The long-held assumption in academia that Whites overlook their own race and its privileges may have to be thrown out, a new study suggests.
Surprisingly, in a telephone survey of more than 2,000 households nationwide, a clear majority of Whites (74 percent) stated that their own racial identity was important to them. A similar majority of its White respondents recognized that prejudice and discrimination are important in explaining White advantage, according to the study, conducted by the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology.
“It’s sort of like having an accent,” says the study’s co-author, Dr. Doug Hartmann. “For some White Americans, racial identity is so fixed, so taken for granted, that ‘race’ becomes something other people have.”
Of the 74 percent of Whites who said that their racial identity was important to them, close to half (37 percent overall) classified it as “very important,” a finding that stunned the researchers. By comparison, about 72 percent of Black, Hispanic and Asian respondents considered their racial identity “very important.”
“Even though there is a big gap between Whites and those who are not White, 37 percent of Whites saying that their racial identity is important to them is a lot more than you might expect,” says study co-author Dr. Joe Gerteis. “If you read Whiteness literature, then you will see a lot of titles on the invisibility of Whiteness.”
This study, titled “Putting Whiteness Theory to the Test: An Empirical Assessment of Core Theoretical Propositions,” will begin to fill the gap in the literature on Whiteness and White identity. Most scholars are either producing works on White theory or are doing empirical studies on discrimination and their effects, Gerteis says.
Still though, White theory, which suggests that Whites are less likely than other groups to see the institutional barriers that give them advantages, did pass the empirical test. Respondents in a group of Blacks, Hispanics and Asians were almost twice as likely as Whites (81 percent to 46 percent, respectively) to say that institutions favor Whites.
