> In
>fact, contrary to a lot of these silly "white studies" types, there is no
>such thing as a "white" culture or, for that matter, a positive "white"
>identity. When people start talking about "feeling great about being
>white" I get (among other things) nervous. Or, to put it another way,
>"white" power is a really different thing than "Black" power.
Well I certainly do understand your revulsion at this characterization of white studies and it does exist, I do not understand why you must unfairly characterize white studies as all about "feeling great about being white" Long ago I decided to take what Black authors said seriously: to start analyzing what it means to be white and how being white 'works' rather than asking Blacks to tell me/us what it's like to be them. In that sense, showing how white is raced and how privilege operates is a lot more than 'feeling good about white culture' When I was teaching a liberal arts college attended mostly by middle class whites, instead of giving them brief peeks at Black (ethnic group life) as if they were voyeurs gazing at the Other, I started making them read stuff that systematically showed how their white upper class privilege was constructed in interlocking systems of social inequality.