Shades Of White Summary

Shades of White is an ethnographic study of two high schools. One, "Valley Groves High School," was suburban, and the "whitest" high school in the region. Here the student body was comprised of non-Hispanic whites (83 percent), Hispanics (7 percent), Asians (5 percent), Filipinos (2 percent), and African Americans (2 percent). The other, "Clavey High," was metropolitan and more thoroughly multiracial--African American (54 percent), Asian American (23 percent), white (12 percent), Hispanic (8 percent), Filipino (2 percent), Pacific Islander (1 percent), and Native American (1 percent). Perry examines the making and living of whiteness in school life, asking about its formation through white students' interactions with one another and with peers of color. In this book the schoolyard is as important as are school curriculum, faculty, and administrators. Meanwhile, the familial and larger social contexts from which students arrive to complete each school day are deemed not so much stable, preexisting settings, as sites in relation to which selves and others must be reconceived and remade.

Contrasting two very different schools in different cities in the same region, the book argues that white racial identity formation must be understood by reference to processes of, "(1) association with people of color; (2) 'us-them' boundary making processes; (3) the
Thus, white female students reminisced about a weeklong celebration of race/ethnic belonging, in which all were invited to wear and complete nametags that said, "I'm proud to be________." Conscious of the impossible position in which the racially-hierarchical United States had placed them--discursive asymmetry meant that "I'm proud to be white" could signify only white supremacism--they joked, remembering that one of them had completed her name tag, "I'm proud to be a virgin!"(pp.