In the Betray white fathers podcast, Phoebe talks about white supremacy and finds out that its taking place so close to her hometown. Personally, i found that part interesting because the town of Quindaro is a part of history but it seems that the way that society works and because it revolves around whiteness that its actually trying to erase it. Quindaro is an abolitionist town. The town was an outlier because it was a place where whites, native Americans and freed African Americans could all live together in peace. Because of the way our society operates, the town id “hidden” since they don’t want people to actually find out that other individuals actually lived like this and supported those ideas.
When Phoebe says that john browns narrative is changed, he is marked as crazy because what he believed in was not considered the norm of society and it needed to fit in with what other white individuals believe in. This idea reminded me of some of the other readings we did, more specifically, Peter woods work and the 1619 project. In general, i feel that this story speaks for itself, since history about the town is not taught in schools even though it was so close to where she grew up.
Another connection that i found between this article and the White Culture description is in part 3. The one that says white culture assigns a higher value to some ways of behaving then others. Then those other behaviors are considered dangerous or deviant. This reminds me of the good/bad binary for some reason because it has to do with one’s behavior (one good and one bad in terms of racist or not racists), almost like living by unwritten rules in order to navigate society.
I can relate more to the calling out ableism piece since I do have a chronic illness that is not noticeable. Originally, I was not sure why this was included but it makes sense that it was since it is discrimination against a specific group based on disability status. Replace disability status with the word race and we can see how similar they are.
Before even reading this article on White Fragility, what i first thought of was that its hard to talk to white people about racism because most think they aren’t racist or do not recognize their role in it. On the anthropological side of things, we created racism. The racial hierarchy keeps getting recreated as the interests of whites then become the foundation of our society. This article puts an emphasis on group power relations in order to understand how racism functions.
I liked that the author listed the patterns. and explained in detail how they contribute to the difficulty of white people to understand racism as a system and how that then leads to white fragility. In one of those patterns, the one on whites being more valuable, that I think related back to the other reading/podcast on Bretaying white fathers since, like how a town of mixed races (white, native American and black) is forgotten. It is also left out of history books and not taught in schools because it does not conform to the society that white supremacy is rooted in. Colored people are left out in many ways, while white people are the main center of attention and focus (just look at the list in the article).
One reply on “Blog post week of 11/30”
The norm of society that you brought up about the white culture piece is very true. The standard of normalcy is by white people and everything else is not normal to most. I think that this mindset that is held of othering is very prevalent in society. Especially in the age group that we are all in if people stray outside of the “normal path” they are seen as social deviants. As we talked about in class today there is no such thing as white culture, but the idea that this article was trying to get at in my opinion is correct. While culture might not have been the correct word my understanding of that article was that they were referring to white American society. It would be ignorant to say that white American society is not the norm in the western world and they do not other or set the tone for what is expected of people.