ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book builds on the empirical insights and critical thought of a long-standing community of scholarly thinkers devoted to understanding and resisting racism in the United States. My own work would not be possible without the work of this larger community, both past and present, and for that, I am appreciative.

This book would also not be possible without the parents who generously opened their worlds to me, welcomed me into their homes, invited me to soccer games and birthday parties, and shared with me their honest perspectives on personal and controversial topics. I am grateful for their willingness to participate in this research, and I acknowledge fully the courage it takes to let a researcher like me into the private life of one’s family. I also thank the young people in this book for teaching me so many things that I did not know, for sharing their ideas and questions, and for taking this project so seriously. While I believe a critical race analysis of the worlds of white families in general is necessary, I also care deeply for these specific families and am thankful for the meaningful relationships and bonds I developed as a result of this research.

Ilene Kalish understood my passion behind this project, patiently and enthusiastically guided me through the process of writing my first book, and has undoubtedly made this work stronger. I sincerely thank her as well as Maryam Arain and the editorial staff at New York University Press for their help. Thanks as well to the series editors of the Critical Perspectives on Youth series, Amy Best, Lorena Garcia, and Jessica Taft, and to the reviewers who provided helpful feedback.

Amanda Lewis is an exceptional and generous mentor who supported this project and me every step of the way. Amanda is an incredibly talented teacher and researcher, and she provided me with many opportunities to explore and develop my interests. To this day, she pushes me to make my work better and offers concrete suggestions of how to do so. Amanda always had faith in me that I could actually take on this project, even in moments when I was not so sure myself. She has helped me find my way professionally and intellectually, and I will always be sincerely grateful for everything she has done for me. I also thank Tyrone Forman, who supported this project from the very early stages and who furthered my interest in conducting research on racism with young people. Tyrone always knew the best book or article to recommend and offered excellent advice, and this work is enriched by his thoughtfulness. In addition, I sincerely thank both Amanda and Tyrone for all the laughter, all the dinners, all the wine, and the warm sense of community that they cultivate and share with their students and friends. I am so fortunate for their mentorship.

I thank William Corsaro for teaching me about children’s agency, for encouraging me to conduct this research, and for reading early drafts of this work. I also thank Irene Browne for her help with coding and for reading my work and offering helpful suggestions for improvement. Two scholars from disciplines outside sociology also greatly influenced this project, and I am fortunate to have been able to learn from their own expertise: I thank Maisha Winn and Barbara Woodhouse for sharing their knowledge and helping my intellectual work grow in new directions.

I was able to collect the bulk of the data for this project thanks to generous funding from the Race and Difference Initiative, the Laney Graduate School, and the Department of Sociology at Emory University. I am grateful to my Emory colleagues for their help along the way. I thank Isabella Alexander, Kendra Freeman, Kim Hall, Celeste Lee, Tiffany Pogue, Chelsea Jackson Roberts, Roselyn Thomas, and Adria Welcher. And I thank especially Liz Alexander and Michelle Manno for their constant feedback and help with this project from beginning to end, for our long-distance writing-group meetings, and for their camaraderie. I know this work is better and more critical because of their input.

The big questions that inform this research began in an undergraduate sociology class I took with Heather Beth Johnson at Lehigh University titled “Race and Class in America.” The child-centered methodological techniques used in this project, in addition to the larger questions I pose, are influenced directly by her. I thank Heather for being such a supportive mentor and great friend, for encouraging me and so many others to pursue the question of “how can this be?,” for reading my work over the past 15 years, for pushing scholars to critically think through the sociology of privilege, for sharing her amazing family with me and for embracing my own, and most of all, for changing my life by teaching me to think sociologically.

I also thank my classmates and friends from Lehigh for all that I learned from them, especially Kaloma Cardwell, Jessica De Pinto, Neil Hurley, Teniece Johnson, Jill Fitzpatrick, Samina Luthfa, Jennifer McCarthy, Xóchitl Mota, Greg Palmer, Lavar Pope, and Carlos Tavares. I thank my English and sociology professors at Lehigh for teaching me what it means to be a scholar, especially Beth Dolan, Mary-Jo Haronian, Dawn Keetley, Jackie Krasas, Judy Lasker, and Ziad Munson. Many thanks also to those who helped me develop ideas for this project during my brief yet intellectually significant time at the University of Illinois, Chicago, especially Amy Brainer, Sharon Collins, Georgiann Davis, Nilda Flores, Mosi Ifatunji, Maria Krysan, Barbara Risman, María Victoria Badillo Rodríguez, and Patrick Washington.

The second round of interviews in 2015 was generously supported by Mississippi State University. I thank my colleagues in the Department of Sociology for their help with aspects of this book, especially Rachel Allison, Dustin Brown, Adele Crudden, Leslie Hossfeld, Kimberly Kelly, Braden Leap, and Ashley Perry. Special thanks to Nicole Rader for being my faculty mentor and friend and to Rick Travis for his consistent encouragement and words of wisdom. Many thanks also to graduate students Courtney Heath and Izzy Pellegrine for their assistance. I also thank my former students for sharing their insights with me about their own racial socialization experiences. I thank Tommy Anderson, Marsha Barrett, Courtney Carter, Mike Roche, Donald Shaffer, Chris Snyder, Ashley Vancil-Leap, and Danielle Wylie for being such supportive colleagues and friends. And many thanks to my archeologist friend Shane Miller for helping me with the map.

I have been fortunate to meet a number of scholars who have kindly offered me their time and advice. I especially acknowledge the help of Erin Winkler, who is one of smartest and nicest people I know, who pushes us all to think more carefully about how kids learn about race, and whose own work has greatly influenced and guided this research. I am also grateful for the encouragement and mentorship of Matthew Hughey, who has provided feedback on many of the ideas in this book, whose research informs my own, and who has generously offered his advice and assistance at various stages of this process. I thank Antonia Randolph for our brief yet incredibly helpful conversation at the 2016 Southern Sociological Society conference. Many thanks to David Embrick for helping me think through the organization of this book.

I thank my friends who have each directly contributed to the completion of this project in their own meaningful way. While I cannot name them all, I thank Mondi Basmenji, Laurel Bastian, Suzanne Blackamore, Kevin Boettcher, Keith Borden, Julia Dauer, Devin Garofalo, Vanessa Lauber, Kerri Matthews, Hassan Pasha, Jessie Reeder, Steel Wagstaff, Stephanie Youngblood, and Erica Zurawski. Special thanks to Emily Clark for everything she did to help me with this research. And thanks to Julie, whom I look up to tremendously, for helping me with this project in so many ways and for serving as such an important mentor to me, whether she knows it or not. I will always be appreciative.

I thank my family, especially my parents, Jean Maloney Hagerman and Doug Hagerman, for always having a positive outlook, for supporting me in every way imaginable, and for consistently modeling the importance of standing up for what you believe is right and speaking the truth, even if it is unpopular. I thank Gail and David McKay for their enthusiasm about this book. I thank Melissa McKay, Mike Sondel, and Laura and Matt Vaughn for their encouragement. And I thank my brother, James Hagerman, for technical assistance along the way. I could not have completed this project without the practical advice, unique perspective, and emotional support of Mikyla Smith, my best friend. I also thank my grandmother JoAnne Sinden Hagerman, who received her first graduate degree in 1948 and who inspires me. I thank her for sharing her stories and knowledge with me, for taking such an interest in my research, and for serving as such strong example of the kind of person I strive to be.

I am grateful to have a partner who earnestly supports me and my ambitions, who endlessly listens to me talk about my research, who helps me find just the right words to express complex ideas simply, who continually teaches me new things and reads me old things, who encourages me to work harder, and who read this manuscript more times than he probably wanted to. Thank you Eric Vivier for being outraged and outspoken about the things that really matter in the world, for reminding me to laugh at the things that do not, and for continuing to walk to the library with me.