simultaneously function as a side show for white people who

Last updated: 2/3/2024

simultaneously function as a side show for white people who look on with delight at all the differences that surround them We may be on our way to genuine hybridity multiplicity without white hegemony and it may be where we want to get to but we aren t there yet and we won t get there until we see whiteness see its power its particularity and limitedness put it in its place and end its rule This is why studying whiteness matters It is studying whiteness qua whiteness Attention is sometimes paid to white ethnicity e g Alba 1990 but this always means an identity based on cultural origins such as British Italian or Polish or Catholic or Jewish or Polish American Irish American Catholic American and so on These however are variations on white ethnicity though some are more securely white than others and the examination of them tends to lead away from a consideration of whiteness itself John Ibson 1981 in a discussion of research on white US ethnicity concludes that being say Polish Catholic or Irish may not be as important to white Americans as some might wish But being white is This then is why it is important to come to see whiteness For those in power in the West as long as whiteness is felt to be the human condition then it alone both defines normality and fully inhabits it As I suggested in my opening paragraphs the equation of being white with being human secures a position of power White people have power and believe that they think feel and act like and for all people white people unable to see their particularity cannot take account of other people s white people create the dominant images of the world and don t quite see that they thus construct the world in their own image white people set standards of humanity by which they are bound to succeed and others bound to fail Most of this is not done deliberately and maliciously there are enormous variations of power amongst white people to do with class gender and other factors goodwill is not unheard of in white people s engagement with others White power nonetheless reproduces itself regardless of in tention power differences and goodwill and overwhelmingly because it is not seen as whiteness but as normal White people need to learn to see themselves as white to see their particularity In other words whiteness needs to be made strange NOTES 1 I use the terms race and racial in this opening section in the most com mon though problematic sense referring to supposedly visibly differentiable sup posedly discrete social groupings 2 In their discussion of the extraordinarily successful TV sitcom about a mid dle class African American family The Cosby Show Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis note eople who look on with We may be on our way egemony and it may be and we won t get there ity and limitedness put whiteness matters on is sometimes paid to means an identity based h or Catholic or Jewish rican and so on These some are more securely tends to lead away from 981 in a discussion of ing say Polish Catholic ans as some might wish whiteness For those in e the human condition abits it As I suggested in white with being human power and believe that te people unable to see people s white people on t quite see that they people set standards of id others bound to fail sly there are enormous with class gender and e people s engagement i itself regardless of in vhelmingly because it is le need to learn to see other words whiteness section in the most com visibly differentiable sup ITV sitcom about a mid illy and Justin Lewis note the way that viewers repeatedly recognise the characters blackness but also feel that you just think of them as people in other words that they don t only speak for their race Jhally and Lewis argue that this is achieved by the way the family conforms to the everyday generic world of white television 1992 100 an essen tially middle class world The family is ordinary despite being black because it is upwardly mobile it can be accepted as ordinary in a way that marginalises most actual African Americans If the realities of African American experience were in cluded then the characters would not be perceived as just people 3 See for instance Bogle 1973 Hartmann and Husband 1974 Troyna 1981 MacDonald 1983 Wilson and Guti rez 1985 van Dijk 1987 Jhally and Lewis 1992 58ff Ross 1995 The research findings are generally cast the other way round in terms of non white under representation textual marginalisation and positioning as deviant or a problem Recent research in the US does suggest that African Americans but not other racially marginalised groups have become more repre sented in the media even in excess of their proportion of the population However this number still falls off if one focuses on central characters 4 The Crying Game GB 1992 seems to me to be an example of this It ex plores with fascination and generosity the hybrid and fluid nature of identity gender race national belonging sexuality Yet all of this revolves around a be mused but ultimately unchallenged straight white man it reinscribes the post tion of those at the intersection of heterosexuality maleness and whiteness as that of the one group which does not need to be hybrid and fluid REFERENCES Alba Richard D 1990 Ethnic Identity The Transformation of White America New Haven Yale University Press Bogle Donald 1973 Toms Coons Mulattoes Mammies and Bucks An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films New York Viking Press Carby Hazel V 1992 The Multicultural Wars in Dent Gina ed Black Popra lar Culture Seattle Bay Press 187 99 Dyer Richard 1993 Seen To Be Believed Problems in the Representation of Gay People as Typical in Dyer The Matter of Images Essays on Representations Lon don Routledge 19 51 Hartmann Paul and Husband Charles 1974 Racism and the Mass Media Lon don Davis Poynter hooks bell 1992 Madonna Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister and Repre sentations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination in Black Looks Race and Represen tation Boston South End Press 157 64 165 78 Ibson John 1981 Virgin Land or Virgin Mary Studying the Ethnicity of White Americans American Quarterly 33 3 284 308 Jhally Sut and Lewis Justin 1992 Enlightened Racism The Cosby Show Audi ences and the Myth of the American Dream Boulder Westview Press MacDonald J F 1983 Blacks and White TV Afro Americans in Television since 1948 Chicago Nelson Hall