What is your personal investment in whiteness? Reflecting on Rochester’s “Stand Against Racism” Day

original article: http://holleratyourscholar.tumblr.com/post/83828039584/what-is-your-pers...

Thanks to efforts organized largely-in-part by the YWCA, today is “Stand against racism" day in Rochester.  I’m looking around, and I’m not sure who I’m standing alongside.

No matter how you identify, please ask yourself the following question:

"What is my personal investment in whiteness?"

"Standing against racism" involves more than intervention.  It’s sad that interrupting racism is often perceived to be more inappropriate than racism itself - so intervening whenever and whenever you can is vital, and takes great courage.  However, these are responsive measures.  Hyper-segregation has, and continues to take a toll on this community, and elsewhere.  We need to be thinking about prevention.  Thus, we need to question our personal and institutional investment in whiteness.  We can’t have it both ways. 

We can no longer afford to cognitively disassociate racism and white supremacy. Despite what the media wants you to believe,  white supremacy isn’t something that resides in the fringe elements of American social fabric - it’s carefully and deeply woven inside each and every one of us, and is constantly being reinforced by popular culture.  “White” is not, and has never been neutral.  We cannot continue to structure our perception around a white ‘default’ - the fact that we actively compare, contrast and define one another against a white ‘standard’ serves  to illustrate the embedded nature of white supremacy.  At the same time, ignoring race serves no purpose other than white-washing (quite literally) histories of power and oppression which continue to have very real implications today.  

We must accept that regardless of our intention, if we are not actively fighting against white supremacy, we are reifying it.   Understand that “whiteness” is not, and has never been static.  It constantly redefines itself through inclusion and exclusion.  It’s a dynamic socio-economic qualifier that expands and contracts out of a need for survival. While some groups have, and continue to experience privilege under the gaze of whiteness, we are all oppressed by its presence.

So, what does it mean to be consciously (and unconsciously) invested in whiteness?  Whiteness isn’t simply a trait, it is an institution - and we’re all shareholders.  It is governed by power, and its most devious act is that it has made itself invisible to us.  Bankrupt the institution of whiteness - make it visible.  Know your oppressor by name.  Don’t just withdraw your shares - understand the complex and mutually beneficial relationship(s) between class / capitalism, heteronormativity, patriarchy,  xenophobia, nationalism, and racism - and how they fuel poor educational outcomes, deplorable health-outcomes, mass-incarceration, deportation, military occupation, and war.  To bankrupt the institution of whiteness means one must take definitive stances on these issues.

July will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Rochester race riots…we would be remiss in our duty as compassionate human beings to let this opportunity to question our personal and institutional investment in whiteness to go unexamined.

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