I'm very interested in what you all think about the discussion. As a Black man, I do not know the intricacies of white racial dialogue as well as a white person may. Kristen used her experiences as a white woman to challenge some of my assumptions. I welcome all of your comments, especially those that are similarly challenging.
Kristen and Jenni,
I think your comments speak to one another, so I’ll try to combine my response. I think the two issues/factors we need to add are: inconsistent rhetoric and (un)consciousness.
We all agree that millennials/”colorblind” whites need a “racist other” to compare themselves too. I suggested that The Racist Generation is their tool. Kristen suggests young whites use (un)known others, regardless of generation. Jenni asks how rescuing individuals/blocs plays into all this. Does rescuing deny whites the “racist other/past” necessary for their colorblind identity?
My answer is that we’re all right. To coin a phrase, based on “abstract liberalism,” I suggest whites use “abstract racism” as a means for handling all of the problems we’re talking about.
By “Abstract Racism,” I mean the white tendency to maintain a concept of a racist past/other that conceptualizes, reifies, and implicates a “racist generation” without populating that generation with particular individuals.
To “flesh out the rules” as Jenni asked, I still say whites are rescuing the racist generation. To incorporate Kristen’s insights, whites may not always see THEIR OWN grandfather as implicated. But they do implicate an unknown hoard of whites from grandpa’s generation. This “unknown hoard” is so abstract as to be fairytale-like. Unfortunately, this abstract generation (i.e. The Racist Generation) coexisted with grandpa. Consequently, history [unfairly] lumps grandpa in with this racist generation and denies him his proper place in the meta-narrative of progressive and benevolent white goodness/supremacy. This [unfair] circumstance (i.e. miss characterizing grandpa) necessitates taking steps to rescue the racist generation (i.e. as a collective) while keeping the idea of a racist past in tact.
In other words, whites want both narratives to be true at the same time: 1) there was a racist past in which whites, who were not as morally advanced as contemporary whites, were racist; 2) my family member existed during that time, but is not responsible for the racist era because s/he lacked the animus/power/significance/etc to have been a criticizable racist.
Therefore:
3) contemporary whites need to rescue grandpa from this unfair characterization, which requires remaking the historical narrative about the racist time/generation.
The Conclusions/Implications:
1) Taken as a whole, what happens is that: A) “colorblind” whites construct an abstract racist other/generation against which to favorably compare themselves; B) this abstract racist other/generation does not include a particular white’s personal loved one, thus whites effectively rescue their own family members from “the racist generation” without threatening the concept; C) as all whites exempt their own family members, the aggregate effect is that “the racist generation” exists without any actual members; therefore D) whites retain a racist generation/past/other for comparison while denying contemporary people of color any tangible targets for redress.
In that way, INDIVIDUAL whites from The Racist Generation are rescued from direct accusation. But more work must be done to restore the narrative of progressive, benevolent white goodness/supremacy.
That work is necessary because all whites depend on the narrative to justify their racial privileges. An identifiable racist generation in the 20th century disrupts the narrative and threatens all whites’ self-identity and justifications of privilege. Therefore, whites rescue the COLLECTIVE racist generation by remaking history (i.e. the new school board regulations) in a way that makes the racist generation a progressive part of white history–redefined as people who took appropriate steps to “protect America” against illegitimate others/radicals and eventually won that battle, as evidenced by the Conservative Reemergence.
The combination of rescuing the racist generation both INDIVIDUALLY and COLLECTIVELY produces inconsistencies, as Jenni mentioned. Colorblind rhetoric is full of logical and discursive inconsistencies. Rescuing the racist generation from blame, while using it for colorblind discourse, is just another illustration of that point.
This duel project of rescuing the racist generation, both as individuals and as a collective, also incorporates Kristen’s critiques. It accounts for the “racial innocence” narratives white families tell and the general ignorance whites have about institutional racism.
At the same time, the project demonstrates why whites are so emotionally invested and politically committed to the rescuing efforts evidenced by the Texas Board of Ed. Rescuing the Collective racist generation is necessary for the essential narrative of white supremacy that is at the core of white self-identity.
Much of this motivation–and the emotions under-girding it–lies beyond the realm of many whites’ consciousness at times. Quotes from the TBOE sessions and quotes from Two Faced Racism demonstrate that whites are very aware of continuing racism and their own racist motives sometimes. But that is not true all of the time. As Charles Lawrence, among many others, points out, white racism is often unconscious and we must account for that in our analysis and resistance strategies.
I would argue that the project of rescuing the racist generation depends, in large part, upon whites’ unconscious racism–e.g. emotional attachment to the supremacy narrative; lack of dissonance over the logical inconsistency of needing a “racist other” while systemically depopulating “the racist other.” The lack of dissonance is accomplished by assigning blame for past racism to a concept (the racist generation) that has no discernible membership. Whites effectively reify the racist generation as a concept, divest it of actual human membership, then invest it with dictatorial powers and responsibility for the racist past.
As I have said, the sum total is that whites rescue their loved ones (i.e. the racist generation) while maintaining a conceptual racist generation/past for “colorblind” comparison.
No comments:
Post a Comment