scholarly journals My Dear White Sister: Self-examining White Privilege and the Myth of America

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-103
Author(s):  
Keely Shinners
Keyword(s):  
White Privilege ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
White People ◽  
Racial Privilege ◽  
Personal Level

James Baldwin, in his landmark essay “My Dungeon Shook,” says that white Americans are “still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.” This open letter explores this history on a personal level. Taking notes from Baldwin’s indictments of whiteness in Another Country and The Fire Next Time, this essay explores how white people, despite claims of deniability, become culpable, complicit, and ensnared in their racial privilege. By reading Baldwin’s work through a personal lens, it implores fellow white readers and scholars of Baldwin to begin examining the myths of America by first examining themselves.

scholarly journals “We Dare Entertain Thoughts not to the Liking of Present-Day Bigots”: Radical Slavs, Race, Civil Rights, and Anti-Communism in Red-Scare America

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-157
Author(s):  
Robert M. Zecker
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
White Identity ◽  
Red Scare ◽  
White Americans ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Racial Privilege ◽  
Poll Tax

Developing a white identity was a key component in immigrants’ acculturation to America. Many immigrants learned to distance themselves from black fellow workers through cultural productions that delineated blacks as impermissible outsiders, and made a case for Slavic or Mediterranean inclusion in the Caucasian republic. Yet “red” immigrants resisted white privilege. During the 1930s-1950s, members of the International Workers Order endorsed anti-colonial movements and civil rights for blacks at home. The Slovak Workers Order and other IWO lodges joined the “American Crusade Against Lynching” and lobbied for an end to the poll tax and segregation. During World War II the IWO was active in anti-lynching and anti-poll-tax campaigns. While in the 1940s many white Americans violently resisted black attempts to integrate neighbourhoods, the radical groups sought to counter the hegemonic white narrative and build cross-racial alliances while preserving members’ discreet, ethnic identities. In no small measure because of this anti-racist activism, the Order was placed on the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations. By 1954 the Order was dismantled, but for a brief moment some “red” members opted out of racial privilege in favour of black-white solidarity.

White People Problems? White Privilege Beliefs Predict Attitudes Toward Confederate Symbols

2021 ◽  
pp. 194855062110519
Author(s):  
Kimberly Rios ◽  
Dominik Mischkowski ◽  
Nicole B. Stephenson
Keyword(s):  
Path Analysis ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Group Level ◽  
White People ◽  
Power Resources ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Racial Ethnic ◽  
Threat Theory

Building upon Intergroup Threat Theory and research on group-level empathy, we tested the relationship between White privilege beliefs and White Americans’ attitudes toward Confederate symbols. In three experiments, participants induced to think about White privilege exhibited more opposition to Confederate symbols, perceived less realistic threat to their group’s power/resources and symbolic threat to their group’s values/identity from the prospect of these symbols being removed, and (in Study 2) felt more empathetic toward racial/ethnic minorities who may view these symbols. Further, a meta-analytic path analysis across studies demonstrated that the effect of White privilege reminders on opposition to Confederate symbols was driven by reduced realistic and symbolic threat, as well as greater outgroup empathy.

Racial Prejudice Predicts Less Desire to Learn About White Privilege

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 310-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Conway ◽  
Nikolette P. Lipsey ◽  
Gabrielle Pogge ◽  
Kate A. Ratliff
Keyword(s):  
White Privilege ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
Affective Responses ◽  
White People ◽  
Total N ◽  
Desire To Change

Abstract. White people often experience unpleasant emotions in response to learning about White privilege ( Phillips & Lowery, 2015 ; Pinterits, Poteat, & Spanierman, 2009 ). Two studies (total N = 1,310) examined how race attitudes relate to White people’s desires to avoid or learn information about White privilege. White participants completed measures of their race attitudes, desire to change White privilege, and their desire to avoid learning information about White privilege. Study 1 showed that participants who preferred their racial in-group reported less desire to change White privilege and greater desire to avoid learning information about White privilege. Inconsistent with expectations, Study 2 showed that participants who anticipated negative affective responses to learning about White privilege reported greater desire to change White privilege.

scholarly journals Making Whiteness Visible and Felt in Fairview

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Michael Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Political Context ◽  
White People ◽  
The Public ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Audience Responses ◽  
The Public Sphere

In this article I analyse how Jackie Sibblies Drury’s play Fairview makes white audience members feel white. As a play that exposes whiteness and calls white people to account for their racism, Fairview speaks to contemporary global antiracist activism efforts. Therefore, I begin by situating Fairview in the transatlantic cultural and political context of Black Lives Matter. I then discuss the theatrical devices Drury employs in Fairview in order to make whiteness felt before going on to analyse a range of white audience responses to the production at London’s Young Vic Theatre in 2019/2020. I reflect on these responses in relation to how white people react to accusations of white privilege and power in the public sphere and identify shared strategies for sustaining whiteness. In conclusion, I consider Fairview as a model of affective antiracist activism.

scholarly journals Review of "American Allegory: Lindy Hop and the Racial Imagination"

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Wade
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
White Americans ◽  
White People ◽  
Social Dance ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Lindy Hop ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

American Allegory uses lindy hop—a social dance invented in the 1920s by black youth in Harlem and now practiced mostly by white dancers—to gain insight into the relationship between black and white Americans and their cultural forms. It aims to contribute to theory about how superordinate groups manipulate culture to maintain power, while also accounting for cultural change and exchange. On page 204 Hancock begins to ask sophisticated theoretical questions but, by then, it is far too late to answer them. While Hancock’s central premise is one to which I am sympathetic—that the community of primarily white people who dance lindy hop today are participating in an appropriation of black culture—he’s never able to move past his premise to a useful contribution.

Using Racial and Class Differences in Infant Mortality to Teach about White Privilege: A Cooperative Group Activity

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica A. Cebulak ◽  
John F. Zipp
Keyword(s):  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Cooperative Learning ◽  
White Students ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Color Blindness ◽  
Cooperative Group ◽  
Learning Groups ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
Learning Group ◽  
Racial Privilege

A considerable amount of research across the past several decades has documented the emergence of a new racial ideology of “color-blindness” as well as evidence that white college students have difficulty recognizing the racial privileges that are obscured by this color-blindness. To address this, we developed a cooperative group White Privilege Activity that used racial and class differences in infant mortality to help students recognize the existence of white privilege. Fielding this in two mass lecture sections of Introductory Sociology, we found that exposure to content on white privilege along with the utilization of cooperative learning group exercises promoted a greater understanding of white privilege for both white and nonwhite students. Furthermore, we found that the racial composition of cooperative learning groups had a significant impact on white students’ racial privilege attitudes.

Racism at the End of White Christian America

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-32
Author(s):  
Kristopher Norris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
The United States ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Womanist Theology ◽  
White People ◽  
The Many

Chapter 1 engages in social analysis to outline the current racial landscape in churches in the United States. Beginning with our current political and religious moment, it addresses and defines the many layers to the problem of whiteness. Drawing on the work of James Baldwin, womanist theology, and contemporary sociology, this chapter describes whiteness as a process of social and identity formation currently experiencing a crisis of legitimation. This current legitimation crisis has precipitated the phenomenon of colorblindness, which leads white people to see our interests and perspectives as universal, blinds us to our epistemological limitations, and leads to a posture of defensiveness and fragility. The chapter concludes by arguing that whiteness presents itself as a “wicked problem” with no identifiable solution.

scholarly journals Pedagogies of Race: The Politics of Whiteness in an African American Studies Course

2011 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regina V. Jones
Keyword(s):  
White Students ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Primary Role ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
White People ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
And Gender ◽  
American Society

This paper evaluates students' arguments for a color-blind society to avoid discussions related to the continued existence of racism in USA culture. Relatedly, this writer finds that as an black woman her status as facilitator in the classroom is directly challenged, on occasion, and that race and gender play a primary role in students' perception of classroom material and how she is perceived. Classroom discussions related to historical texts reveal that structures of domination have slanted perception of black and white people in U.S. culture. Finally, a key to open dialogue about race and racism, primarily for white students, is to explain and demonstrate the invisibility of whiteness or white privilege in American society.

Critical Whiteness Studies

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Applebaum
Keyword(s):  
White Privilege ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Whiteness Studies ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
White People ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
Black President

In 1903, standing at the dawn of the 20th century, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that the color line is the defining characteristic of American society. Well into the 21st century, Du Bois’s prescience sadly still rings true. Even when a society is built on a commitment to equality, and even with the election of its first black president, the United States has been unsuccessful in bringing about an end to the rampant and violent effects of racism, as numerous acts of racial violence in the media have shown. For generations, scholars of color, among them Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Franz Fanon, have maintained that whiteness lies at the center of the problem of racism. It is only relatively recently that the critical study of whiteness has become an academic field, committed to disrupting racism by problematizing whiteness as a corrective to the traditional exclusive focus on the racialized “other.” Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) is a growing field of scholarship whose aim is to reveal the invisible structures that produce and reproduce white supremacy and privilege. CWS presumes a certain conception of racism that is connected to white supremacy. In advancing the importance of vigilance among white people, CWS examines the meaning of white privilege and white privilege pedagogy, as well as how white privilege is connected to complicity in racism. Unless white people learn to acknowledge, rather than deny, how whites are complicit in racism, and until white people develop an awareness that critically questions the frames of truth and conceptions of the “good” through which they understand their social world, Du Bois’s insight will continue to ring true.

`White privilege': A mild critique1

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Blum
Keyword(s):  
Health Education ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Racial Disparity ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Philosophy Of Education ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
White People ◽  
Unjust Enrichment ◽  
Normative Foundations

White privilege analysis has been influential in philosophy of education. I offer some mild criticisms of this largely salutary direction — its inadequate exploration of its own normative foundations, and failure to distinguish between `spared injustice', `unjust enrichment' and `non-injustice-related' privileges; its inadequate exploration of the actual structures of racial disparity in different domains (health, education, wealth); its tendency to deny or downplay differences in the historical and current experiences of the major racial groups; its failure to recognize important ethnic differences within racial groups; and its overly narrow implied political project that omits many ways that White people can contribute meaningfully to the cause of racial justice.

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