Conservatives don’t seem to understand “whiteness”
One thing that’s been strikingly common in conservative criticism of Judge Sotomayor – and particularly criticism of her “wise Latina” remarks at Berkley – is the assertion that we’re witnessing some sort of liberal double standard. “If Sotomayor were a white male,” the complaint usually goes, “she would be attacked as a racist and a white supremacist by the Left!” A more mild form of this complaint was leveled by The American Spectator’s Jim Antle in a post responding to Daniel Larison’s thorough analysis and (somewhat reluctant) defense of Sotomayor’s remarks:
Sotomayor’s remarks are preferable to other multiculturalist pronouncements in that she expresses pride in an actually existing culture rather than a generic celebration of non-whiteness. But at its root is a point of view where some cultures and heritages can be celebrated while others cannot (some are in fact denigrated).
As it so happens, I do think that liberals would promptly excoriate a white male judge who believed that his whiteness and maleness offered him unique insights into the law unshared by women and minorities. That said, liberals would have good reason for tearing apart the judge who extolled his whiteness and maleness as a virtue; in the American experience, the celebration of whiteness and maleness is usually associated with extremely ugly – and often violent – beliefs about the personhood (or in their view, lack thereof) of women and minorities. It’s fair to assume that a judge who expresses pride in his whiteness and maleness is also deeply unsympathetic to those who don’t share his whiteness and maleness.
Now, to be fair, Antle isn’t arguing that white male judges should be able to celebrate (I’ve probably used that word too much for one post) their whiteness and maleness. No, he’s arguing that multiculturalism is unfair insofar that it permits a hispanic woman or a black man to express pride in their “hispanicness” or “blackness,” but it expressly forbids a white person from expressing pride in their “whiteness.” What Antler – and conservatives more generally – miss is that there is a very good reason for this; namely, there is no such thing as whiteness. I don’t need to go into an in-depth discussion of whiteness as a social construct (I’m sure that most of you all are familiar enough with it), but it suffices to say that whiteness is a social construct and not an ethnic identity in the same way that being an Italian is. Which segues nicely into my second point: conservative’s complaints notwithstanding, it is perfectly acceptable for an Italian-American to celebrate her Italian heritage, a Russian-American to celebrate her Russian heritage, or an Irish/German/Anglo-American to make note of – and I guess “celebrate” – her mixed heritage. In fact, we already have a holiday devoted to (superficially) extolling the virtues of the Irish, who last I checked, were white people!
The celebration of whiteness is problematic (and thus forbidden in the “multicultural ideology”) becauses it amounts to a celebration of privilege, and specifically, a privilege that relies entirely on the exclusion of everyone not “coded” white. For whatever reason, conservatives are reluctant to acknowledge white privilege, which as we’re witnessing now, leaves incapable of discussing race and ethnicity in anything but tone-deaf outrage.
And yes, that is just a random picture of white people. Enjoy.
Good post but I don’t think “they” will ever get this basic stuff. Cons just can’t wrap their brains around it. They also have no intention of understanding that “whiteness” is the norm.
Jamelle,
Allow me to register a dissent. (A prefatory comment: for those who don’t know me, I’m a Puerto Rican but a political conservative).
What your post fails to distinguish is that there are, in fact, different kinds of “whiteness,” some of which can be celebrated, some of which cannot. Specifically, white people who before would not have been considered white–Italians, Poles, Irish, Jews, etc.–can celebrate that aspect of themselves that in times past would have prevented them from being considered white: namely, their non-English ethnic identities. Jim Webb tried to celebrate the white Scots-Irish who settled the upland South, but he really only got away with it because (a) the folks he was talking were poor and marginalized despite their whiteness and (b) he delivered a red state to the Democrats.
But you cannot celebrate the white, English-descended culture that produced such important pre-Revolution cultural figures such as Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, the generations of the Revolution and the Framing, and such 19th Century cultural figures as Melville, Hawthorne, Henry Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or Oliver Wendell Holmes (both Sr. and Jr.), to pick a few random names.
Technically speaking, this is would be WASPiness, not whiteness, but either way a WASP could not say that a wise WASP judge would make better decisions that a wise [insert ethnic group here] judge. Yet this white, English-descended, protestant culture that developed in the original thirteen colonies between, say, the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the rise of ethnic Italians and Irish in urban politics in the early 20th century (paving the way for their eventual incorporation into the American mainstream and thus “white” America) is undeniably a distinct ethnicity with its own religious, literary, cultural, and political traditions. This is an ethnic group that is not PC to celebrate, so multiculturalism as practiced in America sets up a double standard.
Now, this should probably be so: it would be absurd to have a “white (or WASP) history month” to rediscover these figures because they are the American canon. Moreover, this double standard is especially justified by WASP America’s historical treatment of minorities, African-Americans and Native Americans in particular.
So there is good reason for a double standard, but I think it is factually wrong to claim that there is no double standard or that there is no such as “whiteness.”
In short, you are right to say that a celebration of whiteness would be a celebration of privilege, but I think you are wrong to say that there is no such thing as whiteness as an ethnic identity. I think to claim otherwise is a way of avoiding the truer, but less popular claim, that there is a double standard and that it is justified.
There are plenty of ways that those cultures are celebrated. Thanksgiving, for one. The Freedom Trail in Boston. Pretty much every tourist attraction in Salem. Plimouth Plantation. At the poorer and more Southern end, there’s bluegrass music and all kinds of Appalachia stuff. Colonial Williamsburg. The richer New England side tends to kind of fade into the background because it’s become the sort of default “American” culture, but it’s definitely there. If you narrow it down a bit from all English-descended people who were here by Revolutionary times to the more regional subcultures, like Maine lobstermen and sailors or Vermont maple sugar people or things like that, there’s plenty that people can and do celebrate.
It is meaningless to say something is “a social construct and not an ethnic identity” – all ethnic identities are, by definition, social constructs. Maybe you meant – whiteness is a social construct but not an ethnic identity – which is to say, it does not occupy the same place in the psyche as, for example, the Italian-American identity.
To the best of my understanding, when white Americans do celebrate their “whiteness,” they almost always refer to the hardships of their ancestors – particularly the immigrant experience. Few “celebrate” by telling their kids, “Yeop, my granddaddy sure did get to drink out of that ‘White’ water fountain.” So the history of white privilege may be concealed and distorted in these accounts, but I don’t think privilege as we understand it is the guest of honor.
You are every bit as racist as those you decry.
This is the type of faux victimology which discredits the civil rights industry, and makes it harder to attack genuine racism. No wonder you can’t seem to get off the Liberal plantation.
Are you for real? Dude you need to get a clue. You do get points for the classic conservative fallback of calling the person who’s calling out the racists racist.
lol, did you search ‘white people’ in google for the picture?
It is, as you allowed in your post, obvious to those who have given much of any thought to race and American history that whiteness is a social construct. But I agree with grandmute that ethnic identities and indeed all other “imagined communities” are also just that, imagined, and thus social constructs. Which does not mean, however, that those constructs don’t have actual, tangible effects. I think a more effective argument against the general conservative failure to understand whiteness (or even honestly, accurately see it) than pointing out its artificiality might be to point out its power. Let’s call it what it still is–white hegemony. Ongoing, de facto white supremacy.
Ouch. This post hurts, Jamelle.
I identify as a white American male because that is all that I have. Outside of a short study abroad in Scandinavia and a few relatives over there with whom I never speak, I have no idea what it means to be nordic. And, compared to most white American males, I’m pretty lucky – the majority of us are complete mutts, with hopelessly intertwined heritages and very little personal attachment to them.
So, I am as generic white American male as they come. I look down at the skin on my hands and I listen to the language I speak, and you are telling me that I am somehow less legitimate than someone who comes straight from Italy?
[quote]It’s fair to assume that a judge who expresses pride in his whiteness and maleness is also deeply unsympathetic to those who don’t share his whiteness and maleness.[/quote]
Yikes. It is “fair to assume” that any self-celebration I do is automatically at the expense of those not like me, while women and minorities’ self-celebration is inclusive and fair?
I think I see what you’re trying to say, but I hope you don’t mean half of what you wrote up there, because it sure reads like an attack on me. I like who I am, and I like those different from me, too, and by your definition it seems that that is an impossibility.
I like who I am, and I like those different from me, too, and by your definition it seems that that is an impossibility.
Maybe that depends on who you identify as. Look at your hand again–is it really, literally “white”? Unless you’re an albino, it’s not. You were labeled white, and labeled that falsely, because you fit an emphasized identity category. That artificial category exists because it was foregrounded in America by an elite class, which did so by way of fomenting division between the lower classes; offering some of them “the wages of whiteness” helped to keep all of them from uniting against their “betters.” Whiteness was then largely defined in simple contrast to the supposed qualities of non-white groups (savage, lazy, lustful, unintelligent, unrestrained, and so on). The collective, ingrained, subconscious white sense that other people have such inherent “inferior” qualities is still with us, all because of the fallacious and pernicious overemphasis of the artificial category of “white,” and thus of other categories emphasized to establish its supposed superiority (“red,” “black,” “yellow” and so on, but also all those nastier slurs–”greaser,” “redskin,” “darkie,” and on and on).
Given all that, and so much more that’s wrong with the whole idea of “race,” why do you want to like the part of who you (supposedly) are, that’s described by that ridiculous label, “white”?
Hey Erik,
First off, I’m really sorry if you read this as an attack on you and your identity, that was not my intention at all. I’m not saying that your identity as a white American male is illegitimate, and I think it’s fine that you like who are. You are Erik H, you are a white American male, and you like the way your look and the way you are. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But there is something problematic about celebrating “whiteness” as an ethnic identity which isn’t true of celebrating “Italian-ness” or what not. To quote macon d above:
Whiteness was then largely defined in simple contrast to the supposed qualities of non-white groups (savage, lazy, lustful, unintelligent, unrestrained, and so on). The collective, ingrained, subconscious white sense that other people have such inherent “inferior” qualities is still with us, all because of the fallacious and pernicious overemphasis of the artificial category of “white,” and thus of other categories emphasized to establish its supposed superiority (“red,” “black,” “yellow” and so on, but also all those nastier slurs–”greaser,” “redskin,” “darkie,” and on and on).
It’s one thing to celebrate your Americanness, which is rooted in particular history and a particular culture and a particular set of beliefs. It’s another thing to celebrate your “whiteness” which is a category built entirely around the exclusion of non-whites. What’s more, it’s simply the case that celebrations of “whiteness” are associated with some pretty ugly beliefs, and echo this exclusion of non-whites (see “white pride”). Again, that’s not to say that you can’t be proud of who are you, or your heritage as an American, but to be proud of your “whiteness” – which in effect, amounts to pride in a sort of racial privilege – is really really strange.
Again, I didn’t mean to offend or attack your identity Erik; we’re friends, I respect you, and I wouldn’t intentionally do that.
Don’t worry, I didn’t take anything personally Jamelle! But I still have several issues with your argument.
It is clear to me that we don’t define whiteness in quite the same way. I consider myself white, but regardless of how the term emerged, I do not include with that definition “supremacist” and “elite,” even if many prominent historical figures with white skin did.
When Kanye raps “They dress tight so we gon dress tighter, they dress white so we gon dress whiter” when talking about Fall Out Boy’s tight jeans, I laugh, because yeah, those white kids, they sure like tight jeans. When stuffwhitepeoplelike.com claims that white people just love them some deli sandwiches, I laugh, because geez, deli sandwiches just happen to be among my favorite foods.
When stuffwhitepeoplelike.com claims that white people can’t get enough of frisbee sports, I laugh, because although I might not care for them, I guess probably they have a pretty white-person image. But that doesn’t make frisbee sports supremacist.
I am fully aware that whiteness is a social construct, but like grandmute and ECLI and macon d I think that puts it squarely in with blackness and latinaness.
Let me put it more solidly: do you consider yourself black?
I am going to assume that you do, given that “black people” is one of the tags you use for your posts, and you use the term frequently to refer to a specific group of people.
What do you think about your blackness? Does it connect you with certain people and ideologies and cultures that you are proud of? Does it connect you with certain people and ideologies and cultures of which you are ashamed?
If you are black and an American, then I am an American and what?
You are White but that doesn’t mean that there is a “white culture” for you to celebrate separate from American culture. White culture and American culture are synonymous. Also it’s kind of not serious to say “regardless of how the term emerged” the history of that matters. A lot.
This is the last I will write on the subject, because I don’t want to distract Jamelle from getting to new material, but I think it’s very silly that you consider white culture and American culture synonymous. As a white person living in Japan, where I am mistaken for all sorts of things other than American, and my immediate peer group of foreigners contains as many white non-American friends as American, my identity is certainly foreigner first, white second, and American a distant third. That is how I am seen by the Japanese, by other people, and sometimes, by myself.
Back to Jamelle’s: it sounds to me like you are saying this whiteness in me – the label that others use for me, and that I accept – is something which I must cut out, something that serves no purpose other than to link me irrefutably back to the legacy of Jim Crow and racial violence. When I embrace the term “white” I accept all the painful baggage that comes with it, but that is certainly not all that whiteness has come to mean. It is offensive that you would continue to call me white while simultaneously defining white as evil and fake. I think that that is absolutely the wrong way to think about racial identity. My relationship with Thomas Jefferson, champion of the masses, boner of slaves, is far more complex than that.
“In fact, we already have a holiday devoted to (superficially) extolling the virtues of the Irish, who last I checked, were white people!”
Only reletively recently. Remember those signs in the mid-1800s that read “No Dogs or Irish”? I think the Micks only got into the white club after all those dirty Slavs, Hunkies, Jews, and Dagos turned up at Ellis Island.
Which only proves your point.
‘But you cannot celebrate the white, English-descended culture that produced such important pre-Revolution cultural figures such as Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, the generations of the Revolution and the Framing, and such 19th Century cultural figures as Melville, Hawthorne, Henry Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or Oliver Wendell Holmes (both Sr. and Jr.), to pick a few random names.’
But … but we celebrate these people and their culture ALL the TIME. Every year we teach their books as the literary canon. Every day we extoll the virtues of their civilization. Every day we live in a society permeated by their values, preferences, norms, views, etc. People in power still look like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. We don’t need to take time out to celebrate it, because we are ALREADY celebrating it. Do you see???
I have heard of every single one of the people mentioned, and so has, I bet, everyone else on this blog.
Seeing the rest of Sotomayor’s speech just rendered this entire affair silly to me. I’ll be honest– I can see why people who interpreted it a certain way were ruffled. That said, I think we should be paying more attention to this woman’s actual track record and politics than most of us are. I don’t understand why people latch onto soundbites like this, and I’m tired of every wrinkled-ass greybeard pundit on television weighing in. Hello, Sotomayor has a career. There is a body of work to examine here. Why are we reducing this woman’s entire professional life to a few words? WHY ARE WE INVESTIGATING SHIT SHE WROTE WHEN SHE WAS 19?!
Fine, maybe it was a bit of a clumsy thing for Sotomayor to say in light of our selectively editing, trigger-happy mainstream media. So? And? Are we to believe that her identity as a “Latina woman” somehow cancels out her professional credentials or ability to interpret law? Right, because the upper-class, white, Christian, heterosexual, and relatively privileged male status that typifies most higher-level U.S. officials confers perfect objectivity and omniscience. Pfft. IMO, a moment’s serious reflection on her words *in context* should alleviate any fears the speech was delivered in the spirit of bigotry. I really and truly don’t think she meant it as such, and I also didn’t feel it came across that way.
But hey, this is probably the last time the opinion of a self-identified Latina official will be this relevant to MSM news networks for quite a while, so let’s enjoy it while it lasts.
To those of you who identify as white and/or would like to learn more about racial privilege in the U.S., I’d love to recommend a book called “Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity” (edited by Thomas Nakayama and Judith Martin, both faculty at the University of Arizona, I believe). It’s basically a collection of essays about various aspects of whiteness as experienced by authors from diverse backgrounds (yes, even white Americans). “Whiteness studies” may on its face seem a ridiculous concept; however this emerging field of study offers us all a valuable chance to explore race relations without pointing fingers at individuals or creating undue feelings of defensiveness (although these can be unavoidable at times, especially during a person’s “awakening” to their privilege). As a PoC hailing from a previously colonized nation, this book touched me very deeply.
Erik,
In my view, “whiteness” doesn’t link you irrefutably back to the legacy of Jim Crow and racial violence. If anything, it links you irrefutably to a sort of invisible privilege which has had an undeniable – although not immediately perceptible – impact on your life. And so here is the rub: celebrating “whiteness” amounts to a celebration of privilege, and celebrating cultural privilege seems incredibly strange, especially *in light of *the fact that even today, others are regularly denounced for embracing their cultural heritage. It’s true that whiteness isn’t only cultural privilege, as you noted, there are plenty of cultural idiosyncrasies that come with being white which aren’t pernicious and perfectly appropriate for enjoying and such. But you can’t really divorce that from the privilege of whiteness, and because you can’t divorce it, trying to signal pride in your “whiteness” will inevitably seem obtuse and inappropriate. It’s not fair, but it is what it is.
Also, I’m not defining white as “evil and fake.” As an earlier commentator noted, all cultural identities are socially constructed, and insofar that whiteness is different, it’s because it was constructed by means of racial exclusion. Now it’s not impossible to build an inclusive whiteness (which is what I think you want to do), but the first step is actually acknowledging that whiteness is a really problematic concept.
Again though, thanks for the comments, and I hope you didn’t take the post personally.
- Jamelle