Learning to Become "Good White Girls" in Canada: The Early Racial Socialization of White Euro-Canadian Women

• In Event: 45.092 - MTCC Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 45.092-3 - (Dis)Covering Whiteness: Dilemmas and Practices Across Contexts

Abstract

In this paper I share interview transcripts from my qualitative study of ten white women in multiracial families to investigate the early learning spaces and discourses through which white women are socialized into whiteness and difference in Canada. As my analysis demonstrates, the women’s learning takes place in informal educational spaces of the home and through popular cultural mediums. I argue the participants are socialized to identify with national mythologies of a tolerant and diverse society, while they are trained to become “good white girls” and assume their place in inequitable systems of the state. Study findings can provide insight into collective racial socialization processes of white Euro-Canadians, which are necessary to understand in efforts to unsettle the settler state.

Author

• Willow Samara Allen, University of Victoria