The Invisibility of Whiteness Makes it the Default

In the theoretical and critical literature of whiteness studies, one of the more often discussed ways in which the social efficacy of the category of whiteness has been maintained in the face of its various “leaks” is, ironically, through its erasure as a definable racial category, as was briefly mentioned in the discussion of Tarzan of the Apes. As Jolanta A. Drzewiecka and Kathleen Wong (Lau) point out, the invisibility of whiteness has resulted in its supposed universality. By erasing itself as a race among other races, so the argument goes, whiteness seeks to move itself beyond the problematic processes of identification described above. The very existence and proliferation of whiteness may rely on its construction of blackness and other racial categories, but, if it remains hidden and unspoken, any problems in the maintenance of its boundaries will also remain hidden. In the post-Enlightenment world, where a negative embodiment is opposed to a positive metaphysical existence in an ontological hierarchy expressed in terms of race, class, and gender, to be a member of an “invisible” disembodied race is to have access to privilege.20 As Dyer states, “There is no more powerful position than that of being ‘just’ human.”