Good White People

Shannon Sullivan

Description

Winner of the 2016 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award presented by the Society of Professors of Education
2014 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Building on her book Revealing Whiteness, Shannon Sullivan identifies a constellation of attitudes common among well-meaning white liberals that she sums up as "white middle-class goodness," an orientation she critiques for being more concerned with establishing anti-racist bona fides than with confronting systematic racism and privilege. Sullivan untangles the complex relationships between class and race in contemporary white identity and outlines four ways this orientation is expressed, each serving to establish one's lack of racism: the denigration of lower-class white people as responsible for ongoing white racism, the demonization of antebellum slaveholders, an emphasis on colorblindness—especially in the context of white childrearing—and the cultivation of attitudes of white guilt, shame, and betrayal. To move beyond these distancing strategies, Sullivan argues, white people need a new ethos that acknowledges and transforms their whiteness in the pursuit of racial justice rather than seeking a self-righteous distance from it.
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Good White Liberals

1. Dumping on White Trash: Etiquette, Abjection, and Radical Inclusion

2. Demonizing White Ancestors: Unconscious Histories and Racial Responsibilities

3. The Dis-ease of Color Blindness: Racial Absences and Invisibilities in the Reproduction of Whiteness

4. The Dangers of White Guilt, Shame, and Betrayal: Toward White Self-Love

Conclusion: Struggles over Love

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Sociology
• Philosophy
• Ethnic studies
• Social class

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 08 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438451701
• Langue: English

Extrait

GOOD WHITE PEOPLE
SUNY series, Philosophy and Race
___________
Robert Bernasconi and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, editors
GOOD WHITE PEOPLE
The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism
SHANNON SULLIVAN
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Jenn Bennett Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sullivan, Shannon, 1967– Good white people : the problem with middle-class white anti-racism / Shannon Sullivan. pages cm. — (SUNY series, Philosophy and race) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-5169-5 (hardcover : alkaline paper) ISBN 978-1-4384-5168-8 (paperback : alkaline paper) 1. Whites—United States—Attitudes. 2. Middle class—United States. 3. Anti-racism—United States. 4. United States—Race relations. 5. United States—Social conditions—1980– I. Title. E184.A1S954 2014 305.800973—dc23
2013025552
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Samantha, Sophia, and Phillip
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Good White Liberals
1. Dumping on White Trash: Etiquette, Abjection, and Radical Inclusion
2. Demonizing White Ancestors: Unconscious Histories and Racial Responsibilities
3. The Dis-ease of Color Blindness: Racial Absences and Invisibilities in the Reproduction of Whiteness
4. The Dangers of White Guilt, Shame, and Betrayal: Toward White Self-Love
Conclusion: Struggles over Love
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank a number of people who helped me with this book:
First and foremost, Phillip McReynolds. I couldn’t begin to describe the ups and downs of writing, rewriting, and undergoing the review process of this book, and Phillip went through it all with me. He is my biggest supporter and best critic, and his positive feedback on an early draft of the introduction was especially important. He read all the versions of the book from beginning to end, providing crucial suggestions and comments. I know he is just as happy as I am to see it published.
I also am grateful to Lucius Outlaw, who provided some much needed moral support during the review process. He understood early on, better than I did, the spiritual side of the book, and that understanding was crucial to the final round of rewriting. I appreciate Melissa Wright’s enthusiastic response to early versions of several chapters of the manuscript, which was important for keeping the project going. I happily thank Robert Bernasconi and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting (series editors) and Andrew Kenyon (SUNY Press) for their interest in and support of this book. Andrew provided particularly helpful editorial guidance during the review process. I benefited from thoughtful feedback from members of the philosophy and the women’s studies departments at Penn State University to whom I presented portions of chapter 4 as part of their colloquia series. I especially appreciate Vincent Colapietro’s question about the place of religion in the overall project. I value the critical questions from audiences at the 2011 philoSOPHIA and especially the 2010 SPEP meetings at which I presented portions of chapter 4 and the conclusion. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for SUNY Press for their lively feedback. I hope that the improvements I made to the book as a result of their collective comments inspire additional vigorous debate in the field.
Many thanks to John Christman and Chris Long for serving as acting heads while I was on sabbatical, during which I finished final revisions of the book. I owe each of them a beer (or several). I am very grateful to Dean Susan Welch and Penn State University’s College of the Liberal Arts for leave from my headship duties. Je tiens à remercier la bande de femmes à Paris qui m’a tenu compagnie pendant les derniers processus de critique et de révision: Caroline, Corinne, Rachel, Dominique, Elisabetta, Cécile, Nathalie, Fabienne, Irena, Aimée, Christelle, Laurence, Carole, Judith, Delphine, et surtout Sara. Et également les bons messieurs: Nicolas, André-Pierre, Benoît, Edward, et Serge. Nos rendez-vous du café Les Artistes et nos soirées de femmes me manquent déja! J’apprécie aussi l’amitié (et le prêt du mixeur) de Mariana. Un merci final aux propriétaires du café Le Parroquet, mon “bureau” pour l’année.
I gratefully acknowledge permission to use the following previously published material in this book. Chapter 2 includes a significantly modified and expanded version of “Whiteness as Family: Race, Class and Responsibility” (in Difficulties of Ethical Life , ed. Shannon Sullivan and Dennis Schmidt [Bronx: Fordham University Press, 2008], 162–78). A revised version of about half of “Transforming Whiteness with Roycean Loyalty: A Pragmatist Feminist Account” (in Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism , ed. Maurice Hamington and Celia Bardwell-Jones [New York: Routledge, 2012], 19–41) is sprinkled across the introduction, chapter 3 , and chapter 4 . The introduction, chapter 4 , and conclusion also include a few modified paragraphs of “Whiteness as Wise Provincialism: Royce on Rehabilitating a Racial Category” ( Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society 44, no. 2 [2008]: 236–62). Earlier versions of small sections of “Sad Versus Joyful Passions: Spinoza, Nietzsche, and the Transformation of Whiteness” ( Philosophy Today 55 [2011]: 238–46) are incorporated into chapter 4 . Finally, chapter 4 and the conclusion include revised portions of “On the Need for a New Ethos of White Anti-Racism” ( philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism 2, no. 2 [2012]: 21–38).
Given the controversy stirred up by some of the claims in those essays, it’s not pro forma when I say that the book’s flaws remain my responsibility alone. I dedicate this book with love to Phillip and our two daughters, Sophia and Samantha.
Introduction
Good White Liberals
The white liberal and the white supremacist share the same root postulates. They are different in degree, not kind.
—Lerone Bennett Jr., “Tea and Sympathy: Liberals and Other White Hopes”
What can white people do to help end racial injustice? This is a question with a complicated history in the United States, in large part because most white people haven’t wanted to ask, much less answer it. The question dates back at least until antebellum America when a small number of white people participated in the Underground Railroad, which enabled black slaves to escape their white masters, and helped work to end legalized slavery. It’s a question that can be found in twentieth-century civil rights struggles when some—again, not many—white people engaged in lunch counter sit-ins alongside African Americans and traveled to the South to help register African Americans to vote. 1 More recently, it’s a question that operated in the historic 2008 election of the first African American to the presidency of the United States, which was possible in part because approximately 43 percent of white voters supported Barack Obama. 2
It’s also a question that assumes that white people can do something positive with regard to racial justice. Not everyone would agree with this assumption. Perhaps most famously, Malcolm X recounts in his autobiography that when a white college girl heard him speak on white racism and agonizingly asked him “What can I do ?” he dismissed her with the terse reply “Nothing.” 3 Up until the last year of his life, Malcolm X argued that the white “man” was the devil, destroying black lives, families, and communities, and thus there was nothing that white people could do to help the United States achieve racial justice for black people and other people of color. White people inevitably were the problem, according to Malcolm X, and the only positive thing they could do was stay out of black people’s way.
White people are a big part of the problem. So too, of course, are white privileging institutions, tax codes, and other societal structures that help sustain white domination. But not all white domination operates on an impersonal level. A great deal of it functions through the practices and habits of individual white people and the predominantly white families and communities to which they belong. This does not mean that white people are atomistic individuals, sealed off from the world around them. On the contrary: like all human beings (and other living organisms), white people are constituted in and through transactional relationships with their environments. 4 Their experiences, beliefs, and behaviors both are shaped by and contribute to a white-dominated world. And so the personal question of what white people can do still needs to be asked and answered. To say that white people can do nothing is to let them off the hook too easily. It says that they do not have to respond to the racist damage that white people historically have and presently continue to cause, and it countenances their continued negligence and inaction with regard to white domination of people of color.
Racial justice movements are not dependent on white people for their success. The struggles, protests, and demands of people of color have been and most likely will conti