On 2/26/07, Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Does whiteness refer to ethnicity not race in whiteness studies? I doubt it.
in that case, does your assertion that "it's whiteness not religion that tends to bring down people's moral and political intelligence in America. . . ." make you racist? I doubt it.
Whiteness studies calls upon people to study the invention of race, especially the invention of the white race, and learn about how self-identification with that identity has served the ruling class, against the interests of those who so identity.
in prose, "whiteness studies" is about how mere ethnicity becomes socially established as "race." In addition, such reification has the functional effect of stabilizing capitalist (or other class) society. (This is a new version of the very old view that racism divides and rules the dominated classes. My old friends in the Sojourner Truth Organization called whiteness "white skin privilege." There ain't nothing new under the sun.) So the quote above becomes "it's [the relatively high status of socially-defined "white" populations] not religion that tends to bring down people's moral and political intelligence in America. . . ." -- Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
