Revealing Whiteness The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege

"[A] lucid discussion of race that does not sell out the black experience." --Tommy Lott, author of The Invention of Race

Revealing Whiteness explores how white privilege operates as an unseen, invisible, and unquestioned norm in society today. In this personal and selfsearching book, Shannon Sullivan interrogates her own whiteness and how being white has affected her. By looking closely at the subtleties of white domination, she issues a call for other white people to own up to their unspoken privilege and confront environments that condone or perpetuate it. Sullivan's theorizing about race and privilege draws on American pragmatism, psychology, race theory, and feminist thought. As it articulates a way to live beyond the barriers that white privilege has created, this book offers readers a clear and honest confrontation with a trenchant and vexing concern.

Shannon Sullivan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University and Associate Director of the Rock Ethics Institute. She is author of Living Across and Through Skins (IUP, 2001).

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1. Unconscious Habit

1. Ignorance and Habit

2. Engaging the Isolated Unconscious

3. Seductive Habits of White Privilege

4. Global Habits, Collective Hauntings

Part 2. Possessive Geographies

5. Appropriate Habits of White Privilege

6. Race, Space, and Place

7. In Defense of Separatism

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index