Discrimination doesn’t follow from differences, it creates them:
“People do not discriminate against groups because they are different; rather, the act of discrimination itself constructs categories of difference that hierarchically locate people as ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’ and then universalizes and naturalizes such differences.” [131]
What is “whiteness”? [132]
· “Whiteness is a sociohistorical form of consciousness”
· “Whiteness constitutes and demarcates ideas, feelings, knowledge, social practices, cultural formations, and systems of intelligibility that are identified with or attributed to white people and that are invested in by white people as ‘white’”
· “Whiteness is also a refusal to acknowledge how white people are implicated in certain social relations of privilege...a form of social amnesia”
“Whiteness” is made up of two features:
1) the enjoyment of the privileges of whiteness
2) the enjoyment of being unaware of and indifferent to whiteness
To support this, McLaren needs to explain:
a) what the privileges are
b) what the exact nature of this ignorance/indifference is—given that white people do talk about their family trees, family history and, literally, their skin color
#1: Racist logics that privilege whites
Judeo-Christian racist logic: whites are obedient, non-whites unruly, disobedient
the scientific racist logic: whites are intellectually, mentally superior; non-whites inferior
psychosexual racist logic: whites are naturally sexually pure ; non-whites are naturally sexual deviants, animals (hence extremely strict consequences for black sex crimes, assumption that all black men are rapists, black women prostitutes)
#2: Racist practices that privilege whites
criminal justice system: highest % of criminals are non-white men. Example: currently 450,000 people are incarcerated on drug-related crimes, and 75% of them are non-white DESPITE the fact that drug use is no higher among non-whites than among whites. The Justice Department reports that one in eight black men in their 20s and early 30s were behind bars last year, compared with 1 in 63 white men. The chance of a black man going to prison in his lifetime is one in three, the department says.
the educational system: whites
fair better in the system than do non-whites; whites find multicultural
education an “unfair burden”; often complain that “Black
“Corporate
#3 Indifference to whiteness
1) regard the “other” as excessive, erotic, outlandish and overly sexual whereas they regard themselves as “normal”
Whites commonly regard non-whites (blacks in particular) as “loud”, Asians are regarded as very “exotic” and “strange” (especially the language and food). Whites rarely consider the fact that others see them as being “strange”
2) whiteness is “transparent.” Whites don’t consider whiteness to be a significant aspect of their self-identity; they may say that “Irishness” is part of their identity, but “whiteness” is not—thus they specify themselves but group together all other race groups (blacks, Asians, American Indians aren’t subdivided into ethnicities)
Example: We talk about “race problems” in this country. Whose problem is this?
Usually, whites think of it as tension between blacks and whites, but primarily as a black problem which needs to be fixed by blacks. In other words, whites don’t see it as their problem directly, but only indirectly if they suffer as a result of the race (black) problem.
(Analogously, often men see sexism issues as a woman’s problem. And they only have to think about sexual harassment or sexism problems if a woman is complaining. Many times, they resent the complaints and look for ways to stop the complaining rather than really see themselves as being part of the source of the complain.)