tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/racial-identity-18231/articlesracial identity – The Conversation2022-07-14T15:43:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1833872022-07-14T15:43:13Z2022-07-14T15:43:13ZWhiteness is an invented concept that has been used as a tool of oppression<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1070289X.2018.1543831">Whiteness</a> is a modern, colonial <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-of-whiteness-long-history-dangerous-idea">invention</a>. It was devised in the 17th century and used to provide the <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race">logic for genocide and slavery</a>. The <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/how-white-people-were-invented-by-a-playwright-in-1613">first recorded mention</a> of “white people”, historians concur, is in English playwright Thomas Middleton’s 1613 play, The Triumphs of Truth. </p>
<p>Ever since the 17th century, people across the world – from the <a href="https://ora.ox.ac.uk/catalog/uuid:e7cc675f-cd66-4827-a52f-9cd1765f3777/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe_filename=602335780.pdf&type_of_work=Thesis">Dominican Republic</a> and <a href="https://pomeps.org/the-racial-politics-of-the-amazigh-revival-in-north-africa-and-beyond">Morocco</a> to <a href="https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/328777">India</a> and <a href="https://cers.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/97/2016/04/Colonisation-and-Maori-Identity-in-New-Zealand-Emily-Fulcher.pdf">New Zealand</a> – have been variously granted or denied rights on the basis of being deemed white or non-white. Whiteness thus has consistently entailed opposition, power and subjugation.</p>
<p>Research shows that this theme of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whiteness-is-at-the-heart-of-racism-in-britain-so-why-is-it-portrayed-as-a-black-problem-181742">whiteness</a> as power and unity has persisted even as the boundaries of whiteness have shifted. </p>
<p>As European powers colonised various parts of the world, they implemented and refined racial categories. In colonial <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/nwig/91/1-2/article-p30_2.xml?language=en">Barbados</a>, 17th-century labour codes described indentured Europeans as “white” and gave them more rights than enslaved Africans on that basis. This ensured that the two groups would not unite in rebellion against wealthy planters. As African American studies expert Edward B Rugemer <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.70.3.0429">has argued</a>, this also “codified racial distinction as a tool of mastery” and was replicated in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.70.3.0429">Jamaica</a> and South Carolina. Crucially, it hinged on the fact that enslaved Black people had no legally recognised rights, whereas European-born white servants did. Slave status was for life, without recourse, and heritable.</p>
<p>In other Caribbean and Latin American colonies, the term “white” gradually replaced the term “Christian” as the designation for European settlers. In <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20057283?seq=1">Haiti</a>, French colonial officials grouped people into an array of categories that conflated race and class: “grands blancs” (big whites), “petits blancs” (little whites), “free coloureds”, and “slaves”, with the overarching distinction being between whites and non-whites. </p>
<p><a href="https://cowlatinamerica.voices.wooster.edu/2020/05/04/the-casta-system/">Spanish and Portuguese colonisers</a> in Latin America, meanwhile, developed the intricate and rigid <em>casta</em> system. At the top of this caste-based hierarchy were peninsular Spaniards (people from the Iberian peninsula), and at the bottom, enslaved Africans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A sign on a beach with people in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473399/original/file-20220711-18-yx0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473399/original/file-20220711-18-yx0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473399/original/file-20220711-18-yx0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473399/original/file-20220711-18-yx0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473399/original/file-20220711-18-yx0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473399/original/file-20220711-18-yx0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473399/original/file-20220711-18-yx0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Apartheid in South Africa was white supremacy institutionalised and policed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/un_photo/3312302890">United Nations Photo | flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Whiteness as a political tool</h2>
<p>What has made whiteness such an enduringly powerful tool is its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-of-whiteness-long-history-dangerous-idea">“nonsense logic”</a>, as writer Robert P Baird recently put it – how ill-defined it is as a label. It can, and has been, defined in whatever way best serves to consolidate power for the ruling group.</p>
<p>Echoing the division between enslaved people and indentured servants centuries earlier, working-class people in the 20th century were pitted against one another by appeals to <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-being-european-a-white-identity-brussels-needs-deep-reflection-in-the-wake-of-the-black-lives-matter-movement-141902">whiteness</a>. </p>
<p>In his 1995 book, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/83/2/614/761848?redirectedFrom=fulltext">How the Irish Became White</a>, American historian Noel Ignatiev looks at 19th-century Irish immigration to the US. He details how these working-class newcomers emphasised their distance from Black labourers, thereby laying claim to whiteness. </p>
<p>As a radical socialist, he questions why they effectively sided with the oppressor (white Americans), rather than with the oppressed (Black enslaved people). “Imagine how history might have been different had the Irish, the unskilled labour force of the north, and the slaves, the unskilled labour force of the South, been unified. I hoped that understanding why that didn’t happen in the past might open up new possibilities next time,” he <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/noel-ignatievs-long-fight-against-whiteness">later explained</a>.</p>
<h2>When whiteness is used to enact violence</h2>
<p>However, as much as whiteness enables power, it also fuels anxiety. Because the category is at once ill-defined but also bestows great power, people who find themselves in that category have consistently been at great pains to protect it. Historically, and still today, in the minds of many of those who stand most to benefit from it, whiteness must be kept “pure”.</p>
<p>Thus, colonial officials in the British Empire treated white settlers as <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011392117750212">citizens with rights</a>, but Indigenous and enslaved people as threats to be suppressed and controlled. </p>
<p>For centuries, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/mar/24/british-schools-are-institutionally-racist-that-must-change-fast">universities and schools</a> across Europe formalised the notion of white supremacy through <a href="https://theconversation.com/whiteness-characterises-higher-education-institutions-so-why-are-we-surprised-by-racism-93147">knowledge production and dissemination</a>. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus taught that every living being could be categorised and classified into types. The German naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach claimed that human beings were divided into five “scientific” races based on skull shape with the “Caucasian” skull <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/335/7633/1308">described</a> as “the most handsome and becoming”.</p>
<p>In India, in the heyday of scientific racism, <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1501&context=faculty">colonial scientists</a> argued that ethnicity and caste were physical attributes, assigning hierarchical status and privileging proximity to whiteness. And as scientific racism became mainstream, whiteness was naturalised and framed as “common sense” for generations of students. </p>
<p>Even more sinister were the political and social programmes that whiteness justified: <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4640067?seq=1">eugenics</a>, forced <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40891307">sterilisation</a>, and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14623528.2020.1750823">genocide</a>. In the 20th century, the humanities and social sciences, too, were agents of white supremacy. <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Decolonizing+Sociology:+An+Introduction-p-9781509541959">Sociology</a> sought to explain modernity by universalising the experiences of European and North American societies, while either depicting African and Asian societies as “primitive” or writing them out of history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A white man in a suit sits surrounded by men of colour in an outdoor setting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473403/original/file-20220711-22-zhqusa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473403/original/file-20220711-22-zhqusa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473403/original/file-20220711-22-zhqusa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473403/original/file-20220711-22-zhqusa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473403/original/file-20220711-22-zhqusa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473403/original/file-20220711-22-zhqusa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473403/original/file-20220711-22-zhqusa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Centering whiteness: the Dutch colonial administrator of Seram, Indonesia, in the early 20th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Bestuursambtenaar_van_Seram_tijdens_een_reis_bij_de_Talsetibaai_TMnr_10001632.jpg">Tropenmuseum | Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This latter point is crucial. White people, and white institutions, have long <a href="https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/46970/3/GibbonsFinalFiveRefusals.pdf">centered their experiences</a>, imagining them to be universal. Universalising their experiences, in turn, has permitted white people to speak of themselves as individuals, who are unmarked by race and racism. </p>
<p>This stands in contrast to the way in which non-white and Black people are collectively <a href="https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10146021/3/Race%20and%20Class%20Sims%20Schouten_Resilience%20HW%20edit.pdf">othered</a> and racialised. And it continues to have tangible, and often terrible, daily consequences. </p>
<p>Universities and schools impose <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2015.1037227">white-centric curriculums</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/afro-hair-how-pupils-are-tackling-discriminatory-uniform-policies-159290">uniform policies</a> that discriminate against Black pupils. Officers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/nov/18/stop-and-search-rose-by-24-in-england-and-wales-during-lockdowns">overpolice Black communities</a> in the name of law and order. Authorities <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/05/they-saw-me-as-calculating-not-a-child-how-adultification-leads-to-black-children-being-treated-as-criminals">adultify Black children</a>, which leads to their being treated as criminals. </p>
<p>In each case, whiteness enacts violence without being spoken. By remembering the history of whiteness, however, we might begin to address the legacies of empire and slavery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183387/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meghan Tinsley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As a political tool with a long history and dubious boundaries, whiteness – by its very fluidity – fosters violence.Meghan Tinsley, Presidential Fellow in Ethnicity and Inequalities, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/761382017-06-02T20:00:28Z2017-06-02T20:00:28ZDoes changing style of hair or dress help black people avoid stigma?<p>On the eve of the NBA Finals, superstar LeBron James found the “N-word” spray painted on his home. Not even <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19505341/police-looking-racial-slur-sprayed-front-gate-lebron-james-home-los-angeles">James</a>, with all his wealth, fame and success, is exempt from being <a href="https://theconversation.com/uncovering-the-roots-of-racist-ideas-in-america-71467">attacked with classic racist slurs</a>.</p>
<p>In the United States, blackness is stamped with centuries-old <a href="http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/hardcover/stamped-from-the-beginning/9781568584638">images and ideas</a> that assign it to <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo21386376.html">perpetual “last place</a>.”</p>
<p>One way blacks have historically responded to stigma – a discredited or disgraced identity – is by displaying what they understand as mainstream values associated with white elites. This strategy, often referred to as “respectability,” is intended to put on display black people’s fitness for full cultural and social citizenship, thereby protecting them from stigma or lowering their exposure to it.</p>
<p>We know from prior research that consumption has been an important <a href="http://www.springer.com/us/book/9780306460890">part of this strategy</a> since a full-fledged mass market emerged in the U.S. in the late 1800s. The mass market brought with it standard product quality, package sizes and prices. Before that, <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807848067/american-dreams-in-mississippi/">as historian Ted Ownby has detailed</a>, blacks had little chance to escape discrimination and stigmatized treatment at local general stores. The mass market, at least in principle, provided an opportunity to express equality with whites in a very tangible way.</p>
<p>These everyday acts of consumption may seem simple, but they gave birth to the Montgomery bus boycott and other acts of anti-racist resistance. Rosa Parks and Montgomery’s riders protested more than the indignity of “back of the bus” treatment. They protested paying full fare for less than full service. Likewise, the student sit-ins at lunch counters throughout the Jim Crow South, as well as protests at leisure places in the North <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15035.html">like swimming pools, golf courses and amusement parks</a>, protested for the rights of blacks to engage fully as consumers.</p>
<p>As a researcher who studies sociological aspects of consumption, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Crockett2/publications">including racial inequality</a>, I examine the question of how well consumption works to manage everyday anti-black stigma in a forthcoming study in the <a href="http://academic.oup.com/jcr/article/doi/10.1093/jcr/ucx049/3064204/Paths-to-Respectability-Consumption-and-Stigma?guestAccessKey=04bdd54a-31c8-47b4-b394-972286268627">Journal of Consumer Research</a>.</p>
<p>Here’s what I found.</p>
<h2>Two approaches</h2>
<p>My analysis shows that members of the contemporary black middle class continue to use consumption to combat stigma. However, after the end of the civil rights movement by 1970, the strategy splintered into two approaches.</p>
<p>The most traditional approach involves avoiding stigmatized objects and practices. The other approach, which emerged after 1970, uses cultural features of blackness to destigmatize objects and practices.</p>
<p>People at times use both strategies to combat “[Fill in the blank] while black” treatment at <a href="http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/articles/587/">restaurants</a>, <a href="http://www.ebony.com/news-views/black-bank-profiling-lawsuit">banks</a>, in <a href="http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2016/02/02/city-council-oks-airport-ban-on-cab-drivers-who-refuse-customers-based-on-race/">taxis</a> or <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-31/study-finds-racial-discrimination-by-uber-and-lyft-drivers">using a ride-hailing app</a> like Uber or Lyft. </p>
<h2>How well do these strategies work?</h2>
<p><em>Note: To protect the anonymity of study participants, I do not identify specific locations. I also use pseudonyms.</em></p>
<p><strong>Case 1: When avoiding stigmatized things or actions works</strong>. No one better embodies this than former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama (not participants in my study, unfortunately). Their entire public persona <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/how-the-obama-administration-talks-to-black-america/276015/">scrupulously avoids anti-black stigma</a>. </p>
<p>Many study participants likewise reported an emphasis on avoiding stigmatized objects and practices. For example, one person was critical of “sagging” pants or shorts as a style because it invites stigmatized treatment. They feel that this vigilance in avoiding stigma helps them “fit in” in predominantly white settings. </p>
<p><strong>Case 2: When avoiding stigmatized things or actions fails</strong>. Rather than 1950s-style discrimination or open racial hostility, participants emphasized seeing fewer benefits from middle-class status than their white counterparts. For instance, a group of participants who each migrated to a small, rural southern town from more cosmopolitan settings found that avoiding stigmatized objects and practices did not help them or their children fit in with white middle-class peers. They felt they were not granted the status that presumably comes with middle-class occupations, accomplishments and households. </p>
<p>A participant spoke about coming to terms with this in the context of his daughters’ experience at school. In a story I heard repeated, he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You know when it hit me? Prom. That’s when it finally – when my daughter had to go to prom with her girlfriends… I was like how tough is this for you to be an A student, an athlete, doing the right thing, and you can’t even date these knuckleheads because they want certain things that you’re not ready to compromise?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Prom, with its formal dresses and tuxedos, bouquets and boutonnieres, hair, makeup and limousines, is the quintessential consumption event of adolescence. It is also where the politics of race, class and gender became crystal clear to this dad. His daughter refused to accept last-place stigma, which for black girls means the <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10057104">presumption of openness to sexual advances</a>. Although she conformed to the classic “good girl” norms of achievement and chastity, this did not shield her from last place stigma. It also left her dateless on prom night. </p>
<p><strong>Case 3: When “oppositional respectability” succeeds</strong>. My study is the first to identify this approach to combating stigma, which emerged after 1970. Rather than avoid stigmatized things and actions, it seeks to remove stigma using features of black culture. For instance, one participant, Adam, does this by cultivating an identity as a cosmopolitan consumer of fine arts who especially loves African-American and African art.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165153/original/image-20170412-25898-1j88v7x.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165153/original/image-20170412-25898-1j88v7x.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165153/original/image-20170412-25898-1j88v7x.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165153/original/image-20170412-25898-1j88v7x.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165153/original/image-20170412-25898-1j88v7x.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165153/original/image-20170412-25898-1j88v7x.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165153/original/image-20170412-25898-1j88v7x.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pieces from Adam’s art collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His extensive art collection is an expression of pride in his cultural heritage, although black art is historically stigmatized as <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/496153?journalCode=wp">“low-brow” and unrefined</a>. So how does he destigmatize these objects?</p>
<p>In my interview with him, his extensive knowledge of pieces with slave themes allow him to craft a story that centers (rather than minimizes) slavery as an ordeal that forged great strength of character. In his telling, that character – and in effect, the art – is part of his cultural heritage.</p>
<p><strong>Case 4: when “oppositional respectability” fails</strong>. Cynthia, a young, single, corporate attorney, lives in a midsized southern city. She migrated there, the city of her childhood, after law school. It’s a traditional black working-class and poor neighborhood derisively known as “Black Bottom.” She was one of few blacks to be part of a wave of gentrification in the neighborhood. Like Adam, she sought to combat last-place stigma by removing stigma from the neighborhood. The ways <a href="https://newsone.com/3114333/gentrification-is-racist-brooklyn-landlord/">gentrification exacerbates racial inequality</a> are well-documented, yet has also <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo3643926.html">helped remove last-place stigma</a> attached to certain neighborhoods.</p>
<p>The market reinforced her efforts, as it did Adam’s. Builders renovated older homes and buildings in anticipation of newcomers. But many of the first wave of gentrifiers moved away for fear of crime. When perceptions of neighborhood disorder become widespread they almost invariably exceed reality, but they are very <a href="http://myweb.fsu.edu/bstults/ccj5625/readings/sampson_raudenbush-spq-2004.pdf">difficult to change</a>.</p>
<p>Cynthia did not see her move to combat stigma as successful. When I interviewed her, she was contemplating leaving the area, as life there became less tolerable. Many traditional residents saw her as just another gentrifying intruder. And without any real change in the neighborhood stigma, Cynthia felt navigating crime in the neighborhood wasn’t worth it, even if it wasn’t as bad as its reputation suggested.</p>
<h2>Shaking stigma</h2>
<p>Avoiding stigmatized things and actions is the classic approach for many African-Americans. For them, “Pull up your pants!” has an unassailable logic. But my research suggests that, whatever other benefits may come from hiking up one’s britches, that won’t always effectively combat stigma. </p>
<p>Many participants shared instances of their refusal to internalize anti-black stigma, and how they expressed that through things like art collections, home displays, and personal hair and clothing styles. This approach works best when people can craft stories that disavow stigma and the marketplace reinforces their stories.</p>
<p>Yet for many, stigma still attaches more strongly to black identity than to <a href="http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-older.aspx">specific behaviors or objects</a>. Once attached, it can <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2538616">survive for a long time</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Crockett received funding for this study from the Institute for African American Research at the University of South Carolina. </span></em></p>Research on how black people try to avoid racism in their daily lives shows that following white, mainstream standards can have mixed results.David Crockett, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/714432017-02-17T02:01:34Z2017-02-17T02:01:34ZWho counts as black?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157004/original/image-20170215-27391-7xf0mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/multicultural-crayons-representing-different-skin-tones-574934023?src=mYYtqxwJlChMIMQrMUSSiw-1-0">'Crayons' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For generations, intimacy between black men and white women was taboo. A mere accusation of impropriety could lead to a lynching, and interracial marriage was illegal in a number of states. </p>
<p>Everything changed with the 1967 Supreme Court decision <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1966/395">Loving v. Virginia</a>, which ruled that blacks and whites have a legal right to intermarry. Spurred by the court’s decision, the number of interracial marriages – and, with it, the population of multiracial people – has exploded. <a href="http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_multi.html">According to the 2000 Census</a>, 6.8 million Americans identified as multiracial. By 2010, that number grew to <a href="http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/02/16/57543/in-an-increasingly-multiracial-america-identity-is/">9 million people</a>. And this leaves out all of the people who might be a product of mixed ancestry but chose to still identify as either white or black. </p>
<p>With these demographic changes, traditional notions of black identity – once limited to the confines of dark skin or kinky hair – are no longer so. </p>
<p>Mixed-race African-Americans can have naturally green eyes (like the singer <a href="http://www.arogundade.com/rihannas-tyra-banks-vanessa-williams-eyes.html">Rihanna</a>) or naturally blue eyes (like actor <a href="http://www.wetpaint.com/you-tell-us-what-color-are-jesse-williams-eyes-641896/">Jessie Williams</a>). Their hair can be styled long and wavy (<a href="http://www.essence.com/galleries/hair-evolution-alicia-keys">Alicia Keys</a>) or into a bob-cut (<a href="http://www.etonline.com/news/190948_halle_berry_reveals_new_edgy_shaved_flower_haircut/">Halle Berry</a>). </p>
<p>And unlike in the past – when many mixed-race people <a href="http://racerelations.about.com/od/hollywood/tp/Passing-For-White-In-Hollywood.htm">would try to do what they could to pass as white</a> – many multiracial Americans today unabashedly embrace and celebrate their blackness.</p>
<p>However, these expressions of black pride have been met with grumbles by some in the black community. These mixed-race people, some argue, are not “black enough” – their skin isn’t dark enough, their hair not kinky enough. And thus they do not “count” as black. African-American presidential candidate Ben Carson even <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/ben-carson-obama-was-raised-white-219657">claimed</a> President Obama couldn’t understand “the experience of black Americans” because he was “raised white.”</p>
<p>This debate over “who counts” has created somewhat of an identity crisis in the black community, exposing a divide between those who think being black should be based on physical looks, and those who think being black is more than looks. </p>
<h2>‘Dark Girls’ and ‘Light Girls’</h2>
<p>In 2011 Oprah Winfrey hosted a documentary titled “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UWwbTglQKg">Dark Girls</a>,” a portrayal of the pain and suffering dark-skinned black women experience. </p>
<p>It’s a story I know only too well. In 1992, I coauthored a book with DePaul psychologist Midge Wilson and business executive Kathy Russell called “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Color_Complex.html?id=3asbkganD14C">The Color Complex</a>,” which looked at the relationship between black identity and skin color in modern America.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DOjgTIN9pTE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for ‘Dark Girls.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As someone who has studied the issue of skin color and black identity for over 20 years, I felt uneasy after I finished watching the “Dark Girls” film. No doubt it confirmed the pain that dark-skinned black women feel. But it left something important out, and I wondered if it would lead to misconceptions. </p>
<p>The film seemed to suggest that if you are black, you have dark skin. Your hair is kinky. Green or blue eyes, on the other hand, represent someone who is white.</p>
<p>I was relieved, then, when I was asked to consult on a second documentary, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN_81iytSXU">Light Girls</a>,” in 2015, a film centered on the pain and suffering mixed-race black women endure. The subjects who were interviewed shared their stories. These women considered themselves black but said they always felt out of place, on the outside looking in. Black men often adored them, but this could quickly flip to scorn if their advances were spurned. Meanwhile, friendships with darker-skinned black women could be fraught. Insults such as “light-bright,” “mello-yellow” and “banana girl” were tossed at lighter-skinned black women, objectifying them as anything but black.</p>
<h2>Identity experts weigh in</h2>
<p>Some of the experts on identity take issue with the general assumptions many might have about “who is black,” especially those who think blackness is determined by skin color. </p>
<p>For example, in 1902 sociologist Charles Horton Cooley <a href="http://mills-soc116.wikidot.com/notes:cooley-looking-glass-self">argued</a> that identity is like a “looking glass self.” In other words, we are a reflection of the people around us. Mixed-race, light-skinned, green-eyed African-Americans born and raised in a black environment are no less black than their dark-skinned counterparts. In 1934, cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mead/field-sepik.html">said</a> that identity was a product of our social interactions, just like Cooley.</p>
<p>Maybe the most well-known identity theorist is psychologist Erik Erikson. In his most popular book, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Identity_Youth_and_Crisis.html?id=v3XWH2PDLewC">Identity: Youth and Crisis</a>,” published in 1968, Erikson also claimed that identity is a product of our environment. But he expanded the theory a bit: It includes not only the people we interact with but also the clothes we wear, the food we eat and the music we listen to. Mixed-race African-Americans – just like dark-skinned African-Americans – would be equally uncomfortable wearing a kimono, drinking sake or listening to ongaku (a type of Japanese music). On the other hand, wearing a dashiki, eating soul food and relaxing to the beats of rap or hip-hop music is something all black people – regardless of skin tone – can identify with. </p>
<p>Our physical features, of course, are a product of our parents. Indeed, in the not-too-distant future, with more and more interracial marriages taking place, we may find black and white hair texture and eye and skin color indistinguishable. It’s worth noting that there’s an element of personal choice involved in racial identity – for example, you can choose how to self-identify on the census. Many multiracial Americans simply identify as “multiracial.” Others, even if they’re a product of mixed ancestry, choose “black.” </p>
<p>Perhaps true blackness, then, dwells not in skin color, eye color or hair texture, but in the love for the spirit and culture of all who came before us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronald E. Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With the number of multiracial Americans growing, there’s a fierce debate in the black community over who’s black – and who isn’t.Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/670442016-10-28T01:01:18Z2016-10-28T01:01:18ZHow a new generation is changing evangelical Christianity<p>Since the late 1970s, American evangelicalism has been largely identified with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/05/16/trumps-success-with-evangelical-voters-isnt-surprising-it-was-inevitable/?utm_term=.d11607f12953">right-wing politics.</a> Conservative religious values entered the political sphere through movements such as <a href="https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/age-reagan/timeline-terms/moral-majority">Moral Majority</a> and <a href="http://www.focusonthefamily.com/?utm_source=family.org&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=vanityURLredirects2016">Focus on the Family</a> that opposed gay rights, abortion, feminism and other liberal issues. </p>
<p>Evangelical leaders have influenced national elections and public policy. They have been instrumental in pushing the Republican Party toward increasingly conservative social policies. They have generally been the <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/23/u-s-religious-groups-and-their-political-leanings/">most consistent voting bloc</a> within the Republican Party.</p>
<p>But, evangelical Christianity, as we have known it, is changing. While <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/07/evangelical-leaders-shrug-at-donald-trump-s-lewd-comments.html">old guard evangelical leaders</a> are vocally supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump for president, there is a <a href="https://www.change.org/p/donald-trump-a-declaration-by-american-evangelicals-concerning-donald-trump">groundswell of opposition</a> from within evangelicals. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://crcc.usc.edu/rcci/">research focus</a> is on vibrant religious congregations. I am seeing the emergence of a new generation of evangelicals that has a very different view of what it means to be a “Jesus follower.” </p>
<p>This generation is abstaining from the political theology of the earlier generation and focusing their attention, instead, on improving the lives of people in their local communities.</p>
<h2>History of evangelicals</h2>
<p>The groundwork for American-style conservative evangelicalism was laid several decades before the rise of the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family movements. Evangelicals, and their forbears the “fundamentalists,” had long made education and mass communication a <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/fundamentalism-and-american-culture-9780195300475?cc=us&lang=en&">centerpiece of their efforts</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143534/original/image-20161027-11260-1744mph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143534/original/image-20161027-11260-1744mph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143534/original/image-20161027-11260-1744mph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143534/original/image-20161027-11260-1744mph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143534/original/image-20161027-11260-1744mph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143534/original/image-20161027-11260-1744mph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143534/original/image-20161027-11260-1744mph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the late 19th century, Bible training schools were set up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alex-photos/6385742691/in/photolist-aJhAPV-3A1PnV-8TDYe8-7w4yGQ-DjWTq-p6YBGj-9NtW8B-uA4HE-damrjn-7eX2vf-5EsmGM-9ujjtc-8RqkfM-5r9n3V-4oSuMn-dN3H2g-gq5Mw-9oZ7Xi-5UmiCv-nKDY9i-btEjgF-5jBGX-9NtW6D-scAcbJ-9NwGFS-cD1Lum-6B71Q-36xTo2-9NwGCJ-cKEVJs-dqjQYQ-hdpTVm-Jt92F-muB5SG-8MBxXp-9wQUp9-8SkGgk-bqCKZK-8WSWR7-XNqCp-dRTgg-5Rmzy7-p5CpVq-r4993-6HMSig-7yunJR-8Y9qFN-ziQ8i-efPyCy-icqa4">alex.ch</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Starting in the late 19th century, they established post-secondary Bible training schools and utilized various mass media outlets, such as their own magazines and radio stations to get their religious message out.</p>
<p>After World War II, these efforts <a href="https://www.acsi.org/Documents/MarCom/ACSI%202014%20Annual%20Report_web.pdf">expanded to include</a> elementary and secondary schools – now numbering almost 3,000, along with <a href="http://cccu.org/members_and_affiliates">approximately 150 evangelical colleges and seminaries</a> in the U.S. In addition, evangelicals expanded their media efforts in publishing (books and national periodicals such as <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/fundamentalism-and-american-culture-9780195300475?cc=us&lang=en&">Christianity Today</a>), radio and television. </p>
<p>Even though these schools and media outlets were independent from each other, they were unified in a shared theological and moral perspective that served to reproduce evangelical culture and beliefs, and to disseminate the religiously tinged political message of the religious right.</p>
<h2>Rifts within</h2>
<p>This once-unified movement is now dividing over whether to support Donald Trump in the general election. </p>
<p>Old guard evangelicals such as the founder of the Focus on the Family movement <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/october/james-dobson-why-i-am-voting-for-donald-trump.html">James Dobson</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/01/27/jerry-falwell-jr-heres-the-backstory-of-why-i-endorsed-donald-trump/">Jerry Falwell Jr.,</a> son of the Moral Majority founder and current president of Liberty University, are warning of dire consequences for the U.S. if Trump is not elected.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/october/james-dobson-why-i-am-voting-for-donald-trump.html">According to Dobson</a>, without a Trump presidency, the U.S. will “see a massive assault on religious liberty,” which would “limit what pastors… can say publicly,” and would “severely restrict the freedoms of Christian schools, nonprofit organizations, businesses, hospitals, charities, and seminaries.” </p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/10/17/why-people-of-faith-dont-have-to-vote-between-the-lesser-of-two-evils/">not all evangelicals</a> are supporting Trump, even though they remain true to the Republican Party. These evangelicals are alarmed at what they see as the vulgar and immoral lifestyle that Trump exemplifies. </p>
<p>In the past, mobilizing this vast religious and political machinery would have resulted in overwhelming and unquestioning support for the Republican candidate. This was first seen with Ronald Reagan in 1980 who won the White House with widespread support of evangelicals, and has been repeated in <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2012/11/07/how-the-faithful-voted-2012-preliminary-exit-poll-analysis/">each election</a> since. </p>
<p>But this time, a call to support Trump has exposed deep divisions within evangelicals that have gone unnoticed until now. </p>
<p>The point is that Trump represents to many the very antithesis of the kind of moral probity that evangelical leaders <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2012/11/07/how-the-faithful-voted-2012-preliminary-exit-poll-analysis/">have spent their lives defending</a>. </p>
<h2>Differences over social and moral issues</h2>
<p>How did this happen? While the <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/racial-and-ethnic-composition/">mostly white religious right</a> was gaining political and cultural power over the last 40 years, evangelicalism became as much a <a href="https://crcc.usc.edu/whats-an-evangelical-these-days-trumps-advisors-point-to-divisions/">political and racial identity</a> as a religious or theological one.</p>
<p>Survey research and election polls have failed to differentiate the differences within the movement between whites, Latinos, African-Americans and Asians who all share the same basic evangelical theology, but who may part company over other social and moral issues.</p>
<p>For example, in most surveys and political polls, “evangelical” is <a href="http://ava.publicreligion.org/#religious/2015/States/religion">limited to white believers</a>, with others who may be similar theologically being classified into other racial/ethnically identified categories such as “Black Protestant,” “Latino Protestant” or “Other nonwhite Protestant.” </p>
<p>Further, as with all religious groups in the U.S., the evangelical movement began struggling to keep its young people in the fold. <a href="https://crcc.usc.edu/will-the-real-evangelical-millennials-please-stand-up/">Recent research</a> shows that among young adults who were identified as evangelicals as teenagers, only 45 percent can still be identified as such. </p>
<h2>A new generation</h2>
<p>At its most basic level, American evangelicalism is characterized by a belief in the literal truth of the Bible, a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” encouraging others to be “born again” in Jesus and a lively worship culture. </p>
<p>This definition encompasses many groups that were not historically included in the old religious right. Thus, while <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-evangelical-latinos-20160523-snap-htmlstory.html">Latino evangelicals believe</a> the same thing about the Bible and Jesus as white evangelicals, their particular social context in many cases leads to a different political stance. </p>
<p>As these new and growing groups find their own voices, <a href="http://evangelicalimmigrationtable.com/new-poll-evangelical-support-for-immigration-reform-remains-robust/">they are challenging</a> the dominant evangelical perspective on political issues such as immigration and economic inequality.</p>
<p>For example, the <a href="http://evangelicalimmigrationtable.com">Evangelical Immigration Table</a>, established in 2014, has been working across a broad spectrum of evangelical churches and other institutions to highlight what they see as the biblical imperative to support a just and humane immigration policy. These groups range from the <a href="http://www.erlc.org">Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission</a> of the Southern Baptist Convention to the <a href="http://www.nhclc.org">National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference</a>. </p>
<p>In addition, younger evangelicals are increasingly coming of age in more diverse neighborhoods and schools, leading to an openness to other racial and religious groups, LGBT people and social justice issues in ways that older evangelicals strenuously opposed. </p>
<p>Further, while the educational successes of evangelicalism, through its many and varied curricula, have served to socialize young people into the “biblically based” moral world, it has also taught them how to read the Bible critically and to pay attention to biblical themes and narrative through-lines that resonate with their own life experiences. </p>
<p>According to a pastor of a church included in my research, he is seeing young evangelicals apply the interpretive skills they have learned in school and church to a broader range of biblical teachings. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When you start to examine the teachings of Jesus, you’re going to end up seeing that justice matters, that we have a responsibility to care for the poor. Younger evangelicals are basically using those same hermeneutical tools to study the Bible and are saying, wait a minute, not only is there nothing wrong with caring about justice, there’s something wrong with not [caring].”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus, while young evangelicals in some ways still evidence a shared theology with their parents’ generation – for example, on biblical passages that would support a “pro-life” perspective – they part company through their engagement with passages that emphasize the believer’s responsibility for the poor.</p>
<h2>View of social justice</h2>
<p>The younger evangelicals that I’ve been studying are not taking the expected evangelical position in this election, such as supporting Donald Trump, or supporting a broader agenda as that promoted by evangelical leaders such as James Dobson. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143545/original/image-20161027-11260-1nqa1kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143545/original/image-20161027-11260-1nqa1kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143545/original/image-20161027-11260-1nqa1kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143545/original/image-20161027-11260-1nqa1kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143545/original/image-20161027-11260-1nqa1kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143545/original/image-20161027-11260-1nqa1kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143545/original/image-20161027-11260-1nqa1kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Younger evangelicals have widely different views.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gfes/8551296501/in/photolist-e2KTqf-e2KfHN-e2KPz5-e2Ebxi-e2KQgG-e2Kdef-e2KP5j-e2EawV-e2DB4X-e2KPNq-e2KQ5N-e2KPm3-e2KedE-e2KeK9-e2DA34-e2DAcp-e2Ket9-e2Kgs9-e2Kf7h-e2DCSv-e2Ke5E-e2DvQR-e2DxLe-ryRqGk-995Bds-e2Dvez-e2DAzT-e2KbWu-e2KbDy-e2Dvu2-e2Kgz3-e2Kdu7-e2DvGx-e2DtK6-e2DCwz-e2Kd8s-e2Kh5U-e2DwkZ-e2Dwza-e2Kci3-e2K9Q7-e2Dy4e-e2Duyc-e2Dw5H">George Fox Evangelical Seminary</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, the political activism that these younger evangelicals tend to engage in usually relates to issues like improving local schools, creating job opportunities, caring for the homeless and other activities that have been largely overlooked by American evangelicalism as it has been practiced over the past several decades.</p>
<p>In my interviews, I’ve asked many of these younger evangelicals how their religious commitments relate to politics. Their responses show a simultaneous distancing from “politics,” and a desire to seek change in a way that is consistent with their beliefs. A good example of this kind of response came from a 20-something African-American young woman who told me, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I also don’t care much for politics, because it’s so ugly. I just feel like, let’s commit to loving people. When I think about laws that unjustly affect minorities or the poor, that bothers me only because of the Gospel.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Diverse world view</h2>
<p>These evangelicals have staked out a middle ground that is neither Democrat nor Republican, <a href="http://theconversation.com/evangelical-christians-are-on-the-left-too-66253">liberal</a> or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/10/17/why-people-of-faith-dont-have-to-vote-between-the-lesser-of-two-evils/">conservative</a>. </p>
<p>This is not to say that younger evangelicals are all in agreement with how their religious views should be applied in the world. Rather, they are opting out of the political identities and battles that have characterized evangelicalism for the past 40 years.</p>
<p>Their world is more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity, social class, sexuality, and religious beliefs. Their friends are as likely to be straight or gay, Christian or Buddhist, or black or Latino. </p>
<p>That has informed the way that they understand their religious beliefs and their political alignments. They are seeking to live out their faith in response to a world that is different from the world that leaders of the old religious right inhabit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67044/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Flory has received funding from the John Templeton Foundation.</span></em></p>Younger evangelicals have a very different view of their faith.Their perspective on issues such as immigration and economic inequality differs widely from that of the religious right.Richard Flory, Senior Director of Research and Evaluation, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/660152016-10-02T23:06:49Z2016-10-02T23:06:49ZIs changing one’s race a sign of mental health problems?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139329/original/image-20160926-31866-10jsd1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rachel Dolezal</span> </figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/16/us/rachel-dolezal/">Rachel Dolezal</a> was born to white parents and raised as a white child, but privately “transitioned” to a <a href="http://www.today.com/news/rachel-dolezal-speaks-today-show-matt-lauer-after-naacp-resignation-t26371">self-identified black woman</a> after attending (and <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/06/rachel-dolezal-sued-howard-university-racial-discrimination">suing</a>) the historically black Howard University. She first made headlines last year when she was <a href="http://www.kxly.com/news/spokane-news/Raw-interview-with-Rachel-Dolezal/33533466">outed as white</a> by a local Spokane news reporter. She was in the news again in September for <a href="http://www.theroot.com/blog/the-grapevine/rachel-dolezal-is-headlining-a-natural-hair-rally-in-dallas/">hosting a black hair expo in Dallas.</a></p>
<p>The state of Dolezal’s psychological well-being seemed to be one of the prominent concerns when she first entered the public eye: Who in their right mind would just up and change their race? This person must be experiencing mental problems, right? </p>
<p>There were lots of opinions. <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/how-scientists-explain-rachel-dolezal-4a2ed99165ef#.v1cwjtfkd">Cognitive scientists</a> suggested Rachel’s deception could stem from a basic psychological motivation to create the best version of herself. Some suggested that, on the extreme end, the case could represent <a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/body-dysmorphic-disorder/home/ovc-20200935">body dysmorphic disorder</a>, a mental illness described as a preoccupation with a perceived physical flaw. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://spectator.org/63140_activist-america-deserves/">conservative right chimed in</a> against calling her crazy, suggesting she recognized that a “profit could be had through participation in the race industry and its various scams.”</p>
<p>However, social scientists may have an alternative explanation for Dolezal’s transition. The explanation stems from the idea that <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/hcrcl29&div=7&id=&page=">race is a social construction</a>, meaning that racial categories are invented categories, often based on how we look or by ancestry, and that they are shaped by society and history.</p>
<p>For instance, who qualifies as black today in the United States is different than who would qualify as black in the 19th century. The socially constructed nature of race not only means that society’s conception of race changes over time, but that individuals might change how they themselves identify over time.</p>
<p>As a sociologist, I have sought to understand how individuals identify themselves racially, and whether there are consequences to having changing racial identifications, or what is called racial fluidity. </p>
<h2>Racial identification fluidity over time</h2>
<p>According to a <a href="https://www.census.gov/srd/carra/Americas_Churning_Races.pdf">report</a> that came out of the 2010 census, 9.8 million Americans changed their racial identification since the 2000 census. While it still remains rare for a white person to change his or her race to black, some racial groups have extremely high rates of change. </p>
<p>For instance, the rate of change over the 10-year period reached almost 50 percent for American Indians and Pacific Islanders. <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/is-elizabeth-warren-native-american-or-what/257415/">Elizabeth Warren</a> stands out as an example of a high-profile person who has identified as American Indian inconsistently in her lifetime. </p>
<p>Scholars have formulated various explanations for why people change racial identifications. Sociologists <a href="http://spx.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/03/0731121414523732">Saperstein and Penner</a> break it down into three main reasons: They are following classification norms; they seek to achieve higher prestige or move away from negative connotations; and/or because they have a wide range of available classifications to choose from. </p>
<p>What remains unanswered, however, is whether there are psychological consequences to racial fluidity. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://spx.sagepub.com/content/59/3/582">research study</a> released this fall, my colleague <a href="https://sociology.rice.edu/brown/.aspx">Tony N. Brown, associate professor at Rice University</a>, and I sought to answer that. We first tracked changes in racial identification among a large, nationally representative sample of adolescents at two points in time. </p>
<p>We then questioned whether changes to self racial-identification was detrimental to mental well-being. We were additionally curious whether changes to observed racial identification were also detrimental. </p>
<h2>American Indians in sample showed high fluidity</h2>
<p>The survey we analyzed allowed the youth respondents to identify their own race and also asked the interviewers to make a judgment of the respondents’ race. We looked at whether changes to race, by either the respondent (self) or interviewer (observer), were related to poor mental health. </p>
<p>Given the high proportion of racial fluidity among American Indians, we conducted this analysis on the subsample of youth who were identified, either by the self or observer, as American Indian.</p>
<p>We first calculated how many experienced racial fluidity. We found that 79 percent of the respondents expressed an inconsistent self-identification as American Indian. That is, of all of the youths who said they were American Indian at either rounds of the survey, only 21 percent said they were American Indian at both rounds. </p>
<p>Likewise, 77 percent were inconsistently observed as American Indian. So, of all the youth judged to be American Indian by the interviewers, only 23 percent were thought to be American Indian at both rounds. </p>
<p>In short, rates of racial identification fluidity – by self or interviewer – were high among American Indian respondents. As a comparison point, rates of fluidity for blacks and whites in the sample fell below 5 percent. </p>
<h2>Is changing your own race associated with poor mental health?</h2>
<p>We next used those measures of racial identification fluidity to predict mental health status – measured in our study as depressive symptoms, thinking about or contemplating suicide, and use of psychological counseling. Our analysis also controlled for basic social demographic factors, like socioeconomic status and skin color. </p>
<p>The unexpected answer to our first question was no: Changing one’s stated race over time had no association with poor mental health. </p>
<p>When we returned to the explanations for racial identification change, our findings began to make more sense. Deciding to adopt the category of American Indian could represent a newfound familial heritage. Alternatively, opting to drop the category could be a choice to avoid stigma associated with being a member of a group that has faced discrimination. </p>
<p>More broadly, though, “trying on” different racial identifications may be a normal process, especially during adolescence. We concluded that fluidity in expressed racial identification does not represent a weak or troubled sense of self. Instead, fluidity represents control over their identity. </p>
<h2>Are changing perceptions of your race by others associated with poor mental health?</h2>
<p>In contrast, the answer to our second question was yes: Changes to one’s perceived racial identification did damage mental health status. That is, when an interviewer observed a respondent as American Indian at one time but not the other, that respondent had an increased risk for mental health problems. </p>
<p>In addition, when those who were observed inconsistently also had lighter skin, the psychological problems were heightened. As the figure illustrates, falling into the light end of the skin color spectrum, and having observers inconsistently perceive your race, is associated with the highest number of depressive symptoms. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140524/original/image-20161005-14236-240y06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140524/original/image-20161005-14236-240y06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140524/original/image-20161005-14236-240y06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140524/original/image-20161005-14236-240y06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140524/original/image-20161005-14236-240y06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140524/original/image-20161005-14236-240y06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140524/original/image-20161005-14236-240y06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Racial fluidity and skin color.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We turned to social psychology for an answer to this surprising finding. According to <a href="http://spq.sagepub.com/content/69/1/81.refs">identity change theory</a>, lack of control of one’s identity can be detrimental to psychological health. A person can become aware of their lack of control through the experience of an identity interruption. An example of a racial identity interruption could be the “<a href="http://theracecardproject.com/what-are-you-people-always-ask/">What are you?</a>” question that many light skin and racially ambiguous folks often encounter. </p>
<p>We reason that fielding queries about one’s race – or even perceiving others to be confused about your race – may cause distress. While other sociologists have found that <a href="http://asr.sagepub.com/content/72/5/750.short">misclassification of one’s race by others is harmful to mental health</a>, our findings lead us to conclude that people who are assigned inconsistent racial identifications by others may suffer as a result.</p>
<p>In regards to Dolezal, well, she continues to stand out as an odd case – none of the explanations typically applied to racial fluidity truly work for her. She is not an adolescent trying on different identities. She opted out a <a href="http://occupywallstreet.net/story/explaining-white-privilege-broke-white-person">privileged racial category</a> and into a category that is confronted with ample discrimination in terms of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/07/bme-women-runnymede-trust-jobs_n_2256589.html">jobs</a>, <a href="http://qz.com/436667/study-black-women-face-racism-and-sexism-in-the-mortgage-market/">housing</a> and <a href="http://newsone.com/2034695/african-american-women-health-disparities/">health</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps she did face identity interruptions and was often asked, “What are you?,” particularly when she positioned herself in majority black surroundings. This could have even motivated her racial transition. </p>
<p>But what does this all mean for her mental well-being? While that is still unclear, this research does suggest that our fixation with other’s race can, indeed, be harmful.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66015/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Whitney Laster Pirtle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rachel Dolezal isn’t the only one who experiences a transition in racial categories, but what are the implications of inconsistent racial identifications on mental health?Whitney Laster Pirtle, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of California, MercedLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/614482016-06-30T14:19:41Z2016-06-30T14:19:41ZAnti-democratic element in student movements holds warnings for South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128851/original/image-20160630-30649-gn53wk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is a growing authoritarian impulse in South Africa, including among some student activists.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Wessells/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is sinking into a political, social and economic crisis. Running in parallel is a growing disillusionment about the post-apartheid project of transformation. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://spii.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/How-to-dismantle-a-ticking-time-bomb-Policy-solutions-for-a-volatile-South-Africa.pdf">time bomb</a> of socioeconomic inequality that experts have long warned about has finally detonated. Unexpectedly, however, we’re seeing not one but multiple, simultaneous explosions. These have been precipitated by class inequality and many other social pathologies, among them white and patriarchal supremacisms. </p>
<p>Materialism and relative deprivation sharpen while social relations become <a href="http://www.ijr.org.za/uploads/IJR_SARB_2015_WEB_002.pdf">polarised</a> and institutions <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-03-23-analysts-weigh-in-on-pornographic-levels-of-state-capture-in-sa">crumble</a>. Sparked by these multiple explosions is a growing authoritarian impulse. This is noticeable not only in the state but in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonising-universities-isnt-an-easy-process-but-it-has-to-happen-59604">decolonisation discourse</a> at universities. </p>
<p>In this article, I attempt to sketch the conditions of this authoritarian inclination in the decolonisation discourse and to identify some of the elements that combine to form it. But first I must emphasise that the discourse of decolonisation consists of multiple, contesting positions. Many within the discourse actively oppose the impulse described here.</p>
<h2>An anti-democratic stance</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/university-students-are-becoming-a-new-kind-of-democratic-citizen-49916">Students have emerged</a> as a newly politicised social formation amid rising disillusionment about transformation. This was envisaged as a comprehensive project of multidimensional, macro- and micro-level change in pursuit of human dignity, equality and freedom for all, as outlined in South Africa’s first democratic <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>. Students’ protest action has exposed intractable gaps in higher education transformation that manifest in different forms of exclusion – financial, cultural – and violence – sexual, racial, symbolic. </p>
<p>Student activists must be acknowledged for fearlessly putting their bodies on the line and demanding urgent action to remedy these untenable gaps. They have laid a powerful challenge before the older generations: they demand that transformation be renewed so it has impact and meaning across the fault lines of race, gender and sexuality and for people beyond the middle classes.</p>
<p>Sections of the country’s student movements regard transformation as a complete failure. Responding to this perceived failure, some among them have adopted an anti-democratic stance. It’s hard to ascertain how prevalent this strand is in the larger decolonisation discourse. There is a rich variety of positions and robust contestations over the meaning and content of decolonisation. </p>
<p>Still, it is important to note the anti-democratic stance, as it points to South Africa’s larger crisis of constitutionalism. Citizens and leaders have displayed a shared incapacity to make the vision of the constitution a lived reality for most people. This incapacity becomes fatal when authoritarian models of change seduce members of the next generation of intellectuals.</p>
<h2>Six elements at play</h2>
<p>The anti-democratic strand has been evident at recent talks and events. The University of the Western Cape hosted <a href="http://www.chrflagship.uwc.ac.za/the-university-and-its-worlds-a-panel-discussion-with-achille-mbembe-judith-butler-wendy-brown-and-david-theo-goldberg/">a panel discussion</a> in May 2016 chaired by Premesh Lalu and titled “The University and its Worlds”. The panellists were Judith Butler, Wendy Brown, David Theo Goldberg and Achille Mbembe – thinkers known for radical critiques on present and historical forms of oppression. They were interrupted by <a href="https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/uwc-students-response-xolela-mangcu/">students</a> who said they’d had enough of “white foreigners” telling black people what to do. Mbembe and the University of Cape Town’s Xolela Mangcu were called “<a href="http://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/students-shouted-me-down-2027581">sell-outs</a>”. </p>
<p>Another example is a colloquium of the student representative council (SRC) at the University of the Free State where I was invited to address students and staff on white privilege. I was attacked by a small group of students for daring to speak. <a href="http://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/The-problem-with-whiteness-Christi-van-der-Westhuizen-20150429">My effort to analyse</a> the changing positions in whiteness since the 1980s offended these detractors. It interfered with their essentialised versions of whiteness and blackness. They insisted that white people should be silent. </p>
<p>Yet another instance is the e.tv television programme “<a href="http://www.etv.co.za/shows/current-affairs/big-debate">The Big Debate</a>”, where I was a guest along with an array of people including representatives from #RhodesMustFall and <a href="https://black1stland1st.wordpress.com/">Black First, Land First</a>. During the recording, set to be flighted in July, a case was made for the violent seizure of land. Irresponsible journalism created a space for the instigation of violence. </p>
<p>Based on these experiences and other examples from the universities of Pretoria, the Witwatersrand and South Africa, I attempt an outline of the anti-democratic stance. The following six elements represent sub-strands that may overlap depending on the context and actors.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>South Africa is not a democracy. The word “post-apartheid” should not be used, since apartheid continues uninterrupted.</p></li>
<li><p>The constitution is documentary proof of how South Africa’s current rulers sold black people out to the former white rulers. Black people who support non-racialism or the constitution have sold out to white people.</p></li>
<li><p>Democracy is a western import and not “authentically” “African”.</p></li>
<li><p>Whiteness and blackness are essentialist identities.</p></li>
<li><p>The “revolution” is incomplete. Violence is the only way to ensure that justice triumphs.</p></li>
<li><p>Blackness is the only political category of relevance in the struggle for social justice. Gender, sexuality and other categories should be shifted aside. In short, one of the sub-strands is openly patriarchal, homophobic and anti-feminist. It explicitly rejects the black feminist theory of <a href="http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/files/socialdiff/projects/Article__Mapping_the_Margins_by_Kimblere_Crenshaw.pdf">intersectionality</a>.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>These six elements are not static and do not represent a consensus of any sort, as is clear from the recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-student-movement-splinters-as-patriarchy-muscles-out-diversity-57855">showdown</a> about sexuality and gender in the University of the Witwatersrand’s #FeesMustFall movement. At the University of the Free State’s colloquium, black members of the SRC expressed themselves strongly in favour of robust but also inclusive conversation. </p>
<p>The retrogressive elements can be summed up as entwined and mutually reinforcing dehistoricisation and essentialisation. </p>
<p>When it comes to historicisation many analyses, including my own, show that the legacies and continuities of colonialism and apartheid bedevil South Africa today.</p>
<p>But if we acknowledge that the country is a democracy, we also acknowledge that the current historical moment doesn’t only consist of remnants of the past. It is also full of new realities that have been brought about by the struggle for democracy, and its fruits. This moment is not apartheid. Several new potentialities have been made available. South Africans are in a process of political contestation to actualise these, or not.</p>
<p>In this sense, democratisation is a never-ending process rather than an event. Its emancipatory possibilities are foreclosed when it is conflated with apartheid, which is what the anti-democratic strand of the decolonisation movement is doing. </p>
<h2>Denying democratic possibilities</h2>
<p>I support the position that white people, men and heterosexuals should be silent in some contexts. But an SRC event like the one at which I was attacked is arranged by a body that represents the whole student community and doesn’t qualify as such a context. White people, men and heterosexuals have a duty to actively dismantle white heteropatriarchy, and should be led by marginalised and oppressed groups in doing so. This means that people with privilege can participate under certain conditions. </p>
<p>Silencing white people in shared spaces, irrespective of their positions, denies the differences among them. It denies the political possibilities that spring from these differences.</p>
<p>Both whiteness and blackness are flattened when racial identities are essentialised. Turning whiteness into an all-powerful phantasmatic object while reducing blackness to victimhood denies the various resistances that ended official apartheid and that continue to subvert apartheid’s legacies today.</p>
<p>I am not saying that black people did not suffer under apartheid or that white people did not benefit from it. I did. So did every other white person, unjustly so. However, a few white people resisted apartheid, sometimes at a great personal cost. Some black people collaborated with the system, to their own benefit. When we bring in gender, sexuality and class – as we should – the picture gets even more complex.</p>
<p>We deny the messiness of the past when we deny these intricacies and complicities. Merely switching the colonial terms around – white = bad; black = good – is not decolonising. It is an elaboration of colonialism’s logic of hierarchical binarism. Apartheid dehumanised black people. In a different way white people, as oppressors, lost their humanity. How does one find openings where self and other can reach out to one another? People in South Africa must recognise their interconnectedness, which is what apartheid attempted to undo. The potential of re-humanisation lies in that recognition.</p>
<p>Essentialisation and dehistoricisation also have other effects. Black people, as though such a monolithic bloc exists, are rendered naturally autocratic. This is a prejudiced fiction and clashes with the evidence on precolonial African systems, as described by <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Citizen_and_Subject.html?id=4X74KEphsHsC&redir_esc=y">Mahmood Mamdani</a>. An offensive correlation is also created between black people and violence that reminds one of colonial racism.</p>
<h2>Ignoring history doesn’t help</h2>
<p>The anti-democratic strand within universities’ decolonisation discourse openly rejects the constitution. It denies the ideological and physical battles between 1990 and 1994 that produced the constitution. It seems unaware or unfazed that these battles led to the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02167/04lv02264/05lv02335/06lv02357/07lv02372/08lv02379.htm">highest death toll</a> of the apartheid era. </p>
<p>Many factors from that time and their implications are overlooked: global and local complexities like the rise of neoliberal triumphalism; the ideological disposition and actual capacity of the African National Congress (ANC); the then ruling National Party having to let go of a white veto even though it controlled the mechanisms of state terror. </p>
<p>These factors are all reduced to the ANC simply selling out to the then white rulers. The proof that is proffered is the constitution’s property rights clause, even though it allows for expropriation in the public interest. Drawing on mid-20th century pan-Africanist arguments, the demand is made that black people should “take the land back in the same way that the colonisers took it” from their ancestors. Precisely this argument was made during the fractious edition of “The Big Debate” I referred to earlier. </p>
<p>Why not instead suggest amending the constitution to address the issue of compensation in the property clause and overhauling the ANC government’s politically compromised land reform process? The restitution of black people’s right to the land must be a foremost post-apartheid goal. But why emphasise land at the cost of all other rights? </p>
<p>Little if any consideration is given to the exceptional inclusion of socioeconomic rights in the constitution, or that much more can be done to expand and claim these rights. The authoritarian impulse in the anti-democratic strand becomes clearest at this point.</p>
<h2>A national depression</h2>
<p>Historicisation is urgently needed – about the past and the present context – in order to identify the actual sources of our national crisis. Neoliberalism looms large both as economic policy and <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/booked-3-what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-wendy-brown-undoing-the-demos">rationality</a>. The background to this moment is worldwide economic and political instability as the forces of late capitalism try to regain their footing after 2008. Inequality is worsening. <a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/fascism-all-rage-europe-and-its-coming-america">Neo-fascist tendencies</a> are on the rise.</p>
<p>The ANC’s version of neoliberal policy is to some extent ameliorated by social grants but has still sharpened South Africa’s particularly acute socioeconomic inequality. This, combined with the global situation, is a primary cause of the economic, social and political crisis. One of the responses is a homegrown authoritarian tendency in which race is prominently wielded as a political tool. It is not coincidental that neoliberalism itself is a profoundly anti-democratic phenomenon that employs a specific mode of racialisation.</p>
<p>Transformation at universities is up against neoliberal instrumentalism, driven by anti-intellectualism. Its model is of the university as business enterprise rendering a select group of people “human capital”. The mantra of competitiveness is used to justify a false contradiction between transformation and academic excellence. </p>
<p>All of these factors, together with the implosion of the ANC – in terms of ethics and governance – contribute to a growing national depression. This brings me to the co-constructive relationship between the anti-democratic positions and a hardening whiteness. While most of South Africa is in the grip of a national depression, some white people respond to the crisis by displaying a nihilistic <em>Schadenfreude</em>. </p>
<p>As argued, blackness and whiteness are co-constructions: they create self in relation to an other. The <em>Schadenfreude</em> position is part of a hardening whiteness that’s also anti-democratic, essentialising and dehumanising. A dynamic is triggered in which efforts at enclosing white identity provoke efforts at enclosing black identity, and vice versa. </p>
<p>We need a collective rethink before we get pulverised by the shortsighted extremes of hardening whiteness and hardening blackness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christi van der Westhuizen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sections of South Africa’s student movements regard transformation as a complete failure. Responding to this perceived failure, some have adopted an anti-democratic stance.Christi van der Westhuizen, Associate Professor, Sociology, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/593302016-05-15T14:16:03Z2016-05-15T14:16:03ZThe myth of white purity and narratives that fed racism in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122487/original/image-20160513-10658-3fqaiy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Apartheid sought to divide blacks and whites in all spheres of life.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In this extract from her book “<a href="http://jacana.co.za/book-categories/new-releases-65840/end-of-whiteness-detail">The End of Whiteness: Satanism and Family Murder in Late Apartheid South Africa</a>”, Nicky Falkof explores how ideas about disease, risk and danger that the apartheid government applied to black people were transposed onto fears about Satanism during the 1980s.</em></p>
<p>The grand apartheid regime’s most pressing fear was <em>gelykstelling</em>, an Afrikaans word that means “equalisation”. It believed that this would bring on the “mishmash cohabitation” and eventual <em>bloedvermenging</em> – blood mixing – that threatened the purity of the white race. </p>
<p>During the run-up to the 1938 election, the National Party campaigned on the argument that the ruling United Party’s policy of allowing mixed marriages would cause mass miscegenation. This, in <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=UTNhTscJ9m4C&pg=PA246&lpg=PA246&dq=mixing+of+the+blood+and+the+ruin+of+the+white+race+van+der+merwe&source=bl&ots=0m_-pf0gZh&sig=L-5KK7v5oMZMJnTS4QKuZ0Htz_w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjnk--HqdTMAhUJLMAKHbjDBEEQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=mixing%20of%20the%20blood%20and%20the%20ruin%20of%20the%20white%20race%20van%20der%20merwe&f=false">the words</a> of Afrikaans intellectual NJ van der Merwe, would lead to “mixing of the blood and the ruin of the white race”. </p>
<p>During the 1970s Afrikaans genealogist <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zXuAAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA11&dq=heese+herkoms&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=heese%20herkoms&f=false">JA Heese</a> uncovered records of more than 1,200 European men in South Africa who married non-white women between 1652 and 1800. Through this he determined that approximately 7.2% of Afrikaner heritage was non-white. This complicated history was not admissible within the apartheid imaginary.</p>
<p>French philosopher Michel Foucault <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=lVJ9lVQV0o8C&redir_esc=y">argued</a> that the existence of other races is essential to safeguard the stainlessness of our own: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Racism makes it possible to establish a relationship between my life and the death of the other … The death of the other, the death of the bad race, of the inferior race (or the degenerate, or the abnormal) is something that will make life in general healthier: healthier and purer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The idea of purity suggests that there is an unadulterated, genuine, original race that must be protected. The unpolluted population must not be infected or otherwise sullied by contact with lesser races. Evocative terminology like <em>bloedvermenging</em> suggests this abomination. The rhetoric of racial purity is full of suggestive terms like illness, weakening and dilution. These imply the medicalisation of the nation.</p>
<h2>Disease to justify segregation</h2>
<p>White South Africa was not, of course, alone in its belief in racial purity. Homi Bhabha, in his <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=-XGKFJq4eccC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">foreword</a> to Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth”, writes that in the colonial situation “the racialised person is seen as a threat, an infection, a symptom of social decline”. </p>
<p>Disease was a powerful tool in the ideological arsenal of South African segregationists. The day-to-day bureaucratic implementation of apartheid racial classifications owed more to common sense than to appeals to blood and ancestry. But the mythology of racial difference, if not the methods by which it was implemented, depended on ideas about infection, dirt and the possibility of a pure blood. Those who aren’t defined as white have always been <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=tmUTCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA364&dq=gilman+nose+job+jews&ots=qoe_PGeq-F&sig=AbRv9MlyguMqK_Aw2lddTnJY9y0#v=onepage&q=gilman%20nose%20job%20jews&f=false">considered “ugly” </a>in the European mindset, which suggests disease and ill health.</p>
<p>Fears of the spread of bubonic and later plagues in the urban slums were a useful justification for the Cape Colony to initiate segregation and forced removals. This was a process of moral, social and economic injustice in the cities of Cape Town and Port Elizabeth that aimed to remove Africans from within the city environs without jeopardising white farmers’ and industrialists’ labour requirements. </p>
<p>When black city dwellers were first ejected from Cape Town at the start of an <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/list-laws-land-dispossession-and-segregation">ongoing project</a> of land dispossession and urban segregation, this was done in response to fears of the “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/180639?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">medical menace</a>” of plague. Health and sanitation became catch-all excuses for segregation. The imperative to separate African slum-dwellers from colonists was stated in extreme terms. </p>
<p>“Infected” urban Africans were demonised as a threat to civilisation in the Cape. The “degenerate poor” were a danger to the health and stability of the “imperial race”. Africans living in urban areas were seen as being only partly modernised, neither true to their tribal roots nor capable of proper civilisation. They were “maladjusted” and susceptible to disease, which could be spread to the colonists. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122483/original/image-20160513-10679-5lk5z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122483/original/image-20160513-10679-5lk5z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122483/original/image-20160513-10679-5lk5z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122483/original/image-20160513-10679-5lk5z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122483/original/image-20160513-10679-5lk5z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122483/original/image-20160513-10679-5lk5z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122483/original/image-20160513-10679-5lk5z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/122483/original/image-20160513-10679-5lk5z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jacana Books</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These powerful medicalising ideas remained in force after South Africa became a Union in 1910. Later, their classification of the poor black body was a constant refrain in the moral and social justification for apartheid even while the state separated people into racial groups based on hair curl, economic status, language and other <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9124190&fileId=S0002020600029826">common-sense</a> attributes.</p>
<h2>The language of hygiene</h2>
<p>The requirement to maintain racial purity was applied to black people as well as to whites. Colonial engineering during the 19th century had aimed to break the power of the chiefs. By the 20th century these tribal authorities had become an important pole in the state’s management of the black population. The <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands">homelands system</a> attempted to isolate Africans in an imagined pre-industrial tribal past. It kept them away from the cities and the influence of modernity. This retribalisation policy was couched in the language of culture and nation. It was, in fact, a deeply cynical exercise in which hybrid or even invented ethnicities were forced upon people for the purpose of controlling their movement, labour and lives.</p>
<p>Officials “were well aware of the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=mFiOAAAAMAAJ&q=isbn:1770073051&dq=isbn:1770073051&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">artificiality of their ethnic engineering</a>”. In some cases, in areas where chieftainships did not exist, government functionaries would simply make them up. They would create a new “traditional” lineage and install a client chief who would keep his subjects in the subdued state that apartheid required of its labour force.</p>
<p>All of these acts of social engineering were expressed in the language of hygiene. Officials cited the need to protect apparently original tribal cultures from polluting contact with modernity – and, of course, all the benefits for social health, life expectancy, political power and the rest that modernity can bring. A particularly hyperbolic statement from then cabinet minister Albert Hertzog, made in 1964, gives a sense of the <a href="http://historysnapshot.blogspot.co.za/2014/04/black-peril-and-its-legacies-in-south.html">corrupting effects</a> that Western culture was thought to have on the “primitive” African and the dangers this presented for white society: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is afternoon and the Bantu [meaning black African] house-boy is in the living room cleaning the carpet. Someone has left the television set on. The house-boy looks up at the screen, sees a chorus line of white girls in scanty costumes. Suddenly, seized by lust, he runs upstairs and rapes the madam.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Discussions surrounding both the importance of Afrikaans as the medium of government and education and the fear of Anglophone influence included suggestions of illness, pollution, dirt, corruption and sickness that characterise the language of racial purity and the quarantined body politic. A rhetoric of contagion and disease became common to white South Africa. As anthropologist <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=QGRUTH8hnQ4C&redir_esc=y">Mary Douglas</a> illustrates, dirt, pollution and taboo are cultural constraints that police boundaries:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Apartheid was nothing if not systematic. It was a bureaucratic behemoth that attempted to classify people into easily managed categories so as to maintain the tenuous margins of whiteness. Black people were superfluous to the white nation, existing only as labour potential, dismissed as dirty and diseased and therefore excluded from the citizenry to protect the health and purity of the state’s primary subjects.</p>
<p>These same medicalising ideas appeared in the public conversation around Satanism and Satanists. The supernatural threat contained accusations of dirt, pollution and illness, of infection and parasitism, of something impure threatening and entering into the realm of the hygienic. The Satanist posed a similar danger to the health of the nation as the black person who was “out of place”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This book project has received funding from Birkbeck College, the London Consortium, the National Research Foundation of South Africa, the Skye Foundation, the University of London and the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust.</span></em></p>The rhetoric of racial purity is full of suggestive terms like illness, weakening and dilution. These imply the medicalisation of the nation.Nicky Falkof, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/439012015-07-10T10:18:48Z2015-07-10T10:18:48ZExploring how black and white artists depict race<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87981/original/image-20150709-10872-537zzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">White painter William Gilbert Gaul's To the End (1907-1909) uses the loyal slave trope. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/To_the_End_by_William_Gilbert_Gaul.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2013, when Graham C Boettcher, chief curator at the Birmingham Museum of Art, first conceptualized a small exhibit examining the visual representation of race in American art, he couldn’t have anticipated the present political moment. </p>
<p>From events in Ferguson and Baltimore to the senseless murder of nine innocent people at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, America finds itself at another crossroads in race relations because of the harrowing effects of systemic racism. </p>
<p>When I was asked to co-curate this exhibition last year, I emphasized that race – specifically, “blackness” – has been constructed and visually represented from the perspectives of both blacks <em>and</em> whites. </p>
<p>Historically, whites have perceived and depicted African Americans as “different,” “picturesque” and, sometimes, “threatening.” </p>
<p>But African Americans have pushed back. They’ve resisted the ways whites often mythologized or satirized blackness, and have presented counter images: works of art that depict or comment on how we visualize our culture and ourselves. </p>
<p>The exhibit <a href="http://www.artsbma.org/exhibition/black-like-who/">Black Like Who?</a>, comprising works from the Birmingham Museum of Art’s permanent collection and private collectors, considers how political, cultural and aesthetic interests influence the artistic representations of black people and black culture at particular historical moments. The exhibit also takes into account the motives and beliefs of the artists, both black and white.</p>
<p>The show doesn’t claim to be an exhaustive examination of depictions of blackness in American art, but it does illuminate areas of American visual culture where blackness has been prominently defined.</p>
<p>There are five distinct sections: </p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: Historical Representations of Race in the South and Beyond</strong> examines why and how artists depicted African Americans, from the Civil War to the Great Depression. </p></li>
<li><p><strong>Black Like Me: African American Portraits</strong> looks at how white artists depicted black subjects in 20th-century American portraiture. </p></li>
<li><p><strong>Brown Skin Ladies: Picturing the Black Woman</strong> illustrates how American artists, both male and female, represent African American women. </p></li>
<li><p><strong>Body and Soul: Rhythmic Representations</strong> presents depictions of black musicians, and looks at how black artists use music as a painterly technique.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>From Mammy and Mose to Madison Avenue: Advertising and the Black Image</strong> examines how black people and black culture are represented in commercial culture.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Altogether, Black Like Who? presents 28 works by 19 artists to show just how fundamental iterations of race are to the American experience. </p>
<p>For example, the section “From Mammy and Mose to Madison Avenue” exhibits photographs by Sheila Pree Bright, Hank Willis Thomas and David Levinthal.</p>
<p>Pree Bright’s work, from her Plastic Bodies series, <a href="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/11/26/article-2513979-19A8E74F00000578-992_634x775.jpg">blends imagery of Mattel’s Barbie doll with photographs of real black women</a>. Her images show how the biases of white beauty standards distort understandings of race and natural beauty.</p>
<p>Both Levinthal’s and Thomas’ works contemplate how the stereotypes of Aunt Jemima and Rastus (the Cream of Wheat chef) inform American conceptualizations of the family breakfast. Levinthal’s photograph of Cooky, a popular cookie jar produced in the 1940s by Pearl China of East Liverpool, Ohio, critiques the prevalence of racist memorabilia in American kitchens – a domestic space that produced the most well-known racist imagery of black men and women. </p>
<p>Contemplating this idea through the black male body, Thomas photographs boxing great Joe Frazier dressed as the blonde <a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4017/4529511452_d9dcfde03d.jpg">Blue Bonnet margarine</a> mascot to make a comment about the roles black men occupy in American advertising. </p>
<p>Together, these artists remind viewers of the ways racism is reflected in our commercial products. Racist understandings of black domestic workers have led to iconic caricatures like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, while beauty ideals that exclude entire groups of black women are represented in Barbie dolls. </p>
<p>The section Brown Skin Ladies juxtaposes works by Elizabeth Catlett, Henry Bannarn, Frank Hartley Anderson and Arthur Stewart to show how various American artists have challenged common depictions of black women. There’s a particular focus on how Bannarn, Anderson and Stewart – artists who are <em>not</em> black and female – navigate both stereotypes and controversial subject matter when presenting black women in their work. </p>
<p>Catlett, who has four works in the section, dedicated her career to accurately depicting black and Mexican women. Her sculpture <a href="http://images.crsculpture.com/www_crsculpture_com/catlett_SEATED_FIGURE_21.jpg">Seated Figure</a> celebrates the power, beauty and fortitude of black women: the figure sits tall, her head raised, back straight and feet planted firmly before her. </p>
<p>And visitors will certainly connect current events to Catlett’s 1970 lithograph <a href="http://art.newcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Elizabeth_Catlett.png">The Torture of Mothers</a>, where the artist visualizes the agony of a mother who has lost her son to police brutality. One hundred years after Catlett’s birth, her work endures as vital social commentary.</p>
<p>The hope is that the exhibit sufficiently engages both historical and contemporary works to show that for three centuries, American artists have been conducting a rather in-depth and complicated conversation about race. Perhaps the exhibition can also spark a conversation among visitors, who will see how past and present works of art have very real connections to recent racial tragedies, and the racial turmoil that continues to plague the American psyche. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Black Like Who? will run from July 11 2015 to November 1 2015 at the <a href="http://www.artsbma.org/exhibition/black-like-who/">Birmingham Museum of Art</a> in Birmingham, Alabama.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43901/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelli Morgan is the curatorial fellow of African American art at the Birmingham Museum of Art, AL. She has received funding from The Ford Foundation.</span></em></p>Black Like Us? – a new exhibition at the Birmingham Museum of Art – looks at how blackness has been portrayed in American art through the years.Kelli Morgan, PhD candidate in African-American Studies, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/438272015-06-26T10:07:02Z2015-06-26T10:07:02ZWe cannot teach race without addressing what it means to be ‘white’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86443/original/image-20150625-29069-1y4rk9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How are race discussions happening in classrooms and what is missing? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jirka_matousek/8431744972/in/photolist-dR5U2j-9gGXxv-8vaG9D-8vdKaG-dQZdBa-8vaFvF-dUkJPn-dRFo8R-dRFqv8-dRDGot-dRKdU1-dUsq2w-dUmq72-dUsrCU-dUmTER-dUkCYM-8vaFdT-dR4kbG-dUsikf-hRubHu-dQWAqX-dQZnke-7HMSCy-dUmwZp-dRPrs2-dQWsnH-bB5hG9-dRLFqd-dRMdk7-dUqX47-dUmDWD-dUssDo-dQV9Cg-7HJcxt-dUsudW-dRPpZ8-7HJcZK-9xHABe-fuP9Ha-4msxSN-u6Eq1J-qVDqwA-dPFW4N-dPVY5c-dQ5k7y-tWLwMj-edufZT-dQ2j41-9uReSo-diB6KV">Jirka Matousek</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We have steeped ourselves in higher education today in a framework for understanding difference that insists we should “value diversity.” Even then, in terms of realizing a robust multiracial environment in colleges across the nation, we have a very <a href="http://gender.stanford.edu/whistling-vivaldi-how-stereotypes-affect-us-and-what-we-can-do-issues-our-time">long way to go</a>. </p>
<p>We know higher education’s commitment to diversity is not mere window-dressing.
For instance, the <a href="https://www.ncahlc.org/About-the-Commission/about-hlc.html">Higher Learning Commission</a> (HLC), an independent corporation founded in 1895 that grants accreditation to post-secondary educational institutions in 19 states, requires a <a href="http://policy.ncahlc.org/Policies/criteria-for-accreditation.html?highlight=WyJkaXZlcnNpdHkiXQ==">commitment to diversity</a>. </p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education-july-dec13-collegecost_10-23/">the skyrocketing costs of college</a>, which make access difficult for the more economically marginalized, and an incarceration crisis that sees young black men and women <a href="http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/03/the-myth-of-desgregation/">imprisoned at astronomical rates</a>, are only two of many factors that create racialized outcomes when it comes to higher education. </p>
<p>Colleges and universities bear institutional responsibility for taking such <a href="http://www.jbhe.com/2013/10/the-persisting-racial-gap-in-college-student-graduation-rates/">racialized outcomes</a> seriously (as the HLC accreditation processes insist). One small but important piece of such responsibility means considering how discussions of race take place in classrooms.</p>
<p>Some of the questions that arise in this discussion are: how can academics help students engage meaningfully in the public discussion now riveted on race and racial violence? What is missing in our current understanding of diversity? And is our current paradigm of diversity adequate for including challenging issues that get raised in regard to white racial identity? </p>
<p>These are important questions to ask, especially since events in Ferguson, Missouri last August that have been followed by numerous killings of African American men, women and children — first by the police and now by a 21-year-old white male in Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. </p>
<p>As a professor of religion and ethics who writes extensively about the role of faith communities in challenging racial injustice, I’ve been grappling with these issues as they show up in my classroom for many years. How do we effectively teach the next generation of young people such that they are better prepared to make a desperately needed impact on the US racial climate? </p>
<h2>White racial identity</h2>
<p>When 70% of blacks <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/22/white-people-believe-the-justice-system-is-color-blind-black-people-really-dont/">cite problems with policing</a> relative to race and only 17% of whites do the same, we, as academics, know that able teaching on racial difference is essential for students. </p>
<p>But the very way in which diversity is framed creates a serious logjam when it comes to race in the college classroom. The premise of diversity is not merely that we are all different (and that students need to learn about that), but that our differences are goods to be celebrated and embraced. </p>
<p>We tout the innate value of diversity for college life: citing <a href="http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Resources/aaccprograms/diversity/Pages/diversityhighered.aspx">the importance of learning</a> in diverse environments to equip our students to navigate a pluralistic world.</p>
<p>But there’s a major gap that goes unaddressed in this framing. </p>
<p>The particular difference “white” racial identity and experience represents in the context of US history and current climate makes it hard to “celebrate” the “goodness” of whiteness. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86445/original/image-20150625-29053-1e672tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86445/original/image-20150625-29053-1e672tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86445/original/image-20150625-29053-1e672tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86445/original/image-20150625-29053-1e672tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86445/original/image-20150625-29053-1e672tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86445/original/image-20150625-29053-1e672tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86445/original/image-20150625-29053-1e672tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">How far is white racial identity considered in discussions?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/22104733@N06/16028969455/in/photolist-qqqEbk-s6kogB-uS5ckp-uzecKL-udD5Cu-uRkX1Y-tTc6wa-thc3Y4-uzeogA-rVFyZS-uPuK37-ue3nrB-tWzeak-ubGFhQ-u64Jdg-tUNwbW-uRkSy1-utk8FB-pVcW7m-pfMCmJ-thbUCr-tWzjC4-q88GLm-r2jHmc-sbmgHr-thcb22-tZJAJg-udDCFN-uecnqc-rqYafv-tWrZK9-tWseLW-ue3yzP-bCb9Hz-ue31CT-s6bJiN-rqYakk-tWrDUh-rVNr3K-rqYQPR-thbXHK-rgfqdq-pVXZJT-pCEM9q-q7T8Gv-qg91nG-qif9e4-qDwDze-tZ3ZKR-s6cSny">greg lilly</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>Students know this. I regularly help my students explore the failure of the diversity paradigm by asking them whether a group of black students carrying signs that read “Black is beautiful” is the equivalent of a group of white students carrying signs that read “White is beautiful.” They quickly shake their heads and tell me “no.”</p>
<p>“Why not?” I ask. “Shouldn’t valuing diversity include all diversity? If we can’t equally celebrate both of these scenes, then what are missing?”</p>
<p>They typically can’t explain why these two scenes are not the same. But, they know they are different. And understanding the reasons the scenes are different becomes a critical starting point for us to think about the historical, ethical and moral challenges of “whiteness” in the United States.</p>
<h2>Inadequate framing of race</h2>
<p>I believe our “diversity” paradigm is failing because it does not give us the tools to unpack and explore this conundrum. </p>
<p>The need to ably teach matters of race difference and historical as well as contemporary racial realities in the US could hardly be more urgent. But our ability to engage, discuss and home in on “whiteness” is stymied by a paradigm that cannot help students understand the difference between the two scenes just described.</p>
<p>Such inadequate framing of race certainly does not help us engage white students in the room, for whom the conundrums evident in the difference between these two scenes are embedded in their actual racial identities as “white people.” (Ask students of color in the room to talk about their racial identity and most can do it. Ask white students to do it and you get an uncomfortable silence.)</p>
<p>So, the diversity paradigm needs something more that can help faculty and students alike directly engage the complexities “white” poses for thinking about race. </p>
<h2>How to engage white students</h2>
<p>Academics are recognizing this and finding different ways to address these challenges. At a recent gathering of the <a href="https://www.ncore.ou.edu">National Conference of Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE)</a>, several workshops focused on the distinct challenges of engaging white students on race. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Kids-Sitting-Together-Cafeteria/dp/0465083617/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435238039&sr=1-1&keywords=beverly+daniel+tatum">Psychologists</a> who study racial identity development have helped educators think about the ways racial identity is formed in response to racial environment. </p>
<p>Such studies explain a great deal about the reactions of white students to racial conversations. For example, if you are taught to genuinely believe in “equality” but experience “white privilege,” the high level of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Race-Nice-Thing-Have-Second/dp/0917276132/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435238075&sr=1-1&keywords=janet+helms">cognitive dissonance</a> that it generates has to be first addressed. Only then can any effective teaching take place about race and racial injustice. </p>
<p>Through race theories and historical work, academics are enabling students to understand how race and racial identities are constructed. These tools help students see the many challenges of a white racial identity as well as that of black or Latino. This can be a potentially transformative education for students today.</p>
<h2>Lean in to move forward</h2>
<p>There’s an irony here, of course. </p>
<p>It’s people of color who are most negatively impacted by the racialized outcomes of higher education and the structural violence of our national landscape. Yet, the gap educators are starting to address puts greater focus on the study of “white.” </p>
<p>So, let me be clear. The point is not that academics believe white students should get even more resources and attention. The point here is that we are coming to recognize that our racial destinies are completely bound up together. </p>
<p>We need to lean in, and explicitly take up the challenges of whiteness if we are to produce teaching and learning that can adequately impact the lives of all, in this racially plural, white hierarchy that is the United States.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43827/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Harvey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What is the experience of white students when racial issues are being taught in classrooms? Are we missing engaging an essential part of diversity?Jennifer Harvey, Professor of Religion, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.