[R]ace as a set of identities, discursive practices. cultural forms, and ideological manifestations would not exist without racism.

The existence of racism does not require that there are races; it requires the belief that there are races.

in a racialized social system all actors are racialized, including whites. Because all social actors are racialized, at some level they must live and perform or "do race."

Race as a passive collectivity or series is a background to identity rather than constitutive of identity. [For example,] [a] person even can claim not to identify at all as white, and this does not change his or her social location or mean that he or she no longer accrues privilege from being part of the dominant racial group.

The salience of racial membership is clearly a less variable matter for some than for others. The "blackness" of blacks is more often an object of focus than the "whiteness" of whites. In this way racialized others (blacks, Latinos. Asians, and so forth) are in many ways thought to "have race" in a way whites deny of themselves.' Thus, blacks and other racial minorities are thought to bring race into situations that previously were understood, in their all-white formation. as nonracial or as racially neutral.

[R]ace is not reproduced from scratch; existing racial schemas, understandings. and rules of interaction fundamentally shape and constrain what is possible. Understanding the relationship between the daily performance of race and larger racial structures is key to our understanding of how race works more generally and to how it shapes the lives of whites. Key here is the recognition that race is always simultaneously about both ideas and resources.

People who are not white can embody or perform hegemonic whiteness (e.g., embracing certain cultural practices, defending institutional practices, protecting particular interests), but those who deviate from hegemonic whiteness are likely to suffer some consequences unless they have access to enough resources to buffer themselves.

Teachers, students, and parents verbally expressed the idea that "everybody is human" just as they expressed, in various forms, beliefs in group level racial differences. For better or worse, these were differences that mattered to them-that shaped where they chose to live, who they wanted their children to marry, who they chose to play with in the schoolyard, what television shows they liked to watch, and how they understood gaps in achievement. These were not part of contrived arguments to defend privilege but just what they believed "to be true," a result of either natural instincts to be around people who are "like themselves" or of "cultural differences" in values. In fact, the white people I spoke to rarely, if ever, thought about their own "racialness." In response to questions about what impact they thought race had had on their lives, they said things like. "I haven't been around it very much."

Part of the privilege associated with whiteness is, in fact, the ability not to think about race at all, not to take any notice whatsoever of its role in daily life.

Given the enormous amount of both similarities and differences between bodies of all kinds, any categorization based on anatomical differences, be it sexual or racial or other, dimorphic or polymorphic, must always choose to invest certain facts with essential meanings and regard other facts (actually, most facts) as insignificant.