particular, make it a particular context in which whites define themselves against other whites and against blacks.
This localized context is unique compared to many other settings. Feagin et al. (2001) argues that
to a substantial degree the lack of daily reflection on whiteness appears to come from social isolation.
While the actual proportion is unknown, many whites have lived their lives totally or mostly isolated from
black persons of any age or social status. . . . There is little interracial contact in most of the nation’s
residential neighborhoods . . . Because of the everyday demography of black-white relations, many of the
places that most whites traverse still have few, or no, black people present (191-193).
While the South is still segregated in many ways, particularly socially, this description does not capture the
interracial working, residential, and recreational environments for many white southerners. Whether they
acknowledge having racial privileges and prejudices or are defensive and make strong denials, the issues of white
southern privilege and prejudice are central to their constructions of whiteness.
Works Cited
Feagin, Joe R. 2001. Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, & Future Reparations.
Routledge: New York.
Feagin, Joe R., Hernan Vera, and Pinar Batur. 2001. White Racism. 2
nd
edition. Routledge: New York.
Frankenberg, Ruth. 1993. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Gallagher, Charles. 1995. “White Reconstruction in the University”. Socialist Review 24(1-2): 165-187.
Hartigan, Jr., John. 1999. Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit.
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