Whiteness Theory

In Week 4 into my Master of Social Work, specifically my Indigenous People and Social Work class, we touched on an interesting topic. As your astute deductive skills may have guessed, it’s about whiteness!

I, for those who do not know, am not white. At least, not in appearance. I will admit to having some “white” tendencies and habits (and, let’s face it, language), but I’m not and never will be white. I am Chinese… which is, in whiteness theory, a “pseudo-white” race in that while we are not recognized as white, we are generally treated “better” than other ethnic groups.

Whiteness theory doesn’t talk much about the hierarchy between white, pseudo-white, and “black” cultural groups, so don’t get your panties twisted up just yet. What it DOES talk about, however, is the “invisible” privilege white people have just by being white. These are things that white people don’t often stop to think about as advantages.

We were asked to discuss the following prompts:

• Because I am white, I can…
• Because you are white, you can…

I was the only Chinese person in my small group of discussion, and while the other members of the group did have some input, I found myself identifying the advantages I envied (or at least recognized) about being white.

Here’s a short list of what we managed to come up with, between the lecturer and the class:

• White people can watch mainstream television and see white culture as the norm, whereas if a minority is featured on the show, their race will always be their identifier and any humor/situations/plot points involving them will inevitably come down to their race.
• White people can watch mainstream media and not see their race being mocked, parodied, belittled, or patronized.
• White people can (for example) eat at a restaurant with poor manners and not have their behavior attributed to their race or ethnicity.
• White people can be recognized for their actual appearance or for things known about them, whereas a non-white person will be identified by their race (i.e., “that Asian girl” versus “the tall brunette with the long hair who was wearing the red sweater and jeans”).
• White people can be cast in TV shows or movies in the majority of roles, whereas non-whites are usually specifically cast BECAUSE a person of that race is needed for a role.
• White people can, in general, expect to be treated well when they live in non-white countries… while non-white expats living in white countries do not get any special treatment (at best) and can get treated with hostility (at worst).
• White people seldom get asked the questions “So what are you?” or, when that question is answered: “Really, you don’t look like [racial/ethnic group].”
• Think of the color of “flesh-colored” bandaids.

A lot more was discussed and mentioned, but now you’re starting to get the picture.

Before you start waving a pitchfork in the direction of my tiny little Chinese eyes, I do acknowledge that most of this comes from living in a predominantly white society. If you were to live in China, turning on the TV doesn’t generally mean you will see white faces there. Still, I would ask: how many Asian TV shows appear on mainstream TV in the West, versus the number of Western TV shows appearing in mainstream TV in Asia?

It’s not about bitterness. This stuff doesn’t bother me at all; I’m a realist, so I accept the status quo as what it is. To me, it’s just extremely interesting, and I believe it pays to be at least aware of these things because, well, there are going to be people out there who are not as understanding about it as I am.

The privilege of being white is perceived as “invisible” because the people who do notice are, well, not white. And as I will never know what it’s like to truly enjoy the privileges of being white, so too will white people never really understand what it’s like to be non-white. And no, being white and moving to a non-white country to live doesn’t count as having a “similar” experience, as covered on one of the points above.

It’s about being empathic. It’s about looking into just how different your day-to-day interactions are from someone else’s so that you can understand them without judging them. It’s about yanking off that veil of cultural ideals and recognizing that no, you are not all the same, and that some people go through life constantly having to justify their most basic cultural habits just because they are not part of the mainstream culture.

That mainstream culture, on a global scale, like it or not, is white. “Majority” and “minority” in this case doesn’t have anything to do with population. Rewind a few decades and think of white people as the “majority” in South Africa, for example, even though they numbered far fewer than blacks. It’s to do with power and, more important, access to power and influence over usage of that power. And you’d be pretty naive (or extremely defensive to the point of lunacy) to believe that white people, internationally speaking, are not the majority in that sense.

Curiously, the concept of “white guilt” was not raised in our discussions, but I do know that it exists: that is, the idea that being white means you are the majority rather than the minority, and that makes you feel guilty for one reason or another. I don’t like this idea, personally. I don’t want a white person to feel guilty for just being born the way they are. I just want them (and non-whites as well) to “get” the reality of the cultural situation we’re in and keep it in mind the next time something culturally sensitive comes up.