you think that you are white
If whiteness didn’t have a social meaning, if the advantages weren’t there, then people wouldn’t think of themselves as white.Metro Times Detroit: The problem with whites. The article is just race traitor 101, but this is a good quote. I remember being attached to my whiteness and utterly unable to even ask myself why. What I want to know is: why hasn't there been an issue of the journal published in a year? Is the project still active? (How long has this story been waiting to run, anyway?)
Comments
I'd like to know too. A couple of years ago, John (Garvey) sent me a draft of a paper he and Noel had written outlining the connection between Race Traitor (as a theory) and Marxism. They felt that people weren't getting their point that whiteness was keeping workers from seeing their true interest. (That is my summary.) At the end of their paper they stated they were most interested in speaking to anti-globalization activists and anarchists who had pulled off Seattle. I don't know what's happened since then.
Posted by: hcog | October 22, 2002 7:33 AM
I can't swear it's apt, but the funny blackpeopleloveus.com site strikes me as the mirror image of Prof. Ignatiev's position. (Via Uffish Thoughts.)
More seriously, Owens and Ignatiev seem to fault white people for holding on to their whiteness because giving it up is "inconvenient". Perhaps I'm too blinkered by the system, but I don't see how giving it up is even possible. A hundred years of American pop- and counterculture has been trying and hasn't succeeded yet. I used to have a psychotic neighbor who would leave the house wearing brown makeup and an afro wig, and I suspect that all he ever got for his effort was a good ass-kicking.
Ignatiev's thoughts are provocative and possibly even true, but I could use some concrete examples.
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle | October 22, 2002 9:23 AM
Can I ask a question? Do you "race traitors" want to abolish all races, or just the white race? And if whites would stop thinking of themselves as being white if it weren't for all the alleged advantages, then why do black people think of themselves as being black? What advantage do they get out of it (well, aside from the affirmative action and welfare payments and potentially billions in reparations...)? And why do you discourage whites from thinking of themselves as white while encouraging blacks to think of themselves as black and Latinos to think of themselves as Latino, etc.?
The whole "whiteness studies" thing is nothing more than a thinly veiled hatred for whites poorly masquerading as academic. Of course, I support it entirely: the more the white-haters spew their hatred, the more whites become sympathetic to the growing white nationalist movement. Keep it up, guys (and womyn)!
Posted by: Some dude from UCLA | October 24, 2002 10:46 PM
Race is a myth.
Posted by: sudama | October 27, 2002 2:13 AM