Roots of "Whiteness"

Behind the recent emergence of of "whiteness" as a prevalent category of scholarly analysis lies the story of two intertwined intellectual traditions and their belated acceptance in the American academy. One of these traditions is antiracist Marxism; the other is the black antiracist tradition. Both have commented on white identity and white racism in ways that presage the insights of the explosion of whiteness studies that followed David Roediger's key text, "The Wages of Whiteness." In this essay, I will provide a brief overview of the two aforementioned traditions before proceeding to evaluate the post-"Wages" scholarship. Hopefully, my discussion will contextualize the whiteness phenomenon by pointing to its roots. I also hope to demonstrate that although some of the whiteness scholarship is less than perspicacious, the work of Roediger et al. constitutes a meaningful intervention into the historiography of race in American history. Finally, my intent here is to build upon and respond to Eric Arnesen's helpful survey of the whiteness field. --From author's introduction