50 Shades of White(ness)

In the wake of yet another in a long line of racially motivated mass shootings, the rhetoric and vocabulary of Whiteness makes a renewed appearance into mainstream media. Unfortunately, definitions related to Whiteness are usually not provided; leaving room for misunderstanding and misinterpretation of key concepts for making sense of our socio-political context and our places in it.  

This article provides a brief primer for understanding Whiteness and the different ways it manifests in American life (arguably in other countries as well). 

Whiteness

In a historic context, Whiteness is the powerful ideology that served to rationalize, legalize, legitimize and define who was categorized as White and who was not. In other words, race is not rooted in biology. It is rooted in a series of legal decisions used to ascribe benefits and privileges (such as property ownership) to those legally determined to be White (Haney-López, 2006; Harris, 1993).  In the 1800’s, the people who were considered White were of ancestry rooted England, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavian countries.  Russians, Poles, Irish, Greek, Italian and other European immigrants did not have access to these White privileges.  The determination of who is considered White evolved over time through legal decisions, eventually leading to the current definition offered by the U.S. Census Bureau,   “A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”   

In our daily lives, Whiteness can understood as a set of assumptions, beliefs, and normative rules that advantage White people and, to varying degrees, disadvantage everyone else (Goldstein Hode & Meisenbach, 2016). Whiteness emerges as underlying persuasive logics that serve as “frameworks for action, the patterning of social practices, the terms and rules for the operation of social institutions of the economy, the educational system, the legal system, the representations of value that define the culture and so on” (Owen, 2007, p. 208).  In other words, the underpinnings of our social order, our civic society, and our governing systems are built on a set of taken-for-granted assumptions that are in fact manifestations of Whiteness.

For example, one dominant assumption in American life is the ‘right to profit’ (Okun, 2010). The ‘right to profit’ value is the cultural belief that the ability to make a profit is a right, not a privilege. This profit motive generates a “cultural ethos of production at all costs” (Okun, 2010, p.11) that has justified a long history of White dominance. Every period in U.S. history is marked by policies, laws, and narratives that produced, and continue to produce, an accumulation of wealth for White people at the expense of non-White people (Okun, 2010). Starting with colonization, slavery, westward expansion, the industrial revolution, all the way to today’s neo-liberal trade policies, the right to profit has served as a legitimized rationale for the commodification and exploitation of workers, particularly people of color (Okun, 2010). Today, the right to profit is manifested in widely held cultural ideals around wealth and consumption that both perpetuate and obscure White cultural, economic, and political dominance. 

White Culture

While there are many cultures and subcultures that make up the United States, the mainstream or dominant ideas about family structure, the value of time, the worth of an individual, the standards for beauty, the English language, the standards of professionalism are all based on White ideals about what is good, right, valuable. In other words, White culture can be understood as the mainstream customs, norms, values, assumptions and beliefs that operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared.

The chart below offers some examples. It is important to note that there is nothing inherently wrong with most of the values, beliefs, ideals expressed in the chart. The issue is that this set of cultural assumptions is upheld as the right way, rather than as one way of equal value as other ways.

White Supremacy and White Nationalism

For many folks, the term White Supremacy conjures images of the KKK, something extreme and far removed from the daily lives of most people. However, in his speech addressing the most recent racially-fueled mass violence on Black people in Buffalo NY, Biden explains that "White supremacy is a poison. It's a poison ... running through our body politic," thus acknowledging that white supremacy is insidiously embedded in our political sphere. White supremacy is an ideological belief that White people and White culture are superior to others and that White dominance is the natural order of things. 

White supremacist ideology is often unspoken in direct terms. Instead, it is encoded in arguments about immigration, poverty, and so on. But there is an extreme fringe of White Nationalists who are very explicit and clear about their belief in, and willingness to commit violence to defend, the racialized order of White dominance.  

But let us not forget that while White Nationalists may seem like a small, fringe, radicalized group, they are the products of a centuries-long legacy of racial violence that has been perpetuated by our government, law enforcement, and military. Click here to see a timeline of racial massacres in the U.S. from the 1600’s to present day.

Fortunately, the vast majority of White Americans are not White Nationalists. Unfortunately, it is this minority of extremists that make it challenging for the majority of White folks to have conversations about being White and what it means.

White Privilege

First, to mitigate defensiveness, it is important to acknowledge that privilege, or the social advantages that come with being identified as ‘the norm,’ such as being free of derogatory remarks and ease of movement in the world, is not something that only White people benefit from. There are privileged identities related to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability status, religion, citizenship status, socioeconomic status, physical appearance, and so on.  In other words, almost all of us are afforded and denied different types of normative privilege in various contexts.

White privilege specifically refers to the wide ranging advantages that come with being identified as White such as never having to worry about being racially profiled by law enforcement; always being able to find beauty products, children’s books and toys, and other products that align with your racial identity and culture; never having to be concerned that your race is a factor when it comes to receiving medical care, applying for loans or jobs, buying houses; always seeing your race represented in positions of power in political, financial, educational, and cultural institutions.

It is important to note that while White people are not subject to systemic and institutionalized racism, White privilege does not shield anyone from harm, suffering, indignity, abuse, or unfairness that life dishes out randomly.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about White identity.     

White Identified and White Identity

There are people, like myself, who 100% benefit from White privilege, but don't really identify as White. As a Jewish person of Eastern European decent, I identify as being part of an ethnic/cultural group and a global diaspora of people who have been subject to anti-Semitism, oppression, and violence throughout history. To me, a White racial identity involves not only privilege, but also an existence free having been scorned or dehumanized because of your racial/ethnic identity. And so, while I accept that I benefit from White privilege (among many other forms of privilege), I do not identify with the label "White person." And I am not alone.

There are many other "White presenting" BIPOC who have invisible but cherished ethnicities. There are bi/multiracial children whose physical appearance mainly favors their White parent. There are Middle Eastern North African (MENA) folks who are forced to check the "White" box on the census, yet are subject to racism. And when we are called "White," it doesn't feel right because it renders invisible important aspects of who we are.

However, let me clear here… not really being White does not free us from our responsibility to own up to the fact that our White privilege can still serve to oppress people, to speak up to use that privilege to counter racism (microaggressions, etc.), and to act up to advocate for more inclusive spaces and against oppression that we may escape because of what we look like.

While racial and ethnic identities of POC are often a source of pride, community, and connection, it seems that only White Nationalists feel a sense of pride, community, and connection about being White. For many other White folks, it is a source of shame and guilt, particularly at times when the ugliness of White supremacy rears its vicious and ugly head. Moreover, the only shared experience of White people may be their lack of being racialized and subject to racism.

The sad truth is that the price of admission to the White power structure and the privileges that it bestows is assimilation. Irish, Russians, Italians, Swedes, Poles and the myriad of other European immigrants that made their way to the New World were initially subject to systematic exclusion from the benefits of White society. But over time, they were able shed language, accents, customs, and cultural identity in exchange for ‘just being American.’ While those whose physical attributes did not align with this image (i.e. Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Latin American) were not even afforded this choice.  

Where to do we go from here?

Obviously, there is no easy answer to this question. Truth and reconciliation, reparations, restorative justice are all tools that we should engage in as a country, but what can we do as individuals, right here, right now?

As with all wicked problems, Whiteness cannot be addressed or altered until it is named and understood. The purpose of this little primer on Whiteness was to help you develop a lens through which to understand the invisible, yet universal, power of Whiteness in order to reveal and question the assumptions and beliefs that uphold that power. If that’s too lofty a goal, then let’s at least just try to spread some understanding when words like White supremacy, culture, and privilege are used. 

References

Goldstein Hode, M., & Meisenbach, R. J. (2016). Reproducing Whiteness Through Diversity: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Pro-Affirmative Action Amicus Briefs in the Fisher Case. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.

Haney-López, Ian. (2006). White by law: The legal construction of race. New York University Press.

Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 1707–1791.

Okun, Tema. (2010). The emperor has no clothes: Teaching about race and racism to people who don’t want to know. Information Age Pub.