What Does It Mean to Be White?—Developing White Racial Literacy

Prompted in part by her experience as a counselor in racial diversity training sessions, where she found most of her fellow white people to be racially illiterate, DiAngelo (education, Westfield State U.) here seeks to show how the social construct of race operates in the United States between whites and people of color and how whiteness shapes the racial identities and perspectives of white people. She begins with a discussion of the importance of the issue in education. She then proceeds to discuss the ways in which socialization shapes the identities and perspectives of all people, the elements of societal oppression, the historical development of race as a social construct, the conceptualization of racism as an embedded system of unequal power in which all are complicit regardless of intentions, contemporary manifestations of "new" racism, the ways in which race shapes the lives of white people, ways in which racism is obscured for and denied by whites, issues of intersecting identities (such as race and class), and the ways in which racism manifests for different racial groups. She concludes with a discussion of the basic tenets of antiracist education. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Robin DiAngelo is a faculty member in the Department of Education at Westfield State University in Massachusetts. Her research is in whiteness studies and discourse analysis. She is concerned with the challenges of an increasingly white teaching force and an increasingly diverse student population. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, and Equity & Excellence in Education. She has twice been honored with the Student's Choice Award for Educator of the Year. She has provided diversity and anti-racism training for a wide range of organizations, including the City of Seattle.