Dismantling racism & oppression: White Privilege

"There is a regime of whiteness, and there are action-oriented white identities. People who identify with whiteness are one of these. It's about time we build an ethnography of whiteness, since white people have been the ones writing about and governing Others."

1. White Supremacist: Preserves, names, and values white superiority
    
2. White Voyeurism: Would not challenge a white supremacist; desires non-whiteness because it is interesting, pleasurable; seeks to control the consumption and appropriation of non-whiteness; fascination with culture
    
3. White Privilege: May critique white supremacy, but maintains a deep investment in questions of fairness/equality under the normalization of whiteness and white rule; sworn goal of ‘diversity’
    
4. White Benefit: Sympathetic to a set of issues but only privately. Will not speak/act in solidarity publicly, because they are benefitting through whiteness in public
    
5. White Confessional: Some exposure of whiteness takes place, but as a way of being accountable to People of Colour after; seek validation from People of Color
    
6. White Critical: Take on board critiques of whiteness and invest in exposing/marking the white regime; refuses to be complicit with the regime; whiteness speaking back to whiteness
    
7. White Traitor: Actively refuses complicity; names what is going on; intention is to subvert white authority and tell the truth at whatever cost; need them to dismantle institutions
    
8. White Abolitionist: Changes institutions; dismantling whiteness, and not allowing whiteness to reassert itself

Barnor Hesse is Associate Professor of African American Studies, Political Science, and Sociology at Northwestern University.