Marginalized white ethnicity, race and crime

Abstract

White ethnicity is generally invisible and unexamined in racism, crime and justice debates. Serving mostly as a default comparator to describe visible minority experiences of crime and criminal justice processes, white ethnicity is seen as unproblematic as an ethnicity except as a potential source of racism. This article draws on aspects of `whiteness studies' in the USA and UK—focusing on marginalized white ethnicities—to explore racialized `white' ethnicity, both historically and today. Designations such as white `underclass', `new' migrants, `white trash' are offered to show that some whites are seen as `less white' than others within a hierarchy of `whiteness'. The article concludes that racism and classism towards marginalized white working-class ethnicities have criminalized these groups in ways not too dissimilar from the criminalization of visible working-class minorities.