White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America

Riveting stories of how affluent, white children learn about race American kids are living in a world of ongoing public debates about race, daily displays of racial injustice, and for some, an increased awareness surrounding diversity and inclusion. In this heated context, sociologist Margaret A. Hagerman zeroes in on affluent, white kids to observe how they make sense of privilege, unequal educational opportunities, and police violence. In fascinating detail, Hagerman considers the role that they and their families play in the reproduction of racism and racial inequality in America.White Kids, based on two years of research involving in-depth interviews with white kids and their families, is a clear-eyed and sometimes shocking account of how white kids learn about race. In doing so, this book explores questions such as, “How do white kids learn about race when they grow up in families that do not talk openly about race or acknowledge its impact?” and “What about children growing up in families with parents who consider themselves to be `anti-racist’?”Featuring the actual voices of young, affluent white kids and what they think about race, racism, inequality, and privilege, White Kids illuminates how white racial socialization is much more dynamic, complex, and varied than previously recognized. It is a process that stretches beyond white parents’ explicit conversations with their white children and includes not only the choices parents make about neighborhoods, schools, peer groups, extracurricular activities, and media, but also the choices made by the kids themselves. By interviewing kids who are growing up in different racial contexts-from racially segregated to meaningfully integrated and from politically progressive to conservative-this important book documents key differences in the outcomes of white racial socialization across families. And by observing families in their everyday lives, this book explores the extent to which white families, even those with anti-racist intentions, reproduce and reinforce the forms of inequality they say they reject.

Reviews of White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America

"This innovative, absorbing ethnography revealsthat there is no single way that whites learn about race. Environmentalinfluences such as schools, neighborhoods, and even extracurricular activitiesprofoundly shape the ways that affluent white children think about racism andits impact on people of color. It'sfascinating to learn how one child develops a critique of police shootingswhile another insists that racism does not exist at all. This immersive studywill transform the way we think about racial socialization among theprivileged. White Kids is a must read for anyone interested in how racialattitudes in America take shape in their earliest moments."-Monica McDermott,Author of Working-Class White: The Making and Unmaking of Race Relations "A terrific book tracing the different trajectories of racial meaningyoung white children make about themselves and others as they navigate theworlds of school, friendship, and neighborhood, as well as the larger worldbeyond. This book is full of rich insight that should give us both pause and asense of possibility."-Amy L. Best,Author of Fast Food Kids: French Fries, Lunch Lines, and Social Ties "More than anything else, whiteness is an everyday practice constructedout of mostly mundane, seemingly `beyond race' interactions. In her masterful White Kids, Margaret A. Hagermandemonstrates this fact by showing how privileged children in a Midwestern townare socialized into whiteness and, more significantly, make choices toreproduce whiteness. Hagerman's book deserves to be read widely as it is asociological gem!"-Eduardo Bonilla-Silva,Author of Racism Without Racists