Whiteness

Whuuut?!? Two posts in one week?!?! You must be unemployed again.

No, just a little more free than usual. Trust me, it won't last.

So I stumbled upon this post regarding Rush Limbaugh and the Crisis in White Conservative Manhood and I found it sort of interesting. Not compelling, mind you, just sort of interesting. It's short on evidence and not particularly revealing, but I think it illustrates an attempt to delve into the issue of whiteness in a moderately critical way that I think the U.S. could benefit from.

The 'Crisis' essay didn't get into it, but for me it sparked the idea that there's an intesection between color blindness, whiteness, and "real america" where White America as a socio-political phenomenon exists.

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit and these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation,” Sarah Palin

"Real America" serves as a proxy for White America. All that is "really truly" American is White to the minds of many. Removed from the label of "Whiteness", then it becomes easy to deny the existence of race, or to proclaim that you don't see race. In the end, you don't need to see race, because all concepts that would normally be packaged into a conception of White race are subsumed in your concept of "America". Does anyone think that Sarah Palin was considering rap, jazz, César Chávez, or Japanese internment when she was referring to "real America"? Not likely. She was talking about small, rural, white towns where race is not an issue because there is only one race present.

If we could find a way to talk about white America, and white culture, in a non-accusatory, non supremacy boosting, academic, way, it would go a long way toward resolving racial issues here. An honest and useful discussion of race must include more than the experiences of Blacks. We have to include the racial experiences of other groups, and as far as white people (or any group) are concerned, we have to find a way to do this without making people feel guilty or chest-thumpingly prideful. There has to be a way to talk about these issues truthfully and dispassionately. Sphere: Related Content