Anti‐racism and the critique of ‘white’ identities

This article addresses the construction of ‘whiteness’ within anti‐racist discourse. It shows that anti‐racists have failed to understand ‘whiteness’ as a temporally and spatially contingent and fluid category. The article argues that this failure has led anti‐racists to view ‘white’ identity as a fixed entity, something beyond change or challenge. The final section of the article looks at the emerging body of literature on the historical geography of ‘whiteness’ to see if it offers the possibility of more nuanced, and effective, anti‐racist conceptualisations of ‘whiteness’.