“I don’t know what’s racist”: White Invisibility Among Explicitly Color-conscious Volunteers

Americans are increasingly aware of structural racial disadvantages, and especially aware of Black disadvantage. In turn, this paper asks to what degree do whites interested in undermining systems of oppression and privilege understand their own place within those systems (if at all)? Based on participant observation of four grassroots organizations serving the unhoused and 30 semi-structured interviews with volunteers, I show that even explicitly color-conscious white volunteers, many of whom spoke about structural inequality and systemic racism without prompting, struggled to see how their race was important in their day-to-day service interactions. A general inability to speak about interracial interactions despite many interracial service experiences highlights the pervasive power and privilege embedded in the taken-for-granted nature of whiteness and provides empirical support to the idea that racialized social systems discourage racial self-awareness among whites. These findings have implications for social justice- and/or service-oriented whites who seek to undermine the systems they identify as problematic and emphasize that antiracism is a continuous process.