{"id":211,"date":"2021-03-07T17:00:18","date_gmt":"2021-03-07T22:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=211"},"modified":"2021-03-07T17:00:18","modified_gmt":"2021-03-07T22:00:18","slug":"what-does-it-mean-to-be-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/03\/07\/what-does-it-mean-to-be-white\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it mean to be white?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This question came up the first day of class and I wanted to consider it again through the context of the Wright and Baldwin material. We have had a lot of discussion about how Blackness is viewed by the white gaze, but we can also consider whiteness as it is viewed by Black writers and characters. There can be shifting perspectives in talking about white people as they are perceived as a group, as individuals, and even as an ideal. Wright encapsulates whiteness as an ideology in Native Son<\/em>: \u201cTo Bigger and his kind white people were not really people; they were a sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead, or like a deep swirling river stretching suddenly at one\u2019s feet in the dark\u201d (114).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bigger\u2019s understanding of white people connects to our discussion of whiteness as a price that is ultimately commodified with privilege in society. Bigger reflects on this awareness when talking about the leaders of the community that, \u201cthey are almost like the white people when it comes to guys like me.\u201d He understands that these members of the community can\u2019t fully buy the ticket of whiteness, but can benefit from certain privileges by conforming to the aims of white people. Professor Cheryl Harris at UCLA builds a similar argument in her article \u201cWhiteness as Property\u201d about whiteness has historically evolved into a form of wealth written into law. She demonstrates how even “passing” as white can be viewed as a form of property. Whiteness was also something Bigger felt he had to learn and grow in understanding of as he got older–like a taboo topic saying, \u201che had even heard it said that white people felt it was good when one Negro killed another.\u201d Baldwin similarly writes in Notes of a Native Son<\/em> that, \u201cin that year I had had time to become aware of the meaning of all my father\u2019s bitter warnings\u2026I had discovered the weight of white people in the world.\u201d Baldwin further describes this series of realizations about white people as a loss of innocence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this discovery, Baldwin had to wrestle with his previous notions of white people in contrast to new experiences and warnings that \u201cI would see, when I was older, how white people would do anything to keep a Negro down.\u201d We begin to see this in Go Tell it on the Mountain<\/em> with John\u2019s understanding of whiteness when \u201chis father said that all white people were wicked and that God was going to bring them low.\u201d I’m curious to see how the opinion of John’s father compares to the rhetoric in the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s of the white man as the Devil. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This question came up the first day of class and I wanted to consider it again through the context of the Wright and Baldwin material. We have had a lot of discussion about how Blackness is viewed by the white gaze, but we can also consider whiteness as it is viewed by Black writers and … Continue reading What does it mean to be white?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3920,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-native-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}