WhitenessDiversity Literacy Week 9

Prepared by Claire Kelly

“Inferential racism” (Hall cited in Peck, p. 93-94)

“… - those apparently naturalised representations of events and situations relating to race that have racist premises and propositions inscribed into them as a set of unquestioned assumptions”

“….relative invisibility permits speakers to be ‘unaware’ of racist implications…”

e.g. colourblindness > “naturalisation of whiteness”; “erases primary aspect of experience”; “participation in erasure”

Prepared by Claire Kelly

How inferential racism works dominant discourses =“set parameters around content,

relations and identities in the talk about racism” (p. 96)

1. Liberalism “cultural code of the individual” Primacy and autonomy of the individual Closes down possibility of group oppression

2. Therapeutic mode “lack of self esteem” Political (racism) > psychological (prejudice) Self directed rather than socially directed solution

3. Religious discourse “unity over division” Shutting down of anger > understanding and forgiveness

Change self not society! Prepared by Claire Kelly

“Dysconcious racism” (King, p. 128)

“impaired consciousness”

“….form of racism that tacitly accepts white norms and privileges.”

“Uncritical ways of thinking about racial inequity accept certain culturally sanctioned assumptions, myths and beliefs that justify the social and economic advantages white people have as a result of subordinating others” (ibid.)

e.g. not recognising that opportunity linked to individuals willingness to assimilate, misrecognising the links between race, gender and class

Prepared by Claire Kelly

All of these modes of racism depend on white privilege…

White privileg

eRacism

Prepared by Claire Kelly

Privilege“When one group has something of value that is denied

to others simply because of the groups they belong to” (McIntosh)

Privilege is structural

Privilege is unearned, you don’t do anything for it

Social position versus subjective experience: The power of privilege is that it rarely experienced as such.

“…question[ing] inevitably challenges the self identity of white people who have internalised these ideological justifications.” (King, p. 128)

Prepared by Claire Kelly

Whiteness“Whiteness was a modernist construction,

central to the colonisation project, and achieved through the exorcism of everything black, particularly African, from white identity” (Steyn, p. 150)

“the master narrative of whiteness: the conception of whiteness as ‘absolutely centered, unitary, masculine.’” (Steyn citing Owens, p. 150)

Prepared by Claire Kelly

Whiteness in contestation Whiteness under challenge

Not unitary Fluid and contested through history (Sacks; Steyn) Alternative narratives

vs.

Whiteness under reconstitution Through ‘taste’ (Dolby) Persisting heirarchies of sexual desirability (Barna &

Pattman) White liberalism (Biko) Semigration (Ballard)

> Everyday, inferential and dysconcious etc. racismsPrepared by Claire Kelly

“One of the more general lessons of history is that human groups can sometimes transcend the past and adapt to circumstances in unanticipated ways. If enlightened self-interest can induce whites to abdicate their privileged position, they may still be able to call themselves South Africans twenty-five, fifty or even a hundred years hence.”

George M. Frederickson

Prepared by Claire Kelly