The task of counter-hegemonic groups is the development of counter-institutions,ideologies, and cultures that provide an ethical alternative to the dominanthegemony, a lived experience of how the world can be different. The entry pointin terms of individual consciousness is the disjuncture between received versionsof reality and lived contradictions" (Lather, 1984, 55-56).

Racism and its effects continue to forcefully impact American society. Efforts tocombat racism have almost always addressed the issue and problems from the perspectiveof the groups affected by discriminatory policies and practices.

However, during the lastdecade of the twentieth century, there was an increasing interest within several disciplinesin foregrounding, interrogating, and rearticulating "whiteness. " Within the disciplines ofsociology, speech communication, cultural studies, critical race theory, and education,discourses have emerged to look at racism not from the perspective of the "other" butfrom the perspective of whiteness and white privilege.

There have been strident calls foran analysis of whiteness as a racialized category and for an examination of how whitenesshas (mis)shaped knowledge production in American culture (Keating, 1995). .