The Unbearable Whiteness of the American Left

[ismnotwasm]

192. A quote

"Whiteness is everywhere in U.S. culture, but it's very hard to see. As Richard Dyer suggests. White power secures it's dominance by seeming to be not about anything in particular.





(Italics mine)


As the unmarked category against which difference is constructed, whiteness never has to speak it's name, never has to acknowledge it's role as an organizing principle in social and cultural regulations. To identify, analyze, and oppose the destructive consequences of whiteness, we need what Walter Benjamin called "presence of mind." Benjamin wrote that people visit fortune tellers less out of a desire to know the future than out of fear of not noticing some important aspect of the present. "Presence of mind," he suggested, "is an abstract of he future, and precise awareness of the presence more decisive than foreknowledge of the most distant events."

In U.S. society at this time, precise awareness of the present moment requires an understanding of the existence and the destructive consequences of the possessive investment in whiteness that surreptitiously shapes so much of our public and private lives."...


This is from a class I took well over ten years ago, from a book I kept and use for reference still, called "The Meaning of Difference" American Construction of Race, Sex and Gender, Social Class and Sexual Orientation" by Karen E. Rosenblum and Toni-Michelle C. Travis

That fact that it remains completely relevant--I'm sure there are new editions, is both intriguing and so very, very sad.

The initial quote stays with me always (whiteness) "as the unmarked category against which difference is constructed."

The power and truth of that quote has never left me, and I hope it helped me to listen, and from listening, learning to hear, and from hearing to learn, from learning to right action; to hopefully lessen the impact of whiteness.