Letters to the Whiteness Studies Web Site, with Responses

From time to time I get letters in response to this web site. Some are hate mail from white supremacists (see the "Hate Mail" link below). But other letters raise important objections and questions that are doubtless shared by many people who encounter Whiteness Studies. Below I have reprinted some of these exchanges, including my responses. I welcome more letters (please indicate whether you are willing to have your letter posted to this page).

• Does Professor Jay Hate White People?: an Exchange
• What's A White High School Teacher to Do?
• An Exchange on White Guilt
• Is White Studies Just More White Narcissism?
• Whiteness in Japan
• Whiteness as Seen by People of Color
• "I never even thought about being white"
• Is Talking About "White Privilege" Just a Trick That Supports White Supremacy?
• A Black College Student Responds Skeptically
  
  Hate Mail Page
  

I. An  Exchange on White Guilt

Dear Sir:  After looking over your web page, "Beyond the Pale,"  I noticed  the word "appalling" came immediately after.  May I ask why?  Do you  believe society today, after what has occurred over the past thirty years,  finds anything to do with "whites" i.e. European/Americans appalling? Many European/Americans ( recent identity preferred over "white") are  hard-working children of European immigrants, as am I.  We should no longer  be blamed for America's ills i.e. slavery, oppression, racism.  We are taking a part in todays's current dialogues regarding issues of race and  diversity. We are, after all, a legitimate ethnic groups with diversity  within our own culture, Germanic, Celtic, Swedish, etc.

Respectfully, 
C.Anastasia, Boston Representative,  European/American Issues Forum 
 www.eaif.org

Dear C. Anastasia:

It seems that I had better explain my pun, since it originates in literary  associations not familiar to all readers. Etymologically, "appalling" means "to turn white," or to make pale, as when someone (depending on their skin color) turns "white" with fear or apprehension. It thus alludes to the political process by which European Americans were turned (wrongly) into "white" people, often to strike fear into the hearts of others. This was, of course, the Klan's technique in adopting the white sheets, which were a metaphor for this process.

Antiracism is not about guilt or blame. You don't have to be guilty or blameful to receive privileged treatment at the bank, at the store, in the courts, in legislative policy, etc. just because you are "white." This is not about individuals; this is about STRUCTURES of privilege. For two centuries laws and customs in the United States gave "white" people (a word that appeared in countless legal decisions and legislative acts) an unfair advantage over others. "Hard working immigrants" of European descent faced a hard lot, but their relative lot was made easier by the fact that they did not have to compete on a level playing field with nonwhites. The job market and access to education were thus skewed in their favor, just as men did not have to face much competition since women were denied the right to compete for most jobs or for admission to the best schools and colleges. Again, these are structures of privilege, and they benefit people no matter whether those individuals want this to be the case or not. It doesn't matter how fair and antiracist you may be, you are not the one they follow in the department store, but you are the one that gets her loan approved at the bank. It's this structure and legacy of white privilege that's appalling. I welcome any conscious effort by European Americans to celebrate their heritage as long as this includes loudly denouncing white supremacy and the myth of the existence of "white" people.

Best regards,

Gregory Jay

Hello, how are you? I am an anthropology major at Hunter College (CUNY) in New York City. I came across your articles on White Studies on the internet while researching an English paper. As I read more of what you and your follow scholars are doing, I have become increasingly distressed. As a Black women let me tell you why White Studies is ineffective in combating racism and simply reinforces racist attitudes.

1. White studies seems to be based on the fact that being white confirms privileges on whites that people of color don't have. Blacks and others are presented as these poor, marginalized people completely defined by the White world. 2. From my own experience white people have no problem with their race, they are uncomfortable with everyone else's. I don't see any White studies researchers teaching about the beauty of Asian/Latino art/literature etc. All I see is white people talking about themselves, as they always have and no effort to embrace other cultures. The White studies argument is that whites should embrace Blacks because we are victimized, not because we are equal and contribute things of value to society. Am I right?

Signed,

Michele Hamilton

 ***

Dear Michele:

I really appreciate your email. The dialogue on these issues is very important, and all of us need to listen carefully to the diverse voices at the table.

Your concerns are valid, and I just want to address a couple of them from my own perspective, since of course I only represent myself and can't speak for all the other people involved in the effort to deconstruct whiteness.

I got interested in the critique of whiteness as an extension of my years of teaching multicultural literature. Normally these are courses focused on the poetry, fiction, and essays of non-whites in the United States. I have also focused on the literature of the enslavement of African Americans, including a graduate seminar this semester. So I don't view the issue as one of choosing between studying whiteness and studying diverse cultures. I think you can and should do both. In teaching at a school that is 85% white, I find it important to challenge my students to realize their own racial position. Most of my students do not want to think about race or to admit that race makes a difference in how they are treated. And they think that if they "appreciate" other cultures or have a black friend this somehow counts as enough in the war against racism.

By putting white supremacy into the mix of topics we critique, we can understand better both the economic and the cultural structures of racism. We can also make racism an issue even when only white people are in the room or when studying material that doesn't appear to be about race (because it is "only" about white people). The trouble with much antiracist education is that it limits discussions of race to moments when people of color are featured. This just perpetuates the myth that white people don't form a racial class, which they do. The founding argument in this discussion is Toni Morrison's book Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. I think when an African American novelist of her distinction makes this point, we should all give it serious consideration.

In deconstructing white privilege, then, much of the focus is on an antiracist critique that is *structural* rather than personal. Many whites will say "But I'm not a racist." They need to see that whether this is true or not, it doesn't really matter, since they will be treated differently because they are white, just as blacks and latinos and Indians will be treated differently based on their appearance. Whites resist antiracist education when they think they are being guilt-tripped. Structural attacks on privilege help get around that barrier. They need not portray people of color as helpless, marginalized victims if the voices of diverse traditions are given space and listened to in constructing the dialogue.

The fact that, in your words, "white people have no problem with their race" is exactly the problem. They have no consciousness of white supremacy or of the benefits it brings or the harms it does.

With all due respect, your statement that "I don't see any White studies researchers teaching about the beauty of Asian/Latino art/literature etc." doesn't begin to do justice to the situation. There is of course a long history of whites writing about and celebrating diverse cultures, though surely not enough. There are many controversies, of course, when white people do this, as often it is said that they are trespassing on other people's cultural terrain or appropriating or colonizing other people's culture. This helps explain why white people who want to work across cultural divides need to reflect critically on their own racial position before they do so, and include racial self-criticism when they are studying other groups. Otherwise we just get more white supremacy, since whites have long been comfortable celebrating blacks or latinos as entertainment or aesthetic objects, as long as they know their place.

You also write that "The White studies argument is that whites should embrace Blacks because we are victimized, not because we are equal and contribute things of value to society." I hope this is not true, but I can see the danger. Yet I think the point remains that white people cannot perceive this equality or appreciate these contributions as long as they are working from a standpoint of white supremacy. Unless we deconstruct white supremacy, then even these acknowledgements of equality and value are being made by people who smugly condescend to make these judgments, as if they had the right to in the first place. Who gave white people that privilege? Asking white people for recognition just reinforces white people's presumption that they have the right to decide these matters and are the ones in charge of who gets recognized. Here's where it is also important to expose white people to cultural achievements like Julie Dash's film "Daughters of the Dust," where African Americans explore and celebrate their history without a single image of a white person in sight.

I know I have gone on way too long. For a better idea of how I approach these problems, you can visit the web sites for my multiculturalism and African American studies classes, or check out my book American Literature and the Culture Wars .

 ***

Dear Gregory Jay

How are you? Thank you for responding to my letter. I agree with many of your statements. I just fear that White studies will become a discipline where white academics study themselves with no input from other groups. I have known many professors have thought they were being self critical and observant, but come off as racist. You many want to tell some of your other academics like the man who wrote How the Irish Became White and Race Traitor web site, that he comes off like this.

 The class I took is called "Crossing Borders." It was a multiculture literature class. We read Passing by Nella Larsen, Native Speaker by Chang Rae Lee, Another Country by James Baldwin, Dreaming in Cuban by Christina Garcia, among others.

 Michele Hamilton

III. Whiteness in  Japan

Dear Gregory Jay

I'll admit, when I first say your pages on the concept of "whiteness" as a race, I thought, "here we go again, more multi-culti nonsense, just another way to make us 'European/Americans' feel guilty."

Don't get me wrong--I'm no David Duke fan.  But I'm not a supporter of Afro-Centrism either (bad history expounded in the guise of raising self-esteem is still bad history).  Growing up where I did, when I did, it was easy to take my white privilege for granted.  We were all white, except for the Native Americans, but they lived over there and never appeared on our radar screens.

Then I moved to Japan, where I was confronted with my whiteness on a daily basis.  A red-haired Polish American living in the most conservative area of Japan.  I was taller.  I was bigger.  I was one of only 100 whites.  I was a minority in a country that has a love/hate relationship with themselves and with America.  I was an American living in a town where right-wing conservatives drive around in big black trucks with large speakers spouting slogans like "Foreigners are evil."  Small children run away from me and my husband when we walk down the street.  Old people won't sit next to us on trains or buses.  Restaurants and bars sport signs "No Foreigners Allowed."

Taxis cruise by without stopping when we're trying to flag down a cab.  Students telling us with all seriousness that foreigner (a) smell bad (b) can't eat raw fish (c) can't use chopsticks (d) are dirty (e) fill in the blanks.

You could say that we were experiencing what many minorities have their entire lives, except for one thing:  what my husband calls "golden discrimination."

We're paid more than the Japanese for doing the same jobs.  We're university teachers and we get better benefits and higher salaries than Japanese in comparable positions.  Academic credentials (except for that all-important M.A) and teaching skills don't matter, because we're white and American.  We teach in our native language; even rudimentary Japanese is not expected (try being a Japanese professor in an American university with no English ability).

We're invited to parties to perform as GOD's (gaijiin (foreigner) on display).

We're courted and reviled.  Paid more but not really trusted.  No matter how good our Japanese becomes, we'll never be part of this culture.  Friends who are married to Japanese and have lived here for 20 years or more still feel like foreigners.   After six years in this neighborhood, the old ladies still check my trash on garbage day to make sure that I'm separating it properly.

It would be easy to laugh at the Japanese attitudes except for one thing:  what I experienced when I attended graduate school in England.  There whiteness is not the issue so much as being an American.  Good Lord, the questions and comments I had to endure.  "How many guns do you own?"  "I think the film Pulp Fiction is an accurate portrayal of American culture in the nineties."  Endless nasty sound-bites that began with "You Americans..." or "I don't like Americans because..."

The attitude that America is the Promised Land, that it is a country singularly blessed is such a part of white Americans' education and self-image that to be confronted with the fact that a lot of people in the world don't like us can be devastating.  Fortunately, I had been in Japan for seven months prior to moving to England, and my sense of privilege was already battered.  Now, seven years after leaving the U.S., I don't take my whiteness for granted.  I know that some people will automatically dislike me because of where I was born.  I constantly question my identity and what it means to be white, American and middle-class.  I no longer begin sentences with "We Americans" because I am only a part of America, and can't possibily speak for everyone.

What's the point to all of this?  If you're going to talk about whiteness, particularly American whiteness, then it's necessary to discuss how others see us--the English, the Australians, the Asians.  It's also important to see how the U.S. succeeds where other countries fail.  What you termed "the balkanization" of America isn't really accurate.  We're got a long way to go in the U.S., but at least there's a dialogue, a sense of things not being right.  You can't legislate people's feelings about "the other" but at least there are mechanisms in place to try to legally correct gross injustices.  Here is Japan there are hundreds of thousands of ethnic Koreans whose ancestors were brought here by force to fuel the war machine.  Over fifty years later the children and grandchildren of those forced laborers are not Japanese citizens, even though they were born here, speak only Japanese and attend Japanese schools.  These Koreans are barred from certain jobs because they are not citizens.  They can't vote in elections.  And many Japanese feel that's ok because they're Korean.  In the U.S., legally at least, the child of a Laotian born in northern Wisconsin could be president.  Maybe not in our lifetimes, but maybe in your grandchildren's.

The U.S. is an ongoing experiment in how to contend with so many ethnic groups, languages, religions and skin colors, with so much violence and failure in the process.  The brouhaha surrounding Joe Lieberman's appointment as Al Gore's running mate shows how far we have to go.  Ideas like your "Whiteness Project" show how far we've come.

Good luck.

Carole L. Kasprzycki

IV. Whiteness as Seen by  People of Color

Dear Professor Gregory Jay:

I wanted to commend you for your website "Whiteness Studies: Beyond the Pale."  I think it is a valuable tool in the racial deconstruction of whiteness and I plan to include it as a link to a class website that I am currently designing for Spring semester 2001 here at Emory University.

(For a previous class website that I put together this semester, please visit http://www.learnlink.emory.edu/~jhobson/RCG.html)

Because I did not see where I could submit a letter to you concerning your website, I decided to contact you via the University of Wisconsin faculty page.  I am writing in particular because I wondered if you knew of any sources within Whiteness Studies that explore representations of whiteness from the perspectives of people of color.

I realize that Whiteness Studies focuses on white people and helping whites to learn how to deconstruct themselves as a race.  Having taught a class this semester on "Race, Gender, and the Body," I realize how difficult it was for my students--of all colors--to learn how to do this. Specifically, two of my students brought to my attention a book this year, The Black Image in the White Mind, which was quite similar to Jan Nederveen Pieterse's 1992 White on Black.

Because of its similarity, I've been wondering: when will we switch from deconstructing the psyches of white people and start deconstructing how people of color view white people and whiteness?  A question that bell hooks has long raised in her 1992 Black Looks. In short, how soon do you think we will see a book titled The White Image in the Black Mind (or in the Minds of People of Color). It's the one area where I feel Whiteness Studies could really explore and complicate with the focus on deconstructions of whiteness.

As one letter-writer had expressed on your website, Whiteness Studies comes dangerously close to re-focusing and re-centering on White People yet again. However, if Whiteness Studies branched out and deconstructed images of whiteness as expressed by non-whites, this would truly expand the project of this academic study, and I do believe it is important.

Often, many of my white students don't even think about their "whiteness" EXCEPT in the presence of non-whites (other students and myself included). What this reminds me of is what Toni Morrison expressed about whiteness being dependent upon an Africanist Presence, not to mention there exists an extreme unease among whites about being perceived as a Racial Other, when they have been raised to feel like the Norm, the Subject, the Gazer who objectifies and defines the Other who exists outside of whiteness. Think of the dramatic psychological shifts that may develop when whites become a "minority" in America in the next couple of decades.

This dis-ease among whites expresses, it seems, a deep anxiety about being perceived as "racially different" as whites, and I'm always amazed when my white students "discover" that they are perceived in certain ways by blacks, Asians, Latinos, Arabs, etc. that they never would have imagined, i.e.--that they sometimes cause feelings of fear and resentment in people of color, that they have no clue what is meant by "internalized racism," that Racism is not synonymous with wearing a KKK sheet, etc.

I raise all these issues because I think it really would be useful to explore representations of whiteness by non-whites: from the ways in which Africans perceived of white colonizers on the continent during colonialism to the ways in which Native Americans viewed "the white man" (or African Americans referring to "Miss Ann" and "Miss Charlie"), to the ways in which Latin Americans construct "gringas" to the ways in which Japanese stereotype whites in their animation, etc.

If you know of any projects that explore this topic, I would greatly appreciate the information.  Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours,

Janell C. Hobson
Institute for Women's Studies
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Dear Janell Hobson:

Thanks very much for your note and thoughtful comments. The issues you raise are extremely important, and difficult. May I have your permission to add your message to the web site's archive for public viewing?

I'll think about what to suggest, but in the meantime I wonder if you've seen David Roediger's anthology "Black on White," which collects black writers' views of whites from the turn of the century to the present. Perhaps it has some of the kind of material you are looking for, though it remains in the black/white binary mode. Maybe another way to get at things is through the growing literature and visual expression of hybridity, in which individuals of "mixed" background negotiate the competing claims made on them by various communities. There's that anthology "Half and Half," and certainly others I am sure. And films like "Mississipi Masala". In Hawaii there is a substantial discourse around the term "haolie", which refers both to white people and non-locals, it seems, much to the confusion of many. This comes up in contemporary local Hawaiian lit (I have a couple of graduate students working in this area, but don't know it very well myself--see the novels of Lois Yamanaka for some controversial examples).

Anyway, I've printed out your syllabus and am looking forward to learning from your work. Thank you once more for writing.

V. "I  never even thought about being white"

Dear Gregory Jay

i am a student at the university of northern colorado. i am currently in a  multiculturalism class and we have a paper due in a month or so. being a  junior i have finally come to mind to that procrastination isn't the best policy.

my questions are fairly simple. i am interested in whiteness and have picked it as my topic for my paper.  so here goes

1. Why is the term "american" seen as white?

2. What are some methods that help whiteness stay hidden?

3. What would you say the literal meaning of whiteness is?

i guess i would like to make one more statement. i read a couple of the  letters on the sight and came across the one that a college student in new  york had written.  She said that she worried about where whiteness studies would go in the future, and basically she thought it was a waste of time to teach. i would like to respond by saying something only I am a white honky from a small town in colorado. probably third on the redneck list of states behind wyoming and montana. i had never even heard of whiteness till i came to college.  and when i did it was like a smack in the face. i never ever thought about being white. also studying whiteness does not make me want to feel sorry for for "victimized" blacks. all it does is make me deal with the fact that i am white. i guess me main statement would be by finding a way to realize my own "whiteness" is a step in the right direction. i say this because how can i even begin to find and embrace other cultures if i have no clue about mine?

VI.  Is Talking About "White Privilege" Just a Trick That Supports White Supremacy?

Professor Jay:

Good luck trying to separate being White from White supremacy.

It is the system of White supremacy that give value to being White. "White privilege" is a trick too, it's a way for white people to claim they aren't maintaining White supremacy, because as we all know, "privileges" are given by someone...  Who "gives" White people "White privilege?"

Individual White people choose to practice racism, this trick of

promoting the concept of Whiteness so you don't have to talk about White supremacy is just that, a trick! It attracts the victims and they become "compassionate."

In answer to your second question, White people who are promoting the concept of White privilege are just practicing White supremacy, but in a very deceitful sophisticated way. AND THEY SHOULD STOP DOING SO!

In regard to your last statement, you need to tell me what YOU KNOW about how White supremacy is practiced, you are the White person, you know where the bodies are buried. I am the inmate, you are the guard, if I understood the prison, I wouldn't even be here. You are the one who knows how this system works, you need to take me on the "Grand Tour" of the prison and teach me everything you have learned as a White person about White supremacy and how it works.  If you refuse, I have no choice but to suspect that you are a White supremacist working to maintain the prison of injustice.

The concept of "White privilege" is just the latest tactic the White supremacist have come up with to create confusion in their victims.

Josh

VII. A Black College Student Responds Skeptically

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