Research

The White Normativity Scale (WNS) is a tool used to measure the extent to which white folx perceive whiteness to be the default or standard race.

During college, I was a research assistant with the role of interviewing students about their transition to college. One of the questions was, “What does your culture mean to you?” Nearly all white students either laughed, were confused, or said that they didn’t have a culture. I was struck by this phenomenon of “white normativity,” and was forced to contend with my own understanding of my culture and how race impacted this. As such, I later decided to explore white normativity further through my graduate school dissertation and continue to research it with a team today.

A primary use of the scale is to bring visibility to something that is so often invisible to white folx. Specifically, some of the items may bring awareness to unconscious thought processes and enable us to challenge them.

For the field of psychology in particular, the WNS can be used for therapists, supervisors, and researchers to reflect on and correct how they might inadvertently be using their positions of power to project what is “normal.” This will ideally be an additional tool in challenging Western psychology’s history of basing understandings of health through a limited white lens.