The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: The Permanent Vacation from Race
Over my spring break last week, I made a trip to IUPUI in Indianapolis to present as part of a series spanning their academic year, White Racial Literacy Project Speakers Series, addressing whiteness as part of their diversity and inclusion initiatives.
One controversial aspect of this approach has been providing separate spaces for white faculty, staff, and students as well as people of color to investigate whiteness. That sits inside a larger paradox of this series—an effort to center whiteness as a process for de-centering whiteness.
During the session for people of color, I addressed how I often navigate issues of race from the context of my own life, specifically framing my discussion of race by self-identifying as a redneck (see my PowerPoint here).
This racial identification, I note, is important because I have the privilege of stepping into a racial discussion of whiteness indirectly, using “redneck” and still not actually saying “white.”
A woman in that session responded by acknowledging my privilege in controlling the narrative of myself—I can ignore (or as I say, take a vacation from being white) my whiteness almost all the time, and even when I confront it, I can maintain some level of invisibility (normalcy). She added that both race and gender are imposed on her, leaving her no option for similar vacations from race or gender.
This woman’s response spoke directly to the video in my presentation of author Toni Morrison calmly checking Charlie Rose’s question about her CONTINUE READING: The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: The Permanent Vacation from Race | radical eyes for equity
