D Whiteness The Power of Invisibility ontinuing to ignore

Last updated: 2/3/2024

D Whiteness The Power of Invisibility ontinuing to ignore white racial imagery As long as race is something nly applied to non white peoples as long as white people are not racially en and named they we function as a human norm Other people are ced we are just people There is no more powerful position than that of being just human he claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of humanity aced people can t do that they can only speak for their race But non ced people can for they do not represent the interests of a race The bint of seeing the racing of whites is to dislodge them us from the posi on of power with all the in quities oppression privileges and sufferings its train dislodging them us by undercutting the authority with which ey we speak and act in and on the world The sense of whites as non raced is most evident in the absence of ref ence to whiteness in the habitual speech and writing of white people in e West We whites will speak of say the blackness or Chineseness of ends neighbours colleagues customers or clients and it may be in the ost genuinely friendly and accepting manner but we don t mention the miteness of the white people we know An old style white comedian will ten start a joke There s this bloke walking down the street and he rets this black geezer never thinking to race the bloke as well as the ezer Synopses in listings of films on TV where wordage is tight e less squander words with things like Comedy in which a cop and his ack sidekick investigate a robbery Skinhead Johnny and his Asian lover mar set up a laundrette Feature film from a promising Native Ameri n director and so on Since all white people in the West do this all the me it would be invidious to quote actual examples and so I shall con e myself to one from my own writing In an article on lesbian and gay reotypes Dyer 1993 I discuss the fact that there can be variations on a De such as the queen or dyke In the illustrations which accompany this int I compare a fashion queen from the film Irene with a black queen m Car Wash the former white image is not raced whereas all the vari on of the latter is reduced to his race Moreover this is the only non ite image referred to in the article which does not however point out at all the other images discussed are white In this as in the other white amples in this paragraph the fashion queen is racially speaking taken being just human This assumption that white people are just people which is not far off ing that whites are people whereas other colours are something else is demic to white culture Some of the sharpest criticism of it has been med at those who would think themselves the least racist or white su emacist bell hooks for instance has noted how amazed and angry ite liberals become when attention is drawn to their whiteness when y are seen by non white people as white Often their rage erupts because they believe that all ways of looking that highlight difference subvert the liberal belief in a universal as race is something people are not racially rm Other people are of being just human monality of humanity r their race But non terests of a race The iem us from the posi ivileges and sufferings authority with which in the absence of ref ing of white people in ess or Chineseness of 3 and it may be in the we don t mention the e white comedian will Iwn the street and he e bloke as well as the vordage is tight none In which a cop and his iny and his Asian lover omising Native Ameri he West do this all the es and so I shall con le on lesbian and gay can be variations on a which accompany this te with a black queen 1 whereas all the vari this is the only non ot however point out as in the other white cially speaking taken which is not far off are something else is ticism of it has been st racist or white su amazed and angry heir whiteness when I ways of looking f in a universal Dyer The Matter of Whiteness 11 subjectivity we are all just people that they think will make racism disappear They have a deep emotional investment in the myth of sameness even as their actions reflect the primacy of whiteness as a sign informing who they are and how they think hooks 1992 167 Similarly Hazel Carby discusses the use of black texts in white class rooms under the sign of multiculturalism in a way that winds up focusing on the complexity of response in the white reader student s construc tion of self in relation to a black perceived other We should she ar gues recognise that everyone in this social order has been constructed in our political imagination as a racialised subject and thus that we should consider whiteness as well as blackness in order to make visible what is rendered invisible when viewed as the normative state of existence the white point in space from which we tend to identify difference Carby 1992 193 The invisibility of whiteness as a racial position in white which is to say dominant discourse is of a piece with its ubiquity When I said above that I wasn t merely seeking to fill a gap in the analysis of racial imagery I re produced the idea that there is no discussion of white people In fact for most of the time white people speak about nothing but white people it s just that we couch it in terms of people in general Research into books museums the press advertising films television software repeatedly shows that in Western representation whites are overwhelm ingly and disproportionately predominant have the central and elabo rated roles and above all are placed as the norm the ordinary the standard Whites are everywhere in representation Yet precisely because of this and their placing as norm they seem not to be represented to themselves as whites but as people who are variously gendered classed sexualised and abled At the level of racial representation in other words whites are not of a certain race they re just the human race We are often told that we are living now in a world of multiple identi ties of hybridity of decentredness and fragmentation The old illusory unified identities of class gender race sexuality are breaking up some one may be black and gay and middle class and female we may be bi poly or non sexual of mixed race indeterminate gender and heaven knows what class Yet we have not yet reached a situation in which white people and white cultural agendas are no longer in the ascendant The media politics education are still in the hands of white people still speak for whites while claiming and sometimes sincerely aiming to speak for humanity Against the flowering of a myriad postmodern voices we must also see the countervailing tendency towards a homogenisation of world culture in the continued dominance of US news dissemination popular TV programmes and Hollywood movies Postmodern multiculturalism may have genuinely opened up a space for the voices of the other chal lenging the authority of the white West cf Owens 1983 but it may also