Keeping Whiteness Intact: How Undergraduate White Women Make Meaning of Whiteness at the University of California, Los Angeles

• In Event: Problematizing Power, Politics, and Hegemony in the Campus Environment

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine how white women make meaning of whiteness at a historically white institution. While existing studies within the fields of race and ethnic studies, gender studies, and higher education have begun to explore whiteness and how it influences how white women understand racism, this has been limitedly explored, a gap in the literature this study seeks to address. Through 11 semi-structured interviews with white women at UCLA, this study finds that white women make meaning of whiteness in their own lives through understanding their socioeconomic status and adopting white ignorance. The significance of this study is that it empirically highlights how white women contribute to racial injustice at one historically white institution.

Author

• Tonia Guida, University of California - Los Angeles