White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness

Beginning with the premise that race shapes white women's lives, just as much as gender, shapes men's lives or sexuality shapes heterosexual lives, Ruth Frankenberg examines, through 30 life-history interviews, just how this "whiteness" is constructed. "White Women, Race Matters" does not, however, aim to point its finger at a monolithic "whiteness" as the sole cause of racism and sexism. Rather, it intelligently examines and documents the unique experiences of white women and their coming to racial consciousness. Frankenberg suggests that the commonly held perceptions of "whiteness" as a hollow concept, and race and racial consciousness as the province of non-white people, are false. "Whiteness" is not an empty signifier, but rather a multifaceted daily experience of racial structuring, and through ethnographic descriptions of the 30 womens' lives, Frankenberg provides evidence that "whiteness" is a specific set of cultural practices. The only difference, she says, is that unlike other cultural practices, it is as yet both unmarked and unnamed. Ruth Frankenberg has written on building multi-racial women's studies curricula, academics' responses to Edward Said's "Orientalism", and the meaning and utility of the concept of the "postcolonial", In addition to teaching and research, Frankenberg has been involved in feminist, antiracist, and antifascist activism.