On Being White: A Series (3)

I began this series on race in America (see here) with a personal anecdote, because personal stories and subjective accounts are de rigueur in writings in the field of “whiteness studies.” The Wages of Whiteness by the labor historian David Roediger, for instance, opens with a conversion narrative concerning his journey from his racist past. Marilyn Frye, a retired professor of philosophy who has established an academic reputation with work on racism and sexuality, likewise appears to have suffered much from being a white woman, always aware, as she writes, that every choice or decision she makes is “made in a matrix of options,” that all decisions are “an exercise of race privilege.” (My emphasis.)  In the end, however, what it all comes down to is Marilyn Frye: “Does being white make it impossible for me to be a good person?”

The takeoff of whiteness studies occurred less than two decades ago, with Roediger’s study, but the field has had enormous influence over public discourse, especially in the media. The articles and books it has generated, and especially the jargon of the field — white privilege, white racism, and so on — have become self-propelling. This jargon has penetrated the consciousness even of folks who have never heard of Jacques Derrida: the assumptions of whiteness studies have become the “new natural.” Observe a hedge fund manager enjoying a cognac at a smart bar on the Upper West Side (where I live and which is also the throbbing heartbeat of liberal America). If the TV monitor is featuring a rant by MSNBC’s Melissa Harris Perry about “blaming the victim,” you and I might turn away, but he will nod sagely, at least if anyone is watching. Even people who would seem to be the object of scorn of whiteness studies pay lip service to the proposition that they are oppressors of blacks and other minorities.

The white professional classes, however, wear this scorn lightly, like anyone who acts with noblesse oblige. No one is going to take away the privileges they enjoy, even if Bernie Sanders becomes president. “Matrix of options,” indeed. As for the laborers in the the field of whiteness studies, they will fight to their dying breath to retain tenure or, as they call it, “academic freedom.” It is not, however, the fellow-privileged who are the targets of whiteness studies. The object of their scorn is the white working class.

The next installment discusses the political goals of whiteness studies.

Picture credit: Free Republic

On Being White: A Series (2)

A crowd of white persons

It was a summer evening in Central Park in New York. I was attending a Metropolitan Opera performance with a group of friends. The event was free, and since early morning the Sheep Meadow, to the west of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, people had been dropping by to reserve choice spots with blankets and folding chairs. By 6 p.m., two hours before Alan Gilbert hopped up the steps to the platform and lifted his baton, before gratitude had been expressed for the sponsorship of eminent organizations (Bloomberg, Bank of America the crowd stretched all the way back to the Delacorte Theater at the south end of the meadow. By then everyone was chowing down, some plunging into baskets fit for a Downton Abbey picnic. The mood was mellow: even for those who did not experience Manhattan in the bad old days but know the city only in it revived family-friendly incarnation, the mood was one of universal good will. As often happens on such cultural occasions, I surveyed the crowd of several thousand people in order to note what I was certain was missing: black people. Later in the year at a performance of the award-winning musical Hamilton on Broadway, written and performed by the Puerto Rican composer and rapper Lin-Manuel Miranda, the same thing struck me, the absence of blacks (except among the actors).

Where are the blacks at such events, I ask myself?

Picture credit: An Eventful World

On Being White: A Series (1)

When I entered college at Indiana University in 1961, the subject around which American liberal and illiberal opinion was centered was that of racial integration, a charged issue to which I was introduced, of all places, in my sociology class. In my perusal of the table of contents in the textbook, I had noted that a chapter was devoted to race, but one morning this perplexing American social problem was addressed by my professor with considerable vehemence. I can't recall the specific content of his utterance, for the blood rushed to my head and made coherent thought impossible. To hear this white professor dwell so openly on instances of shameful treatment of blacks made me uncomfortable, which I suppose was his intention. My discomfort could be seen as an effect of the new environment into which I had plunged at seventeen, one that challenged one's dearest preconceptions. Indeed, the episode is the first I recall in which new social realities collided with my own convictions.

I speak not of civil rights, however, but, rather, of the professor's forthrightness. From my point of
view, the professor was engaging in a flagrant breach of decorum: he was talking about inappropriate things, like sexual intercourse, in mixed company. My discomfort was principally because of the black students in the class. Although I could scarcely know what a black person had suffered –– no more than could the professor –– I knew that blacks suffered. But I also felt that suffering was an intensely personal matter and that the real blight was the deep inner wounds. Being forbidden to use a water fountain was not something you wanted people to notice when they thought about you.

 This open injecting of political content into the classroom was a first, but it did not galvanize me to engage in civil rights activity. What had a stronger, if more subtle, effect was the professor's breach of decorum, particularly the lack of challenge or response to it. Although his comments, focused as they were on the less-than-human treatment of blacks, might be very wounding to blacks, openness was apparently all part of being a smart, with-it person, especially if it concerned airing mortifying aspects of one's experience.

Picture credit: The Daily Mail