ABSTRACT
Whiteness, to a group of us who met briefly in the 1980s to discuss our racial identities, conjured a slightly sinister vision of Home Counties England. If I had read Ruth Frankenberg’s White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness I would have left the meeting fascinated by our revelation of whiteness instead of frustrated with our inability to name racial privilege. For other white feminist women who also failed to name whiteness in the 1980s, this book would have suggested a way beyond guilt over racism, anger over criticism, and, ultimately, withdrawal from anti-racist activism.
