Whiteness: Feminist Philosophical ReflectionsChris J. Cuomo, Kim Q. Hall Written in an engaging narrative style, this book contains reflections on the meanings of whiteness in racist contexts. By considering whiteness as it shapes and is infused by gender, class, sexuality, and culture, these philosophical investigations undermine racist hierarchies along with false naturalistic conceptions of the meanings of race and universalistic understandings of gender. Central to this project are questions about how it is that culture and the state create such a wide range of different people who understand themselves as white. The essays collected here discuss how one learns to be a good white Southern woman, what it means to pass as white, and whether there really is a dilemma that accompanies white privilege. At the heart of this collection are analyses of the relationships between the construction of whiteness and the realities of racism, and politics that hope for a connection between understanding racial formations and resisting racisms. |
Contents
Introduction Reflections on Whiteness | 1 |
Glancing Backward | 13 |
My Grandmothers Passing | 15 |
My Fathers Flag Kim Q Hall | 29 |
Growing Up in Little Rock | 37 |
Pinay White Woman | 45 |
Performing Whiteness | 53 |
The American Celebration of Whiteness | 55 |
Identity and Privilege | 75 |
White Ideas | 77 |
Despising an Identity They Taught Me to Claim | 85 |
The Other Colors of Whiteness A Travelogue | 105 |
Epilogue | 117 |
119 | |
129 | |
About the Contributors | 131 |
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African Americans Anglo antiracist Anzaldúa Asian began bian Black Chicana claim classroom Confederate flag constructed context critical discrimination discussion divest domination drop rule dyke essays ethnic example experience father's flag fear feel felt feminism feminist fixed Frye gender Gloria Anzaldúa grandmother grandmother's heritage idea of white iden identity positions institutional racism Jewish Israeli Jews learned Lesbian Knowledge Goddesses lesbians and lesbian lives look María Mary Douglas meanings of whiteness METCO Mexican American mother narratives Nina nonwhites one's oppression pamilya philosophy Pinay political question race privilege race traitor racial formation racial identity reinscribe responsibility Routledge scripts seems sense sexuality social someone South Spanish story structures thought tion understand United University Press white guilt white identity white privilege white privilege awareness white skin white southern white supremacist white women woman women of color women's studies write York