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Where Do White People Come From? A Foucaultian Critique Of Whiteness Studies, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

Over the past 15 years we have seen the rise of a field of inquiry known as Whiteness Studies. Two of its major tenets are (1) that white identity is socially constructed and functions as a racial norm and (2) that those who occupy the position of white subjectivity exercise ‘white privilege’, which is oppressive to non-whites. However, despite their ubiquitous use of the term ‘norm’, Whiteness Studies theorists rarely give any detailed account of how whiteness serves to normalize. A case is made here that we can only understand how whiteness normalizes if we place the development of white …