"Find Ways to Interrogate"

"The critical study of whiteness has grown in recent years, and there has been a plethora of publications for people who identify as white to consult and learn their own origin story. One very notable work is The History of White People, written by Nell Irvin Painter, the Edwards professor of American history, emerita, at Princeton University. Her work, which contributes vitally to the development and expansion of what we consider 'white,' looks as far back as the Greeks and Scythians. What is especially relevant to our political climate is the way Painter's thorough investigation of whiteness reveals an intimate historical affinity with being American. Despite the consensus on the biological meaninglessness of race, it remains a relevant topic in how nonwhites are treated. Painter told me that despite the biological meaninglessness of race, '[t]he idea—the ideologies—of race may change over time, but they are not arbitrary. They relate to relations of power and concepts of class and gender and beauty,' and she pointed out the importance of recognizing the 'social and economic power of ideologies of race.'
"Yet, like the work on whiteness by Du Bois and Baldwin, these insights have generally failed to become a part of popular political and social discourse."

Jordan Lindsey at Slate calls for a whiteness-history month.