“If they were white and middle class”: The possessive investment in whiteness in U.S. History textbooks’ portrayal of 20th-century social democratic reforms

ABSTRACT

The authors analyzed three Advanced Placement U.S. History textbooks’ narratives of U.S. 20^th century social democratic policies (e.g. New Deal, G.I. Bill, pro-suburbanization policies) using Lipsitz’s possessive investment in whiteness as a theoretical framework. The authors found texts portrayed the exclusion of Black populations from policy benefits and, to a lesser extent, the disparate benefits conveyed to white communities. However, discussions of racial disparities were segregated from primary narratives that conveyed race neutrality in policy implementation. Additionally, texts obscured white benefits by framing the racist outcomes of the policies as unavoidable. This work contributes to ongoing critical analyses of official curriculum artifacts like textbooks and standards documents by noting how they manage to include, yet exclude, critical, structural understandings of U.S. history.

KEYWORDS:

• Possessive investment in whiteness
• textbook analysis
• United States history
• whiteness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Following critical scholars such as Hawkman and Shear (2020), we intentionally did not capitalize white to avoid centering whiteness and reifying its hegemonic status.