During the day, housewives pegged out billowing sheets, knowing that here in the tough North they were judged on clean linen and the whiteness of the front doorstep … Paul West
2
: something (such as an area or a substance) that is white in color
… this widening in the river, a place indistinguishable in winter from the surrounding whiteness … John Hildebrand
The curtains were being drawn across the aeroplane windows; a screen was lowered at the head of the cabin; images flickered on the whiteness ahead. Shashi Tharoor
This is a gelid whiteness, studded with a few bits of … fruit and altogether devoid of discernible flavor or sweetness. Jay Jacobs
3
: the fact or state of belonging to a population group that has light pigmentation of the skin : the fact or state of being white (see whiteentry 1 sense 2a)
Racial or color categories communicate the long-standing color scale in which lightness/whiteness is more desirable and more socially valued than darkness/blackness. Nadine Fernandez
Did I yearn to convert to whiteness? As a child, if it had been a matter of pushing a button, there were times when I would have pushed it as idly and insistently as a man waiting for an elevator. Kenji Yoshino
The proposition that whiteness, as such, has no content but is rather a negation, the identity of not-being-black, is a shocking revelation to most white Americans, who continue to imagine that there is a nonracist way of defining their whiteness in positive terms, although they are tongue-tied when asked to say what it is. Orlando Patterson
Example Sentences
Recent Examples on the WebGone too is the implicit whiteness of the maker, the viewer and the subject. Chadd Scott, Forbes, 24 July 2022 Unsurprisingly, whiteness was often placed at the top of the hierarchy. Brigit Katz, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Aug. 2022 Okparanta could have turned this moment into an opportunity for a sharp look at the blindness of our protagonist, and a more subtle unfurling of Bird’s whiteness.New York Times, 12 July 2022 That unknown, and the possibility that she was drawn to the doll’s whiteness, disturbed him. Dorany Pinedastaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 23 June 2022 In Latin America, race is often glided over as if all Latin Americans lived through the same racial conditions, but those whose skin tones approximate whiteness benefit from white privilege and colorism; Mabiland knows this. Alán Pelaez Lopez, refinery29.com, 12 June 2022 The only recurring character is the nondescript dream avatar for American whiteness. Darren Franich, EW.com, 8 Apr. 2022 And seeing the character of Peggy Scott on The Gilded Age has opened audiences eyes to the reality that rich, worldly, and sophisticated Black people exist – and have existed for some time – irrespective of adjacency to whiteness. Lynnette Nicholas, Essence, 29 July 2022 And there are the games with color, the white fabrics that are never white, yet seem to blaze with the preternatural whiteness of sheets bleached and dried in the southern sun. Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 15 June 2022 See More
Word History
First Known Use
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Time Traveler
The first known use of whiteness was before the 12th century