Seeing White

An Introduction to White Privilege and Race

By (author) Jean Halley, Amy Eshleman, Ramya Mahadevan Vijaya

Not available to order

Publication date:

01 July 2011

Length of book:

252 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442203075

This interdisciplinary textbook challenges students to see race as everyone's issue. Drawing on sociology, psychology, history, and economics, Seeing White introduces students to the concepts of white privilege and social power.

Seeing White is designed to help break down some of the resistance students feel in discussing race. Each chapter opens with compelling concrete examples to help students approach issues from a range of perspectives. The early chapters build a solid understanding of privilege and power, leading to a critical exploration of discrimination. Key theoretical perspectives include cultural materialism, critical race theory, and the social construction of race.

Each chapter includes discussion questions to help students evaluate institutions and policies that perpetuate or counter forces of privilege and discrimination.
The website www.seeingwhite.org includes multidisciplinary demonstrations, activities, examples, and images for researchers and instructors who seek to explain racism and reveal white privilege.

With remarkable clarity, Halley, Eshleman and Vijaya have made the often invisible workings of culture both visible and comprehensible. Focusing on one of the most knotty of problems-entrenched assumptions about racial difference and inequality-this important book will offer students the opportunity to see the familiar in unfamiliar ways, and to challenge the mental baggage that so many carry inside their heads and hearts. The book's goal is to lay the groundwork for a better historical understanding of ideas that too often remain unexamined.