The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics

George Lipsitz is a professor of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a prolific author of several books including The Possessive Investment in Whiteness (1998), American Studies in a Moment of Danger (2001), and How Racism Takes Place (2011). Aside from his books focusing on race relations in the United States, he has also published books on popular culture and music, and he injects much discussion of popular culture into this text to highlight the relevance of his arguments and appeal to his reader with familiar examples. Lipsitz is also an activist who focuses on fair housing and equity in education. He has served as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the African American Policy Forum and on the Board of Directors of the National Fair Housing Alliance. He uses housing policy to illustrate his arguments about asset inequality among different races.

Lipsitz’ scholarly work is interdisciplinary and crosses the boundaries of Black studies, ethnic studies, whiteness studies, and sociology. His approach to scholarship is grounded in anti-racist, activist goals that involve social reform and pedagogy, which is in contradistinction to the narrow, discipline-bound focus on one particular discipline. Instead of the controversies and competition between ethnic studies and American studies, Lipsitz focuses on building coalitions to address prison reform, queer activism, and a variety of other issues.