The Center for the Study of White American Culture (the Center) supports cultural exploration and self-discovery among white Americans. It encourages a dialogue among all racial and cultural groups concerning the role of white American culture in the larger American society. The Center operates on the premise that knowledge of one's own racial background and culture is essential when learning how to relate to people of other racial and cultural groups. We believe the task of building genuine and authentic relationships across racial and cultural lines is crucial to the future well-being of America.

Toward these ends the Center actively encourages participation by white Americans and Americans of color, women and men, alike. The Center maintains that the views of both insiders and outsiders contribute to understanding a culture. The Center also acknowledges that gender, class and ethnic differences are intertwined with racial ones, and must be explored as part of a complete study of racial and cultural difference.

Critical White Studies Looking Behind the Mirror edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic

Honorable Mention for Outstanding Books Awards, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America, 1997

No longer content with accepting whiteness as the norm, critical scholars have turned their attention to whiteness itself. In Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror, numerous thinkers, including Toni Morrison, Eric Foner, Peggy McIntosh, Andrew Hacker, Ruth Frankenberg, John Howard Griffin, David Roediger, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Noel Ignatiev, Cherríe Moraga, and Reginald Horsman, attack such questions as:

• How was whiteness invented, and why?


• How has the category whiteness changed over time?


• Why did some immigrant groups, such as the Irish and Jews, start out as nonwhite and later become white?


• Can some individual people be both white and nonwhite at different times, and what does it mean to "pass for white"


• At what point does pride in being white cross the line into white power or white supremacy?


• What can whites concerned over racial inequity or white privilege do about it?

Science and pseudoscience are presented side by side to demonstrate how our views on whiteness often reflect preconception, not fact. For example, most scientists hold that race is not a valid scientific category—genetic differences between races are insignificant compared to those within them. Yet, the "one drop" rule, whereby those with any nonwhite heritage are classified as nonwhite, persists even today. As The Bell Curve controversy shows, race concepts die hard, especially when power and prestige lie behind them.

A sweeping portrait of the emerging field of whiteness studies, Critical White Studies presents, for the first time, the best work from sociology, law, history, cultural studies, and literature. Delgado and Stefancic expressly offer critical white studies as the next step in critical race theory. In focusing on whiteness, not only do they ask nonwhites to investigate more closely for what it means for others to be white, but also they invite whites to examine themselves more searchingly and to "look behind the mirror."

The White Antiracist Community Action Network (WACAN) offers a protected online space where white antiracists and people of color who support and encourage white antiracists can assemble, network, share in community, and act to transform our larger society to one that is racially just.

In time we hope WACAN will meet the technical, social, and leadership challenges needed to become a large, self-supporting community of a thousand or more members.