renouncing whiteness

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Nov 24 14:05:08 PST 2000


Chuck Grimes writes:


>For the sake of argument would either Chris or Jennifer like to
>explain just precisely how one goes about renouncing whiteness. Is
>there a prayer or chant or something--maybe burn some incense?

It seems that there is a great problem with the idea of individually "renouncing whiteness," even aside from the problem of individualism that Carrol mentioned.

Today, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech has come to be sadly misappropriated by neo-conservatives whose racism is "color-blind" racism -- a backlash racism against having to be conscious about racial oppression, one of whose effects is so-called whiteness:

"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"

It is not for nothing that one of Shelby Steele's books is entitled _The Content of Our Character_.

Yoshie



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