The task of counter-hegemonic groups is the development of counter-institutions,
ideologies, and cultures that provide an ethical alternative to the dominant
hegemony, a lived experience of how the world can be different. The entry point
in terms of individual consciousness is the disjuncture between received versions
of reality and lived contradictions" (Lather, 1984, 55-56).
Racism and its effects continue to forcefully impact American society. Efforts to
combat racism have almost always addressed the issue and problems from the perspective
of the groups affected by discriminatory policies and practices. However, during the last
decade of the twentieth century, there was an increasing interest within several disciplines
in foregrounding, interrogating, and rearticulating "whiteness." Within the disciplines of
sociology, speech communication, cultural studies, critical race theory, and education,
discourses have emerged to look at racism not from the perspective of the "other" but
from the perspective of whiteness and white privilege. There have been strident calls for
an analysis of whiteness as a racialized category and for an examination of how whiteness
has (mis)shaped knowledge production in American culture (Keating, 1995).
