Whiteness

• 
• SOURCE: Hedgehog Review
  4/10/2020
  

  Left Behind: The Trouble with Euphemism

  by Nancy Isenberg

  A historian of white rural poverty says that the cultural phenomenon of JD Vance's book "Hillbilly Elegy" is just the latest deployment of the "left behind" euphemism to obscure the nature of poverty in the United States. The rural poor are and have been part and parcel of the American economic order.

• 
• 4/11/2021
  

  What Will be the Terms of Racial Forgiveness in America?

  by J. Chester Johnson

  Much of today's antiracist discourse among white Americans resembles what anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace" – self-forgivness without cost or atonement for crimes that, while past, nevertheless are deeply present today.

• 
• SOURCE: Contingent
  3/2/2021
  

  We, the Nation, Born Under This Tree

  by Sean Cleary

  A speech of Edward Everett and a painting by N.C. Wyeth create a mythical founding moment of an American nation conceived as a white homeland. 

• 
• SOURCE: Salon
  2/1/2021
  

  After Trump, the Crisis: David Roediger on White America at the Historical Crossroads

  Salon's Chauncey DeVega interviews a founding figure of the study of American whiteness, who thinks White America is at a crossroads between an inclusive social-democratic politics or a turn toward the hard right. 

• 
• 1/14/2020
  

  Historians, Insurrectionists and Fragile White Folks

  by James Brewer Stewart

  A historian of abolition and an advocate of racial justice argues that historians must reject the psychological framework of some recent popular antiracist books and learn from the history of activists embodying Frederick Douglass's call for a "moral revolution" through engagement with others.

• 
• SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
  9/5/2020
  

  Beyond Jermag Yev Sev: A Roundtable on Armenian American Identity

  A dialogue with a historian of Armenians in the United States shows that the boundaries of the "white race" have shifted historically and been determined not by biology but by politics played out in immigration courts. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/25/2020
  

  ‘Please Don’t Convert to Whiteness’: Johann N. Neem on Current Trends in Racism and Antiracism

  Historian Johann N. Neem, an immigrant from India, decries the white supremacy unleashed by Trump but questions whether trendy antiracism discourse is encouraging white progressives to uphold the ideal of an America open to all in an interview.   

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  8/14/2020
  

  Settler Fantasies, Televised

  by Hannah Manshell

  The genre of house hunting and home improvement shows involve contestants claiming the prerogatives of owning property, which has historically been allotted to white people at the expense of the indigenous in several societies. 

• 
• SOURCE: Counterpunch
  8/3/2020
  

  Renouncing White Privilege: A Left Critique of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”

  by David Barber

  "The dominant aspect of the contradiction of white supremacy for poor and working class whites is not that white supremacy advantages us, but that it ties us to our own oppression."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/22/2020
  

  Why "White" Should be Capitalized, Too

  by Nell Irvin Painter

  A capitalized “White” challenges that freedom, by unmasking “Whiteness” as an American racial identity as historically important as “Blackness” — which it certainly is.

• 
• 6/28/2020
  

  Those We Abuse, We Loathe

  by J. Chester Johnson

  Until white Americans reckon with the significance of white supremacy in America, they will deflect a sense of responsibility by laying blame for black suffering on black Americans themselves. 

• 
• 6/14/2020
  

  It's Time for White Parents to Have The Talk with their Children

  by Roy E. Finkenbine

  Many African American parents have a common experience of teaching their children about racism and its dangers. Not enough white parents talk with their children about how racism affects their lives. 

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  10/26/19
  

  A Racist Attack Shows How Whiteness Evolves

  by Nell Irvin Painter

  An assault at a New Jersey high school football game had an unexpected cast of characters.

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  2/22/19
  

  America Needs an Education in Whiteness

  by Jordan Lindsey

  Not a white equivalent of Black History Month—but a better understanding of the concept of whiteness and the harm it inflicts on race relations.