Dwayne replied:
>Maybe you should clarify your clarification.
>Because to me, it sounds like you're saying Obama's being 'black' when
>he delivers a pretty speech but is showing his 'white' aspects
>whenever he wonkily talks about technocratic and imperialist
>management topics.
>
>I'll try to remember this division during the day.
>
>But how would it work? Let's see...maybe, while inspiring friends with
>stirring words (or just having a laugh at lunch) my soulful blackness
>is front and center. Later, when I'm trying to work through the
>pointy headed technical details of a Beowulf cluster, I'm pushing the
>tendencies of my Scottish great grandad to the fore.
>
>W.T.F. Mage?
>
>.d.
I think you'd have to WTF at me when I speak of decentering "whiteness". In other words, I'm talking about institutionalized racism: the notion that there are blacks, Latinos, etc. defined against standard issue whiteness where whiteness represents the norm of citizen, worker, father/mother, adulthood, etc. Whiteness conceived as a process, not a product, is the "good family man" trotted out against the whispered accusation, "He's a Muslin(tm)."
I *thought* this is what Mage was talking about, particularly because he put "Black" and "White" under erasure, and capitalized both. That was a signal to me that he wasn't literally talking about race as a thing, a cultural product, but as I say below: a process.
On another thread, at 09:08 AM 11/5/2008, Shane Mage wrote:
>Last night, and in the weeks before, numerous celebrants in the media
>commented sagaciously how the president-elect would never have risen
>like a soufflé if He had not been Black. Oddly, there was not a
>single voice to remark that He would not have had a chance if He had
>not been White.
I surfed back and forth among all the morning news shows. While I was as caught up in the moment as Chuck was last night, broke out the champagne and toasted the loser even, I was aghast as I listened to all these white people celebrating the fantabulousness of the u.s. I had merely _guessed_ that this was what went through the heads of white folks, now I have more examples than I can bear. Something on the order of: "Yay! This proves to Europe we're not racists. You can't go anywhere in Europe without some snoot bringing up our racist past. No more of that! Take that Germany."
Joe Scarborough said that.
Others, variations on the idea that this finally put behind us slavery, Jim Crow. Over and over again, references to slavery, Jim Crow, white flight back in some distant past. Others said that this would show racists what's what. Take that, you racist bigots!
It was this giant celebration of a bunch of Stretch Armstrong figures patting themselves on the back for how wonderful they were.
Racism happened in the past; not one mention of racist incidents today.
But what is really annoying is that it just reinforced the idea that racism is *all* about attitudes and beliefs. That the only thing that matters is that you stop thinking bad things about black folks. Never mind getting at the underlying structural racism -- the institutionalized racialization that is endemic to this system.
Race: it's a process, not a product.