Whiteness as pathological narcissism

Abstract

White, liberal, educated, upwardly mobile people are often thought to have transcended racism. Consequently, they may not think of themselves as white, as possessing any particular white privilege, or as having any sense of superiority about their whiteness. To confront someone about one's repudiated white privilege is analogous to confronting the person about their defensive grandiosity; the person feels attacked and responds with denial and counterattack. We suggest that white racial superiority, white privilege, and repudiated white racial identity are forms of pathological narcissism driven by an unconscious desire to be a triumphant oedipal winner and to avoid, at any price, being a disgraced oedipal loser. White racial superiority, white privilege, and white identity rely on racialized oedipal splitting in which whiteness comes to represent all idealized forms of love and lust while blackness comes to represent the devalued forms. © 2009 William Alanson White Institute and the William Alanson White Society.