Whiteness: Feminist Philosophical Reflections

Front Cover
Chris J. Cuomo, Kim Q. Hall
Rowman & Littlefield, 1999 - Philosophy - 133 pages
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
Related Reading
119
Index
129
About the Contributors
131

The King of Whiteness
57
Whitie and Dyke Constructions of Identities in the Classroom
63

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