Ode to Whiteness

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Jan 11 09:25:40 PST 1999


Chuck Grimes wrote:


>To be white, it must be re-born in
>clean child-like simplicity. It must be virgin and immaterial,
>immaculate and fastidious, orderly and without guilt so as to
>perfectly co-line with its embedding in an equally reduced and barren
>psychological template of purified mediocrity. What can be found in
>this Christian whiteness is nothing more than an idealized
>banality. It is neither sinister nor profound. It is as blank as its
>own child-like gaze.
>
>Do any of you recognize that gaze?

The Christian gaze I recognize is more full of guilt-inducing scrutiny than that. An overwhelming majority of Americans profess to believe in heaven (slightly fewer in hell), and of those, an overwhelming majority think redemption is theirs. Isn't that presumptuous? Shouldn't Christians live in fear of their God and his judgment? And the Catholicism I remember from my childhood was full of terror and pain. Where'd all that stuff go?

Doug



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