he following quotes come from various sources, mostly contemporary, on whiteness and white identity. Most reflect the serious work of professionals engaged in understanding how and why white Americans act as they do. Many of the quotes are from people who do not explicitly identify as white, and probably would not be identified as such by others. Taken together, the quotes represent both insider and outsider views on the topic.

Lack of understanding of self owing to a poor sense of identity causes Whites to develop a negative attitude toward minorities on both a conscious and a subconscious level.

Judith H. Katz, White Awareness: Handbook for AntiRacism Training (Norman, OK: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1978).

There is a dearth of studies on Whites in the area of social identity development in general and racial identity development in particular.

"White Racial Identity Development in the United States" by Rita Hardiman in Race, Ethnicity and Self: Identity in Multicultural Perspective, edited by Elizabeth Pathy Salett and Diane R. Koslow (Washington, DC: NMCI Publications, 1994).

Many Whites in the United States have a strong sense of ethnic identity that is tied to their immigrant ancestors’ country of origin (Italian Americans, Irish Americans, Swedish Americans) or to their experience in this country (New England Yankees, Midwestern Hoosiers, Appalachians, and so on). There are many subgroups within the White experience, but ...[m]any United States Whites with a strong sense of ethnic identity do not have a strong sense of racial identity. Indeed, ...many Whites take their Whiteness for granted to the extent that they do not consciously think about it. Nevertheless, their identity as members of the White group in the United States has a profound impact on their lives.

"White Racial Identity Development in the United States" by Rita Hardiman in Race, Ethnicity and Self: Identity in Multicultural Perspective, edited by Elizabeth Pathy Salett and Diane R. Koslow (Washington, DC: NMCI Publications, 1994).

...it has frequently been the case that White students enrolled in my class on racial and cultural issues in counseling expect to be taught all about the cultures of people of color, and they are almost always surprised to hear that we will be discussing the White group’s experience. Some students remark that they are not White; they are female, or working-class, or Catholic or Jewish, but not White. When challenged, they reluctantly admit that they are White but report that this is the first time they have had to think about what it means for them.

"White Racial Identity Development in the United States" by Rita Hardiman in Race, Ethnicity and Self: Identity in Multicultural Perspective, edited by Elizabeth Pathy Salett and Diane R. Koslow (Washington, DC: NMCI Publications, 1994).

[T]he majority of the dedicated white activists [in Civil Rights] of the period 1961-1963 were radicals and beatnik types. Both were alienated from American middle-class values, and in their rejection of these values turned either to the Marxist critique of capitalist society or, perhaps more often, took on something of the hipster personality. Many of the latter type fitted quite neatly into Norman Mailer’s concept of the "white Negro." Alienated from the middle-class conventions of their parents, they glorified the most alienated and outcast group in American society, lower-class Negros &emdash; the stereotypes of personal sloppiness and uninhibited sexuality. Only, instead of considering these qualities bad, they regarded them as the wrap and woof of a superior way of life. As one bearded Johns Hopkins graduate student gravely informed me: "Of course Negros are more promiscuous and uninhibited sexually than whites. I envy them and wish I could be like them." Similarly, the radicals tended to romanticize lower-class Negros as part of their romanticization of the oppressed and poor of all societies.

August Meier, "Who Are the True Believers? &emdash; A Tentative Typology of the Motivations of Civil Rights Activists" in A White Scholar and the Black Community 1945-1965: Essays and Reflections (Amherst, MA: The Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1992).

To some, the hipster sorts [of whites involved in Civil Rights prior to 1963] are "kooks." Many of them so reject their identity as members of conventional American white middle-class society that, far from objecting to the "race-baiting" of some of the Negro militants, they either revel in it masochistically or join in similar criticism themselves. A few even fancy themselves "black nationalists." At CORE’s 1963 convention one such activist unsuccessfully urged a Negro to run against a white candidate for the organization’s National Action council. His reason, succinctly stated, was simple: "We don’t want any more of those God-damned white people on the council."

August Meier, "Who Are the True Believers? &emdash; A Tentative Typology of the Motivations of Civil Rights Activists" in A White Scholar and the Black Community 1945-1965: Essays and Reflections (Amherst, MA: The Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1992).

The examples of the status figures in their churches and the civil rights crisis of 1963 combined to make it suddenly evident to these young [white] men and women [from stable family backgrounds] that race discrimination was a burning issue. And it was a burning issue to them precisely because it violated the democratic and Christian values which they had been trained to treasure.... The point I am making is that in contrast to the beatniks, the radicals, the pacifists, and even the liberals, the commitment of these youths arose not out of any alienation from American society, but out of a profound sense of attachment to it.

August Meier, "Who Are the True Believers? — A Tentative Typology of the Motivations of Civil Rights Activists" in A White Scholar and the Black Community 1945-1965: Essays and Reflections (Amherst, MA: The Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1992).

[Blacks are mired] in a very natural process of inversion in which we invert from negative to positive the very point of difference — our blackness — that the enemy used to justify our oppression.

...One of the many advantages whites enjoy in America is a relative freedom from the draining obligation of racial inversion. Whites do not have to spend precious time fashioning an identity out of simply being white. They do not have to self-consciously imbue whiteness with an ideology, look to whiteness for some special essence, or divide up into factions and wrestle over what it means to be white. Their racial collectivism, to the extent that they feel it, creates no imbalance between the collective and the individual. This, of course, is yet another blessing of history and of power, of never having lived in the midst of an overwhelming enemy race.

Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990).

[An all-white group] is essential to creating the atmosphere of security, safety and trust needed for participants to feel able to express, recognize and change racist attitudes and behaviors. In addition to fostering trust, the all-white group encourages the white students’ racial identification. One of the important steps that whites must go through in learning about racism and their role in combatting it is to recognize themselves as white. While...ethnic minorities are forced by their racial oppression to be aware of themselves as members of racial groups, whites generally have the luxury to feel "normal," not aware of their whiteness.

Echols, I., Gabel, C., Landerman, D., & Reyes, M., (1988). "An Approach for Addressing Racism, Ethnocentrism, and Sexism in the Curriculum," in C. Jacobs & D. Bowles (Eds.), Ethnicity and Race. Silver Spring, MD: National Association of Social Workers.

Few whites are able to say honestly that being White is an identity that brings them a sense of pride. Although some may feel that being White means being powerful, lucky, comfortable, and secure, it also can mean confusion, entrapment, and threatened self-esteem, hardly attributes that would promote helpfulness to people-of-color, who may be dealing with such consequences themselves. A [counseling] practitioner whose sense of self is distorted and who needs another to project on cannot help that other to feel good about himself, to develop sound judgement, strong reality testing, goal-oriented behavior, the will to struggle against racism, and the skill to work toward change in his oppressed condition. Changing the meaning of White to a more positive one thus becomes an important step in preparation for [counseling] effectiveness.

Elaine Pinderhughes, Understanding Race, Ethnicity, and Power: The Key to Efficacy in Clinical Practice (New York: The Free Press, 1989).

The anxiety that exists for Whites concerning the subject of race should not be underestimated. It is high even for those who believe they have mastered their biases and especially for those who have made the commitment to self-confrontation. For although many would like to believe they are free of racial prejudice and want to view it as operative only in instances of blatant bigotry, there is tension about checking this out. This anxiety has been expressed in terms of fear of discovering bad things about oneself, uneasiness about unexamined values, awareness of the pervasiveness of racism, of one’s helplessness to cope, and of a sense of a sense of entrapment... Management of this anxiety in the interest of confronting bias and achieving greater comfort and confidence in cross-racial interactions should be seen as an act of courage.

But usually Whites do not feel courageous. They tend instead to plead ignorance and to protest that they have never had to think about the meaning of being White.

Elaine Pinderhughes, Understanding Race, Ethnicity, and Power: The Key to Efficacy in Clinical Practice (New York: The Free Press, 1989).

The most destructive consequence of guilt and one that is most likely to cause [counseling] practitioners and teachers to behave inappropriately and defensively is the threat it poses to self-esteem and to everyone’s need to feel positive about his identity. White people have as great a need to feel that their racial identity is positive as do people-of-color. The task for them is to find out what they need to do to achieve this.

Elaine Pinderhughes, Understanding Race, Ethnicity, and Power: The Key to Efficacy in Clinical Practice (New York: The Free Press, 1989).

"My pre-college friends thought I was having an identity crisis," says the Mississippi native of their response to her decision to join Robert Clark’s campaign to become the first Black congressman from Mississippi since Reconstruction. "They couldn’t understand why I would want to take that job when I could do something else."

Some of her family members were more blunt. "They wanted to know why I was ‘wasting’ my talents there when I could be making more money in another surrounding [Translation: White] that was more like I was brought up in." says Hinton.

She also had to face their real, if difficult to voice, fear. "For one family member," she confides, "the real concern was that I would meet, fall in love and marry a Black person."

Karen Hinton, former press secretary for Mississippi State Rep. Robert Clark quoted in "Reverse Integration," by Laura B. Randolph, Ebony, January 1994, pp. 68-70,72. [Brackets original.]

There are few resources that focus on the need for white men to learn about their own identity. History books do not tell about the effects of slavery on the slave owners. They do not suggest that white people’s fears when they see two or more black men walk or drive through white neighborhoods may be the same fears that haunted white Southerners after slave-uprisings such as Denmark Vesey’s plot in 1822 and Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831. Nor do they describe how being part of the race that has dominated and oppressed Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Native Americans, and other people of color on this continent affects individual members of that race.

Oron South, "The Learning Problem," in The Diversity Factor, Vol. 1 No. 3, 1993, pp. 32-33.

Now you may be all right; there are a few white men who are, but the pressure is such from your white friends that you will be compelled to talk against us and give us the cold shoulder when you are around them, even if your heart is right toward us.

Thomas Hall, ex-slave, when interviewed in 1937 at age 81 as part of the Federal Writers’ Project during the Great Depression. Reported in My Folks Don’t Want Me To Talk About Slavery, edited by Belinda Hurmence (Winston-Salem, North Carolina: John F. Blair, Publisher, 1993) p. 53.

If we follow through on the self-reflexive nature of these encounters with Africanism, it falls clear: images of blackness can be evil and protective, rebellious and forgiving, fearful and desirable — all of the self-contradictory features of the self. Whiteness, alone, is mute, meaningless, unfathomable, pointless, frozen, veiled, curtained, dreaded, senseless, implacable. Or so our writers seem to say.

Toni Morrison, from Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York:Vintage Books, 1993) p. 59. [Original emphasis]

Another reason for this quite ornamental vacuum in literary discourse on the presence and influence of Africanist peoples in American criticism is the pattern of thinking about racialism in terms of its consequences on the victim--of always defining it assymetrically from the perspective of its impact on the object of racist policy and attitudes. A good deal of time and intelligence has been invested in the exposure of racism and the horrific results on its objects. There are constant, if erratic, liberalizing efforts to legislate these matters. There are also powerful and persuasive attempts to analyze the orign and fabrication of racism itself, contesting the assumption that it is an inevitable, permanent, and eternal part of all social landscapes. I do not wish to disparage these inquiries. It is precisely because of them that any progress at all has been accomplished in matters of racial discourse. But that well-established study should be joined with another, equally important one: the impact of racism on those who perpetuate it... The scholarship that looks into the mind, imagination, and behavior of slaves is valuable. But equally valuable is a serious intellectual effort to see what racial ideology does to the mind, imagination, and behavior of masters.

Toni Morrison, from Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York:Vintage Books, 1993) p. 59. [Original emphasis]

There are two other students in my class who have one black parent and one white parent, and they were very black-identified, but they also got recruited very heavily by these same two [black] guys who were like, "You belong with us. Why don’t you come with us?" And I didn’t want to be recruited. Again, I wasn’t willing to make this decision that these were the only people I was going to talk to for three years, which is really what they wanted you to decide. It was okay to talk to the Latino students, you know, and the Native American students; if you had to you could talk to the Asian students, but you should avoid white students unless they prove themselves... I know so many white students who feel completely alienated; they didn’t come to Berkeley expecting to have to jump through hoops to be allowed to talk to someone who was black.

Lisa Feldstein, age 28, biracial child of a black mother and white father, quoted by Lise Funderburg in Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994) pp. 130-131.

You start talking about racial issues, especially with upper-class white folk, immediately they go into the denial stage of "Prove to me why this is true." Well, how many volumes am I going to sit here and beat my head against the wall to prove to you that our life experience may be just a little bit different from yours?

Brad Simpson, age 31, biracial child of a white mother and black father, quoted by Lise Funderburg in Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994) p. 171.

When I feel more white, that’s about something physical, about how other people react to me in terms of oppression or discrimination. It’s also culture and class: middle-class, predominantly white neighborhoods, predominantly white schools. I don’t see white people as different from me, and I think that’s very different from most black people, maybe even very different from biracial people. I pass very easily as white, and so I have a sense that I do know what it’s like to be fully part of white culture: being around Whites, being assumed to be white, being amongst white people for long periods of time. Also, the white culture is just more available for everyone on TV, in the media.

Paul Whitaker, age 32, biracial child of a white mother and black father, quoted by Lise Funderburg in Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994) p. 219.

People, of course, are so ignorant, and her hair is very straight and fine, although it’s wavy, and so people would ask me stupid things when she was a baby, like, "What is she?" or "Where’s her dad?" or "Whose baby is that?" Then when she was getting bigger they would pet her hair and ask her what she was mixed with. She would say, "Why, I’m black." And she would say that first, because I always stressed that first, right? And told her how wonderful that was and what that meant and we studied African history and black history and all that stuff, and she would say — because she knows and loves her grandmother, and I’m sure she thinks of her aunt and uncle this way because they’re such universal human beings — so she’d say, "I’m black and I’m Cherokee and I’m white!" And I just freaked out. Because, although I’m sure it’s very obvious to most people, you’ll probably never hear me saying, "I’m black and I’m Cherokee and I’m white." I just don’t add the last part. I never do.

Zenobia Kujichagulia, age 43, multiracial child of a white mother and racially mixed father, discussing her own daughter’s experience, quoted by Lise Funderburg in Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994) pp. 292-293. [Original emphasis]

All I know is that by the next century, this country is not going to be Leave It to Beaver. I saw the future in LA. I saw Asians, I saw Hispanic, I saw all different types of people. The white people were the minority. W.E.B. DuBois talks about how, being black, you learn how to live in two worlds, you learn how to be around people differently, you learn how to adjust. If you’re white, you never really had to do that before. In a sense I feel sympathy for them because they’re going to have to learn how to do that pretty soon, and I’m already doing it.

John Blake, age 27, biracial child of a white mother and black father, quoted by Lise Funderburg in Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994) pp. 300-301.

One time I had on some shirt that had various statements on it about being black; "I’m black and I’m proud. It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand..." And they were all positive comments. I guess "you wouldn’t understand" wouldn’t necessarily be positive, but it was on there, nevertheless. I think my hair covered that one. But this guy started yelling something like, "I’m white and I’m proud of it," and he said, "And I’m so white and I’m so proud that I could kick your da-da-da," some abusive statement about how he could prove something to me with violence — which he couldn’t have anyway. But some white power thing. I guess he finally calmed down and had gotten all that out and was feeling better, and he said, "You know, if I wore a white power T-shirt in this school, they’d probably make me take it off." And I said, "You’re probably right. And that’s not fair. So you can wear one and you could dispute it if you like, but I don’t care. I could care less." And I left. I wasn’t impressed so I just left. But I remember thinking, if you had seen the look in his eyes when he first started, I was like, "I’m glad I’m not around you alone." After that point, if he was in the hall and the hall was empty, I would turn the other way.

Simone Brooks, 17, biracial child of a white mother and black father, quoted by Lise Funderburg in Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1994) p. 317.

...the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased.

Benjamin Franklin, "Observations Concerning the Increase in Mankind," (1751), Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree (New Haven, 1959). Cited in article by Straughton Lynd, "Slavery and the Founding Fathers," in Black History: A Reappraisal, ed. Melvin Drimmer (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1969).