The Gratifications of Whiteness

The Gratifications of Whiteness PDF Author: Ella Myers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197556760
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The first book-length study of W. E. B. Du Bois's conceptualization of American whiteness. W. E. B. Du Bois famously argued that whiteness in the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries functioned as a "public and psychological wage," offering valuable social standing to even the poorest of whites. Such "compensation," dependent on the devaluation of Black existence, helped secure the US capitalist regime and prevent interracial class solidarity. This book argues that Du Bois's influential account of compensatory whiteness is crucially important, but also incomplete. For Du Bois, whiteness was never one thing, but many. Focusing on Du Bois's middle-period work (about 1920-1940), Ella Myers uncovers an overlooked, complex analysis that theorizes whiteness as a source of varied gratifications. These gratifications include not only the status rewards of racial capitalism, but also the enjoyment of gratuitous Black suffering and the conviction that the planet belongs to those marked as "white." The book shows that Du Bois's analysis, developed in response to the pressing political problems of his own day, also offers insight into 21st century struggles for racial justice. Myers argues that it is important to recognize the extent to which anti-Blackness continues to underwrite plural -and deeply disturbing-forms of white gratification here and now. Doing so helps explain the tenacity of America's unequal racial order and also reveals why creative, multifaceted strategies of resistance are necessary to end it.

The Gratifications of Whiteness

The Gratifications of Whiteness PDF Author: Ella Myers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197556760
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first book-length study of W. E. B. Du Bois's conceptualization of American whiteness. W. E. B. Du Bois famously argued that whiteness in the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries functioned as a "public and psychological wage," offering valuable social standing to even the poorest of whites. Such "compensation," dependent on the devaluation of Black existence, helped secure the US capitalist regime and prevent interracial class solidarity. This book argues that Du Bois's influential account of compensatory whiteness is crucially important, but also incomplete. For Du Bois, whiteness was never one thing, but many. Focusing on Du Bois's middle-period work (about 1920-1940), Ella Myers uncovers an overlooked, complex analysis that theorizes whiteness as a source of varied gratifications. These gratifications include not only the status rewards of racial capitalism, but also the enjoyment of gratuitous Black suffering and the conviction that the planet belongs to those marked as "white." The book shows that Du Bois's analysis, developed in response to the pressing political problems of his own day, also offers insight into 21st century struggles for racial justice. Myers argues that it is important to recognize the extent to which anti-Blackness continues to underwrite plural -and deeply disturbing-forms of white gratification here and now. Doing so helps explain the tenacity of America's unequal racial order and also reveals why creative, multifaceted strategies of resistance are necessary to end it.

The Heart of Whiteness

The Heart of Whiteness PDF Author: Robert Jensen
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872868419
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
An honest look at racism in the United States, and the liberal platitudes that attempt to conceal it. This book offers an honest and rigorous exploration of what Jensen refers to as the depraved nature of whiteness in the United States. Mixing personal experience with data and theory, Jensen faces down the difficult realities of race, racism, and white privilege. He argues that any system that denies non-white people their full humanity also keeps white people from fully accessing their own. The Heart of Whiteness is both a cautionary tale for those who believe that they have transcended racism, and also an expression of the hope for genuine transcendence. "Very few white writers have been able to point out the pathological nature of white privilege and supremacy with the eloquence of Robert Jensen. In The Heart of Whiteness, Jensen demonstrates not only immense wisdom on the issue of race, but does so in the kind of direct and accessible fashion that separates him from virtually any other academic scholar, or journalist, writing on these subjects today."—Tim Wise, author of Dear White America "With radical honesty, hard facts, and an abundance of insight and compassion, Robert Jensen lays out strategies for recognizing and dismantling white privilege– and helping others to do the same. This text is more than just important; it's useful. Jensen demonstrates again that he is a leading voice in the American quest for justice."—Adam Mansbach, author of Angry Black White Boy and Go the F***to Sleep "Jensen's spotlight on the gaps separating the American promise of liberty and justice from the reality is accessible, powerful and moving. In short, it is a terrific piece of anti-racist writing."—Eleanor Bader, The Brooklyn Rail

The Politics of the Wretched

The Politics of the Wretched PDF Author: Zahi Zalloua
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135042286X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The Politics of the Wretched argues for ressentiment's generative negativity, prompting a shift from ressentiment as a personal expression of frustration to ressentiment as a collective “No”. Inspired by Kant and Nietzsche's philosophy, Zalloua identifies two modes of deploying ressentiment – private and public use – by substituting ressentiment for reason. This reinterpretation argues for a public use of ressentiment, for the wretched to universalize their grievances, to see their antagonism as cutting across societies, and to turn personal trauma into a common cause. A public use of ressentiment rails against the ideology of identity and victimhood and insists on ressentiment's generative negativity, its own rationality, prompting a shift from ressentiment as a personal expression of frustration to ressentiment as a collective “No”. Reframing ressentiment as a tool to oppose the evils of capitalism, anti-Blackness, and neocolonialism, it both alarms the liberal gatekeepers of the status quo and promises to energize the anti-racist Left in its ongoing struggles for universal justice and emancipation.

The Enduring, Invisible, and Ubiquitous Centrality of Whiteness

The Enduring, Invisible, and Ubiquitous Centrality of Whiteness PDF Author: Kenneth V. Hardy
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324016914
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 615

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Book Description
A comprehensive collection on the topic of whiteness from writers in the field of mental health and activism. Whiteness is a pervasive ideology that is rarely overtly identified or examined, despite its profound effects on race relationships. Being intentional about naming, deconstructing, and dismantling whiteness is a precursor to responding effectively to the racial reckoning of our society and improving race relationships, addressing systemic bias, and moving towards the creation of a more racially just world. In this collection of essays, scholars from a variety of backgrounds and trainings explore how the longstanding centering of whiteness in all aspects of society, including clinical therapy spaces, has led to widespread racial injustice. Contributors include: David Trimble, Lane Arye, Jodie Kliman, Ken Epstein, Toby Bobes, Cynthia Chestnut, Ovita F. Williams, Gene E. Cash Jr., Carlin Quinn, Christiana Ibilola Awosan, Niki Berkowitz, Jen Leland, Mary Pender Greene, Hinda Winawer, Bonnie Berman Cushing, Michael Boucher, Robin Schlenger, Alana Tappin, Timothy Baima, Jeffery Mangram, Liang-Ying Chou, Irene In Hee Sung, Ana Hernandez, Robin Nuzum, Keith A. Alford, Hugo Kamya, and Cristina Combs.

The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness

The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness PDF Author: Birgit Brander Rasmussen
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822381044
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Bringing together new articles and essays from the controversial Berkeley conference of the same name, The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness presents a fascinating range of inquiry into the nature of whiteness. Representing academics, independent scholars, community organizers, and antiracist activists, the contributors are all leaders in the “second wave” of whiteness studies who collectively aim to combat the historical legacies of white supremacy and to inform those who seek to understand the changing nature of white identity, both in the United States and abroad. With essays devoted to theories of racial domination, comparative global racisms, and transnational white identity, the geographical reach of the volume is significant and broad. Dalton Conley writes on “How I Learned to Be White.” Allan Bérubé discusses the intersection of gay identity and whiteness, and Mab Segrest describes the spiritual price white people pay for living in a system of white supremacy. Other pieces examine the utility of whiteness as a critical term for social analysis and contextualize different attempts at antiracist activism. In a razor-sharp introduction, the editors not only raise provocative questions about the intellectual, social, and political goals of those interested in the study of whiteness but assess several of the topic’s major recurrent themes: the visibility of whiteness (or the lack thereof); the “emptiness” of whiteness as a category of identification; and conceptions of whiteness as a structural privilege, a harbinger of violence, or an institutionalization of European imperialism. Contributors. William Aal, Allan Bérubé, Birgit Brander Rasmussen, Dalton Conley, Troy Duster, Ruth Frankenberg, John Hartigan Jr., Eric Klinenberg, Eric Lott, Irene J. Nexica, Michael Omi, Jasbir Kaur Puar, Mab Segrest, Vron Ware, Howard Winant, Matt Wray

Images of Whiteness

Images of Whiteness PDF Author: Clarissa Behar
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 184888222X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This collection examines images of whiteness in literature, film, television, as well as ethnographic studies, and provides preliminary guidance to engage in anti-racist praxis and education.

Fatal Denial

Fatal Denial PDF Author: Annie Menzel
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520297202
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Fatal Denial argues that over the past 150 years, US health authorities’ explanations of and interventions into Black infant mortality have been characterized by the "biopolitics of racial innocence," a term describing the institutionalized mechanisms in health care and policy that have at once obscured, enabled, and perpetuated systemic infanticide by blaming Black mothers and communities themselves. Following Black feminist scholarship demonstrating that the commodification and theft of Black women’s reproductive bodies, labors, and care is foundational to US racial capitalism, Annie Menzel posits that the polity has made Black infants vulnerable to preventable death. Drawing on key Black political thought and praxis around infant mortality—from W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary Church Terrell to Black midwives and birth workers—this work also tracks continued refusals to acknowledge this routinized reproductive violence, illuminating both a rich history of care and the possibility of more transformative futures.

Feeling White

Feeling White PDF Author: Cheryl E. Matias
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9463004505
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Discussing race and racism often conjures up emotions of guilt, shame, anger, defensiveness, denial, sadness, dissonance, and discomfort. Instead of suppressing those feelings, coined emotionalities of whiteness, they are, nonetheless, important to identify, understand, and deconstruct if one ever hopes to fully commit to racial equity. Feeling White: Whiteness, Emotionality, and Education delves deeper into these white emotionalities and other latent ones by providing theoretical and psychoanalytic analyses to determine where these emotions so stem, how they operate, and how they perpetuate racial inequities in education and society. The author beautifully weaves in creative writing with theoretical work to artistically illustrate how these emotions operate while also engaging the reader in an emotional experience in and of itself, claiming one must feel to understand. This book does not rehash former race concepts; rather, it applies them in novel ways that get at the heart of humanity, thus revealing how feeling white ultimately impacts race relations. Without a proper investigation on these underlying emotions, that can both stifle or enhance one’s commitment to racial justice in education and society, the field of education denies itself a proper emotional preparation so needed to engage in prolonged educative projects of racial and social justice. By digging deep to what impacts humanity most—our hearts—this book dares to expose one’s daily experiences with race, thus individually challenging us all to self-investigate our own racialized emotionalities. “Drawing on her deep wisdom about how race works, Cheryl Matias directly interrogates the emotional arsenal White people use as shields from the pain of confronting racism, peeling back its layers to unearth a core of love that can open us up. In Feeling White: Whiteness, Emotionality, and Education, Matias deftly names and deconstructs distancing emotions, prodding us to stay in the conversation in order to become teachers who can reach children marginalized by racism.” – Christine Sleeter, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, California State University, Monterey Bay “In Feeling White, Cheryl E. Matias blends astute observations, analyses and insights about the emotions embedded in white identity and their impact on the racialized politics of affect in teacher education. Drawing deftly on her own classroom experiences as well as her mastery of the methodologies and theories of critical whiteness studies, Matias challenges us to develop what Dr. King called ‘the strength to love’ by confronting and conquering the affective structures that promote white innocence and preclude white accountability.” – George Lipsitz, Ph.D., Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness Cheryl E. Matias, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver. She is a motherscholar of three children, including boy-girl twins."

Critical White Studies

Critical White Studies PDF Author: Richard Delgado
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1566395321
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 699

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Book Description
No longer content with accepting whiteness as the norm, critical scholars have turned their attention to whiteness itself. In Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror, numerous thinkers, including Toni Morrison, Eric Foner, Peggy McIntosh, Andrew Hacker, Ruth Frankenberg, John Howard Griffin, David Roediger, Kathleen Heal Cleaver, Noel Ignatiev, Cherrie Moraga, and Reginald Horsman, attack such questions as: *How was whiteness invented, and why? *How has the category whiteness changed over time? *Why did some immigrant groups, such as the Irish and Jews, start out as nonwhite and later became white? *Can some individual people be both white and nonwhite at different times, and what does it mean to "pass for white"? *At what point does pride in being white cross the line into white power or white supremacy? *What can whites concerned over racial inequity or white privilege do about it? Science and pseudoscience are presented side by side to demonstrate how our views on whiteness often reflect preconception, not fact. For example, most scientists hold that race is not a valid scientific category -- genetic differences between races are insignificant compared to those within them. Yet, the "one drop" rule, whereby those with any nonwhite heritage are classified as nonwhite, persists even today. As the bell curve controversy shows, race concepts die hard, especially when power and prestige lie behind them. A sweeping portrait of the emerging field of whiteness studies, Critical White Studies presents, for the first time, the best work from sociology, law, history, cultural studies, and literature. Delgado and Stefancic expressly offer critical white studies as the next step in critical race theory. In focusing on whiteness, not only do they ask nonwhites to investigate more closely for what it means for others to be white, but also they invite whites to examine themselves more searchingly and to "look behind the mirror."

Witnessing Whiteness

Witnessing Whiteness PDF Author: Shelly Tochluk
Publisher: R&L Education
ISBN: 1607092581
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Witnessing Whiteness invites readers to consider what it means to be white, describes and critiques strategies used to avoid race issues, and identifies the detrimental effect of avoiding race on cross-race collaborations. The author illustrates how racial discomfort leads white people toward poor relationships with people of color. Questioning the implications our history has for personal lives and social institutions, the book considers political, economic, socio-cultural, and legal histories that shaped the meanings associated with whiteness. Drawing on dialogue with well-known figures within education, race, and multicultural work, the book offers intimate, personal stories of cross-race friendships that address both how a deep understanding of whiteness supports cross-race collaboration and the long-term nature of the work of excising racism from the deep psyche. Concluding chapters offer practical information on building knowledge, skills, capacities, and communities that support anti-racism practices, a hopeful look at our collective future, and a discussion of how to create a culture of witnesses who support allies for social and racial justice. For book discussion groups and workshop plans, please visit www.witnessingwhiteness.com.