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Book Reviews: Interrogating Whiteness

Scholars in the field of education have focused on issues of race as critical to socially just and equitable education, educational practice, and educational policy for a number of years (Gillborn, 1990; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Lomotey, 1989; Nieto, 1996; Sleeter, 1992; Tatum, 1992,1994). More recently, a number of scholars have succeeded in moving the study of racial identity, including white racial identity, into educational discourse (e.g., Fine, Powell, Weis, & Wong, 1997; Mclntyre, 1997). Viewing whites as having a racial identity has provided us with an opportunity to further unravel the complexities of racial markers, locations, and systems and offers some hope that effective interventions may be developed to interrupt and reverse the course of racism. The recent focus on whiteness (in education and elsewhere), however, has not been received with unqualified celebration by all members of the academy. For example, scholars have expressed concern that the focus on whiteness may eclipse "important work being done across the range of race, postcolonialism, ethnicity, and 'people of color '" (Fine, Powell, Weis, & Wong, 1997, pp. xi-xii). Dr. C. Ayisha Blackshire Belay, Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Indiana State University poignantly asks, "Who is it [the study of whiteness] for? And in this point in time, why?" (Rodriguez, 1999, p . 22). Her questions reflect a number of growing concerns. One such concern is that whiteness studies began because white scholars wanted to create a space for themselves within ethnic studies and the multicultural movement (i.e., recentering whites in all areas of academe) (Rodriguez, 1999). Furthermore, profound questions remain about the nature and purposes of "critical white studies." Some cultural critics— including most of those represented in the book we review here—claim to be looking for some form of positive white identity (Derman-Sparks & Phillips, 1997; for examples in the reviewed book, see especially chapters by Kincheloe & Steinberg and McLaren). Others, like Noel Ignatiev (1999) and Judith Butler (1997), have provided analyses that suggest white identity may have no, or little, constructive utility for anti-racist struggle.