In sum, here are my major "take-aways" from the election in terms of what I can do:
1) Although many factors lay behind the election of a person patently unfit to be President, one of them certainly is fear of the unknown or of the stranger. Maintaining friendships with a wide range of people--and seeking to bring diverse people together--can ease those fears.
2) Much of the electorate feels disrespected by liberal or radical intellectuals--and that is partly by design. Educated white people, especially, commonly distance ourselves from our less educated counterparts by mocking their values and intellects, and they have gotten the message. This sort of distancing, this assertion of superiority, often happens unconsciously, I think, but it is no less damaging for that.
3) A point related to #2, above: I need to remember that people I disagree with have things to teach me, access to truths I have not learned. My knowledge and understanding will always be partial.
None of the above means that I or others should stay silent or passive in our politics. But all of us need to own our part of the current dilemma for us to have the best chance of working our way out of it.
Like a person falling from an airplane without a parachute, most people in the U.S. have had a great ride since World War II, especially. The ground, it appears, is rapidly approaching.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Friday, December 9, 2016
How Did This Happen, Part III
One of the more striking and, for many of us, disturbing developments of the last campaign was the emergence of what is commonly referred to as "White Nationalism," or, more generally, white identity politics.
This growing attraction to or assertion of a white identity is the product of several themes. Part of it is simply demographics, namely that in more and more parts of the U.S. white people no longer constitute a majority. It also reflects a sort of longing for the sort of identity that people of color seem to possess--or at least that white people think they possess. I've run across many liberals who in fact seem to regret being white, as whiteness is associated with not having a culture or an identity.
In academia, being white is in fact commonly interpreted as a sort of mark of shame, or at least being very uncool. A few months ago I read a book proposal on American identities that essentially identified whiteness with privilege and oppression.
I have two general problems with that assertion or assumption. First, it seems to be a sort of (albeit subtle) form of white privilege to assert that only white people are capable of dominating and exploiting others. To assert that white people are more evil than other groups is to at least imply that we are more clever than the rest, that we are the ones with agency. Second, and on a more practical level, many white students will resent the assertion or implication that whiteness can be reduced to unearned privileges and domination. As one pundit recently observed, white people are apt to vote for the party that is not calling them racists.
President-Elect Trump was very skilled at speaking to the fears and resentments of white people across the educational spectrum. "Make American Great Again" was, for many people, code for "Make American White Again"--or at least that America would be "restored" to the sort of place where white men, especially, called the shots and where their cultural references (from "Merry Christmas!" to the Confederate flag) were enshrined as norms.
Part of what progressive-minded people who are concerned about racism and other forms of prejudice need to do, it seems to me, is to find a way to talk about race, ethnicity, and identity in a way that does not simply reduce whiteness to oppressiveness. When I think of my heritage, what my parents and their parents handed down to me, certainly racism is part of the package. But far more explicit and influential, I think, was a ferocious work ethic.
Of course the problem here is that when white people celebrate their ancestors' work ethic, for example, we commonly go on to assert that our work ethic makes us better than everyone else. White Nationalism asserts that only white people have made substantial contributions to the U.S. or to civilization more broadly defined. Some assert that only white people can even do an honest day's work. This is not simply insensitive; it's patently false.
Can white people build a sense of identity, of culture, that is not tied up in disparaging the cultures of others?
This growing attraction to or assertion of a white identity is the product of several themes. Part of it is simply demographics, namely that in more and more parts of the U.S. white people no longer constitute a majority. It also reflects a sort of longing for the sort of identity that people of color seem to possess--or at least that white people think they possess. I've run across many liberals who in fact seem to regret being white, as whiteness is associated with not having a culture or an identity.
In academia, being white is in fact commonly interpreted as a sort of mark of shame, or at least being very uncool. A few months ago I read a book proposal on American identities that essentially identified whiteness with privilege and oppression.
I have two general problems with that assertion or assumption. First, it seems to be a sort of (albeit subtle) form of white privilege to assert that only white people are capable of dominating and exploiting others. To assert that white people are more evil than other groups is to at least imply that we are more clever than the rest, that we are the ones with agency. Second, and on a more practical level, many white students will resent the assertion or implication that whiteness can be reduced to unearned privileges and domination. As one pundit recently observed, white people are apt to vote for the party that is not calling them racists.
President-Elect Trump was very skilled at speaking to the fears and resentments of white people across the educational spectrum. "Make American Great Again" was, for many people, code for "Make American White Again"--or at least that America would be "restored" to the sort of place where white men, especially, called the shots and where their cultural references (from "Merry Christmas!" to the Confederate flag) were enshrined as norms.
Part of what progressive-minded people who are concerned about racism and other forms of prejudice need to do, it seems to me, is to find a way to talk about race, ethnicity, and identity in a way that does not simply reduce whiteness to oppressiveness. When I think of my heritage, what my parents and their parents handed down to me, certainly racism is part of the package. But far more explicit and influential, I think, was a ferocious work ethic.
Of course the problem here is that when white people celebrate their ancestors' work ethic, for example, we commonly go on to assert that our work ethic makes us better than everyone else. White Nationalism asserts that only white people have made substantial contributions to the U.S. or to civilization more broadly defined. Some assert that only white people can even do an honest day's work. This is not simply insensitive; it's patently false.
Can white people build a sense of identity, of culture, that is not tied up in disparaging the cultures of others?
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