1.3 Partie I, Chapitre III
Note 32: Nelson: » The term White
Washing can be defined as a racist practice of removing visible minorities in
popular media by making their skin appear lighter, or even replacing them
altogether with white actors. Black Erasure can be described as the tendency to
ignore, remove, and falsify Black bodies and Black voices in academia, news,
media, and other outlets. As someone who has always identified as Black, as a
young girl, I wondered why I did not look like the little white girls on the TV
or in books. When I grew a little older, I began to resent that I did not look
like the light skinned, blond haired models in all of the magazines and popular
TV shows. Rarely, did I ever see any minorities in the media that I was exposed
to. White Washing in the media has impacted me
negatively.»
Note. 33: Dyer « Race is something only
applied to non-white peoples, as long as white people are not racially seen and
named, they/we function as human norm. Other people are raced, we are just
people. There is no more powerful position than that of being `just' human. The
claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of humanity. Raced
people can't do that - they can only speak for their race. But non-raced people
can, for they do not represent the interests of a race.» « We
(whites) will speak of, say, the blackness of Chineseness of friends,
neighbours, colleagues, customers or clients, and it may be in the most
genuinely friendly and accepting manner, but we don't mention the whiteness of
the white people we know.» « The assumption that white people are
just people, which is not far off saying that whites are people whereas other
colours are something else, is endemic to white culture.» Research- into
books, museums, the press, advertising, films, television, software -
repeatedly shows that in Western representation whites are overwhelmingly and
disproportionately predominant, have the central and elaborated roles, and
above all are placed the norm, the ordinary, the standard. Whites are
everywhere in representation. Yet precisely because of this and their placing
as norm they seem not to be represented to themselves as whites but as people
who are variously gendered, classed, sexualised and abled. At the level of
racial representation, in other words, whites are not of a certain race,
they're just the human race.»
Note 34: Nelson: « Black women are
typically sassy and opinionated (Blaque). Their characters are either hyper
sexualized or overweight and meant to be unattractive. Black men are typically
abusive and loud. Black male characters usually revolved around being a `thug'
or some other negative lifestyle. It is important to note, many Black
characters are created to be one-dimensional. The same is not true of white
characters. White characters have been heroes, villains, brave, weak, shy,
dangerous, outlandish, etc. There is no one way to describe the roles white
actors have played, and yet there are clear circumstances where Black actors
have been demoted into playing stereotypical roles.» « Black Erasure
and White Washing in popular media negatively impacts children in the Black
community and aids in the robbery of their childhood. It is hard to think about
the magnitude of the effect that colorism and the complete erasure of Black
bodies has had on children in the Black community. Without regularly seeing
positive reflections of themselves in the media it becomes hard for some Black
children to value their self-image.»
Note 35: Reitman Meredith « the white
workplace is created and maintained through a process of whitewashing in which
everyday practices seek to deny racial politics, superimpose white culture and
normalize that culture in place. This characterization directly challenges the
notion of the high-tech workplace as morally above problems of race. What
distinguishes white places from those associated with oppressed racial groups
is that they are constructed through a denial of identity rather than its
explicit portrayal. It is this denial that makes these places so important to
reveal.»
Note: 37 Yochim: Scholarship focusing on the
treatment of blacks in media has relied quite heavily on this definition of
racial symbolic annihilation, although the concept is not always explicitly
referenced. To illustrate, Pescosolido, Grauerholz, and Milkie (1997) describe
blacks as being ignored, stereotyped, or demeaned by media; their criticism
echoes Gerbner's and Tuchman's original definitions which include «
absence» as well as « condemnation» and «
trivialization.» Hooks (1992) argues that African American women have
experienced condemnation as they are often relegated to controlling, sexually
wanton representations (see also Hill Collins, 2000). Brown (2001) discusses
the absence of heroic blackness in comic books. He argues that readers must
identify across racial boundaries since the visible racial minorities in most
comic books were nameless criminals that white heroes defeated. Whylie
(1999) uses the term « colorstruction» to reveal how skin color
differences within blackness are exploited in media to associate a higher value
to those that possess physical traits closer to those of whites. Whylie posits
that the characters in the 1991 film New Jack City, created by a black
filmmaker, present « a rather obvious color line that separates the more
negative dark-complexioned characters [...] from the lighter black ones»
(p. 189). For Whylie, introducing such intraracial warfare is not just about
exploiting black as evil in our imaginations. Rather, Whylie offers that
blackness, even in media products such as New Jack City, is trivialized and
rendered moot, replaced by white supremacy and cultural domination.
Note:38: Dyer: The latter become what
distinguish white people, giving them a special relation race. Black people can
be reduced (in white culture) to their bodies and thus to race, but white
people are something else that is realised in and yet is not reducible to the
corporeal, or racial.
Note 39:McIntosh: I have come to see white
privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on
cashing in each day, but about which I was « meant» to remain
oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special
provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas,
clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks.
After I realized, through faculty development work in
Women's Studies, the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged
privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then
I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom
they encounter are oppressive.
At school, we were not taught about slavery in any
depth; we were not taught to see slaveholders as damaged people. Slaves were
seen as the only group at risk of being dehumanized. My schooling followed the
pattern which Elizabeth Minnich has point our: whites are taught to think of
their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that
when we work to benefit others, this seen as work that will allow «
them» to be more like « us.» I think many of us know
how obnoxious this attitude can be in men.
1. can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of
my race most of the time.
2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting
or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want
to live.
3. I can be reasonably sure that my neighbors in such a
location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, fairly well
assured that I will not be followed or harassed by store detectives.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of
the paper and see people of my race widely and positively represented.
7. I can go into a book shop and count on finding the writing
of my race, represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit
with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can
deal with my hair.
8. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on
my skin color not to work against the appearance that I am financially
reliable.
9. I did not have to educate our children to be aware of
systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
10. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial
group.
11. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I
fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
In this potpourri of examples, some privileges make me
feel at home in the world. Others allow me to escape penalties or dangers that
others suffer. Through some, I escape fear, anxiety, insult, injury, or a sense
of not being welcome, not being real. Some keep me from having to hide, to be
in disguise, to feel sick or crazy, to negotiate each transaction from the
position of being an outsider or, within my group, a person who is suspected of
having too close links with a dominant culture. Most keep me from having to be
angry.
Note: 40:Plaut,Romano « Whites tend to
endorse color blindness more than do people of color (Neville, Lilly, Duran,
Lee, & Browne, 2000; Ryan, Hunt, Weible, Peterson, & Casas, 2007). What
is its appeal? Color blindness has ego-protective features. Adopting color
blindness lets members of groups associated with perpetrating racism (e.g.,
Whites) maintain an egalitarian self-image, because it allows them to believe
they are nonprejudiced and are self-presenting as such. Indeed, Whites' use of
color blindness in interracial interaction correlates with exter- nal
motivation to control prejudice (Apfelbaum, Sommers, & Norton, 2008). It
can also represent a vision for an equitable society, where race does not
impact life outcomes (Knowles, Lowery, Hogan, & Chow, 2009), and when
framed as commonality regardless of back- grounds, it can relate to warmth
(Hahn, Banchefsky, Park, & Judd, 2015; Wolsko et al., 2000). However, color
blindness can also justify current inequality. When threat- ened, White
Americans high in social dominance orienta- tion (i.e., preference for
group-based hierarchy) use color blindness to defend the status quo (Knowles et
al., 2009). Color-blind racial attitudes also resonate with low- status group
members high in social dominance orienta- tion (Neville, Coleman, Falconer,
& Holmes, 2005).
Note 41: Pailey: The `white gaze' is a phrase
that gained prominence in the works of black American public intellectuals and
literary legends -- including Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin --
who have fiercely resisted one dimensional, racist tropes about blacks in
America. A Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author of 11 novels, Morrison once
quipped in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, `I am a
black writer struggling with and through a language [English] that can
powerfully evoke and enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural
hegemony, and dismissive « othering» of people' (1992: x-xi). While
Palestinian scholar Edward Said (1978) evoked the `white gaze' of development
as the `seeing eye' of Orientalism, French existential philosopher Jean-Paul
Sartre (1964) described it as `the privilege of seeing without being seen'.
Whereas First Nations and indigenous studies scholar Glen Coulthard (2004:
14-15) termed it a `colonial frame', American sociologist Joe R. Feagin (2013:
ix,3) called it an `overarching worldview' and `white racial frame' that
rationalizes and justifies white privilege and domination. Continuing on this
trajectory, Mbembe (2017: 28) called the `white gaze' of development a `Western
consciousness of blackness' which makes whiteness the epitome of normalcy.
Echoing Stuart Hall (1992), Malawian historian Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (2009: 131,
133) reduced it to a `colonizing epistemological order' which seeks to
`universalize the West and provincialize the rest'. And last, but certainly not
least, Kenyan literary scholar Grace A. Musila (2017: 703-04) recently
summarized the `white gaze' as a `single-lens knowledge register', a
`blindspot' and a `fantasy of the monopoly of the gaze' which assumes that `the
Other is both subject to this gaze and incapable of returning the gaze'.
Note 42: Yancy: « Black
bodies in America continue to be reduced to their surfaces and to stereotypes
that are constricting and false, that often force those black bodies to move
through social spaces in ways that put white people at ease. We fear that our
black bodies incite an accusation. We move in ways that help us to survive the
procrustean gazes of white people. We dread that those who see us might feel
the irrational fear to stand their ground rather than « finding common
ground,» a reference that was made by Bernice King as she spoke about the
legacy of her father at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.» «
The white gaze is also hegemonic, historically grounded in material relations
of white power: it was deemed disrespectful for a black person to violate the
white gaze by looking directly into the eyes of someone white. The white gaze
is also ethically solipsistic: within it only whites have the capacity of
making valid moral judgments.»
Note 43: Greco: What our research found is
that white gaze requires Black women to monitor how they look, emote, talk, and
behave if they want to fit in and lead at work,» McCluney said. «
Black women must expend considerable resources - time, money and energy - to
accommodate whiteness. The paper indicates that whiteness is imposed at work,
primarily through the adoption of Eurocentric standards as the basis for
organization-wide norms and expectations. There are two keys to this imposition
- white display rules and white beauty standards. One common enactment of white
display rules found in the tweets was the scrutiny of Black women's facial
expressions. White display rules also affected how Black women negotiate the
Angry Black Woman trope, which is imposed to control Black women's bodies
through tone-policing and labeling their general demeanor as «
angry.» Whiteness is also enforced through the exploitation of Black
women and their work. Exploitation manifests as invisibility, or situations
where their presence and/or ideas are ignored and overlooked. Other
exploitative practices upheld the Strong Black Woman stereotype, whereby people
viewed Black women as strong and invincible, and as having a limitless capacity
to support or save others.
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