Breaking the Code of Good Intentions: Everyday Forms of Whiteness

by Melanie E.L. Bush

Breaking the Code of Good Intentions: Everyday Forms of Whiteness examines why most white people in the U.S. believe we have achieved racial equality even though social and economic indicators suggest otherwise. The book draws on research conducted between 1998-2000 at a college within the largest urban public university in the nation, exploring white students' perceptions about identity, privilege, democracy, and intergroup relations.

The book explores mechanisms that reinforce the adherence to dominant narratives (which function to maintain and reproduce racialized structures of inequality) and identifies 'cracks in the wall of whiteness,' circumstances that can foster understanding about systemic and racialized patterns of inequality. The author illuminates the connection between everyday thinking and the policies and programs that structure society.

Framed within an analysis of economic and political transitions that have occurred within the United States and globally in the second half of the twentieth century, the book examines the shift in public opinion from a presumption of collective responsibility for the common good and toward a belief in the social survival of the fittest. The author explores the extent to which these transitions led to the acute sense of white victimization that is portrayed by the media.

Concluding with recommendations for academia and society at large, this book asserts that the time is overdue for the dismantling of narratives that align ordinary whites with global elites and that the very future of humanity depends on challenging this long-time pattern.

Genres: Academic

328 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 2011

Reviews

[Cwn_annwn_13 · Rating 1 out of 5]

As if white people are not bombarded with enough hate yourself propaganda already as it is they now have "whiteness studies" at many Universities. You could actually laugh at something like this if this ideology wasn't being pushed at some of the most respected Universities in America. While the rank and file people that champion "whiteness studies" are certainly insane and/or brainwashed I would have a hard time believing that this doesn't originate from one of those globalist big business/banker funded think tanks.

The content of this book is more or less the author uses selective quotes from interviews with white Brooklyn College students, who are all middle class liberal types and uses them to point out how racist, insensitive and privileged they are no matter how logical in pointing out double standards or even out and out anti-racist what they say is. Just one example is a white female talks about having a crush on a "light skinned" black and its strongly implied that this is a sign of the girl being racist because he was "light skinned". So unless your mind is not properly washed you must believe that it does not matter if you have non-white friends, date interracially, or how much of a liberal race mixer you are. Its still not enough. Your still an insensitive racist that has no idea how much of a life of privilege you lead at the expense of "people of color". People of colors lives are utter hell and its because middle class white people exist. No matter what you cannot prostate yourself enough. Enjoy your new world order!

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melanie Bush's book is a much needed work (as the only other review demonstrates). The author presents evidence from student focus groups that demonstrate many white students' complete misunderstanding of the social, economic, and political structures that continue to benefit whites at the expense of nonwhites. Central to her analysis is a focus on the role that individualist thinking plays in maintaining this system of structural advantages for whites. Since many white people are misinformed about how the economy and political institutions work, they are unable to identify the real reason they experience greater vulnerability in the economic and political realms: the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the wealthiest citizens. Instead, many whites blame nonwhite people for poverty in communities of color and also for downwardly mobile whites. Bush shows how this plays out in students' (mis)understandings of the racial inequality in the US.

[Aaron Lozano · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one took me a while to finish. Very dense. I suspect it is a bit out of date and wish I had read it when it was a newer book. Still, there was a ton of important information here. The December push to reach my yearly reading goal continues!