A polemical rubric for analysing the way in which the white peoples of Europe constructed and perpetuate a discourse which uses skin pigmentation as a political marker and privileges their own skin colour above all others. It is a polemical term in the sense that although the term race has been around for centuries, it was rarely if ever applied to white peoples, as though to say only people of colour have race. As is also obvious, the very notion of people of colour implies that being white is somehow the standard against which skin pigmentation should be measured and judged. But by the same token, it is the existence of those racialized others that gives whiteness its meaning. Critical analysis of whiteness seeks to expose the falseness of its position as the ânaturalâ, ânormalâ, or âgivenâ term in any debate about skin colour. Whiteness studies is a sub-branch of Postcolonial Studies. Further Reading: R. Dyer White: Essays on Race and Culture (1997). S. Garner Whiteness: An Introduction (2007). G. Hage White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (1997). R. Mohanram Imperial White: Race, Diaspora, and the British Empire (2007). R. Young White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (1990).