White Normativity Term Paper

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The Problem of White Normativity

In a multi-racial world, defining anyone as “black” or “white” makes as much sense as believing that all issues are “black” and “white” and that there are no shades of gray to anything. Almost everyone will certainly agree that from politics to economics to religion to any subject under the sun, there is a great deal of leeway to be given because to rigidly peg something or label it in a starkly definitive manner is to be too constrictive and narrow in one’s view. As a multi-racial woman, I myself feel that to think in terms of “black” or “white” goes against the grain. In South America, these dichotomies were virtually unknown in the past: the people accepted that their identities were more distinctively based on family lines, heritage and culture—not the color of their skin (Baran, 2007; Burdick, 1998). In the U.S., American society has so long been obsessed with an “us” and “them” approach to characterizing people that it inevitably leads to tribalism. There are “whites” and “blacks” and “others”—when the real issue has nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with culture. The White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) who defined Manifest Destiny and either wiped out the Native Americans or pushed them from their land brought a distinctly northern European Protestant culture to the New World—a culture in which they viewed themselves, like the Jewish people, as God’s chosen. Everyone else—whether Catholic, indigenous, or black—was there to be used. That is what became known as white normativity in the U.S. Whiteness was really the manifestation of the ideological aspects and culture of the Enlightenment that extended across the Atlantic and took root among the Revolutionaries here.

As Tim Wise (2012) notes, whiteness has always been a “social and institutional force”—not a category for people but rather a description of a “mindset,” as Wise puts it (p. 12). Whiteness in America is “a social category created for the purpose of enshrining a racially divided polity” (Wise, 2012, p. 12). It was whiteness that the Founding Fathers promoted when they wrote about liberty and the pursuit of happiness: they were not talking about freedom and equality for everyone—just for everyone who was like them. Hooks (1999) states, however, that true America is more than just whiteness: whiteness was only the mode by which the power structure of the ruling classes was communicated. America actually boasts so many different races, cultures, ethnicities and people who have nothing whatsoever to do with whiteness that what is irrationally known as “white America” is in danger of disappearing (which would actually be a good thing)—though the ruling class (the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies and the representatives in government) are still far and away more representative of whiteness than the rest of America (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). Hooks (1999) argues that this is unfortunate because “within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (p. 21). Without the breath of fresh air that is the multi-racial world in America, whiteness would be so bland and boring that it would have died long ago—it survives because America is a multi-racial society that is infused with richness of cultures and ideas; the problem is that it all gets subordinated to the will of the ruling class, which allows for white normativity to be perpetuated. Whiteness is made to look normal and ethnicity and diversity are simply tolerated to give some “color” and make whiteness more palatable over time. The mindset of whiteness is still perpetuated through the power structure and the culture industry, recognized by the Frankfurt School as being at the heart of the oppression of the lower classes (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1944).

Thus, racism is still a problem in America, in spite of the work of the Great Emancipator in the 19th century and the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s. Whereas previously racism was expressed through slavery or Jim Crow, today it is expressed through white normativity—whiteness as a normal mindset. Bhandura (2013) states that “rather than waging war on non-whites, post-Civil Rights America normalizes whiteness,” which pushes “non-whites” into a battle of survival as they are pitted against one another by the culture of whiteness propagated by the ruling class and its culture industry (p. 223). “White” people who have good intentions, may want to do something to end this otherwise endless culture war—but as DiAngelo (2011) points out, “white people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress” (p. 54). In other words, “white” people tend to live outside the environments where race-based violence actually occurs: they have no real or tangible sense of how whiteness, white normativity and the ruling class actually impact non-whites. This is problematic because in order for white normativity to be addressed, the “whites” who profit from white normativity need to be more mindful of what it is like for non-whites in America.

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As a person of mixed-races, I find it problematic that we are still talking about “whites” and “blacks” and “others” at all in those terms. Race is not a strong or even a good categorizer—except for racists who want to use race to serve their own interests in the power structure. As Baran (20070 has shown, the concept of race was born out of a need for the ruling classes to organize society according to racist lines and doctrines. The reality is that we live in a multi-racial world, where most people have more than one “race” within themselves. Even among “whites” there are so many ethnic and racial variations that it is impossible to believe that “white” serves as a satisfactory categorization for a group of people from, say, Eastern Europe, Italy, Spain, England, Germany or Russia. There are multiple races just in that one group—yet most of that group would be classified as “white” simply because of skin tone. The irony is that only those from England and perhaps Germany would really believe in the “whiteness” of white normativity; the others would identify more according to ethnic and cultural lines—and that is because whiteness is essentially a WASP construct. That is the main source of the problem in America: a white culture or culture of whiteness has been promulgated and perpetuated by the ruling classes.

The white culture in the U.S. is superior in itself, and it is not a point of discussion, focus, or examination by others. On the other hand, aspects that are different and discordant to their culture are made objects of attention and discussion. According to Hitchcock and Flint (1997), since historical time white people have overwhelmingly focused on studying and discussing other racial groups while inherently the racial aspect of the white people are not discussed or studied instead it is depicted as taboo in white culture to bring a discussion or study the white race. Thus, there is a central hypocrisy in white normativity.

Though a negative manner is depicting racism, “white” Americans consider themselves as not “black,” not “people of color,” and not “foreigners”—therefore, they are not a marginalized group. This is where the essence of white fragility comes into play (DiAngelo, 2011): “whites” have no sense of what life is like for Americans who live outside the protective bubble of white privilege. From their protective bubble of privilege, “whites” take themselves and their culture as superior, and they will only adopt the values of others out their own choice or necessity triggered by environmental and not from coercion from other cultural groups. As Wise (2012) indicates, “whites” view “blacks” as being held back by their own “behavioral pathologies, personal choices and dysfunctional cultural values” (p. 40). Those who uphold whiteness view blackness or otherness (foreigners) as lacking in the simple cultural values that make whites so successful in America—the problem is that this view is delusional and smacks of delusions of grandeur. “Whites” have benefitted from whiteness to the extent that they have participated in the perpetuation of white normativity. “Whites” who have not have had to struggle and fight as though they were outsiders in a system, like blacks or

Asians or Latinos. The Irish immigrants, for example, did not have it easy in New York City: they had to organize their own political machine, which became known as Tammany Hall and was reviled by the WASP establishment. The same was true of the Nation of Islam, which organized itself thanks to the leadership of Malcolm X. Thus, both some non-WASP, non-“white” “whites” and some “blacks” have shown the ability to organize themselves—and so race really has nothing to do with it. It is all about culture and identity.

Nonetheless, in upbringing their children, “whites” who embrace white normativity pass on cultural values that are learned as simply the way things are done and not alternatives (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). The white culture is also presented….....

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