2004-04-24 - 1:18 am
On Thursday I was on a panel at my school, Eugene Lang College, responding to a talk given by historian, professor and white anti-racist activist David Roediger. His talk addressed the some of the ways in which recent immigrants to the United States in the 1920's and 30's (and before and after) consolidated their new "white" identity through segregated housing and also the problematics with anti-racism that tries to use the rhetoric that we're all "American" as a way to mediate differences. It was an interesting talk and also sparked off interesting disucssion (today we had a lunch and discussion with Dr. Roediger at school to more specifically address the ways white supremacy and white privilege plays out at our school). It's tiring too, because all these discussions have happened before. And I know the administration won't act on them. I had similar discussions with the administration at my high school. Why the students at the school do not reflect the population of the cities they are in, the alienation students and faculty of color feel, the tokenization, the fact that these school's cost so damn much and is prohibitive for all students from working class backgrounds. And it is frustrating when the administration says it will be like "water on a stone" to change when, though there are deeply embedded issues that have to do with the way these institutions of been structured as white spaces and act to just reporduce that dynamic, there are also very concrete things to do like giving more financial aid and hiring more professors of color. And how do I fit into this discussion as a white person who does not want to re-center myself in the debate because I talk about white supremacy as a white person? It's a good question and I think we need more theorizing, more historical investigation and more committment to acting on thes discussions we have and taking our intellectual labor (that is, thinking and talking and writing) into actual action, becuase though I beleive so much in the powe of transforming consciousness, I also need to ask, where does it go?
And so here's what I said thursday night:
It is a great honor for me to be here with professors and writers who have been a significant source of inspiration for me. I would like to respond to Dr. Roediger’s talk by raising some questions and sharing some of my personal experience as a white person engaging in study and action that is simultaneously critical of whiteness and acts to challenge white supremacy.
In the introduction to “Colored White: Transcending the racial past” Dr. Roediger uses the phrase “taking history seriously” to call into question the idea that future racial change can be predicted from demographic trends. For me this is an important idea when thinking about “whiteness” and what it means for me as a so called “white” person to be doing anti-racist work and trying to put critical theories around race and whiteness into action. Personally, I think that a major part of studying “whiteness” is being able to chart the moments when being “white” ceases to feel like an absence of race or culture, and begins to understand how “whiteness” is a concept with a dangerous, violent history.
In “Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination” bell hooks writes, “It is the telling of our history that enables political self-recovery. In contemporary society, white and black people alike believe that racism no longer exists. This erasure, however mythic, diffuses the representation of whiteness as terror in the black imagination.” (hooks in Roediger, 51) I think many people are all too aware that racism still exists, but it is only through the examination of our many intersecting histories can we hope to understand how to seriously address the ways “whiteness” and “blackness” have been constructed as binary opposites and how both “white” people and people of color can work to challenge white supremacy.
I also think that it is crucial that this kind of self-examination, as well as the critical study of whiteness by so-called white people and people of color, does not re-center white people. It is not enough for me as a white person to acknowledge this fact. Being an “anti-racist white,” or, say, in my case, Anglo-Irish-Scottish-Franco-American, cannot become a just trendy identity that somehow neutralizes the power that whiteness is given in our society. This would loose sight of the fact that to be visibly identified as “white” (which is of course, mediated by so many other factors, such as gender, class and sexuality to name a few) is still very privileged position. This said, for me, examining my personal history as a white, queer woman is an essential piece of enabling my own political self-recovery. It also deepens my understanding of what is at stake when attempting to live, work and struggle as an “anti-racist” white person.
I grew up in a very white, middle and upper middle class suburban town in southern Maine. In reference to Dr. Roediger’s talk, I have to ask myself what it means to be a product of generations of residential segregation. What had my friends and neighbors given up of their ethnic and cultural identities in order to live in that town and survive in that space? This question becomes particularly relevant to me now, living in a city where white people are not the majority.
How do the histories of whiteness determine how I move through this urban space? Keeping in mind the histories Dr. Roediger discussed of progressive, white women reformers who supported segregated housing I also must ask myself what histories I am invoking when I consider working in not-for-profit social service agencies or as an educator in New York City. I also feel it important to think about the neighborhood I live in and the school I attend.
Currently, young white people, and young, professional people of color, are quickly moving into neighborhoods like Park Slope, Williamsburg, Bushwick, Harlem, and Prospect Heights in search of cool places to live, cheaper rents, and access to hip, urban culture. Gentrification is the other side of residential segregation. It often re-segregates these neighborhoods, as rents rise and working class people of color and ethnic whites are forced to move out. This is a story many of us know.
I live in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a primarily Latino, Chinese and white working class neighborhood, where a slow, but steady, trickle of privileged college and university students are moving in. The differences between who I see on the streets in my neighborhood and who I see at this University are staggering – I do not feel like I am in the same city. This again reminds me of the privilege of access – to education, jobs, and housing, among other things – that whiteness gives. The challenge presented to me is this: how do we use our knowledge of history in the present to address questions such as ensuring truly equal access to education, housing and jobs? How do we create space in this university (and all educational institutions) where people of color, ethnic whites and people from working class backgrounds are not forced to assimilate in order to succeed?
