This article responds to Marzia Milazzo's article ‘On white ignorance, white shame, and other pitfalls in critical philosophy of race’, in which Milazzo argues that the concepts white shame, white guilt, white privilege, white habits, white invisibility and white ignorance are pitfalls in the process of decolonisation. Milazzo contends that the way these concepts are theorised in much critical philosophy of race minimises white people's active interest in reproducing the racial status quo. While I agree with Milazzo's critique of white (...) shame and white guilt, I argue that these affective responses are fundamentally different to the remaining concepts. Drawing on critical whiteness studies and agnotology, I argue that white privilege, white invisibility and white ignorance are valuable conceptual tools for revealing white people's active investment in maintaining racial inequality. Whereas Milazzo sees a contradiction between white people's active interest in maintaining racial inequality and concepts like white invisibility and white ignorance, I argue that, correctly theorised, these concepts resolve this apparent contradiction. I contest Milazzo's call to reject white privilege, white invisibility and white ignorance, arguing that these concepts are useful tools in the project of decolonisation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines discursive change in Australia from 1950 to 2010 through the lens of critical whiteness studies. Using textbooks as records of dominant narratives, I evaluate discourses of whiteness and Aboriginality in Australian history textbooks over this period of substantial social change. I show that overt discourses of white exceptionalism and Aboriginal deficiency are only present in the earliest decades of my sample. However, these discourses persist in later decades in ‘polite’ forms, maintaining the racial status quo while enabling (...) whites to be positioned favourably. I argue that discursive change only becomes embedded in textbooks if it bolsters the status of whites, evidencing Bell’s thesis of interest-convergence. (shrink)