North? Exploring Whiteness, Privilege, and Identity in Education

• Main Authors: Paul R. Carr, Darren E. Lund, The Great White, Kelleen Toohey, K. Toohey
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Canada; Carr; Kathleen; First Nations
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1029.7233; http://www.ucalgary.ca/dlund/files/dlund/gwnreviewjimi.pdf

If White people do not know they are White, how can those who are in positions of power, many of whom are White, effectively understand and challenge racism and unearned privilege? (Carr and Lund, p. 2) This recent edited book takes as its goal to explore “what does Whiteness1 look like in general and in Canada in particular? ” (p. 3) and brings together a variety of authors who explore the individual privileging and institutional pervasiveness of Whiteness from a variety of viewpoints: for example, as a First Nations woman academic; as a White gay man; as a White provincial education policy maker; as a teacher in a northern community, and so on. As one of the chapter authors, Kathleen Berry, observes, while we are familiar with studying the oppression of particular groups in Canadian (and other) societies, what is rare is an acknowledgement of how that oppression links to White privilege. Rather, as George Sefa Dey in the Foreword to the book argues, Whites are more likely to deny race and difference politics as endemic in Canadian society: he observes, for example, “many of the people most imbued with [racism’s] orchestration and manifestation, namely, White people maintain the power and privilege to ignore and dissociate themselves from the experiences of others who are more directly affected or marginalized by racism” (p. vii). This book should serve to alert researchers and teachers to undeniable examples of how racism has been experienced in a wide range of situations (from the perspectives of the colonized, but also from the perspectives of critically aware