ABSTRACT
The phrase "the invisibility of whiteness" refers in part to moments when whiteness does not speak its own name. It is also crucial to contemplate just how recently many explicit namings of whiteness went underground in the United States. One irony of writing about whiteness's invisibility is that the late 1990s have witnessed intense debate over whiteness in academia, in the media, in classrooms, and in many private worlds. Meanwhile, the efforts of other white people are caught up in the forging of an altogether more retrogressive interpretation of the historical moment, one that mistakes several decades of talk about the need for racial equity, with the actual achievement of that goal. However, something a little different seems to be present in the United States at the start of the twenty-first century. Thus all three discursive repertoires circulate in the United States, in forms rearranged but hardly changed.
