I’ll be called a racist after this one. It won’t be the first time. In fact, people who are extremely close to me have dropped the R-word on me more than once. I think that is a huge misnomer. I also think that it often follows me pointing out racial realities such as what I’m laying out right now. Today my concern is the end of white expansionism and the effect that it having on the idea of whiteness, moving it from a position of ubiquity closer to the feeling one has when the walls are closing in on you.
To understand my position you have to first grasp the concept that ‘white’ was never intended to be a catch all phrase. It was never meant to induce a feeling of fear or conjure images of polo shirts and khakis. It was, on the other hand, intend to be a safe word. It was intended to be reflective of a higher class and a limited order of individuals. White was a refuge–a reflection of the ‘Us’ side of us vs. them. Black, in contrast, had a more specific delineation, which I plan to discuss in another post. I have numerous points of evidence to support this. Basically, White was something to be proud of while other cultural labels were not. In my time studying sociology this is one of the things I found to be really interesting and eye opening. However, in the ten minutes I have to put this out I have to rely on one well known and very simple piece of evidence: The Irish.
Irish was separate from White for a long time. It wasn’t until the middle of the 1900’s that Irish people became classified as white. Even then the joining was a response to the understanding that these groups (Irish, German, Polish, French, Dutch, etc. all shared a common bond, look, and enemy). The joining of forces created the white diaspora and helped the super group remain the dominant racial force in the American system of stratification.
Yep, American. We created this sense of whiteness in ways that were not common elsewhere. In fact, in pockets of our country being Jewish is considered white whereas it is not considered so in several other countries. While the idea of white is not a purely American construct, it is reinforced by the white American diaspora, often at the expense of cultural individuality. In other words, we reduce people to white, black, hispanic, etc. and in doing so ignore the individual cultural history that formed that subsection of people. All of this brings me (belatedly) to my point:
There really aren’t that many more sub groups to add to the white category. Meanwhile, a host of ‘non-white’ ethnic groups are sprouting up and demanding notice. The result? It creates the illusion that whitehood is under attack. Is it though? Is it really? Or is the growth of other groups suddenly clouding the skies with forms of understanding and awareness different from what we had become used to from this particular hegemony. Moreover that hegemony is disappearing, replaced by something that looks a lot more diverse. It is no wonder the idea of whiteness seems under attack.