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Whitenesses (colour/culture, especially in the UK)

  
 
Cat Chant
08:39 / 23.07.04
A long time ago, there was this thread, to which this one should be considered a sequel; and now there is this thread, to which this one should be considered a companion piece. I'm starting a new thread, rather than continuing the old "whiteness" one, for two reasons:

(1) by the end of the last one, people were beginning to flag rather and finding five densely-argued pages a bit much to get through; and

(2) inspired by the documentary on the BNP last week (discussed here), I want to refocus the argument a little bit.

In the old Whiteness thread, BiP wrote (and I'm cutting this down heavily and misrepresenting what is a much more subtle & nuanced argument, by the way):

one of the most useful things that can be done for the future of race relations in the UK is for white people to interrogate whiteness, as one way out of some of the impasse situations that the 'multiculturalism' discourse often finds itself in right now.

The way I want to refocus that, with reference to the BNP documentary and the "black friends" thread, is to think about the ways in which, in the UK, whiteness, majority status, and a feeling of "belonging" to the dominant culture or the dominant ways in which Britishness represents itself, all overlap.

Some of the things which might help us to talk about that, of course, are the instances where those things don't overlap: where skin colour and ethnicity aren't lined up in the way that the culture wants them to be (I've been reading Judy Trent Scales Notes of a White Black Woman recently), or where whiteness doesn't equate with majority culture (Eastern Europeanness was a big theme in the last thread). (I kind of have a vague Deleuzean desire to talk about a becoming-minoritarian of whiteness, but I'm not 100% sure what that means, so I won't.)

Okay. To start off (because I have to go meet my supervisor in ten minutes, but I've been meaning to start this thread for weeks and if I don't do it now I never will), a couple of anecdotes.

One. When I was watching the BNP documentary with my (Australian) girlfriend ("Racism in Australia is very different from this!"), we started talking about the BNP schtick that "Asian people get all the money/housing/ advantages", and how that perception probably stems from the fact that whiteness is never labelled as such. Okay, there are good reasons for that, but, for example, charities, spaces, and resources that will benefit maybe 99% white people are never called "White Shelter", or "White Poverty Aid", whereas charities, spaces and resources targeted at specific underprivileged ethnic minority groups will explicitly state that they aim to benefit a particular ethnic or religious group. So an awareness that there are overlaps between - well, between "unlabelledness" and "whiteness" in British culture is a good starting-point for challenging that perception. Though it's difficult maybe to work out how to frame that, rhetorically, so that it doesn't reinforce racism ("Well, you needn't worry about money going to Asian groups, because most of the money still goes to white people just as it should").

I was wondering, also, based on this, what the BNP meant by "white culture". Because they seem to me to very much exploit a slippage between "British" and "white"; they tend to use "white culture" and "civilization" interchangeably. I wondered whether it would be helpful to circulate and popularize more specific takes on white Britishness - I was thinking of Celtic or Saxon religion/ rituals (Morris dancing?), and other things that are actually specifically related to a particular white culture - importantly, not one that can disappear into "civilization" as a whole as if it were synonymous with it. (I think the Morris dancing example makes that clear ) Is it useful to "exoticise", in some ways, some genealogies of the "white" past of Britain, in order to stop it being synonymous with the "history" of Britain?

Two I went out on the Gay Scene, for some reason, last weekend, to an all-women club: it's been five years or more since I was last in an all-women gay space, and for various reason the previous day I'd been really on edge on the streets and constantly primed for homophobia, so I could really feel myself relaxing and letting down guards that I'm not usually even aware of having up. Then I spotted the one and only black woman in the club, and suddenly realized how white the Gay Scene is (in my city, at least) - and it made me realize that, where your experience is the majority/dominant one, you just don't notice what a privilege it is not to have to have your shields up all the time. That is, that all-white space is just as much a comfort zone as all-gay space, but we don't treat it as such, because it's meant to be unmarked.

Okay, now I'm late. I hope this all makes some sort of sense.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
18:03 / 24.07.04
This it seems to me is a good point to ask the question whether considering fascist notions of 'whiteness', and in the process trying to reclaim these obviously non-existent phantasies - is really what a leftist political perspective should be engaged in. The question being 'Is multiculturalism really the best strategy available ?'

I would suggest that we should rather reject this (multiculturalist) and still predominant form of leftist politics, which by implication accepts that capitalism and parlimentarydemocracy is going to continue as the only available system, instead of focusing on the fundamentals of the capitalist/parlimentarydemocratic system - it wishes to concentrate on different cultural, sexual, religions, and lifestyles, including that already mentioned neo-fascist monster of 'whiteness' - continuing and attempting to make the logic of ressentiment as something positive; isn't it the case that in todays multicultural liberal politics the only acceptable way of producing yourself is as a victim ? (The becoming minortarian of deleuze/guattari is not supposed to mean this but it does have this implication). It seems reasonable to propose that we should reject the justification of political demands through the use of the specific features of a specific group; such as specific rights because we are members of this or that ethnic or religious group - which in fact violates the democratic principle of equality and the egalitarian principles...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:10 / 26.07.04
...which leads us to quite an interesting side-road - whiteness as embattled or beseiged quality; the ressentiment of whiteness, if you like.

One of the fun things about whiteness as a default setting for UK culture (to quote the abstract) is, it seems to me, that much of white culture is defined by its sense of being under threat, be it left, white, rich or poor - there is no feeling of security to whiteness. The nine-men's morris is filled up with mud, and asylum seekers are eating the Queen's swans. British whiteness, or at least the largely white institutions that are characterised as uniquely British, find themselves under threat from a many-headed beast that manages to combine a startling number of characteristics - densely packed but occupying vast areas of our already overpopulated island, taking all our work but also lazy and supported by state benefits, possessed of an inflexible and intolerant moral creed, but also spreading HIV and chasing our children. It seems that there is very little that what is not white cannot do, and very little that what is white *can*.

Of course, I've already complicated the argument horribly, because many of these behaviours pull us back into the queston of what constitutes whiteness. The asylum seekers that are causing one of the latest waves of threat to whiteness are themselves white, or more precisely wudl have been white a few decades ago. Previously, the Irish got the same reception. It seems to me that, in Britain, the culture of "whiteness" is to a very great extent tied up in the idea of there being a sort of ur-culture, of which the "natives", who just *happen* to be white, are the historically-appointed guardians (morris dancing, civil war reenactment, Airfix models, Richard Hoggart). I think it is probably possible to attain the status of a guardianship of this culture if not white, but with the proviso that one's duties are primarily ceremonial. Assimilation is possible, but how do you then deal with elements that have no great wish to assimilate, or with whom the default setting doesn't *want* to assimilate, or of course both.

I've just popped over from the thread on the Secret Agent in Film, TV and Theatre where, discussing the BNP, Anna de L expresses her confusion about how people can still think that there is anything identifiable as Britishness anymore. I'm not sure whether she means anything meaningful or anything worthwhile, but certainly one thing "Britishness" *can* mean is whiteness. Elsewhere in the same thread, it is pointed out that "asylum seeker" *seems* a lot less racist than "black" or "asian" as a motive for exclusion or persecution, but I think it's a bit more nuanced than that - asylum seekers are an immediate financial and social threat to the institutions of whiteness - they, notionally, grow fat on our flax, consume the resources of our NHS, and generally make the insitutions that the society that is identified as uniquely British - tax-paying, respectable, still largely congregated in areas where, to touch briefly on the sister thread of this one, non-white people happen not to be present - threatened not by something as crass as diluting the whiteness of the area or group (for shame), but rather *overloading public services* or *adversely impacting house prices*.

Which brings us back to Deva and the plurality of whiteness. Whitenesses exist multiply, and overlap, and I think it's fair to say that the actual colour of one's skin is not necessarily entirely implicated in whiteness, at least in the UK. At which point, is it reasonable even to talk in terms of "whiteness", as a descriptive term? I think probably yes, but with the qualifying statement that whiteness here proabbly reflects a number of elements - presentation, accent, dress, skin colour - of which skin colour is merely the most obvious from a distance and often the hardest to efface. However, I'm interested in Islam in these terms, because, while Islamophobia is a quietly accepted form of not-quite-racism, a white muslim is a disturbing concept for whiteness, because not immediately identifiable as such...
 
 
sdv (non-human)
09:55 / 27.07.04

Whatever Happened To Compassion?

http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=04/07/24/1726256&mode=nocomment&tid=4
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:57 / 27.07.04
Is that link worksafe, sdv? What is it? Could you tell us something more about it in the thread, and possibly how you react to it? Cheers.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:02 / 27.07.04
One of the fun things about whiteness as a default setting for UK culture (to quote the abstract) is, it seems to me, that much of white culture is defined by its sense of being under threat, be it left, white, rich or poor - there is no feeling of security to whiteness.

Yup. In 200 years time, if people were to read the shit "whites" say about "whiteness" now they'd piss themselves. Of course, the ironic thing is that the very essence of "Britishness", which is often tied into "whiteness", is that we ARE the product of many races. And long may that continue as a trend.

Yes, the situation as it stands is fucking horrible, with the "whiteness" contingent claiming superiority. Sorry, you fuckers, but it's not gonna last much longer. It CAN'T. In the oldy-worldy days, maybe, but it's not just a bad idea that it should be preserved, it's an impossible one.

It's not just fun, Haus... it's fucking wicked. White supremacy is dead on its arse in the face of modern society. The unfortunate thing is it's kicking while it goes down.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
15:44 / 27.07.04
The link points towards an article by Zygmunt Bauman - which starts from assumption that we exist within a multicultural world but which is also a brief and lucid attack on the a left fixated on cultural issues at the expense of the material:

"...Richard Rorty accuses the 'cultural Left' in the US of preferring 'not to talk about money' and selecting as its 'principal enemy' 'a mind-set rather than a set of economic arrangements'. To repair the blunder, Rorty suggests, the Left 'would have to talk much more about money, even at the cost of talking less about stigma', and 'put a moratorium on theory'..."

I'm interested in why a thread which contains the implicit assumption, whether it is stated or not, that skin color is a relevent means of identifying where one stands on social and political issues -- responds to the challenge that Bauman and Rorty reproduce here.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:08 / 27.07.04
You see, I don't think it does necessarily contain those assumptions - it certainly considers skin colour, or more precisely a set of identifiers contributing to a perception of "whiteness", of which skin colour is one. But I don't see a perception that skin colour affects where you stand on political or cultural issues, but rather how social and political issues might stand on *you*, but then perhaps I am reading it differently. Do you, believe, then, that one cannot in good conscience address the experience of different groups in the developed world before one has sorted out inequalities of wealth worldwide?
 
 
sdv (non-human)
10:51 / 28.07.04
Tannce -

Good question, not sure how to answer it as I've always existed on both sides of the question. Questions of identity, both cultural and personal, which are often but not always the same thing, should not in my view be allowed to get in the way of the general recognition that the unfair distribution of material goods, from health, education to sheer right to live -- is the critical issue.

The cultural question will always run into the familiar realisation that cultures are always ultimately impositions and as such are always already oppressive. There is a wonderful moment in a late Bunuel movie in which Spanish partisans are about to be shot by a squad of French soldiers - as they are killed they shout 'Long live our Chains'. This is especially relevant in this discussion because it's a clear representation of the desire to prefer our known chains rather than unfamiliar liberties. A question which applies to all human subjects and is obviously not specific to our own local host culture (in my case european, subtype british)...

The primary point of resistance should surely not be to the culture but to the socio-economic system within which this culture along with all other cultures exists ? But any resistance that increases human liberty is to be valued...

The way in which this discussion is framed by whiteness refers, perhaps unconsciously to the reactionary discourses founded on notions of race, including those notions of citizenship based on culture and race - which reach there most murderous rationality in facism, I am thinking especially of Heidegger but also of the definition of citizenship in the Federal Republic of Germany which was based on related otions of race and culture. These things make the attempt at identifying the major cultures in terms of false skin colour (i'm pink not white) an error. This is because as any materialist should know the radical thing about capitalism is that it doesn't care if you are human, non-human, male, female, aethist or believer... merely a producer and consumer.

These are not simple issues and the contradictions are obvious... (sigh)
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:12 / 28.07.04
Yes, but *white* people get not to worry about the discourses of race, *because* they are white. I think this is rather the point that is being made here. White people in the Bundesrepublic, wite people in the UK, get not to worry about the concept of whiteness as default setting, because the idea of whiteness as default setting is not being criticised, because whiteness is a default setting. Dig? I don't see how

But any resistance that increases human liberty is to be valued...

Tallies with the idea that we should be ignoring questions about how people's identity is constructed and imposed upon by society. If the idea is that human liberty can only be increased by destroying capitalist society, then well and good, but in that case I don't see that much value can be added to this disussion beyond the contribution of that opinion. In the meantime, people not *identified socially* as white (a set of identifications about which skin colour is only one, as I believe I mentioned upthread) still appear to be suffering as a result of that. Now, does that mean that they should become *whiter*? That is the best way for them to get around the problem as far as they can without the concept of whiteness being interrogated, after all...
 
 
sdv (non-human)
13:13 / 28.07.04
Except that your position contains the assumption that race, that is to say 'whiteness' is the default setting. That our cultures are not already, even always already multicultural... Not withstanding that it is interesting that you believe that 'white people in the UK, get not to worry about the concept of whiteness as default setting...'

Of course I would not be, as you say, ignoring questions of identity if the multicultural framework was one that matched with the reality of peoples lives. You may exist in a world in which 'whiteness' mirrors your personal everyday experience - i doubt it however - but it certainly does not work as a means of explaining the complexities of mine...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:16 / 28.07.04
Ok, I think I'm out of this one. sdv - I suggest you read the previous thread on whiteness, and then come back to this one - there's lots of interesting stuff on there. Most obviously, we are using "whiteness" and "multicultural", it seems, to mean different things.
 
 
Cat Chant
09:29 / 29.07.04
sdv: I have very little idea what you're trying to say, and even less idea how it is meant to relate to my opening post. For example, I say:

I was wondering, also, based on this, what the BNP meant by "white culture".

and you say:

The way in which this discussion is framed by whiteness refers, perhaps unconsciously to the reactionary discourses founded on notions of race...

Given that I'm talking about the BNP, it's hard to see why you think I'm referring unconsciously to reactionary ideas of race. This thread is for a discussion which is about whiteness, not 'framed by' whiteness. Furthermore, you say:

These things make the attempt at identifying the major cultures in terms of false skin colour (i'm pink not white) an error.

And I say very explicitly that I am not identifying major cultures in terms of skin colour, but attempting

to think about the ways in which, in the UK, whiteness, majority status, and a feeling of "belonging" to the dominant culture or the dominant ways in which Britishness represents itself, all overlap.

That is, to think about why, when and how Britishness represents itself as white. Now, if you really feel that it's time for a 'moratorium on theory' and that the only useful resistance is to global capitalism, not to any cultural manifestations, might I ask what you are doing in this thread at all? Is it really more important to shut down discussions on culture and race than to start discussions on whatever you think the issue is?

If I sound heated, well - I'm pissed off because this is something I am trying hard to think about, and I made an effort to make myself vulnerable in this thread because on the whole I trust the people here to think in some sort of intimate engagement together, and I feel like you've turned this thread into a who's-read-more-Zygmunt-Bauman pissing contest.
 
 
grant
19:25 / 29.07.04
, to think about why, when and how Britishness represents itself as white.

I have trouble with that as a question, so I'm going to rephrase it and then stab at an answer.

When do Japanese people represent themselves as Asian?

First thought: Well, when they come in contact with Africans or Americans (and Europeans), I think, either as potential trade partners/enemies or else as a military force. This would probably be where that ressentiment business would come in, but I think it's more geographic than cultural. Spheres of influence and all that.

Second thought: There's a strain of Confucianism that dates back a few hundred years to a time when Japan was colonized by China (the kanji alphabet is based on T'ang Dynasty Chinese writing, I think). I'm not intimate enough with contemporary Japanese culture to know how consciously this cultural/religious heritage is displayed, but I know it shows through in cultural artifacts like Lone Wolf & Cub, in historical displays like imperial weddings, and, to a lesser degree, in martial arts (such as you might see at the Olympics).


So, one is in opposition to Other, and the other is a kind of religious/historical idea-set.

I suspect (if white supremacist groups in the US are any example) you'll find the same themes in the BNP. And probably, in a different way, in ideas surrounding the Royal Family and the former British Empire.

I dunno, does that offer anything useful?
 
 
Ex
08:50 / 30.07.04
. I wondered whether it would be helpful to circulate and popularize more specific takes on white Britishness - I was thinking of Celtic or Saxon religion/ rituals (Morris dancing?), and other things that are actually specifically related to a particular white culture - importantly, not one that can disappear into "civilization" as a whole as if it were synonymous with it. (I think the Morris dancing example makes that clear ) Is it useful to "exoticise", in some ways, some genealogies of the "white" past of Britain, in order to stop it being synonymous with the "history" of Britain?

I'm not sure this would take off as a strategy for destabilising 'whiteness'.
For starters, if civilisation and whiteness stay firmly associated, adding some local colour to whiteness may not destabilise that - the basic assumption that white people created everything good about the world (see Kilroy). It'll just make whiteness look more interesting and a teensy bit exotic. I think whiteness is in a position of relative stability and dominance so it can afford to say 'Actually, yes, on holidays we dance round with bells on our ankles... but we're still best.'. It would take come hardcore pushing to actually shift perceptions of whiteness(es) until it/they were associated more with the specific, odd, querky then with the rational, dominant, everyday 'proper' stuff.

That was slightly incomprehensible.
I also suspect that historically, movements that supported the dominance of white people also found room to be fond of specific cultural traditions - feelng secure in their general mainstream/dominant image, they can introduce kooky, specific elements. Do other posters know more on this? I can only really think of the Nazis, and they're no use to anyone.

The other thing is that I'm not sure whether it would successfully break down 'whiteness' into more specific chunks, and thus expose it as a conglomerate con; it might just work to suck up a load of different ethnicities and cultures into the mass of whiteness. To ducttape more things together, rather than pull them apart.

Sorry to be pessimistic. I'm not sure what the solution is - I think 'whiteness' should be broken down by making it less general ('white people stand for all things that are good') and more specific ('various ethnic groups have at various times stood for a load of different and often oppsed things').
What is really annoying me at the moment, which might be a fruitful area of intervention, is the way that when 'civilisation' shifts, what 'white' stands for shifts with it. Recently, various speakers have been distinguishing Britain from the rest of the world by insisting that Britain has stood for women's rights, and that other countries are uncivilised by comparison - and justifying intervention on those grounds (most notably in Afghanistan). This should have been refuted - both in terms of our national record (when and how widely has Britain historically stood for women's rights?) and the record of 'civilisation' itself (go back a couple of centuries and other nations are being described as uncivilised precisely because there is less gender differentiation in their culture - Britain is civilised because of the extreme differentiation of the genders). I'd like see both sides highlighted more - that the idea of what is 'civilised' changes, and that 'whiteness' shouldn't give itself so much credit.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
14:33 / 30.07.04
I want to contribute to this thread in more depth than I can currently manage...

I have been thinking of whiteness along the lines of the very helpful gender pyramid thingy outlined in Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook, where the nearer you are to the pinnacle of whiteness the less complicated everything is for you... the pinnacle of whiteness, just as with the pinnacle of being 'correctly' gendered, being the white American alpha-male type. Is that in any way helpful? It sort of allows for differences in whiteness, adn different levels of whiteness, without clouding over the idea of there being a thing 'whiteness' which can be usefully interrogated.

On historical movements - I find it hard to think of a movement supporting the supremacy of whiteness before the C20 because, before that, the supremacy of white people was not really challenged in Western societies, and so there was not really a need to explicitly assert the superiority of whiteness. I think. But within the lovely comforting world of whiteness, obviously plenty of people were able to associate with all sorts of weirdness - theosophy adn that sort of hoohah - without it being a problem, just as they are today (see Tony and Cherie Blair). However those further away from the pinnacle whiteness were relegated to the cultural periphery just as they were to other peripheries, and their oddities became quaint (partly I suspect to make them unthreatening...).

Not sure how relevant that is, sorry.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
00:58 / 02.08.04
I know what sdv means so I'm going to forge quickly in (but not too much because I kind of feel that I rotted the other thread on this subject and want to give everyone the space that they should probably be finally and beautifully allowed )...

Firstly-we are using "whiteness" and "multicultural", it seems, to mean different things

There's a problem with the word multicultural, I sometimes call it my own personal problem, in everyday use it's come to mean simply people living side by side but I'm sure that quite a few people here have encountered it's other older, Blunkettesque and segregatory meaning. Considering that this is the Head Shop I'm often surprised that it's usually bandied about in the more common sense of the word.

My second response wants to be to this- if the only useful resistance is to global capitalism, not to any cultural manifestations, might I ask what you are doing in this thread at all?

I think the point is that global capitalism is the *object* that creates these divisions (and in a sense you could argue that it's always been the case- slave trade, colonialism and those are only the obvious things). So if you want to resist racism and really examine the meaning behind British whiteness than it begins, not with Britain but in fact with the entire world and not with an examination of Britain and our status as white but with the interplay and clash of cultures that happens everywhere and is antagonised by capitalism. The affirmation of ourselves and our roll, the seeking out of the BNP's beliefs are never going to help anything. The cultural manifestations emerge from global capitalism, I strongly suspect that what sdv is trying to say is cut out the inbetween and go for the jugular that is capitalism because otherwise we don't achieve anything. (These marxists are always trying to make you do everything their way!)


Now to move swiftly, I'm actually going to contribute! I continue to think that whiteness is a cultural myth albeit one that presents social problems through general idiocy that should be stamped on rather than provoked by the government. I suppose that I always will because I think that colour contributes very little to culture except for utter nonsense broadcast by people who actually think it makes a damn bit of difference to anything. That's not to say that I don't appreciate the cultures that are non-white just that I think skin-colour isn't significant. I only believe that it means something in its grounding as majority and to an extent I think that's very clearly presented by Tannce's post- British whiteness, or at least the largely white institutions that are characterised as uniquely British, find themselves under threat from a many-headed beast. Stupid, stupid Britain.

Anyhow when you say certainly one thing "Britishness" *can* mean is whiteness I find myself compelled to reply that it's just not my experience of Britishness. For me a huge part of being British was growing up in a community of Gujarati speakers and going to Diwali festivals where I was the only white kid (well, apart from my brother). My parents being utter atheists I was allowed access to all religious festivals and learned only a tiny amount about their meaning due to general disinterest. Thus huge amounts of Indian culture instilled in to me but very little knowledge of actual rituals. However those Diwali festivals mean more to me Britishly than my local, Herts all white parish council ever will.

all-white space is just as much a comfort zone as all-gay space, but we don't treat it as such, because it's meant to be unmarked

I don't understand that. I get the dominance thing, no one likes to be the only white person, the only black person, the only gay person in a space. No one likes to be the absolute minority but I can say with all confidence and utter truth that being in an all-white space makes me less comfortable than being in a completely mixed space. I don't pick up on it anymore but I remember with utter clarity of looking around at the age of 11, surrounded by white classmates and feeling like something in the world had gone absolutely wrong. My first two weeks were totally surreal. I'm also rather uncomfortable in an all gay space or an all straight space or at least an area specifically designed to be one or the other.

To be honest I don't really know how to answer this thread, reading my words back it reads a bit like 'well nyah, I'm like this already bleurgh bleurgh, sheep' but that's not what I'm trying to say. What I mean is, socially and institutionally I can concieve of a problem but I don't really get the point of view of that problem to the point where British whiteness just makes so little sense it's absurd. I truly don't understand it, I feel like I'll never crack it because psych-wise, the minority thing I get but why would you predict being in the minority in the future? Why would you care and how could Britishness be about whiteness? I absolutely and totally on the most basic level don't understand. I am a whiteness leper.

So really what I'm trying to say is- you know all those powerful little groups in the Home Counties who make tea and jam but actually have something that makes you shiver inside... that's my impression of British whiteness and that's why it's got to go. Hey, second generation Brits can knit too (and make jam).
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:55 / 02.08.04
So, we agree that whiteness is not actually located in skin colour? You have white (or pink, or whatever descriptor you prefer) skin, but are not a part of the institution of whiteness that is located in knitting circles in the Shires? That's quite a big first question, if only because we then get onto questions like:

Anyhow when you say certainly one thing "Britishness" *can* mean is whiteness I find myself compelled to reply that it's just not my experience of Britishness. For me a huge part of being British was growing up in a community of Gujarati speakers and going to Diwali festivals where I was the only white kid (well, apart from my brother). My parents being utter atheists I was allowed access to all religious festivals and learned only a tiny amount about their meaning due to general disinterest. Thus huge amounts of Indian culture instilled in to me but very little knowledge of actual rituals. However those Diwali festivals mean more to me Britishly than my local, Herts all white parish council ever will.

I'd suggest that there are two elements in this account that are instructive but unrealised. The first is that part of the institution of whiteness might be said to be precisely such a freedom for uninterest. You weren't interested in the meaning of the religious ceremonies, so you got simply to observe them as brightly-coloured ceremonies - like an exhibition of Morris Dancing, say. I would suggest that the people celebrating Diwali would not have the same freedom to ignore the rituals and beliefs of the knitters in the Shires if they wanted to have any part or say in the control of the social institutions that entwine both.

The second thing is the all-white Herts Parish Council. Simply put, and my intention here is not to be rude about anyone's culture or location, but once you get outside certain areas (London for you, Leicester for me) the opportunity to hang around at Diwali festivals drops off sharply, *which pushes up house prices* (to bring economics and capital back in). Areas like Hertfordshire are startlingly monocultural (I recall a friend telling me about her town in Dorset, which had one Chinese and one Indian family, and indeed the village I spent my early years, which had one mixed-race kid), and this monoculturality is protected and supported by the institutions of capital. In effect, they are the bulwarks of the tricoteuses. So, will they just fade and die, just as the England of warm beer and matrons cycling to church fades and dies even as a resonant ideal, or eventually isolate themselves completely - retreating inside gated communities with armed guards from which they pull ropes that keep governments protecting them, until eventually they wither into sterility? I think involving questions of capital is important and useful, but not to say that my struggle is better than your struggle but to look at how the questions are implicated in each other...
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
12:28 / 02.08.04
*deep breaths*

Thanks, Tann for interposing yrself bewteen mine and Anna's posts. Alot of the above post, I agree with, and it's very well put.

I've had a bit of time to think and try and hold off from the 'argghhh' post this was going to be. And I will try and be positive and contribute, but I have to respond to Anna's points.

I do agree that an understanding of how capital operates is vital for any project of that attempts to dismantle or rebuild beyond all recognition a dominant identity, and probably guilty of over-stating the cultural/personal identity issue.

But I don't believe that you can separate the two, make them cause and effect. Tannce has clearly and effectively demonstrated how capital feeds into your own personal experiences of 'multicultural' and 'white' space.

You're arguing on the one hand the the cultural approach has no meaning, that 'looking inside ourselves' is of no use, and then you're doing exactly that and extrapoloating from a your own persnal experience, which you're carefully keeping separate from notions of capital and class, a notion of what colour means.

Ok. And a question: on this:

The affirmation of ourselves and our roll, the seeking out of the BNP's beliefs are never going to help anything.

Do you consider this unproductive for anyone/everyone, or specfically for looking at British whiteness?

Right. Anna, I'm going to try and not rant, but there's a quality in your post that gives me such a visceral anger that it could be difficult. And hey, you do like to 'charge in', so why don't I try.

And it arises from this:

I suppose that I always will because I think that colour contributes very little to culture except for utter nonsense broadcast by people who actually think it makes a damn bit of difference to anything. That's not to say that I don't appreciate the cultures that are non-white just that I think skin-colour isn't significant. I only believe that it means something in its grounding as majority and to an extent I think that's very clearly presented by Tannce's post

My immediate response to this is that it's an empathy gap so huge that there's no point me even trying to respond. But it makes me so angry, I feel it's worth having a go.

*You* don't think skin-colour means anything, but this doesn't mean that you don't 'appreciate' the cultures that are racially different from you.

Do you realise quite how condescending your're being here? Same goes for the 'look how easily i dip in and out of cultures, none of them mean anything to me beyond pageantry'. But Tannce has covered that. (This puts me in mind of yr 'ignorant fools' thread in the Temple. Is that culture more worthy/needing of respect?)

You're conflating all immigrant experiences into one here and saying that because for *your* cultures skin colour isn't relevant, that means it isn't relevant.

Which, and sorry if this is snippy but hey, you would say, given that yr from a *caucasian* immigrant culture.

My skin colour is important to me, not only because I'm now proud of my culture in a way that when I was younger I wasn't, shame which expressed itself in a desire to be white skined/brown-haired. That is a part of it, yes.

Being and feeling dark and beautiful is a reaction in part against racism and being in a minority culture.

But it's also just about being who I am, and being allowed to get on with that. In refusing the notion that my skin colour is at all relevant, your're refusing my culture an equal footing with white cultures unless I toe your line on colour. A line that's made by a culture whose colour, as we can see from this an other threads, is tricky and problematical to work with and pin down.


Y'know, maybe it's not about equality as 'judging-everyone-the-same' as equality as 'respecting-and-living-with-our-differences'. Just maybe?

Mutuality, rather than equality, perhaps?


(note to mods, if this is offtopic, can someone pm me as I'd like to grab it and bung it somewhere else rather than having it deleted)

And frankly, as long as racism in on 'on the street, I find yr very presence offensive and feel it's okay to verablly and physically abuse you' fashion, which to get personal for a second, I'd be very surprised if you've experienced, then reclamation tactics are viable and valid.
 
 
Cat Chant
14:08 / 02.08.04
[lots of interesting things here - thesis is demanding all my attention like teething baby - thanks to everyone for being thoughtful and interesting - will post properly someday]
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:19 / 02.08.04
Actually, rereading and attempting to be a bit more intopic, it occurs to me that many members of non-english white immgirant communities, do argue that their skin colour is a factor, in for example, having their cultural difference erased/ignored/minimised in favour of physically visible cultural differences.
 
 
Cat Chant
17:27 / 02.08.04
I want to take this in three directions simultaneously, so I hope that's okay - we can maybe start some spin-off threads if it seems necessary. Thanks to everyone for helping me focus my random, scatty and not-very-well-expressed thoughts...

Ex:

feelng secure in their general mainstream/dominant image, they can introduce kooky, specific elements

Damn/thanks. I think you've put your finger on it there - it reminds me of an article by Susan Sordo (I think) which I meant to quote in another thread. She's talking about 'postmodern effacements' (of, among other things, race and skin colour) and gets very depressed by a Donahue show which posed the question of whether a particular set of adverts for green contact lenses was racist; the audience all responded (dating the show/article slightly) "Black women wear green contact lenses, Bo Derek puts her hair in cornrows, what's the difference?" She suggests that "the difference" is precisely that black women have historically been (and still are) pressured to spend time, labour and money on making their appearance "whiter", whereas Bo Derek is in a position of such stability and dominance that she can afford to flirt with cornrows (secure, for one thing, in the knowledge that even in cornrows she won't be mistaken for/treated as a black person, so she can pick up the attractive 'look' without it signifying in the same way on a racist street). That is, it does nothing to - expose white people to the same level of risk as black people.

Um, not that my desire is for there to be a 'level playing field' of racism, obviously - I also certainly don't want white cultures/people to be 'victims' ("Oh the tragedy of how Morris-dancing whiteness is oppressed!" - such nonsense), that wasn't what my 'safe space' anecdote was supposed to be about at all. I guess, actually, I was thinking something about how white minority - or at least historically specific - cultures are places where there is a cultural content - not just "whiteness = universalism" or "whiteness = the blending of all colours together into a blank page of humanity" - which is not linked to oppression, and so maybe that could be a model for, or a route towards, some sort of non-oppressive whiteness and/or cultural-racial multiplicity. But you're right that actually it's because "whiteness" as dominant can afford to be kooky. Hmm. Oh well, I had the feeling Morris-dancing couldn't possibly be the cure for any of our social ills and now I know why...

This

it might just work to suck up a load of different ethnicities and cultures into the mass of whiteness. To ducttape more things together, rather than pull them apart.

is interesting too and I hadn't thought of it - thanks again. You mean, like, it would show how inclusive and universal whiteness is, rather than the reverse?

Kit-Kat Club:

I have been thinking of whiteness along the lines of the very helpful gender pyramid thingy outlined in Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook, where the nearer you are to the pinnacle of whiteness the less complicated everything is for you

Ooh. Now what that reminds me of (because [shame, shame] I still haven't read My Gender Workbook) is Eve Sedgwick saying that there is only one perspective from which sex/gender/desire/(race) all make sense in terms of compulsory non-miscegenating heterosexuality (again, that perspective is the white Anglo straight male). And, like I said, I've been reading Notes of A White Black Woman recently, which is about the experience of being a "white"-skinned African-American woman. Which sort of gets at Anna's point that

skin-colour isn't significant

Sort of yes and no. No, in that skin colour isn't the determinant: it doesn't determine culture, or even race - and, in fact, if you're in the 'right' point of the pyramid or chain, where your skin colour, your experienced race, and the cultural connotations of that skin colour in your social milieu all line up "correctly", then skin colour isn't significant. If you're a white black woman (or, for that matter, as BiP points out, a black black woman), it probably is.

Some scatty responses to your post, Anna, which I thought was really interesting, and I'm still thinking about it:

certainly one thing "Britishness" *can* mean is whiteness I find myself compelled to reply that it's just not my experience of Britishness

Which is good, and also interesting. But I wondered if you could explain a bit more in general terms what you mean? Obviously you weren't experiencing Diwali in the same way as the (presumably religiously/culturally engaged) people you were celebrating it with - just as obviously, these experiences have formed part of your cultural vocabulary in a way they haven't, say, mine.

When you ask:

how could Britishness be about whiteness?

well... that's kind of what this thread is about: how can it be? How does that pyramid/thread work to line up Britishness and whiteness, and how can we stop it? Can we stop it without seeing how it works? Simply through greater cultural interchange/integration? What kinds of Britishness can we invent, circulate, create, experience, that specifically resist the specific rhetorics of 'white Britain'?

I can't help thinking that Britishness does mean something (having just moved my Australian girlfriend in, I can tell you that she experiences something 'British' about living here and not in Australia) and whiteness means something different in Britain than in, say, Australia (this is partly why I've been thinking about British race/racism since I went to Australia last year, because it was so strange to be somewhere where "rights for indigenous people" was a good thing and not vile BNP jargon).

(Pedant corner: the only person to have used the word 'multicultural' in this thread is sdv, in a very critical sense, and BiP, in quotes in an informally phrased sentence, also in a critical sense, so I'm not sure who's 'bandying it about' in the Head Shop.)

As for this:

global capitalism is the *object* that creates these divisions... So if you want to resist racism and really examine the meaning behind British whiteness than it begins, not with Britain but in fact with the entire world and not with an examination of Britain and our status as white but with the interplay and clash of cultures that happens everywhere and is antagonised by capitalism

Okay, that's clearer than sdv, and many thanks, but I have the same reservation: maybe the most important thing is to combat capitalism, but no-one is posting in the Big Brother thread to say "Capitalism produced Big Brother! That's all there is to say about it, and continuing this thread is a waste of time, when we should be combating capitalism!" I mean, if you and/or sdv can come up with a good model for how global capitalism produces race and racism, how they work to help global capitalism, and what we can do about that, no-one will be more grateful than me: but in the meantime, just saying "This is a pointless use of time because we should be fighting global capitalism" applies to everything.

Or, in other words, please talk about the interplay and clash of cultures that happens everywhere and is antagonised by capitalism. I'd love to see it. I don't know enough about it and would be really interested, and it's an important answer to the questions I posed in this thread. I get the feeling that you and sdv assume that I only want answers that are framed in terms of personal identity. I really did want this thread to be open-ended.

But this is part of my larger (occasional) problem with the Head Shop: I think it should be a place for collaborative thinking, where people correct each other and reframe questions in their own way, not a place where people go "Aha! You didn't mention capitalism in your first post! This thread is worthless!" I didn't mention it because I didn't think of it, and I want other people to bring in other perspectives. If I could encapsulate the whole issue in a single post, what would be the point of having a discussion?

Bollocks. I'm late now so I can't even really reread this post - hope it makes some sort of sense. back tomorrow.
 
 
grant
21:06 / 02.08.04
I'm having a thought that isn't quite done yet, but I'm not going to wait for it quite because it's late and I want to leave work. The thought has something to do with a relationship between significance, global capitalism, Morris dancing and visual cues.

Basically, it has to do with the immediacy of the assumption of cultural roles (understood as access to white culture) based on visual cues within a split second transaction -- a nearly biological, preconscious response to visual signifiers that is not only encouraged/regulated by global capital (as reinforcing social order) but also regulates the flow of capital. Like, assumptions bankers make about property values when you sit down to ask for a mortgage loan, the assumptions that potential employers make when they sit you down for a job interview, the assumptions witnesses make at the scene of a robbery, the assumptions potential mates make sitting next to you at the bar. This layer of assumptions plays a part in creating cultural elements, but I'm not sure it's exactly the same thing as culture (as in "multiculturalism") itself... more like the relationship between reflex or hypnotic suggestion (assumption) and the structure of the mind itself (culture).

Or, I don't think there's a way Morris dance can be transmitted immediately, visually, such that it can be used as shorthand for a set of other cultural/race-based assumptions.

Not finished with thought.

======

On green contacts and hair straightener:
I'm not sure the relationship between white/non-white races is as simple as white folks wanting to be all exotic, but colored folks feeling they have to appear white. There was a piece on the NPR a few weeks back about this landmark black millionaire in the 1920s or so... a woman who created her own business making beauty products, starting with a hair straightener (but also being the first in the 50s/60s to show images of models with afros). I'm not saying the exotic dabbling vs. white=beauty dynamic doesn't exist, because it does. I think there's a lot more going on in conceptions & presentations of beauty than that privilege-only model suggests.
 
 
Cat Chant
16:49 / 06.08.04
...based on visual cues within a split second transaction -- a nearly biological, preconscious response to visual signifiers that is not only encouraged/regulated by global capital (as reinforcing social order) but also regulates the flow of capital.

That gives me a shivery feeling. I like it a lot. The direction in which I, myself, would want to take it - and I'd be interested to know if these are the lines you're thinking along, or not - is something about how obviousness or transparency is always a route for capital. Althusser says that what ideology does is impose obviousnesses as obviousnesses, and the way I usually explain that to my students is with reference to a moment in Life is Beautiful where the little boy is asking his dad why the shops have signs up saying "No Jews, No Dogs". His dad says that they just don't like Jews and dogs, and they decide they'll put up a sign in their own shop saying "No Eskimos, No Spiders". Now, that moment works because, no matter how much we reject the implications, we're all capable of reading - and we can't help reading - the ideological or the cultural weight behind "No Jews, No Dogs". That is, we know that "No Jews, No Dogs" is not the same as "No Eskimos, No Spiders" (that an association is being made between Jews and Dogs, but that's only one dimension of it).

Um - so at that level of communication, those channels or routes of legibility/understanding, the split-second, preconscious identifications, that's where capital is producing, regulating and policing race? Sort of as if... that pyramid, or chain, that Kit-Kat and I were talking about, as if capital flows down it more easily if it's correctly aligned.

(And you're quite right that exoticism vs white=beauty isn't the only thing going on in racialized body-maintenance/modification practices, grant - hope I didn't suggest that it was.)
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
17:06 / 06.08.04
Brief footnote:

Weirdly enough, Morris dancing arguably derives from Morisco or Moorish dancing, so historically speaking, it's possibly as British/white as the Spanish Moors who brought it to this country in the 14th century...

http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3moris.htm
 
 
Cat Chant
07:20 / 07.08.04
Aha! Like fish and chips, as British as... the Jewish immigrants that brought it to Britain in, er, the eighteenth century (or something).
 
 
grant
15:34 / 12.08.04
Um - so at that level of communication, those channels or routes of legibility/understanding, the split-second, preconscious identifications, that's where capital is producing, regulating and policing race? Sort of as if... that pyramid, or chain, that Kit-Kat and I were talking about, as if capital flows down it more easily if it's correctly aligned.


Yes... at the invisible level of the assumptions one carries into an economic transaction.

Reading back on what I wrote (which I can barely recognize now, a week later), I think most of what I was doing was underlining the fact that ideas about race & racism are rarely processed at a conscious level, although one might consciously rationalize one's pre-conscious feelings.
 
 
grant
20:55 / 18.08.04
By the way, since this thread has been dubbed the sequel to the other "Whiteness" thread, I should post this thang I got off Language of Blood blog:
The Deconstructing Whiteness bibliography.

As far as starting points, this one seems to offer many. It's well organized, but I wish it was annotated.

There are links at the very bottom to a couple other sites and to the rest of the "Whiteness Studies" page... which features its own newswire. Well worth bookmarking.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
17:21 / 20.08.04
You're conflating all immigrant experiences into one here and saying that because for *your* cultures skin colour isn't relevant, that means it isn't relevant.

No, no, that's not what I was trying to say. I was aware while I was writing that post that it could come across as condescending but I wasn't trying to belittle experience through colour but to say that culturally/Britishly part of our problem is the constant identification of skin colour. Bengali- Are you happy with the fact that so much of your identification happens through the colour of your skin? Through a physical attribute? No, I'll go further than that- Do you think it's right that your colour and not your culture denotes so much of your difference? Sorry, this sounds more combative and accusatory than I mean it to be. These questions are meant in a genuine sense and not rhetorically. I want to talk about the way things actually are as I percieve them. British-Asian is as valid as British-Polish and my mother is not an other in social eyes but you are and that's just fucking ridiculous because you're both second generation immigrants and should have the same rights and opportunities to be seen in that way. I'm trying to highlight what I think is unjust and wrong here. So I *know* colour means something and is important but what I mean is that it doesn't define the level of Britishness that you or any of us experience.

Y'know, maybe it's not about equality as 'judging-everyone-the-same' as equality as 'respecting-and-living-with-our-differences'. Just maybe?
Where are your differences based? In relationships, food, a relative who kisses you three times instead of once, in a man who makes a comment about the colour of your skin? That's what I mean- the positives are about things that all cultures regardless of skin have in common, about the different details that cultures possess but the negatives don't get aimed at someone who is white. That's why I'm down on the focus on skin colour and why I'm prone towards the judge-everyone-the-same outlook. Because respecting-and-living-with-our-differences isn't enough or because really in a good world it shouldn't be enough.

Obviously you weren't experiencing Diwali in the same way as the (presumably religiously/culturally engaged) people you were celebrating it with

Anymore than I could go to France and be French in two weeks or claim to understand Christianity as a christian or be part of that community. I think I was about as involved as I could be in a community I didn't belong to and couldn't enter. So I'm not assuming that I understand the culture because that would be pretty dim. All I can have is an outsiders view and I think that realising that is respectful of differences but it's a view of a culture and a different type of Britishness. Not recognising that it's British- that Diwali festival- is a mistake because all of the children there were British. When I look at the exiled Polish community in this country I don't see a group of Polish people living in Poland now, I see people who maintain a culture that Poland possessed in the '30s, '40s and '50s. So they're British-Polish and their children are even more British.

Whiteness is about skin colour but it's absurd to assume that we all exercise our whiteness in the same way. I don't deny that there's a problem, a wealth gap, a startling amount of prejudice, I'm not naive but simply recounting my own experience and where I think the problems lie. Contrary to people's opinion- Tannce has clearly and effectively demonstrated how capital feeds into your own personal experiences of 'multicultural' and 'white' space- white space was precisely what I was attempting to highlight when I was talking about my schooling. Bengali how can you get irate about this and then say that you don't want equal judgement for people? My point was the inequality of Britain at the moment, that our constant recognition of skin colour is problematic because people shouldn't make judgements on those kinds of grounds, that there needs to be more exposure to other cultures early on and that even if you can't be inside them it can be a positive experience and you, at least, realise then that people are just people. There isn't a big, cultural way to deal with difference, it needs to be done on an individual basis.

Okay, now this can still be misinterpreted and I want to make it clear that this is entirely about a problem of segregation that I think we have and not any solution that I can concieve of. I know you can't ignore the colour of your skin in any real sense, I know that I can say these things because I'm white, it's not that I think ignoring what sets you apart from a white minority is going to get you anywhere. I'm just trying to emphasise the problems with integration from a white perspective. So please don't think I'm purposefully being arrogant and privileged and throwing myself about. I really am trying to focus on the problems with whiteness as this dominant and utterly stupid thing because as a white girl I do think whiteness is stupid and I don't want it to be this way.
 
  
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