U.S. colleges to offer 'Critical Whiteness Studies' as part of 'antiracist' practices

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

In the Fall of 2023, the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of New Mexico will be conducting a course on "Critical Whiteness Studies," providing students with insights into whiteness as an ideology of supremacy and domination.

“Our goal in this course is to learn how to identify and challenge whiteness as part of an antiracist practice,” the course description states.

At the University of Colorado, Denver, there is a course called "Problematizing Whiteness: Educating for Racial Justice," which emphasizes that "Critical Whiteness Studies" offers a comprehensive examination of race, encompassing the struggles of people of color while also addressing the complicity of white individuals, the Daily Wire reports.

Additionally, at the University of Oregon, there are courses such as "Critical Whiteness Studies," which delve into the social construction of race by examining and contextualizing the concept of 'whiteness' as a racial category in the United States. Moreover, the university also offers classes on "Environmental Racism" and "Feminist Theories of Race."

The School of Education at the University of San Francisco will offer a course named "Whiteness, Power, and Privilege," which will take a comprehensive look at “racialization and racism through the lens of Critical Whiteness Studies.” It also offers an “examination of whiteness as the driving force behind … oppression.”

During the 2022-2023 academic year, the University of Puget Sound, through its English Department, offered a course on "Critical Whiteness Studies." This course explores and “engages with ‘whiteness’ as a category of identification in order to develop a theoretically informed understanding of the history, function, and effects of racial encoding within literature.”

In the archived records of the University of Wisconsin Madison's African Cultural Studies department, there was a course titled "The Problem of Whiteness," which has since been deleted. The course description stated that its focus was on "Critical Whiteness Studies," aiming to comprehend the social construction and experiences associated with whiteness to contribute to the dismantling of white supremacy.

It added “Our class will break away from the standard US-centric frame, and consider how whiteness is constructed globally.” The course explains how white people “consciously and unconsciously perpetuate institutional racism.”