whiteness

noun

white·​ness ˈ(h)wīt-nəs 

1

: the quality or state of being white: such as

a

: white color

The whiteness of a diamond is the most important factor, unless you're buying a fancy color like yellow or pink.

—The New York Times Style Magazine

b

: pallor, paleness

… watching the way … his stomach hung pregnant over his belt, the whiteness of his skin, the blueness of his veins …

—Zadie Smith

c

: freedom from stain : cleanness

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 white entry 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

Examples of whiteness in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The original painting is an orange-y color, adding an additional meditation on the specific nature of inclusion and exclusion of art historical canonization from his perspective as a Southern Black man and the problem of whiteness and its history. —Maximilíano Durón, ARTnews.com, 21 Oct. 2024

But European regionalism has always also included ethnic and cultural elements connected to Christianity and whiteness. —Hans Kundnani, Foreign Affairs, 10 Sep. 2024

The temperance look feels like a reaction against a beauty standard drifting away from whiteness; in other words, it is related to the death of Kardashianism, where even the sisters appear to be lightening their tans and slimming their backsides. —Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 19 Oct. 2024

One Civil War-era photographer Charles Eisenmann took pictures of performers known as Circassian Beauties, women supposedly from the Caucasus, displaying them as exemplars of pure whiteness. —Emmanuel Iduma, ARTnews.com, 16 Sep. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1