Touring Derrick Bell’s Afrolantica, Part 3: What Could it Mean to Be White?
"Were the advantages of color to disappear, how would whites replace their carefully constructed but ever-fragile self-esteem based on whiteness?"
March 21, 2012 - 5:41 am
Part 1: A Guided Tour Through Derrick Bell’s Afrolantica Legacies, Part 1
Part 2: A ‘Euphoria of Freedom’
In the prologue to Afrolantica Legacies Professor Derrick Bell claims whites base their self-worth on skin color:
For without black people in America, what would it mean to be white? Of what value whiteness, the privilege of preference, the presumption of normality, the reassurance of majority status? Were the advantages of color to disappear, how would whites replace their carefully constructed but ever-fragile self-esteem based on whiteness? Blacks doubted that many whites would ever ask themselves these questions, but the questions were not less real because unacknowledged.
What would ‘whitey’ do for meaning if there were no black people in America? My guess is that ‘whitey’ America would do exactly as what it has done before and will continue to do–take pride in being American, still the last best hope of man on Earth.
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The story of America is not, has not, and never fundamentally will be about relations between races. It is about something else–the common man finally being able to come into his own.
Wouldn’t it be a shock to all the apostles of Derrick Bell (including the Obamas, Eric Holder and many more) to realize how little white people even think about black people, especially when they’re not pestering us?
Couldn’t have said it any better myself.
Gee, Derrick, did you try asking white people in rural New England? You’ll find some that have never actually met a black person.
But yes, they presume themselves normal.
I’ve gone my whole life, 56 years now, without ever thinking about being white. The only time it ever comes up is filling out government forms.
Shrinks play that game, identify yourself. Dad, husband, American, occupation, ….. then way down the list if they insist I keep going- English, Irish, Scotttish, Welsh- but not white or caucasian. Most whites never put it on their list. I think Asians are the same way.
Blacks put black in the top 3.
Discrimination will end when the government quits practicing it. EVERY job application wants racial characteristics – for the government. Why?
Poor D*ckw*d Bell is now getting his 15 minutes. Sharpton is looking to get back in. Rot in hell, racists.
Bell is assuming that “Whiteness” is based on oppression, and can only exist when there is something to oppress. This is a delusional and bigoted view.
Further, we can see how this fits in with the theory of “kyriarchy,” which is the idea that strait white males (SWM) pit non-SWM against each other by, for example, getting a strait black man to oppress a gay or woman.
The response of the left is to denegrate people into their own little sub-caste and then declare that the only way to fight the “kyriarchy” is for non-SWMs to act/think like the left believes that they are supposed to act. the left then promises to manipulate things through Affirmative Action, &c. until all classifications are equal, with the concomitant elimination of anything related to strait white male normalcy (e.g. andronomative, hetronormative, &c.)
More on “Kyriarchy”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy
It would mean nothing, because practically no “white” person considers that to be part of their identity in the way that a black person considers “black” to be theirs. There is as much cultural difference between myself (with an ancestry of German/Scot) and, say, an Italian-American as there is between an African American and a Chinese. We tend to view ourselves as “American” with the addition of our ethnic heritage, not as some mythical monolithic “white” group. This conglomeration is one of CRT’s biggest problems.
I remember picking up a copy of gay publications in West Hollywood (California), and reading loud admonitions to “Patronize these Gay Businesses!” I often thought of how interesting it would be to be gay, or black, and at least on paper have this whole group of people I didn’t know actually care about me. I know I can’t rely on any kind of white solidarity to help me in the world, because there isn’t any.
If you ask my identity, it’s software developer. I have more in common with a black software developer than I have a white farmer. But I have nothing in common with a ghetto drug dealer. The funny thing is that blacks typically define their identities based on the drug dealer, not the programmer, Harvard professor or President.
This has always seemed horribly destructive to me.
Now, what I really don’t understand is why many whites like rap music and buy from musicians whose own lyrics express a deep hatred for their white customers. That kind of behavior strikes me as suicidal. For me, if I believe a musical artist hates me, I will return that in milder form by never buying their music. Seems obvious, no?
D