Antiracism.net & the Center for Whiteness

I found a treasure trove of listings for organizations that are working on behalf of anti-racism efforts at www.antiracism.net. This website breaks down racism in to many different categories, but shows how these different issues from environmental racism to sexism to police brutality have strong relevance to issues about race.

After checking out some of the websites that are listed, I found an interesting group, the Center for the Study of Whitness, that focuses on enabling "Whites" to enter into discussions about racism and find educational materials towards that specific goal. Here is a sample from their website. www.euroamerican.org

"The Center was created to address the lack of information and discussion of the role of white people and white culture in American society. In some venues this topic was given only marginal consideration. In others, discussion of whiteness seemed to be taboo and any attempts to broach the subject were met with hostility and denial.

Among people who were concerned about the role that white Americans might play in creating a multiracial society, few could find materials, venues and forums for discussion, and supportive organizations to assist in creating a dialogue. Within predominantly white organizations, whiteness still remained an unexamined barrier to developing a multiracial organizational culture. Some grassroots training efforts could be found, and individual scholars and practitioners within various fields were beginning to examine issues of whiteness and white culture. But little of this reached the general public. Even many scholars and practitioners were isolated from one another.

Today some of this is changing. Many people have begun to examine whiteness and white culture, and to ask what it will take for white Americans to live in a society that is multiracial. Though this growing awareness has not been due to the Center alone (far from it), we believe we have played a leadership role. In particular we have fostered the growing awareness and discussion of these issues among a broader public. The very act of our creation was an intentional statement that whiteness can and should be discussed."