Oh, is that how it works? Like, if a racist says a bunch of stuff about “blackness”, somebody else can rush in to assuage the concerns of any given black person with a quick, oh, gosh, no, I’m sure he didn’t mean to condemn you, since, ah, you seem to be one of the good ones; his remarks on “blackness” weren’t meant to condemn all black men, only to condemn the millions who are problematic, see?
These are complex and nuanced issues. It can take some effort to understand concepts like these that Coates utilizes.
Cite?
Nobody gets 100% of any large group’s vote, especially in a two-party system.
There wasn’t an “America” more than a few centuries ago. Before that the world was dominated by the British Empire and colonialism. You think Europeans viewed people in China, India and Africa as “equals”?
How about Columbus and the indigenous North Americans?
The way I interpret “whiteness” as described by the article is as sort of affluent Anglo-Saxon/Germanic Republican old money elitism. The sort that values family ties back to the Mayflower or European aristocracy. Modern examples can be seen in the South with their cotillions and leisurely celebration of Antebellum culture as well as in Northern Old Money Wall Street culture (think of the Duke brothers in Trading Places). It is a concept that implicitly implies a cultural superiority, which also serves to justify their large concentration of wealth. This particular “whiteness” is specific to American culture, but is just an extension of racial, ethic and class prejudices stretching back for centuries. And you are correct that it has not only harmed non-whites, but also large groups of whites that include Irish, Italian, Jews, Slavs and Hispanics.
The term, however, is still very racist and offensive. It still implies the Evil White Man is responsible for all of societies ills and paints all white people with the same brush.
I’m sure they didn’t. And I think aspects of the concept of whiteness can be traced back to these eras and even further back.
But the whiteness being discussed here is more a product of colonial/early America – as I said in the OP (with cites), in colonial America (early 17th century, at least), lower class white people and black people actually got along reasonably well. Interracial marriage was legal and, while uncommon, wasn’t as unheard of as it would have been in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 1640s and 1650s, there were multiple wealthy African families in Virginia. In the 1690s, Virginia ordered that all free blacks be deported. The thrust is that relations between whites and blacks in America were deliberately made worse by those in power, through laws and cultural practices, thus creating a sense of “whiteness” that didn’t exist before in that form.
I don’t find it racist and offensive. To me it’s just the best descriptor for the artificial social construct that deliberately made race relations much, much worse, to the detriment of black people (and other non-white people, to varying degrees), but also poor white people, in/around the 17th and 18th centuries. We could just as easily call it “whiteness/blackness” or “whiteness/blackness/redness/other-ness”, but that would be much more clunky.
It was much, much better to be black in Virginia in the early 17th century than the early 19th. There’s a reason for that, and it was deliberate. It wasn’t an accident or a coincidence.
Before colonialism, most Europeans had no reason to even think about that. Those areas were either unknown, or something like equal trading partners. The idea of race-based social strata only started to emerge with the idea that these places could be conquered and colonized. Before these peoples were exploitable, they were just the “exotic other”, not “nonwhite”
Of course Europe had been “othering” their own people for exploitation for some time, but using religion, language, and ethnicity for that purpose.
When Europe set about colonizing the Americas, they quickly realized they would need to conquer and enslave the indigenous populations, but that didn’t square well with the fig leaf of “spreading Christianity”. To resolve that dilemma, they decided it was OK to enslave people who weren’t Christian because they were uncivilized, unchurched, and just plain different from Europeans. So the first class of labor exploitation was non-Christian people, who were the indigenous. Note that “whiteness” was still not in the picture yet.
A few years later it became clear that indigenous slave labor wouldn’t scale to the economic production that the land could produce. They could not be captured, held, and controlled in sufficient numbers. Enter the African slave trade. Here, slaves were kidnapped and held in incredibly large numbers to satisfy the demand for labor. To resolve this conflict of idea, the idea of “whiteness” was born. Europeans were white, everybody else was not, and this gave them authority to oppress them in whatever ways were deemed necessary to protect whiteness. Here is where the indigenous people were relabeled from “heathen, non-Christian” to “not White”.
A couple of things happened here. First, as the kidnapped Africans converted to Christianity, the religion-based rationale for slavery and conquest collapsed. Next, the ruling class realized that if the European laborers and African laborers ever bonded in solidarity, the price of labor would skyrocket and control of the land was lost.
So that is how the concept of “whiteness” arose from the ashes of the “civilized Christian” myth. It was the last-ditch intellectual rationalization of why European rulers should treat everyone else like shit, and why the European colonist workers tolerated this system though slave labor depressed the wages and living conditions of free laborers.
So there is no “before colonialism” as we are thinking of concepts of whiteness and its invention. It arose contemporaneously with, and because of, the strengthening of colonial demand for cheap labor and social control.
Just to add to iiandyiiii’s reply to this: Before the rise of modern “scientific racism”, Europeans were definitely prejudiced against other cultures (and in many cases vice versa), but not so much against other skin colors. Early European explorers cheerfully threw around terms like “savages” and “bestial” for the various tribal cultures they encountered, but without taking it for granted that every person with a similar complexion would be necessarily “savage” or “bestial” due to innate racial characteristics.
I disagree, and as a white person, I don’t find the term “whiteness” offensive either. ISTM quite clear that it refers to a particular cultural construction of white racial identity, not to actual white people as a group. “Whiteness” in this sense implies ideas like “socially superior to non-white”, “not performing menial services for non-whites” (remember the whole indignant kerfuffle about the white Marine holding an umbrella over Obama? that was a whiteness-violation issue), “sexual/racial purity of whites”, “white humanity as opposed to non-white animalism”, etc. etc. That’s not the same as claiming that all white people actually espouse those ideas.
Similarly, the term “femininity” refers to a particular cultural construction of femaleness (dainty, pretty, weak, helpless, tender-hearted, subservient, likes pink, etc.) rather than to actual women as a group. It’s not an insult to me as a woman if someone criticizes prescriptive ideals of “femininity” as sexist and unhealthy, and it’s not an insult to me as a white person if someone criticizes the cultural role of “whiteness” as racist and unhealthy.
We can certainly talk about “blackness” as a cultural construction of racial identity without being racist or denigrating actual black people as a group, and in fact sociologists do this all the time.
When a racist talks about “blackness”, though, they are usually doing so in the sense of making claims about the alleged essential nature of actual black people. The racist’s whole point is to assert that “blackness” is not a cultural construct but describes what black people innately, inevitably are like.
No, we can’t talk about blackness as a cultural construct. Because anyone who talks about blackness as a cultural construct is really talking about blackness that isn’t a cultural construct.
Regards,
Shodan
Can’t tell if this is snark or serious. And either way, I can’t figure out what point you’re trying to make.
You mean, racists gonna racist even when they try to hide it under the pretense of being all “sociological”? Well, that is all too frequently true.
Nonetheless, lots of people are successfully talking about blackness as a cultural construct, in sociology journals, popular media, and everywhere else.
I agree that anybody who has a history of expressing racist opinions is probably going to be viewed with suspicion if they suddenly claim to be just talking about “blackness as a cultural construct”, though.
It’s serious.
My point is that any (white) person who talks about blackness will instantly be accused of saying that black people are inherently inferior, particularly on the SDMB.
Thus we can’t talk about blackness as a cultural construct.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not sure if that’s true. I think you might be talking about criticisms of black culture, black family structures, or similar – if so, that’s not the “blackness” that’s being discussed in this context.
Well, to know whether or not that’s true, we would have to see the responses to all white persons who have talked about blackness. Looking forward to seeing your cites.
Any person? Instantly? Wow, sounds like you have a ton of examples ready at hand to demonstrate where this happened outside of your own imagination.
But I’m afraid you’re gonna have to move the goalposts back to their original position of blackness as cultural construct vs. “that’s just how they are.”
After arguing against iiandyiiii for several pages, I’ll take this opportunity to agree with him. The idea that Coates is “condemning all white men” in that article is absurd.
In what way is criticism of black culture not a discussion of blackness as a cultural construct? Is black culture not a cultural construct?
Regards,
Shodan
He said “blackness in this context”, not “blackness in any context”. In this context, it is, simply, being a black person (particularly in the US), regardless of any cultural attributes one might assign to that person.
I just read an article at Vox titled “I used to lead tours at a plantation. You won’t believe the questions I got about slavery.” I’ll think I’ll post this in every thread where some Dopers pretend that racism or Confederacy worship is no longer a serious problem.
Often when white people believe themselves to be criticizing “black culture,” they are actually just criticizing the effects of white supremacy, which is the opposite of criticizing blackness–it is reinforcing the white cultural concept of blackness.
Most people can see this well enough if they turn the clock back a century. If you read white criticisms of “black culture” from 1917, you see all the same stuff you see today if you turn on Fox News or go to Breitbart: black people are lazy, dumb, sexually aggressive, criminals who cannot keep their families together. For most people, looking back on those criticisms from 1917, it’s obvious that those white people aren’t making cultural criticisms as we normally understand the term. What they are doing is reinforcing racial castes using the traditional tropes associated with whiteness and blackness. They are looking at the fact that white supremacy led to vagrancy laws that arrested black men for being unemployed (or even just not working on Saturdays) and forced them to work for free on chain gangs and concluding that black people are criminals. They are looking at white male paranoia about white female chastity and purity and concluding that a black teenager talking to a white girl is a sign of sexual immorality. They are looking at black schoolkids given a fraction of the resources of white school kids and concluding that the difference is their race.
But for some reason, even many of the people who can see clearly when you turn the clock back are blinded when the identical thing happens in 2017. In their eyes, the 2017 critics who point to the effects of white supremacy are subtle sociologists making erudite claims about “black culture” instead of fragile racists shoring up their own identities. These people who imagine themselves cultural critics point to too many missing black fathers without mention of where all those black men went and why. They point to high murder rates without asking why they are high or how long they have been high. They complain about school dropout rates without ever once asking themselves what causes black teens to leave high school at higher rates than white teens, because they assume they know the answers. It’s all there to be found in their idea of blackness, of course.
It is not inevitable that people who think there is something in black culture or black identity is harmful are labeled racists. It is inevitable–and fully justified- when such criticisms are made without any good faith effort to divide evidence of culture from evidence of the effects of white supremacy, or when the critique identifies something unique to black culture (say, misogyny in popular music) that is anything-but unique.