Adopting Whiteness: How African Americans Participate in Perpetuating and Sustaining Racial Dominance and Institutional Racism

Abstract

Whiteness is for White people. White people own it, benefit from it, and embody it. But whiteness is also for African Americans—to adopt, embody, or internalize the ideologies and ideals of whiteness as a means to reproduce and sustain white hegemony. Uncle Tom, Oreo, Carlton, and Uncle Ruckus are some of the terms African Americans assign and use to describe in-group members that are perceived as giving up their identity to align with and internalize white ideals and ideologies. This qualitative study explored how whiteness manifests in the lives of African Americans. Using focus groups, African American participants were asked to define what blackness means and what it means to be Black in comparison to their understanding of whiteness. The analysis of the data revealed that African Americans operate a triple consciousness: dysconscious whiteness, mirroring whiteness, and a third consciousness of a Black gaze. Each consciousness carries the emergence and/or embodiment of whiteness.