The socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness: how it was created how it changes and how
it protects and privileges people who are perceived as white. This volume in the MIT Press
Essential Knowledge series examines the socially constructed phenomenon of whiteness tracing
its creation its changing formation and its power to privilege and protect people who are
perceived as white. Whiteness author Martin Lund explains is not one single idea but a
shifting overarching category a flexible cluster of historically culturally and
geographically contingent ideals and standards that enable systems of hierarchical
classification. Lund discusses words used to talk about whiteness from white privilege to
white fragility the intersections of whiteness with race class and gender whiteness in
popular culture and such ideas as colorblindness and reverse racism which he argues
actually uphold whiteness. Lund shows why it is important to keep talking and thinking about
whiteness. The word whiteness he writes doesn't describe it conjures something into being.
Drawing on decades of critical whiteness studies and citing a range of examples (primarily from
the United States and Sweden) Lund argues that whiteness is continually manufactured and
sustained through language laws policies science and representations in media and popular
culture. It is often positioned as normative even universal. And despite its innocuous-seeming
manifestations in sitcoms and superheroes whiteness is always in the service of racial
domination.
