[SUNY Series, Philosophy and Race 01] • Good White People

Argues for the necessity of a new ethos for middle-class white anti-racism.

Building on her book Revealing Whiteness , Shannon Sullivan identifies a constellation of attitudes common among well-meaning white liberals that she sums up as “white middle-class goodness.” She critiques this orientation as being more concerned with establishing anti-racist bona fides than with confronting systematic racism and privilege.

Sullivan untangles the complex relationships between class and race in contemporary white identity and outlines four ways this orientation is expressed, each serving to establish one’s lack of racism:

The denigration of lower-class white people as responsible for ongoing white racism

The demonization of antebellum slaveholders

An emphasis on colorblindness, especially in the context of white childrearing

The cultivation of attitudes of white guilt, shame, and betrayal

To move beyond these distancing strategies, Sullivan argues, white people need a new ethos that acknowledges and transforms their whiteness in the pursuit of racial justice rather than seeking a self-righteous distance from it.

Shannon Sullivan is Head of the Philosophy Department and Professor of Philosophy, Women’s Studies, and African American Studies at Penn State University. She is the author and editor of many books, including Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (coedited with Nancy Tuana), also published by SUNY Press.