Certain Privilege: Rethinking White Agency

Abstract

The writer argues against a tendency in whiteness studies to remake white identity in an effort to undo racism. Maintaining that whiteness is a strategy to maintain white privilege and that it already has too much agency, she examines various arguments for better forms of white identity. She suggests the ally movement that works against homophobia as a possible model for thinking about educating for social change without encouraging the certainty of the dominant group to frame the terms of understanding.