Speech given at the 3rd National Conference on Whiteness, University of Chicago, November 7, 1998.

I use the term whiteness to describe such things as white racial identity, white culture and European Americans as a people.

This is different and broader from how other people may use the term.

At the Center for the Study of White American Culture we’ve developed a perspective we call decentering whiteness.

In brief, we say that…
* Whiteness forms center of our society in the United States
* We believe no single racial or cultural group should control the center
* We need to take whiteness out of the center and replace the center with multiracial values

When we talk about being in the center of society, by that we mean having access to power, control of resources and having the ability to enforce one’s values.