizement of European
rower. Backhouse (1999: I 5) states:

Immigration laws shaped the very contours of Canadian society in

ways that aggrandized the centrality of white power. .. ' Education,
emplol,rnent, residence, and the freedom of social interaction were
sharply curtailed for all but those who claimed and were accorded
the racial designation "white."

Prior to the 1960s immigrants came primarily from Europe' Immigrants

i"om Great Britain and northern Europe were preferred (this includes
iuropeans from the United States, the British Isles, France, Belgium, Holland,
iwitzerland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland). The logic
rsed for this designated preference was that eastern and southern Europeans'
,alues were antithetical to "Canadian" (Anglo-Saxon) values, and therefore
hey would be more difficult to assimilate, Some immigrant groups, such as
he Ukrainians, Finns andJews, were stigmatized as "dangerous foreigners"
vho had socialist or communist ties (\Meinfeld and Wilkinson 1999). At times,
rowever) immigration laws were flexible around the nation's need for labour
rower and land settlement. Even these "dangerous foreigners" were let into
lanada because of the pressure to settle the West, but primarily because they
vere 'white' (see \{tnks 1997; Shepard 199 l; Walker l9B5; Thompson 1979).
lhis loosening of immigration policy, however, was not enough to populate
he West or needs. Labour market pressures led the Canadian
fill labour
Jovernment to recruit Chinese,Japanese and South Asians, but once their
abour power was no longer needed (i.e., the Canadian National Railway was
:ompleted), immigration was again restricted. An important point needs to
re made here while Asian populations were allowed entry immigration
-
aws and policies forbidding free African settlement were vehement, strin-
;ent and ste adfast. For example, in l9 I I , just one year before the passing of
hc o'whitc women's labour law," a fcdcral order-in-council was drawn up,
.hough ncvcr lbrmalizcd, furbidding African migrants from Oklahoma to
in,

24 WHITE FEMININITY

settle into Western Canada (see Winks 1997; Shepard l99l; Walker 1985;
Thompson 1979). It did not become formal policy because other methods
effectively stopped hundreds of African Americans who were fleeing racial
discrimination and violence in Oklahoma.
\4/hile immigration laws prevented certain populations from settling in
Canada,there remained a need to manage the "undesirables" already here.
These groups consisted of the first inhabitants of the continent the First
who had
-
arrived well
Nations people and the African and Asian populations
before the late nineteenth century. Managing these populations required
laws and practices that severely curtailed their autonomy (e.g., to pursue
business enterprises, marry cross culturally) and also required the creation
of ideological systems that legitimated these practices. Before moving into
a discussion of the ideological aspects of whiteness, it is relevant to ask who
created these ideologies, laws and practices.
In Canada, middle/upper-class European men, mostly of English and
Scottish extraction, were the primary definers of policies that shaped im-
migration, business and national politics. A significant proportion of the
corporate and political elite in nineteenth-century Canada was made up
of immigrants from the British Isles.John Porteq in his seminalbook, The
Wrtical Mosaic (1965), argued that Canada's two charter groups, the English
and French, were able to define the conditions by which other immigrants
were admitted to Canada as well as designate for themselves the upper ranks
of the labour, political, bureaucratic, religious and media elites as well as the
top positions in the occupational hierarchy. Again, immigrants from northern
and western Europe were considered more racially and culturally like the
English and French, while southern and eastern Europeans were seen as
inferior. Over time, non-Europeans were granted selective and conditional
entry into Canada.
These social/cultural assessments of ethnicity and race determined
immigration eligibility and access and rank in the occupational hierarchy.
Italian immigrants, for example, were regarded as culturally inferior to the
Anglo-Saxon "race" and specifica\ recruited for work in agriculture, mining,
domestic service, the metal trades, logging and road construction. Franca
Iacovetta (1992: 28) argues that immigration olficials and members of the
political and economic elite assessed Italians as able to "tolerate irregular
emplo;rment, low wages and physically demanding work"' Ray Breton (1 998)
argues that Porter's vertical mosaic no longer exists because those European
groups identified as occupying subordinate status have been able to move
up the socio-economic hierarchy. In other words, the hierarchy of 'white'
racesJacobson (2000) described has been reconfigured to include the for-
merly inferior European groups into their "rightful" place in the Caucasian
"race," and thus, the ethnic and social inequality idcntificd by Porter has beqn
reconfigurcd akrng racial lincs, 'fhtr point is thilt t.hc Catrirdian mosaic has
 BEHIND THE .WHITE, CURTAIN

norphed into a di{ferent complex configuration, with race having become

rne of the primary mediums through which social and economic relations
rre lived and experienced (see Hall et al. l97B).

A/HITENESS AS AN IDEOLOGICAL
\ND RELATIONAL CATEGORY
fhe second dimension of whiteness is that it is an ideological and relational
rategory. Whiteness does not and cannot stand alone. It draws part of its
neaning from what it means to be "non-white" and from encounters with
.he Other. Marimba Ani (1994: 284)states:

"\Vhiteness" is central to the European self-image, just as their image

of others necessarily involves "blackness" or "nonwhiteness," as it
is put negatively in European terms. This aspect of the European
aesthetic helps to define the content of European cultural national-
ism, and white supremism, in this way, becomes identifiable as one
of its most significant characteristics. . . . No ethnology of European
culture can with honesty ignore the significance of color in the mind
of the European.

In a similar argument, Paul Hoch (1979) states that, ideologically, whiteness

s not only in juxtaposition to non-whiteness but specifically to blackness/dark-

ress. He explains that in European cultural mythology, there is a Manichean

rroral framework that constructs the world as polarized by forces of good and
:vil, which are symbolized in the oppositions between lightness and darkness
lnd black and white. This Manichaeism is most evident in European languages,
,nrhere whiteness is the positive thesis to the negative antithesis of blackness
James 198l) and is frequently evoked in popular culture.
According to Hoch, the most widely circulated myth in class-stratified
Western society is the conquest of 'white' manhood over the 'black' villain,
,arho is a threat to the "white goddess." This particular myth of the 'black'
,rillain was used in Canada to legitimate the creation of the order-in-council
n 191 I to prevent African migrants from settling in Western Canada. Even
rrior to this, SirJohn A. Macdonald invoked the mythological 'black' rapist
lnd 'white'virgin to justify Canada's maintenance of the death penalty (see
Backhouse l99l). Another variant of this myth is the conquest of 'white ' civi-
.ization over a contaminating darkness or blackness that is a threat to 'white'
curity. This variant can be seen in the popular film trilogy Tlte Fellowship of
the Ring. An adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's (1955) novels, the film uses stark
images of whiteness and blackness/darkness to convey a cinematic spectacle
cf good versus evil.
While the use of such cultural mythology is fictional in theory in
nrqntirn it lrac lrnen disnlnced nnto thc hodies of rcal neonlc '- I,]trrtlncans
t'
?6 WHITE FEMININITY
are mythologized as those who epitomize and embody all that is good and
Iight. Africans (cursed with blackness of skin, see Jordan 1968) epitomize
and embody all that is evil and dark. Tamari Kitossa (2005) refers to this
trans-valuation as an anthropomorphic symbolic transference. According to
Hoch, all that is base, bestial and sensual is black. In fact, in European racial
cosmology the colour of the devil is black. This signification in psycho-social
terms means that the blackness as "race" is a "tribal stigma" located in and
on the bodies of African people. Equally, whiteness is located in and on the
bodies of European people. The crucial di{ference is that whiteness is a
positive, chameleon-like racialization and a privileged location that eludes
the markings of a racial position and, as such, is constructed as a natural
rather than a raced category. Borrowing from Louis Althusser (1971: 165),
these ideological constructs provide the "imaginary relationship... to the real
relationships in which they live."
This association of blackness to the skin of African people is a ryrnbolic
association that is neither innocuous nor accidental. This association was
the primary indicator of slave versus free status, which emerged from the
material desire of European colonizers for cheap labour to clear the newly
conquered land and work the fields. As pointed out, it was this categorization
of the African to slave and therefore to blackness that facilitated Europeans
to perceive themselves as 'white.' This process of racialization relied on the
generation of what Martinot (2003: 64) calls "massive social paranoia," which
rendered the African as nemesis. Violence became a manifestation of this
paranoia and a tool to subjugate this nemesis.
Hoch (1979) explains that the occurrence of great violence towards
the African man specifically arose in connection with the master taboo of
American (and Canadian) society (particularly after the end of slavery) the
- He
prohibition of intimacy between African men and European women.
states, in a point well reflected in the overwhelming reaction to the killing of
Georgina Leimonis at theJust Desserts restaurant:5
In the past such antagonisms have been pure sexual dynamite, the
stuff of lynchings, castrations and occasionally genocide. And yet
how common they still are. The alleged rapes of white women by
Black "guerillas" in southern Africa are still used to whip up world-
wide white hatreds, and the idea of supermasculine black power
which grows out of the "barrel of a gun" still has frightening sexual
connotations. The black as super-stud. On the loose. After our
women. (Hoch 1979:48)
The crucial point is that whiteness as a social and ideological currency
carries significant symbolic ideological weight in.juxtaposition to blackness
(Deliovsky 2002). This weight rcsido$ in its Maniclracism l)cr:aurlr:, not only
BEHIND THE .WHITE,CURTAIN 27
does this binary provide colour designations, it also provides the social and
symbolic representations that mark the boundaries of power, privilege and
belonging in Western society. It is the polarity between whiteness and black-
ness that gives the intermediate ideological categories (i.e., in-between people,
"ethnic" whites, not quite whites, honorary whites, etc.) their meanings'
These categories, much in line with the "Great Chain of Being" ([ordon
l968), place 'black' and 'white' as negative and positive polar extremes, with
other racial categories distributed between them. Exemplifying this point,
Lothrop Stoddard (1920: 91 92), an influential early twentieth-century
racialist thinker, states:
The brown and yellow people have contributed greatly to the civfiza-
tion of the world and have profoundly influenced human progress.
The Negro, on the contrary has contributed virtually nothing' Left
to himself, he remained a savage, and in the past his only quickening
has been where brown men have imposed their ideas and altered
their blood. The Originating powers of the European and the
Asiatic are not in him.
Thus, significantly, rather than this Manichean binary representing an ex-
clusivity of blackness andwhiteness, itwas actually an incorporative matrix that
was inclusive of other raciallethnic (and class) categories, albeit in a hierarchical
manner. Kate Dar,y (1995: l98) also speaks to this racialization process:
Whiteness becomes the dynamic that underpins a process of racial-
rzaionthat feeds privilege to all whites, so to speak, without letting
all white people sit at the table. Those middle-class people of colour
invited to sit at the table are bequeathed a status that is always already
and only honorary contingent, itinerant and temporary.
Operating simultaneously, if not more visibly than its incorporative
matrix, is that it is self-evident in European racial cosmology (rooted inJudeo-
Christianity) that whiteness does not exist without blackness (seeJordon 1968).
This binary suggests that a hierarchy exists and European people understand
their position and sense of selfrelat',,ve to others. \Mho that Other may be, while
signified by a blackness/darkness that has been projected onto the bodies
of African people, canvary at times based on history and geography. Kovel
(1970: 95) writes of the anthropomorphic transference of colour symbolism
into social relations:
A lightly hued people aided perhaps by fantasies derived from
their skin color came
- to dominate the entire world, and in the
-
proccss defined themselves as white. The process that gencrated this
white powcr also gcnerated the fear and dread ol'blatrk,

2A WHITE FEMININITY
As Kovel suggests, this relational dimension of whiteness is experienced
and defined by a process of negation the negation of blackness. In a similar
-
yet broader argument, Thomas Nakayama and Robert Krizek explain that
being 'white' means not having any other "blood lines" that contaminate
it: "Unlike other categories, one can only be white by not being anything
else" (1999: 97). Not being anything else means not being "red," "yellow" or
"black." Kovel (1970: 107) suggests this negation is necessary for European
people's psychology because the "negation yields power, an energy so titanic
as to shake the globe and perhaps destroy it." The power of whiteness is one
of its fundamental and pivotal features.
. While whiteness operates as an ideological and relational category it is
also crosscut by gender, class, sexuality and so on. Ruth Frankenberg ( I 993:
236) states that whiteness is also a category that is "co-constructed within a
range of other racial and cultural categories, with class and with gender."
This assertion has two implications for critical whiteness studies: first, the
subjective experience of whiteness can vary based on one's gendeq class,
sexualiry regional location, etc; second, whiteness can be culturally signified
and expressed in different classed, gendered, etc. ways.
Addressing the first point, Marill,n Frye states that whiteness, or\in
her words "whiteliness,"6 does not equate to the same thing in the lives of
European men and European women:
The political significance of one's whiteliness interacts with the
political significance of one's status as female or male in a male-
supremacist culture. For the white men, a whitely way of being in
the world is very harmonious with masculinity and their social and
political situation. For white women it is, of course, all very much
more complicated. (Frye 1992: 160)
It is more complicated because there is a tension and contradiction
that
exists between a disembodied whiteness and an embodied femininity.T An
embodied femininity means that European women do not have the same
relationship, access or subjective experience to whiteness as do European
men. Being'white'does not save women from the "condition of wuman," as
Frye (1992: 60) argues, because "those who are born female and white are
born into the finferior] status created by white men's hatred and contempt
for women" (emphasis in original). In this way, being'white'is a masculine
expression of power to which European women have ambiguous and con-
ditional access.
These tensions and contradictions lead to the second point; whiteness
can be culturally and ideologically signified in different classed, gendered, etc.
ways. For example, the term "white trash" is an ideological mcans of identi-
fying class distinctions or dillerences within thc same corporcality (Hartigan
.WHITE,
BEHTND THE CURTAIN
1997: 52). In this context of cultural signification, howeveE whiteness and
sexuality are represented differently for men and women along class lines.
Dreama Moon (1999: 195) argues that "white women's respectabilitywithin
white communities is seen as deeply implicated in their production of 'good
(white) girls'who are racially loyal." Similarly, Kate Dary argues that in a
socio-symbolic order European women can signify hegemonic, institutional-
ized whiteness by virtue of their association to a "pure, chaste, asexual before
the fall womanhood (a next-to-a-man-and-godliness-womanhood), attained
and maintained via middle-class respectability" :
Some white women have more mobility than others, it is at the
intersections of class privilege that whiteness is fully mobilized.
Syrnbolism of white womanhood is not that of the fallen, dis-en-
franchised white woman but that of the respectable white woman;
it is at the intersection of gender and race with "middle-classness"
that white women embody and perform institutionalized whiteness.
(Dar,y 1995: 197)
It is this mobility that can be seen as European women's privilege. By
virtue of their race and class European women can travel this racial con-
tinuum, moving further away from savagery toward enlightenment but never
quite reaching the most privileged end of this continuum. Dary (1995: I 97)
explains that, paradoxically, European women can never "fully embody the
unembodied dimension of white masculiniry for to 'embody' is still [their]
definition and destiny." While whiteness and femininity are complicated, as
Frye noted, the historical genesis of their mutual articulation can be definitely
traced, and with this can be developed a better appreciation of European
women's complex locations within a 'white' patriarchal social order.
One historical genesis of the mutual articulation of whiteness and
femininity can be traced to colonial America (and the colonial Caribbean).
Pointing specifica\ to the "matrilinearity statute," Steve Martinot (2003: 57)
argues that English women were "sexually fictionalized" for the purpose of
profit and property that "produced a 'colour coding' of sexuality and further
socialized the already growing color coding of labor." Martinot explains that
the "matrilinearity statute" established that the children of a mixed couple
would have the servile status of the mother rather than the status of the father.
Under this statute, within the context of anti-miscegenation laws directed
against African men and European women, the children of enslaved women
would become sources of wealth as future slaves themselves, regardless of their
paternity. The children of free women (usually 'white') would also be free.
To secure the association between race and bondage, however, it was added
to the statute that English mothers of'mixed children were to be punished,
Though this statutc invcrtcd patriartlty's central tcnct of patrilincal dcsccnt
30 WHITE FEMININITY

and broke from English Common Law, Martinot (2003: 56, 57) explains that
this reversal was an economic function of regulating labour through gendered
social constructions of racialpurityversus racial servfity. The immediate elfect
was to turn all women regardless of race into breeding stock within a sexual-
ized racist economic and nationalistic framework. The reproductive capacity
of those women in permanent servitude became a direct aggrandizement of
English men's property rights and privileges. Definitive of the reproduction
of the entire racist social order, English women were limited to bearing the
heirs that would inherit those property rights and privileges that Cheryl Harris
(1993) calls "whiteness as property." If they did not do so, they would suller
the pain of punishment (i.e., lashes). Martinot (2003: 56) argues:

As a rearticulation of motherhood and sexualiry the statute created

profound distinctions between English women and African women,
and thus between English and Africans in general, through women's
personal relations and marriages. l

In the context of the foregoing discussion on Manichaeism, African

women were integral to this fictionalization. It was only in the juxtaposition
of 'white'womanhood and blackness (African women were not even consid-
ered "women") that each took its meaning. Martinot (2003:57) explains:

In effect, the statute opposed African women and English women to

each other through inverse renarrativizations, to be used in di{ferent
opportunistic ways by the puropean] male elite of the plantation
economy for the sake, in both cases, of profitability and property.

The crucial di{ference between'white' womanhood and'black' woman-

hood is that African women were "sexually fictionalized" for the purpose
of wealth accumulation by robbing them of their "very womanness as
persons" (57). In contrast, English women were imbued with a woman-
hood that was contingent on their "sexual discretion and comportment,"
which did not necessarily reside in being female per se but in their purity as
'white' English Christians. Conveniently, to facilitate the mythic chasteness
of English women, prior Christian perceptions of 'white'women as sexual
creatures were displaced on the bodies of 'black' women specifically and
other negatively racialized women generally. Martinot points out that due
to this renarrativation, 'white'women were "to be watched very carefully."
This not only meant European masculine surveillance and punishment of
violations but also European women's appropriation and internalization of
the rules of 'white'womanhood. Frye (1992: 162) argues that the rules of
'white'womanhood, or what she calls a "white women's whitcliness," was/is
contingent on European women enacting a partncrshil: and racial solidarity
with Europcan men.
 .WHITE,
BEHIND THE CURTAIN 31

My foray into U.S. history does not intend to suggest that only European
und African women are significant for the study of 'white' womanhood.
lather my argument is that the juxtaposition of these t\,vo groups represents
L gendered articulation of one of the primary binaries (of white and black)

n the process of racialization codified in law, which has set the s1'rnbolic
)arameters of race in North America. Similarly, Martinot (2003: 23) argues:

The first division invented was that between whites and all other
shades. And the purity condition for whiteness was the essential
concept that produced that first division. Thus, all concepts of race,
and all racializations of people, derive from the European inven-
tion of whiteness through the assumption of a purity condition for
themselves in the context of a colonial relation with other peoples
of di{Ierent shades.

Integral to "the purity condition of whiteness" was the un-pure condition

rf blackness established inJudeo-Christianity (seeJordon 1968). The two were
deologically symbiotic. Thus, those two groups of people that ideologically
rnd qrmbolically typified these categories of whiteness and blackness also
'epresented polar ends of a racial cosmology and hierarchy. Consequently,
rll other shades of people were ideologically and syrnbolically assessed within
hese extremes. For example, in the United States, when deciding whether
r Sicilian woman was 'white' enough to be protected by anti-miscegenation
aws, the measure of her whiteness was her approximation to blackness.
.ronically, it was decided that she was not 'white' enough in Anglo-Saxon
erms, nor could it be proven that she was not of African descent (|acobson
1000: 5). It is important to note how blackness was associated to people of
\frican descent and whiteness associated with people of British descent. In
rnother example, when Chinese or Irish men were pictorially depicted in
.he twentieth century they oftentimes were "blackened" or "negrofied'" In
>rder to visually illustrate these groups' "inferior" status to Europeans, they
vere depicted as having what are stereotlped as African features: thick lips,
uzzyhair,broad face and nose (see Stuart Hall 1997). \Ahile other negatively
'acialized groups have been stereotyped according to their "race," when
\frican people were stereotyped they were not "yellowed" or "reddened," nor
lid they need to be visually "blackened" for they were already constructed as
black' and, as such, embodied blackness. Stuart Hall (1997: 254) explains:

For blacks, "primitivism" (Culture) and "blackness" (l{ature) became

interchangeable. . . not only were blacks represented in terms of their
essential characteristics. They were reduced to their essence.

Thus, thcir essencc was their blackness and their blackness was their
6aarr.rrrr rnoirnr. rrl' rr.rrwrrenlatittn-n' as Ha.ll (1997: 249)
 32 WHITE FEMININITY
calls it, has persisted since its inception (around 1650 in the Caribbean and
1690 in Mrginia). I make this argument to give specificity and nuance to the
process of negative racializationfor several reasons. One reason is that I am
striving to establish connections between this specificity and its relationship
to whiteness and 'white' femininity. This specificiry as an example, allows
for the comprehension of the overt discrimination that people of African
descent continue to experience (i.e., racial profiling and racial violence)
and for the vehement anti-interracial animus sometimes directed toward
European women involved with African men.
Another reason is that, on a more general level, I do not wish to con-
struct subjugated groups as an undifferentiated mass of universally oppressed
people. Negatively racialized groups were/are not equally stereotyped or
equally oppressed. How each group has been historically, ideologically and
symbolically signified in the 'white' imagination, as well as their historical
and structural relationship to capitalism, has had a direct bearing on their
current structural and ideological position in North America. As one example,
First Nations people in Canada have been regarded historically as both dif-
ferent from and inferior to Europeans. Their forced removal onto "Indian"
reseryes, in addition to colonialism, directly resulted in First Nations people
I
being one of the most socially and economically disadvantaged groups in
the country (see Satzewich 2001; Frideres 1998). African people's historical
and structural relationship to capitalism, and its precursor slavery and colo-
nialism, howeveq were not only significant to the racialization process, they
were the foundation on which whiteness and white supremacy came into
being. As Martinot (2003: 70) points out, Africans "occupied the real centre
of white racialized identity." Furthermore, Frank Wu (2002: 35) argues that
the most profound "split of our society has been a color line between black
and white, o! more precisely, between black and everything else." Thus, in
order to understand race, race relations and racial oppression, the signifi-
cance of the African and her,/his blackness must be apprehended, not as a
superior form of oppression, but as a form that gives shape and context to
the oppression of other racially dominated groups.
While some of the historical examples are U.S./British specific, they are
relevant to the Canadian context. Notions of 'white'womanhood dominated
all of the countries tied to British imperialism and colonialism. Canada, in
the days of colonial development, relied on ideas of "white womanhood"
as the civilizers of Canadian society. As Constance Backhouse (1999: 282)
points out, "white women were called into service as the 'guardians of the
race,' a symbol of the most valuable property known to whitc society to be
protected at all costs from the encroachment of <lthr:r racos." Onc dillerence
in Canada, as opposedto the Unitcd States (and otlrr:r rioloniirl cutr:rpriscs),
was that the racial Other most signilicant in trunrlrcrs nt lhc timc wrtrt: I,'irst
Nations womcn. Although rrotiorrs ol' 'hlnck' lhrnrr,le lirsr:iviorrsrrcss lrad
t
BEHIND THE
.WHITE,CURTAIN 33
ideological currency (particularly in Nova Scotia, where there was a larger
African Loyalistpopulation), given the small numbers of Africanwomen and
the absence of a plantation slave economy, 'white'womanhood depended
on juxtaposition to Aboriginal womanhood (particularly in the Prairies).
Sarah Carter (1997: 204) states that "what it meant to be a white woman
was rooted in a series of negative assumptions about the malign influence
of Aboriginal women." There were also a series of negative assumptions
about the degenerative influence of Chinese women in British Columbia at
the turn of the twentieth century.
A comprehensive analysis of 'white' femininity can only be understood in
the context of a comparative history of femininity that includes the qrmbolic
construction of all women of colour (Carby l9B7; Ware 1992; Agnew 1996;
Carter 1997). This analysis must include understanding how the black/white
binary functions in defining femininity and womanhood. In addition, while
racelgender-specific ideologies were contrary to the actual lives of women,
they played a powerful and enduring role in relegating women of di{ferent
"races" (and ethnicities and class, I argue later) to specificjobs and physical
localess (see Carter 1997).
Returning to Frye's statement about the complexity of European women's
experience in a 'white' patriarchal order, Kate Dar,y (1995) points out that
'white' womanhood is not a totalizing force. It carries a number of ideologies
that at times conflict and are utilized di{Ierentially depending on the histori-
cal needs of European male control. Thus, it shifts and changes according
to the historical condition (Davy 1995: 199).
As much as 'white'womanhood was deployed to reproduce patriarchal
colonial society, class boundaries influenced how it was constructed and
practised. Class boundaries, for example, played a role in 'white' responses to
interracial sexual liaisons. Martha Hodes explains that poverty de-feminized
'white' women. When poor 'white' women had sexual liaisons with 'black'
men, it was seen as a sign of their debasement and promiscuity:
White women of the lower classes and especially those who defied
the rules of patriarchy could not count on an ideology about female
purity to absolve them of alleged illicit sexual activity. Poorer white
women. .. were subject to abuse that ranged from insulting language
to rape... sometimes black men and white women were simply
accorded the same treatment. In Georgia, angry whites "burned
three colored men, and three white women," alive because they
lived together. (Hodes 1997: 200)
The brutal, and at times, fatal treatment directed toward lower-class
European women was not directed toward women from the middle and
upper dtrsst:s. Whcn intcrracial scxual liaisons occurred between African
i|,

34 WHITE FEMININITY

men and elite English women, they were assumed to be cases of rape. It
was imagined that elite English women could not harbour sexual desire for
African men because they were too virtuous to entertain such ideas of men
who were cast as beast-like. Their elite status as middle/upper-class English
women was conflated with 'white' womanhood.
Hodes, however, points out that a significant transformation occurred
after emancipation. Convictions about the depravity of poor European
women began to hold less power. In the desire to preserve aracialhierarchy
in the absence of slavery European male southerners created rigid bound-
aries of colour in an attempt to ensure European women gave birth to only
'white'children. Without slavery to diflerentiate and separate African people
from poor Europeans, it became vital, according to Hodes, that ideas about
'white' female purity include poor European women. A prime example of
this change in European male attitude was the credibility given to tvvo poor
European women who concocted the story that they were raped by nine
young African men (ages thirteen to fifteen). The false testimonies of these
women against the Scottsboro Nine were used as an instrument of 'white'
solidarity and 'white' terror. Interestingly, much the same effect was achieved
by the false arrest, twelve-year incarceration and subsequent exoneration of
four African American men and one Latino American man in the "Central
ParkJogger rape case."
Vron Ware (1997) explains that images of 'white' female r,ulnerability
to a 'black' menace were exploited to convey the message of the necessity of
policing the boundaries between African and European populations. Echoing
Ware, Sarah Carter (1997: 15) points out a common theme in recent works
on European women and colonialism: that protecting the virtue of European
women (varyingin time and geography) became ajustification for suppressing
and controlling the Indigenous populations. Carter states:

The threat of real or imagined violence against white women was

a rationale for securing white control, for clarifying boundaries be-
tween people. The degree of concern and the nature of the measures
taken varied, depending on how secure the colonial authorities felt.
During times of upheaval and uncertainty or insubordination, ftenzy
over the safety of white women dramatically increased, often bear-
ing no relation to the actual level of assault or rape. The events had
lasting impact, however, and were reflected in government policy
and social relations. (1997: 15)

Significantly, Carter argues that in colonial situations whcrc issues of race

did not have salience, women were nonetheless polarized into the two catego-
ries as agents of either the salvation or the ruin ot' elitc mcn. f)rawing on
-
work by Mary O'Dowd (1995), Cartcr (1997: 1B) Bteter thot in the r:ontcxt 9l'
 .WHITE, 35
BEHIND THE CURTAIN

)thnicity, "while Irish women were portrayed as guileful, deceitful, and licen-
ious creatures who could lead men into degeneracy, English women were seen
rs nourishing and strengthening the colonial ideal." As with the connection
)etween race and gender, a similar argument can be made for ethnicity.
With the influx of European immigrants between mid-l800s and early
1900s in the United States and Canada, 'white' womanhood, which was con-
lated with bourgeois Anglo-Saxon-hood/Celtic-hood, became a contested
deology. The multicultural change in the U.S.'s and Canada's landscapes
nade defining'white'womanhood more challenging. In 1922, as mentioned
:arlier, an Alabama Circuit Court of Appeals reuersed the conviction of Jim
lollins, an African American man convicted of the crime of miscegena-
ion, on the grounds that the state had no evidence that the Sicilian woman
n question, Edith Labue, was indeed a'white'woman $acobson 2000: 4)'
fhis ruling made clear that as a Sicilian woman) although it could not be
letermined that she was nlt "non-white," she was not 'white' enough or the
dnd of 'white' woman whose purity was to be protected by the miscegenation
itatute. In another example, in early twentieth-century Saskatoon, a police
nagistrate adjourned a trial on the subject of interpreting whiteness in the
'white women's labour law." There were questions of whether Russian and
lerman waitresses constituted 'white' women. It was eventually decided
.hat they were indeed members of the 'white' race (see Backhouse 1999;
Jarter 1997). These rulings are not oddities but part of a much broader
)attern of re-articulating whiteness and racial categorization throughout
he United States and Canada between the mid-nineteenth century and the
nid-twentieth century.

A/HITENESS AS AN UN/MARKED CATEGORY

fhe third dimension is that whiteness is a historical and cultural practice that
rften has been "unnamed" and "unmarked" as a European racial practice.
Kobena Mercer (1 99 I : 205-206) states: "One of the signs of the times is that
ve really don't know what 'white' is." Thus, he asserts, "the real challenge
n the new cultural politics of diflerence is to make 'whiteness'visible for the
irst time, as a culturally constructed identity."
Within the last two decades, one of the first attempts by a European
.o make 'white'privilege visible to European people was Peggy Mclntosh's
1990: l-2) "IJnpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Mclntosh begins from
essay,
:he premise that European people do not perceive or acknowledge their race
rrivilege, which acts like "an invisible weightless knapsack of special provi-
iions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes,
lompass, emergency gear and blank cheques." The invisibility of these pro-
dsions is inextricably tied to the idca that 'white' culture and identity have
ro content, somcthing that is frequcntly expressed in Ruth Frankenbcrg's
 WHITE FEMININITY
(1993) study on American 'white'female identity. Frankenberg (1993: 196)
notes that on several occasions "whiteness as a cultural space is represented
asamorphous and indescribable, in contrast with a range of other identities
marked by race, ethnicity, region and class." One European woman stated:
The formlessness of being white... if I had an ethnic base to
identify from, if f was even Irish American, that would have been
something formed, if I was a working class woman, that would have
been something formed. But to be aHeinz 57 American, a White,
class confused American, land of the Kleenex tlpe American, is
so formless in and of itself. It only takes shape in relation to other
people. (quoted in Frankenberg 1993: 196)
I
I
Frankenberg (1993: 197) explains that this woman's inability to grasp
and name her own cultural positioning reflects how "whites are the non-
defined definers of other people." For Franl<enberg's research participant,
to be "white," American and "non-ethnic" is not to be anything particular.
Richard Dyer ( I 997 : I l) explains that, "the privilege of being white in white
culture is not to be subjected to stereotyping in relation to one's whiteness."
Thus, at the level of racial representation European people are not seen as a
partitularrace, they are just the human race. Othns are raced (Africans, Asians,
Aboriginals, etc.), but European people are just people. And as just people,
Europeans are allowed a kind of anory.mity and a non-distinctiveness that
originates from not having their personhood being conflated with their entire
"race." For example, European people are allowed to be variously classed,
gendered and sexualized, etc. without it being associated to their whiteness.
Dyer (1997: l2)states:
White people are stereotlped in terms of gender, nation, class,
sexualiry ability and so on, but the overt point of such typification
is gender, nation etc... . to be normal, even to be normally deviant
(queer, crippled), is to be white. White people in their whiteness,
however, are imagined as individual and/or endlessly diverse,
complex and changing.
Thus, typically, whiteness colonizes the conventional classifications of all
social categories other than those of race. As such it is "non-whites" who
carry the burden and presumed social responsibilities of negative racial dif
fnence (i.e., crime).
While whiteness, as a racial expression of culture, remains nominally
visible to Europeans at the level of everyday reflection and interaction, it
still, nonetheless, structures ways of understanding self and others and even
ways of theorizing about history and culture itsclf Clearly thc woman in
Frankenbcrg's rcscarch has structurcd a racial underrtonding ol'hcrsclf and
BEHIND THE
.WHITE,CURTAIN 37
American culture being 'white' means being cultureless in other words
- -
without form and content. Frankenberg (1993: 197) points out that "the
self, where it is part of a dominant cultural group, does not have to name
itself." It is this ability not to name itself that Frankenberg (1993: 157) calls
"power evasiveness," or what I call "white evasiveness," and it is that which
structures'white'identity. In the evasion of whiteness, European people can
remove themselves from issues of race and consequent)y choosenot to see the
complex power relations embedded in race relations.
Thus, while 'white'evasiveness structures'white'identityit also structures
perceptions of history and culture. These perceptions of history and culture,
however, are constructed in Eurocentric ways. Adrienne Rich (1979) calls this
"white solipsism." Rich (1979: 299) argues that 'white' solipsism constructs
the world as a'white' space wherein whiteness is perceived as normative and
universal because it is a tendency
to think, imagine and speak as if whiteness described the world... a
tunnel vision which simply does not see the non-white experience or
existence as precious or significant, unless in spasmodic, impotent
guilt reflexes, which have little or no long-term, continuing momen-
tum or political usefulness.
The works of these theorists suggest that whiteness depends simultane-
ously on both embracing and denying whiteness. For Dreama Moon (1999:
79), thefait accompli of 'white' enculturation is to produce and reproduce
whiteness "through the creation of the illusion of a 'white' world, while
simultaneously draining that 'whiteness' of any elements that would mark
it as a specific structural and cultural location." It is this illusion of a non-
particular and non-positioned whiteness that creates a formless whiteness
and consequently removes whiteness from history and its social content.
And therein lies its power, these scholars arg'ue, to structure ways of under-
standing self and others and history and culture an invisible and visible
European power devoid of the awareness of its cultural and racial content.
For Frankenberg and others, seeing andanalyzingwhat that content is and
how whiteness structures that content is vital for understanding the creation
and perpetuation of social inequality. It is vital because the idea that 'white'
culture is not culture, or empty culture, cloaks how European people have
secured their positional superiority through this contradictory articulation
of a universal and empty culture.
It is this positional superiority that derives from its inlvisibility and its
material and psychological consequences that must be accounted for. As
Peggy Mclntosh (1990) states, 'white' people are taught to believe that all
that they do in the world is explained in terms of their ability and individu-
ality. Thc idca that Europeans havc greater access to "good"jobs and nice
 WHITE FEMININITY
neighbourhoods because of their skin colour, and not necessarily merit, is a
reality rarely acknowledged by European people. Thus, for these scholars,
whiteness is an unnamed, unmarked racial category that secures its power
by refusing to identify itself and its effects. Dyer (1997: 9) argues:
This then is why it is important to come to see whiteness. For those in
power in the West, as long as whiteness is felt to be the human condi-
tion, then it alone both defines normality and fully inhabits it.
Toni Morrison (1992: x-xi) makes a similar argument in her analysis of
whiteness in the literary imagination. She maintains that this unacknowledSed
whiteness has created a literary "language that can powerfully evoke and
enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony, and dismissive
'othering."' For many critical race scholars, it is paramount to make "white-
ness strange" and to dislodge it from its centrality. Their scholarly work is
their contribution to this goal.
IS WHITENESS REALLY AN UN/MARKED CATEGORY?
The three dimensions in critical white studies have resulted in theoretical
tensions and debates over what constitutes appropriate ways of defining
whiteness as a concept for knowledge production and analysis. There have
been criticisms and debates around the issue of an "unmarked" and "invis-
ible" whiteness. In fact, some race scholars reject the idea of an unmarked
whiteness.John HartiganJr. (2001 : I 39), in his ethnographic study on 'white'
Detroiters, states that "the widely trumpeted assertion that whiteness is
an unmarked and normative identity often seemed laughable in Detroit,"
where he was unable to discern a common unifying ideology of whiteness.
Even Ruth Frankenberg, whose work has emerged as salient in critical white
I
studies, has rethought her original assertion that whiteness is an unmarked
category. She goes as far as to say "the more one scrutinizes it, however, the
mere notion of whiteness as an unmarked norm is revealed to be a mirage
or indeed, to put it even more strongly, a white delusion" (2001:73).
V\hat does this mean? Is whiteness an unmarked or marked category?
One's political and ideological starting point of inquiry into whiteness must
be considered before a broad answer to this question can be attempted. For
example, if the inquiry into whiteness starts from a subjective or micro-
sociological point of view, then this inquiry would yield a specific set of
answers. Whiteness as a subjective experience of identity formation for some
European people, like the middle-class Anglo-Saxon woman in Frankenberg's
study, is clearly unmarked. For self-proclaimed 'white' supremacists such as
the Kanadian Knights of the KKK, however, whiteness is clearly a marked
category of self-identification. If the inquiry into whitcncss starts I'rom a
t macro-sociological structural point of view, thio inquiry would yicld yet
BEHIND THE
.WHITE,CURTAIN 39
another set of answers. Critical race studies has shown that during the
imperialist and colonial missions of Europe, whiteness was clearly marked
as a category of privilege, determining who would be colonized and who
would be the colonizer. In light of these points, scholars need to ask more
than just whether whiteness is an unmarked or marked category. They need
to take into account the starting point of their own analysis and the history
that surrounds it. This means scholars need to make clear their definitions
and theoretical assumptions on race.
Having said this, the question of whether whiteness is marked or un-
marked needs further elaboration. Frankenberg (2001: 74) responds to the
question in the following way:
Whiteness is in a continual state of being dressed and undressed,
of marking and cloaking. It has been so since the time when the
term was first used racially, partway through half a millennium of
European imperializing travel through, settlement in, and expro-
priation from the Americas, Africa, parts of Asia, Australia, and
the Pacific region.
Thus, to understand the marking and unmarking of whiteness is to un-
derstand history. Understanding the historical marking of whiteness entails
knowing that during the times when whiteness was a marked racial identifier
for European people, the world witnessed some of the most violent occur-
rences (i.e., Apartheid South Africa,Jim Crow era United States, European
colonialism/imperialism, transatlantic slave trade). Conversely, understanding
the historical unmarking of whiteness means understanding that since people
and nations cannot rule by violence alone (or for extended periods of time),
it becomes more advantageous to conceal overt expressions of domination.
The unmarking of whiteness is just that: the concealment of overt expres-
sions of domination. Franz Fanon (1969) addresses this point:
For a long time it looked as though racism had disappeared. This
soul-soothing unreal impression was simply the consequence of
the evolution of forms of exploitation. Psychologists spoke of a
. prejudice having become unconscious. The truth is that the rigor
of the system made the daily affirmation of superiority superfluous.
(Fanon 1969: 7)
It is not that whiteness has become unmarked but rather that the daily,
aggressive marking of whiteness as a property of 'white'privilege has become
unnecessary. Inasmuch as whiteness is articulated as positional superiority
and a structural location of advantage, it is wholly dependent on racism for
its continued reproduction. And considering that racism has become struc-
turally cmbcddcd in socicty and absorbcd by thc statc (c.g., in thc trrimirratl

4Q WHITE FEMININITY
justice and immigration systems), overt individual daily affirmation of white
supremacy is just not needed. Fanon (1 969: 32) states: "Racism has not man-
aged to harden. It has had to renew itself, to adapt itself, to change its ap-
pearance. It has had to undergo the fate of the cultural whole that informed
it." In line with Fanon's argument, what is now theorized and perceived as
an unmarked whiteness can be explained as a renewal or an adaptation to
disguise 'white' domination.Joel Kovel (1970), in a similar line of reasoning,
calls this adaptation "meta-racism"e:
Meta-racism is a distinct and very peculiar modern phenomenon.
Racial degradation continues on a different plane, and through a
di{ferent agency: those who participate in it are not racists that
-
but meta-racists, because they
is, they are not racially prejudiced
-
acquiesce in the larger cultural order which continues the work of
racism. (Kovel 197 l: 2ll-12)
\4lhile the daily affirmation of superiority through aggression has become
unnecessary this does not mean it never occurs. Every so often racist systems
of domination reassert their dominance through spontaneous displays of
individual and state 'white' aggression. The much publicized beating of
Rodney Kirg'o is a fitting example of the convergence of individual and
state aggression in the expression of 'white'domination. As Kovel (1970: 38)
states, "what had been invisible becomes visible when it threatens the order
of things, and that order attempts to adapt to the threat so as to maintain
its underlying assumptions about the world'" Those underlying assumptions
support a cultural order of whiteness with all of its diverse dimensions.
One more question still needs to be examined. The assertion that white-
ness functions by being unmarked and invisible, so it appears natural and
"normal," begs the question to and for whom is whiteness "unmarked,"
- Collins 1986; King 19BB). In this way power is understood not only in terms
"unnamed" or in other words "invisible"? It is not for those most victimized
by whiteness. Not for victims like Rodney King, who lay defenceless while
European California police officers beat him unconscious. Not for Shidane
Arone, who was tortured and killed by European Canadian army o{ficers
sent on a "peace" keeping mission to Somalia (see Razack 2004). As bell
hooks (1992) points out, communities of colour frequently see and name
whiteness and are victims of its "terror." The answer then is, if whiteness is
indeed an unmarked category it is unmarked for those who have the power to
make it so European people (and primarily elite European men; however,
-
more needs to be said about this assertion). The challenge then for scholars
engaging in whiteness research is to explicate the "marking and unmarking
of whiteness" in history. Adding to this, it is equally if not more important
to understand that at the centre of this marking and unmarking of whiteness
is 'white' power at work.
t
BEHIND THE .WHITE.CURTAIN 4'I
When the capacity to control and influence one's life and the lives of others
becomes routine and patterned into a system of domination and privilege it is
power. As David Wellman (l 993: I 2) argues, race and racism are "matters of
power" and they matter in, for example, who goes to prison, who is racially
profiled and who gets good quality health care. Whiteness, through history
and social practice, has acquired that power. Thus, whiteness is the power to
cloak and uncloak itself at will. It is the power to terrorize, to be magnani-
mous, to forget history to invent history to institutionalize 'white' privilege,
to evoke 'white' power and even to denounce 'white' power. It is power. It is
not absolute power because it is always contested, sometimes negotiated and
sometimes taken. But it is power nonetheless. This point cannot be stressed
enough. MatthewJacobson (1999: 9) writes that "the history of whiteness
and its fluidity is very much a history of power and its disposition."
Again, who has this power? As mentioned, historically, the primary defin-
ers of whiteness in North America were middle/upper-class men of British
extraction. This statement is "fact" and to some extent is true today observe
the top hundred most powerful/wealthy people in the world and
-
it is hard to
miss the dominant gender and ethnic dimensions. This, however, does not
mean that sovereign power resides in European male hands; 'white' power is
more dispersed and complex. To adequately comprehend the contemporary
mechanisms of power, it is useful to turn to Michel Foucault's conception
of power. For Foucault, power is not a fixed quantity that emanates from
just physical force or a sovereign power. Power, rather, emanates through all
aspects of society, gathering strength from the regulation and surveillance
of the behaviour of individuals, from systems of knowledge, society's insti-
tutions and technologies and through interactions between people not
just from above, but also from below to sustain positions of dominance
-
and subordination(see Beale 1970; Hull, Scott and Smith l9B2;Dill 1983;
of economic exploitation and physical coercion, but also in broader cultural
or symbolic terms, including what Stuart Hall (1997: 259) describes as "the
power to represent someone or something in a certain way within a certain
-
'regime of representation,"' and thus, "it includes the exercise of symbolic
power through representation practices." This conceptualization of power
proves useful to the social and historical analysis of 'white'femininity. Susan
Bordo (2003:27) argues that those moments when
power works "from below," prevailing forms of selfhood and sub-
jectivity (gender among them) are maintained, not chiefly through
physical restraint and coercions (although social relations may cer-
tainly contain such elements), but through individual self-surveillance
and self-corrections to norms,
r
4? WHITE FEMININITY

Not keeping these issues of power central in whiteness studies can lead
to conclusions that might deny the significance of "race" in North America
today. Troy Duster argues that there are two significant but distinctly con-
flicting frameworks that run at cross purposes in whiteness studies. On one
side, there are scholars "who depict race and whiteness as fluid, continually
reflecting emergent and contingent features of social life, emphasizing the
relational and ever changing character of race" (Duster 2001: I l3). On the
other side, there are scholars who have portrayed the persistent, deep-seated,
structural and "solid-state features of race and racism sustained through-
out three centuries even as they have acknowledged the occasional shifting
boundaries of who gets included in the category'white."'Duster, thus, warns
against advancing an either/or approach to race in whiteness studies. In his
argument against such a competitive framework, he gives a beautifirl analogy
of race with the nature of water:

While water is a fluid state, at certain contingent moments, under

thirty-two degrees, it is transformed into a solid state ice. This
-
is an easy binary formulation. But things get more complicated,
because when HrO, at still another contingent moment boils, it
begins to vaporize or to evaporate. And now the coup de grace of the
analogy of HzO to race: HzO in its vapor state can condense, come
back and transform into water and then freeze and hit you in its
solid state as an ice block; what you thought had evaporated into the
thin air can return in a form that is decidedly and consequentially
real. (2001: 1 14)

Therefore race (and in this case whiteness) can, like water, change its
appearance and take on many forms without changing its fundamental
structure. Duster argues that "race can be simultaneouslyJanus-faced and
multifac(et)ed and also produce a singularly dominant social hierarchy"
-
(15). He concludes that " it is a fundamental mistake to think that, because
we have seen this evaporating condition fof race] with our own eyes, it is
gone forever and that the use of race will no longer be a powerful stratifying
practice in America" (132). Indeed, if we make the error of highlighting any
one of those forrns (singular versus multi-faceted) as more real or important
than another, we will lose vital insight into the nature and character of power
embedded in racial stratification. Duster (makes a compelling argument about
the power of race (whiteness) and its ability to mark and unmark itself, or
in his words, the "morphing" ability of race (124). This "morphing" ability
of whiteness is, ultimately, the most significant manifestation of its power in
the post-modern age. Thus, when I am exploring the relational or discursive
aspects of whiteness, I am cognizant of the fact that thcsc aspccts are sup-
ported by the solid-state features of racc and rar:ism.
 BEHIND THE,WHITE, CURTAIN 43

.WHITE, PEOPLE
VHITENESS AND
iome scholars argue that in order to advance an analysis of the process of
acialization it is important to separate the concept of "whiteness" from
white' people. Annlouise Keating (1995) specifically addresses this point
lee also Giroux 1997) when she states that the association of whiteness to
white' people concerns her because "it draws on false generalizations and
mplies that all human beings classified as white automatically exhibit the traits
ssociated with whiteness: they are, by 'nahtre'insidious, superior, empty, ter-
ible, terrifying, and so on" (Keating 1995: 907, emphasis in original). While
recognize her concern not to conflate the two not all'white'people will
recessarily think and act in 'white' ways the
-
call for separation is troubling
-
br several reasons. We need to understand that whiteness is more than just a
;onceptual framework th at analyzes how 'white' people act and think. It is a
iamework that incorporates many points of analysis from structure to ideol-
rgy to standpoint. As a standpoint,ll there is a necessary association bet\'veen
vhiteness and how European people behave and think, but this association
loes not necessarily suggest that all European people automatically exhibit
L uniform whiteness, as Keating suggests. What the concept whiteness can

lo is provide a framework to understand the relationship between structure,

deology and everyday experience in the perpetuation of racial domination
rnd privilege.
Conceptually, whiteness may be used to describe a social realiry
rut it can also be a way to name that social reality. As such whiteness
:onstitutes two elements: one, the conceptual the instrument of the
locial scientist seeking to explain a social
-
phenomenon and two, the
rhenomenological aspect of a social reality. What the
-
latter means is that
vhiteness is also a way of "being" in the world' For example, when bell
rooks (1992) describes whiteness as "terror" (170), she is describing one
:lement of whiteness that European people can and have accessed, not
.hat all European people terrorize all Aft'rcan American people. Once
rgain, it is at this point where it is critical to understand that whiteness is
rbout power and its disposition.
At the heart of whiteness are issues of "race," tacializaion and racism
rnd who has the institutional, cultural and economic power to define "race,"
.o enact racism and to engage in the racializaion process. Troy Duster's
rotion of "morphing" is useful to illustrate this power. Sharing a personal
.ale he had with the Chicago police, he recalls the events that unfolded one
right when he drove his mother to the corner store to purchase some last
ninute groceries. He waited in the car with a friend he was visiting while
ris mother went in the store. He noticed that a police car had circled the
rlock scveral times. Eventually, the police car stopped, and three police of-
icers cxited and approached Dustcrr's vchicle, Duster recalls that whilc they
t' 44 WHITE FEMININITY

ordered him and his friend out of the car, one of the police o{ficers had his
gun drawn. Describing the ensuing events, Duster (2001: 124) states:

One of them said quite agitatedly, "I askedyou, 'what are you doing
here on a Saturday night parked in front of a grocery store?"'... I
told the truth: "I'm waiting for my mother." That's when I saw his
billy club. He lifted it slowly, deliberately, and I had the experience
of all of this happening as if in slow-motion... and all the while he
was saying, "you're a real wise ass."

Duster relays his relief when his mother comes out of the store and asks
in a booming voice, "Officer, what's going on here?" He asserts that it was in
that moment that he "understood the fluid and contingent andJanus-faced
character of race":

I saw it happen with my own eyes. With his arm in midair, this
tough white cop turned officer-of-the-law and literally turned and
tipped his hat to my mother and said, "Madam, we're here to serve
and protect you." Yes. A remarkable capacity to transmogrification
or, perhaps better, morphing He went from solid state to fluid state.
He transformed himself from "an occupying force of domination"
into someone there "to protect a woman citizen" from a suspicious
character from the sort of person like me who waits out in front
of grocery- stores casing the joint 'round midnight. (Duster 2001:
124, emphasis in original)

As an agent of the state, an immutable state of solidiry the 'white'police

olficer was able to actively access whiteness a supple and fluid state and
-
system of 'white' domination. Furthermore, this police officer chose to act
in a way that was compatible with 'white' domination because it was avail-
able to him as a European person and without any repercussions. Duster's
example illustrates the potential danger of conceptually separating 'white'
people from whiteness. Whiteness has many elements or, if you will, a range
of ways to enact, support and legitimate whiteness in order to centralize
power in European (male) hands. This range allows for multiple expressions
of 'whiteness.'
These multiple expressions of power also allow for the granting of con-
tingent access to whiteness for select groups of colouq while never allowing
them full 'white' membership. Recall Dar,y's argument that middle-class
people of colour who are invited to sit at the table of whiteness are bestowed
a status this always "honorary contingent, itinerant and temporary" (1995:
198). It is important to note that several scholars have argued that this con-
tingent acceptance into whiteness has not been extended tcl pcople of African
dcscent. The work of Ellis Cose (1993) suggests the miclcllt:-class status of'
 .WHITE, 45
BEHIND THE CURTAIN

\fricans in America is less the case of contingent acceptance into whiteness

Lnd more a case of limited opportunities for upward mobility created by
he class dl,namic in America. In another example, George Yancey (2003)
Lrgues that the degree of alienation experienced by Africans as a result of
heir exceptional historical and contemporary experiences of racial exclusion
Lnd violence prevents them from sitting at the table of whiteness.
Clearly, the creation and perpetuation of whiteness depends on the
nultiple historical and current daily practices of European people and the
ocio-economic structures that support it. Furthermore, to reject whiteness
rnd to criticize its implications would not change the fact that a European
lerson will be conferred advantages and privileges that they may not want,
Nhiteness as positional superiority allows all people defined as 'white' access
o 'white' privilege. Another point needs to be emphasized here. There is
Ln embodiment to whiteness that cannot be ignored or overlooked. Georgt
)ei et al. (200+: 23) contend that, "while skin color cannot stand alone as
he singular lynchpin by which the race concept is held together, there is a
)ermanence and salience to skin color in relation to the problematics of cat'
:gorization and social di{ferentiation." So much of what whiteness has meanl
ristorically is the physical/genetic reproduction of Anglo-Saxon Europear
reople. Furthermore, so much of the 'white' anti-interracial animus directec
oward mixed relationships has resulted from the idea that interracial unionl
lollute the "pure" gene pool of whiteness and create a "mongrel" breed
fhe concept of whiteness, thus, can be likened to the concept of "race.'
iocial scientists have come to understand that "race" is a social construct
ret, at the same time, it remains a powerfirl organizing feature of people'r
ives. Knowing that it is an invention does not take away from the realiq
lf its e{Iects. ln a similar way, knowing that being 'white' is a monumenta
bbrication of epic proportions does not alter the fact thatwhiteness operatel
rs a tremendous social force for mobilizing how people act and interact, at
vell as for shaping how people perceive themselves and others. Dei et al
2004:92) argue:

Whiteness is a form of self-identity and a marker of material, po'

litical, symbolic and psychological worth. It is against this wortl
that the oppressed are measured and examined, thereby turninp
the economy of visibility into an exercise of power. Arising withir
the privilege loci of power and control relative to these norms ol
whiteness, the disciplinary power of the White oppressor is exercisec
through both his invisibility and the compulsory racialized visibiliq
of its subjects.

As such, a separation would rcnder unintelligible the vital elemcntl

nvolvr:d in pror:csscs of racc and rat:iitlization.
r'
46 WHITE FEMININITY

Furthermore, historical research demonstrates that European people were

active in creating an association between their 'white' selves and whiteness.
The European working classes in America, Britain, South Africa and Australia
fought to be recognized as 'white.' A case in point isJonathan Hyslop's analysis
of 'white' Iabourism before World War I in Britain, South Africa and Australia.
He states: "\4rhiteness was not so much imposed from above as demanded from
below" (1999: 4lB). The imperialworkingclass, as he calls it, did not "'become
white': itmade itself 'white"' (1999: 4lB, emphasis in original). Similarly, this
argument can be made for how the Irish working class became 'white' (Ignatiev
1995) and howJews became 'white' (Brodkin l99B). Calling for a separation
between whiteness and 'white' people would miss this crucial point and provide
the conceptual space for European people to proclaim, "I am not racist. The
system is racist." European people can go about their daily business of access-
ing 'white' privilege and no one vrl,ll be called accountable for their "unearned
privileges." Steve Martinot (2003: lB0) argues:

The inseparability of the individual and the institutional is difficult

to articulate, since individual activities and social institutions are
incommensurable, while each remains the indispensable condition
for the existence of the other. The tenacity of racism in the United
States lies in the fact of this incommensurabiliry whereby individuals
escape rationality or responsibility by retreating into the institutional,
and the institutional escapes political regulation by being dispersed
among a society of individuals.

Thus, rather than calling for a separation, it would be more politically

advantageous and conceptually creative to work towards a definition and
conceptualization that makes clear the contingent relationship between
whiteness and European people. Marilyn Frye ( I 992: I 49) argues that "being
white is not a biological condition. It is being a member of a certain social/
political category a category that is persistently maintained by those people
who are, in their own and each other's perception, most unquestionably"
members of this group. She explains that this membership in some ways is
compulsory and if one is 'white' then one is

a member of a continuously and politically constituted group which

holds itself together by rituals of unity and exclusion, which develops
in its members certain styles and attitudes useful in the exploitation
of others, which demands and rewards fraternal loyalty, which de-
fines itself as the paradigm of humanity, and which rationalizes (and
naturalizes) its existence and its practices of exclusion, colonization,
slavery and genocide (when it bothers to) in terms ol' a mythology
of blood and skin. (150)
 .WHITE, 47
BEHIND THE CURTAIN

While I do not disagree with Frye's assertion that race is not a biological
:ondition, having what is perceived as 'white' skin certainly does help in being
rart of this "imagined 'white' community." The capability of "light-skinned"
\fricans to pass as 'white'certainly speaks to this idea. Since one is not neces-
arrly born 'white' but rather becomes'white,' how does this membership pro-
:ess occur? Does the concept of whiteness help to uncover this racialization
rrocess? I believe it can. But uncovering this process means being mindful of
he dimensions and criticisms highlighted and understanding the complex-
ry that the concept of whiteness brings. It is only when we understand this
;omplexity that we have the analytical depth and clarity that is instrumental
o the struggle for social change. Being mindfirl also means remembering that
vhether whiteness is marked or unmarked, multi-dimensional or singular,
:ontested or disputed, it is Europeans (primarily males) who have the power
o define whiteness as a social reality in the West. Thus, while whiteness is
)o-constructed within a range of other racial and cultural categories (such
rs class and gender), it is fundamentally "asl,rnmetrical." It is asl,rnmetrical,
Ls Frankenberg (1993: 237, emphasis added) arg'ues, because the "term
whiteness' signals the production and reproduction of dominance rather than
ubordination, normatiuiqt rather than marginality and piuiLege rather than
lisadvantage." In other words, whiteness as race signals power for 'white'
rcople. Thus, to paraphrase Ward Churchill (1999), the whole can never
re understood without knowledge of the function and meaning of each of
he parts, while the parts cannot be understood other than in the context
rf the whole. The "whole" is the structural and individual power of racism
Lnd racialization that feeds privilege to all 'white'people, regardless of class,
;ender and ethniciry relative to and at the expense of all negatively racialized
reople. Conceptualizing the whole in which whiteness functions allows for
he understanding and elaboration of the cultural, material and social forms
lf historical relations of power rather than abstracted generalizations. Not
righlighting the whole in which whiteness exists can reinscribe European
lomination because it denies racialized groups the public recognition of their
,ictimization by Europeans and proclaims European people victims too' And
n the age of 'white'/male backlash to political correctness and affirmative
rction, Europeans have, most certainly, proclaimed themselves victims' The
rccusations that affirmative action policy and emplopnent equity are reverse
liscrimination are just some examples.
The social sciences now have something called "whiteness studies,"
rnd it appears that knowledge production of 'white' identity is increas-
ngly becoming the purview of European scholars themselves, a tendency
.hat is troublesome. European people analyzing a system that, in varying
legrees, privileges them is as problematic and paradoxical as it is necessary.
it can and has resulted in a particular kind of scholarship that is perhaps
{iprrrntnrl ,r-.{ }rirrunrl R r,r',. ,rs q r.rrmnlnv lnrntirrrt rrl' srrhordination lrnd
 WHITE FEMININITY
privilege brings contradictions and complications within whiteness studies
that European people on their own may not be able to observe. As such,
culture and systems of domination tend to be more clearly visible from the
margins and from those groups who can least take it for granted. European
scholars engaging in critical white studies must be forever mindful of these
complex issues. My last point, and for me one of the most important, is that
critical whiteness scholars must acknowledge those radical scholars of colour
who laid the foundation for such studies and continue to push at the centre
from the margins. More European scholars need to do as European scholar
Judith Butler does in acknowledging African scholar Franz Fanon, and as
does European scholar David Roediger with African scholar WE.B. DuBois.
This recognition is especially important in light of the fact that it is they, as
negatively and visibly racialized others, who are among those most victimized
by whiteness as a social reality and as a concept. To ignore their scholarship
is to perpetuate again the psychic injury of invisibility and insignificance.
A useful way to grasp the complexity of whiteness is through Philomena
Essed's ideas about "everyday racism": "Racism is more than structure and
ideology. As a process it is routinely created and reinforced through everyday
practices" (199 1 : 2). Essed develops the concept of "everyday racism" to con-
nect the structural forces of racism with routine experience of the everyday
world. Her concept is useful because it allows for the understanding that
there is indeed a relationship between the structural privilege of whiteness
and everyday practices of European people. She states: "Race relations in
this sense are a process present in and activated at the everyday level as well
as prestructured in a way that transcends the control of individual subjects"
(50). Essed states that everyday racism is the incorporation of racism into
daily life through cognitive and behavioural practices that set in motion
the fundamental underlying power relations in society. This process, Essed
(1991: 50) maintains, must be seen as a field through which the incorpora-
tion of "racism into everyday practices becomes part of the expected, of
the unquestionable and of what is seen as normal by the dominant group."
Essed's argument is consistent with Dorothy Smith's (1999: 5) idea of the
" every day / everynight world" :
The knowing subject is always located in a particular spatial and
temporal site, aparticularconfiguration of the everyday/ everpight
world. Inquiry is directed towards exploring and explicating what
s/he does know
- the social relations and, irganization pervading
her or his world but invisible in it.
Thus, whiteness can be seen as a structural feature of power and privilege in
North American society that is actively maintained and accessed by European
people at the level of the everyday/everynight world. This book on'whitc'
BEHIND THE'WHITE, CURTAIN 49
femininity explores how the broader organizing elements of whiteness con-
struct the everyday experiences of European women. This exploration gives
meaning to the details of the everyday and draws on critical race./whiteness
studies, which examine how systems of inequality are organized around race,
class and gender in North America and the ways differences in aggregate
powe! wealth and influence are established and largely rationalized through
race, class and gender theories.
WHITENESS, HISTORY AND FEMINISM
Earlier scholarship from critical whiteness studies illustrates that whiteness
operates as a tremendous social force influencing how people act and interact,
as well as shaping European people's perceptions of themselves and others
(Frankenberg 1993; Dyer 1997;Jacobson 2000). In other words, whiteness
was/is a process of racialization embedded within social relations of power
and domination. Those groups defined as "raced" and not 'white' were
severely curtailed in their freedom to determine the quality and direction
of their lives. But this is only half the story. Historical accounts of white-
ness, particular\ involving who became 'white,' appear to be a history of
European men. While these works have been invaluable, they have fostered
an image of a "world without women" or, atleast, a world where women do
not count. These images are particularly evident in the social and economic
history of whiteness, and they point to a central issue for feminism that
-
history as is retold in the countless books found in libraries across the world,
is ies story. Thus, one of the central questions of feminism is how to rescue
and restore women to history.
Joan Kelly-Gadol (1987: 15) asserts that to recognize the agency and
historicity of women means engaging a dialectic specific to the feminist
agenda. This dual goal for feminism is "to restore women to history and to
restore our history to women," in other words, to add "herstory." For feminists,
particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, adding herstory meant jettisoning the
"malestream" conceptual and methodological tools of positivist science and
building on the political assertions of 1960s feminist radicalism. Feminists
from all disciplines began challenging the distinctions in the social sciences of
subject/object, mind/body and political/personal. Radical feminist scholars
declared that the personal was indeed political, and therefore any inquiry into
women's lives must seek to explicate this relationship. Under the influence of
this injunction, some feminists proclaimed that objectivity and value-free social
science were fictions of the patriarchal order; others yet stated that if such
a goal were possible, it would not be desirable. Having rejected the reigning
masculinist imperialism of the social sciences, feminists were confronted with
the challenges of developing methodological and research tools consistent
with thc li:minist idcal o{' "liberating women's minds and bodies."
 WHITE FEMININITY
Feminist theorists debated the best and most suitable methodological
approaches for research on women's lives. Some suggested that to begin an
understanding of women's lives a phenomenological approach (grounded in
the experiential) was required; others suggested a Marxist political economy
approach toward understanding women's economic exploitation should be
the goal of restoring women to history. Striking a middle ground, a few femi-
nist scholars advocated a holistic and transdisciplinary approach to knowl-
edge generation and production that would ground theory in the concrete
realm of women's lives (Harding l9B7; Hartsock 1987; Smith l9B7). The
attempt, howeveq to create "herstory" grounded in a "feminist standpoint"
or "standpoint of women," although promising, revealed serious limitations.
One limitation rested on the very foundation on which it was conceptualized:
the idea that there was a herstory rather than herstoies.
By the 1990s, largely through the critical insights of feminists of colour
(see Beale 1972; Hull l9B2; Dill l9B3; Collins l986; King l9BB), it became
apparent that feminist epistemology and research mirrored the racial exclu-
sionary practices and hierarchy found in society at large. African feminists,
in particular, pointed out the similarities European feminist methodology
had with the traditional European male social sciences (see Joyce Ladner
l 9B7). Smith ( 1 987) argued that the "conceptual imperialism" that European
feminists experienced at the hands of androcentric epistemology, African
and other women of colour also experienced at the hands of 'white' feminist
epistemology. Feminists of colour revealed that feminist theory and research
was primarily the domain of European, middle-class, university-educated
women, and their work reflected their biases and standpoints. In other words,
herstorlt was really the story of 'white' middle-class women.
Feminists of colour pointed out that, not only was 'white' feminist theory
ethnocentric, it was a distortion of fact and reality. Indeed, from the earliest
stages of first-wave feminism, European women demanded gender equality
by articulating their trustworthiness as 'white' social actors (i.e., builders of
nations as pure, 'white' mothers). Disillusioned and angered by the European
feminist movement's ideological intransigence, feminists of colour moved
toward developing an epistemology and methodology that reflected their
specific concerns. With that in mind, manyAfrican feminists articulated their
experiences in analyical categories grounded in the convergence bet'ween
standpoint and theory (see Patricia Hill Collins 1990). The results were
concepts such as "double oppression" (Beale 1972), the "dialectic of Black
womanhood" (Dill I983)and "multiple jeopardy" (King I9BB).
In their theorizing feminists of colour emphasized the relationship among
class, gender, sexuality and race as aspects of the multi-dimensionality of
women's lives. Their scholarship illustrated the limitations of a feminist schol-
arship that assumed a common bond of oppression based on sex. [i:minists
I of colour argued that if feminism was to actualizc its goal to libcrnte wonlcnts
BEHIND THE
.WHITE,CURTAIN 51
bodies and minds then feminist theorizing must take seriously the role of
race in feminism, history and social relations. Taking race seriously meant
reconfiguring feminism so that it reflected a wider and more radical politic.
My research on 'white' femininity aims to contribute to such a politic.
This contribution entails rethinking and retheorizing how di{Ierent groups
of women construct identity, access and administer power and make sense
of their everyday lives. Equally important in this retheorizing howeveq as
Dorothy Smith (1999: 43)states, is explicating
the concealed standpoint, the position in the ruling relations that is
taken for granted in how we speak and that bounds and constrains
how a political economy of women can speak to women, let alone
Third World women. It is a problem of the invisible center that is
concealed in the objectification of discourse, seeming to speak of
the world dispassionately, objectively, as it is.
This invisible centre and concealed standpoint is a 'white' centre and
standpoint, which has eluded analysis yet exerted tremendous influence.
Therefore, one central component toward a wider, more radical feminist
politic is the explication of this concealed standpoint, which involves making
visible what has been denied visibility in European feminist theory the
"racialness" of European women.
For the most part, race in mainstream feminist theory has been theorized
from the standpoint of racialized women, who are stigmatized by "race."
As Nakayama and Krizek (1999: 9l) state, "in light of the influential politi-
cal position of \A/hiteness, it is surprising that critical scholars have not yet
scrutinized the centre in the ways they have been probing the margins'"
European feminist scholars in their attempts to restore women to history
and probe the margins have, in many instances, only reinscribed the power
relations of whiteness. As Dorothy Smith (1999: 43) states, this retheoriza-
tion "has merely rewritten the boundaries. The center still remains; the
standpoint within ruling is stably if invisibly present." Paradoxically, though
on the margins of male/European power, European women are located
within the centre of whiteness, and consequently their whiteness has fallen
outside the scope of feminist sociological investigation. If, howeveq asHazel
Curby (1992: 3) states, "everyone in the social order has been constructed in
our political imagination as aracialized subject," then how have European
women been racialized? Furthermore, how are theyliving and experiencing
this racialization?
These questions are important to ask because they seek to establish
that European women too are raced. This acknowledgment allows for the
o'racialncss" into focus
critical elaboration of the conditions that bring this
(Irrankenbcrg 1993). Without conceptualizing whiteness as a raccd social
 52 WHITE FEMININITY
identity and standpoint, a complex history of racialization is obscured because
being 'white' becomes conceptualized, by omission, as natural rather than
culturally constructed. It becomes a concealed standpoint that obfuscates
recognition of the power relations embedded in this category (Frankenberg
1993; Nakayama and Martin 1999). This omission works systematically to
obscure theoretical explanations of specific forms of oppression of women
who are subjected to racism, sexism and classism while obscuring the privi-
lege of women who may not sufler racial or class oppression. \Vhat results
is a narrowly defined scope of analysis that limits an integrated knowledge
production. The data that are produced within a narrow conceptual and
theoretical framework support the original scope of analysis
- in this case,
that European people/women are not raced. This tautology makes it difficult
to ask questions and explore ideas outside the conceptual and theoretical
boxes already supplied by sociology (Kuhn 1963; Smith l9B7). As such, the
knowledge production on or about racialized people supports the notion that
"other" people are raced, but European people are 'Justpeople" (Dyer 1997).
Naming and marking whiteness and understanding its relationship to
European people displaces "race" as an exclusive property and standpoint of
people marked with racial di{Ierence. Thus, the concept of whiteness signals
the idea that there is a category of people identified as 'white.'Undergirding
the concept of whiteness, to quote Kovel (1970: 6-7), is "the totality of cul-
ture, an entity embedded within a deep and unconscious matrix of mean-
ings culturally derived meanings, all of which change under the force of
-
historical movement." One component of this study on 'white' femininity is
understanding how these culturally derived meanings are experienced day
to day and at this historical moment. Referring to Gramsci (1971: 324), this
may be called an inventory of human subjectivity: "the consciousness of what
I
one really is [involves] knowing thyself as a product of the historical process
i
to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an
inventory." In a sense, a genealogy of whiteness and gender provides the
inventory of the "infinity of traces" in which the racialness of European
women has been deposited. In a broad way, to paraphrase Frankenberg
(1993), my task is to contribute to the making of a cartography and the
creation an inventory of the racialized and sexualized landscapes and the
historical and contemporary practices of whiteness that shape the everyday
implications and reproductions of whiteness in European Canadian women's
lives. As such, I am attempting to map the habitus of 'white' femininity. My
contributions are one piece of a larger puzzle that tries to do the following:
advance an analysis of the various ways power is coerced, compelled
and negotiated through European Canadian women's choices of sexual
partners and their sexual orientation;
call attention to European wt)mcn's compulsory rat:c-lirtluscd hctcnrsexu-
L
BEHINDTHE'WHITE,CURTAIN 53
ality, which seryes as a condition for accessing and maintaining power
and privilege in society;
shed light on the ways whiteness as a structural and psychological location
of privilege is secured and legitimated through the compliance and/ot
participation and discursive practices of European Canadian women
(and men) in certain contexts;
highlight the "race" and ethnic dimensions of femininity that oftentimes
are missed or ignored in mainstream feminist analysis on beauty and
body image; and
call attention to European Canadian women's engagement with nor-
mative 'white'femininity, which simultaneously serves to privilege and
control them.
NOTES
1. DuBois (1975) argues that a "wage of whiteness," the psychological and social
position of superiority based on 'white' skin, seduced the European working
classes into aligling with the 'white' ruling elite, thereby participating in their
own oppression rather than aligning themselves with working classes of colour
in the fight against inequaliry
, I, too, am one of those European scholars implicated in this process.
.). Backhouse (1999) uses the term "raceless" to signify that "race" aPPears to
be absent as a recognizable legal category of classification in the legal history
of Canada between 1900 and 1950. She explains, for example, that "statutes
drawing all manner of racial distinctions were frequently 'raceless' in title."
(Backhouse I 999: I 3). This "racelessness" reflects a society, Backhouse (l 999: I 4)
argues, determined to ignore issues of race.
4. Recounted by Susanna Moodie in her memoirs, Roughing It in tlu Bush (1852).
5. On April 5, 1994, four armed men entered a cafe calledJust Desserts. In the
course of the robbery a young European woman was accidentally shot and
killed. The fact that the armed robbers were men of AfricanJamaican descent
played a pivotal role in how media, public and government o{Ecials responded
to the incident. The media quoted cries for the reinstitution of the death penalty
(Burnett 1994: A4), and many news articles quoted people asking "how could
such a tragedy happen to such a beautiful and innocent young girl?" One
newspaper article quoted people saying that "she is among the saints" (INilkes
and Small 1994: ,{6). Immediately after the shooting, and sustained for several
months, the media cited examples of how immigration policies failed law-abiding
citizens in Canada. Government officials called for tougher immigration laws.
6. Frye developed the concept of whiteliness in attempt to describe what is now
commonly understood as "whiteness." It was her attempt to find a conceptual
link between being'white' and a way of "being" in the world.
7. During the Enlightenment period an ideal was constructed by European
philosophers of the mind split from its own body. This psychic separation was
perceived as freeing the mind from a cumbersome body' It was also seen as thc
highest lbrm of rationality, to whitfi all humans should strivc. 'I'his "progrcs-