Glossary of Terms
The following glossary of terms associated with Critical theories in the postmodern Academy are drawn from and inspired by the work of James Lindsay at the invaluable New Discourses website. The Social Justice Encyclopedia at New Discourses posts direct quotations from various Critical theorists regarding each of these terms, after which New Discourses provides helpful commentary. I encourage all readers of The Jesuit School to learn much more about each term at New Discourses. Furthermore, the website’s rich assortment of essays and podcasts will shed much-needed light on a variety of issues involving postmodern and Critical theories. Jesuit educators, alumni, and parents who wish to know more about what is being created when both the Jesuit Schools Network and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities weave Critical Social Justice into Catholic Social Teaching would do well to bookmark New Discourses as one of their go-to sites.
A
Allies are members of dominant identity groups who acknowledge their privilege and commit themselves to a subordinate role in support of identity groups who have been oppressed or marginalized. Becoming an ally requires submission—allies listen to the stories of those who have been treated unjustly, they recognize their own complicity in that injustice, and they support with humility the causes of those who have been victimized.
Antiracism is a combination of practices and ideas that acknowledges the existence of racism in every situation. An antiracist appreciates that racist behavior in oneself or in others is often unconscious behavior and must be consistently called out and addressed. Antiracist ideas include assertions about this country and white people in general that are accepted as true: the United States is systemically racist and has been since its Founding; those who are white are privileged from birth by virtue of their whiteness and are complicit in the maintenance of white systems of power; those who are not white are born victims within a fundamentally unjust nation and any person of color who disagrees is exhibiting false consciousness and acting white; those who claim to be color-blind are simply in denial about the reality of their own racism and of racial inequities in this country. Assertions to the contrary are racist ideas. Since racist policies cause racial inequities, antiracist policies are required to produce racial equity. Those antiracist policies will, by definition, be discriminatory. As the most prominent popularizer of antiracism, Ibram X. Kendi, states, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
B
BIPOC is an acronym for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. A relatively recent creation, this acronym’s letters indicate a type of hierarchy in the establishment of racial and ethnic victimization with blacks mentioned first, then the indigenous, followed by all other people of color.
Black Lives Matter is a political movement that, in typical Critical Theory manipulation of the language, employs a phrase with which no one would disagree—”black lives matter”—as a political tool that, once said aloud, indicates to others your public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which is a movement, by its founders’ admission, steeped in Marxism and which incorporates in its statements of belief ideas about whiteness, systemic racism, the traditional family, and gender that conform with the identity politics of Critical Theory. If you refuse to say that Black Lives Matter when asked to do so, you will of course be considered a racist.
C
Cisgender is a term created by Critical theorists to distinguish from transgender. Both cisgender males and cisgender females possess gender identities that match their “sex assigned at birth.”
Color-blindness is the idea that policies and practices ought not make race or ethnicity a determining factor. This is, according to antiracists, problematic because color-blindness is too easily dismissive of racism and its consequences. Identity politics requires seeing race and ethnicity; achieving equity requires seeing race and ethnicity. The rejection of color-blindness is a purposefull rejection of the liberal order and equality. Those who insist that they are color-blind, or that the law must be color-blind in order to be just, are racist rather than antiracist.
Complicit Anyone who is a member of a dominant group benefits in some way from being born into that group whose dominance is established because of systems of power that are racist. Being complicit is a collective attribute of those in a dominant identity grouping (whites, males, heterosexuals are each specific identity groups). Unless people acknowledge their privilege and submit themselves to working to end their privilege, they will remain complicit. Antiracism, for example, requires constant self-critique regarding one’s complicity in racist structures: acknowledging one’s white privilege is an initial antiracist step.
Critical consciousness is awareness—awareness that you are either oppressed or an oppressor, awareness that society is composed of systems of power and privilege that both dominate or oppress. Critical theorists advocate both awareness— “consciousness raising”—and activism to dismantle systems that create injustice. Since the 1960s, the ideas of Paulo Freire, through his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, have influenced the training of teachers by promoting the idea that educators must raise the consciousness of their students. In contemporary parlance, if your consciousness has been raised, you are woke. The ideas of Paulo Freire, and others with similar ideas, are taught in many a teacher education program.
Critical Race Theory begins from the basic premise that American society is, root and branch, systemically racist. This racism is a permanent feature of American life, as CRT’s founder Derrick Bell asserted, thus explaining why the various legal victories of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-and-60s failed to close achievement gaps and end social disparities. According to one of its primary adherents, Richard Delgado, CRT “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” Distinctly anti-Western and anti-American, critical race theorists seek dismantlement of structures and institutions rather than their reform. Treating people equally, being color-blind, and evaluating people by their character and their abilities are problematic: these liberal ideas simply reinforce racist policies that benefit the dominant group, whites. Concrete policies that bring about racial equity, rather than abstract notions about equality, are essential and the only way to make progress against systems of racism.
D
Discourse is normally considered any written or spoken communication. Nothing is that simple in a postmodern world, where discourse is the way we speak and write about anything since the way we do so determines how reality is constructed. Because Western civilization has constructed through discourse structural realities that are, among other things, white, patriarchal, Eurocentric, misogynist, homophobic, and heteronormative, these realities must be dismantled and replaced. That is done through discourse—language—that elevates other ways of knowing—lived experiences, storytelling, personal narratives—over and above Western ways of knowing that rely on science and reason. Truth is not objectively determined; truth is personal and shaped by discourse.
Diversity in a social justice context refers to physical, social, and cultural differences that comprise distinct identity groups involving race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, and physical abilities. Different identities are to be accepted and celebrated in safe, nurturing environments, an environment that shields marginalized identities from the power and privilege of those dominant identity groups that have kept them marginalized. A purpose of the diversity regime is to dismantle that power and privilege. Since no culture is considered superior to any other culture, and since every culture has different ways of discovering truth, any diversity of ideas or opinions that might be seen as threatening to the embrace of differences are not welcome. Diversity acknowledges and celebrates ideas or opinions only insofar as they conform to the social justice expectations of identity politics.
E
Equality and equal opportunity are illusory ideas created by the dominant identity group to make others who belong to oppressed identity groups believe that they have as much opportunity as anyone else to succeed. Such equality springs from Enlightenment liberalism, which is white, Eurocentric, and only willing to cede the illusion of power through concepts of “equality” that do nothing to undermine the structures and institutions that maintain the dominance of white systems of power. True equality will never exist without equity.
Equity and equitable do not mean fair—unless you believe fairness is created through compulsion and force. Equity requires equality of outcomes, and those outcomes are demonstrated once demographic parity has been achieved. Advocates of equity are not concerned with investigating and examining root causes for disparities of results—the root cause is known in advance and is always systemic. These advocates locate disparities and fix them by changing standards as well as hiring and promotion practices; and eliminating, where necessary, traditional measurements of skill, knowledge, and preparation.
F
False consciousness is a way of thinking by members of marginalized identity groups that demonstrates they are internalizing and identifying with the attitudes and beliefs of the dominant identity group. Such false consciousness is evidence that people either remain unaware of their own oppression or are ignorant about how they are, by their refusal to see themselves as victims, upholding the systems of dominant power.
G
Gender is socially constructed during childhood through the family, the church, and other cultural institutions that teach children what it means to be a man and a woman and how a child conforms to those cultural beliefs and expectations. According to Critical social justice theorists, gender is, therefore, separate from the biology of sex; gender is something learned and shapes who you are and who you believe yourself to be. Boys are socialized to be masculine, and girls are socialized to be feminine. This socialization creates injustice because, first, it assumes that a person’s biological sex informs what is considered to be within the broader range of behaviors that is acceptably masculine or feminine, and then society goes about creating systems of power that are unequal (because those systems prioritize masculine power over the feminine) and that marginalize those who fall outside the acceptable gender norms. The only norm acceptable to Critical theorists regarding gender is that gender possesses no norm. Anything goes.
H
Hegemony refers to the the controlling systems of power in a society and its culture. In Western societies, hegemony is maintained through the dominance of its ideas rather than by force. Critical theorists intend on putting an end to this white, patriarchal, heteronormative hegemony.
Human nature—the idea that there are qualities, traits, and behaviors universal to all human beings—is rejected by Critical theorists, who see human nature as an idea that has been constructed by dominate identity groups in order to maintain their power. Since all realities are socially constructed, including social constructions involving sex and gender, the idea of our having a human nature that is universal is denied. You are born a blank slate—your nature is what you yourself personally construct and cannot be universalized to make objective statements of truth about human beings.
I
Identity has nothing to do with you as an individual. Your identity is a social, and therefore a political, phenomenon. It is determined by your existence with social groupings, most of which are immutable: race, ethnicity, biological sex, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, disability etc. Since each of us belongs to more than one social grouping, our individual lives are a composite of intersecting identities. Your individual thoughts and ideas are irrelevant to your political identity, which is determined by the social groupings to which you belong. Your personhood is determined by your political identity, the personal always being political in Critical Theory.
Identity politics involves the creation of specific political special interest groups out of distinct identity groups. The term’s origin is traced to the late 1970s, when a black lesbian feminist organization, The Combahee River Collective, coined the term out of its rejection of the equality-based liberalism of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. When justice is determined by equity rather than equality, each specific marginalized identity group has distinct political ambitions regarding the achievement of equity. Where each identity group intersects with one or more other identity groups is the point at which identity politics can amass political pressure most effectively.
Implicit bias—the idea that, at an unconscious or subconscious level, you hold certain negative attitudes or believe certain stereotypes about people who belong to specific identity groups and that these attitudes and stereotypes affect how you feel about and behave around these people. The political convenience of implicit bias is that no one has to prove you possess an implicit bias: it is understood that all of us have implicit biases because we have been socialized (or socially constructed) to have them without our even being aware of them. Testing for implicit bias involves word association tasks which require the participant to make certain word associations (either positive or negative) about persons representing specific identities. The longer you hesitate, for instance, to employ a positive association with someone who is a member of a marginalized identity group, the more bias you implicitly possess. That the science behind implicit bias—and the testing for it—is a matter of serious dispute is not an impediment for those intent on employing it in order to advance their political projects.
Inclusion implies exclusion. Inclusion does not mean “everyone is welcome.” That’s what the social justice warriors who revel in “inclusion” want you to think (as they want you to think “equitable” means “fairness” and diversity implies “differences of opinion too.”) Inclusion, instead, means that “all marginalized, oppressed, and victimized groups” are welcome, and that their feelings and opinions are to be given respect and priority. Inclusion excludes and seeks to silence anything—any ideas, any speech, any terms, any facts, any symbols—that makes those who are marginalized feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or not completely accepted.
Internalized oppression applies to any “marginalized” individuals who do not accept the Critical social justice belief that they are in fact oppressed. Such persons who reject being thought of as victims are said to be sell-outs and to possess false consciousness. They will be said to be “acting white,” a “gender traitor,” a “race traitor,” among other pejoratives. Because Critical theorists believe that we can understand oppression only by the direct experience of being oppressed, such theorists prioritize the lived experiences and personal narratives of those who are members of victimized identity groups. Members of dominant identities can only know about oppression from identities that have experienced oppression: that’s why listening must especially be taught to people who have dominant identities. Listening for those in dominant identity groups means to keep silent and, when asked to comment, to affirm and agree. And that is why the lived experiences of those marginalized identities whose personal narratives disagree with what is acceptable in Critical social justice theory are an embarrassment and interrupt the political project of Critical theorists. These individuals are said to have experiences and stories that are “inauthentic.” Such individuals are said to possess internalized oppression, in that they have chosen to operate within oppressive systems of power.
Intersectionality is a concept initially developed by critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw. It says each of us belong to identity groups that intersect with one another within systems of power that either dominate or marginalize. A person who is female and black and lesbian, for example, must endure three distinct marginalizations. If you are white and male and gay, you reside within two dominating groups and one marginalized group. Political alliances—identity politics—intersect based upon one’s position of dominance or marginalization within the intersection, and constant self-examination and awareness is required in order to see clearly how one is privileged or oppressed and what one must do to remain politically correct. The struggle never ends as the systemic dynamics of power relationships—racism, sexism, heterosexism—always exist and must be acknowledged by those in a dominant position at any point in the intersection of identities.
J
K
Knowledge is no longer what we know to be true based upon evidence scientifically gathered and logically considered. Postmodernists are highly skeptical of science and reason; they believe that what is considered knowledge—what’s considered true—is self-interested and accepted as true because it maintains the power of the dominant social group. Knowledge is, therefore, always political. Critical theorists also consider knowledge—as traditionally understood—to be culturally-based and thus socially constructed to affirm the values of those in positions of power. There are other ways of knowing, say Critical theorists, ways rooted in emotion, in spiritual and cultural beliefs and traditions, and in personal experiences: these paths toward knowledge have been unjustly marginalized by those who dominate. That is why it is necessary for people in the dominant social groups to learn to be silent when those who are marginalized are speaking. Unless you are affirming and accepting what you are being told by those who are marginalized, you are maintaining your privilege and your position of power to the disadvantage of others.
L
Lived experience is the gateway toward knowledge. A “first-hand experience” or “personal anecdote” is not what is meant by Critical theorists when lived experience is prioritized although such personal narratives are important features of a person’s lived experience. Instead, lived experience as a term refers to the entirety of your life’s experiences as they have unfolded in systems of power that either dominate or oppress. Because lived experiences of oppression or victimization are the experiences that matter, those who exist in dominant identity groups have no lived experiences of value unless those experiences demonstrate acknowledgement of their complicity in systems of oppression. The role of those in dominant identity groups is to listen, and to accept and affirm the lived experiences of the marginalized. There is an exception: if you are a member of a marginalized identity group and you possess false consciousness, your experiences are not considered “authentic” lived experiences. The convenient feature of lived experience is that it always conforms to Critical Theory analysis. This is why someone can be said to be inauthentically black or a gender traitor or white adjacent: identity politics with its diversity and inclusion requirements, will insist that any disagreement among one of its own reveals internalized oppression.
M
Marginalized refers to the process of being excluded from the benefits and privileges offered by society at large. Such marginalization is, according to Critical theorists, systemic as it is rooted in questions of identity—identity by race, by ethnicity, by sex, by sexual orientation, by gender, etc.. This exclusion is socially constructed to benefit specific identity groupings, resulting in oppression, victimization, and other forms of injustice. Marginalized groups are felt to be in need of protection, often through a regimen that advances diversity, equity, and inclusion. Those members of marginalized groups who do not believe themselves to be marginalized are considered inauthentic and to have internalized their oppression: you aren’t black if you believe x, y, or z; you can’t possibly vote for that person because, after all, you are gay; your grandparents are from Mexico, so how can you support the building of a border wall.
Meritocracy, or the idea of merit, is considered to be a means by which those in a dominant position maintain their power. If society is systemically racist and unjust, merit can not be earned by diligent study and hard work. Merit is an advantage accorded to those born with privilege. Those who believe in meritocracy are placing the responsibility for success, or the lack of it, on the individual person rather than on the systems and structures that enforce the dominant identity groups’ positions of power. A failure to achieve is not due to a person’s lack of effort, preparation, ingenuity, industriousness, or other markers of ability or merit: failure is a sign of systemic oppression.
Microaggressions are those daily slights, insults, and snubs—be they verbal or nonverbal—that are perceived by those who are marginalized. What matters here is not a person’s verbal or nonverbal intention; what matters is the perception of the person who feels victimized by a microaggression. Since educators who dabble in or are fully on board with Critical theories emphasize becoming aware of signs of oppression and marginalization, microaggressions can be read into any situation. The pursuit of safe spaces necessarily follows.
N
Narrative shapes what is considered to be true by the society at large when that narrative is controlled by the dominant identity group. It is a story or myth—a master narrative—fashioned by the dominant identity group to perpetuate its power. Such narratives are accepted as true through socialization, beginning with how families raise their children. The Critical theorists espousing social justice give preference to marginalized narratives that counter the dominant narrative, a narrative that keeps them in a subservient or inferior position. By relating stories of their lived experiences and through other ways of knowing, those people whose identities are marginalized can begin to disrupt, dismantle, and deconstruct the dominant narrative—and the privilege and power that this master narrative both provides and protects.
O
Objectivity not only is impossible, according to Critical theorists, but the effort to be objective is harmful. While objectivity refers to the search for what is true by attempting to identify and control for as many potential sources of bias as possible. Critical theorists deny that minimizing or controlling for bias is at all possible; furthermore, controlling for biases, they believe, creates a bias, one that is white, Western, Eurocentric, and decidedly masculinist. Critical social justice theorists, who disregard objectivity because it is biased toward the dominant identity group, always give priority to the subjective lived experiences and personal narratives of the marginalized as the surer path toward what is “true.”
P
Positionality is your personal position within intersecting groups of identities to which you belong, each identity grouping having distinct relationships to the systems of power. Your positionality reflects your status as a person possessing identities that dominate and identities that oppress. Your positionality must be constantly examined: you must consider both the ways your identities can oppress others and the ways your identities privilege you. A black man, for example, may be oppressed because of his race but be privileged because of his sex: this gives the man knowledge and thus authority about oppression due to his race but no authority regarding oppression due to sex or gender. The more aware you are of your positionality, the more critically conscious you become. A person with critical consciousness recognizes that the experience of oppression confers knowledge about oppression, and thus authority, whereas the lack of having experienced oppression requires humility and acknowledgment of complicity in oppression.
Privilege, which conveys benefits by virtue of being a certain race or sex or sexual orientation, is unearned and taken for granted by those born into a dominant identity group. That is why it is necessary to have your consciousness raised so that your privilege can be recognized and then rectified by actively fighting against it: check your privilege. Since ridding oneself of unmerited privilege is crucial in social justice matters, you will observe the requisite shaming and humbling wherein a person declares to others that Yes, I have lived a life of privilege and I will now make amends.
Problematic is a reference to anything in reality that appears to uphold or advance or justify or give legitimacy to those who benefit from their privilege in a society that is systemically racist, heteronormative, sexist, and patriarchal. As an example, the traditional use of the term “master” to identify the faculty member who led each residential college at Yale University (there are currently 14 residential colleges) was considered to be “problematic” because of the association of “master” to an authority figure during slavery. Though all acknowledged that the term “master” derived from the Latin magister, referring to “teacher, director, head, chief,” and in that context had no relationship to slavery, the term “master” has been abolished at Yale’s residential colleges and replaced with “head of college.”
Q
R
S
Social construct is a label placed upon any belief or idea in order to manage it within a social justice context. Our ideas regarding race, sex, gender—all are socially constructed through culture, the family, the church, the entire apparatus of socialization. While it is evident that many beliefs are indeed developed and acquired through socialization, in the Critical theory perspective, all such constructs are invidious and intended to maintain the dominance of specific identity groupings and their position of oppression over others. Furthermore, what Critical theorists maintain is that everything we know is socially constructed. In other words, there is nothing that we know based upon scientific methods and our reason that establishes truth. For Critical theorists, knowledge is always shaped by our subjective biases, whether the knowledge comes from scientific investigation or the personal narratives of lived experience. No way of knowing deserves priority over another as all ways of knowing are socially constructed.
Social justice—like diversity and inclusion—is a term that does not mean what we have traditionally thought it to mean.Yes, people naturally want a society that is fair and just, where all are treated equally before the law and in terms of opportunities, where discrimination by superficial characteristics or religious beliefs does not exist. But Critical Theory has reconstructed social justice into questions of power and privilege. Social justice is a Critical concept that is entirely political and transformative as it seeks to impose a specific way of looking at the world—through the Critical lens that sees all power dynamics in structures and systems—and specific solutions that run counter to liberal notions of equality, hard work, merit, and individual free will. Therefore, Critical social justice requires advancing not equality but equity: equity meaning equality of outcomes and, where necessary, reparations for historical oppression.
Systemic racism refers to all the ways society is organized so it privileges the dominant racial grouping and marginalizes all the others. Any individual racial prejudice can only be considered evidence of racism within systemic racism if that prejudice flows from a position of greater power to those in a position of lesser power: yes, only whites can be racist because whiteness is the identity of dominance. Evidence of systemic racism includes, but is not limited to, the following: any achievement gap between whites and people of color; any racial or ethnic disparity of results; any historical evidence of gaps and disparities even if, in any particular situation, that gap or disparity no longer exists; any belief in meritocracy, human nature, individual free will, assimilation, and classical liberal values; any reliance upon science, reason, cultural values of hard work and responsibility for one’s actions; color-blindness with regard to race; any negative feelings toward aspects of non-white cultures or any appropriation of non-white culture; any disagreement with the basic tenets of Critical race theory. Unless a person is actively antiracist, that person is supporting and complicit in systemic racism.
T
Tolerance does not mean an agreement to live and let live or to allow free expression of opinions even if you disagree with those opinions. That’s so yesterday. Tolerance requires intolerance of certain perspectives if those perspectives stem from a position of dominance. Being intolerant against white people in the name of antiracism, being intolerant against men in the name of feminism, being intolerant of heterosexuals in the name of gender and sexual fluidity is perfectly fine. Anything that makes marginalized identity groups uncomfortable or feel micro-aggressed is entirely unacceptable and must not be tolerated. This tolerance of intolerance stems from Herbert Marcuse’s conception of “repressive tolerance,” which contends that no one ought tolerate anything which is oppressive or leads to oppression.
U
V
W
Ways of knowing include tradition, superstition, storytelling, and emotion, all of which have been excluded from the ways of knowing established by white, Western, Eurocentric man: empiricism, science, reason, and logic. Western culture, having privileged these ways of knowing, has imposed them on other cultures as though science and logic lead to knowledge and truth, when in fact they merely prioritize white subjective biases over the subjective biases of the marginalized. All knowledge is social constructed, merely products of culture that reinforce systems of power. Critical social justice advances other ways of knowing outside the cultural tradition of white Western man. What is required is racial humility, cultural relativism, and shutting up and listening to the lived experiences of the marginalized in order to forward diversity and inclusion, thus “decolonizing” the existing system of knowledge, including its artistic, musical, and literary canons. Should anyone believe that rigor is needed in the search for truth, it is important to understand that rigor itself is a form of white male dominance over the oppressed.
White fragility is a term made famous by critical race theorist and popularizer Robin D’Angelo, who titled her bestseller White Fragility. The general idea is that people who are white are unable—are too fragile—to accept being confronted by their white privilege and their continual complicity in white racist systems of oppression. This is an effort to use human psychology to force people into a public transformation that will find them adopting antiracist positions. White fragility comes to the fore as soon as a white person is accused of such privilege and complicity, which are not merely accusations but assertions accepted as true by all Critical social justice advocates. If you argue, if you disagree, if you remain silent, if you refuse to participate, you are exhibiting white fragility. You have no way out except through confession and submission by agreeing with those who insist you, because of your whiteness, have certain privileges which others do not possess because they are not white. Since you see yourself as someone who does not judge people based upon the color of their skin and as someone who would never discriminate against someone because of that person’s race or ethnicity, you may take umbrage at being called a racist or a supporter of racism or a beneficiary of white supremacy. However, since you believe that not being racially prejudiced is a positive and a sort of ‘get out of jail free’ card, you clearly do not understand that racism is all pervasive and that you are complicit in it simply by virtue of your whiteness: you must therefore acknowledge your complicity and adopt antiracist positions. James Lindsay refers to this dilemma as a “kafkatrap,” based on the novelist Franz Kafka’s The Trial: “a situation in which one is accused of something in such a way that both one’s confession to it and denial of it are able to be interpreted as proof of one’s guilt.” The underlying purpose of most diversity, anti-bias, and anti-racist training is to evoke such admissions and submission. You will often hear people claim that we need to have “honest” conversations or “uncomfortable” conversations about race: what is not stated is that you will be informed “how to listen” during such conversations and what are the appropriate ways of responding. In the postmodern world, even the term “conversation” ought be taken with a grain of salt.
White privilege refers to the benefits and advantages those who are white possess from birth simply because of their whiteness. These advantages are structural, embedded within a system designed to benefit whites over people of other races and ethnicities. Because they are so pervasive, so systemic, these privileges are taken for granted and often accepted unconsciously. However, those with privilege consistently work to maintain as legitimate the structures and institutions that provide these advantages. Critical theorists are here to raise your consciousness—develop a critical consciousness—so that you recognize and, then, radically reform yourself. One of the major steps taken to develop such consciousness is the focus on identity—diverse and inclusive identities—so that those whose possess the dominant white identity see how their whiteness, which is their identity, marginalizes and victimizes those who possess identities that are not privileged.
Whiteness is a social status, or identity, that conveys legal, economic, and political rights not provided to others. Because white people have been socialized to believe that whiteness is normal and positive, they accept its privileges as normal and right. Critical theory maintains that white people are naturally invested in whiteness and, therefore, become complicit, consciously or unconsciously, in preserving all of its benefits. Critical whiteness studies—a course of study in a number of universities—explores every aspect of whiteness as it pertains to socially constructed systems of power with the aim of dismantling all of it. It ought be understood that whiteness is a poison that infects certain people of color. This can be seen when people of color support or legitimize “white” ways of doing things, including positive beliefs about the Founding of this country, about science and logic and literature, about family and Western culture and Christianity. Such support by people of color is, according to Critical theorists, evidence of false consciousness and internalized oppression.