Prometheus 6

P6
Are you familiar with Wages of Whiteness and Working Toward Whiteness by David Roediger? I think you might find these books conducive to your line of thought on this matter.

I haven't read them. I wrote this to answer a specific question.

My knowledge of whiteness studies comes from talking to and reading the works of past participants. I don't read a lot of it (and that actually includes Tim Wise's stuff) because EYE am not he to whom it is directed.

I actually have no line of thought on the subject.

The reason I mentioned Roediger is because his works might fit your preference for sociological rather than psychological discussions of whiteness.

But who is his target audience?

That's a good question. I think Roediger's scholarship ends up targeting multiple audiences. I read his book, The Wages of Whiteness, as an undergraduate in an Afro-American Studies course entitled The Dynamics of Racism. I have also found his work in reading lists compiled by professors who teach labor history. I am not sure that his books are widely read outside of academia, however. Although praised by some, Roediger has been jeered or ignored by many in the academy who find his work disingenuous, inaccurate, or objectionable. His book, The Wages of Whiteness, analyzes the role that "whiteness" played in the development of working-class identity from the Jacksonian era to the end of the Civil War. Working Towards Whiteness, in many ways a sequel to his earlier work, directs attention to the evolution of white identity in the context of European immigrants and working-class citizens who assimilated into the normative middle-class by the end of World War II thanks to the New Deal and war mobilization.

If anything, Roediger's study of whiteness falls into the category of white history just as Slavery By Another Name does. Both Blackmon and Roediger grew up in regions of the country which have a shameful racial history. Blackmon grew up in the Mississippi Delta; Roediger grew up in southern Illinois. As white children, they were taught in so many ways not to associate with black children and became aware at an early age that their black peers were always more economically deprived than they were. Both of them have claimed that their scholarship is driven by a desire to discover the reason why they grew up in a world where such injustices were commonplace. In doing so, they have jump started conversations among white people about the nature of their social and economic privileges, but they have also supplied a portal to African Americans seeking to understand their own past in relation to white supremacy. In these instances, they disseminate information about the dimensions of white privilege among white people, but do they also not "explain white folks to Black folks?" I would be curious to hear your opinion.

Okay, I'm back.

My friend Prof. George hit me by email...I think you sold a copy of at least one of Roediger's books.

You have to keep in mind my Black partisan thing. Because of that there's a level where I don't get the purpose of White Studies as currently practiced. Thinking about it now, I feel it's like capital-D Diversity...looks like it ought to make things easier for minorities but exists to benefit the mainstream. I think it's original purpose was to teach white folks how to cope in our new multicultural world.

If that's the case, this is what I would try.

1. Teach them that unearned privileges say nothing about you as a person, just as being born rich says nothing about you as a person.
2. Teach them to recognize unearned privilege when they see it, before trying to get them to admit they have it. Step 1 makes this a lot easier.
3. Teach them how the unearned priivilege came to be. This is the White History part.

From wikipedia:
"Whiteness and Architecture
While 'white' architecture has been fashionable since the 1920s as a particular kind of Modernist style, the links between architecture and race have only recently begun to be researched and analysed by scholars.[9]The focus of such work is on the way that architecture and architectural discourse has been used to maintain cultural distinctions favourable to 'Whiteness' and patriarchy."
Soon to be a new course at your favorite tax supported University taught by a tenured professor.

I can relate to your criticism of capital-D Diversity and how it exists to benefit the mainstream. I think whiteness studies, however, challenge the mainstream to a greater degree than survey courses covering non-white cultures. According to Manning Marable, academic treatment of non-white cultures under the rubric of capital-D Diversity,

... does not adequately or fully address the inequalities of power, resources and privilege
which separate most Latinos, African Americans and many Asian Americans from the great
majority of white upper- and middle-class Americans. It does not adequately conceive of
itself as a praxis, a theory which seeks to transform the reality of unequal power relations.
It deliberately emphasizes aesthetics over economics, art over politics. It attempts to
articulate the perceived interests of minority groups to increase their influence within the
existing mainstream.

Whiteness studies, on the other hand, do account for the social, political, and economic gaps which separate the white mainstream and minority communities. There are, perhaps, different branches of whiteness studies which succeed better than others. Maybe I need to study different examples that demonstrate the pitfalls of focusing on "privilege and guilt." In the end, however, I don't think whiteness studies suffer from the deficiencies inherent in multiculturalism or even belong in the same category.

A couple of weeks back it was said on prometheus6: "I believe collegiate level whiteness studies are deeply flawed by their focus on white privilege rather than white identity. "

When P6 wrote this the first time, my immediate reaction was, "There's a difference?"

Since then, my thinking has been kind of back and forth on the question. P6's definition of terms made sense to me. On the other hand, sometimes I think after you subtract "privilege," white identity is an empty set.

There's always beach volleyball.

Seriously, there's those places that are like 1.5% Black where for a lot of white folks race doesn't arise. What do white folks do when there are no Black folk in the room?

n/t

there's those places that are like 1.5% Black where for a lot of white folks race doesn't arise.

In situations like that, group identity doesn't focus on race. Instead it focuses on class, politics, wealth, or....I don't know...beach vollyball! Especially when there isn't an other to give whiteness definition, I'm not sure a definition exists.

The logical conclusions that follow from this are ugly, but they offer an explanation for the pervasiveness of racism.

Whiteness studies, on the other hand, do account for the social, political, and economic gaps which separate the white mainstream and minority communities. There are, perhaps, different branches of whiteness studies which succeed better than others.

I'm not sure...I'm thinking about that classic unpack your knapsack thing. All psychology, not sociology, no history.

Like I said, I'm not sure I get the whole concept.

"What do white folks do when there are no Black folk in the room?"

Oh, to be a fly on the wall.

Seriously though, some white people are incredibly sympathetic to black people on an abstract level when there are no black people around--even if they stare uncomfortably at the rare black person they come in contact with. Maybe it stems from the "White Man's Burden." I was kind of surprised that Obama won the Democratic primary in my home state of Wyoming. On the other hand, it is hard to work up a fear of the "other" when there are few "others" around. In the final analysis, however, white people who grow up in environments that are 98% white are still endowed with a sense of privilege even if it is not overtly misanthropic. My 11th grade history teacher, for instance, included The Bell Curve in her curriculum.

I wonder if the sense of privilege that you feel white people have is really a sense of privilege because they are American citizens? I think that you are focusing on white privilege because white identity is a very hard thing to pin down.

I wonder if the sense of privilege that you feel white people have is really a sense of privilege because they are American citizens?

No. Black people are American citizens too.