What I learned about Whiteness and Communication....

Grew up in

rural Texas in a

poor

white

uneducated

single-parent

home.

In Carbondale, I

Moved to the

“Graduate

Student

Ghetto”

(a.k.a.

the Comm Studies Ghetto),

“Ghetto,” the image of which has been [the]

source of shame and embarrassment when

spoken outside of

certain black contexts”[i]

Saying I

live in the “graduate student ghetto”

is

problematic.

Living alone, I

lock my doors

when I come home.

“Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

ClickClickClickClickClickClickClick.

The clicking sounds are

always accompanied by nervous gestures and eyes

[eyes] that want to

look but are

hesitant to do so.”[ii]

I don’t

live in the ghetto,

In

a

ghetto.

I don’t live in a

segregated living space

that is the

result of

bias or

stereotyping.

I live

amongst friends,

amongst departmental family,

amongst …

“Whiteness is not

merely an

objective social location entirely

independent of the self, but rather, a

central feature of subjectivity, or

one’s lived, interior self. Whiteness is

learned,

in process,

developed over the modern era and

still developing, but

lived on the inside as well as

attributed to

one’s

external

appearance.”[iii]

“Whiteness is not simply and solely a

legally recognized property interest. It is

simultaneously an

aspect of

self-identity and of

personhood…”[iv]

“Whiteness produced

—and was produced by—the

social advantage that accompanied it.”[v]

bell

hooks

grew up “in the

social circumstances created by

racial apartheid to

all black spaces in the

edges of town…”[vi]

Away from the city center

marks the streets

as dimly lit by the moon,

darkening the luminosity as well as

(in hooks’ description)

marking the

bodies

as
dark.

Like McIntosh, “If I should

need to move,

I can be

pretty sure of

renting or

purchasing

housing

in an area which I can

afford and

in which I would

want

to

live.”[vii]

Moreover, my

white privilege means that

I get to live in a

fairly nice,

well-located

neighborhood and refer to it as

the ghetto, with the

expectation that my

neighbors and friends will

laugh

at the association I’ve made.

“Whiteness

not only points to the

ways in which

colorism

(white as believed to be supremely

beautiful,

untainted,

moral,

good,

intelligent,

civilized, and

lawful)

is the hallmark of

North American racism but also

points to those

phenotypical whites who

make

every

effort to

guard against racist beliefs.”[viii]

As a white body, I

benefit from the

white,

racist

social structure.

“Whites need not

intentionally invest in

whiteness in order to

reap

the

benefits…”[ix]

“By

avoiding

whiteness as a

raced term, whites

effectively

distance themselves from

whiteness as a

governing

racial

ideology

in the United States.”[x]

“Whiteness, after all, is a

master

of

concealment;

it is

insidiously embedded within

responses,

reactions,

good intentions,

postural gestures,

denials, and

structural and material

orders.”[xi]

“In order to

transcend

current

race

relations,

which is a concrete possibility,

we must

first

go through race

in order to

have any

hopes of

going beyond it.”[xii]

Until then,

“as an

antiracist racist

I believe that I should

always

feel

conflicted,

full of contradictions,

never as though I have

“arrived”.”[xiii]

And,

until then,

I will

say “I

live

in the

tree streets

of

Carbondale.”

---

[i] Leonardo, Zeus.  Race, Whiteness, and Education.  NY: Routledge, 2009. Print. (123)

[ii] Yancy, George.  Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race.  Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Print. (xix)

[iii] Yancy (x-xi)

[iv] Harris, Cheryl.  “Whiteness as Property.”  Black on White: Black Writers on What it Means to Be White.  Ed. David Roediger.  NY: Schocken Books, 1998.  103-118. Print. (104)

[v] Harris (116)

[vi] hooks, bell.  “Whiteness in the Black Imagination.”  Killing Rage: Ending Racism.  NY: Owl Books, 1995. 31-50. Print. (39)

[vii] McIntosh, Peggy.  “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.”  Readings in Sociocultural Studies in Education, 2^nd ed. Kate Rousmaniere, Ed.  NY: McGraw Hill, 1995. 189-195. Print. (190)

[viii] Yancy (25)

[ix] Yancy (53)

[x] Yancy (46)

[xi] Yancy (229)                 

[xii] Zeus. (125)

[xiii] Christine Clark, as quoted in Yancy (227)