This article is a review of the concept of whiteness and how the power and privilege of whiteness is reproduced within societies such as Australia and South Africa. As well as providing a broad overview of whiteness, our aim is to highlight and establish dialogue about how research on whiteness may contribute to decolonisation and work towards social justice. The review begins by outlining the meanings and complexity of whiteness. Having established some parameters for understanding whiteness, the second part of the article focuses on how whiteness reproduces itself. Three different, but related, practices or mechanisms through which whiteness is reproduced have been identified in the literature. These are knowledge and history construction, national identity and belonging, and anti-racism practice. In conclusion, we briefly discuss how we are investigating whiteness further in relation to pedagogy and applied research. While this article is not aimed at providing a complete review of whiteness, it does provide a background against which we can start thinking differently about racism, race relations, and anti-racism. These different ways of thinking include interrogating power and privilege in the analysis of racism, which in turn may lead to more effective and critical action addressing racism.

We welcome the responses offered by Ratele (2007), Stevens (2007), and Steyn (2007) to our article reviewing whiteness. The commentaries provide a more nuanced and sensitive analysis of whiteness, particularly in relation to the history and context of South Africa. While whiteness studies is most certainly not the only, or even the most important, tool for understanding and opposing racism, the responses by Ratele (2007), Stevens (2007), and Steyn (2007) serve to bolster our conviction that a critical interrogation of whiteness is an important resource in continuing to develop effective approaches to anti-racism.We welcome the responses offered by Ratele (2007), Stevens (2007), and Steyn (2007) to our article reviewing whiteness. They are informative and challenging, and extend our exploration of whiteness and the possibilities for research and anti-racism practice. In particular, the commentaries provide a more nuanced and sensitive analysis of whiteness, particularly in relation to the history and context of South Africa. While perhaps our oversights were inevitable in a broad review that endeavoured to find commonalties between two countries that have quite different histories of race relations, the devil is in the detail and we are aware that blunting the complexities of whiteness can lead to a dangerously simplistic understanding of those race relations. In this regard, and many others, we appreciate the responses by Ratele, Stevens, and Steyn, which strengthen and complement what we set out to do. For Steyn and Stevens, the differences centre on the numerical minority of white people compared to Australia