Right to White: Combating Colorblindness Through Monochromatic Dreams - Zachary Davis

Prelude:

I remember in my intro to philosophy class the Professor taught Hume’s Problem of Induction. They repeatedly corrected a popularized misinterpretation of the argument: inductive reasoning employed in science can never prove a 100% causal link, and can only prove strong correlational evidence that imply usually X corresponds with Y. Rather the devastating implication of Hume’s problem of induction is that past evidence has no bearing whatsoever on future occurrences, there is no reason to believe that gravitational forces will operate the same tomorrow as today. In other words causation is not just to 100% prove, but there is no reason correlational evidence has any effect on the strength of a causal link.

The reason I recall this example, is because I’ve observed a similar gap in understanding accounts of structural discrimination particularly accounts like Harris which criticize neutrality and colorblindness. Like the scientist, people are incredibly willing to accept they are not perfect neutral agents, and cannot 100% control or combat their implicit biases. Yet in doing so they not only forfeit the responsibility to take corrective actions, but additionally maintain the goal of neutrality. Rather, there is no evidence moves towards more neutrality decrease colorblindness or discrimination. The problem is not just with colorblindness in our current society, but colorblindness in the ideal society, which continually builds biases back in through incoherent commitments to equality.

To give a material example of these commitments’ problems, in Prof. Shankar’s work “Nothing Sells like Whiteness” they discuss marketing campaigns targeted at racial minorities move from a focus on Multiculturalism, with agencies primarily staffed by peoples of individual communities using particular cultural messaging towards specific cultural groups i.e. Latino, Black, Chinese etc., to a move to diversity advertising in the 90s, which has uses messaging about diversity and equality generally. These ads typically are handled by more mainstream advertising agencies, have scripting targeting the majority/white audience, and feature a variety of racially cast actors typically including a white representative. The white representative is sometimes used as the ‘main character’/viewer insert in interacting with racial minorities, or otherwise representing the good.

 

Main Paper:

I was going to write the main body of my blog post on expanding my previous argument of Beauvoir through a combination with my new familiarity with Hegel and Race and Gender theory, to extend Harris’ discussion of what it means to be recognized as white. However, I’ve written on similar things in the past, and will in the future, so I think its more interesting for now to just pose these as questions for my cohort:

What does it mean to be recognized as white?

What does it mean to be white?

Do you have a right (property right potentially?) to your racial identification? And to what extent is race decided externally/internally? i.e. the racial identity of the person who grew up with two black parents who pass as black, but due to a skin condition, passes as white.

Is recognition beneficial in combating discrimination?

How is recognition power controlled/monitored? How should it be controlled/monitored if at all?

 

Previous paper written on the exact same reading last semester for Phil of Law if anyone wants to read it. 

Disclaimer: Some of my opinions have evolved, and much of it was already meant to be thought provoking especially the passing section which I think I personally disagreed with when written, but I think anti-recognition/unintelligibility movements are given way less thought then deserved:

Stealing Whiteness as Property: A Deep Dive into Identity Relationships

In this paper, I make two main arguments. First, Harris’s account of whiteness as property is better understand as an issue founded in identity relationships and fundamentally ensured by liberalism and theories of equality. In doing so I look to both Frank Wilderson’s afro-pessimism and applications of Beauvoir to race for explaining this identity relationships. Therefore, Harris’ attempts at policy and ideological change through affirmative action will result in a new stage of preservation through transformation as theories of equality move to new privileges whiteness has property over. Second, through exploring stealing whiteness as property I’ll attempt to show solutions are possible but must operate unilaterally at the identity level sans liberalism.

              Wilderson uses Harris’ examples of preservation through transformation between Chattel Slavery, Jim Crow Laws, and the Prison Industrial Complex as foundational evidence for the failure of liberalism frameworks. For wilderson, societal progress for blackness is impossible as they are situated as the other, and forcibly alienated from their selves. Applying Harris, whiteness as property can be understood as having property over the solution, and the security which comes from that assurance. The modern white progressive may feel shame in their unique access to whiteness, and thus via liberalism desire to distribute that whiteness through methods such as affirmative action. In doing so, via whiteness they access the security of having a solution. With every transformed racial system there was an end goal determined by whiteness: slavery abolition became acceptable with the coming of Jim Crow, desegregation with the prison industrial complex, and whatever will come from prison reforms or abolition. Blackness is forced into an unending pursuit of that solution always situated in the future as racial equality resulting in cruel optomism. Therefore, from an afro-pessimist framework Harris’ own arguments understood through this relationship between whiteness and blackness lead to pessimistic conclusions about liberalism and Harris’ solutions.

Beauvoir understands a distinction between identities as nature i.e. sex and identities socially constructed i.e. gender, or being as race vs becoming race. Phrases such as “You are as eloquent as a white person,” display this divide, where eloquent black people are seen as becoming white when adopting white properties or how women “fail as women,” when they adopt masculine qualities. For Beauvoir this shifting social identity is fundamentally constructed in the comparison between what people are seen as being, and the properties they are seen as becoming. Therefore, in the social relation there is a fundamental otherness or negativity in relation to whiteness constitutive to the social categories, black traits are not-white traits, i.e. if eloquence is constitutive to whiteness then the lack of such is found in the negation of blackness. Therefore, subordination is fundamentally constitutive to the relationship, to be a master is to be white, and to be a slave is to be black. Harris’ account of property exists as an expression of that relationship, or the extent of ownership over whiteness and therefore valuable characteristics. Once more liberalism appears incoherent as a solution, insofar as affirmative action fundamentally values black assimilation to whiteness via adoption of white qualities i.e. high SAT scores on white culture written by white judges etc.

Rather I find in what Harris and liberalism reject – stealing property through passing a valuable solution. Passing allows a person to steal ownership over whiteness, rather then being recognized as being black while becoming white, they are presumed being white while becoming black through performing the deceptive act for their own motives. Moreover, passing undermines belief in the ownership of whiteness. Unlike white people, white-passing persons do not understand whiteness as intrinsic to their own identities. As such, they uniquely hold the freedom of how they choose to present whiteness through passing. I.e. they may represent whiteness as deferring to black people on issues of racial inequality. Even the white ally cannot mirror this, because their self is in part beholden to societal standards of whiteness. Changing what society understands whiteness as while subscribing in their whiteness relative to those standards, requires a change in belief as to what they are. Therefore stealing ownership over whiteness has the sole potential to avoid the recreation through white liberalism of whiteness-owned solutions which reify racial discrimination.