Having grown up in a predominantly white area, I have noticed that many of my white peers only began referring to themselves as white after leaving our area or going to college. Before, they would never have considered themselves white. While they have identified with other aspects of their identity, like their gender, religion or sexuality, race doesn’t seem to hold any meaning for white people from white areas. This changes only when they enter diverse spaces, like college, when they suddenly gain what is defined as white consciousness, the psychological and political awareness of being white. So why does whiteness go unnoticed for so long? And what are the implications of gaining white consciousness?
Whiteness as the dominant race in western contexts makes it basically invisible because it functions as the default. If white people don’t face discrimination or injustice then they don’t need to ask why they are being treated in a negative way, so their privilege allows them to not consider their race, making it seem invisible to them. Whiteness functions as the default, status quo, or standard, and anything else is diverting from that standard, defined in comparison to the default. This also allows white cultural norms to be treated as universal rather than specifically white. There’s almost an implicit expectation that every other race should know a culturally specific white artist, food or habit, whereas other races don’t expect anyone else to know a specific cultural song or custom. This is because other cultures are forced to reckon with their racial identity due to being perceived as different, and are therefore aware that a certain aspect of their culture is specific, not universal.
It then makes sense that, for a white kid growing up in a predominantly white area, going to college will be the moment where they finally realise they are white. Being in an environment that exposes you to different identities forces you to reckon with your own. Similarly, being in conversations and classes where race and identity is discussed in an academic way is so insightful and continues to foster the idea that whiteness is one of many racial identities, and is meaningful, just like religion or gender or class is. For some white people, college can put them in social situations where they are even the minority for the first time in their life, which would be a real shock to the system. College is a pivotal moment when whiteness stops being the default and starts becoming an identity among others.
I’d like to introduce a different kind of white consciousness, one that we have seen emerge from identity politics, one with far more negative implications. Since 2016, identity has become conflated in political discourse more as a reaction to demographic change rather than simply an innocent realisation of whiteness. With increased migration, the US is projected to become “minority white” by 2045 with 49.7% of the population as white. The media does a good job at framing this demographic change as a threat and replacement of the white majority, rather than diversification or multiculturalism. White consciousness functions here as a recognition of privilege that is not coupled with a desire for egalitarian policies, but rather the opposite. In this case, white people are recognising they have privilege, but with this realising they have something to lose as they are already socially and economically on top. White identity in this case is being mobilised around a fear of perceived status loss to a highly exaggerated threat of demographic change.
So, while in the college context and in the right wing identity politics context white consciousness is being recognised as a visible identity, both cases are producing different reactions. White consciousness can be reflective, merely realising that your white identity is one of many racial identities and white cultural practices aren’t “American” or universal, they are specifically white. But white consciousness in white identity politics shows how identity can get politically mobilised and defensive due to a misconstrued idea of status loss, which the media heavily exaggerates.
Whiteness often goes unnoticed until white people are put in social spaces where they are forced to reckon with that identity. For some, this leads to reflection and a deeper awareness of race and identity. But for others, particularly as demographic change in the US and Europe is deliberately framed as a threat by the media, the same white consciousness can provoke a different, more defensive attachment to white identity. This shows why diverse spaces are important from an early age. When everyone is forced to think about their racial identity, not just those who are treated as different because of it, it becomes just something we all have and difference becomes a normalised foundation of society.
