Dr. Alexis Shotwell recently interviewed Dr. Abigail Bailey about her new book, The Weight of Whiteness: A Feminist Engagement with Privilege, Race, and Ignorance, for the Blog of the APA. Dr. Bailey’s book was included as a reading for Dr. Shotwell’s winter Sociology course, SOCI 4850D: Sociology of Whiteness.
Please read an excerpt from the interview below:
Endings offer fine beginnings. My final chapter treats whiteness as an inherited weight and extends what I call a ‘weighty invitation’ to people with white ancestries–especially those of us with settler-colonial pedigrees– to remain still long enough to hold space with the discomfort and pain of the historical weight we inherit from our ancestors. This takes patience and courage. About eight years ago, at my father’s request, I began researching his maternal family line. I wanted to make sense of the boxes of family papers and artifacts I inherited.