White...not Transparent

In looking at the changing perspective of whiteness through the readings for this week there were a few repeated themes I noticed. These include:
Whiteness as a racial category that is no longer transparent. A need to be self-critical and self aware regarding whiteness.
Whiteness as it is related to economics and class.
Whiteness and privilege.

I have expanded on some of these themes below.

There were also some discrepancies I noticed between analyzing whiteness compared to a post-ethnic ideology.
The theorists and critics seem to be talking about whiteness in the same broad terms as other minorities (i.e. blackness).
It seems that in order to really analyze whiteness the playing field between white and other "ethnicities" needs to be leveled. The historical analysis of whiteness is no where near as in depth as other cultures.
And Roediger brings up an excellent point in the difference between theoretical whiteness and how whiteness functions in lived experience.

Opaque vs. Transparent
It becomes evident from the readings that we can no longer approach whiteness as meaningless, historically void and transparent. The very color white itself is loaded with social and historical symbolism; pureness, blankness, absence, etc. Roediger talks about the historical value of whiteness in terms of whites views of nonwhites. "When residents of the US talk about race, they too often talk only about African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans. If whites come into the discussion, it is only because they have 'attitudes' toward nonwhites. Whites are assumed not to 'have race,' though they might be racists," Roediger writes. White, as Roediger also writes, is an extremely imprecise term.

Whiteness, Economics and Class
It is undeniable that whiteness is often associated with class, especially the middle or upper class. Even the term white collar suggest a certain difference between whites' economic situation and the "others." We tend, as a society, to forget about the white poor, and associated the lower income population with minorites, often blacks. The fact that class is often closely associated with race was evident after the destruction of hurricane katrina. Poor and black became almost synonyms in the media representation of the victims of Katrina. Often poor economic situations are blamed on nonwhites. For example, Mexican immigration might be the most popular contemporary example. The US tends to blame the loss of jobs on illegal immigration and the influx of the nonwhite working class. However, there is nothing mentioned about the racial impllications of outsourcing US jobs. Maurice Berger uses the interesting phrase that it seems to be in people's best interest to "capitalize on their whiteness." Whiteness often implies economic power, even if that is mostly a false assumption. Even the poor have the ability to capitalize on their whiteness by having the benefit of assumed education and skill.

Broadness of Whiteness
In my own identity chart shown in a previous, I found it interesting that I didn't think to include "white" as a defining identity, but instead included norwegian, finnish, native american and german (with norwegian and finnish taking up the most "ethnic space.") This made me realize that in a way, my whiteness is still somewhat transparent to me. The first time I became self-aware of my whiteness was in preschool (around the age of 4), which I attend on a Northern Minnesota Native American reservation, where I was the minority. It was only at first that I was aware, and soon my whiteness was forgotten. Until I moved to Chicago, my areas of residency have had largely white demographic. However, I have always felt that my whiteness was more nuanced that just purely (for lack of a less ironic term) white. Stahlings talks about abolishing the normativity of whiteness in "Whiteness: A Wayward Construction," yet the very broad term WHITE is normatized not to include the different variations of whiteness. Although one could argue that the very appearance of whiteness bestows one with priveleges that others of different ethnicities are denied, it was not historically that way. Historically degrees of whiteness were much more divided, which is extremely evident in the neighborhood break-up in Chicago (although gentrification has erased much of that segregation, but not entirely). At one point Polish-Americans, Italian Americans, etc were not considered "white." However, these divisions have been erased, but what also seems to be diminishing is the ethnic diversity of whiteness. This is possibly why I chose to include my Norwegian and Finnish heritage as a large part of my identity, because the traditions associated with those nationalities are still very much embedded into my family life and tradition. It seems contradictory to try and integrate whiteness into the post-ethnic discussion when scholars seems to be using the broad discourse to talk about whiteness that they are trying to diseminate regarding other ethnicities.


Theory and Academics vs. Lived Experience
Although significant progress has been made in the intellectual and scholarly perception of whiteness, the fact that whiteness still holds severe economic, social, cultural and political priveleges in real live is pervasive. Although language has been invented in order to "politically correct" the way we refer to the social construction of race, it does not erase the social oppression, racism, prejudice and a certain degree of white supremacy that still exists. However, Wendy Ewald's "White Girl Alphabet" shows that language has symbolic racial connotations and there exists a certain lingual hierarchy that effect how we discuss and interpret race. Although post-structuralism has made vast improvements on the way we approach and talk about race, the existence of post-structuralism as it relates to race is not as evident in our general perceptions of society. All the "radical scholarship" does not equal radicial activism in society. Roediger explains that the intellectual demystification of race can cause disappointment when theory meets practice. I began making connections between the post-ethnic movement and the third wave feminist movement. It seems the 60s and 70s were a time of radical activism, for both feminism and civil rights, and now the "movement" is more intellectually based and there is much less "action" on the part of the general public. Maybe its a generational thing where the young, educated individuals feel a certain sense of apathy about how much good activism really does.

How does this all relate to art?
Art seems to function as a hyprid of intellectual study and lived experience. If we turn to Manet's Olympia, there is a reversal of the sexual, black female stereotyping and instead the white woman is the promiscuous sexual being, while the black servant (dressed in white) is the reserved, innocent, more asexual figures. During the multicultural period, it was common for nonwhite artists to make art about their ethnic identity, yet it was taboo to make art about whiteness (and to much extent...still is). However, one could argue that artists have been making art that is unintentionally about whiteness since the inception of art practice. William Kentridge's work has a lot to do with whiteness and apartheid in South Africa. Cindy Sherman made photographs about the B-Movie white female actress archetype. Still, the intentional depiction of whiteness seemed taboo. Maybe when this subject matter is no longer taboo will we be closer to a true post-ethnic ideology that includes the analysis of whiteness.