Whiteness /

Pitched to a general audience, this contribution to the "MIT Press Essential Knowledge" series analyzes the social construction of whiteness. Lund (Malmö Univ., Sweden) succeeds admirably in engaging readers with the relevant scholarship while offering a range of examples that concretize whiteness as a conceptual frame. Central to his argument is the idea that whiteness is the bedrock of the deployment of racialized thinking in the interest of the power and privileges that attend to being identified as white. The range of empirical examples moves from the pseudoscientific racism of the late 19th century to the significance of the internet today. Beyond power and privilege, the book also examines the emotional character of whiteness, delving into white guilt, fragility, fear, and rage. The last two introduce the basis for the potency of the great replacement myth and the violent backlash it generated. Though the book is primarily about whiteness in the US, Lund uses selected examples from Sweden to make insightful comparisons. He concludes by insisting that knowledge alone does not suffice. Rather, it must be applied to efforts to undermine the destructiveness of whiteness. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and lower-division undergraduates. --Peter Kivisto, Augustana College (IL)