Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T15:03:59.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“MARKING WHITENESS” FOR CROSS-RACIAL SOLIDARITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2015

Greta Fowler Snyder
Greta Fowler Snyder*
Affiliation:
Political Science and International Relations Programme, Victoria University of Wellington
*
*Corresponding author: Dr. Greta Snyder, Political Science and International Relations Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington 6040, New Zealand. E-mail: greta.snyder@vuw.ac.nz_
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The dramatic difference in typical Black and White lifeworlds—or sets of “cultural givens” assumed by Black and White Americans and used to interpret experience—impedes the development of a cross-racial solidarity oriented toward racial justice. If such a cross-racial solidarity is to be realized, actors must reorient the average White lifeworld in ways that make Whites more receptive to Black claims. I identify, theorize, and assess a particular strategy for transforming the dominant White lifeworld, and thus facilitating cross-racial solidarity, that directly confronts contemporary Whiteness: “marking Whiteness.” The idea of “marking Whiteness” is abstracted from three different texts—the blog-turned-book Stuff White People Like, a satiric essay entitled “I Am a Martyr (And So Can You!): A Guide to White Male Victimhood” published in Esquire magazine, and the sketch comedy phenomenon Chappelle’s Show. Interventions that “mark Whiteness” make Whiteness hyper-visible—as is characteristic of “marked” groups—and portray average White behavior and ideas as integral to the systemic reproduction of racial injustice. “Marking Whiteness” renders the racial polity visible, and makes contemporary Whites’ complicity in racial injustice undeniable. While there are good reasons to be skeptical of the progressive credentials of any mass cultural product and popular texts are often subject to misinterpretation, popular culture should be recognized as an important site in lifeworld and solidarity construction and reconstruction.

Keywords

WhitenessLifeworldSolidarityMarkingPopular CulturePostracial
Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Fall 2015 , pp. 297 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Hutchins Center for African and African American Research 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alcoff, Linda Martín (2006). Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Elizabeth (2010). The Imperative of Integration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Barkawi, Tarak (2009) “Small Wars” and Big Consequences: From Korea to Iraq. Globalizations, 6(1): 127–131.Google Scholar
Ben-Ishai, Elizabeth (2010). Sexual Politics and Ascriptive Autonomy. Politics & Gender, 6(4): 573–600.Google Scholar
Brekhus, Wayne (1998). A Sociology of the Unmarked: Redirecting Our Focus. Sociological Theory, 16(1): 34–51.Google Scholar
Black Lives Matter (2015). About Us. <http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/> (accessed June 16, 2015).+(accessed+June+16,+2015).>Google Scholar
Brooks, David (2001). Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. New edition. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Chokshi, Niraj (2014). How Felon Voting Policies Restrict the Black Vote. The Washington Post, February 12. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/02/12/how-felon-voting-policies-restrict-the-black-vote/> (accessed April 7, 2015).Google Scholar
Clement, Scott (2015). Whites are More Confident than Ever that Their Local Police Treat Blacks Fairly. Washington Post, December 9. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/09/whites-are-more-confident-than-ever-that-their-police-treat-blacks-fairly/> (accessed June 16, 2015).Google Scholar
Cohen, Andrew (2012). How Voter ID Laws Are Being Used to Disenfranchise Minorities and the Poor. The Atlantic. March 16. <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-voter-id-laws-are-being-used-to-disenfranchise-minorities-and-the-poor/254572/.> (accessed April 7, 2015).Google Scholar
Colbert, Stephen (2008). Stephen Colbert’s Guide to White Male Oppression: I Am a Martyr. (And So Can You!). Esquire. <http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/g46/stephen-colbert-0808/> (accessed March 11, 2015).Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. (2006). After the Deluge: Publics and Publicity in Katrina’s Wake. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 3(1): 239–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. (2011). Not in Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. (2012). Racial Tragedies, Political Hope and the Tasks of American Political Science. Perspectives on Politics, 10(3): 669–673.Google Scholar
Dyson, Michael Eric, and Chennault, Ronald E. (2004). Giving Whiteness a Black Eye. In Eric Dyson, Michael (Ed.), The Michael Eric Dyson Reader, pp. 113–133. New York: Basic Civitas Books.Google Scholar
French, Ashley Joselyn (2010). Stuff White People Buy: Race, Consumption, and Group Identification. Consumers, Commodities and Consumption: A Newsletter of the Consumer Studies Research Network, 11(2). <http://csrn.camden.rutgers.edu/newsletters/11-2/french.htm> (accessed March 11, 2015).Google Scholar
Gallagher, Charles A. (2003). Review of Shades of White: White Kids and Racial Identities in High School, by Pamela Perry. Social Forces, 81(4): 1518–1519.Google Scholar
Grzanka, Patrick R., and Maher, Justin (2012). Different, Like Everyone Else: Stuff White People Like and the Marketplace of Diversity. Symbolic Interaction, 35(3): 368–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gross, Alan (2010). Rhetoric, Narrative, and the Lifeworld: The Construction of Collective Identity. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 43(2): 118–138.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1999). Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haggins, Bambi (2007). Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Hooker, Juliet (2009). Race and the Politics of Solidarity. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hughey, Matthew (2012). Color Capital, White Debt, and the Paradox of Strong Racial Identities. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 9(1): 169–200.Google Scholar
Iton, Richard (2008). In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lander, Christian (2008a). #62 Knowing What’s Best for Poor People. Stuff White People Like. October 2. <http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/10/62-knowing-whats-best-for-poor-people/> (accessed June 22, 2015).Google Scholar
Lander, Christian (2008b). #73 Gentrification. Stuff White People Like. February 22. <http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/22/73-gentrification/> (accessed June 22, 2015).Google Scholar
Lander, Christian (2008c). #20 Being an expert on YOUR culture. Stuff White People Like. January 23. <http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/23/20-being-an-expert-on-your-culture/> (accessed June 22, 2015).Google Scholar
Lander, Christian (2009). Interview by Ben Pobjie at Sydney Writers’ Festival, May 29. <http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/browse/video_popup.htm?vidURL=/tv/bigideas/stories/2009/05/29/2584326-mediarss-full.xml&vidTitle=Christian%20Lander%20on%20Stuff%20White%20People%20Like&vidLength=Full> (accessed March 11, 2015).Google Scholar
Lander, Christian (2010). Speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, February 24. <http://vimeo.com/9751705> (accessed March 11, 2015).Google Scholar
Lander, Christian (2011). Interview by Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr., and Daryl Miller, associated with the White Privilege Conference. Intersections Radio, October 18. <http://www.blogtalkradio.com/intersectionsradio/2011/10/18/intersections-radio-guest-christian-lander> (accessed March 11, 2015).Google Scholar
Lanham, Robert (2003). The Hipster Handbook. 1st edition. New York: Anchor.Google Scholar
MacMullan, Terrance (2005). Beyond the Pale: A Pragmatist Approach to Whiteness Studies. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 31(3): 267–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massey, Douglas, and Denton, Nancy (1998). American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McAllister, Marvin (2011). Whiting Up: Whiteface Minstrels and Stage Europeans in African American Performance. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Mendelberg, Tali (2001). The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages and the Norm of Racial Equality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mieszkowski, Katharine (2008). The Unbearable Whiteness of Being. Salon. July 6. <http://www.salon.com/2008/07/05/white_people/> (accessed September 12, 2013).Google Scholar
Miller, David (1995). On Nationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Myerson, Collier (2015). A Guide to Debunking the Need for ‘All Lives Matter’ and its Rhetorical Cousins. Fusion. June 15. <http://fusion.net/story/150076/a-guide-to-debunking-the-need-for-all-lives-matter-and-its-rhetorical-cousins/> (accessed June 16, 2015).Google Scholar
Newsweek/The Daily Beast (2012). Newsweek/The Daily Beast Poll. The Daily Beast, April 6. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/dam/dailybeast/2012/04/06/Newsweek_DailyBeast_Race_In_America_Survey.pdf> (accessed March 11, 2015).+(accessed+March+11,+2015).>Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha (1994). Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism. Boston Review, October 1. <http://www.bostonreview.net/martha-nussbaum-patriotism-and-cosmopolitanism> (accessed March 11, 2015).Google Scholar
Perks, Lisa Glebatis (2010). Polysemic Scaffolding: Explicating Discursive Clashes in Chappelle’s Show. Communication, Culture & Critique, 3(2): 270–289.Google Scholar
Perry, Pamela (2002). Shades of White: White Kids and Racial Identities in High School. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Pew Research Center (2013). King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal; Many Americans See Racial Disparities. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. <http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/08/final_full_report_racial_disparities.pdf> (accessed March 11, 2015).+(accessed+March+11,+2015).>Google Scholar
Phillip, Abby (2014). Protesting Racial Injustice While White. Washington Post, December 11. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/11/protesting-racial-injustice-while-white/> (accessed June 16, 2015).Google Scholar
Pierce, Andrew J. (2012). Reconstructing Race: A Discourse-Theoretical Approach to a Normative Politics of Identities. Philosophical Forum, 43(1): 27–49.Google Scholar
Reinhardt, Mark (2012). Stuff White People Know (or: What We Talk About When We Talk About Trayvon). Theory & Event, 15:3. <https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v015/15.3.reinhardt.html> (accessed March 11, 2015).Google Scholar
Roberts, Sam (2012). Segregation Curtailed in U.S. Cities, Study Finds. New York Times, January 30. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/us/Segregation-Curtailed-in-US-Cities-Study-Finds.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&> (accessed March 11, 2015).Google Scholar
Robinson, Russell (2008). Perceptual Segregation. Columbia Law Review, 108(5): 1093–1180.Google Scholar
Rodriguez, Gregory (2008). White Like Us. Los Angeles Times, February 25. <http://www.latimes.com/news/la-oe-rodriguez25feb25,0,4970343.column#axzz30shVG3Yk> (accessed March 11, 2015).Google Scholar
Rogers, Melvin (2012). The People, Rhetoric, and Affect: On the Political Force of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk. The American Political Science Review, 6(1): 188–203.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard (1989). Contingency, Irony, Solidarity. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rossing, Jonathan P. (2012). Deconstructing Postracialism: Humor as a Critical, Cultural Project. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 36(1): 44–61.Google Scholar
Sanburn, Josh. (2015). From Trayvon Martin to Walter Scott: Cases in the Spotlight. Time, April 10. <http://time.com/3815606/police-violence-timeline/.> (accessed June 16, 2015).Google Scholar
Schwartz, Benjamin (2008). Intolerant Chic. The Atlantic, October 1. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/10/intolerant-chic/306976/> (accessed March 11, 2015).Google Scholar
Seltzer-Kelly, Deborah, Westwood, Sean, and Peña-Guzman, David M. (2010). Deweyan Multicultural Democracy, Rortian Solidarity, and the Popular Arts: Krumping into Presence. Studies in the Philosophy of Education, 29(5): 441–457.Google Scholar
Sue, Derald Wing (2004). Whiteness and Ethnocentric Monoculturalism: Making the “Invisible” Visible. American Psychologist, 59(8): 761–769.Google Scholar
Transue, John E. (2007). Identity Salience, Identity Acceptance, and Racial Policy Attitudes: American National Identity as a Uniting Force. American Political Science Review, 51(1): 78–91.Google Scholar
Turner, Jack (2012). Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wong, Cara J. (2010). Boundaries of Obligation in American Politics: Geographic, National and Racial Communities. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar