ABSTRACT
In the last decade, the study of white privilege has reached currency in the educational and social science literature. In 2009, the city of Memphis, Tennessee hosts the Tenth Annual Conference on White Privilege. Concerned with the circuits and meanings of whiteness in everyday life, scholars have exposed the codes of white culture, worldview of the white imaginary, and assumptions of the invisible marker that depends on the racial other for its own identity (Frankenberg, 1993, 1997; Hurtado, 1996; Kidder, 1997; Rothenberg, 2002). In particular, authors like Peggy McIntosh (1992) have helped educators understand the taken for granted, daily aspects of white privilege: from the convenience of matching one’s skin color with bandages, to opening up a textbook to discover one’s racial identity affirmed in history, literature, and civilization in general. In all, the study of white privilege has pushed critical education into directions that account for the experiences of the “oppressor” identity (Hurtado, 1999).
