| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word - Neutral Man's Burden | ||||
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No point of view—and no race—is neutral. We just privilege some more than others. The news surrounding Sotomayor's nomination and confirmation has really brought home for me the fact that my race is not more normal, average, or neutral than anyone else's. Even more, it has shown me just how much our society assumes that white is normal, average, and neutral—much more than had I previously realized! I hope other white Americans are getting the same message.
I highly recommend you read the discussion at SI (where you can also read the transcript if you don't want to watch the clip) and check out Macon D's comments at Stuff White People Do.
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the funny thing about whiteness? it's visible and invisible. visible in that it's everywhere, invisible in that it's unmarked.
ReplyDeletecritical white studies is actually fairly interesting; it's all about deconstructing whiteness as the norm, and how whiteness is a "race" category unlike any other. i can recommend some articles if you'd like.
Waansleyvark: Yeah, and non-white races are also both more visible and supposed to be invisible, as Sotomayor's confirmation debacle reveals.
ReplyDeleteI can't honestly say I'll get around to reading the articles now, but that does sound interesting. Whiteness is definitely weird... This is probably not what you're talking about, but for example, in Britain (I don't know about today, but definitely not that long ago) I might be considered non-white or mixed race because my most identifiable nationality is Irish, which for a long time was considered a separate category from other white backgrounds. And during wars of the past, various groups of white people have declared Germans to be of a separate "race." Of course, if I claimed to be multi-racial in America today, I'd get some (justified!) funny looks for denying my white privilege.
that is part of CWS, yes. a portion of it is dedicated to analyzing how certain groups (irish and italian immigrants, jewish people) became white and how others gave up their whiteness (chinese people, middle easterners). definitely weird.
ReplyDeleteRight...and of course, we would see it as "becoming" white and "giving up" whiteness, when it can't really be anything other than whites "allowing" or "kicking out" those groups, right?
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