Michael Perelman wrote:
You are out of line. You can disagree with a penner, but don't make
it personal.
In the spirit of open and friendly debate, I want to present a few
points that Bill might find interesting, if he chooses to indulge in it:
a) In the sense in which Yoshie used it (at least as I read it)
"whiteness" is not a _skin condition_ but an attitude and a form of
identification (which can and should be altered, unlike one's skin).
b) Racism is a form of discrimination (and admittedly also attitude)
which has real consequences for those who are at the receiving end.
c) The advantages that white people enjoy and the racism they perpetuate
(if and when they do) is a result of their "whiteness" and (generally
speaking) nothing more than that.
d) Such labelling as "whiteness" is no more racist than a claim that
gender activism/analysis that critiques the "patriarchy" is "reverse
misogyny[?]", or that the general use of the term "Brahmin" (to denote
an elite class) is reverse discrimination against Brahmins.
To tie this into my earlier thoughts on Indian American "upwardly mobile
petit-borgeois" (as Hari has helpfully pointed out in response to my
earlier post), I will provide an example: the original Brahmins (and
their modern equivalents) now transplanted to the USA are, in my
criticism, often seeking exactly that identity: "whiteness".
--ravi
