- “No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.” — James Baldwin
---
Measure, measure, measure.
We learn to measure first.
We spend our days measuring. And when we count we start at one.
---
Every number after is in relation to one.
Two is one after one.
Three is two after one. And so on.
Every child knows that one is the beginning from which all other numbers arise.
---
And every child knows that one is Whiteness.
---
The beginning.
---
In the beginning there was Whiteness. This is the glittering starting point. This is The Default. This is what we measure everything else against.
I think the author is stretching his premise pretty much constantly throughout the entire article. "To Lin, we (brown people) are lesser beings — not inherently so, of course — but because the burden of our struggle has exhausted its brave and noble warriors so fully, it prevents them from considering existential issues and experiencing the real, larger life that white people are living. " No. To Lin, people living in poverty focus on parts of life Lin isn't interested in. It just so happens that in this world, white people happen to be less affected by poverty. White people in poverty and in war are in exactly the same boat and Lin doesn't suggest otherwise. "Sadly, Lin has failed to see that he is an Asian-American man and somehow – somehow – his mind has managed to ponder “big ideas.” If Lin is an Asian-American man and Lin manages to ask, “How do I know if the universe is meaningless?” his own existence disproves his theory. And his theory proves the existence of The Default." Lin's theory has nothing to do with this. Lin's theory is that people associate race with certain issues and Lin doesn't want to muddle up the themes of his writing by having readers trying to continue applying those associations. He doesn't make his character the "default" of white in order to do this, he simply doesn't apply any race to his characters. The author of this article seems to think Lin's characters are white for some reason. 'Or when analysts say things like, “Without blacks and Hispanics, the majority of Americans voted for Romney.” The assumption is that white voters, white politicians, white pundits are more real and are the only ones who can present objective solutions and analyses, since they are not burdened by self-interest.' So there are only blacks, Hispanics, and whites? If you exclude blacks and Hispanics you also somehow automatically exclude Asians and native Americans? "He wants to be accepted into black culture (unfortunately, only shown in “Spring Breakers” as drug culture)." No, he wants to be accepted into street culture. He DOES want to be accepted into drug culture. It's not 'black culture' when people of every race who grow up in those environments end up behaving that way or because poverty affects people of color more significantly in this country, it just seems like another example of the author of the article's focus on race biasing his experience of the world. The article seems to be more about the author than about people in general, but maybe I'm just out of touch.
I think you're out of touch and actually being an example of what the author was talking about. No, you cant be here in 2014 and say "it just so happens white people are less affected by poverty."
I believe I spent the majority of my primary school education learning about how white people were going around the planet conquering shit and setting up society as we know it for the past 1000 years.
How to a black kid in the South Bronx [or any other poor urban area] surrounded by real poverty turns on a TV to see images of white people living in the suburbs and all the cool toys have white people and rarely anyone that looks like me.
How every image of "wealth" and "middle class" is peddled to you as white suburbia and the main goal of your life is to attain their lifestyle. His characters are white because white is the default and removing any sign of ethnicity or non white culture makes it safe to assume white. Look at the response to the casting of certain characters for movies in recent years. Characters with no predefined cultural identity were simply assumed to be white. Even in my own mind, I struggle to read a book and not automatically assume the character is white solely based on the actions being undertaken and the description of their lifestyle falling in line with what I was shown to be "white." Yes, that's what the narrative of this country says and thats the context in which it is used. How you even deny that when Fox News and "right wing conservative media machine" exists, I do not know. It would seem in my life experiences and news reports that I've consumed over the past 25 years that America has been spending quite some time associating street culture today with degenerate black and hispanic peoples. Rarely is the light shown on the degeneracy of poor white folk, which is a shame because they may really be the 2nd most abused group of people in America behind the white baby boomer population [ the people who this giant fear apparatus was built on] Parts that resonated with me the most: Dunham is correct that as an artist she has to write what she knows. But if what she knows is that white existence is a neutral, non-racial experience, she needs to learn something different. “What we achieve inwardly will change our outer reality,” wrote Plutarch.No. To Lin, people living in poverty focus on parts of life Lin isn't interested in. It just so happens that in this world, white people happen to be less affected by poverty. White people in poverty and in war are in exactly the same boat and Lin doesn't suggest otherwise.
Lin's theory has nothing to do with this. Lin's theory is that people associate race with certain issues and Lin doesn't want to muddle up the themes of his writing by having readers trying to continue applying those associations. He doesn't make his character the "default" of white in order to do this, he simply doesn't apply any race to his characters. The author of this article seems to think Lin's characters are white for some reason.
So there are only blacks, Hispanics, and whites? If you exclude blacks and Hispanics you also somehow automatically exclude Asians and native Americans?
No, he wants to be accepted into street culture. He DOES want to be accepted into drug culture. It's not 'black culture' when people of every race who grow up in those environments end up behaving that way or because poverty affects people of color more significantly in this country, it just seems like another example of the author of the article's focus on race biasing his experience of the world.
White culture steals because it has no soul of its own. White people are fleeing Whiteness because they do not have a way to exist apart from their history of oppression. But in fleeing, they continue that history, continuing to be blind to the largest remaining system that reinforces inequality. One which they continue to benefit from. The Default. The idea that white people are ‘regular’ and everyone else is something different. Admiring that “something different” as better is still reinforcing the fact that it is adjacent to the real thing.
When Dunham falls back on expressing just her personal experience, she is denying that her personal experience is an experience of whiteness. She has been duped into believing that her whiteness is background, that it is just “regular,” that it’s default. Only The Default could exist apart from any system of oppression. Only The Default is outside, with an objective view of race. And if you see yourself as The Default, a No. 1, you certainly are contributing to systems of inequality. And in supporting a system where the same stories are told from the same points of view you continue to support The Default and you benefit from it.
White liberals, on the other hand, are so afraid of claiming any white identity (for terror of feeling white pride or appearing to deny their white privilege) that they also reinforce the idea that whiteness is empty, nothing — that it’s a default. They act like they have no particular identity. And if you act like you don’t have any particular identity, you are “regular.” But white liberals end up feeling that pain of a lack of identity and they have to look to other cultures to find meaning. This is why white American culture co-opts meaning from everyone else, from African-Americans (Elvis, Alien, Britney Spears) and Native-Americans (spirituality) and Asian-Americans (zen, Martial Arts) and India (Yoga, Meditation).
How does a white Jewish woman share her genuine pain over her large nose and her curly hair without being punched in the face by a black woman? How do white people fight for freedom for their spiritual selves and legitimacy for their external experience when the world is still so racist and they benefit from their whiteness?
If Person A is actively supporting and benefiting from a system that oppresses Person B, it is very hard for Person B to hear Person A say, “But I’m hurt too!” However, if Person A is actively working to dismantle the system they benefit from but which oppresses Person B, then Person B is finally seen — and Person A’s pain can be embraced. In order to see a person you must see the truth of their pain. If you deny their pain, you refuse to see them. This is what makes black people invisible. And black invisibility is what makes white pain invisible to black people.
It’s scary to focus on white people in any way and have sympathy for white pain, when everything, everything, is already by, for, and about white people (The Default is why we all laugh when some idiot asks why there isn’t a White History Month). It’s scary because brown people are seen as continuing the problem of racial division implicitly just by existing, or by daring to be dissatisfied with obvious inequality. Or by seeming to deny white people’s joy over progress towards racial equality (Obama) by ungratefully continuing to feel pain and point to pain.
"No, you cant be here in 2014 and say "it just so happens white people are less affected by poverty." " I'm not saying it's that way for no reason. I'm just saying that it's true. What Lin said was a factual statement about the world and not something that indicates some kind of bias on his part. "His characters are white because white is the default and removing any sign of ethnicity or non white culture makes it safe to assume white. " This is malarkey. That would make his argument: "The default is white. Lin didn't specify a race. Because white is default, Lin's character is white. Because Lin's character is white by default, Lin is supporting white as the default."
But it does, there's been multiple posts on this very site about subconscious bias. That's actually exactly what I'm saying. It's a feedback loop that exists as part of the environment. By intentionally leaving his work "blank," so to speak, it is easily assimilated into the "white by default" loop.
I don't think so. I think you're right on point. I had to stop reading halfway through, because I could feel myself getting dumber by the line. It's not often I find a piece so philosophically unsound that I can actually feel myself losing a point or two off of my IQ, having given too much effort trying to make sense of otherwise non-sensical arguments. The author thinks there is a divide between white and non-white, and that this is the struggle of the brown person. This couldn't be further from the truth. The struggle is between former slaves and former slave holders. Period. All other racial divides are trivial by comparison (except maybe the Native American/white divide, but it certainly isn't in the popular consciousness to nearly the same extent). Nobody ever made a law that says that Asian Americans can't vote, go to school, or be taught to read, let alone that they can be owned, traded, abused and disposed of. I'm not saying that it's not possible for Asian Americans to be discriminated against by some people some times, but there's no institutional racism against them (look at their income demographics for evidence). Latinos suffer more from xenophobia than from institutional racism, also (although some states seem hell bent on institutionalizing their xenophobic tendencies). In the end, each situation is different (hell, Asians are super racist against blacks, from my observations. I have a bunch of Chinese colleagues, and lots of them are scared stiff of black people). We can't arbitrarily create a divide between white and non-white. It's the most dishonest attempt at defining race relations I think I've come across in a supposedly serious piece of journalism (or whatever this is).The article seems to be more about the author than about people in general, but maybe I'm just out of touch.
I think you've misunderstood what the author is expressing. From this POV, the article isn't about the divide between black people and white people. The article is about the issue of white identity and the impact that issue has on the ability of humanity to move past race relations. His argument is merely framed by examples of the black vs white struggle which as you rightfully claimed is rooted in descendants of slaves vs descendants of slave owners.
Interesting that you've used another "default", that of maleness. The author is female. None of us is immune, it seems ;) His argument is merely framed by examples of the black vs white struggle which as you rightfully claimed is rooted in descendants of slaves vs descendants of slave owners.
nope, we aren't. We just try to be better. [Also why I've been trying to intentionally not use possessive and gendered language as much as one can. It's amazing how hard it is to break a habit you never really considered until a certain moment in time.]
I agree with a lot of what you and Pribnow have said, but I'm unsure about this one. I think there's a fine line between xenophobia and racism in some cases, and I'm more inclined to believe that one can be used to mask the other with policies from states like Arizona. The interesting part of this article to me was addressing white identity, or the lack thereof and touching upon the "I am not" aspects of it, as opposed to the affirmative identity. I wish it went more in that direction and less in the direction it ended up going.Latinos suffer more from xenophobia than from institutional racism, also (although some states seem hell bent on institutionalizing their xenophobic tendencies).
It's hard to disentangle the two in a many cases. But we used to do the same thing to the Irish and Italians, and now they're indistinguishable from other Europeans. My guess is that as Latin Americans become a bigger part of the population, and they start to assimilate more into main stream America, that the xenophobia will erode. At least, I hope so. I think there is historical precedent for such thing, anyway. Blacks occupy a unique place in race relations with whites, and I think it's degrading to the memory of slavery to lump all "people of color" together, similar to how it's degrading to the Holocaust when we call every bad leader "Hitler".I think there's a fine line between xenophobia and racism in some cases, and I'm more inclined to believe that one can be used to mask the other with policies from states like Arizona.