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 ...