WHITENESS & · PDF fileWHITENESS & COLORBLINDNESS ... •“The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. ... the inferior behavioral and psychological traits

WHITENESS & COLORBLINDNESS

WHITENESS/COLORBLINDNESS (1)•Those two terms are very similar in their meanings, however…• Whiteness refers to the invisible power and privilege

unearned and inherited by whites• Colorblindness refers to the continuing denial of

whiteness as privilege through a constant refusal to see race as an important social issue•Examples:

• Why can’t we just do away with racial categories?• “We are all Americans, humans”

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WHITENESS/COLORBLINDNESS (2)•The critical examination of whiteness, academic and not,

simply involves the effort to break through the illusion that whiteness is natural, biological, normal, and not crying out for explanation (Roediger)

•Many people in lots of different fields and movement activities have tried to productively make it into a problem.

• When did (some) people come to define themselves as white?

• In what conditions?

• How does the lie of whiteness get reproduced?

• What are its costs politically, morally and culturally?3

WHITENESS/COLORBLINDNESS (3)•Richard Dyer

• “White people create the dominant images of the world, and don’t quite see that they thus construct the world in their image”

•Eduardo Bonilla-Silva• “What is the meaning of contemporary Whites’

racial views? How can Whites claim to believe in racial equality and yet oppose programs to reduce racial inequality?”

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WHITENESS/COLORBLINDNESS (4)•Studying whiteness and colorblindness is a way to reverse the analysis of race relations

• Most assimilationist theorists such as Park, Gordon and others have put the emphasis on minorities

• Racial inequality is often commented upon by analyzing the reasons why minority groups are politically, economically and socially subordinated groups

•The study of whiteness allows to switch the focus to whites and how they have perpetuated a dominant culture and racial hierarchy

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WHITENESS: WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? •When race is examined, people usually talk about people of

color

•However, whiteness as a racial category needs to be examined in depth (Jay, 1998)

• To ignore it is to give it “special status”

• To ignore it is to reproduce “white privilege” of non-examination

• Whiteness does not exist on its own; it exists in relation to blackness, Asianess and being Latino

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DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS•Du Bois’ “color line” quotation in relation to “double

consciousness”

• “Am I black or am I American?” (Du Bois, 1903, p. 45)

• It it the “sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others” (Du Bois, 1903, p. 8)

•Because of the experience of being black in America, African Americans have a heightened awareness of both their own blackness and of the whiteness around them

• Do whites have a double consciousness?

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DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS (1)

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DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS (2)

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SYSTEM OF WHITE SUPREMACY (1)•Race functions as a large ensemble of practices and rules (role of the racial state) that give white people all sorts of small and large advantages in life

•Whiteness is the source of many privileges

• However, to criticize whiteness does not mean to engage in guilt (this is too individualistic)

•Racism will end with the end of those practices, or in other words, with the abolition of whiteness

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SYSTEM OF WHITE SUPREMACY (2)• Race functions as a large ensemble of practices and rules (role of the racial state) that give

white people all sorts of small and large advantages in life

• Excerpts from the DOJ Civil Rights Division report on Ferguson police:

“Racial Bias Ferguson’s approach to law enforcement both reflects and reinforces racial bias, including stereotyping. The harms of Ferguson’s police and court practices are borne disproportionately by African Americans, and there is evidence that this is due in part to intentional discrimination on the basis of race. Ferguson’s law enforcement practices overwhelmingly impact African Americans. Data collected by the Ferguson Police Department from 2012 to 2014 shows that African Americans account for 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson’s population. African Americans are more than twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during vehicle stops even after controlling for non-race based variables such as the reason the vehicle stop was initiated, but are found in possession of contraband 26% less often than white drivers, suggesting officers are impermissibly considering race as a factor when determining whether to search. African Americans are more likely to be cited and arrested following a stop regardless of why the stop was initiated and are more likely to receive multiple citations during a single incident. From 2012 to 2014, FPD issued four or more citations to African Americans on 73 occasions, but issued four or more citations to non-African Americans only twice. FPD appears to bring certain offenses almost exclusively against African Americans. For example, from 2011 to 2013, African Americans accounted for 95% of Manner of Walking in Roadway charges, and 94% of all Failure to Comply charges.”

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE WHITE?•There has never been, nor is there now, one definition of white

•The construction of the category, white, however loose, variable, or inconsistent this classification was or continues to be, signifies the supremacy of one socially defined population over others based on physical characteristics deemed meaningful and important through the political and social process of racialization

•Whiteness is quite often defined as what it is not (circular definition)

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WHITENESS / WHITE PRIVILEGE/WHITE SUPREMACY (1)

•Peggy McIntosh (1995)

•White privilege has been defined as a package of benefits, granted to people in our society who have white skin

•Allows them certain free passes to certain things in our society that are not easily available to people of color

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• Examples:

•Being able to turn on the television and see people of their race widely represented

•Never being asked to speak on behalf of their entire race

•Being able to have a bad day without wondering what their race had to do with specific negative incidents

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• It is an unearned privilege

•White skin gives broader and easier access to resources, opportunities etc…•Job market

•You are born with it (skin tone) and cannot escape it•Even if you are the most white ANTI-RACIST individual

• Power NOT to have to think about what it means to be white•Being white means that you do NOT have to think about being discriminated against

•Being able to go along with life without thinking about race16


• Power NOT to have your race as a social marker in society•Does name-calling carries the same weight whether somebody is called

the N-word or “cracker?”

• You are invisible but represents the norm at the same time•Being white is being “normal” (being the referent group)•Being white means benefiting from it without thinking about it•You never talk about your privilege because you don’t know what

others go through• You don’t feel privileged because your life seems normal

•Whiteness represents the yardstick by which other groups are judged by•Theories of assimilation, for instance

• To assimilate into what? White normality?17


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•Whites in the U.S. barely refer to themselves as whites• Use of ethnicity

• Being Italian-American etc…• Or just define themselves as American

• American is often associated with being white

•Example:• “American Beats out Kwan” (MSNBC headlines during the 1998

Winter Olympic Games)• “American Outshines Kwan…” Seattle Times 1998 headlines• “The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners.

I’m not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?” (John Rocker, 1999)

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•White privilege is also…

•As a white professor to have legitimacy when talking about race

•While professors of color are often, if not always, perceived as complaining

•As a white professor, I have no personal experiences of discrimination but my words seem to carry more value than the words of professor of color

•White students might become more receptive

•Whiteness carries legitimacy

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• All racial categories are by definition social relations of power

•Within this system of racial stratification, being white typically affords a disproportionate share of status, and greater relative access to the material resources that shape life chances

• It is for these reasons that white is defined as a form of property (Harris, 1993) that yields both tangible assets (land, job) and privileges (citizenship, social honor) to whites that are or have been denied to non-whites

• This is what Lipsitz calls “the possessive investment of whiteness”, not uniformly distributed among whites, but nonetheless passed down from one generation to the next

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KNOWLEDGE, IDEOLOGIES & NORMS (1)•Charles Gallagher

•White supremacy is a system of social and economic stratification where white became hegemonic through white cultural beliefs and practices

• Linnaeus and Blumenbach (18th century European “scientists”) fused cultural bias, religious dogma, and ethnocentrism with the inferior behavioral and psychological traits of non-European human populations to create a hierarchy

• Not surprisingly, the “civilized” white race was situated on the upper reaches of this hierarchy• Blumenbach chose the word Caucasian to represent the “white”

race because he felt that “the women of the Caucasus region in Russia were the most beautiful in all Europe” (Smedley)

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KNOWLEDGE, IDEOLOGIES & NORMS (2)

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KNOWLEDGE, IDEOLOGIES & NORMS (4)•According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) between1980 and 2008

• Blacks were disproportionately represented as both homicide victims and offenders. The victimization rate for blacks (27.8/100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5/100,000).

• The offending rate for blacks (34.4/100,000) was almost 8 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5/100,000).

• In 2008, the homicide victimization rate for blacks (19.6 homicides per 100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for whites (3.3 homicides per 100,000)

• 84% of white victims were killed by whites and 93% of black victims were killed by blacks in 2009 (Dept. of Justice)

•The myth and associated fear of "black on black" crime is sold as a legitimate, mainstream descriptive and becomes American status quo. "The term 'black-on-black violence' is a slander against the majority of law-abiding black Americans, rich and poor, who get painted by this broad and crude brush."

• Imagine the police saying they were investigating an incident of white-on-white violence• How would it be received?

• Whites are responsible for the vast majority of violent crimes (in actual numbers, not rates).

• With respect to aggravated assault, whites led blacks 2-1 in arrests; in forcible-rape cases, whites led all racial and ethnic groups by more than 2-1. And in larceny theft, whites led blacks, again, more than 2-1. (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0325.pdf)25


•Theodore Allen

•The knowledge, ideologies, norms, and practices of whiteness and the accompanying “white race” were reinforced in the U.S. as part of a system of racial oppression

•Whiteness, as knowledge, ideology, norms, and practices, determines•Who qualifies as “white” and maintains a race and class

hierarchy in which the group of people who qualify as white disproportionately control power and resource

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DEFINING WHITENESS THROUGH IMMIGRATION POLICY (1)

• In 1790, the Federal government ruled that the right to become a naturalized citizen was reserved to “free white persons”

• In 1870, in response to the granting of citizenship to freed Black lifetime bond laborers within the U.S., a new category for those eligible for naturalized citizenship was created -immigrants from Africa or those of African descent

•Over the years, until racial restrictions were removed in 1952, the court was repeatedly called on to determine who was white as applicants of various ethnic and racial background requested citizenship as “free white persons”

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• In Ozawa v. United States (1922), the Court relied on common knowledge and scientific evidence to exclude a Japanese petitioner

• He was not of the type “popularly known as the Caucasian race,” thereby invoking both common knowledge (“popularly known”) and science (“the Caucasian race”)

• Science and popular knowledge worked hand in hand to exclude the applicant from citizenship

• In United States v. Thind (1923), Bhagat Singh Thind, relied on the Court's earlier linkage of “Caucasian” with “white” to argue for his own naturalization

• Science and common knowledge diverged, complicating a case that should have been easy under Ozawa's straightforward rule of racial specification

• Reversed course, the Court repudiated its earlier equation and rejected any role for science in racial assignments

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•Haney Lopez

• Immigration and naturalization policies determined who was in the U.S., which in turn determined who was available to make up an “American”

• Laws and social pressures also influenced marriage•Anti-miscegenation laws

•Other laws affected marriage as well

• Example: Until 1931 a woman lost her citizenship if she married a man ineligible for citizenship

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•Segregation, laws restricting and regulating marriages between white people and people of color, as well as immigration and naturalization policies worked together to determine which physical characteristics went into the mix we see as white

•The original immigration restrictions are reflected in today's assumptions regarding who is an American and who is a “foreigner”

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COLORBLINDNESS (1)• Individual whites become “raceless” (belief that race does not exist)

when they deny that whiteness or European racial heritage is of any relevance•One would think that this “colorblind” (not seeing race) approach

prefigures good interracial relations, but actually, this “racelessness” (lack of understanding about race) is anything but “colorblindness” (treating everybody equal) because many of the same whites definitely don't see people of color as raceless (having no race).•A “raceless” identity is the basis for whites seeing themselves as the

“normative” humanity free from race or ethnicity, and non-whites as abnormal humans with race and ethnicity

•We set whiteness as the norm that others have to measure themselves against

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COLORBLINDNESS (2)

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COLORBLINDNESS (3)•The idea of a “raceless” society is based on the notion of meritocracy

• It does not take into account the existence of the myth of meritocracy

• Not using the social construction of race to analyze societal problems is to refuse to analyze one of the major factors of structural inequality

• Discrimination will not disappear with a “raceless” society

• i.e. France is one particular examples where race is not talked about but where racial discrimination is very much real

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COLORBLINDNESS (4)•Rodriguez (2000, p.8)

• “The rhetoric of colorblindness enables Whites to erase from consciousness not only the history of racism and how that history plays itself out economically, politically, socially, and culturally in the present; such an insidious discourse also dissuades both the individual and institutions from engaging in antiracist strategies for dismantling white privilege and for reworking the terrain of whiteness”

• “With [colorblindness], we are told that all people are the same under the skin and that we all have the same equal chances of making it. Therefore, the 'logic' continues, if a minority person fails to achieve, then the blame lies solely with the individual”

Rodriguez, Nelson M. "Projects of Whiteness in a Critical Pedagogy." in Dismantling White Privilege: Pedagogy, Politics, and Whiteness,by Nelson M. Rodriguez and Leila E. Villaverde, eds., New York: Peter Lang, 2000

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COLORBLINDNESS (5)•Denman-Sparks & Phillips (1997, p. 52)

•“Colorblindness justifies withdrawal from social action by assuming that racism will cease to exist when people stop noticing racial and cultural differences”

•“Colorblindness obscures the reality of institutional racism by attributing the source of the problem to seeing differences rather than to a system that denies certain racial groups equitable economic and political gain”

Derman-Sparks, Louise, and Carol Brunson Phillips. Teaching/Learning anti-Racism: A Developmental Approach. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1997

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DOG-WHISTLE POLITICS (1)

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•Three racisms vs Strategic racism

•The racism-as-hate model

•Most common understanding of racism emphasizing discrete acts of bigotry by malicious individuals•Example: skinheads, hate groups, or individuals spewing racial epithets towards different groups

•Structural racism

•Conception of racism emphasizing structures rather than individuals. Racism is woven into society’s fabric•Example: wealth disparities across racial/ethnic groups

•Implicit bias

•Unconscious bias constitutes the main rival to the focus on intentional animus. It stresses that almost all of us draw on racial ideas at the implicit level long before our conscious minds have a chance to recognize the errors. •Example: Implicit bias test

•However, while we might hardwired to assign meaning to perceived differences, we are not automatically programmed to to think in terms of race (the unconscious is largely social)


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•Strategic racism

• It refers to purposeful efforts to use racial animus as leverage to gain material wealth, political power, or heightened social standings

•Example: Convict Leasing•13th amendment reads: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except

as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States”•It was a way for southerners to regain some control and save face after

the massive system of labor exploitation was shattered with the abolition of slavery.•It allowed the South to rebuild a criminal justice system around

imprisoning blacks with fines for minor infractions turning into jail time.•The main point was NOT to fill jail cells but to fuel a new form of

involuntary servitude


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•Strategic racism

•Example: Convict Leasing•The heart of the system laid in leasing out convicts as

laborers•Governments and private enterprise benefited handsomely

•At one point, Alabama early nearly 12% of its total revenue from the leasing of convicts to private businesses

•Convict leasing recreated a facsimile of slavery directly, with convict laborers held and exploited under the terror of the lash in fields, factories and mines.

•Convict leasing ended after WWII when the federal government exerted its power to end the renewed enslavement of African-Americans


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•Strategic racism

•Example: Convict Leasing•Spite (hate) alone did not do that•Hate did not create new structures and rationales for the exploitation of

black labor•While unconscious notions of white superiority and black depravity no

doubt played a role, convict leasing was not the product of anyone’s identity•Unconscious minds did not elaborate new criminal laws, nor devise a new

form of chattel slavery, not was convict leasing a mere continuation of past structures. This was not inertia but purposeful effort

•Convict leasing was a carefully planned shift in the machinery of labor extraction•Today’s dominant conceptions of racism do not give us a way to fathom this

process


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•Strategic racism

•Racial hate cannot explain the origins of racial hate. Notions of race were invented, and racial hatred stimulated to justify exploitation.

•Reagan’s operative Lee Atwater was quoted as saying:•“ You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1967 you can’t say “nigger”-that hurst you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously, maybe that is part of it. I am not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying “we want to cut taxes and we want to cut this.” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “nigger, nigger.” So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.”


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•Contemporary language of strategic racism

•“welfare queens”•Tax payers (doers) vs. tax eaters (takers)•free loaders•entitlements•“illegal immigrants”•the wall

•teen pregnancy

•war on drugs•terrorists•Obamacare


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RACISM WITHOUT RACISTS (1)•Bonilla-Silva explains how people use colorblindness to subconsciously reinforce racism

•He argues that if whites are truly colorblind then they should be well integrated with minorities.

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• However, this is not the case

• Whites rarely interact with minorities in their daily lives

• “White habitus” – This is how whites tend to only deal with other whites, reinforcing white standards or “white privilege” within America’s contemporary society

RACISM WITHOUT RACISTS (2)•He argues that there are dominant frameworks that promote colorblind racism (or a new racial ideology)

• Abstract liberalism

• Naturalization

• Cultural racism

• Minimization of racism

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ABSTRACT LIBERALISM• It involves using ideas associated with political liberalism (e.g. “equal

opportunity,” the idea that force should not be used to achieve social policy) and economic liberalism (e.g. choice, individualism) in an abstract manner to explain racial matters

• The idea of EO was vehemently opposed right after the civil right movements, and whites are now using it to oppose affirmative action• It is a way of denying severe under-representation in education and in the

workplace

• It is also based on the idea that we are all “individuals” making our own “choices” so we can choose to send our kids to segregated schools

• It ignores institutional policies behind de facto segregation

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NATURALIZATION• It is a frame that allows white to explain away racial

phenomena by suggesting they are natural occurrences

• Whites claim that “segregation” is natural because people from all backgrounds tend to “gravitate towards likeness”

• Or that the number of white friends they have is just because of “the way things are”

• Those ideas contribute to the myth of nonracialism (or racelessness) and contradict colorblindness because after all minorities do it too•It is almost a natural biological thing

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CULTURAL RACISM (1)•It is a frame that relies on culturally based arguments such as

“Mexicans do not put much emphasis on education” or “blacks have too many babies” to explain the standing of minorities in society

•Culture has replaced biology which contributes to colorblind racism or racism without racists

• Example: “I believe in morality. I believe in ethics. I believe in hard work. I believe in old values. I don’t believe in handouts… so the whole welfare system falls into that category. The idea of 14 year-old kids getting pregnant … is absurd and ridiculous! And that’s what causing the country to go downhill.”

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CULTURAL RACISM (2)• From www.saveourstate.org

• Mexifornia: California is turning into a Third-World cesspool

• From the Minuteman Project website• Future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling

cultures with no common bond to hold them together, and a certain guarantee of the death of this nation as a harmonious “melting pot.” The result: political, economic and social mayhem

• Quote from a college student interviewed for Bonilla Silva’s book• “Just from, like, looking at the black people that I’ve met in my classes and the few

that I knew before college, not like they’re - I don’t want to say waiting for a handout, but to some extent, that’s kind of what I’m hinting at. Like, almost like they feel like they were discriminated against hundreds of years ago, now what are you gonna give me? You know, or maybe it’s just their background, that they’ve never, like maybe they’re the first generation to be in college, so they feel like just that is enough for them”

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CULTURAL RACISM (3)

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MINIMIZATION OF RACISM• It is a frame (similar to the fixed fallacy/ahistorical fallacy)

that suggests discrimination is no longer a central factor affecting minorities’ life chances (“it’s better now than in the past” or “there is discrimination, but there are plenty of jobs out there”)

• Quote from a college student interviewed for Bonilla Silva’s book• When asked about discrimination in jobs, Janet answered: “I would say

that’s a bunch of crap. I mean, if they’re qualified, they’ll hire you and if you are not qualified, then you don’t get the job. It’s the same way with, once you get the job, if you are qualified for a promotion, you’ll get the promotion. It’s the same way with whites, blacks, Asians, whatever. If you do the job, you’ll get the job”

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EVIDENCE• Pager’s 2001 study’s main findings

• While criminal record remains a significant barrier to employment White applicants with felony convictions were just as likely, if not more likely, to get called back for a job than black applicants without a criminal history

• Pager & Western’s 2006 study’s main findings• New York employers were twice as likely to prefer whites over blacks for lower-wage

jobs

• New York employers did not view black job applicants as less skilled, as other researchers have found. Instead, New York employers tended to rule out black applicants by holding them to a higher standard

• New York employers were also more likely to steer black workers into lower jobs, and out of jobs involving customer service

• Employers were more open to Latinos than blacks. Latinos received fewer callbacks and job offers than whites

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THE RACIALIZED PICKET LINE

White Workers, Conflict, and Power in the Southern California Supermarket

Strike(2004-2005)

(by Jake B. Alimahomed-Wilson, CSULB)

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WHY THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SUPERMARKET STRIKE?

•Racial/Gender diversity among strikers

•70,000 plus workers on strike

•900 stores affected by strike

•Loss of over $1 Billion in sales

•Largest strike by grocery workers in US history

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METHODS•Since he wanted to examine the evolution of White workers’ racial consciousness, he chose to interview White strikers

•25 in-depth semi-structured interviews with White strikers

•Ethnographic observation at 16 strike locations in Eastern Los Angeles County

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CRIMINALITY AND SCABS• “At the Ralph’s across the street, they have people

who just got out of prison working there now. They all came from Folsom Prison or the one around here. At least that’s what I was told by the Ralph’s picketers. I am just trying to get the word out since they have no background checks or drug tests for these animals they call workers. You just gotta’ show up and you get hired. They just got out of prison…it is scary who they will hire to keep us out of work” (Sam)

• “Many of them [scabs] are the ghetto type. You know, your dirtier elements of society” (Max)

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SCABS & THE CONSTRUCTION OF RACIALIZED MASCULINITIES

• “I know of another store where we were told that it looks like they [managers] went to the nearest prison and got the nastiest looking people and bussed them in. Their new head checker scab at this store [in Diamond Bar] is a ‘cholo’-type and has ‘trigger finger’ tattooed on his hand. The scabs look like they are gang members. Many of the little old ladies in Pasadena are afraid to go into the stores. It’s a scary bunch they have in there” (Janet)

• “They get to wear Levis on the job. They all wear their pants all baggy and can barely keep them from falling off. They probably have one hand working and one hand in the cash register. They don’t look like classy workers. They look like homeboys off the street. They have no concept of proper attire and class” (Anne)

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“MODEL MINORITY” CUSTOMERS•“They [Asian Americans] got everything they want here. I mean,

they don’t give a fuck about us or the strike. They all own their businesses and drive around in their fancy cars, they don’t have our values” (Drew)

•“Most Asians don’t even know what a union is, let alone care. [Has your local attempted to do outreach to the Asian community members who shop at this store?] There is no point. They don’t want to hear anything about the strike. I don’t think I have ever turned a single Asian around. [Marcus then turns to his fellow strikers and asks:] ‘Have you guys ever turned an Asian around?’ I sure as hell haven’t. They just don’t care. They come to our country and get all of these loans to start their own businesses. They ain’t worried about you.” (Marcus)

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WHITENESS & WORKING CLASS AUTHENTICITY• “When I came back to California I noticed that they let in a lot of

immigrants, in a short period of time. I feel that this is part of the issue that explains why the majority of scabs are minorities. It’s because they have nothing else. They are just going to go for what they can get. As Americans they don’t care for us. If you look at the statistics in California, it shows that the State is being run and ruled over us by minorities. The Hispanics are taking over all across California. It is true in my neighborhood as well. My parents lived there for forty years and now we are treated like we are the illegal aliens. I was raised with a family that had family values, that’s why I would never scab. I just want to say to them: ‘hello! I am the American here, I was born here!’ So this is my own personal opinion. This is why the majority of scabs and new employees are minorities” (Lisa)

• “I don’t think a lot of minorities understand the issues because all they are out for is to take and not to give. American workers are becoming a thing of the past, it is very unfortunate….If all of them would have stood with us at the picket line, it would have probably been over by now” (Anne)

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Example of whiteness and colorblindness

October 18, 2012

Here’s a new sign one of Royce’s supporters has put up around the district:

This is what Jay Chen said when he saw it:

“Yes, we were as confused as you when we first saw this sign in La Habra Heights yesterday. Only U.S. citizens can run for public office, so what are these folks getting at? Are they taking a jab at my birthplace city, Kalamazoo? I know it’s a funny sounding name, but it’s no worse than Honolulu, and it’s not like anyone ever gets worked up about people being born in that city.”

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WHITENESS & · PDF fileWHITENESS & COLORBLINDNESS ... •“The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. ... the inferior behavioral and psychological traits