continue to consume racist food products

Corporations all over the United States use "Indian" names, and companies have logos and trademarks with "Indian" themes. From the blue-eyed woman in "Indian Princess" garb on the door of the trucks of the "Navajo" trucking company to the "Indian princess" depicted on the Land 'O Lakes butter packages, stereotypical images of Native Americans are everywhere.

Many corporations add insult to injury by not only appropriating Native images and traditions, but scrambling them in the process. Tuscarora Yarns, for example, has chosen to represent itself with a logo that is a stereotypical image of a Native American in a Northern Plains Indian eagle feather headdress, often misnamed a "war bonnet." My grandfather --a full blood Cherokee and Tuscarora -- was born and raised in North Carolina, the traditional homeland of both these Native peoples. Knowing this, I educated myself about everything I could that related to both nations. Anyone else who took the trouble to do so would know that Tuscarora people did not wear this type of regalia.

--H. Mathew Barkhausen III,
Seventh Native American Generation (SNAG) magazine

The above image, a seemingly warm, generous, and racially feminized offering of butter, has been emanating from Land O'Lakes products for over eighty years now. I'm embarrassed to admit that when I was a kid, I felt attracted to her.

My current embarrassment about that boyhood attraction arises in part from my adult understanding that this buttery "Indian maiden" is just one example of the white supremacy that permeates American life and culture, embedding itself into the most seemingly innocent practices and products. It's also part of a long, disgusting, and ongoing tradition of such advertising imagery, both here and in Europe.

The company that makes this butter, along with other dairy products, is now called Land O'Lakes, Inc., and it's been functioning with "Land O'Lakes" in its name since 1926. The "now-famous Indian maiden," as their web site continues to identify her, adorns all of their products.

I'd be willing to bet that this company has fended off numerous buyout attempts by food-giant conglomerates, and I'd also bet that the continuing and profitable appeal of this "Indian maiden" is a primary reason they've been able to afford staying independent. The trouble is, despite the wholesome, nostalgic aura that draws many consumers to buy Land O'Lakes products, the "appeal" of their "Indian maiden" is a racist one. To whom, exactly, does she appeal, and not appeal?

Like the hoary fantasies of "Indians" and "Pilgrims" sharing with quiet reverence the first "thanksgiving," the Land O'Lakes butter maiden helps white Americans sidestep and repress the horrific realities of what white Americans have done to Native Americans. It also invites continued white oblivion to contemporary Native American misery, by offering instead a warm, fuzzy image, an image that is also oddly sexist, in that it's both sexually alluring and warmly maternal (who knows, maybe that combination explains my pubescent attraction to her).

I'm considering a letter of protest about this to Land O'Lakes' headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota (letters are often tougher to dismiss than emails). I'm also wondering, though, if that would really do much good. After all, not many other consumers seem to object to her ongoing existence in the dairy section. And if most of those few who object are actual Native Americans, like H. Mathew Barkhausen III, Terri Andrews, Rob McDonald, or a blogger who calls himself the Pudgy Indian, well, that's still just a few, right? And they're just "Indians," right? Or so the white thinking seems to go on these matters. But maybe, adding my voice of protest, and yours, would help to send the butter maiden into the retirement that she's been deserving for a long, long time.

When I discovered on the Land O'Lakes web site that the "Prestigious Chef's Council" had endorsed their "Indian" butter, I thought for a second that the company had managed to find a willing council of Native American "Chiefs" somewhere. But, no, it's actually just a "chefs" council (and from what I can tell, all white ones).

And then when I read on another site that Land O'Lakes was announcing their first packaging change "in 86 years," I thought, "Finally! Another purveyor of commodity racism has seen the light." But no, I was wrong again--the only change is the shape of the package, to better conform with the different shapes in which butter has long been sold in some western American states.

"Commodity Racism," a useful term here, was coined by Anne McClintock (in her book Imperial Leather, which is named after a somewhat differently risible product--check out the cheesy, diversionary appeal going on here). McClintock charts the movement of racism during the Victorian era from the realms of science to those of manufacturing, particularly in advertising. The result was early ads like this one, which shows, as McClintock describes it, "an admiral decked in pure imperial white, washing his hands in his cabin as his steamship crosses the threshold into the realm of empire":




Or this one, which speaks for itself in terms of which race embodied connotations of cleanliness and purity, and which embodied the opposite (like you, I can't make out the words below the image):




Unlike Land O'Lakes butter, Pears Soap (which is still made by the British Company that first sold it in in 1789, a date that makes it the oldest brand-name in existence) is now sold in less objectionable ways. Their web site offers an interactive photo album that allows you to flip through examples of their previous advertisements; it's no surprise that the many racist, empire-boosting ads have been scrubbed, as it were, from the record.

As an American product, the obstinately old-fashioned Land O'Lakes butter maiden is part of a distinct tradition of commodity racism in the grocery store, a tradition that mostly consists of images that I'd rather leave in the dustbin of history than reproduce here. Still, a few are worth showing, by way of contextualizing not only the butter maiden, but also other racist images that still end up in today's grocery carts.

Such ads have appealed primarily to white people, by playing up to prevalent stereotypes about other people, as in this bizarre conjunction of text and imagery, for an oddly named brand of sweet potatoes:




Many other images of African Americans depicted them eating stereotypical foods, and sporting completely (and inaccurately) black skin and grotesquely exaggerated features. The latter are echoed in this ad* for American Apparel (click on it for a larger version):




But back to the particular kind of image that we still see in the butter maiden, that of iconic individuals who helped to sell food. There's Aunt Jemima, whose image still sells syrup, and who looked like this in 1899:




Like the butter maiden, Aunt Jemima has yet to be retired, though she has been "updated"; today she looks like this:




There's also the Frito Bandito. Fortunately, he has been retired:





So why am I filling up my white-folks blog with racist images of non-white folks?

Because such images are much more about white people, and especially white fantasies, than they are about actual non-white people. They conjure up thoughts and feelings of warmth, or humor, or security, but they do so by conjuring up racist thoughts, sensations, and even fears about subjugated people.

If we can afford to buy more food than the bare necessities to survive in terms of nutrition--if we're in a position to pick and choose--then we're also buying, and "consuming," the connotative aura that's added to the foods by the images placed on them. These images have much more to do with why we buy products than we often realize, and their effects in reinforcing racist ideas are also stronger than we often realize.

For me, the issue is quite simple--we should boycott these kinds of foods, and all such commodity racism should be retired.

And don't even get me started on the racist imagery that infests all levels of American sports.

(Contact info for companies listed above: American Apparel, Land O'Lakes, and Quaker Oats, the maker of Aunt Jemima products)

*As several readers of this post and this one have noted, this image isn't an "ad," but rather a magazine article; American Apparel's distancing of sorts from the image appears on their web site here.


UPDATE: The more things change . . .




Boston.com: "A box of Obama Waffles is seen in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008. A vendor at a conservative political forum was selling boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap. The product was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix and sold it for $10 a box at the Value Voters Summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council."

apologize instead of compensate

WASHINGTON (CNN, 7/29/08) -- The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for slavery and the era of Jim Crow.

The nonbinding resolution, which passed on a voice vote, was introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen, a white lawmaker who represents a majority black district in Memphis, Tennessee.

While many states have apologized for slavery, it is the first time a branch of the federal government has done so, an aide to Cohen said.

In passing the resolution, the House also acknowledged the "injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow."

"Jim Crow," or Jim Crow laws, were state and local laws enacted mostly in the Southern and border states of the United States between the 1870s and 1965, when African-Americans were denied the right to vote and other civil liberties and were legally segregated from whites.

The name "Jim Crow" came from a character played by T.D. "Daddy" Rice who portrayed a slave while in blackface during the mid-1800s.

The resolution states that "the vestiges of Jim Crow continue to this day."

"African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow -- long after both systems were formally abolished -- through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity," the resolution states.

The House also committed itself to stopping "the occurrence of human rights violations in the future."

The resolution does not address the controversial issue of reparations. Some members of the African-American community have called on lawmakers to give cash payments or other financial benefits to descendents of slaves as compensation for the suffering caused by slavery. . . .


So what exactly does yesterday's Congressional vote mean in terms of anything really worthwhile? Anything, that is, beyond mere words?

First of all, a "resolution" is a mere statement of opinion or support by a political body. The word "nonbinding" underscores the lack of real action such resolutions tend to entail. As Wikipedia succinctly puts it,

A non-binding resolution is a written motion adopted by a deliberative body that cannot progress into a law. . . . An example would be a resolution of support for a nation's troops in battle, which carries no legal weight, but is adopted for moral support.

The issue that Congress totally sidestepped is, of course, that of reparations. Most white Americans think that the idea of offering financial compensation to today's African Americans for injustices suffered by their ancestors is nonsense, since, you know, "that was all in the past."

However, other Americans recognize that the effects of those past injustices live on--including members of Congress, as evinced by yesterday's Congressional resolution, in a sentence worth reading again:

African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow -- long after both systems were formally abolished -- through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity.

Right. So how about some compensation, then, for those who continue to "suffer from the consequences"? How long will it be before our federal servants--excuse me, our federal "politicians"--move to the next logical, ethical, moral step on this issue?

I'm not holding my breath. But I'm also not without hope that something can be done in the meantime. In this video, damali ayo demonstrates one way of redistributing income in racial terms--maybe ordinary, goodhearted white folks should follow her lead.

There's more information about damali ayo's conceptual art project, "Living Flag," here.

white quotation of the week (damali ayo)

White: adj. Descendents of European and some semitic peoples. Confusing due to the word’s association with all things good. Common dictionary definitions include, “the color of pure snow,” “angelic,” “clean,” and “without malice.” Despite these positive associations, when applied to a person, the term often raises discomfort among people belonging to this racial category. Many prefer to reject this label in favor of a less controversial ethnicity. The kind of response often heard from a person identified as white is, “I’m not white. I’m Irish.” . . .

White Noise:
Common Questions that You’ll Have to Answer

“White noise” is the term for sounds that are such a regular part of your environment that they blend into a dependable background hum. White noise is a subtle sound track for your daily life. It’s like living next to a freeway. At first, the sound of the cars may seem so loud you can barely hear yourself think. But after a while the drone becomes familiar, a standard part of your daily routine. In fact, some days you can’t imagine living without it. Just kidding.

You may have heard these statements so often that you’ve begun to tune them out. It’s time to splash some cold water on your face and listen again to what’s being said around you. . . .

• “Do black people get tan? What I mean is, does your skin get darker? And then do you call that ‘tan’ or ‘darker’? You get blacker, right? Or do you get lighter? Do you get lighter in the sun?”

• “You speak English very well. You’re so articulate. You can talk without even sounding black. But you could sound black if you wanted to, right? Do it now. Say something and sound really black.”

• “I used to try to make friends with black people, but black people just don’t want to be friends with white people. I try to talk to them and they look at me like I’m crazy. What am I doing wrong?”

• “I thought it would be really fascinating to meet you since you’re from the Caribbean. Oh, you’re not from the Caribbean? Well, you could be. Are you sure you’re not?”

• “I’ve met a few black people in my life. They were interesting, always wore the most colorful clothes. I don’t remember their names. I liked to look at them. But I didn’t make friends with any of them. We didn’t have anything in common.”

• “How come black people don’t come to our group? I invite them. I have food I think they will like, but they don’t come. Week after week we wait, and no people of color come. They just aren’t interested in our group. I guess we’re going to stay an all-white group. I don’t know how to change that. It’s not our fault. We want to talk about racism, but how can we do that without people of color there?’

• “Why do you call yourselves black? I mean you’re not really black, you’re more of a brown color. Though I did see this man once who was so black. He was actually black, like the color, like my shoes. Actually black. He was beautiful. I thought so.”

• “You have such an interesting name. Are you named after [insert name of geographical landmark] or [insert name of ethnic food] or maybe [insert rhyming name of impoverished country]? I’ve never met anyone with your name. Did you make it up yourself?”

• “Why are you always talking about racism? Can’t you just relax? I tell people not to talk about race around black people ‘cause you’ll get really angry and call them racist.”

• “I really don’t have very much experience with people of color. I don’t know what to say or do. I’m from an all-white town, remember? Don’t fault me for my circumstances. If I’m surrounded by white people, I’m going to know mostly white people and know about white people. What am I supposed to do? Yes, all of my friends are white, but I don’t know any other people. Am I supposed to seek out black people? You think they’re going to talk to me?”

• “My grandparents are the most racist people you’d ever meet. I sit at dinner sometimes and they say the most racist things. I can’t believe it. There’s nothing I can do about it. Let me tell you some of the things they say. They are so racist.”

• “Last year I read this book, I don’t remember the name, but a black person wrote it. You know the one they made into a movie? It was great. You’d like it. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever read. You’d probably understand it more than I would. It was really good. The main character was black and he killed a woman and he was running from the police. And I don’t want to spoil the ending or anything ‘cause you really should read it, but he gets killed. In the end. In prison. He was guilty. It was really good. Really realistic. A black person wrote it, so it was accurate. I think it was based on a true story. I bet it was true. You’d like it. You should read it. I’ll lend it to you.”

• “Where I went to school there was a lot of racism and the black kids were always protesting. I don’t really know much about it. I heard once that the campus police beat this kid up because he was black. But he must have done something wrong. Anyway, I didn’t really get involved with it. I had to concentrate on important things, like my schoolwork.”

• “All the black people I’ve met are so angry, it makes it hard to be friends with them. But you are easy to talk to. You don’t get mad every time I say something.”

• “You come from a big family. And you grew up in the ghetto, I mean, inner city. Right? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Did you have to share a bedroom with all of them? Do you know your father? And you were really poor and on welfare. Or did you have money? Then you aren’t really black. Like, you are black, but you are kind of white too. You kind of act white. I bet you can be black or white depending on who you’re talking to.”

• “Were your great-grandparents slaves? I just found out that my great-great-grandparents were slave masters. They owned slaves. Of course I don’t think that’s good or anything. I’m glad that it’s all in the past now. I can’t be held responsible for something my ancestors did hundreds of years ago. It was a really long time ago. Everything is different now. People are equal. I can’t keep paying for things my ancestors did that I don’t even believe in. What am I supposed to do, pay a special tax? A white tax?”

• “People think that you, I mean black people, are uneducated. But you’re different. I mean, I don’t think of you that way. A lot of people I know think that way. You’re easy to talk to. Most black people aren’t as easy to talk to as you are. I can say whatever I want around you and I know you’re not going to call me a racist or something. Right? Because I’m not. I’m not a racist. You know that, right?”

• ‘I don’t even see race. When I look at someone I don’t see their race at all. I’m really beyond all of that.”

• “I don’t think of you as black.”

damali ayo,
How to Rent a Negro (2005)

damali ayo's award-winning work has been shown at galleries across the world. She has spoken to Colleges, High Schools, Non-profits and communities in 20 U.S. states and Canada about race, diversity, art and eco-living. damali and her work have been featured in over 100 publications world-wide including Harpers, the Village Voice, Salon.com, the Washington Post, Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune, and CSPAN2's "Book TV." In 2008 damali folded her work fighting racism into a broader vision for holistic change and healing in her creation of CROW Clothing, a new kind of clothing company that uses sustainable fibers, supports social change and helps to inspire its customer base through educational tools and resources.

extend the white conquest of the earth into outer space

Dashing billlionaire space cowboy Richard Branson,
with mockups of Spaceship Two and White Knight Two

I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly:

"But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?"

Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!

-- W.E.B. Du Bois,
Darkwater (1920)

MOJAVE, California (AP, 7/28/08) -- Virgin Galactic is giving the world a glimpse of its secret space tourism program.

Sir Richard Branson's space company Monday trotted out the mothership aircraft that will launch a still-to-be-built spaceship out of the atmosphere.

The mothership is a white, four-engine plane with room in the middle where the spacecraft will go.

The early morning rollout in California's Mojave desert came four years after SpaceShipOne became the first private manned rocket to reach space.

Now the White Knight Two aircraft being shown today is due to undergo flight tests this fall.

More than 250 customers have paid $200,000 or put down a deposit for the chance to be one of Virgin Galactic's first space tourists.

A date for the first launch has yet to be announced.


That's a lot of "whiteness," Sir Richard. Its predominance probably also permeates, in a more overtly racial sense, White Knight Two's passenger list. All that whiteness certainly correlates in an odd, perhaps ironic way with the fundamental connection made so presciently by W.E.B. DuBois, between white racial ideology and the conquest of the earth.

It's as if, once the earth is more or less a "white" or "whitened" place, in that it's largely owned by white people, and largely operated under white presumptions, in many cases for white people . . . where else is there to go with such endless white expansion, except "up"?

DuBois wasn't the only non-white person to marvel at how incredibly acquisitive white people tend to be when it comes to land and space. In Linden Hills, Gloria Naylor's 1985 satire on the African American middle class, one of the fictional characters is the black owner of a piece of land located somewhere in the northern United States, sometime in the early 1900s. As this character, Luther Nedeed, contemplates what to do with the land, which will eventually become a wealthy, exclusively black suburb, he thinks:

Like his father, he saw where the future of Wayne County--the future of America--was heading. It was going to be white: white money backing white wars for white power because the very earth was white--look at it--white gold, white silver, white coal running white railroads and steamships, white oil fueling white automotives. Under the earth--across the earth--and one day, over the earth. Yes, the very sky would be white. He didn't know exactly how, but it was the only place left to go.

During the 1960s, America's largely black-and-white racial divide was reflected in differing communal opinions on "America's" effort to reach the moon, via NASA's Apollo program. Many black people knew that the whole "conquering outer space" thing was mostly a white thing, and not just because all the people they saw doing it on their televisions were white people.

As Lynn Spigel writes in her chapter on "Outer Space and Inner Cities,"

While many whites were critical of the space project, nationwide polls demonstrated significant racial differences. According to David Nye, from 1965 to 1969 the strongest supporters of Apollo tended to be Caucasian, male, young, affluent, and well educated. Meanwhile, "the strongest opposition lay within the Black community, where less than one in four supported the expenditure of $4 billion per year for the Apollo program." This opposition was not a rejection of science or even space exploration per se. Instead, African American criticism of NASA was articulated within the broader context of racial protest. . . .

Mainstream media targeted at whites typically presented the space race in the context of family life. In Life and Look, astronaut heroes were depicted as ideal suburban dads and their wives as perfect housewives. And while Hollywood science fiction films and television programs did sometimes present stories that dealt with prejudice and colonialism, these media spoke allegorically about race. In contrast, African American responses to the space race (whether positive or negative) were often explicitly tied to a critique of suburban segregation and the plight of blacks in the inner cities.

Coda:

Gil Scott-Heron
"Whitey on the Moon"

display their values with t-shirts

[Cross-posted by request from Know Good White People]

Calling a few adventurous anti-racists…

I am conducting an experiment, and I need the help of ten people of various ethnic backgrounds who are willing to participate.

The experiment will simply entail wearing a (free) t-shirt that features a photo of an abolitionist hero with the message “I’ll choose my own heroes, thank you.” Participants must agree to post about reactions to the shirt.

There are two different t-shirts in the experiment. Both feature white American abolitionists. One of the t-shirts features a picture of John Brown, the other a picture of James and Lucretia Mott. See samples of each shirt below.

Of course, the text on the shirt would indicate that the individual depicted there is indeed someone you would choose as a hero — if that is not the case, you would not be an appropriate candidate for this experiment. I am looking for participants who would choose John Brown and/or James and Lucretia Mott as individuals they would refer to as heroes.

The shirt is free to ten selected participants who write to "knowgoodwhitepeople" at novelistkc@gmail.com Please include a brief paragraph about your interest and/or involvement in anti-racist issues, indicate your ethnicity(ies), and tell me why you are interested in this experiment. Also please include a mailing address, and indicate which of the shirts you would prefer (and why).

Front of John Brown T-shirtBack of John Brown T-shirt

Back of John Brown T-shirt

Front of James and Lucretia Mott T-shirt

Back of James and Lucretia Mott T-shirt

Email your request to novelistkc@gmail.com

These t-shirts (prior to decoration) are produced by American Apparel. To read about their committment to a sweat-shop free work environment and fair wages and benefits for their employees visit:

http://www.americanapparel.net/contact/ourworkers.html

UPDATE: knowgoodwhitepeople adds:

Damn, I thought I was doing my homework when I found AA. :-( It is ridiculously difficult to find a clothing manufacturer that is not tied in some way to the abuse of human beings.

Does anyone know of a cruelty-free t-shirt manufacturer?

know what "the n-word" means, but not what "the g-word" means

White Americans have different opinions about the word referred to by that common euphemism, "the n-word." Some ask why, if black people can use the actual word, white people can't; some don't see a problem with anyone using that word; some say no one should use it; and some (including me) say that white folks shouldn't use it, and that the question of whether black folks should use it is the business of no one else but black folks.

So it's clear that nearly all white Americans know what that euphemism, "the n-word," means. However, if you instead said another phrase to them, "the g-word," few would know which word you're referring to. That's mainly because in most situations, if someone catches a white person using the word that "the g-word" refers to, it's far less embarrassing for that person than if he or she had been caught using the word referred to by that other phrase, "the n-word." Since white folks think that their use of the actual "g-word" isn't all that embarrassing, they've seen no reason to create and use that euphemism ("the g-word") for it.

As with the actual "n-word," getting called out for using the actual "g-word" should provoke something worse than mere embarrassment for white folks. And that phrase, "the g-word," should become as much a part of the ordinary white American's vocabulary as the word that it refers to. And finally, of course, white usage of the actual word that it refers to should stop.

In this three-minute video, an author talks about his new book on this topic and, especially, about the repeated usage by one of our prominent politicians of the actual word that the phrase "the g-word" refers to.







[hat-tip for the video to no1kstate at momma, here come that girl again!; for more information on Irwin Tang's book, go here]

this week's white news and views

• "Friend of Mexican Immigrant Beaten to Death in Pennsylvania Gives Eyewitness Account of Attack" (Amy Goodman @ Democracy Now!)

  Luis Ramirez, a twenty-five-year-old Mexican immigrant, was beaten to death last week by a group of teenagers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. He was walking home last Saturday night when six white high school students brutally beat him while yelling racial slurs. Despite eyewitness testimony, no charges have been filed. We speak with Arielle Garcia, a friend of Ramirez who witnessed the attack.
  

• "Not Quite White: When Racial Ambiguity Meets Whiteness?" (Nadra Kareem @ Racialicious)

  I grew up trying to spot the otherness in whites—such as Janet on “Three’s Company” or the star of “Wonder Woman,” who, it turns out, is half-Mexican—because I was hungry to see myself represented in a medium in which my kind was mostly invisible. But that’s not the only reason I make such connections. On a subconscious level, I believe that I respond to white society’s rejection of blackness by projecting blackness onto whites. The rationale is that, if whites are part-black themselves, their racism doesn’t just amount to hatred of people of color but to a sort of self-hatred. In this way, it is easy to see how racism isn’t just damaging to its so-called targets but to society collectively.

• "What if you (don’t) got white skin? (Consuming Whiteness part 2)" (the professor @ Professor, What if . . . ?)

  Of course, milk is not pure (unless you consider growth hormones pure) and is neither healthy or curative for the majority of people. Nevertheless, the US still equates wholesomeness, purity, and good health with milk. Just last week my daughter stayed at her cousin’s house where she was only allowed milk as it is ‘good for you.’ Too shy to refuse to drink it, she has been suffering stomach pains as milk does not do her body good. And, today, my aunt reprimanded me when I told her my kids don’t drink milk. These relatives of mine are not unique I suspect — they, like many other Americans, have been misled by a very successful ad campaign into believing that a beverage that is unhealthy and damaging to the majority of the world’s populace ‘does a body good.’ Not only is it an unhealthy product for many, it is also promoted via a racist narrative that conveys a white supremacist paradigm.
  

• "Do Americans Expect Their Business Leaders to Be White? Study Says Yes" (Melissa Lafsky @ Discover Magazine)

  In one example of how embedded racial biases can play out, researchers at Duke, the University of Toronto, and Northwestern business schools found that Americans still overwhelmingly expect business leaders to be white, and rank white leaders as more effective than their minority counterparts.
  
  The study’s data came from 943 undergraduate and graduate students, nearly all of whom had experience working for a company or corporation. They were given fictitious news reports and performance reviews from a fake company and then asked to guess the race of a set of CEOs, project leaders, and other employees described in the materials.
  
  The participants overwhelmingly (up to 72 percent) guessed that the people in power were white, even when the students were told that the company was predominantly African American, Hispanic American, or Asian American. The same “presumption of whiteness” didn’t occur when the subjects assessed the less powerful and accomplished employees.
  

• "Post-Racial = Assimilation, Folks" (Tennessee Slim @ . . . on whatever crosses my mind)

  [B]lackness is such a drag. For White folks. They are tired of talking about it and they are tired of being reminded of it. Post-racial is about getting past all the things about "blackness" that makes White folks uncomfortable. It's not about getting past whiteness so that race takes on a meaning having nothing to do with a power dynamic (which would be truly post-racial). That would require the acknowledgment that there is a relationship of power between Black folks and White folks. And we still aren't there.
  
  Obama makes does make White folks feel better in their whiteness. In this sense, we are at a place where some Black men aren't necessarily frightening, but this is not the same as redefining the image of blackness in the White imagination. In other words, Obama is the exception that proves the rule.
  

• "The End of White Flight: For the First Time in Decades, Cities' Black Populations Lose Ground, Stirring Clashes Over Class, Culture and Even Ice Cream" (Conor Dougherty @ The Wall Street Journal)

  For much of the 20th century, the proportion of whites shrank in most U.S. cities. In recent years the decline has slowed considerably -- and in some significant cases has reversed. Between 2000 and 2006, eight of the 50 largest cities, including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, saw the proportion of whites increase, according to Census figures. The previous decade, only three cities saw increases.
  
  The changing racial mix is stirring up quarrels over class and culture. Beloved institutions in traditionally black communities -- minority-owned restaurants, book stores -- are losing the customers who supported them for decades. As neighborhoods grow more multicultural, conflicts over home prices, taxes and education are opening a new chapter in American race relations.
  

• "White Women Who Don't Get Racism" (Jesse @ Racism Review)

  [Katie] Couric didn’t stop there, though. She went on to suggest that there is sexism in the news business and beyond in the larger society, but that “sexism is worse than racism.” . . . With this assessment, Couric joins a long and growing list of white-women-who-don’t-get-it, when it comes to racism, such as Geraldine Ferraro. As Adia Harvey wrote here back in March, “Making the case that sexism is worse than racism or even that it is the primary source of women’s oppression ignores the experiences of minority and working-class women (who simultaneously contend with racism and capitalist exploitation) and ultimately alienates these women from feminism and feminist causes.”
  
  
  

• "White privilege.. its everywhere I am not" (Blackgirlinmaine's weblog)

  Imagine walking around in a large city when the urge to take a sudden and powerful bowel movement hits (I know this is sounding crazy but stick with me), well the spousal unit just looks for a nice hotel and wanders in and uses their facilities. The first time he shared this with many years ago, I looked at him like he was crazy, see when I used to live in Chicago and found myself in a similar predicament it never dawned on me to go to a hotel. Perhaps, because I have had experiences when traveling and staying at top notch hotels where just my appearance required showing a key card and proof I really belonged at the hotel and wasn’t loitering. Its a small thing but it was one of the first times I stopped to ponder how we, Black folks and White folks at times can inhabit different worlds.
  
  In more recent days, a white girlfriend and I were discussing local beaches we take our kids, and my pal shared that she regularly uses one particular beach that is private… I knew the beach in question but was fascinated that she regularly just used it with no concerns, I even asked her aren’t you concerned that the organization that owns it might ask you to leave? She told me no; see white privilege allows you to go and do seemingly simple things like shit or use a beach with no concerns that someone might question you, hound you, or disturb you in any way. Damn, it must be nice. . .
  
  
  

And finally, a poem about white folks, by Dana Kaiser-Davidson (@ Everyday Whiteness)


My People: White People

My people: white people
Truth be told “we” never were a people, fragments of cultures that bought into privilege
called whiteness, the invisible word
I remember 10th grade family history project being more concerned about my place in the human race
Bypassed cultural legacy for oneness, WE are all one my white people said
Not a color thing, just people.

My people: white people, Land of independent nuclear families
Smothering ideals of perfection, Bottled up resentments, Blistering silences
No such thing as mistakes or getting messy
We keep quiet to our own addictions, then blame people of color for all things called bad
poverty, drugs abuse, domestic violence, molestation. . . perceived as isolated problems that white people are free from.

My people: white people
We say we are not racist, yet we are raised in a racist society
Pass on stereotypes of what we think people of color are really like to our children
We are fed half-truths and lies in history books
We sit silently while children are made into puppets on T.V color
White children learn diversity through Disney’s Pocahontas and Aladdin
Stereotypes that my grandparents taught me filtered my own perceptions
My people we have been hurt to think this separation does not chain our minds and hurt our souls

As I mind my mind with forgiveness, I let go of shame for my own people
I’ve deemed myself better than
I’ve acted out the lies I’ve been told, believing I was never racist
I sat in silence, guilt immobilized my mind
Held my own spirit captive
ego chatter categorized good and bad white people

Heaven on earth looks like oneness
With my own people
What is the use of pretending I am not like those white people
Who latch onto other cultures in order to cope with fragmented family histories

My people
From Irish, Scottish, English, German and unknown descent
Carried legacies of hurts with them
Pulled up from bootstraps laced in shoes stained in blood of slavery and genocide

My people: white people
Let’s love the hurts of forgotten legacies into wholeness
Let’s forgive our forefathers and mothers as we forgive ourselves for the violence, silence, shame and separation that internalized racial superiority has caused
For living in comfortable bubbles of safety
For believing we were never racist
Lets educate ourselves and other white people to histories ignored instead of asking people of color to be our teachers or explain the hurts they have faced

My people: white people
I vow to love you arms wide open as I love my baby niece
All white people no matter what you’ve said,
done, kept silent in the name of privilege
You are good people
It’s time to mourn the hurts we’ve afflicted as a people
It’s time to grieve our separation from our own indigenous heritages
each cultural legacy dropped in the name of survival

It’s time to love our peoples, love ourselves
consciously awaken from our legacy of racial smog
Into awareness of our white privileges and culture
Let us create pride in our people
birthed in freedom, shared power, prosperity
and tangible oneness with all people
My people: white people,
the spiritual revolution is calling you

listen to anti-racist music

It's naive to think a few well intended musicians can do something about a problem so widespread and endemic.

--The Spectator's Toby Young
on fighting racism with music

From The Clash to Bob Dylan, from Bob Marley to U2, from NOFX to Saul Williams to Nas, and from many others to many others--a lot of music with an anti-racist message gets listened to by a lot of white people. But it seems that few of these white people--white Americans, at least--ever get inspired by that kind of music to go out and actually DO anything against racism.

Is music a viable venue for fighting racism? Is Toby Young's cynicism about fighting racism with music justified, or do some musical efforts of this sort result in a reduction of racism and/or white supremacy?

Two songs toward further cerebral stimulation on this matter:

Johnny Cash
"White Girl"
(lyrics)




Billy Bragg
(channeling Woody Guthrie)
"All You Fascists"
(lyrics)

fail to give credit to non-white people for understanding whiteness

I recently realized that in writing this blog, I haven't done enough to acknowledge many of my sources for information about white folks and the ongoing reality of white supremacy. So I should pause in my writing of this blog to say something that I haven't said often or fully enough--my understanding of the ways of white folks is fundamentally informed by the knowledge and insights of non-white people.

To put it as simply as I can: understanding white people has been a matter of life or death for non-white people, so many of them have come to understand a lot of things about white people, and about how race operates in society, that most white people don't know.

As I write about whiteness, and as I work against it in my daily life, I continuously draw on what amounts to an ongoing tradition, an especially African American tradition, of analyzing and recording the ways of white folks. In order to give some credit where credit is due, I added a subtitle to this blog from a favorite book of mine, The Ways of White Folks, by Langston Hughes. He's a writer whose work continues to receive accolades for his insightful and artful depictions of black feelings, thought, and behavior, but virtually no recognition for his equally penetrating insight into white feelings, thought, and behavior.

Today I'm also offering, much later than I should have in the course of writing this blog, the following list of materials that have especially informed my understanding. These writings generously offer non-white knowledge about the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of white folks, and about white supremacy and hegemony. White folks especially should read (or watch) some of them, and listen, and incorporate them into their understanding of themselves and their own racialized positions in the world.

There isn't room here for me to list all such works, nor to describe each of them, so I've added links to other online sources for each, when I could find them. This list is by no means complete. I'm sure it also fails to give enough credit to non-white writers on whiteness who are not African American. If you know of any more works that could appear on this list, please let me know, either in a comment or via email (unmakingmacon at gmail dot com), and if they clearly fit, I will add them. I'll also add any work that occurs to me later.


[Thanks to Tim Wise for suggesting a post of this sort. And by way of returning the favor: Tim is requesting help with a book he's writing, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and Whiteness in the Age of Obama. You can go here for more information, including how to point him to potentially useful materials.]


Damali Ayo, How to Rent a Negro (2005)

James Baldwin, "Stranger in the Village" (1955); The Fire Next Time (1963); "Going to Meet the Man" (short story, 1965); "The Price of the Ticket" (1985)

Valerie Babb, Whiteness Visible: The Meaning of Whiteness in American Literature and Culture (1998)

Mia Bay, The White Image in the Black Mind African-American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925 (2000)

Octavia Butler, Kindred (novel, 1979)

Shakti Butler, Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible (film, 2006)

Charles W. Chesnutt, "The Passing of Grandison" (short story, 1899)

Vine Deloria, Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (1995)

W.E.B. DuBois, "The Souls of White Folks" (1920)

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

Cheryl I. Harris, "Whiteness as Property" (1993)

bell hooks, "Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination" (1992)

Langston Hughes, The Ways of White Folks (short stories, 1933)

Zora Neale Hurston, Seraph on the Suwanee (novel, 1948)

Michelle T. Johnson, Working While Black: The Black Person's Guide to Success in the White Workplace (2004)

Chang-rae Lee, Aloft (novel, 2004)

Joseph Marshall III, "White Lore" (1998)

Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (1997)

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1970); "Recitatif" (short story, 1983); Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992)

Adrian Piper, "Cornered" (art installation, 1988); "Passing for White/Passing for Black" (1992)

David Roediger, Black on White: Black Writers on What it Means to be White (anthology, 1999)

Danzy Senza, Caucasia (novel, 1998)

George Schuyler, Black No More (novel, 1931)

Ronald Takaki, Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th-Century America (1979)

Thandeka, Learning to Be White: Race, Money and God in America (2000)

Melvin Van Peebles, Watermelon Man (film, 1970)

Richard Wright, Savage Holiday (novel, 1954)

Frank H. Wu, Yellow (2002)

George Yancy, What White Looks Like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question (2004)

white quotation of the week (toi derricotte)

A Woman Who Looks White

The woman on the TV talk show looks white, is confident, unerring, and unashamed of herself; but the audience doesn't believe she is black, not the blacks or the whites, and they are all angry that she has dyed her hair blond. They accuse her of dating whites, though she says, and I believe, that she has never dated whites. Here attitude is tough: "I know I'm black, and I don't care what you think of me." She is definitely not sucking up to any of them.

The blacks and the whites are allied in their hatred. Perhaps the whites are mad because they don't want to think that anyone who looks as white as they do could be black. They don't want the lines to be fuzzy. If somebody who could be one of them doesn't want to be, maybe being white isn't as great as they thought. And many blacks have worked hard not to want to be that woman. The irritant might creep under the door. Some of us, without thinking, may still refer to her "good" hair.

Several young men at an all-black college recently told me that in their dreams they saw themselves as colorless or white. Sometimes a sin in thought, even if uncommitted, is just as stinking. When we look at her we remember that somebody made somebody else feel like shit and then preferred the world that way.

If she had been white, her self-possession under attack may have been admirable. But for a black woman--and a light-skinned black woman at that, who should at least be sorry for her color--to be so imperturbable, to have gotten away with her own self-worth . . . well, it seemed totally wrong, as if she had gotten away with murder.

She shows photographs of relatives from several generations back, all of whom look like the most middle-class people from Iowa--men in business suits, educators, lawyers, doctors, ministers, and women with fluffy soft hair and a sense of security in their eyes. It is as if the family built a city around her heart which had protected her from what we are all supposed to suffer, as if she hadn't yet heard the news.

--Toi Derricotte,
The Black Notebooks

Toi Derricote's books include The Empress of the Death House, Natural Birth, Captivity, and Tender, winner of the 1998 Patterson Poetry prize, and a memoir, The Black Notebooks. The Black Notebooks was a recipient of the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association of Nonfiction Award, and was nominated for the PEN Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is Co-Founder of Cave Canem, the historic first workshop/retreat for African American poets.

focus on racists instead of racism

In "How to Talk to Racists," Jay Smooth from Ill Doctrine clarifies the distinction between the "what they did" conversation and the "what they are" conversation. He's right--this distinction is crucial to understand.

repress their awareness that they're living on stolen land

I wrote a couple of days ago about Elisabeth Hasselbeck's enactment of a common white tendency in mixed race discussions, that of elbowing themselves onto center stage and taking up most of the time and attention (usually while talking about race in terms of non-white people, instead of in terms of themselves and other white people).

Hasselbeck's behavior got me thinking about another mixed-race discussion, Lee Mun Wah's 1994 film, The Color of Fear, where a group of men spend a weekend together, discussing racial matters with even more apparent sincerity than the women of The View. I watched the film again to see if the white men in the group enact the same phenomenon; one of the two did, and the other didn't. And that seems to have everything to do with how far along the road they are toward self-awareness in racial terms.

The group of men who share their normally hidden feelings about race throughout The Color of Fear consists of eight North Americans of various races, and two of them are white. One of the latter, Gordon Clay, begins his self-introduction by stating, "I am a racist," and the other, David Christensen, well, he's a lot like Elisabeth Hasselbeck. For him, matters of race are mostly about non-white people, since being white pretty much doesn't mean a damn thing to him. At least not at first.

All of the eight men get a good deal of camera time in this emotionally wrenching film, but David seems to get the most. It's not so much that he insists as much as Elisabeth does on occupying center stage. It's more that, as the discussion goes on, it becomes clear to the rest of the group that not only is David the most obstinately unenlightened member of the group. He also perfectly embodies the kind of blithe, complacent white supremacy that the rest of them (including the other white guy, Gordon) are struggling to articulate their difficulties with. So the other men spend a lot of time trying to get David to understand their reality, and his own.

The member of the group most willing to confront David with his own racial blindness and unwitting arrogance is Victor Lewis, an African American man (who has gone on to widespread renown as a anti-racist educator, trainer, and activist).

In this two-minute clip from the film, which I very, very much recommend seeing and sharing, Victor confronts two other common white tendencies enacted by David--the white-individualist claim that all people "stand on their own" in this world, and the forgetfulness buried within that claim that the ground white Americans stand on is stolen land.

If you can get a group of people to watch it with you, this film remains a fantastic generator for discussion. And like other films that I've featured on this blog, I recommend asking your local library to order a copy if it doesn't have one yet.

this week's white news and views

• "What if whiteness doesn’t do a body good? (Consuming Whiteness part 1)" (the professor @ Professor, What if . . .?)
  

  In a series of pieces slated to post to this blog over the next few weeks, I will consider how advertisements continue to promote ideas of white supremacy and induce the US public to consume the idea that whiteness (in food, bodies, clothing, etc) is ideal. . . . From white t-shirts to white bread to white picket fences to white women to white teeth to white socks to white skin to white undergarments to white paper, ads (and the commodities they aim to sell) invest in (and perpetuate) white as good, white as superior, and white as pure.
  
  However, as recent findings have revealed, white is not so good or healthy when it comes to food. The no-carb craze has shown white carbs to be the worst for the body while milk’s ‘goodness’ has been made questionable due to all the growth hormones pumped into cows as well as to studies showing that milk is not all that good for the body after all. Yet, to replace these outmoded investments in whiteness, we have turned to other white pursuits, such as teeth whitening and (gasp) anal bleaching. Who knew that having a white anus was so important?

• "I Don’t Have a Racist Bone in My Body" (knowgoodwhitepeople)

  Although there were many tense moments in our conversation, during which I had to struggle to maintain my calm, by far the most excruciating subject for me to endure was the one we spent over two hours entrenched in—slavery. I was astounded by Jason’s ignorance of the institution itself. Not only did he reiterate my elementary school teacher’s beliefs about slaves being relatively happy family members, he went so far as to repeat a joke he’d recently heard on a talk radio show which callously declared that American blacks shouldn’t be worrying about reparations, but “ought to be happy we aren’t charging them for their ancestors’ cruise over here.”

• "White Privilege in Fantasy Fiction and Gaming" (saxifrage00 @ Whatever: The Examined Life) ; h-t to Jack Stephens @ Alas! A Blog)
  

  As a GM I'm responsible for portraying entire cultures and worlds, and it's hard to overturn the "everyone is white" default without either being ham-fisted about it or Orientalising a culture. One way of overturning the invisibility of Whiteness (part of how it establishes itself as the default) that I've considered is just to describe the skin colour of all my characters regardless of whether they are the invisible White or a marked Other. The problem there is how to describe White characters then: do I just say White? What about actual white skin that a moon elf has? The White race isn't even homogeneous, since it's a modern construction for political and power reasons: real White skin colours range from pale pink, to tan, to olive, to yellow, and more I'm sure I'm missing.
  
  What do you think about portrayals of race in your shared fiction?

• "Black and White Twins & Perils of Colored Admixture" (Razib @ Gene Expression)

  At this point I just want to put a slight spotlight about what the doctor said. The "black" baby pops out, and the doctor isn't surprised, the "white" baby pops out the doctor is totally shocked. Why? The father is white. But we know why: black is dominant to white, black + white → black. I'm generally not one to think that racism is the greatest of all evils, so I don't want anyone to take what I'm going to say next as if there's a major value judgment...but I suspect this expectation that many white people have that blackness dominates over whiteness has two roots; a psychological and sociocultural one.
  

• "Who Admits to Race Bias?" (Shana Burg)

  So the majority of whites claim to hold more positive views of race relations? I hate to be cynical, but I have to wonder what the gap is between one’s professed views and his or her actual views, especially after the telephone conversation I had about two months ago with RJ (not his real name), who told me he’s absolutely not prejudiced and there’s no race problem in his state
  
  RJ is a white man in his seventies who lives in the Mississippi Delta. He does church-related work and has lived and worked in the Deep South all his life.
  
  I decided to send RJ my new book for young readers, because I heard he had contacts with a large network of private schools in the South. My book A Thousand Never Evers is set in 1963 Mississippi and recounts a 12-year-old African American girl’s personal struggle to come to terms with her racist society. I was hoping that RJ might introduce the book to educators he knows.
  
  “So how did you like it?” I asked.
  
  “We come from two different opinions on this stuff,” RJ told me. Then he drew in a breath. A really big breath. And from there, he spoke his mind—seven single-spaced pages worth.
  

• "Why Do White People Dislike Michelle Obama?" (Cenk Uygur @ The Young Turks)
  

  In the latest NY Times/CBS News poll, I think one number has been over looked. Michelle Obama has a stunningly low approval rating with white people. Only 24% of white Americans have a favorable view of her.
  
  That's George Bush like numbers. That's almost in Dick Cheney territory. I don't get it. What did she ever do to anybody?
  
  She seems like an exemplary wife and mother. She is a hard working and accomplished American. What is it about her that is so off-putting to white Americans? I am sincerely puzzled.
  
  I have a terrible answer. It's an answer I can't quite believe is true - and I don't want to believe is true. But I don't see a reasonable alternative explanation. Racism.

And finally (thanks to Kit from Keep It Trill), a video that raises an old question for me--how long is the West's entrenched re-racialization of Jesus as "white" going to continue?

"Black Jesus"
by Everlast

insist on occupying center-stage

I don't normally watch The View, but sometimes it ends up in front of me (or I end up in front of it). Many of you have probably seen Elisabeth Hasselbeck's recent and apparently sincere breakdown of sorts, which took place during a discussion on the show of "the n-word" this past Thursday. The video is making the blog-rounds, sparking further debate on who can and can't use the word, and whether it should instead be run over with a truck and tossed onto the trash heap that is America's racial history.

I first saw it at All about Race, and I was struck less by any original insights offered by The View crew into the use of that contentious word than by the interactions between these black and white women as they discussed the issue. Despite the persistent efforts of Whoopi Goldberg to add some substance to the conversation, Elisabeth insists on being the center of attention. As she does so, she demonstrates very well a common white pathology that often emerges in such discussions, something I call "center-stage sickness."

I've reprinted below this video-clip the comment that I left on this phenomenon at All about Race. What do you all think of Elisabeth's performance here? Did it seem especially "white" to you? And aside from her dominance of the discussion, what do you think of the points she makes, or that Whoopi and the others make?

At All about Race, Carmen D writes, "My perpetually unanswered question to all of the white people who make this complaint ["Why can't we use it too?"] is why in the world would any racially sensitive white person want to use the ‘n-word’? Why does this particular double standard tick you off so much?"

I'm reposting my comment on this (which will make a lot more sense if you first watch the six-minute video) from Carmen's site to provoke discussion here about a common white mode of behavior. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on an apparently sincere white woman who's at least trying to grapple with racial issues, but Elisabeth's paradoxical combination here, of white dominance and something like victimhood, really gnaws at me:

I think it’s pretty damn presumptuous of Elisabeth, or of any other non-black person, to say anything at all about whether blacks should use that word, or about how they use it. What the hell business is that of white people?

I also think Elisabeth’s performance here, though probably not staged, is a perfect instance of white center-stage sickness. When it comes to racial discussions, our tendency is to jump in and dominate the discussion, all while talking, paradoxically, about OTHER people in terms of race, instead of about ourselves in terms of race–about what being “white” actually means for us, about what being trained as white has done TO us.

That latter proposed move wouldn’t be so appropriate on Elisabeth’s part in this particular discussion, since the topic IS the n-word, but dominating the discussion in the way she does is such a common white form of behavior in these kinds of mixed race discussions. The basic message, again a terribly presumptuous one, is “I need to tell you how you should live your life. And if you try to complain or explain what race means in your life, I’m going to tell you how you’re wrong about that too, because somehow, I just know more about what it is to be you than you yourself do.”

How sad that the other women there (Whoopi excluded) let that discussion, on THAT WORD no less, be all about poor widdle white Elisabeth.




[The View crew also discussed the n-word, with far less drama, in February. I'd also like to add that the term and concept of "center-stage sickness" is not original on my part. I remember the term "center-stage phenomenon" from another writer's book on whiteness, but the title and author escape me. If anyone else knows of it, I'd be grateful for the information.]

associate the word "race" with non-white people, instead of with themselves

Silence about whiteness lets everyone continue to harbor prejudices and misconceptions, beginning with the notion that “white” equals normal. Whiteness oppresses when it operates as the invisible regime of normality, and thus making whiteness visible is a principal goal of anti-racist pedagogy.

--Gregory Jay,
"Teaching about Whiteness"

As we all probably know, the "blogosphere" is growing at an exponential pace these days. Writing a blog, and reading more and more blogs by other writers, has certainly changed my reading and writing habits (though in ways I can't really quantify or qualify just yet). I just read somewhere that 175,000 new blogs appear everyday. But I'm not sure where I read that--losing track of my sources more often is certainly one change in my reading and writing habits, brought about by the increased time I spend online.

A tiny sector of the blogosphere focuses on matters of race. Of course, "tiny" is a relative term. The number of blogs that focus explicitly on matters of race must be far less than one percent of the blogs out there. On the other hand, there are already far more blogs that focus on race than any one person could possibly read, probably in his or her entire lifetime.

So far, the racially oriented sector of the blogosphere is incredibly diverse, but it also seems limited in some ways. I would bet, for instance, that the vast majority of the bloggers who focus on race are located in the United States (but that might just be my US-centric, English-oriented view of things). Also, if it were possible to select a truly representative sampling of blogs from the race-oriented sector of the blogosphere, I imagine that the selector would be hard pressed to find many at all that focus explicitly on racial whiteness.

If the Internet in general is an extension of American society and culture, then it's likely that the oppressive "whiteness-as-unmarked-norm" phenomenon that Gregory Jay describes above holds true in most of the blogosphere as well. If so, then what's wrong with a space of sorts within another murky sea of whiteness for exclusively non-white discussions? Should white folks really try to elbow their way into that conversation, as if seeking center-stage all over again? Why should discussion of "whiteness" be a part of the online discussion of "race"?

I think it should, if white discussants of the topic remain respectful and unobtrusive. And if they remain accountable to those who suffer from the white supremacy that benefits themselves. They can do so in part by also acknowledging and referencing non-white work on the topic responsibly, and by listening attentively to non-white critiques (which doesn't mean, of course, that a white participant in anti-racist discussions has to agree with all non-white critiques of his or her work, just because the critic is non-white--how racist would THAT be?).

I say such things with confidence because I have found a few blogs that offer extensive, effectively anti-racist analysis of the ways of white folks, from both white and non-white perspectives. "Know Good White People," for instance, offers repeatedly inspiring and often fascinating takes on whiteness from a black perspective. Renowned author, speaker, and activist Tim Wise runs a blog with whiteness-related content at Red Room. There's also "Beyond White Guilt," a LiveJournal community that functions as a blog of sorts. "Wigger Lover" features posts on a particular mode of white identity, including a wide array of rare video clips (which is all part of an effort on the blogger's part to get a film made on the topic). Although the blog "Too Sense" isn't directly focused on whiteness, a white writer there, One Drop, often addresses whiteness with remarkable perspicacity. And there are, of course, overtly "white" web sites that handle whiteness in a way quite the opposite from that of those blogs that I'm talking about here, which actually make up "the anti-racist race-oriented sector of the blogosphere."

There's also, of course, the famous (and infamous) "Stuff White People Like," and the whiteness blog that you're reading now, which I initially began as a disgruntled response to SWPL. I'm always on the lookout for other blogs that focus on whiteness in an anti-racist manner, and I've actually been spending a lot of time recently at a new one. The SWPL-to- SWPD spinoff machine continues, it seems, as this new whiteness blog is named "Stuff White People Say."

Actually, the connection of SWPS to this blog, SWPD, is closer than mere moniker resemblance. The posts at "Stuff White People Say" are so far entirely focused on stuff "said," or written, at this blog. By me.

An originator of the new blog, veteran writer Restructure!, explains her motivations in starting "Stuff White People Say" this way:

Macon D really doesn’t understand how problematic his blog and his comments are, and when we are resisting racism, he sees it as a personal attack on his status or something. In many ways, commenting on his blog is of limited use, because our criticism is perceived as destructive or negative criticism existing merely to negate his blog. If we create our own blog, then it will reframe our resistance as antiracist content itself. (I think.)

On the other hand, I think I shouldn’t waste my time with him, because it’s useless.

Then again, there are so many people reading that blog, especially naive white people, and they might come away with the impression that his blog is ‘antiracist’. I mean yes, it is antiracist in a way because he is resisting some racism, but he consistently makes completely screwed up comments . . . .

[W]e shouldn’t hold our breath for Macon D suddenly having an epiphany and finally understanding why his blog is so screwed up.

As I said, I've been spending a lot of time recently at this new blog, looking for insights that I can transfer to my work here. Though I am, as Restructure points out, a "slow learner," I do appreciate the efforts of her and others there. Although we all get frustrated at times, and sometimes we let that frustration show, I do believe we share a general goal, and that progress toward it is taking place. I encourage you to check out that progress (and maybe even contribute to it).

Finally, here's hoping that more anti-racist blogs focused on white supremacy will appear soon. If you know of others that I've missed here, please let us know.

A larger presence of such blogs can only help to raise white folks' awareness of their own racial status, thereby helping to dispel their common fantasy that race has nothing to do with themselves.

struggle when asked what being "white" means to them

If I had an ethnic base to identify from, if I was even Irish American, that would have been something formed, if I was a working-class woman, that would have been something formed. But to be a Heinz 57 American, a white, class-confused American, land of the Kleenex type American, is so formless in and of itself. It only takes shape in relation to other people.

--Cathy Thomas

Here's a short film by Christopher J. Rock in which he asks white Americans what being "white" means to them. Like most white Americans, his interviewees find this a difficult task.

Rock has posted this film on YouTube, where he asks for comments because he's thinking of expanding it into a full-length film. If you have ideas or suggestions for him in that regard, you can go here.

One topic you might address in the comments here: Why do you suppose white people often find it so difficult, and even uncomfortable, to talk about their own racial membership?

white quotation of the week (andrea gibson)

See Through

We're on our way back to school from gymnastics class.
And only in Boulder, Colorado,
the kids are singing John Lennon's "Imagine"
at the back of the bus, when

Jesse stops herself mid-verse,
stretches her arm across the aisle like a sunbeam,
tugs at the edge of my shirt and asks,
"What does hatred mean?"

Jesse's five years old.
Anything I say, she's gonna believe.
But I realize, I don't know the answer.
I'm not sure what hatred means.
I could guess and say it's the opposite of love.
I could guess and say,
"Jesse, hatred is why there are nothing but white faces
on our private-school bus."

But Jesse isn't white yet.
Go ahead and ask her.

"What color are you, Jesse?"

"Well, it looks like I'm pink."

Shane thinks he's orange.
Skylar says she's tan.
Rhett says he's see-through.
"See, you can see how my veins are blue
but they're red when I bleed."

And I wish there was no such thing as springtime.
'Cause I don't trust the machines
that will one day be planting seeds in these gardens
teaching them that some people are flowers
some people are weeds,
rip the weeds by their roots
ignore their screams
tilt your own face to the sun
take what you want,
you are the chosen ones.

Sitting Bull said white people are liars and thieves.
I wanna tell Jesse he was wrong.

I wanna tell her we didn't come like a time bomb,
gunpowder on our breath,
teeth built like bullets,
that this land didn't weep when our feet
first mercilessly hit the ground.
I don't want to say we drowned and maimed the children,
sliced long strips of their skin for bridle reins,
I don't wanna say the moon was slain,
the constellations dispersed like shrapnel.
Mothers killed their babies, then killed themselves
when they saw our faces on the horizon
and all that we left was a trail of tears.

But if I have to say that,
I wanna say our boats stopped there.
I wanna say the waves never saw the sails of slave ships,
never heard the sound of chain links,
but Jesse, think slaughterhouse.
Think people branded, suffocating, foaming at the mouth.
Can you imagine what kind of pain you would have to endure,
to throw yourself overboard 2000 miles out to sea?
Lungs gratefully exchanging breath for saltwater,
gratefully trading life for death.

Can you imagine being chained to your dead daughter?
How many days would it take you to stop
searching her hands for lifelines?
To stop searching her fingertips for remnants of sunshine?
To stop searching her wrists for a pulse,
for just some sign of time turning backwards
to when you knew
people could never do things like this?

And Jesse this
is not just a picture of our history,
not just a picture of our past.
We've been hundreds of years
measuring the size of our hearts
by the size of our fists,
erecting our bliss on the broken backs of dark skin.
The present is far from gift-wrapped.

Ask New Orleans,
Ask mothers in the Bronx,
chasing rats out of their babies' cribs.
Ask the fathers of the kids
whose lives we exchange for cheap gas.
Ask our prisons why jail bars always come in black.
Ask Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq.
Ask the woman in Thailand whose cancer builds our laptops.
Ask the Mexican man working in a field fertilized
by nerve gas.
Ask his daughter when she's born without fingers
or hands to pray with.
Ask me how long I could keep going with this list.
God might be watching,
but we are not.

You are white, Jesse.
There are bodies dangling
from the limbs of your family tree.
Our people pull people from the soil like weeds.
Breathe in our story.
Force yourself to hold in your lungs
'til you can hear our hymns sung beneath white sheets.
'til your can feel your own finger on the trigger of the gun.
Feel yourself fire as they shout.
Do not look away as bullet enters heartbeat.
Now breathe out.
This is where we come from.
This is still where we are.
Now where will we go from here?

I don't believe we're hateful.
I think mostly we're just asleep.
But the math adds up the same.
You can't call up the dead and say,
"Sorry, we were looking the other way."

There are names and faces behind our apathy,
eulogies beneath our choices.
There are voices deep as roots
thundering unquestionable truth
through the white noise that pacifies our ears.
Don't tell me we don't hear.
Don't tell me we don't hear.
When the moon is slain,
when the constellations disperse like shrapnel,
don't you think it's time,
something changed?

Andrea Gibson is "a queer poet/activist whose work deconstructs the foundations of the current political machine, highlighting issues such as patriarchy, gender norms, white supremacy, and capitalist culture." A performance poet who has won multiple slam contests, headlined at major venues, and appeared on Free Speech TV, Dyke TV, the BBC, and in the film Slam Planet, Gibson has also self-released three CDs and three books.

Transcribed from an audio file available here, the above poem also appears in Gibson's first published book, Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns. Performances of many of her poems are available on YouTube.

ask for suggestions

White reader Liza sent me the following email, asking for suggestions about how to get a dialogue on race started in her small, predominantly white town.

I've offered some suggestions below; do you have others for her? What can an ordinary person do to promote discussions of whiteness, and of race more generally, in her own community?


Hello,

Just found this blog yesterday and am intrigued. I am a white woman in my early 40's who lives in a predominantly white rural town of about 4000 people. I have always tried my best to instill in my children non-racist views, but with only a couple of black kids at our school, I have found few opportunities to really broach the subject in a way that doesn't sound like an after school special.

I know that there is racism in the world, in our community, and I would like them to be more prepared to deal with these things as they head out into the world, not to mention working on my own understanding. I have thought of trying to start a social group or study group of some kind to get a dialogue going, but I fear making a novelty out of the blacks in our town if I suggest such a thing.

Are there any suggestions out there?

Thanks, Liza



Hello Liza,

First of all, I applaud your efforts. America is moving toward the probability of electing its first black* president, yet the ongoing effects and manifestations of American white supremacy continue to cause declining circumstances and fortunes for many non-white people. Serious, productive local dialogues on race are as crucial as ever, and yet, such a conversation is rarely welcome in a residential setting like yours.

It's interesting that your desire to address race is framed in terms of the few black folks in your town. Have you considered addressing instead, somehow, the majority? White folks have a race too, even though in a setting like yours, they probably rarely ever think seriously about what it means to be "white" (and when they do, they tend to think and talk about it in objectionable ways, as I'm sure you know).

Starting a social or reading group on "race" is a great idea. Churches often have the space (and sometimes, some resources) for such a gathering, as do libraries and town halls. Even a restaurant or a coffee shop can be a good meeting place, and moving an established group from home to home can also work well.

A reading group could focus on race in many ways. There are innumerable novels and memoirs that address race, including whiteness (which again, I recommend as your focus, since your group members are likely to be mostly or all white). If you'd eventually like some reading suggestions, write back to me--I have a long list. You could also consider the ones I've reviewed so far on this blog.

Watching films together and then discussing them afterward is also a good way to get a dialogue going. Race and whiteness are depicted in ways that can be discussed in just about any movie, though some are more likely to generate discussion than others. One that has proven its value for this purpose in, I'm sure, thousands of such gatherings is The Color of Fear, a powerful documentary about a multiracial group of men who discuss their racial experiences together.

These sorts of documentaries are often accompanied by discussion guides (as are many novels and memoirs that deal with race). As I noted in yesterday's post, you could begin working with films by asking your local library to purchase them. For instance, Free Indeed is a brief, inexpensive drama about white privilege and service work, put together by the Mennonite Central Committee.

If you can generate enough interest on this topic in your community to get some funds together, you might consider inviting a speaker on whiteness and racial issues. Again, the local library can be a good setting for this. If you're familiar with Tim Wise, for instance, he's not as expensive as you might think. Many scholars from colleges in your state would also be willing to speak for a modest fee on particular aspects of the topic (and Google can help you find them). "Whiteness" has been a topic of intensive interest and study for at least a decade now, and as a result, many speakers are available for such talks.

Particular lecture and discussion-group topics could include race relations in your particular part of the state or country--how, for instance, did it get so white? (It wasn't an accident, nor the mere coincidence that most of your town's current residents probably think it was). Was your town a "sundown town"? (James Loewen is also a traveling speaker, and a damn good one too.) Who were the particular indigenous groups that inhabited your area, and what happened to them? How did the European immigrants to your area become "white," and why did they do so? How does their choice to become "white" continue to affect the lives of their descendants today? How is race addressed in your local schools? What are the area's kids learning about race, and how else are they learning it? How is race played out in your community in relation to other factors, such as social class, or gender, or the larger national and even international economies? Are there, for instance, migrant workers in your area? If so, how long has that been happening, and why did it start? What do local white people think, and perhaps fail to understand, about migrant workers?

Finally, I do not suggest a sort of celebratory, appreciative, buffet-like approach to these matters. White supremacy isn't just a thing of the past, but too many white efforts to address "race" end up merely celebrating other races (and often in limited, simplistic, and patronizing ways), instead of addressing "whiteness" and its significance for ongoing inequities and injustices.

I hope that this blog's readers will add other suggestions for you in this post's "comments" section, and I wish you the best of luck in this important effort. You'll probably meet some resistance, and you'll need to be persistent and brave if you really do want to get people thinking and acting. But that's the only way that the kind of change you're looking for ever happens.

Best of luck, and please let me know sometime what becomes of your efforts,

macon d


*This word originally appeared as "black" (with quotation marks around it), but in response to a discussion about that in the Comments section for this post, I've removed the quotation marks. Thanks to jw, Lori, and Restructure! for addressing this issue.

ask their local libraries to buy movies

Today's post is a movie recommendation, and a clip from that movie: Shakti Butler's Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible. The usual superlatives for good movies apply--inspiring, thought-provoking, powerful, moving, insightful, and many more.

You can order a copy here. It's a bit expensive, so if you can't afford it, why not ask a nearby librarian to order a copy instead? You'd be helping out a very worthy organization, World Trust Educational Services, and you'd also be planting a seed in your local library that could flourish into further awareness of white privilege and the ways of white folks.

(Below the clip is a brief review of the film by Carol Estes.)

Review of Mirrors of Privilege:

“I wake up every single morning of my life and think, ‘I am a black person,’” says a professor in the film Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible.

It’s different for me. I’m white, but not once did I ever wake up and think, “I am a white person.” In my mirror, I don’t see a white person, just a person, and I might even congratulate myself on that.

But it’s nothing to be proud of, according to this film. It means I’m colorblind in a particularly problematic way: I can’t see whiteness. I can avoid acknowledging the racial privileges that have supported my successes and sustain the comfortable myth that I earned my perch near the top of the social ladder.

Mirrors of Privilege, a simply made but surprisingly compelling film, introduces white people to the part of our whiteness we’ve learned not to see, through a series of conversations with white people who have thought deeply about race. A professor of women’s studies from New York recalls feeling baffled after reading two essays from African American women arguing that white women were oppressive to work for. “How can that be?” she wondered. “We’re so nice.” She decided to investigate. “If I have anything I didn’t earn,” she told herself, “show me.” She meditated over this challenge and within three months had identified 46 examples.

Throughout the film, some scenarios are powerfully illustrated in dance. One tableau shows three people, down on all fours, lined up shoulder to shoulder. Across their backs reclines a white woman, languorously reading a book, oblivious to the trembling arms of the black man who’s holding her up.

These are images and voices that have been largely missing from America’s discussion of race—articulate, principled, caring white people struggling to come to grips with their own fear, guilt, and ambivalence. They form, as anti-racism activist Van Jones puts it, “a cry from the heart of white people working to restore their own humanity.”

---

Carol Estes wrote this review as part of A Just Foreign Policy, the Summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. Carol Estes is a YES! contributing editor, and for eight years has sponsored the Black Prisoners Caucus at a men’s prison in Monroe, Washington, where she co-founded the program University Behind

refuse to bury their dead in black cemeteries

A handmade grave-marker at

the Lamington Black Cemetery
in Bedminster, New Jersey

Most white Americans think that racial segregation died with the end of the "Jim Crow" era. However, in many areas of life, white people continue to separate themselves from non-white people--even when life is over.

Americans in general don't spend much time pondering death. The awareness of our own impending mortality--an awareness that perhaps most truly separates us from other animals--is continually repressed for us by America's consumerist, live-for-the-moment society.

In fact, in many ways, Americans more or less deny death, including the mass deaths caused in so many places by our white supremacist foreign policies.

As for white Americans, I think it's safe to assume that most of them probably aren't even aware of the many black cemeteries out there. If so, it means that they haven't taken another step in this regard, which is to consider what it would mean to be buried in such a place. To be a white corpse in the ground, surrounded by black corpses. To have those friends and relatives who are willing to visit their white remains come less often, because this cemetery is known as a "black cemetery."

And why, you might ask, would the possibility of a white body's burial in a black cemetery ever come up in the first place?

Here's a recent story about an incident in Texas where this possibility did arise. In this case, members of the white community rallied around a white body that was in danger of ending up in a black cemetery, apparently in an effort to "save" it from such an ignominious state of final rest. After all, the logic here seems to go, how could a white person ever rest in peace if she's surrounded by black people?


Racial divide stirred by burial of murder victim

By MONICA RHOR Associated Press Writer
© 2008 The Associated Press

HOUSTON — More than a year ago, an unidentified woman's body was found on a road, her dark hair shorn off, a plastic bag taped around her head, her hands severed. She had been strangled and tossed away by her killer.

Today, the crime remains unsolved, the murder victim's name is still unknown and efforts to bury her have set off controversy in Waller County — a rural area just west of Houston that has long been roiled by racial divisions.

The victim is white, while the funeral home and cemetery that a justice of the peace initially chose to handle her burial in Hempstead are historically black.

But Waller County Commissioners Court balked at paying for that burial. When activists started raising questions about the county's hesitation at burying the woman in a black cemetery, the commissioners asked a white-owned funeral home in Waller to handle arrangements.

That outraged Walter Pendleton, a local black minister who filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Hempstead that forced it to integrate its public cemeteries.

"I'm just appalled right now. I can't believe this county stooped that low," he said. "The county overstepped its boundary to get a white funeral home to pick up the body so that it could not be buried in a black cemetery."

The victim would be the first known white person buried in a black cemetery in Waller County. Since March 25, Waller County has paid neighboring Harris County $50 a day to store the body.

"I have never seen such defiance and determination to protect a segregated system," said DeWayne Charleston, the Waller County justice of the peace who first ordered the black funeral home to handle the arrangements.

Judge Owen Ralston, the county's top elected official, denied that racial issues were at play. "I didn't know if the victim was black or white, and I didn't care," Ralston said.

Rather, he attributed the delay in burial to the black funeral home director's insistence that the county sign a letter guaranteeing payment. Ralston said that went against county policy, and instead contacted another funeral home to handle the arrangements.

The white-owned funeral home picked up the woman's body on Monday — the same day community activists sent out a news release calling attention to the situation.

That a nameless murder victim's burial is stirring claims of racial discrimination is not surprising in Waller County.

In 2006, the Texas Attorney General investigated claims that the rights of black voters were violated. Earlier this year, students at historically black Prairie View A&M University protested to bring attention to racially motivated voting problems in Waller County.

"The issue of racism always raises its head here — from voting rights to education, to the criminal justice system," Charleston said. "Waller County is stuck in the 19th century."

Charleston said he wasn't trying to cause trouble when he ordered the black funeral home to handle arrangements for the woman. He was simply struck by the brutality of the crime and the poignancy of a murder victim with no family to claim her.

"You never know what her circumstances were. She could be from Texas and estranged from her family. She could be the victim of human trafficking," Charleston said. "She's certainly entitled to a dignified burial no matter what the circumstances. I'm treating her as though she is a kin of mine."

The woman's nude and mutilated body was found on a Prairie View road just before dawn on March 18, 2007. She is believed to be between 30 and 50 years old, and was likely killed at another location, then dumped on the roadside, police say.

"It was gruesome and that no one identified her or claimed her makes it more horrific," Charleston said. "I thought that this woman, if nothing else, was going to have the distinction of integrating Waller County cemeteries."


[The New York Times also covered this story]


PS--I have no idea how this poor woman came to her end, but her story reminds me of one of the most powerful films I've ever seen, Agnes Varda's Sans Toit ni Loi (Vagabond or Without Roof or Rule in English). Released in 1985, it follows a lone woman for awhile, raising questions (for me at least) about just what "freedom" and "community" really mean, especially when you die.

Here's a taste of it:

white weekend links

• "Study: Medical Students Show Racial Bias" ("content creator" Jessie Coleman @ CNN.com, via The Independent Florida Alligator)

  For each of the 21 medical students who enter the room, Edna's fears are still to be discovered. They each see the same 55-year-old woman, each meet with the same brown eyes. They all hear the same Southern twang in her voice and the same tremor of fear when she asks if she could have cancer. The only difference is that 12 of the students see a dark-skinned version of Edna, and the other nine students see a light-skinned version.
  
  Edna is a computer-animated image projected life-size on the side of a white wall, and she is used in a study monitoring the interactions of medical students with virtual patients. The study, which has three of five authors from [the University of Florida], found white medical students were less empathetic toward black virtual patients in one-on-one interviews.
  

• "On Being Jewish and White" (The Girl Detective @ Feministe)

  I’ve written before on how angry I was when fellow progressives began to inform me that while some Jews consider themselves white, it’s only because they’ve assimilated into white culture. They never explained what white-looking Jews actually are, if not white, but the message was always clear: if we Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews think we’re white, well, it’s just because we wanted some of that tasty privilege so badly that we suppressed our real identity to get it. I’d known, of course, that many white extremists still considered Jewishness a race, but hearing such comments come from leftists surprised and upset me for a couple of reasons: 1) they were presuming to know more about a Jew’s identity than a Jew would, and 2) those who were people of color were surely familiar with the frustration at having others dictate how they should define themselves.

• "The White Stuff: What Does an Extremely Popular New Blog about White Culture Tell Us About Race in America?" (Samhita Mukhopadhyay @ The American Prospect)

  Lander didn't set out to write an academic treatise on whiteness. Rather, he set out to joke about it. What sets it apart from the hundreds of other well-written, funny Web sites is that it's hit a nerve--especially because it appeared at a time when America was captivated by the issue of race in the presidential primary. And so it's worth thinking about exactly what this blog tells us about whiteness and why its mostly white, affluent audience has so enthusiastically embraced this gently mocking rundown of their culture. . . . Stuff White People Like is a "safe" place for white people to talk about race . . .

• "Is 'White Privilege' Real?" (Michelle DiMartino @ "Exploring Race," a forum at the Chicago Tribune Web Edition)

  During my job search, I noticed that when I would go to a job bank, I was treated differently in comparison to minorities. The agents grilled me, not to help me get a job, but to find out why I didn’t have one. They wanted to know what I had done to make myself so poor. They also asked why I didn’t have a family member who could help me. Did they ask this just because I’m white? As someone holding a philosophy degree I cannot help but be, well, philosophical. Without a college degree you can’t earn a living wage, and without paying for college you cannot get a degree. If your parents don’t make a lot of money or if you don’t earn scholarships, then you will have to take out many student loans. When you leave school and can’t find a job, you can find yourself back where you started. Being any particular race doesn’t help you at all when you belong to the lowest socioeconomic class and you’re struggling to pull yourself up. I am white but throughout my life I have not known white privilege. Not in the least.

• "I'm Not Racist, I Have Black Friends" (Renee @ Womanist Musings)

  How much longer do white people believe they can use the I have a "black friend" card to cover their clearly racist behaviour? . . . I think I have finally figured out the mystery of the black friend...he/she is imaginary aren't they? ...Yep, your "pretend buddy" that you can whip out every time the word racist is thrown your way. Here is a little tip, next time you go to pull the "black friend" out of your defence arsenal, please be aware that this excuse has worn thin, and we (anti-racists) are on to your sorry, lying asses.

• "A White Man Does the Right Thing: The Courage to Stand against Racism" (Joe Feagin @ Racism Review)

  L. F. Eason III, a white North Carolina state manager with a distinguished record of state employment . . . was forced to retire (in reality, fired) because he would not allow the employees at his laboratory to lower the flag to honor one of the most infamous of the white-racist advocates ever to serve in the U.S. Senate, the unrepentant anti-civil-rights advocate, Senator Jesse Helms.
  

• "Who Wants To Marry A White Dude?: America’s First Interracial Reality Show in the Works" (by Iliana Rabun-Wood @ Giant)

  The premise is that this white guy who has an affinity for dipping into the chocolate goes on a TV show and chooses between a dozen or so sistas to find his true love. If VH1 airs this show, they’re going to have a lot of explaining to do. And no, it’s not a Robert DeNiro production.
  

And finally, a video that may well suggest--contrary to what I've been periodically saying on this blog--that perhaps white people should NOT dance more often than they do.

use racially coded jungle settings to promote the consumption of another animal's baby food

The white race cannot survive without dairy products.

--Herbert Hoover

In continuation of this blog's ongoing examination of "white world-traveling," I submit here another item for consideration and discussion. Look at all the "whiteness" in this video, and at all the non-whiteness used as a backdrop for it. Is this racist? Species-ist? Milk-ist?

Watch. Listen. Drink from the milky white river. Ponder. Discuss.

[hat-tip to Alterdestiny for the Hoover quote]

overlook the racism of the justice system

[This is a guest post from SWPD reader jw, who adds the following self-description: "As a white German I see it as my responsibility that history never again can repeat itself. Without ideology I am politically left, embracing humanism and trying to be a part in the fight against the system of white supremacy. Anti-racism is more than just being against racism." jw also wrote recently about how white people "sacrifice the selves of their children"]

The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography and local politics.

--Bryan Stevenson, Death Row lawyer

While it may seem that America is "tough on crime," the prison industry, along with the police and the judiciary, plays an important role of control and the demonstration of power.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world , at 737 persons imprisoned per 100,000. A report released Feb. 28, 2008 indicates that in the United States more than 1 in 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison. The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.

According to the Bureau of Justice, Blacks are almost three times more likely than Hispanics and five times more likely than whites to be in jail.

And while white supremacists use such statistics to "prove" their argument that Black people are more prone to crime than white folks, the real reasons for such high incarceration rates are racial profiling and the so-called "War on Drugs."

Human Rights Watch writes that

African-Americans are arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for drug offenses at far higher rates than whites. This racial disparity bears little relationship to racial differences in drug offending. For example, although the proportion of all drug users who are black is generally in the range of 13 to 15 percent, blacks constitute 36 percent of arrests for drug possession. Blacks constitute 63 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons. In at least fifteen states, black men were sent to prison on drug charges at rates ranging from twenty to fifty-seven times those of white men.

After slavery, slave patrollers, the KKK and Jim Crow, white control over Black people took on a new dimension, which is not "tough on crime" but tough on non-white people (and also poor white people).

Thus it is no surprise that the USA still practices the death penalty as another way of demonstrating its utmost power. America is a nation that still believes it should decide who has the right to live and who does not. However, the right to live is a Human Right, and the application of the death penalty is violating a basic human right in the name of "justice."

One argument for the death penalty is that it deters homicide. But as a New York Times study discovered, statistics do not demonstrate the efficiency of the death penalty.

The dozen states that have chosen not to enact the death penalty since the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that it was constitutionally permissible have not had higher homicide rates than states with the death penalty, government statistics and a new survey by The New York Times show.

Indeed, 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average, Federal Bureau of Investigation data shows, while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average. In a state-by-state analysis, The Times found that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty.

The study by The Times also found that homicide rates had risen and fallen along roughly symmetrical paths in the states with and without the death penalty, suggesting to many experts that the threat of the death penalty rarely deters criminals.

The death penalty is also not actually used against the most brutal murderers. Instead, according to findings of Amnesty International,

a defendant was several times more likely to be sentenced to death if the murder victim was white. This confirms the findings of many other studies that, holding all other factors constant, the single most reliable predictor of whether someone will be sentenced to death is the race of the victim.

Underlying the statistical evidence is the differential treatment of African-Americans at every turn in the criminal justice system. From initial charging decisions to plea bargaining to jury sentencing, African-Americans are treated more harshly when they are defendants, and their lives are accorded less value when they are victims. Furthermore, all-white or virtually all-white juries are still commonplace in many localities.

That the justice system of America is seriously flawed is also proven by the many exonerations. "Since 1973, 129 people in 26 states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence." (deathpenaltyinfo.org)

Also, Troy Davis was sentenced to death 1991 without proof of his guilt. There is no physical evidence against him and his conviction is based on witness testimony. His execution was halted, but "on Monday, March 17, 2008, the Georgia Supreme Court decided 4-3 to deny a new trial for Troy Anthony Davis, despite significant concerns regarding his innocence. Today's stunning decision by the Georgia Supreme Court to let Mr. Davis' death sentence stand means that the state of Georgia might soon execute a man who may well be innocent." (amnestyusa.org)

A criminal justice system where race becomes an influential factor is no system of justice. And a society that acts as a silent bystander, sides with the injustice. This is how white supremacy works--as a system in which the powerful decide who has a right to freedom and to life itself, and who does not.

white quotation of the week (karen brodkin)

Pictorial Report #43: "The G. I. Bill of Rights"
Army-Navy Screen Magazine

Regarding the racial significance of this bill, Karen Brodkin writes:

I continue to be surprised when I read books that indicate that America once regarded its immigrant European workers as something other than white, as biologically different. My parents are not surprised; they expect anti-Semitism to be part of the fabric of daily life, much as I expect racism to be part of it. They came of age in the Jewish world of the 1920s and 1930s, at the peak of anti-Semitism in America. They are rightly proud of their upward mobility and think of themselves as pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. . . .

Part of my ethnic heritage was the belief that Jews were smart and that our success was due to our own efforts and abilities, reinforced by a culture that valued sticking together, hard work, education, and delayed gratification.

I am willing to affirm all those abilities and ideals and their contribution to Jews’ upward mobility, but I also argue that they were still far from sufficient to account for Jewish success. I say this because the belief in a Jewish version of Horatio Alger has become a point of entry for some mainstream Jewish organizations to adopt a racist attitude against African Americans especially and to oppose affirmative action for people of color. Instead, I want to suggest that Jewish success is a product not only of ability but also of the removal of powerful social barriers to its realization. . . .

[Suddenly, after World War II,] the same folks who had promoted nativism and xenophobia were eager to believe that the Euro-origin people whom they had deported, reviled as members of inferior races, and prevented from immigrating only a few years earlier, were now model middle-class white suburban citizens.

It was not an educational epiphany that made those in power change their hearts, their minds, and our race. Instead, it was the biggest and best affirmative action program in the history of our nation, and it was for Euromales. This is not how it was billed, but it is the way it worked out in practice. I tell this story to show the institutional nature of racism and the centrality of state policies to creating and changing races. Here, those policies reconfigured the category of whiteness to include European immigrants. . . .

The GI Bill of Rights, or the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act, is arguably the most massive affirmative action program in American history. It was created to develop needed labor force skills and to provide those who had them with a lifestyle that reflected their value in the economy. The GI benefits that were ultimately extended to 16 million GIs (of the Korean War as well) included priority in jobs—that is, preferential treatment, but no one objected to it then—financial support during the job search, small loans for starting up businesses, and most important, low-interest home loans and educational benefits, which included tuition and living expenses. This legislation was rightly regarded as one of the most revolutionary postwar programs. I call it affirmative action because it was aimed at and disproportionately helped male, Euro-origin GIs. . . .

The reason I refer to educational and occupational GI benefits as affirmative action programs for white males is because they were decidedly not extended to African Americans nor to women of any race. Theoretically they were available to all veterans; in practice women and black veterans did not get anywhere near their share. . . .

During and after the war, there was an upsurge in white racist violence against black servicemen, in public schools, and by the Ku Klux Klan. It spread to California and New York. The number of lynchings rose during the war, and in 1943 there were anti-black riots in several large northern cities. Although there was a wartime labor shortage, black people were discriminated against when it came to well-paid defense industry jobs and housing. In 1946, white riots against African Americans occurred across the South and in Chicago and Philadelphia.

Gains made as a result of the wartime civil rights movement, especially in defense-related employment, were lost with peacetime conversion, as black workers were the first to be fired, often in violation of seniority. White women were also laid off, ostensibly to make room for jobs for demobilized servicemen, and in the long run women lost most of the gains they had made in wartime. . . .

Black GIs faced discrimination in the educational system as well. Despite the end of restrictions on Jews and other Euro-ethnics, African Americans were not welcome in white colleges. Black colleges were overcrowded, but the combination of segregation and prejudice made for few alternatives. About 20,000 black veterans attended college by 1947, most in black colleges, but almost as many, 15,000, could not gain entry. Predictably, the disproportionately few African Americans who did gain access to their educational benefits were able, like their white counterparts, to become doctors and engineers, and to enter the black middle class. . . .

The record is very clear. Instead of seizing the opportunity to end institutionalized racism, the federal government did its level best to shut and double-seal the postwar window of opportunity to African-Americans’ faces. It consistently refused to combat segregation in the social institutions that were key to upward mobility in education, housing, and employment.

Moreover, federal programs that were themselves designed to assist demobilized GIs and young families systematically discriminated against African Americans. Such programs reinforced white/nonwhite racial distinctions even as intrawhite racialization was falling out of fashion. This other side of the coin, that white men of northwest European ancestry and white men of southeastern European ancestry were treated equally in theory and practice in regard to the benefits they received, was part of the larger postwar whitening of Jews and other eastern and southern Europeans.

To say that Jews pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps ignores the fact that it took federal programs to create the conditions whereby the abilities of Jews and other European immigrants could be recognized and rewarded rather than denigrated and denied. The GI Bill and FHA and VA mortgages, even though they were advertised as open to all, functioned as a set of racial privileges. They were privileges because they were extended to white GIs but not to black GIs. . . .

Jews and other white ethnics’ upward mobility was due to programs that allowed us to float on a rising economic tide. To African Americans, the government offered the cement boots of segregation, redlining, urban renewal, and discrimination.

--Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks
& What That Says About Race in America

read "stuff white people do"

children dancing in Scotland,
circa 1900 or so

This blog has reached the 100-post mark, and it's great to see that the anti-racism effort I started here three months ago is steadily gaining a wider audience (the page-view counter at the bottom should reach 50,000 today). The readership here is clearly diverse, and in ways beyond race, as evinced by the lively Comments sections.

And as the sampling below from other blogs indicates, the word about "stuff white people do" is spreading--in a good way.

All of which makes me want to pause for a moment of celebration. In fact, it makes me . . . want to . . . dance! (Stop me when I'm starting to sound too much like Ellen.)

For instructions on how to dance along, see the video at the bottom of this post.

Regular programming of the serious sort will resume momentarily. . .


Changeseeker @ Why Am I Not Surprised:

[L]ast night, thanks to a comment by Professor Zero, I discovered a new blog called Stuff White People Do. The author is smart, right on the target, introspective and clever. He reads all the same books as I do, watches all the same movies, and shares many of the same opinions. And he's written almost as much in the past ninety days as I wrote all last year.

I was tired when I reached SWPD last night and after about an hour on the site, I decided that I'm no longer necessary to the blogosphere, after all . . . Then, I remembered what I had learned the night before (see this post), so I shook off the feeling and just celebrated the blog. . . . if you haven't read Macon D. over at Stuff White People Do yet, then let me send you on over there post haste.

Just recognize that you're probably gonna be there for a while.

Kelsey Atherton @ Plastic Manzikert:

Stuff White People Do: This is fantastic, and part of that is how the blog is still struggling to understand what it is about. I've written about the blog before, and rather recently. I've been reading it for much longer, when I saw it buried in a comment thread at Stuff White People Like. The blog then was rough, and a little glib. Now it's matured into something that is still rough, but does an excellent job of showcasing the uncomfortable discussions of race and privilege. The unspoken last part of the title is "Stuff White People Do (with privilege that enables them to ignore race and to affirm white identity while paying lip service to racial equality)". That's a lot of subtext, and the blog bears it in a properly uncomfortable way. And it does that in a really good way. It's hard to recommend something that sounds so unpleasant, but the experience is worth it, and it isn't as bad as it first seems. It's the learning kind of uncomfortable, not the terror kind.

Shaina Monfils @ The Feminist Writer:

Learning about race and sociology at the University completely changed how I view the world. Obviously, I still participate in the benefits of white privilege, because all white people get those whether they want them or not (which, by the way, is an important thing for all whites to recognize, lest we run around with the attitude of "I'm not racist, so therefore solving racism is about changing those other racist people"). But the thing that really gets under my skin is when people assume that racism is a dormant problem that is either already solved, or an issue that we can't do anything to change. The blog Stuff White People Do looks at the effects of white privilege from the point of view of a white dude named Macon D, in order to help people understand the ways in which they're participating in the continuation of racism. . . .

I also found it interesting that Macon D states that his goal in producing the blog is to write explicitly about whiteness. He says that

I’ve noticed, for instance, that when I ask white individuals to talk about whiteness, about what their being white means for them, they usually have very little to say, and they eventually end up talking about non-white people instead. White Americans are usually unaccustomed to talking directly about their own whiteness, and when asked to do so, they often shift to discussing it in relation to other races, and then end up talking almost exclusively about those other people instead. ("sit quietly in movie theaters - part two")

Personally, I think the reason that the reason white scholars try to stay away from examinations of whiteness is because they don't want to appear to be reducing the discussion to a white viewpoint. As in, "even though minorities have endured centuries of enslavement and abuse, racism is really all about white people in the end." But if white people are racist, and especially if they are unknowingly so, doesn't the solution to the problem lie in getting them to recognize their behavior as racist, and then encouraging them to change it? It seems to me that instead of white people "learning" to "accept" minorities, racism should be dealt with by demonstrating to whites that they are the ones that are flawed, because they buy into the idea that minorities are "different" in the first place.

Blogs such as Stuff White People Do are so instrumental in drawing attention to the blatant privilege present in our society today. It's good to see that readers are getting all riled up in the Comments section of the posts, because it gives me hope that perhaps there are still some individuals out there who are engaged in an ongoing discussion about racism and classism, and are committed to making a change.


Thank you, Changeseeker, Shaina, and Kelsey, and thanks also to others who have mentioned this blog on theirs.

As I said above, all of this is cause for a pause, a celebratory pause. And as regular SWPD readers know, I think white people should dance more often--so here we go.

And for my totally serious readers, there is a lesson here, especially for white parents: "Get them started young!"

To a Child Dancing in the Wind

I

DANCE there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water’s roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool’s triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?

II

Has no one said those daring
Kind eyes should be more learn’d?
Or warned you how despairing
The moths are when they are burned,
I could have warned you, but you are young,
So we speak a different tongue.

O you will take whatever’s offered
And dream that all the world’s a friend,
Suffer as your mother suffered,
Be as broken in the end.
But I am old and you are young,
And I speak a barbarous tongue.


William Butler Yeats (Responsibilities and Other Poems, 1916)

go along with racism instead of calling it what it is

C is a white friend of mine who just moved into a new apartment a couple of months ago. She’s been increasingly upset lately, because she doesn’t enjoy living there yet, and she's not sure why. What’s really been bothering her is not so much the apartment itself nor the area of the city that it’s in. It’s more that, although she likes those things, she’s still not comfortable in her new living situation, and she just hasn't been able to figure out why.

Yesterday, as we talked about her feelings, she realized that the bad feeling about her new place has been coming to her in moments when she talks to her white friends, family members, and co-workers. In particular, this feeling about her new apartment seems to be connected to the common reaction among the white people she knows to the apartment, or rather to its location.

She moved from a rather bohemian, largely white part of her Midwestern American city to a largely non-white area. C says she doesn’t mind the area’s racial makeup, and that she even likes it. The apartment itself was actually the clincher—it’s nicer for the price than the one she’d been renting before. She says that lately, she’s enjoyed exploring the different kinds of people and shops and restaurants in the area, and that being in such a minority as a white person hasn’t caused any problems that she’s aware of.

C has every reason to like the apartment and its location, so we tried to talk through her lingering dissatisfaction with it. The more we talked, the more evident it became that it was the reaction of her friends and acquaintances, almost all of whom are white, that was somehow bothering her. Their feelings about the apartment, and especially about the neighborhood, and especially about the neighborhood's people, were affecting her own feelings about all of that.

What C was feeling, without quite realizing what it was, was a collective white fear of and disdain for the neighborhood and, especially, for the people living there. This common white attitude toward largely non-white neighborhoods was pressuring her in ways that she hadn’t realized were really about race, and racism.

“When I told my [white] friends and the people I work with where I live,” C said, “they all had the same reaction.”

C frowned and curled her lips as she imitated the incredulous disdain her friends, acquaintances, and family members: “’Why would you move to THAT part of town?’ ‘Why would you want to move THERE?’ ‘How will you ever get along with your neighbors?’ And so on.

“But here’s weird thing,” C continued. “I got to thinking about my reaction to what they were all saying. I realized after awhile that my reaction was always the same—I defended the neighborhood. ‘Oh, but it’s not so bad, not so bad at all!’ or ‘It’s really a much more interesting place, with more different things going on, and it has a lot of interesting restaurants and things that I didn’t have in my old neighborhood.'”

“Why is that weird?” I asked. “I mean, I think a lot of people in your situation would defend their new neighborhood. You made a decision to move there, and so you wanted to defend that decision. I don’t think most people would find your reaction weird . . .”

“Right, but the thing was, I knew at some level that their reactions were racist. I realized at some point, after hearing the same basic reaction again and again, and then saying the same things all the time in return, that neither one of us was talking about the real issue, the one they were really talking about—race.”

“Ah. Right. So, can you explain how you see that now as the real issue?”

“Well, it’s obvious now, and it really bothers me how we didn’t come out and just SAY it to each other. I mean, we’re all good, well-meaning people, or we think we are, but we’re really white people who are afraid of black neighborhoods. And Mexican people. We don’t want to be around those people if we don’t know them. And we sure don’t want to LIVE around too many of them. So their reactions to my neighborhood were racist. And instead of calling them on that, instead of pointing it out to them, I went along with this kind of unspoken racism. I played right along with it. Without even realizing I was doing that.”

My friend C’s voice had begun to shake, and then she started crying.

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I just don’t know. I mean, it’s like that white privilege stuff that you write about on your blog. It really is there in all of this, somehow, and I played along with it! I’m so MAD that shit is in my head! I let their racism pass, each and every time, and I let the whole conversation be about my defense of the neighborhood, instead of . . .”

C sort of wiggled her hand in the air, then rubbed the fingers of that hand together as she frowned, trying to find the words. Then when she found some words, she clenched her hand into a fist.

“Instead of just calling them out on what they were really saying. On the racism of what they were really saying.”

C wiped away a line of tears on her cheek.

“I felt a pressure from them, a racist pressure. And instead of resisting that, let alone pointing it out, I went along with it. So I was acting racist too, even though I’m the one who moved into that neighborhood! Even though I like it, and I don’t really have that feeling they do about it being scary or whatever because it has so few white people.

“But I think, I still wasn’t liking the neighborhood, because, well you know, it’s a new place, and it is busier and noisier than my other place. But I wanted to tell you about this, because I realize now that I was sort of going along with that white fear of the place too, that my friends were expressing.”

“Expressing without really saying it,” I said.

“Right, because of course, THEY’RE not racists, they would say. Nobody’s a racist anymore, right? At least nobody I know, nobody THEY know. But I was letting how THEY felt about the place affect how I feel about it. Without even realizing that was going on.”

We were quiet for a minute or two.

C then said that she feels better about her new place because she’s no longer letting the feelings of other white people, people whom she otherwise likes and loves, affect her own feelings about the place. But she still feels bad about realizing that those people she loves have such strongly, unreasonably, fearfully racist attitudes. And there was her lingering anger, too, about having such feelings inside herself, feelings that she still has to overcome sometimes in her new surroundings.

I think that seemed to both of us like enough for now. Having figured out a thing or two about whiteness, we went on to talk in more detail about her new apartment, which I hadn’t seen yet, and about her neighbors. She says she’s kind of a loner, “kind of a hermit,” but she is getting to know some new “nice people.”

I don’t think C has her feelings about race in her neighborhood quite worked out yet, but I do think she sees something about herself and her white friends that she hadn’t seen before.

That something is not only a kind of veiled racism, which both she and her friends took part in. It's also the power of whiteness—what it’s done to her and to the white people she knows. How it’s trained them. And how white supremacy subtly coerces goodhearted white people into cooperation and complicity.

white weekend links

• "Anti-racist terminology is not pedantic. The systematicity of racism is visceral, and your skepticism derives from your ethnocentric worldview." (Restructure!)

  That something is ‘complex’ or ‘elusive’ to white people does not mean that it is universally complex and elusive to all humans. There can exist things that are experienced at a very basic level of perception by one group of people, yet not be recognized by another group due to the other’s lack of experience or lack of conceptual background.

• "It is Not Easy Being White" (Addison Berkeley @ The Naked Loon)

  Let me just start with the word “white.” Who decided that it was okay to call me that? I prefer “Euro-American” or simply “Amero-American.” But white does not even accurately describe the actual color of my skin. Do you know what is actually white? Toilets, mayonnaise, and snow. People call me white right to my face; day in and day out. What they are really calling me is “snowy mayo toilet-skin.”

• "Uh-Obama: Racism, White Voters and the Myth of Color-Blindness" (Tim Wise @ LA Progressive)

  The extent to which Obama’s white support has been directly related to his downplaying of race issues simply cannot be overstated, as evidenced by the kinds of things many of these supporters openly admit, possessing no sense of apparent irony or misgiving. So, consider the chant offered by his supporters at a recent rally–and frankly, a chant in which whites appeared to be joining with far greater enthusiasm than folks of color–to the effect that “Race Doesn’t Matter, Race Doesn’t Matter,” a concept so utterly absurd, given the way in which race most certainly still matters to the opportunity structure in this country, that one has to almost wretch at the repeated offering of it.
  

• "Christian Lander knows the Stuff White People Like" (Mindy Farabee @ Los Angeles Times)

  "The Stuff is more about class than race," Lander said. Yet it's not even precisely rich whiteness that he singles out for his ire. It's moneyed Caucasian liberals saturated with irony and bedecked in ostentatious authenticity and hard-earned nonchalance. "It is the attitude, it's not about the stuff," Lander clarified . . . . "It's all a contest," he said. "It's a competition that's not about money, because that's crass. Authenticity and happiness are valued more than wealth. Wealth was always taken care of in this group of people." Still, the upper middle class is "completely dominated by white people," he emphasized. "If you're from another race and you like the stuff in the book, chances are you will get accused of acting white. . . "

• "What the Housing Crisis Can Tell Us about Racism, Sexism and Homelessness" (Clayton Perry @ blogcritics magazine)
  

  If we choose to view each of these problems and its race dynamics as separate issues, then we are guilty of ignoring the points of origin which connect them all together. According to Max Rameau, an organizer with the Center for Pan-African Development in Miami, Florida, the root problems of gentrification in the 2000s are the same as the root problems of segregation in the 1960s: people of colors’ lack of power and control over land, and white supremacy.

• "'No Irish Need Apply': A Myth of Victimization" (Richard Jensen @ Journal of Social History)
  

  The Irish American community harbors a deeply held belief that it was the victim of systematic job discrimination in America, and that the discrimination was done publicly in highly humiliating fashion through signs that announced "Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply." This "NINA" slogan could have been a metaphor for their troubles—akin to tales that America was a "golden mountain" or had "streets paved with gold." But the Irish insist that the signs really existed and prove the existence of widespread discrimination and prejudice.
  
  The fact that Irish vividly "remember" NINA signs is a curious historical puzzle. There are no contemporary or retrospective accounts of a specific sign at a specific location. No particular business enterprise is named as a culprit. No historian, archivist, or museum curator has ever located one; no photograph or drawing exists. No other ethnic group complained about being singled out by comparable signs. Only Irish Catholics have reported seeing the sign in America—no Protestant, no Jew, no non-Irish Catholic has reported seeing one. This is especially strange since signs were primarily directed toward these others: the signs said that employment was available here and invited Yankees, French-Canadians, Italians and any other non-Irish to come inside and apply. The business literature, both published and unpublished, never mentions NINA or any policy remotely like it. The newspapers and magazines are silent. The courts are silent. There is no record of an angry youth tossing a brick through the window that held such a sign. Have we not discovered all of the signs of an urban legend?

  
  

• "At TBPAC, Chris Rock's unspeakably funny; second show Thursday" (Eric Deggans @ tampabay.com)

  He's dropping serious knowledge about race, culture and class — leavening the lessons with so many laughs, most fans don't even know they're being schooled. For example, check Rock's dissertation on why black women really hate black men who date white women: "Black women are not attracted to white men," he said. "You see a black woman with an overweight white man, that means her credit is (messed) up." . . . " John McCain is too ... old — didn't he used to own Sidney Poiter?" Rock asked, in one of the rare jokes that can be printed in a family newspaper. "Who's going to be his vice president? A nurse?"

And finally, a video for regular SWPD reader Nquest, who says he "should have been a linguist": an interview with the most famous American linguist that most Americans have never heard of, conducted by Ali G, the most famous British b-boy that most Americans have never heard of (unless they've seen him in his other guise, as Borat).

most embody american-ness

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. . . .

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. . . .

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. . .

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

—The United States Declaration of Independence,
adopted on July 4, 1776

Be in enacted by the State and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof . . .

—An Act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,
ratified on March 26, 1790

Autonomy is freedom and translates into the much championed and revered "individualism" . . . . Eventually individualism fuses with the prototype of Americans as solitary, alienated, and malcontent. What, one wants to ask, are Americans alienate from? What are Americans always so insistently innocent of? Different from? As for absolute power, over whom is this power held, from whom withheld, to whom distributed?

Answers to these questions lie in the potent and ego-reinforcing presence of an Africanist population. This population is convenient in every way, not the least of which is self-definition. This new white male can convince himself that savagery is "out there."

—Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark:
Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992)

After 1870, Blacks as well as Whites could naturalize, but not others. . . . from 1870 until the last of the prerequisite laws were abolished in 1952, the White-Black dichotomy in American race relations dominated naturalization law. During this period, Whites and Blacks were eligible for citizenship, but others, particularly those from Asia, were not. Indeed, increasing antipathy toward Asians on the West Coast resulted in an explicit disqualification of Chinese persons from naturalization in 1882. . . .

In 1935, Hitler's Germany limited citizenship to members of the Aryan race, making Germany the only country other than the United States with a racial restriction on naturalization. The fact of this bad company was not lost on those administering our naturalization laws. . . .

In 1952, Congress moved towards wholesale reform, overhauling the naturalization statute to read simply that "[t]he right of a person to become a naturalized citizen of the United States shall not be denied or abridged because of race or sex or because such person is married." Thus, in 1952, racial bars on naturalization came to an official end.

—Ian Haney López, White by Law:
The Legal Construction of Race
(1996, 2006)

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. I could measure up to the cultural standards and take advantage of the many options I saw around me to make what the culture would call a success of my life.

My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as “belonging” in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely. My life was reflected back to me frequently enough so that I felt, with regard to my race, if not to my sex, like one of the real people.

--Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege and Male Privilege:
A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences
through Work in Women’s Studies" (1988)

Deep within the word "American" is its association with race. . . . American means white . . .

--Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark

adopt non-white children

Many white folks express their magnanimity by adopting non-white children. This is not to say that non-white people don't adopt white children.






[source: the original home of The Simpsons. Hat-tip for the video to Carmen D at all about race]

white quotation of the week (tim wise)

Carmen Van Kerckhove: One of the choices you seem to have made is to really work with other white people. When it comes to anti-racism work, it seems like white folks sometimes end up in kind of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation, where I think if they seem too actively involved, there’s this sense that maybe they’re trying to, you know, take things over from people of color. But then, it just seems like it’s a little bit tough to negotiate a space in which you can really do work and not create any sort of negative reactions to that. So what have you found to have worked for you personally and among other white racism activists that you know? What advice do you have to white people who are listening to this who want to get involved in this work?

Tim Wise: First it’s to accept that you will screw up. I mean, I screw up on a pretty regular basis, and I think that’s part of doing this work, particularly if you’re a member of the dominant group fighting a system of oppression from which you, at least in relative terms, benefit, there’s always gonna be questions. And I think they’re good questions. I think it’s perfectly valid for folks of color to wonder just what the hell am I up to, and what the hell are other white folks up to, doing this work.

I get that. I wouldn’t trust me either if I was in that situation. But ultimately—and I think women who wonder why men are doing anti-sexism work have every reason in the world to ask that question—I’d be worried if folks weren’t asking it. What I do hope, however, is that those of us who are white, when we do the work, and we get challenged, that we don’t, just sort of, give up.

I mean, what I see a lot of times is white folks, when they get challenged on this, when they get some of that push-back from people of color, who frankly have no reason to trust what we’re doing or why we’re doing it, it’s like we almost think, “Well how ungrateful!” You know?

And I think that’s because a lot of white folks come to this work with the mentality that we’re doing it for other people. And, one of the things I learned doing community organizing, working in public housing in New Orleans for about fifteen months with a great organization down there called Agenda for Children, that was connected to the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, which does anti-racism training, was that they really taught me—and I haven’t figured it all out—but they taught me the importance of accountability, and trying to be responsive, and responsible to, people of color, understanding that ultimately we want to follow the lead of people of color, but that we’re not doing it for them. . . .

For those of us who are white, I think the way we can remain responsible and accountable is to have an accountability network. Now, it’s easier to have that, perhaps, if you’re doing grassroots activist work. Nowadays, that’s not the work I do. As a writer and someone who speaks around the country, it’s been a lot harder for me, in all honesty, to have a strong accountability network. So what I try to do is make sure that when I write something, I send it out before I ever post it or publish it anywhere, I send it out to several hundred people, both people of color in grassroots situations and organizations, as well as white allies. I ask for feedback, I ask for criticism, and I’m always open to that even after it’s published. I’ll go back and change something in an article if it’s problematic, if some way that I said something is messed up in someone’s mind, or if they didn’t think I said it quite as well as I could’ve, I’ll go back and rework it.

In fact, I did that with the entire book, White Like Me. There were some, I think, very valid criticisms of the initial volume, and some of the things that I left out, some of the ways that I said certain things. I actually went back and fundamentally changed the book, because I wanted to make the book, of course, as strong as it could be, but I also wanted to reflect the notion of accountability, that if I’ve done something that is not helpful, or done something which wasn’t as helpful as it could’ve been, I want to go back and try to rework that, and try to get better at it.

And accountability’s never going to be perfect, but I think part of being accountable is being open, making yourself open, exposing yourself to that kind of critique, and then taking it really seriously when it comes in. It doesn’t mean that every criticism’s valid, and there’s some people who are just not going to want to see white folks do this kind of work at all, and that’s fine. For me, I always come back to the fact that in the end that I’m not doing this for people of color. I’m fighting racism and white supremacy because I think it fundamentally diminishes my humanity. I think it diminishes me, I think it diminishes my family, I think it ultimately puts me, and the entire country and the entire world at risk.

So I don’t really need permission to fight a system that I think diminishes me and I think may destroy all of us. But I think, permission or no permission, I do want to try to be accountable, and I want to be listening to what people of color are saying, following their lead, not dictating the agenda. Not going in and saying, “Well, the issue here is obviously A, B,or C,” when in fact people of color might say, “No, the issue is D, E, or F.” And I have to be open to learning and listening as much as teaching and speaking, and I think that is what white folks can keep in mind as they go forward.


[Transcribed from a preview of Addicted to Race Premium, which you can subscribe to here. Hat-tip to Why Am I Not Surprised? for the "quotation of the week" idea.]

sit quietly in movie theaters (part two)

Film audience at the New Egyptian Hall, London, 1907-08

Today’s post about movie audiences is a continuation of yesterday’s post about movie audiences. In particular, it’s about the comments that readers wrote in response to yesterday’s post, and I’ll also have more to say about the ostensible topic of both posts—expectations of silence by movie audiences.

I hope that at least some of my readers had fun guessing what I might have really meant by yesterday’s brief, rather enigmatic post. When I wrote it, I knew that its claim—that silence in movie theaters is a common form of behavior among white movie audiences—would cause a negative reaction from some readers of this blog. And sure enough, it did.

For the record, the claim in the one-sentence post is a paraphrase of a sentence in a fascinating book, Performing Whiteness: Re/Constructions in the Cinema. In that book, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster writes that proper movie “spectatorship is nonparticipatory, silent, and white.” At the end of this post, I’ll turn things over to Foster with an excerpt from her book and let her explain how that could be.

As I promised in the comments section of yesterday’s post, I will write about reader reactions to that post in this one, and I want to do so as a demonstration of something. I will then use that “something” to address how we tend to think about whiteness, and race more generally. I also think that the many negative reactions of readers’ to yesterday’s post have implications for the kind of white anti-racist writing that I’m doing on this blog, and perhaps for white anti-racist work more generally.

One interesting thing about negative reactions to the claim made by yesterday’s one-sentence post is that what the sentence says is actually true—sitting quietly in a theater and shushing others who aren’t behaving quietly IS a common form of behavior among white movie audiences. I don’t think that claim can be convincingly disputed, at least in an American context.

The second part of the post, which says that watching movies silently is more common among middle-class white audiences than among other white movie audiences, may be less true. However, the tenuous nature of that second claim, and the lack of any examples or references to audience research in the post to support it, was not what caused a negative reaction. I even entered the comments section yesterday and suggested that the post’s claim could be more about social class than about race, but from what I can see, no one else picked up on social class as a way to consider the post’s claim and its implications.

So why the focus on race, and why the negative reactions to a claim that’s actually true? Because, as many commenters wrote, claiming simply that white folks often do something implies that non-white folks don’t do it—even if the person making the claim actually says nothing at all about non-white folks.

What this whole charade of mine demonstrates, then, is that in our common conception of “race,” whiteness inevitably exists in relation to other categories. It’s very difficult to talk about whiteness in isolation. To talk about it, that is, without talking about other races.

In fact, whiteness has existed in relation to other racial categories from the very beginning of “race” as a concept—“white” folks wouldn’t call themselves that if their ancestors hadn’t decided to make a big deal out of racial differences in order to do things to people from other races.

So, for those of us who focus on whiteness, what do we really talk about when we try to talk about it? Can we actually talk about it without talking about other races? Or must we always talk about it in relation to other races? And if we do talk about other races as we do so, how should we do so?

I’ve noticed, for instance, that when I ask white individuals to talk about whiteness, about what their being white means for them, they usually have very little to say, and they eventually end up talking about non-white people instead. White Americans are usually unaccustomed to talking directly about their own whiteness, and when asked to do so, they often shift to discussing it in relation to other races, and then end up talking almost exclusively about those other people instead.

This kind of removal, or distancing, also happens among white writers on race—most of them write about people of color, instead of about white people. In 1990, bell hooks issued a plea about this tendency that I think still needs to be heard today:

One change in direction that would be real cool would be the production of a discourse on race that interrogates whiteness. It would just be so interesting for all those white folks who are giving blacks their take on blackness to let them know what’s going on with whiteness. In far too much contemporary writing—though there are some outstanding exceptions—race is always an issue of Otherness that is not white: it is black, brown, yellow, red, purple even.

Actually, I’ve also noticed a similar relational conception of whiteness in my own writing. I’ve often wondered if whiteness can be talked about in isolation, since talking about it in relation to other races raises problems about how to represent or describe those other races in my writing.

I too find it difficult to talk about whiteness and white folks without also talking about non-white folks. In the past three months or so that I’ve been writing this blog, I often call on the writings of non-white observers of whiteness for their take on the white thing currently under examination. As several commenters have pointed out, I sometimes run into trouble doing so (and for those who might think that I don’t listen to my detractors, I do—I’m working on these things).

It is important to talk about whiteness in relation to other races, because white supremacy still has so many deleterious effects on members of other races. But in order to examine whiteness, to better understand it, must one always do so in relation to other races? Can it not be isolated for close analysis?

After all, white people have, and still do, try to separate themselves from other people. Indeed, whiteness is all about separation from non-white people; that’s one of its fundamental points, perhaps its very raison d’être. And yet, paradoxically enough, it depends on conceptions of non-white others for its very existence. And as yesterday’s exercise of sorts demonstrates, saying much of anything at all about white people means saying something about non-white people too. Even if you don’t actually, literally claim that something is true about non-white people, if you claim something about white people, you still have, by implication.

And so we continue, in the wake of so many centuries of destruction and waste wrought by the bludgeon of race, with whiteness and its supposed opposites still going round and round, clutching each other in a mad, paradoxical dance of division and mutual dependency.

Can we step outside of the dance and become spectators? If we do, will we remain as silent as well-behaved movie audiences? How about instead, we get noisy, and try to stop the dance?


[And here, as promised, are some excerpts from Gwendolyn Audrey Foster’s book, Performing Whiteness, explaining her claim that silent movie spectatorship is a white thing. As well as a gendered thing. Oh, and a class thing too. To explain how this all came about, she goes back to the early days of cinema, when silent spectatorship arose as a different way of behaving within a crowd that was being entertained. Notice as well that she doesn’t talk about white audiences without also talking about black audiences.

By the way, I don't necessarily endorse Foster's claims here--I offer them as a matter of interest in relation to "whiteness," and I wish she had more to say about the racial differences, if any, among contemporary movie audiences. Because this excerpt is fairly long, I will skip my usual use of italics for quoted material.]


If, as Mary Ann Doane suggests, “whiteness. . . is a form of masquerade which conceals an identity” (229), what does this masquerade suggest about white audiences and their constructions as good or bad? How do white audiences perform good whiteness or bad whiteness? Much has been written about cinema audiences in general, exploring the relationship between the construct of the film being witnessed and the gender and class of moviegoers, yet little reception theory has been written about white audience behavior.

White women were often constructed as bad audiences or bad moviegoers. As Shelley Stamp observes, “the recurring figure of a boisterous, talkative woman” (27) was popular in the silent era and “chatty women became one of the more familiar caricatures of the era” (26). Miriam Hansen notes in Babel and Babylon that the “'rule of the silence' had to be learned in the 1910s” (95).

The white woman was, then, largely constructed as a consumer of images. Consequently, there was much anxiety on the part of theatrical film exhibitors because of the class differences among women. Exhibitors wished to appeal to all classes while appearing to privilege the upper-class woman. Special seats were set aside for “ladies” in a Jim Crow-style arrangement; “ladies” of course, meant white women, and the seating separated them by class.

“Class-conscious women were thereby guaranteed that they would constitute a significant body of the audience and perhaps more important, that they would not have to rub elbows with less cultivated patrons who might also be in attendance” (Stamp 14). While the “[u]nreal unity the on-screen spectacle proclaims masks the class divisions on which real unity of the capitalist mode is based” (Debord 46), the off-screen space both encouraged white class prejudice and encouraged good (read silent) female behavior.

The “genteel culture of female moviegoing promoted by the industry accomplished much more than simply encouraging patronage among this desirable segment of the market. Such promotions also guided women's expectations, furnishing them with clues about how to conduct themselves in picture houses” (Stamp 15). White women were thus being used as colonized figures of commerce while simultaneously allowing themselves to be further colonized by social-conduct guides. They were mocked for being loud and praised for being poised, quiet, white, and genteel. Good-white women were, therefore, subject as spectators to the dualities usually associated with the Victorian age.

“Woman, Victorian society dictated, was to be chaste, delicate, and loving....She was seen, that is, as being both higher and lower, bother innocent and animal, pure yet quintessentially sexual” (Smith-Rosenberg 183). Performing good-white femininity meant shutting up and removing large hats, so it is perhaps contrary to expectations that many women filmgoers actually preferred action and spectacle.

“In fact, women were attracted to sexually explicit, action-oriented, and agitational films that encouraged alternative viewing modes and extra-textual engagement, at a time when filmmaking was increasingly standardized toward classical norms” (Stamp 198). Thus, despite exhibitor expectations, women who were privileged, white, and gentile were invited into cinemas to provide respectability to exhibition houses, yet they made a great deal of noise and liked action-adventure films, especially serials, which often featured female action heroines.

But to be a good audience in dominant white culture increasingly meant to be a quiet audience. Unfortunately, this call for silence meant that many black audiences, who had a propensity to interact with the films they viewed in a call-and-response mode, were coded by white people as poorly behaved: only in all-black theaters could African Americans or others feel free to respond to films as they wished. . .

[A] good audience remains defined as a silent, almost reverent audience, a construct that is deeply related to class, race, and gender. The quietest audiences are those that attend films in museums and retro houses, where all the comments during a film are met with a stern glance and admonitions to remain silent. Happily, there are exceptions to this rule of silence in the cathedral of cinema. These “exceptional screenings,” in which audiences are active and vocal participants during the viewing of a film, break the fourth wall of cinema reception. Audiences who are exiled from one another, silenced by the unseen panoptic presence, enact an agreed-upon definition of good-spectator behavior. Thus good spectatorship is nonparticipatory, silent, and white.