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Defining Whiteness: Perspectives on Privilege

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Defining Whiteness: Perspectives on Privilege Defning Whiteness: Perspectives on Privilege Anna Lindner Although white people have largely dictated the global narratives of history, philosophy, literature, and beyond, whiteness as a racial category remains vague. How, then, do we defne whiteness and how do those considered white relate to other racial groups? One path to understanding these questions is to provide an overview of whiteness, including its history, as well as Black authors’ interpretations of white identity and its impact on populations of color, critical whiteness studies, case studies, and contemporary scholarship in the feld. Te overview concludes by addressing white privilege and the ways in which whites can support people of color in the pursuit of racial justice. In terms of scholarship, the research presented here is focused primarily on the United States, drawing on research from other countries when applicable. Anna Lindner is pursuing her Master's Degree in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her research focuses on historical approaches to critical race and gender studies. You can reach her at [email protected]. gnovis • 43 Volume 18, Issue 2 • Spring 2018 Introduction: What is Whiteness? that we lacked a racial identity, or if that we possess one, it contains no relevance” (2014, Given the global history of colonization 20). Whites are permitted to exist outside of and imperialism of generally lighter peoples racial identity, even though non-whites are over darker, discrimination on the basis constantly assigned racial labels. In other of skin color and other manifestations words, to be white enables one to retain a of prejudice have played a pivotal role in sense of individuality, while barring people shaping the world. Although most modern of color from exercising that same right. scholars carefully consider the role of race in society, the ways in which whites’ Privilege is inherent within any construction racial identities impact their lives remain of whiteness. For example, white dominance widely unrecognized and understudied. in the United States has produced Research must then address the formation institutions that elevate opportunities for of what is now considered the “white race,” whites over those of other groups. Professor beginning with the broader global narrative, of Sociology Cliford Leek notes that which informs the development of North whiteness can be defned “as a set of practices American whiteness. that function to protect and maintain privilege, while others defne whiteness Te concept of race is socially constructed, simply as the experience of privilege” developed over centuries partially as a (2014, 214). Both defnitions are necessary; method of social control (McIntosh 2007, however, even those who acknowledge their 1 349). Science has shown that race is not whiteness often do not recognize the ways in biological, but merely an ideology based which it protects privilege, which is one way upon superfcial value judgements (Painter in which whiteness becomes problematic. 2010, 2). Te term white refers most Indeed, even “seemingly ‘benign’ practices of obviously to light skin, but also denotes whiteness reinforce white supremacy” (ibid., those who historically have beneftted from 215). When the white way is enforced as the light-skin privilege. Tus, both defnitions only right way, people of color are viewed as of whiteness will be considered here when divergent, and marginalized as a result. referring to white people. Te term ethnicity is often confated with As opposed to the racialization assigned to race. Ethnicity can be equated with culture, people of color, whiteness can be defned by while race refers not only to skin color, but its hyper-visibility, which counterintuitively also to one’s perceived categorical identity. 2 leads to invisibility. Journalist Nicholas Indeed, sociologist Doug Daniels (1997) Kristof observes that while individuals refer conducted a study to determine if Canadian to “people of color in terms of their group university students considered groups such individuality, [whites] insist on referring to as “Jewish,” “Spanish,” and “Arab” to be white ourselves individually, almost as if to suggest (1997, 51). Te students gave mixed and 1 Slavery, for example, existed before the Transatlantic slave trade was established in the sixteenth century, but these slaves could buy their freedom and their children were not necessarily enslaved (see the section on “Whiteness, a History” for more information). Slavery in the New World was initially similar, but eventually developed into racial slavery—those with even “one drop” of “black blood” were enslaved in an intergenerational cycle of disenfranchisement that continues to afect their descendants today (Houston & Wood 1995, 43). 2 Te hyper-visibility of whiteness (i.e., the overrepresentation of whites in the media, etc.) allows them to be normalized (i.e., equated with a standard state of humanness). Tis normalization leads to the invisibility of their race (e.g., whites are described as “tall” or “blonde,” while people of color are referred to by their “race,” based on assumptions about their physical appearances). For further discussion, see the section on “ Black American Authors”. 44 • gnovisjournal.org Defning Whiteness often uncertain responses. Tis is because Painter challenges the common some groups, like the Jewish people,3 were misconception that Greece was the eventually considered white based on social birthplace of the original “white race” conditions. As another example, despite (ibid., 2-31). Te Greeks were what we now championing blue eyes and blonde hair as consider “mixed race” due to the mingling the ideal, Adolf Hitler called the Japanese of people from a variety of backgrounds. “honorary Aryans” during WWII, for no Indeed, Painter maintains that the modern reason other than their military allegiance “race narrative ignores early European to Germany (Stratman 1970, 4). slavery and the mixing it entailed, leading today’s readers to fnd the idea of white Jolanta Drzewiecka and Kathleen Wong slavery far-fetched. But in the land we now note that white ethnicity is “a matter of call Europe, most slaves were white” (ibid., personal choice, not only about whether 33). Te rise of racial slavery represents an to maintain one’s ties to ethnic ancestry historical anomaly: for the frst time, skin but also which ties and to which ancestry” color became the basis for enslavement (1999, 205). No other ethnic group can (Allen 1975, 2). However, the etymology freely fit between categories; people of color of the word “slave” indicates a diferent are implicated by their racial backgrounds in historical global reality. Painter points out ways that whites are not. Charles Gallagher that due to the increase in enslavement of echoes this notion, stating that for whites, people from the Balkans, the European “ethnic identity is understood as a personal, slave coast, “the word ‘Slav’ turned into the private orientation that, like a hobby, makes word ‘slave’” (ibid., 39). those who express it feel good” (2013, 157). Only whites can opt-in and opt-out of their White slavery also contributed to many of identities because they are not implicated by the white beauty ideals that persist today. them in the ways that people of color are. Painter writes: “By the nineteenth century, ‘odalisques,’ or white slave women, often Whiteness: A History appear as young, naked, beautiful, and sexually available throughout European and As evidence in the previous section suggests, American art” (2010, 43). Interestingly, the race is socially constructed.4 How, then, did diminished status of these white women the concept of whiteness develop? In Te seemed to only increase their desirability. History of White People, Nell Irvin Painter For decades, “ideals of white beauty endured. points out that biologists postulate that all Tey had become frmly embedded in the people alive today “share the same small science of race,” (ibid., 58) which included number of ancestors living two or three practices such as comparing African skulls thousand years ago. Tese circumstances to those of apes, allowing whites to tout their make nonsense of anybody’s pretensions to racial superiority. Such “imagery inspired the fnd a pure racial ancestry” (2010, 2). obstetrician Charles White (1728-1813) to think about race as physical appearance,” (ibid., 69) a notion not considered before 3 “Jewish” can refer to both members of the religion and denote the culture surrounding Judaism, rendering it an ethnicity. Tis eth- nic identity becomes confated with race perhaps in part due to phenotypes (i.e., physical features) shared by many Jewish people. Although Jewish people in the United States were originally identifed by this religious or ethnic identity, they eventually became categorized as white, partly because there were large populations of Jewish people that were not immediately conspicuous as Other in the ways that darker-skinned people were. For historical specifcs on the homogenization of whiteness, see the following section. 4 For further discussion of race as a social construct, see Kramarae, Cheris. 1995. “Classifed Information: Race, Class, and (Always) Gender.” In Gendered Relationships, edited by Julia T. Wood. Mountain View, CA: Mayfeld Publishing. gnovis • 45 Volume 18, Issue 2 • Spring 2018 this time. Racial science culminated with them at a distance from poor whites (1994, the work of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 253). To prevent indentured servants and who added skin color when classifying other lower-class whites from allying with humans into “species.” Indeed, “such African Americans against the elite, the meticulous measurement endowed the bourgeoisie began to enlist them to protect ‘Caucasian’ variety with an unimpeachable their property. Indeed, in 1727, “poor scientifc pedigree,” (ibid., 75) a birthright whites when on patrol duty were to receive cited by racists like Hitler, who facilitated pay… [and] for what?—to crush plots and the genocide of people we now primarily rebellions such as their own grandfathers consider white. may have taken part in along with black bond-servants ffty years before” (Allen Te global conception of race parallels the 1975, 12).
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