White Out: Understanding White Privilege and Dominance in the Modern Age by Christopher S. Collins and Alexander Jun (review)

In White Out, professors, trainers, and facilitators Christopher S. Collins and Alexander Jun offer some new approaches to discuss key concepts around Whiteness, racism, privilege, and dominance. In particular, they focus on common pushback when White dominance is named and address how to respond to that pushback. They offer new metaphors and new vocabulary to help those learning about White dominance. These new approaches can also serve as tools for those educating about Whiteness and White supremacy. They also use a current mindset and recent examples throughout the book to make the conversation with the reader accessible and relevant.

The authors begin by explaining the systemic nature of White supremacy and how it is internalized in their opening chapter. They offer new metaphors for thinking about systemic Whiteness. They also include succinct and clear introductions of key concepts like the social construction of Whiteness, implicit bias, systems of White supremacy, internalized Whiteness, moving beyond the Black-White binary, and exploring White dominance. In the second chapter, they explore the dynamics of White people sharing their hurts and pains in response to hearing People of Color share their experiences of racism. They explain that there are an infinite number of reasons why White people might share pain in response to hearing about the pain of racism, but this often results in minimizing People of Color's experiences and ignores the systemic nature of racism.

In chapter 3, the authors explore White privilege through the metaphor of a virus they call "Whitefluenza." They use this metaphor to point out that White privilege is constant, but the symptoms and how it shows-up change with context and time. They use current and timely examples of White privilege throughout the book including Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Rachel Dolezal, and the 2016 presidential election in the United States. In chapter 4, they explore the tensions White people can experience in feeling they should speak up, take a stand, and confront their White peers and simultaneously they should not take up space, listen, and do not re-center Whiteness. The authors make a good case for why White people should avoid approaching being an ally to be the savior, hero, or rescuer. A deeper exploration of how to navigate the complexity of these substantive, complex, and important tensions would have been helpful.

The next three chapters explore some of the harm White people can inflict when they engage around race and racism in general. In chapter 5, the authors discuss the ways that White people sometimes feel hurt experiencing slurs because they are White. The authors explain that intentionally hurting someone through a racial slur should be avoided. However, focusing on these experiences minimizes the experiences of racism by people of color and ignores the systemic nature of White supremacy. In chapter 6, they explore White anger, especially White men's anger, and how it shows up in violence, politics, social movements, public policy, campus groups, police shootings, and more. In chapter 7, they explore ways White people express, consciously and unconsciously, that they are oppressed now with suggestions for how to correct this inaccuracy and engage White people in these conversations.

The final two chapters offer ways to understand White identity development and ways to move this learning forward. In chapter 8, the authors share the findings from their research and the cycle of consciousness for White people. In the final chapter, the authors reflect succinctly on how they have tried to offer a new vocabulary to understand and address White dominance.

The strengths of White Out are in the authors' current examples and mindsets, the new metaphors and language they offer for established concepts, the personal voice and perspectives of their identities as White and Korean, Asian American, and the "way forward" sections at the end of each chapter that seek to provide helpful guidance. They discuss, unpack, and...