Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror

Front Cover
Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic
Temple University Press, 1997 - Social Science - 700 pages
No longer content with accepting whiteness as the norm, critical scholars have turned their attention to whiteness itself. In "Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror," numerous thinkers, including Toni Morrison, Eric Foner, Peggy McIntosh, Andrew Hacker, Ruth Frankenberg, John Howard Griffin, David Roediger, Kathleen Heal Cleaver, Noel Ignatiev, Cherrie Moraga, and Reginald Horsman, attack such questions as:
*How was whiteness invented, and why?
*How has the category whiteness changed over time?
*Why did some immigrant groups, such as the Irish and Jews, start out as nonwhite and later became white?
*Can some individual people be both white and nonwhite at different times, and what does it mean to pass for white?
*At what point does pride in being white cross the line into white power or white supremacy?
*What can whites concerned over racial inequity or white privilege do about it?
Science and pseudoscience are presented side by side to demonstrate how our views on whiteness often reflect preconception, not fact. For example, most scientists hold that race is not a valid scientific category -- genetic differences between races are insignificant compared to those within them. Yet, the one drop rule, whereby those with any nonwhite heritage are classified as nonwhite, persists even today. As the bell curve controversy shows, race concepts die hard, especially when power and prestige lie behind them.
A sweeping portrait of the emerging field of whiteness studies, "Critical White Studies" presents, for the first time, the best work from sociology, law, history, cultural studies, and literature. Delgado and Stefancic expressly offer critical white studies as the next step in critical race theory. In focusing on whiteness, not only do they ask nonwhites to investigate more closely for what it means for others to be white, but also they invite whites to examine themselves more searchingly and to look behind the mirror.

From inside the book

Selected pages

Contents

Old Poison in New Bottles The Deep Roots of Modern Nativism
348
The First Word in Whiteness Early TwentiethCentury European Experiences
354
Life on the Color Line
357
Others and the WASP World They Aspired To
360
Beyond the Melting Pot
368
The Economic Payoff of Attending an IvyLeague Institution
378
Useful Knowledge
381
Stupid Rich Bastards
387

Growing Up What in America?
36
White Images of Black Slaves Is What We See in Others Sometimes a Reflection of What We Find in Ourselves?
38
Synopses of Other Important Works
46
Suggested Readings
47
How Whites See Others
49
The White Race Is Shrinking Perceptions of Race in Canada and Some Speculations on the Political Economy of Race Classification
51
Ignoble Savages
55
Darkness Made Visible Law Metaphor and the Racial Self
66
Playing in the Dark Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
79
Transparently White Subjective Decisionmaking Fashioning a Legal Remedy
85
The Rhetorical Tapestry of Race
89
Imposition
98
Racial Reflections Dialogues in the Direction of Liberation
106
The Tower of Babel
112
The Quest for Freedom in the PostBrown South Desegregation and White SelfInterest
117
Soulmaning Using Race for Political and Economic Gain
125
Dysconscious Racism Ideology Identity and Miseducation
128
Synopses of Other Important Works
133
Issues and Comments
134
Suggested Readings
135
Whiteness Historys Role
137
Race and Manifest Destiny The Origins of American Racial AngloSaxonism
139
The Invention of Race Rereading White Over Black
145
Only the Law Would Rule between Us Antimiscegenation the Moral Economy of Dependency and the Debate over Rights after the Civil War
152
The Antidemocratic Power of Whiteness
157
Whos Black Whos White and Who Cares
164
Images of the Outsider in American Law and Culture
170
Back to the Future with The Bell Curve Jim Crow Slavery and G
179
The Genetic Tie
186
Synopses of Other Important Works
190
Issues and Comments
192
Whiteness Laws Role
193
White Law and Lawyers The Case of Surrogate Motherhood
195
Social Science and Segregation before Brown
199
MexicanAmericans and Whiteness
210
Race and the Core Curriculum in Legal Education
214
The Transparency Phenomenon RaceNeutral Decisionmaking and Discriminatory Intent
220
Toward a Black Legal Scholarship Race and Original Understandings
227
Identity Notes Part One Playing in the Light
231
The Constitutional Ghetto
239
Synopses of Other Important Works
248
Suggested Readings
249
Whiteness Cultures Role
251
Do You Know This Man?
253
The Curse of Ham
255
Los Olvidados On the Making of Invisible People
258
White Innocence Black Abstraction
263
Race and the Dominant Gaze Narratives of Law and Inequality in Popular Film
267
Residential Segregation and White Privilege
273
Mules Madonnas Babies Bathwater Racial Imagery and Stereotypes
276
The Other Pleasures The Narrative Function of Race in the Cinema
280
Synopses of Other Important Works
285
Issues and Comments
288
White Privilege
289
White Privilege and Male Privilege A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Womens Studies
291
From Practice to Theory or What Is a White Woman Anyway?
300
Racial Construction and Women as Differentiated Actors
305
The GI Bill Whites Only Need Apply
310
Making Systems of Privilege Visible
314
Race and Racial Classifications
320
Reflections on Whiteness The Case of Latinosas
323
Stirring the Ashes Race Class and the Future of Civil Rights Scholarship
327
The Social Construction of Whiteness
330
Synopses of Other Important Works
334
Suggested Readings
335
The Ladder of Whiteness
337
The Mind of the South
339
How Did Jews Become White Folks?
395
How White People Became White
402
Paths to Belonging The Constitution and Cultural Identity
407
Is the Radical Critique of Merit AntiSemitic?
414
Synopses of Other Important Works
420
Issues and Comments
421
The Color Line Multiracial People and Passing for White
423
Passing for White Passing for Black
425
Black Like Me
432
The Michael Jackson Pill Equality Race and Culture
438
Did the First Justice Harlan Have a Black Brother?
444
Learning How to Be Niggers
458
What Does a White Woman Look Like? Racing and Erasing in Law
467
La Guera
471
Notes of a White Black Woman
475
Our Next Race Question The Uneasiness between Blacks and Latinos
482
A Review of Life on the Color Line
493
What Is Race Anyway?
499
Synopses of Other Important Works
501
Issues and Comments
502
Suggested Readings
503
Biology and Pseudoscience
505
The Misleading Abstractions of Social Scientists
507
Caste Crime and Precocity
510
Embodiment and Perspective Can White Men Jump?
512
Bell Curve Liberals How the Left Betrayed IQ
515
Brave New Right
519
Race and Parentage
523
The Sources of The Bell Curve
528
Hearts of Darkness
530
Thank You Doctors Murray and Herrnstein Or Whos Afraid of Critical Race Theory?
534
Dangerous Undertones of the New Nativism
538
Synopses of Other Important Works
542
Suggested Readings
543
White Consciousness White Power
545
The Rise of Private Militia A First and Second Amendment Analysis of the Right to Organize and the Right to Train
547
The Changing Faces of White Supremacy
552
Hatelines Week of Sunday April 7 1996 COMPILED BY THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRATIC RENEWAL
558
Blue by Day and White by Knight
561
The Race Question and Its Solution
566
The American NeoNazi Movement Today
573
Talking about Race with Americas Klansmen
586
Antidiscrimination Law and Transparency Barriers to Equality?
589
White Supremacy And What We Should Do about It
592
White Superiority in America Its Legal Legacy Its Economic Costs
596
Synopses of Other Important Works
601
Issues and Comments
604
What Then Shall We Do? A Role for Whites
605
Treason to Whiteness Is Loyalty to Humanity AN INTERVIEW WITH NOEL IGNATIEV OF RACE TRAITOR MAGAZINE
607
How to Be a Race Traitor Six Ways to Fight Being White
613
Rodrigos Eleventh Chronicle Empathy and False Empathy
614
Obscuring the Importance of Race The Implications of Making Comparisons between Racism and Sexism or Other Isms
619
White Men Can Jump But Must Try a Little Harder
627
Was Blind but Now I See White Race Consciousness and the Requirement of Discriminatory Intent
629
White Women Race Matters The Social Construction of Whiteness
632
Resisting Racisms Eliminating Exclusions South Africa and the United States
635
Dysconscious Racism The Cultural Politics of Critiquing Ideology and Identity
640
What Should White Women Do?
642
Confronting Racelessness
644
A Civil Rights Agenda for the Year 2000 Confessions of an Identity Politician
646
What We Believe THE EDITORS OF RACE TRAITOR MAGAZINE
653
Segregation Whiteness and Transformation
654
White Out
658
Issues and Comments
664
About the Contributors
665
Index
671
Copyright

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Page 16 - AMAZING grace ! how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me ! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.
Page 16 - I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it.
Page 91 - My brethren say, that when a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws...
Page 258 - Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs...
Page 183 - Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.
Page 24 - 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.
Page 186 - Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.
Page 258 - Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs any more than they can acquire our complexion?
Page 256 - Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is the 'Blackness of Blackness.' " And a congregation of voices answered: "That blackness is most black, brother, most black . . "In the beginning . . ." "At the very start,
Page 75 - WE wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, — This debt we pay to human guile ; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs ? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask.