Whiteness Matters. What lies in the future?

A semiotic focus on whiteness can improve our understanding of race issues and vice versa, given the role played by whiteness in the context of the interrelation among races, which is today, under the e¤ect of globalization, a world scenario. This does not mean to say that whiteness and race studies converge or that they can be reduced to each other. Global, national, regional and local manifestations of racialization, ever more exasperated in today’s world, cannot be explained in terms of the whiteness question alone. But whiteness studies, especially from a sociosemiotic perspective, can contribute importantly to race studies. In fact, both require an understanding of the logic or, better, ‘‘ideologic’’ that subtends them, that is, the logic of identity, inherent in the verbal ad non-verbal signs and behaviors in which they find expression.