Whiteness

Crucet explores the complexities of whiteness, depicting it as something that Americans are taught to strive for and embody in order to be successful and accepted in society.

In this book, whiteness is positioned as a synonym for being a part of the norm, matching the standard of those around you. When you look around you as a white person in America you see yourself represented in the ranks of power and in all levels of society, and therefore you yourself do not see yourself as privileged or special, but as one of many. This is what Crucet refers to as white privilege. Crucet recognizes in many white people the tendency to to playfully claim to be “culture-less”, “vanilla,” or “plain, boring, American white,” which, she argues, subliminally reveals “how little race impacts their lives, how whiteness is ubiquitous to them, and they mistake that ubiquitousness as a...