Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the MirrorRichard Delgado, Jean Stefancic 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. |
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 |
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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 |
Other editions - View all
Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror Richard Delgado,Jean Stefancic No preview available - 1997 |
Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror Richard Delgado,Jean Stefancic No preview available - 1997 |
Common terms and phrases
affirmative action African African-American American argued Asian believe Bell Curve black and white Brown century civil rights color Constitution construction Court culture Derrick Bell discrimination dominant economic equality ethnic European example experience feminist film genetic human immigrants Indians individual inferior innocence Irish James James Harlan Jewish Jews John Justice Klan KLOR DE ALVA Ku Klux Klan labor Latinos lives look means Mexican militia miscegenation movement narrative Native Americans Negro neo-Nazi norm oppression Peggy McIntosh political problem Professor protection question race traitor racial identity racism Reprinted by permission rhetoric segregation sense sexual skin skinheads slave slavery social society South Southern status stereotype subordination supra supremacist surrogacy theory tion United University victims WASP white Americans white male white privilege white race white supremacy white women woman workers York
Popular passages
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.