On 2/26/07, Mark Lause <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote that "whiteness" "helps others to understand which
white folks of America -- those who strongly identify with white American
identity and those who don't and would rather identity with others in
America and the rest of the world -- are more politically promising and the
balance of forces between two kinds of white folks."
I've never seen this distinction made when it's been applied to historical
questions. In this model, there is only one type...characterized by
"whiteness."
In theory, a Caucasian who rejects and sheds "whiteness" is no longer
"white." But I have no idea what they mean by this.
The only people in America originally mainly from Europe whose
whiteness was in question in the past but are now legally white (in
the eye of the US government) _and yet_ have not given up their ethnic
identity en masse are Jews. That is important -- good for Jews of
America and the rest of America. Their collective refusal to become
"just white Americans" -- no doubt rooted in their collective memory
of injustices of the past, the chief among them being the Holocaust,
but also discrimination here in the USA, too -- has had impact on
their subjectivity, and they tend to stand far to the left of other
white folks, usually as left as Blacks. So, not becoming "just white"
helps.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
