This paper addresses a simple but troublesome puzzle: the problem of how to describe and understand the position or location of those who belong to dominant groups (e.g. whites, men, heterosexuals, or the economically well-off) yet resist the usual assumptions and orientations of those groups (e.g. white anti-racists, male feminists, heterosexuals critical of heterosexism, or economically privileged persons against class exploitation ).

The fundamental goal of this essay is to give a cogent account of the location of traitorous white identities, one which explains the sorts of practices that might be associated with traitorousness. While traitorous identities have received less attention in feminist epistemology than critiques of the Cartesian disembodied spectator, or accounts of "outsiders within," they warrant reflection. I begin by setting out Sandra Harding's account of traitorous identities in Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (1991) and take issue with her portrayal of traitors as 'insiders," who as a result of a shift in the way they see and understand the world, "become marginal." I argue that this description is misleading and does not capture Harding's intended meaning. I offer an alternative characterization of traitors which I think reflects more accurately Harding's intended meaning, and avoids the confining features of feminist standpoint theory's margin/center cartography.

Crafting a distinction between "privilege-cognizant" and "privilege-evasive" white scripts, I characterize race traitors as privilege-cognizant whites who refuse to animate the scripts whites are expected to perform, and who are unfaithful to worldviews whites are expected to hold. Defining traitors in terms of the scripts they animate offers an account of traitors that is consistent with the spirit Harding's epistemological project and less prone to misinterpretation. I develop the notion of traitorous scripts further by explaining how animating them helps to cultivate a traitorous character. Using Aristotle's view of character formation I briefly sketch what it might mean to have a traitorous character and conclude by explaining why world travel in Maria Lugones's sense, is indispensable to traitorous character formation.