'Pale warriors': skinhead culture and the embodiment of white masculinities

This chapter aims to expose the processes used to enact a white identity. In doing so it argues that whiteness is a choreographed identity, repetitively sustained in corporeal actions. The chapter analyses ethnographic data, based upon interviews with explicitly racist young men, to interpret their stylised investments in adopting a hostile posture of whiteness. It is argued that a key way in which these white identities are consolidated are through racist practices and an investment in a certain type of working-class masculinity. By exploring the performativity of whiteness, and drawing attention to the contradictions and uncertainties underpinning white masculinities, the work aims to make an intervention into debates about whiteness, racism and the cultural experiences of working-class young men.