THEORIES OF CULTURE
1B
Week 1
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness – George
Lipsitz
The “Negro Problem” implies that racial polarization comes from the existence of
blacks rather than the behaviour of whites. Whiteness is the unmarked category
against which difference is constructed; therefore it never has to acknowledge its
role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations ‘presence of
mind’ is needed. Race is a cultural construct with deadly social causes and
consequences. From the start, European settlers in North America established
structures encouraging a possessive investment in whiteness (via the
subordination, exploitation and enslavement of non-whites). “Although
reproduced in new form in every era, the possessive investment in whiteness has
always been influenced by its origins in the racialized history of the United States
—by the legacy of slavery and segregation, of “Indian” extermination and
immigrant restriction, of conquest and colonialism” (2). Besides hegemony over
racialized groups, white power also depended on pinning different racial groups
against each other. Still, there also existed interethnic antiracist alliances. “Yet
whether characterized by conflict or cooperation, all relations among aggrieved
racialized minorities stemmed from recognition of the rewards of whiteness and
the concomitant penalties imposed upon “nonwhite” populations” (4).
There has always been racism in the US, but this racism changes over time (e.g.,
policies of federal housing led to residential segregation). After WW2: “The
suburbs helped turn Euro-Americans into “whites” who could live near each other
and intermarry with relatively little difficulty. But this “white” unity rested on
residential segregation, on shared access to housing and life chances largely
unavailable to communities of color” (7). Racial minorities come to live in the
poor neighbourhoods, are displaced by ‘urban renewal programmes’ and are far
more often exposed to toxic waste in their neighbourhoods ( health effects).
“Environmental racism makes the possessive investment in whiteness literally
a matter of life and death; if African Americans had access to the nutrition,
health care, and protection against environmental hazards offered routinely to
whites, seventy-five thousand fewer of them would die each year” (10).
Neoracism of contemporary conservatism (Reagan, Bush) allied a disparate and
antagonistic coalition, united in what they opposed: the supposed bad behaviour
and inferior morality of minority individuals and communities. “The racism of
contemporary conservatism plays a vital role in building a countersubversive
consensus because it disguises the social disintegration brought about by
neoconservatism itself as the fault of “inferior” social groups, and because it
builds a sense of righteous indignation among its constituents that enables them
to believe that the selfish and self-interested politics they pursue are actually
part of a moral crusade” (16). Even race-neutral policies in the 1980s and 1990s
hurt the minorities more.
,To much attention is given to individual manifestations of racism, so systemic,
collective, and coordinated group behaviour is forgotten. Whites victimize
themselves, feeling blamed for their ancestral slavery. This gives the idea that
racism is something of the distant past, as if racism died with slavery. “They feel
innocent individually and cannot conceive of a collective responsibility for
collective wrongs” (21). The contemporary realities of segregation, racialized
social policies and neoconservatism’s racism are ignored. Liberal individualism is
used as a cover for coordinated collective group interests (my ancestors didn’t
own slaves so you can’t blame me). “But those of us who are “white” can only
become part of the solution if we recognize the degree to which we are already
part of the problem—not because of our race, but because of our possessive
investment in it” (22).
The possessive investment in whiteness = white privilege?
I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their
Privilege. So I Asked. – Claudia Rankine
The 1980s and early 1990s saw the rise of an area of study (whiteness studies)
aimed to make visible a history of whiteness that through its association with
‘normalcy’ and ‘universality’ masked its omnipresent institutional power. “I was
always aware that my value in our culture’s eyes is determined by my skin color
first and foremost.”
Link to the previous article: “Just recently, a friend who didn’t get a job he
applied for told me that as a white male, he was absorbing the problems of
the world. He meant he was being punished for the sins of his forefathers.
He wanted me to know he understood it was his burden to bear. I wanted to tell
him that he needed to take a long view of the history of the workplace, given the
imbalances that generations of hiring practices before him had created.”
‘Whiteness as property’: the assumptions, privileges and benefits (white
privilege) accompanying whites as a valuable asset to protect, e.g., by racial
profiling. This whiteness as property is even written into the law/in white
interpretation of the law. ‘White privilege’: the invisible systems conferring
dominance on white people.
Wikipedia: “Affirmative action involves sets of policies and practices within a
government or organization seeking to include particular groups based on their
gender, race, sexuality, creed or nationality in areas in which such groups are
underrepresented - such as education and employment.”
“Because if you can’t see race, you can’t see racism.”
Dutch capitalism and slavery – Pepijn Brandon
Eric Williams’ thesis: Britain’s profits of slave-plantations in the West-Indies in the
18th century contributed significantly to the Industrial Revolution and therefore
the birth of modern capitalism. But what about the Dutch (who industrialized
later so are often forgotten); Dutch commercial capital was of great importance
to the wider breakthrough of European capitalism. Dutch wealth amassed in both
,hemispheres (Asia & America) fed into European capital accumulation; Dutch
capital played the role of initiator, enforcer, organiser and intermediary.
The Dutch abolished slavery as the last European nation, but went on with other
forms of forced labour (cultivation system in East Asia, in the Caribbean with 10-
year ‘apprenticeships’). The Dutch role in global slavery was extensive, as slave
trader and by using slave labour on plantations in the colonies. The main
revenues were not drawn from the slave-trade itself, but from the goods
produced on the plantations by the enslaved (sugar, coffee, tobacco, etc.).
Besides this, Amsterdam at that time functioned as a crucial hub of wider
European trade and finance, so also the trade in colonial goods.
So, Wiliams’ thesis should be approached in a much broader framework than just
Britain and historians should not posit that Atlantic slavery was only of marginal
importance to the Dutch economy. In Asia, it’s more difficult to calculate the
profits from slavery, because there, many different forms of coerced labour were
combined and the VOC often relied on intermediaries (so European ownership is
difficult to establish). There needs to be made a common framework wherein the
connections between slavery in the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean World are
made clear.
What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is Everyone
Talking About It? – Susan Ellingwood
Critical Race Theory “is united by an interest in understanding and rectifying the
ways in which a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of
color in America has had an impact on the relationship between social structures
and professed ideals such as ‘the rule of law’ and ‘equal protection.’” “’It is a way
of looking at law’s role platforming, facilitating, producing, and even insulating
racial inequality in our country, ranging from health to wealth to segregation to
policing’”. CRT’s focus on the politics of race shows that racism is not always an
individual fault or intent, it shines light on institutionalized racial disadvantage
and systemic racial inequality (link article 1: collective instead of individual; The
individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the
dominant culture.). Some whites see this anti-racism as racism against white
people, which is incorrect since it’s all about racial justice.
Lecture 1: Black & White in America; Scientific
Understandings of Race
“Race” as the following categories (all overlapping):
- Biological: In the 21th century, we know that race is socially constructed.
There’s far less (biological/genetical) variation between groups than there
is within groups (as is with gender). At most, about 6% of gene variation
can be reduced to race; so 94% in common, 6% different. Biological
differences were about physical differences of the body, such as a different
sized brain.
- Sociological: Sociological understandings of race look at social, economic
and political relations, again falling back on the biological understandings
, race. Trying to gain understandings of particular subpopulations, based on
race.
- Cultural: Cultural understandings of race: people acting black or white;
music as category (black music, white music), ‘black masculinity’. Cultural
understandings of race build on the sociological categories.
- Historical: these categories of race change over time, they are situational
(within an all black group, the categories are very different than in a
mixed-race group) and generational (a black woman born in 1920
categorises herself differently than her daughter born in 1950 from her
daughter in 1980, etc.). Where and when you are defines how you talk
about race.
- Political/critical: what are the laws, what are the de jure and de facto
systems that reinforce and perpetuate racial difference and power? De
jure: in reference to the law; de facto: as it’s experienced. And how are
these terms/ideas used politically? Critical Race Theory is used to
politicizing the study of race.
Terminology (changed over time, and depending on the circumstances in which
one talks about this. Also differences how people want to talk about themselves,
with how other people talk about them (e.g., the census) ): negro (19 th-mid 20th),
colored (turn of the 20 th century), Afro American and Black (mid-century), African
American (1980’s). Self-identification is really important, e.g., calling yourself
black instead of African American to purposeful not associate yourself with
Americans.
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach: German physician and anthropologist. One of the
first to explore mankind as an aspect of natural history, coined the idea of
‘human race’ (1775). He divided the human species into 5 races: Caucasian
(white), Mongolian (yellow), Malayan (brown), Ethiopian (black) and American
(red). Idea of degenerative human history; Adam and Eve where Caucasian
inhabitants of Asia and other races came about as reactions to environmental
factors (the sun, poor nutrition). Black: due to the tropical sun. Eskimo’s due to
the cold wind; Chinese were more fair-skinned than other Asians because they
were rather urban so protected to much of the environmental factors. In his
mind, every non-white race was a degeneration/damaging/flawed iteration based
upon environmental characteristics. When these characteristics were fixed, we
could reunite the human race in the future as entirely Caucasian.
Samuel G. Morton used the same approach (1839) of cranial research to develop
a hierarchy of races: for ex. Caucasian’s skulls were well proportioned. Hierarchy:
Caucasian, Asian, native American, African. Morton claimed that the difference
between humans was one of species rather than variety: scientific racism origins.
Caucasians had the biggest brains, Indians were in the middle and Africans had
the smallest brains. He believed that the skulls were so different that God had
from the beginning had spread them around the world so that there wouldn’t be
competition. Cranial capacity determined one’s intellect. Basis of a clear
hierarchy of race. How much are these differences are biological, and how much
are cultural/sociological? This scientific justification of this hierarchy serves to
reinforce American socio-political and economic structures of that time.
Nott & Gliddon, Types of Mankind: argued that the different races didn’t originate
from a single species, but had different zoological provinces. Very dramatic
