Geographies of Whiteness

Whiteness must be decolonized from its conceptual frame of Anglicanism in order to fully understand
its context. Including colonial geographies and modern struggles of indigeniety into discussions of
whiteness and the ways of whiteness help to underscore the full capacity of whiteness through
otherization.

histories of colonialism(s) and imperialism(s) that have survived into the present.

I have found whiteness to be a useful heuristic tool regardless of its discursive associations with an
essentialized, hegemonic ethnicity or potentially monolithic power framework (cfWinders 2003). When
uncoupled from such associations, (the study of) whiteness has provided the capacity to encapsulate sets
of context-specific processes and performances of particular, and often very subtle, forms of
racialization.

I now outline what I believe to be an important and useful strategythe addition of a more overt
postcolonial/imperial perspective to research on whiteness. Because of its particular preoccupations,
North American Whiteness Studies, as a research field, has largely neglected Indigeneity. Meanwhile, in
critical race studies (in geography and elsewhere), postcolonial theorists and researchers have raised the
need to consider the trajectories of colonialism experienced by Indigenous peoples, in the present (King
1992; Peters 1998). The study of whiteness, with the inclusion of postcolonial/imperial perspectives, also
holds the potential to liberate research from the trap of (mis)representation of the other, and yet, the
application of a critical postcolonial lens to studies of whiteness is yet to be fully realized.

King A (1992) Rethinking colonialism: An epilogue. In N Alsayyad (ed) Forms of
Dominance: on the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise (pp 339
355). Avebury: Aldershot

Peters E J (1998) Subversive spaces: First Nations women and the city. Environment
and Planning D, Society and Space 16:665686

black (Indigenous and surrounded) and white (non-Indigenous and surrounding) spaces

an array of strategies and projects aimed at consolidating and reinforcing white space have found
expression in the local area. By opening these fields of whiteness by means of the kinds of analysis used
in contemporary human geography, the following vignettes demonstrate the allocation of ethnicity, and
consequent racialization, in localized and processural performances of whiteness, and the subtleties of
whiteness thus enabled. These examples reveal also that while such processes for example the
racialization of particular spacesmay be context specific, whiteness also operates within a wider
context of neo-colonial Australian

funding to aboriginal colleges cut because of duplicate services offered in the larger college district.
Indigenous scholars were thus forced out into white spaces to contimue their community welfare work.

Not just black/white binary
The population that utilizes white space includes individuals from a myriad of ethnic backgrounds.