Whiteness - LA Progressive

Sikivu Hutchinson: When you’ve been suckled on Ozzie and Harriet, its “hard” to have your whiteness referenced as a source of violence; especially by people of color.

Gabby Douglas and White Man’s Privilege

By Unai Montes-Irueste

Unai Montes-Irueste: Bob Costas’ backhanded compliment of Gabby Douglas’ ability to overcome “imaginary barriers,” is undeniably a statement uttered by a rich white man, blinded by his privilege.

Wages of White Affirmative Action: Predatory Lending & The Ghetto

Sikivu Hutchinson: While homebuyers of color were essentially taxed for being black or brown; white homebuyers “bootstrapped” their way to the American dream with lower interest rates and better terms handed to them by the big banks.

The GOP’s Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses

Sikivu Hutchinson: The contrast between the immigrant trajectory of seized opportunity (and earned citizenship) versus the resident black population’s essential otherness, is a subtext of the GOP’s anti-government platform.

Art, Transnational Whiteness, and Racism

Jessie Daniels: It’s the picture of the event – the cutting of the cake and the culture minister feeding the cake to the artist is really what created the big stir.

Trayvon Martin: White Picket Fences, White Innocence

Sikivu Hutchinson: Fifty-seven years after Emmett Till was lynched in the name of white womanhood, the murder of Trayvon Martin—a beautiful son, friend, and prospective college student—is yet another testament to the terror of white picket fence innocence.

Kony 2012: Whiteness, Social Media and Africa

Jessie Daniels: Kony 2012 is, then, an endorsement of the moral superiority of white values of reason, order, and now social media against the supposed chaos and violence of Africa.

Black and White in a Small Midwestern Town

By Steve Hochstadt

Steve Hochstadt: That mixing in Jacksonville was regulated by the racism of stores and restaurants which black families could not enter, of high school dances for white students only, of neighborhood covenants which allowed only whites to buy property.

The White Working Class Was Bamboozled

David Love: If Stockholm Syndrome relates to the feeling of empathy that kidnap victims have with their captors, then certainly what we are witnessing today is a Stockholm Syndrome of those on the losing end of American capitalism.

Tim Tebow and the Politics of Whiteness

By Mark Naison

Mark Naison: Best of all, Tebow doesn’t confirm racial stereotypes. He is strong, tough, athletic, dominating the game because defensive players can’t tackle him. And he has clearly won the respect of his black teammates. I like that.

“The Help” Reflects the Racial Divide, Then and Now

By Sharon Kyle

Sharon Kyle: In a culture where “whiteness” is rarely mentioned and hardly ever critically examined it is not surprising that the women in my church saw the story as heartwarming and uplifting. I, on the other hand, saw this as just another story of the black experience as viewed through the white lens.

Racism, Whiteness and the Health Disparities Industry

Jessie Daniels: We need to begin to critically examine those who hold the most power and resources in society, that is at white people, for the ways that they contribute to and benefit from the inequality in health outcomes.

Race and Racism Online: What the Research Tells Us

Jessie Daniels: Assumptions about the whiteness embedded in the infrastructure and design gets spoken when there are ruptures in that sameness, such as the introduction of an African-American-themed web browser, Blackbird.

GOP Strives to Make Hate Groups Look Respectable

David Love: The GOP cannot have it both ways. They cannot take a stand in favor of hate groups—white supremacists, neo-confederates, and homophobes—and take offense when their critics call them out for it.

The Real Story of the White Citizens’ Council

By James C. Cobb

James C. Cobb: Pledged to maintain white supremacy, the councils foreswore violence but did their best to intimidate blacks who might think about challenging the status quo and to make painful examples of those who did.

Tea Party Diversity?

David Love: People of color and other minorities need membership in the Tea Party like they needed membership in the White Citizens’ Council during Jim Crow. And the notion of Tea Party diversity is just as implausible.

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Glenn Beck? Racism and White Privilege on the Liberal-Left

By Tim Wise

Tim Wise: How even liberals, progressives and leftists, despite our advocacy for equity and stated commitment to racial justice, still manage to manifest and further racism — whether deliberately or not — in our activism, messages and policy prescriptions.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

By Mark Naison

Mark Naison: When my working-class white friends and fellow coaches attacked affirmative action—which they did vociferously and often—it was about preferential treatment that they saw blacks and Latinos getting on the job, especially in the civil service.

Why Not Blame It on a Black Man

David Love: I just read a pilot study that CNN released on the racial attitudes of children. And nearly 60 years after the watershed Brown v. Board of Education case – in which the Supreme Court invalidated Jim Crow school segregation – it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Toward a More Complete MLK Day

By Simon Balto

Simon Balto: King understood that the problems of America involved much more than racial inequality, and—in answer to LBJ’s question—what he in fact wanted was “a radical redistribution of power.”

Good Hair v Nappy Hair

By Sharon Kyle

The N Word We Rarely Address ike most blacks in America, I was raised in an environment where hair like mine, kinky hair, was frequently referred to as “bad hair.” Conversely, straight hair or kink-less hair was characterized as “good hair“. I grew up receiving a steady stream of messages that directly or indirectly informed [...]

An End to the Southern Strategy, But No Post-Racial America