Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past (American Crossroads (Paperback))

Rating:
Summary: At a crossorads, 3.7 stars
Review: About a decade ago, David Roediger published "The Wages of Whiteness," which looked at the question of why members of the Northern Working Class, especially recent Irish immigrants, were so hostile to African-Americans and so supportive of pro-slavery politicians. What, one might ask, would Catholic Irish immigrants get from supporting extremely arrogant Southern Protestant landowners, who tended to look down on both laborers and Catholics? Roediger's insight was that by emphasizing a common "whiteness," Irish-Americans could challenge those who would denounce them as Catholics, proletarians, and arguably, not white themselves.

This is the third book where Roediger has expanded his concept of "whiteness." A key element is that "race" is a social construction, and that in the past "whiteness" has been a subjective concept. Not only have Arabs, Hispanics and Indians from India been excluded from the concept of "Caucasian," but immigrants from Ireland and Germany, Eastern and Southern Europe have all been "in-between" at times. (Benjamin Franklin once wrote that Swedes and most Germans weren't white, indeed only the English and Saxons were.) Ethnic groups have had to struggle to ensure their "whiteness", usually at the expense of African Americans. But there has also been opposing tendencies in American history from those who would challenge the shibboleths of "whiteness" and the racial oppression that it supports.

This collection includes an interesting essay on Rudolph Gulliani's demagogic campaign against Chris Ofili's Virgin Mary, pointing out an Italian tradition of black Madonnas. There is an insightful essay on O.J. Simpson, which is very informative on the complex links between sports, commercialism, and race. Another chapter looks at why abolitionists got on better with early feminists than with early trade unionists, even though both of them compared their plight to slavery. (The answer is that feminists, having grown out of the abolitionist movement in the first place, were more sensitive to the horrors of slavery, whereas trade unionists tended to belittle it.) The final chapter deals with the ambiguity of Elvis' forays into African-American music, and the phenomenon of "wiggers." Roediger's account here is particularly subtle as he points out both the strengths and weaknesses of such "crossing-overs" for an anti-racist agenda. Some wiggers want to identify with the culture of hip-hop, others vicariously identify with its misogyny and violence.

Perhaps the best essay deals with a critique of the neoliberal view on race. There has been much talk of appealing to "class" as opposed to "race" issues. But as Roediger points out what the Democratic Party of Clinton did was not support such issues as trade unionism, free trade, maternity leave, childcare, or national health insurance. Instead it appealed to pre-existing prejudices against blacks. Roediger points out that affirmative action potentially benefits a large majority of the working class, or would if we did not define such a group as white males. "Because of existing inequalities of race, some new benefits will clearly be utilized at different levels across racial lines," while at the same time "the tremedous benefits of Federal Housing Administration loans, home mortgage tax deductions, and federal subsidy of highway construction serving new suburbs are seen as 'race neutral,' despite the fact that their benefits accrue overwhelmingly to the white middle class."

Certain problems exist though. (1) There is a somewhat annoying tendency to cite Melville, Ellison, Du Bois and other heroes of the past in a somewhat uncritical and hagiographic manner. (2) Although this book is extensively footnoted, there is little primary research. There is much reference to new scholarship, but it is sometimes repetitive. (3) On the hand it is important to note that "whiteness" is not a natural or uncontested concept. On the other hand, as Barbara Fields and Eric Arnesen have pointed out, racialization of "blacks" and "whites" are not equally subjective. The Northern Democratic Party, the Roman Catholic Church and naturalization judges have never really doubted the "whiteness" of most European Catholic immigrants. (4) An emphasis on "whiteness" ignores other aspects of conservative hegemony in the United States. One aspect is religion, the other is the English/Scottish assumptions of what it is constitutively "American." Another aspect is the ideology of anti-totalitarianism. After all, when the National Review and The New Republic attack welfare, the model they invoke is not George Wallace, but George Orwell, castigating intellectuals in the name of the people, damning the left for refusing to face the facts about a decripit underclass. (5) There is much talk of "people of color" being an "other" for white Americans. But as Orlando Patterson pointed out in the New Left Review in the 1960s, there is also a tendency to obscure their presence completely. Many Americans, after all, live in states where racial minorites are non-existent, while others, of course, live in hyper-segregated suburbs.