Fan studies, as a field, currently does not have a robust engagement with race. Recent years have seen the emergence of some awareness of fan studies’ gaps with regard to race and attempts to fill them. Here, it is argued that it is the whiteness of both fandom and fan studies that encourages this inattention to race. The whiteness of fandom leads to fans refusing to address race as well as actively foregrounding whiteness. Whiteness is also vital to examine as a key factor in the media industries’ contemporary engagement with fans. Despite the whiteness of the fandoms that fan studies tends to examine, fans of color do of course exist in them, and the specificities of this dynamic also need to be examined carefully. There is also a substantial gap in our understanding of the specific experiences of fandoms of color.
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