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This review examines research on white racial and ethnic identity, paying special attention to developments in whiteness studies during the past decade. Although sociologists have long focused on white ethnic identity, considerations of white racial identity are more recent. White racial identity is commonly portrayed as a default racial category, an invisible yet privileged identity formed by centuries of oppression of nonwhite groups. Whiteness has become synonymous with privilege in much scholarly writing, although recent empirical work strives to consider white racial identity as a complex, situated identity rather than a monolithic one. The study of white racial identity can greatly benefit from moving away from simply naming whiteness as an overlooked, privileged identity and by paying closer attention to empirical studies of racial and ethnic identity by those studying social movements, ethnic identity, and social psychology.

As neighborhoods that were predominantly White become more racially and ethnically diverse, many Whites in those communities respond with feelings of threat and political shifts to the right. Trump's election in 2016 has often been attributed, at least in part, to such responses among members of the White working class. Building on this work, in the summer of 2017 (and thus after the election) we interviewed 77 working-class White residents of three majority-White cities from the Midwestern United States that had recently become more diverse due to an influx of Latino immigrants and/or an increase in native-born racial minorities. Respondents were asked about their class identity, perceptions of change in their communities, and their attitudes about immigration and racial minorities.

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Many signs point to the contemporary period as a color-blind era, one in which Whites purport to be unaware of race in social or political life. At the same time, White ethnic and racial identity continues to be measured in official government statistics such as the decennial U.S. Census and the annual American Community Survey (ACS). To adjudicate between the two, the ACS ancestry question response can be used not just as a means to measure the actual size of national origin populations but can also be a way to understand what it means to be “White” in an era of color blindness and optional ethnicity. White identities can provide the mechanisms by which color-blind ideologies are understood and expressed. Whites whose primary identity is “American” will understand race in a different way than a White respondent who identifies with a European ethnicity—yet each identity can lead to the same color-blind beliefs. To assess the appeal of different varieties of White identity, the responses of 16,632 non-Hispanic Whites to the ancestry question on the 2011 ACS are used. Based on these data, one can discern four primary types of White identity prevalent in the United States today: “White” (6%), “American” (10%), “ethnic” (62%), and “none” (12%). Each identity is most appealing to a different segment of the population—for example, older, urban Whites are most likely to claim an ethnic identity, while younger Whites living in rural areas with larger Hispanic populations are most likely to claim simply that their ethnic ancestry is “White.” Each identity also suggests a different pathway to color blindness.