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Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Black studies

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Map of Africa and the African diaspora throughout the world

Black studies or Africana studies (with nationally specific terms, such as African American studies and Black Canadian studies), is an interdisciplinary academic field that primarily focuses on the study of the history, culture, and politics of the peoples of the African diaspora and Africa. The field includes scholars of African-American, Afro-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, Afro-European, Afro-Asian, African Australian, and African literature, history, politics, and religion as well as those from disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. The field also uses various types of research methods.

Intensive academic efforts to reconstruct African-American history began in the late 19th century (W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America, 1896). Among the pioneers in the first half of the 20th century were Carter G. Woodson, Herbert Aptheker, Melville Herskovits, and Lorenzo Dow Turner.

Programs and departments of Black studies in the United States were first created in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of inter-ethnic student and faculty activism at many universities, sparked by a five-month strike for Black studies at San Francisco State University. In February 1968, San Francisco State hired sociologist Nathan Hare to coordinate the first Black studies program and write a proposal for the first Department of Black Studies; the department was created in September 1968 and gained official status at the end of the five-month strike in the spring of 1969. Hare's views reflected those of the black power movement, and he believed that the department should empower Black students. The creation of programs and departments in Black studies was a common demand of protests and sit-ins by minority students and their allies, who felt that their cultures and interests were underserved by the traditional academic structures.

Black studies departments, programs, and courses were also created in the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

Names of the academic discipline

The academic discipline is known by various names. Mazama (2009) expounds:

In the appendix to their recently published Handbook of Black Studies, Asante and Karenga note that "the naming of the discipline" remains "unsettled" (Asante & Karenga, 2006, p. 421). This remark came as a result of an extensive survey of existing Black Studies programs, which led to the editors identifying a multiplicity of names for the discipline: Africana Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, African/Black World Studies, Pan-African Studies, Africology, African and New World Studies, African Studies–Major, Black World Studies, Latin American Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Black and Hispanic Studies, Africana and Latin American Studies, African and African-American Studies, Black and Hispanic Studies, African American Studies, Afro-American Studies, African American Education Program, Afro-Ethnic Studies, American Ethnic Studies, American Studies–African-American Emphasis, Black Studies, Comparative American Cultures, Ethnic Studies Programs, Race and Ethnic Studies.

Okafor (2014) clarifies:

What appears to drive these distinctive names is a combination of factors: the composite expertise of their faculty, their faculty's areas of specialization, and the worldviews of the faculty that make up each unit. By worldview, I am referring to the question of whether the constituent faculty in a given setting manifests any or a combination of the following visions of our project:

  • a domestic vision of black studies that sees it as focusing exclusively on the affairs of only United States African Americans who descended from the generation of enslaved Africans
  • a diasporic vision of black studies that is inclusive of the affairs of all of African descendants in the New World—that is, the Americas: North America, South America and the Caribbean
  • a globalistic vision of the black studies—that is, a viewpoint that thinks in terms of an African world—a world encompassing African-origin communities that are scattered across the globe and the continent of Africa itself.

The range of names in Black Studies also reflects the historical and sociopolitical contexts in which these programs emerged. For example, terms like "Afro-American Studies" originated during the civil rights movement, emphasizing a focus on the African American experience and the struggle for racial equality. In contrast, more contemporary terms like "Africana Studies" and "Pan-African Studies" reflect a broader engagement with the global Black experience, including connections across the African diaspora and an acknowledgment of transnational influences.

History

Americas

North America

Canada

In 1991, the national chair for Black Canadian Studies, which was named after James Robinson Johnston, was created at Dalhousie University for the purpose of advancing the development and presence of Black studies in Canada. Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin was studied by the Black Canadian Studies chairman, John Barnstead.

Mexico

Through development of the publication, The black population in Mexico (1946), Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán made way for the development of Afro-Mexican studies.

United States
Carter G. Woodson, United States

The development of Africana studies, as outlined by Robert Harris Jr., underscores the discipline's evolution in response to historical contexts and societal needs. The first stage, from the 1890s until World War II, was marked by grassroots organizations that sought to illuminate the rich histories and cultures of African peoples. This foundational work laid the groundwork for future scholarship by challenging prevailing narratives that often marginalized or misrepresented Black experiences.

The second stage shifted the focus to African Americans, reflecting the urgent need to address the unique historical and cultural contributions of this community, particularly in the wake of the civil rights movement. This period emphasized the significance of African American history, culture, and identity within a broader American context, fostering a greater understanding of systemic racism and social justice.

The third stage saw the establishment of formal academic programs labeled as Black Studies, which further institutionalized the discipline within higher education. These programs aimed to create a rigorous academic framework for studying the Black experience, often incorporating interdisciplinary approaches that draw from history, sociology, literature, and the arts. This formalization not only legitimized the field but also contributed to a growing body of scholarship that challenged dominant narratives.

As Africana studies continues to evolve, the fourth stage—emphasizing global connections and an Afro-centric perspective—highlights the discipline's responsiveness to contemporary issues. It seeks to explore the interconnectedness of African and African Diaspora experiences, fostering a deeper understanding of cultural phenomena and their implications in a global context. This aim reinforces the importance of representing diverse voices and experiences, ensuring that the Black experience is recognized as integral to the broader human narrative.

In summary, Africana studies serves not only to broaden students' understanding of global histories and cultures but also to empower them with an enriched perspective that celebrates the complexity and diversity of Black experiences. By acknowledging and addressing the gaps in traditional educational narratives, this field of study aims to contribute to a more equitable and inclusive understanding of history and culture.

In the United States, the 1960s is known as the "Turbulent Sixties." During this time period, the nation experienced great social unrest, as citizens challenged the social order in radical ways. Many movements took place in the United States during this time period, including women's rights movement, labor rights movement, and the civil rights movement.

The students at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) were witnesses to the Civil Rights Movement, and by 1964, they were thrust into activism. On October 1, 1964, Jack Weinberg, a former graduate student, was sitting at a table where the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was distributing literature encouraging students to protest against institutional racism. Police asked Weinberg to produce his ID to confirm that he was a student, but he refused to do so and was, therefore, arrested. In support of Weinberg, 3,000 students surrounded the police vehicle, and even used the car as a podium, from where they spoke about their right to engage in political protest on campus. This impromptu demonstration was the first of many protests, culminating in the institutionalization of Black studies.

Two months later, students at UC Berkeley organized a sit-in at the Sproul Hall Administration building to protest an unfair rule that prohibited all political clubs from fundraising, excluding the democrat and republican clubs. Police arrested 800 students. Students formed a "freedom of speech movement" and Mario Savio became its poetic leader, stating that "freedom of speech was something that represents the very dignity of what a human is." The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a well-connected and organized club, hosted a conference entitled "Black Power and its Challenges." Black leaders, who were directly tied to then ongoing civil rights movements, spoke to a predominantly white audience about their respective goals and challenges. These leaders included Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

Educational conferences, like that of the SDS, forced the university to take some measures to correct the most obvious racial issue on campus—the sparse black student population. In 1966, the school held its first official racial and ethnic survey, in which it was discovered that the "American Negro" represented 1.02% of the university population. In 1968, the university instituted its Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), facilitated the increased minority student enrollment, and offered financial aid to minority students with high potential. By 1970, there were 1,400 EOP students. As the minority student population increased, tension between activists clubs and minorities rose because minorities wanted the reigns of the movement that affected them directly. One student asserted that it was "backward to educate white people about Black Power when many black people are still uneducated on the matter. "The members of the Afro-American Student Union (AASU) proposed an academic department called "Black Studies" in April 1968. "We demand a program of 'Black Studies', a program that will be of and for black people. We demand to be educated realistically and that no form of education which attempts to lie to us, or otherwise mis-educate us will be accepted."

AASU members asserted: "The young people of America are the inheritors of what is undoubtedly one of the most challenging, and threatening set of social circumstances that has ever fallen upon a generation of young people in history." Everyone learns differently and teaching only one way is a cause for students to not want to learn, which eventually leads to dropping out. All students have their specialties, but teachers don't use that to help them in their learning community. Instead, they use a broad way of teaching just to get the information out. AASU used these claims to gain ground on their proposal to create a Black studies department. Nathan Hare, a sociology professor at San Francisco State University, created what was known as the "A Conceptual Proposal for Black Studies" and AASU used Hare's framework to create a set of criteria. A Black studies program was implemented by the UC Berkeley administration on January 13, 1969. In 1969, St. Clair Drake was named the first chair of the degree granting, Program in African and Afro-American Studies at Stanford University. Many Black studies programs and departments and programs around the nation were created in subsequent years.

At University of California, Santa Barbara, similarly, student activism led to the establishment of a Black studies department, amidst great targeting and discrimination of student leaders of color on the University of California campuses. In the Autumn season of 1968, black students from UCSB joined the national civil rights movement to end racial segregation and exclusion of Black history and studies from college campuses. Triggered by the insensitivity of the administration and general campus life, they occupied North Hall and presented the administration with a set of demands. Such efforts led to the eventual creation of the Black studies department and the Center for Black Studies.

Similar activism was happening outside of California. At Yale University, a committee, headed by political scientist, Robert Dahl, recommended establishing an undergraduate major in African-American culture, one of the first of such at an American university.

When Ernie Davis, who was from Syracuse University, became the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy in college football, it renewed debates about race on college campuses in the country. Inspired by the Davis win, civil rights movement, and nationwide student activism, in 1969, black and white students, led by the Student African American Society (SAS), at Syracuse University, marched in front of the building at Newhouse and demanded for Black studies to be taught at Syracuse. It existed as an independent, underfunded non-degree offering program from 1971 until 1979. In 1979, the program became the Department of African American Studies, offering degrees within the College of Arts and Sciences.

Unlike the other stages, Black studies grew out of mass rebellions of black college students and faculty in search of a scholarship of change. The fourth stage, the new name "Africana studies" involved a theoretical elaboration of the discipline of Black studies according to African cultural reclamation and disparate tenets in the historical and cultural issues of Africanity within a professorial interpretation of the interactions between these fields and college administrations.

Thus, Africana studies reflected the mellowing and institutionalization of the Black studies movement in the course of its integration into the mainstream academic curriculum. Black studies and Africana studies differ primarily in that Africana studies focuses on Africanity and the historical and cultural issues of Africa and its descendants, while Black studies was designed to deal with the uplift and development of the black (African-American) community in relationship to education and its "relevance" to the black community. The adaptation of the term, "Africana studies", appears to have derived from the encyclopedic work of W. E. B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson. James Turner, who was recruited from graduate school at Northwestern on the heels of the student rebellions of 1969, first used the term to describe a global approach to Black studies and name the "Africana Studies and Research Center" at Cornell, where he acted as the founding director.

Studia Africana, subtitled "An International Journal of Africana Studies", was published by the Department for African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati in a single issue in 1977 (an unrelated journal called Studia Africana is published by the Centro de Estudios Africanos, in Barcelona, since 1990). The International Journal of Africana Studies (ISSN 1056-8689) has been appearing since 1992, published by the National Council for Black Studies.

Africana philosophy is a part of and developed within the field of Africana studies.

In 1988 and 1990, publications on African-American studies were funded by the Ford Foundation, and the African-American academics who produced the publications used traditional disciplinary orthodoxies, from outside of African-American studies, to analyze and evaluate the boundaries, structure, and legitimacy of African-American studies. To the detriment of the field, an abundance of research on African American studies has been developed by academics who are not within the discipline of African American studies. Rather, the academics, and the scholarship they have produced about African American studies, has been characterized as bearing an "Aryan hegemonic worldview." It has been argued that due to a staffing shortage in the field of African American studies, academics in the field, who are trained in traditional fields, carry with them presumptions of the primacy of their field of training's viewpoints, which tends to result in the marginalization of the African phenomena that are the subjects of study and even the field of African American studies at-large. Consequently, matters of development of theory as well as the development of historical and African consciousness frequently go overlooked. As the focus of African American studies is the study of the African diaspora and Africa, including the problems of the African diaspora and Africa, Conyers claims that this makes the theory of Afrocentricity increasingly relevant.

The National Council for Black Studies has also recognized the problem of academics, who have been trained in fields such as education, economics, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology – fields outside of African American studies – and are committed to their disciplinary training, yet are not able to recognize the shortcomings of their training, as it relates to the field of African American studies that they are entering into. Furthermore, such academics, who would also recognize themselves as experts in the discipline of African American studies, would also attempt to assess the legitimacy of Africology – done so, through analysis based on critical rhetoric rather than based on pensive research.

Following the Black studies movement and Africana studies movement, Molefi Kete Asante identifies the Africological movement as a subsequent academic movement. Asante authored the book Afrocentricity, in 1980. Within the book, Asante used the term "Afrology" as the name for the interdisciplinary field of Black studies, and defined it as "the Afrocentric study of African phenomena." Later, Winston Van Horne changed Asante's use of the term "Afrology" to "Africology." Asante then went on to use his earlier definition for "Afrology" as the definition for his newly adopted term, "Africology". Systematic Africology, which is a research method in the field of Black studies that was developed by Asante, utilizes the theory of Afrocentricity to analyze and evaluate African phenomena. In an effort to shift Black studies away from its interdisciplinary status toward disciplinary status, Asante recommended that Afrocentricity should be the meta-paradigm for Black studies and that the new name for Black studies should be Africology; this is intended to shift Black studies away from having a "topical definition" of studying African peoples, which is shared with other disciplines, toward having a "perspectival definition" that is unique in how African peoples are studied – that is, the study of African peoples, through a centered perspective, which is rooted in and derives from the cultures and experiences of African peoples. By doing so, as Ama Mazama indicates, this should increase how relevant Black studies is and strengthen its disciplinary presence.

Caribbean

Among English-speaking countries of the Caribbean, scholars educated in the United States and Britain added considerably to the development of Black studies. Scholars, such as Fitzroy Baptiste, Richard Goodridge, Elsa Goveia, Allister Hinds, Rupert Lewis, Bernard Marshall, James Millette, and Alvin Thompson, added to the development of Black studies at the University of the West Indies campuses in Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad.

Cuba

During the early 1900s, Fernando Ortiz pioneered the emerging field of Afro-Cuban studies. On January 16, 1937, the Society for Afro-Cuban Studies was established. Afro-Cuban Studies (Estudios Afrocubanos) is the academic journal for the Society for Afro-Cuban Studies (SEAC/Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos). In 1939, Rómulo Lachatañeré's academic work appeared in a volume of this journal.

Dominican Republic

In 1967, Carlos Larrazábal Blanco authored, Los Negros Y La Esclavitud En Santo Domingo, which is considered to be a foundational academic work in Afro-Dominican studies. Even in areas of the Dominican Republic with many Afro-Dominicans and where Afro-Dominican culture is predominant, there has been an ongoing challenge in Afro-Dominican studies to find linguistic evidence of a remnant Afro-Dominican language.

Haiti

Lorimer Denis, Francois Duvalier, and Jean Price-Mars, as founders of the Bureau of Ethnology and leading figures in the Noirisme movement in Haiti, were also influential in the publishing of the foundational Afro-Haitian studies journal, Les Griots. One of the most influential academics in Afro-Haitian studies is René Piquion.

Puerto Rico

As of 2019, Afro-Puerto Rican studies is not offered as a degree program by the University of Puerto Rico. Numerous academic publications, such as Arrancando Mitos De Raiz: Guia Para La Ensenanza Antirracista De La Herencia Africana En Puerto Rico, were scholarly works that established Isar Godreau as a leading academic in Afro-Puerto Rican Studies.

Central America

Costa Rica

The Executive branch created a law to establish a Committee for Afro-Costa Rican Studies, as one, among other laws, to increase the level of inclusion of Afro-Costa Ricans in Costa Rica.

Guatemala

Christopher H. Lutz authored, Santiago de Guatemala, 1541–1773, which is considered to be one of the foundational literatures of Afro-Guatemalan studies.

Honduras

Due to a history of scarce resources and anti-black racism, Afro-Hondurans have largely been excluded from academic publications about Honduras; consequently, Afro-Honduran studies has remained limited in its formal development.

Panama

In March 1980, along with the Panamanian government, the Afro-Panamanian Studies Center hosted the Second Congress on Black Culture in the Americas.

South America

Bolivia

  • Art Style: Andean textiles, goldsmithing, and pre-Columbian artifacts.
  • Notable Locations:
    • Tiwanaku Archaeological Site: Famous for its monumental stone carvings and architecture from the Tiwanaku civilization.
    • La Paz’s Witches’ Market: Offers handcrafted items and Indigenous Aymara art.


Argentina

Argentina, located in the heart of South America, is a country with a rich cultural heritage that spans centuries. Its art scene reflects a unique blend of indigenous traditions, European influences, and contemporary innovation, making it one of the most vibrant artistic landscapes in Latin America. From prehistoric cave paintings to cutting-edge modern installations, Argentine art is a testament to the country's diverse history and cultural dynamism.

Since the 1980s, Afro-Argentine studies has undergone renewed growth.

Brazil
Abdias Nascimento, Brazil

In 1980, Abdias Nascimento gave a presentation in Panama of his scholarship on Kilombismo at the 2nd Congress of Black Culture in the Americas. His scholarship on Kilombismo detailed how the economic and political affairs of Africans throughout the Americas contributed to how they socially organized themselves. Afterward, Nascimento went back to Brazil and began institutionalization of Africana studies in 1981. While at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Nascimento developed the Afro-Brazilian Studies and Research Institute (IPEAFRO). A course for professors was provided by IPEAFRO between 1985 and 1995.

Chile

From the 1920s to the 1950s, publications that included the presence of Afro-Chileans were not systematized, and, from the 1960s to the 1980s, publications continued to group Afro-Chileans with other groups. Since the 2000s, there has been increasing systematization and a more formal development of Afro-Chilean studies, along with a greater focus on Afro-Chileans and the recovery of Afro-Chilean cultural heritage.

Colombia

Scholars, such as Rogerio Velásquez, Aquiles Escalante, José Rafael Arboleda, and Thomas Price, were forerunners in the development of Afro-Colombian studies in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960s, as social science programs became incorporated into university institutions, contributions from anthropologists and social scientists added to its emergence. Following the promulgation of the Colombian Constitution, particularly Article 55, in 1991, Law 70 in 1993, and Decree 804 by the Ministry of Education in 1995, the elements for Afro-Colombian studies began to come together, and historic discrimination of Afro-Colombians was able to begin being addressed, with the development of national educational content about Afro-Colombians and Africa. At the University City of Bogotá, of the National University of Colombia, the Afro-Colombian Studies Group developed and established a training program in Afro-Colombian studies for primary and secondary school teachers. In February 2002, a continuing education diploma program in Afro-Colombian studies was developed and began to be offered at the University of Cauca in Belalcázar, Caldas. At the Pontifical Xavierian University, there is a master's degree program in Afro-Colombian studies. There is also a study abroad program for Afro-Colombian students and African-American students existing between the Afro-Colombian studies program at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Colombia and African-American studies programs at historically black colleges and universities in the United States.

Ecuador

Afro-Ecuadorians initiated the development of the Center of Afro-Ecuadorian Studies in the late 1970s, which served as a means of organizing academic questions relating to Afro-Ecuadorian identity and history. Though it dissolved in the early 1980s, by the 1990s, organizations that followed in the example of the Center of Afro-Ecuadorian Studies ushered in the development of the Afro-Ecuadorian Etnoeducación program at the National High School, in Chota Valley, Ecuador, and a master's degree program in Afro-Andean Studies at the Simón Bolívar Andean University (UASB), in Quito, Ecuador. With the promulgation of Article 84 of the 1998 Constitution of Ecuador, gave formal recognition was given to Afro-Ecuadorian Etnoeducación. Juan Garcia, who was one of the founders of the Center of Afro-Ecuadorian Studies, is a leading scholar in Afro-Ecuadorian studies and has contributed considerably to the development of the programs in Chota Valley and Quito.

Paraguay

In 1971, Carvalho Neto authored, Afro-Paraguayan studies.

Peru

While the presence of Afro-Peruvian studies may not be strong in Peru, the body of scholarship is undergoing growth. There have been efforts to organize the elements of Afro-Peruvian studies in Peru, such as by LUNDU, which organized an international conference for Afro-Peruvian studies in Peru on November 13, 2009. During this LUNDU-organized conference, Luis Rocca, who co-founded the National Afro-Peruvian Museum, and is also a historian, presented on his research regarding Afro-Peruvians. A university student group focused on Afro-Peruvian studies was also created near San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima, Peru. Additionally, there has been some scholarship in Afro-Peruvian studies developed in the United States and a panel on Afro-Peruvian studies at a conference hosted on December 11, 2019, by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research in the United States.

Uruguay

Since 1996, the amount of scholarship of Afro-Uruguayan studies has increased as a result of increased global focus on Afro-Latin American studies.

Venezuela

The curriculum for Afro-Venezuelan studies was developed at Universidad Politécnica Territorial de Barlovento Argelia Laya (UPTBAL), in Higuerote, Barlovento, by Alejandro Correa.[13] In 2006, Afro-Epistemology and African Culture were formally developed as the initial courses for students in this curriculum.

Europe

United Kingdom

Kehinde Andrews, United Kingdom

Following the rise and decline of Black British Cultural Studies between the early 1980s and late 1990s, Black studies in the United States reinvigorated Black Critical Thought in the United Kingdom. Kehinde Andrews, who initiated the development of the Black Studies Association in the United Kingdom as well as the development of a course in Black studies at Birmingham City University, continues to advocate for the advancement of the presence of Black studies in the United Kingdom.

Research methods

African Self-Consciousness

Kobi K. K. Kambon developed a research method and psychological framework, known as African Self-Consciousness, which analyzes the states and changes of the African mind.

Africana Womanism

Delores P. Aldridge developed a research method, which analyzes from the viewpoint of black women, known as Africana Womanism. Rather than the importance of the individual (e.g., needs, wants) being considered greater than the family unit, the importance of the family unit is regarded as greater than the individual.

  • Enrich the introduction by highlighting the global resonance and universal themes found in Black American art.
  • Weave in a compelling thesis statement underscoring its evolution as a mirror to cultural identity and historical struggles.

Afrocentricity

Main article: Afrocentricity
Molefi Kete Asante, United States

Afrocentricity is an academic theory and approach to scholarship that seeks to center the experiences and peoples of Africa and the African diaspora within their own historical, cultural, and sociological contexts. First developed as a systematized methodology by Molefi Kete Asante in 1980, he drew inspiration from a number of African and African diaspora intellectuals including Cheikh Anta Diop, George James, Harold Cruse, Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and W. E. B. Du Bois. The Temple Circle, also known as the Temple School of Thought, Temple Circle of Afrocentricity, or Temple School of Afrocentricity, was an early group of Africologists during the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped to further develop Afrocentricity, which is based on concepts of agency, centeredness, location, and orientation.

Black Male Studies

Main article: Black Male Studies

Black Male Studies primarily focuses on the study of Black men and boys. Its research focus includes the study of Black manhood and Black masculinity, and it draws from disciplines such as history, philosophy, and sociology. Black Male Studies uses a Black male-centered paradigm designed to critique past and present gender studies publications on Black males as well as centers and contends with the problem of anti-Black misandry ("disdain for Black men and boys"). Past and present gender studies publications tend to carry assumptions of Black men and boys being criminals and assailants of Black women and white women. Consequently, past and present gender studies publications tend to contain paradigms, theories, and narratives that are grounded in anti-Black misandry, along with a theoretically constructed language of hypermasculinity, and tend to be ill-equipped at understanding Black males as victims. The past and present vulnerability of Black males, ranging from rape, to sexual abuse, to death, which tends to be overlooked and downplayed by rhetoric about hypermasculinity, underscores the need to develop new language, narratives, and theories for understanding Black males.

Blues Culture

James B. Stewart developed the research method and methodological framework, known as Blues Culture, which examines the traits (e.g., versatility, vibration) of Africana culture utilizing various means from an assortment of disciplines (e.g., economics, history, sociology).

Double Consciousness

W. E. B. Du Bois, United States

W. E. B. DuBois developed the research method and conceptual framework, known as Double Consciousness, to analyze how Africana people (and phenomena) exist in a dual racialized (black-white) world and subsequently develop a dual consciousness. Rather than succumb to various forms of external pressure (e.g., assimilation, harassment, prejudice, racism, sexism, surveillance), Africana people discover how to steer through them.

Four Basic Tasks of the Black Studies Scholar

James Turner developed the research method and social scientific framework, known as Four Basic Tasks of the Black Studies Scholar, which investigates the problems that affect the experiences of Africana peoples and addresses four related criteria (e.g., defend, disseminate, generate, preserve new knowledge) utilizing various means of examination from an assortment of disciplines (e.g., conceptual history, economics, political science, sociology).

Interpretative Analysis

Charles H. Wesley developed the research method of Interpretative Analysis, which utilizes a structural or cultural system to gather, analyze, and interpret data.

Kawaida Theory

Maulana Karenga, United States

Maulana Karenga drew from the concept of Nguzo Saba to develop his research method, known as Kawaida Theory. Seven factors (e.g., creative production, ethos, history, religion, economic organization, political organization, social organization) are utilized to examine the Africana experience, which is set within a Pan-Africanist context.

Miseducation of the Negro

Carter G. Woodson developed the research method of and conceptual framework for the Miseducation of the Negro, which analyzes and assesses the history and culture of Africana people, and notates their notable loss of such is due to Africana people being decentered from their own historic and cultural contexts.

Nigrescence

William E. Cross Jr. developed the research method, known as Nigrescence, as a psychological framework; with the framework, he analyzes Africana culture and the behavioral dimensions of its psycho-adaptive traits as well as analyzes a timeline of Black culture (which is composed of five steps).

Optimal Worldview of Psychology

Linda Meyers developed the research method, known as the Optimal Worldview of Psychology, which utilizes investigates the African mind through a cultural framework (e.g., surface-level structure of culture, deep structure of culture); its sub-optimal viewpoint highlights the demerits of an African mind that has an assimilated mentality and its optimal viewpoint corresponds with an African mind that has an Africana mentality.

Paradigm of Unity

Abdul Alkalimat developed the research method known as the Paradigm of Unity, which has a considerable focus on relationships between social classes, via Marxist analysis, and utilizes gender as a determining factor as well as utilizes an undefined notion of Afrocentricity.

Shared Authority

Michael Frisch developed the research method, known as Shared Authority, to investigate orature, which recognizes the personhood (e.g., subject, agency) and experiences of the Africana individual. Through this methodological recognition, information that may not have been captured in prior publications is able to be optimally acquired.

Social Legitimacy

Winston Van Horn developed a research method and methodological framework (composed of three steps), known as Social Legitimacy, which analyzes the experiences of Africana peoples and Africana phenomena in their political and sociological contexts.

Two Cradle Theory

Cheikh Anta Diop, Senegal

Cheikh Anta Diop drew from anthropology, archaeology, history, and sociology to develop a research method and cultural metric, known as Two Cradle Theory, to assess the differences between African and European cultures – between what are characterized and viewed as the southern cradle and the northern cradle.

Ujimaa

James L. Conyers Jr. drew from the concept of Nguzo Saba to develop the research method known as Ujimaa; the methodological framework draws from philosophy, sociology, and conceptual history, with the understanding that culture is utilized to analyze and assess Pan-Africanist phenomena from around the world, and is utilized to analyze social responsibility and the work of the collective.

Recent challenges and criticisms

One of the major setbacks with Black studies programs or departments is that there is a lack of financial resources available to students and faculty. Many universities and colleges around the United States provided Black studies programs with small budgets and, therefore, it is difficult for the department to purchase materials and hire staff. Due to the budget allocated to Black studies being limited, some faculty are jointly appointed, therefore, causing faculty to leave their home disciplines to teach a discipline with which they may not be familiar. Budgetary issues make it difficult for Black studies programs and departments to function and to promote themselves.

Racism, perpetrated by many administrators, is alleged to hinder the institutionalization of Black studies at major universities. As with the case of UC Berkeley, most of the Black studies programs across the country were instituted because of the urging and demanding of black students to create the program. In many instances, black students also called for the increased enrollment of black students and financial assistance to these students. Also seen in the case of UC Berkeley is the constant demand to have such a program, but place the power of control in the hands of black people. The idea was that Black studies could not be "realistic" if it were taught by someone who was not accustomed to the black experience. On many campuses, directors of Black studies have little to no autonomy—they do not have the power to hire or grant tenure to faculty. On many campuses, an overall lack of respect for the discipline has caused instability for the students and for the program.

In the past thirty years, there has been a steady decline of Black studies scholars.

Universities and colleges with Black studies departments, programs, and courses

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Colombia

Ecuador

United Kingdom

United States

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Universities with Ph.D. programs in Black studies

United States

Prominent academics in Black studies

Africa

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Scholarly and academic journals

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Intellect

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellect
The intellect comprises the rational and the logical aspects of the human mind.

Intellect is a faculty of the human mind that enables reasoning, abstraction, conceptualization, and judgment. It enables the discernment of truth and falsehood, as well as higher-order thinking beyond immediate perception. Intellect is distinct from intelligence, which refers to the general ability to learn, adapt, and solve problems, whereas intellect concerns the application of reason to abstract or philosophical thought.

In philosophy, intellect (Ancient Greek: dianoia) has often been contrasted with nous, a term referring to the faculty of direct intuitive knowledge. While intellect engages in discursive reasoning, breaking down concepts into logical sequences, nous is considered a higher cognitive faculty that allows for direct perception of truth, especially in Platonism and Neoplatonism. Aristotle distinguished between the active intellect (intellectus agens), which abstracts universal concepts, and the passive intellect, which receives sensory input.

During late antiquity and the Middle Ages, the intellect was considered the bridge between the human soul and divine knowledge, particularly in religious and metaphysical contexts. Thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Averroes explored intellect as the means by which humans engage in higher reasoning and theological contemplation. This intellectual tradition influenced both Christian Scholasticism and Islamic philosophy, where intellect was linked to the understanding of divine truth.

In modern psychology and neuroscience, the term "intellect" is sometimes used to describe higher cognitive functions related to abstract thought and logical reasoning. However, contemporary research primarily focuses on general intelligence (g-factor) and cognitive abilities rather than intellect as a separate faculty. While theories such as Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences address diverse ways of processing information, they do not equate directly to historical or philosophical notions of intellect.

Etymology and meanings

In Platonism, dianoia (Greek: διάνοια) is the human cognitive capacity for, process of, or result of discursive reasoning, specifically about mathematical and technical subjects. It stands in contrast to the immediate, cognitive process of intuitive apprehension or noesis (noesis).

Intellect and intelligence

As a branch of intelligence, intellect primarily concerns the logical and rational functions of the human mind, emphasizing factual knowledge and analytical reasoning. Additional to the functions of linear logic and the patterns of formal logic the intellect also processes the non-linear functions of fuzzy logic and dialectical logic.

Intellect and intelligence are contrasted by etymology; derived from the Latin present active participle intelligere, the term intelligence denotes "to gather in between", whereas the term intellect, derived from the past participle of intelligere, denotes "what has been gathered". Therefore, intelligence relates to the creation of new categories of understanding, based upon similarities and differences, while intellect relates to understanding existing categories.

In psychology

The Structure of Intellect (SI) model organizes intellectual functions in three dimensions: (i) Operations, (ii) Contents, and (iii) Products.

A person's intellectual understanding of reality derives from a conceptual model of reality based upon the perception and the cognition of the material world of reality. The conceptual model of mind is composed of the mental and emotional processes by which a person seeks, finds, and applies logical solutions to the problems of life. The full potential of the intellect is achieved when a person acquires a factually accurate understanding of the real world, which is mirrored in the mind. The mature intellect is identified by the person's possessing the capability of emotional self-management, wherein they can encounter, face, and resolve problems of life without being overwhelmed by emotion.

Real-world experience is necessary to and for the development of a person's intellect, because, in resolving the problems of life, a person can intellectually comprehend a social circumstance (a time and a place) and so adjust their social behavior in order to act appropriately in the society of other people. Intellect develops when a person seeks an emotionally satisfactory solution to a problem; mental development occurs from the person's search for satisfactory solutions to the problems of life. Only experience of the real world can provide understanding of reality, which contributes to the person's intellectual development.

Jung and the four cognitive functions

Carl Gustav Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, offered a nuanced view of intellect and intuition within the human psyche. He acknowledged the importance of intellectual faculties for logical reasoning and understanding but cautioned against overreliance on intellect at the expense of other vital aspects of the psyche, such as intuition and emotion.

In Psychological Types (1923), Jung explored different modes of consciousness, including the role of intellect. He identified thinking as one of the primary psychological functions, which, when extraverted, is oriented by objective data and often recognized as the dominant mode in scientific and philosophical endeavors. He stated:

In this sense it might be said that the extraverted intellect, i.e. the mind that is orientated by objective data, is actually the only one recognized.

Jung also associated intellect with the thinking function in his model of psychological types. In contrast to feeling, sensation, and intuition, thinking relies on structured, rational cognition. While necessary for problem-solving and scientific inquiry, intellect alone cannot fully grasp the depths of the psyche or facilitate individuation—the process of becoming a whole and integrated self. He noted:

The faculty of directed thinking, I term intellect: the faculty of passive, or undirected, thinking, I term intellectual intuition.

This distinction reflects an influence from Platonic thought, where dianoia (discursive reasoning) is differentiated from noesis (direct apprehension or intuition). Jung expanded upon this by integrating these concepts into his psychological framework, emphasizing that both intellect and intuition are essential for a comprehensive understanding of the self and the world. For Jung, intellect had its place but needed to be balanced with intuitive and symbolic thought.

Guilford and the structure of intellect

In 1956, the psychologist Joy Paul Guilford (1897–1987) proposed a Structural Intellect (SI) model in three dimensions: (i) Operations, (ii) Contents, and (iii) Products. Each parameter contains specific, discrete elements that are individually measured as autonomous units of the human mind. Intellectual operations are represented by cognition and memory, production (by divergent thinking and convergent thinking), and evaluation. Contents are figurative and symbolic, semantic and behavioral. Products are in units, classes, and relations, systems, transformations, and implications.
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Whiteness studies

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteness_studies

Whiteness studies is the study of the structures that produce white privilege, the examination of what whiteness is when analyzed as a race, a culture, and a source of systemic racism, and the exploration of other social phenomena generated by the societal compositions, perceptions and group behaviors of white people. It is an interdisciplinary arena of inquiry that has developed beginning in the United States from white trash studies and critical race studies, particularly since the late 20th century. It is focused on what proponents describe as the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of "whiteness" as an ideology tied to social status.

Pioneers in the field include W. E. B. Du Bois ("Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization", 1890; Darkwater, 1920), James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time, 1963), Theodore W. Allen (The Invention of the White Race, 1976, expanded in 1995), historian David Roediger (The Wages of Whiteness, 1991), author and literary critic Toni Morrison (Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992), and Ruth Frankenberg (White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, 1993).

By the mid-1990s, numerous works across many disciplines analyzed whiteness, and it has since become a topic for academic courses, research and anthologies. Some syllabuses associate the dismantling of white supremacy as a stated aim in the understanding of whiteness, while other sources view the field of study as primarily educational and exploratory, such as in questioning the objectivity of generations of works produced in intellectual spheres dominated by white scholars.

A central tenet of whiteness studies is a reading of history and its effects on the present that is inspired by postmodernism and historicism. According to this reading, racial superiority was socially constructed in order to justify discrimination against non-whites. Since the 19th century, some writers have argued that the phenotypical significance attributed to specific races are without biological association, and that what is called "race" is therefore not a biological phenomenon. Many scientists have demonstrated that racial theories are based upon an arbitrary clustering of phenotypical categories and customs, and can overlook the problem of gradations between categories. Thomas K. Nakayama and Robert L. Krizek write about whiteness as a "strategic rhetoric," asserting, in the essay "Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric", that whiteness is a product of "discursive formation" and a "rhetorical construction". Nakayama and Krizek write, "there is no 'true essence' to 'whiteness': there are only historically contingent constructions of that social location." Nakayama and Krizek also suggest that by naming whiteness, one calls out its centrality and reveals its invisible, central position. Whiteness is considered normal and neutral, therefore, to name whiteness means that one identifies whiteness as a rhetorical construction that can be dissected to unearth its values and beliefs.

Major areas of research in whiteness studies include the nature of white privilege and white identity, the historical process by which a white racial identity was created, the relation of culture to white identity, and possible processes of social change as they affect white identity.

Definitions of whiteness

Zeus Leonardo defines whiteness as "a racial discourse, whereas the category 'white people' represents a socially constructed identity, usually based on skin color". Steve Garner notes that "whiteness has no stable consensual meaning" and that "the meanings attached to 'race' are always time- and place-specific, part of each national racial regime".

Development of the field

Studies of whiteness as a unique identity could be said to begin among black people, who needed to understand whiteness to survive, particularly in slave societies such as the American colonies and United States. An important theme in this literature is, beyond the general "invisibility" of blacks to whites, the unwillingness of white people to consider that black people study them anthropologically. American author James Weldon Johnson wrote in his 1912 novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man that "colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them"[ Author James Baldwin wrote and spoke extensively about whiteness, defining it as a central social problem and insisting that it was choice, not a biological identity. In The Fire Next Time (1963), a non-fiction book on race relations in the United States, Baldwin suggests that

"White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed."

A major black theory of whiteness connects this identity group with acts of terrorism—i.e., slavery, rape, torture, and lynching—against black people, who were treated as sub-human.

White academics in the United States and the United Kingdom (UK) began to study whiteness as early as 1983, creating a discipline called "whiteness studies". The "canon wars" of the late 1980s and 1990s, a term that refers to political controversy over the centrality of white authors and perspectives in United States culture, led the scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin to ask "how the imaginative construction of 'whiteness' had shaped American literature and American history" The field developed a large body of work during the early 1990s, which, according to Fishkin, extends across the disciplines of "literary criticism, history, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, popular culture, communication studies, music history, art history, dance history, humor studies, philosophy, linguistics, and folklore".

As of 2004, according to The Washington Post, at least 30 institutions in the United States including Princeton University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of New Mexico and University of Massachusetts Amherst offer, or have offered, courses in whiteness studies. Whiteness studies often overlaps with post-colonial theory, the study of orientalism, and anti-racist education.

One contribution to White Studies is Rich Benjamin's Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America. The book examines white social beliefs and white anxiety in the contemporary United States, in the context of enormous demographic, cultural, and social change. The book explains how white privilege and segregation might flourish, even in the absence of explicit racial animus.

Another contribution to whiteness studies is Gloria Wekker's White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, which discusses the immutability and fluidity of white identity and its relationship to innocence in the context of post-colonial Netherlands in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In Wekker's analysis, the process of separating Dutch from "Other" is facilitated through skin tone and non-Christian religious practices. According to Wekker, the process of racialization is reserved for mid-to-late twentieth century immigrant groups (Muslims, Black Surinamese, Black Antilleans), as a means of delineating groups outside the constructed immutable "norms" of Dutch society.

Sociologist Michael Eric Dyson contributed to the discussion of white identity in his 2017 book Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America. Dyson's book specifically addresses "five dysfunctional ways that those regarded as white respond when confronted with the reality that whiteness is simultaneously artificial and powerful" as well as "dysfunctional ways that black people sometimes respond to white racism."

Areas of study

Whiteness

Whiteness studies draws on research into the definition of race, originating with the United States but applying to racial stratification worldwide. This research emphasizes the historically recent social construction of white identity. As stated by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1920: "The discovery of a personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing,—a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed." The discipline examines how white, Native, and African/black identities emerged in interaction with the institutions of slavery, colonial settlement, citizenship, and industrial labor. Scholars such as Winthrop Jordan have traced the evolution of the legally defined line between "blacks" and "whites" to colonial government efforts to prevent cross-racial revolts among unpaid laborers.

Princeton professor Nell Irvin Painter, in her 2010 book The History of White People, says the idea of whiteness is not just a matter of biology but also includes "concepts of labor, gender, class, and images of personal beauty".(p. xi) The earliest European societies, including the Greeks and Romans, had no concept of race and classified people by ethnicity and social class, with the lowest class being slaves, most of whom were European in origin.(p. xi) Race science, developed in Europe in the 1800s, included intense analysis of different groups of Europeans, who were classified as belonging to three or four different races, with the most admirable being from northern Europe.(pp. 215–6) From the early days of the United States, whiteness was a criterion for full citizenship and acceptance into society. The American definition of whiteness evolved over time; initially groups such as Jews and Southern Europeans were not regarded as white, but as skin color became the primary criterion, they were gradually accepted. Painter argues that in the 21st century the definition of whiteness – or more precisely the definition of "nonblackness" – has continued to expand, so that now "The dark of skin who happen to be rich ... and the light of skin from any (racial background) who are beautiful, are now well on their way to inclusion."(pp. 389–90.)

Academic Joseph Pugliese is among writers who have applied whiteness studies to an Australian context, discussing the ways that Australian Aboriginals were marginalized in the wake of the European colonization of Australia, as whiteness came to be defined as central to Australian identity, diminishing Aboriginal identity in the process. Pugliese discusses the 20th-century White Australia policy as a conscious attempt to preserve the "purity" of whiteness in Australian society. Likewise Stefanie Affeldt considers whiteness "a concept not yet fully developed at the time the first convicts and settlers arrived down under"  which, as a social relation, had to be negotiated and was driven forward in particular by the labour movement. Eventually, with the Federation of Australia, "[o]verlaying social differences, the shared membership in the 'white race' was the catalyst for the consolidation of the Australian colonies as the Commonwealth of Australia".

White backlash

Main article: White backlash

White backlash or white rage in association with or as a consequence of whiteness is an area of investigation in whiteness studies. Sociologist Matthew Hughey has described this examination of racially-based backlash within its historical context; "Another approach to the study of whiteness centres on the white "back-lash" against the advances born from the civil rights movement."

Political scientist Danielle Allen has analyzed the intersection of whiteness with North American demographic changes, stating how they can "provoke resistance from those whose well-being, status and self-esteem are connected to historical privileges of 'whiteness'". Discussing the method of this resistance, Veronica Strong-Boag's co-edited Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women's History explores how white backlash in Canada attempts to frames the defending of white interests as a "defence of national identity", rather than an acknowledgement of the political action of whiteness.

Scholar George Yancy has explored the societal response to perceived loss of racial privilege in his 2018 book Backlash; how reactions derived from whiteness fluctuate between Robin DiAngelo's concept of white fragility versus the more extreme backlashes throughout history.

White education

The study of white education and its intersection with whiteness is a continuing area of research in whiteness studies. Scholarly investigation has critiqued white-derived education as inevitably for the benefit of, organized by, and oriented towards white people. Horace Mann Bond was one of the early scholars to identify bias and privilege operating in white education systems. Bond critiqued suggestions African Americans were not intelligent enough to participate in the same schools as white Americans and campaigned against calls for literacy tests for suffrage. He challenged the Southern Manifesto and identified bias for funding white education, rather than universal funding, even within the reformist movement for desegregated schools.

Whiteness and privilege have continued in US education after Jim Crow versions of the segregationist ideology have lost their legitimacy due to legal and political failures. Privacy and individualism discourses mask white fear and newer forms of exclusion in contemporary education according to scholar, Charles R. Lawrence III.

White identity

Main article: White identity

Analyzing whiteness to forge new understandings of white identity has been a field of exploration for academics since the publications which largely founded modern whiteness studies in the mid-1990s. In exploring Ruth Frankenberg's works, and her interchanging use of the two concepts, the separation has been examined by scholars attempting to intellectually "disengtangle each from the other".

Sociologist Howard Winant, favoring a deconstructionist (rather than abolitionist) study of whiteness, suggests this methodology can help redefine and reorient understanding of white identity. In biological examination, whiteness studies has sought to expose how "white identity is neither pure nor unchanging – that its genealogy is mixed" in order to unearth biases within the white racial identity.

White privilege

Main article: White privilege

In 1965, drawing from insights from Du Bois and inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, Theodore W. Allen began a 40-year analysis of "white skin privilege", "white race" privilege, and "white" privilege. In a piece he drafted for a "John Brown Commemoration Committee", he urged that "White Americans who want government of the people" and "by the people" to "begin by first repudiating their white skin privileges". From 1967 to 1969 various versions of the pamphlet, "White Blindspot", containing pieces by Allen and Noel Ignatin (Noel Ignatiev), focused on the struggle against "white skin privilege" and significantly influenced Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and sectors of the New Left. By June 15, 1969, The New York Times was reporting that the National Office of SDS was calling "for an all-out fight against 'white skin privileges'".

In 1974–1975, Allen extended his analysis of "white privilege", racial oppression, and social control to the colonial period with his ground-breaking Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race. With continued research, he developed his ideas as his seminal two-volume The Invention of the White Race published in 1994 and 1997.

For almost forty years, Allen offered a detailed historical analysis of the origin, maintenance, and functioning of "white-skin privilege" and "white privilege" in such writings as: "White Supremacy in U.S. History" (1973); "Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race" (1975); "The Invention of the White Race," Vol. 1: "Racial Oppression and Social Control" (1994, 2012); "The Invention of the White Race," Vol. 2: "The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America" (1997, 2012); "Summary of the Argument of 'The Invention of the White Race'" Parts 1 and 2 (1998); "In Defense of Affirmative Action in Employment Policy" (1998); "'Race' and 'Ethnicity': History and the 2000 Census" (1999); and "On Roediger's Wages of Whiteness" (Revised Edition)";

In his historical work, Allen asserted that:

  • the "white race" was invented as a ruling class social control formation in the late 17th-/early-18th century Anglo-American plantation colonies (principally Virginia and Maryland);
  • central to this process was the ruling-class plantation bourgeoisie conferring "white race" privileges on European-American working people;
  • these privileges were not only against the interests of African Americans, they were also "poison", "ruinous", a baited hook, to the class interests of working people;
  • white supremacy, reinforced by "white skin privilege", has been the main retardant of working-class consciousness in the US; and
  • struggle for radical social change should direct principal efforts at challenging white supremacy and "white skin privileges"[ Allen's work influenced Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and sectors of the "new left" and paved the way for "white privilege", "race as social construct", and "whiteness studies". He also raised important questions about developments in those areas, and he avoided using the term "whiteness", using quotation marks when he did.

Laura Pulido writes about the relation of white privilege to racism.

"White privilege [is] a highly structural and spatial form of racism ... I suggest that historical processes of suburbanization and decentralization are instances of white privilege and have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism."

Pulido defines environmental racism as "the idea that nonwhites are disproportionately exposed to pollution".

Writers such as Peggy McIntosh say that social, political, and cultural advantages are accorded to whites in global society. She argues that these advantages seem invisible to white people, but obvious to non-whites. McIntosh argues that whites utilize their whiteness, consciously or unconsciously, as a framework to classify people and understand their social locations. In addition, even though many white people understand that whiteness is associated with privilege, they do not acknowledge their privilege because they view themselves as average and non-racist. Essentially, whiteness is invisible to white people.

For instance,

"I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untouched way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious" (188).

McIntosh calls for Americans to acknowledge white privilege so that they can more effectively attain equality in American society. She argues,

"To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these taboo subjects".

White privilege is also related to white guilt. As Shannon Jackson writes in the article, "White Noises: On Performing White, On Writing Performance" (1998), "The rhetorics of white guilt are tiresome, cliche, disingenuous, and everywhere. And now that the stereotype of 'the guilty white' is almost entrenched in its negativity as 'the racist white', people actively try to dis-identify from both."

White shift

White racial shift or decline, which has been abbreviated to the phrase whiteshift, and its intersection or connectedness to whiteness, has been a source of study and academic research within the field of whiteness studies. In relation to demographic decline of white people, the phenomenon has been analyzed as producing "a formal re-articulation of whiteness as a social category" in relation to fear-based politics with the US. Academic Vron Ware has examined this fear-based element in the sociology of resentment, and its intersection with class and whiteness. Ware analyzed how white decline, and its portrayal in British media, facilitated a victim or grievance culture, particularly among white British working-class communities.

Political scientist Charles King has proposed that, in the context of the numerical decline of white Americans, whiteness is progressively revealed to be driven by social power, rather than biology.

White socialization

White socialization or white-ethnic socialization is an emerging area of research in whiteness studies. Scholar Julia Carmen Rodil has analyzed the role that non-Hispanic white parents play in the racial socialization of white children, arguing that colorblindness as an ideology in upbringing leads to unchecked racism. Research suggests that white people are socialized to perceive race as a zero-sum game and a black-white binary and this informs the beliefs in reverse racism and prejudice plus power. For white youth, parents play a role in conversations around race and racism and this influences racial perceptions and biases into adulthood. Social media has also been found to play a role in the racial socialization of white adolescents.

Schools of thought

Critical whiteness studies

An offshoot of critical race theory, theorists of critical whiteness studies seek to examine the construction and moral implications of whiteness, in order to reveal and deconstruct its assumed links to white privilege and white supremacy. Barbara Applebaum defines it as the "field of scholarship whose aim is to reveal the invisible structures that produce and reproduce white supremacy and privilege", and "presumes a certain conception of racism that is connected to white supremacy". Anoop Nayak describes it as underpinned by the belief that whiteness is "a modern invention [which] has changed over time and place", "a social norm and has become chained to an index of unspoken privileges", and that "the bonds of whiteness can yet be broken/deconstructed for the betterment of humanity". There is a great deal of overlap between critical whiteness studies and critical race theory, as demonstrated by focus on the legal and historical construction of white identity, and the use of narratives (whether legal discourse, testimony or fiction) as a tool for exposing systems of racial power.

Whiteness and architecture

In the early 21st century, architectural historians have published studies related to the construction of whiteness in the built environment. Studies have grappled with the exclusionary nature of the architectural profession, which erected barriers for nonwhite practitioners, the ways in which architects and designers have employed motifs, art programs, and color schemes that reflected the aspirations of European-Americans and, most recently, with the racialization of space.

Criticisms

Conservative writers David Horowitz and Douglas Murray draw a distinction between whiteness studies and other analogous disciplines. Writes Horowitz, "Black studies celebrates blackness, Chicano studies celebrates Chicanos, women's studies celebrates women, and white studies attacks white people as evil." Dagmar R. Myslinska, an adjunct associate professor of law at Fordham University, argues that whiteness studies overlooks the heterogeneity of whites' experience, be it due to class, immigrant status, or geographical location. Alastair Bonnett argues that whiteness studies treated "white" culture as a homogenous and stable "racial entity" – for example, Bonnett observes that whiteness researchers in Britain argued that white British people lived in a homogenous "white culture" (which Bonnett observed was never clearly described), with the researchers completely ignoring British culture's regional diversity, despite having ample opportunity to study it.

Barbara Kay, a columnist for the National Post, has sharply criticized whiteness studies, writing that it "points to a new low in moral vacuity and civilizational self-loathing" and is an example of "academic pusillanimity." According to Kay, whiteness studies "cuts to the chase: It is all, and only, about white self-hate."

Kay noted the leanings of the field by quoting Jeff Hitchcock, co-founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of White American Culture (CSWAC) who stated in a 1998 speech:

There is no crime that whiteness has not committed against people of colour.... We must blame whiteness for the continuing patterns today... which damage and prevent the humanity of those of us within it....We must blame whiteness for the continuing patterns today that deny the rights of those outside of whiteness and which damage and pervert the humanity of those of us within it.

In addition to such criticism in the mass media, whiteness studies has earned a mixed reception from academics in other fields. In 2001, historian Eric Arnesen wrote that "whiteness has become a blank screen onto which those who claim to analyze it can project their own meanings" and that the field "suffers from a number of potentially fatal methodological and conceptual flaws." First, Arnesen writes that the core theses of whiteness studies—that racial categories are arbitrary social constructs without definite biological basis, and that some white Americans benefit from racist discrimination of non-whites—have been common wisdom in academia for many decades and are hardly as novel or controversial as whiteness studies scholars seem to believe. Additionally, Arnesen accuses whiteness studies scholars of sloppy thinking; of making claims not supported by their sources; of overstating supporting evidence; and of cherry picking to neglect contrary information.

He notes that a particular datum almost entirely ignored by whiteness studies scholars is religion, which has played a prominent role in conflicts among various American classes. He says that a type of "keyword literalism" persists in whiteness studies, where important words and phrases from primary sources are taken out of their historical context. Whiteness has so many different definitions that the word is "nothing less than a moving target." Arnesen notes that whiteness studies scholars are entirely on the far left of the political spectrum, and suggests that their apparent vitriol towards white Americans is due in part to white workers not fulfilling the predictions of Marxist theory that the proletariat would overcome racial, national and class distinctions to unite and overthrow capitalism. He cites, as an example, David Roediger's afterword to the seminal Wages of Whiteness, which asserts that the book was written as a reaction to "the appalling extent to which white male workers voted for Reaganism in the 1980s." Arnesen argues that in the absence of supporting evidence, whiteness studies often rely on amateurish Freudian speculation about the motives of white people: "The psychoanalysis of whiteness here differs from the 'talking cure' of Freudianism partly in its neglect of the speech of those under study." Without more accurate scholarship, Arnesen writes that "it is time to retire whiteness for more precise historical categories and analytical tools."

In 2002, historian Peter Kolchin offered a more positive assessment and declared that, at its best, whiteness studies has "unfulfilled potential" and offers a novel and valuable means of studying history. Particularly, he praises scholarship into the development of the concept of whiteness in the United States, and notes that the definition and implications of a white racial identity have shifted over the decades. Yet Kolchin describes a "persistent sense of unease" with certain aspects of whiteness studies. There is no consensus definition of whiteness, and thus the word is used in vague and contradictory ways, with some scholars even leaving the term undefined in their articles or essays." Kolchin also objects to "a persistent dualism evident in the work of the best whiteness studies authors," who often claim that whiteness is a social construct while also arguing, paradoxically, that whiteness is an "omnipresent and unchanging" reality existing independent of socialization. Kolchin agrees that entering a post-racial paradigm might be beneficial for humanity, but he challenges the didactic tone of whiteness studies scholars who single out a white racial identification as negative, while praising a black or Asian self-identification. Scholars in whiteness studies sometimes seriously undermine their arguments by interpreting historical evidence independent of its broader context (e.g., Karen Brodkin's examination of American anti-semitism largely neglects its roots in European anti-semitism). Finally, Kolchin categorically rejects the argument—common amongst many whiteness scholars—that racism and whiteness are intrinsically and uniquely American, and he expresses concern at the "belief in the moral emptiness of whiteness [...] there is a thin line between saying that whiteness is evil and saying that whites are evil."

Theodore W. Allen, pioneering writer on "white skin privilege" and "white privilege" from the 1960s until his death in 2005, offered a critical review "On Roediger's Wages of Whiteness" (Revised Edition). He personally put "whiteness" in quotes because he shied away from using the term. As Allen explained,

"it's an abstract noun, it's an abstraction, it's an attribute of some people, it's not the role they play. And the white race is an actual objective thing. It's not anthropologic, it's a historically developed identity of European Americans and Anglo-Americans and so it has to be dealt with. It functions... in this history of ours and it has to be recognized as such. . . .to slough it off under the heading of 'whiteness,' to me seems to get away from the basic white race identity trauma."

In a scholarly debate with whiteness studies pioneer David Roediger, Eric Kaufmann, a scholar of political demography and identity politics and the author of Whiteshift (which was criticised for defending white identity politics), criticizes the field as a whole, arguing :

"White Studies suffers from a number of serious flaws which should lead us to question whether this approach can continue to advance the frontiers of knowledge in the wider sphere of ethnic and racial studies".. These flaws include: 1) a constructivism which fails to recognise the cognitive and social processes that underpin social 'reality'; 2) an excessive emphasis on ethnic boundaries as opposed to ethnic narratives, thereby overstating the degree of malleability possible in ethnic identity; 3) a tacit belief in white exceptionalism, which overemphasises the ideological character of whiteness and deifies whites; 4) an elision of dominant ethnicity and race; and 5) a threefold parochialism in terms of place, time horizon and the role of race in ethnic studies."

Kaufmann then proposes, as an alternative approach to the study of white identity, the emerging concept of "dominant ethnicity", using Anthony D. Smith's definition of "ethnic group" as a "named, imagined, human community, many of whose members believe in a myth of shared ancestry and place of origin."

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