White normativity in contemporary society

The Problem of White Normativity
In a multi-racial world, defining anyone as “black” or “white” makes as much sense as believing that all issues are “black” and “white” and that there are no shades of gray to anything. Almost everyone will certainly agree that from politics to economics to religion to any subject under the sun, there is a great deal of leeway to be given because to rigidly peg something or label it in a starkly definitive manner is to be too constrictive and narrow in one’s view. As a multi-racial woman, I myself feel that to think in terms of “black” or “white” goes against the grain. In South America, these dichotomies were virtually unknown in the past: the people accepted that their identities were more distinctively based on family lines, heritage and culture—not the color of their skin (Baran, 2007; Burdick, 1998). In the U.S., American society has so long been obsessed with an “us” and “them” approach to characterizing people that it inevitably leads to tribalism. There are “whites” and “blacks” and “others”—when the real issue has nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with culture. The White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) who defined Manifest Destiny and either wiped out the Native Americans or pushed them from their land brought a distinctly northern European Protestant culture to the New World—a culture in which they viewed themselves, like the Jewish people, as God’s chosen. Everyone else—whether Catholic, indigenous, or black—was there to be used. That is what became known as white normativity in the U.S. Whiteness was really the manifestation of the ideological aspects and culture of the Enlightenment that extended across the Atlantic and took root among the Revolutionaries here.
As Tim Wise (2012) notes, whiteness has always been a “social and institutional force”—not a category for people but rather a description of a “mindset,” as Wise puts it (p. 12). Whiteness in America is “a social category created for the purpose of enshrining a racially divided polity” (Wise, 2012, p. 12). It was whiteness that the Founding Fathers promoted when they wrote about liberty and the pursuit of happiness: they were not talking about freedom and equality for everyone—just for everyone who was like them. Hooks (1999) states, however, that true America is more than just whiteness: whiteness was only the mode by which the power structure of the ruling classes was communicated. America actually boasts so many different races, cultures, ethnicities and people who have nothing whatsoever to do with whiteness that what is irrationally known as “white America” is in danger of disappearing (which would actually be a good thing)—though the ruling class (the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies and the representatives in government) are still far and away more representative of whiteness than the rest of America (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). Hooks (1999) argues that this is unfortunate because “within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (p. 21). Without the breath of fresh air that is the multi-racial world in America, whiteness would be so bland and boring that it would have died long ago—it survives because America is a multi-racial society that is infused with richness of cultures and ideas; the problem is that it all gets subordinated to the will of the ruling class, which allows for white normativity to be perpetuated. Whiteness is made to look normal and ethnicity and diversity are simply tolerated to give some “color” and make whiteness more palatable over time. The mindset of whiteness is still perpetuated through the power structure and the culture industry, recognized by the Frankfurt School as being at the heart of the oppression of the lower classes (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1944).
Thus, racism is still a problem in America, in spite of the work of the Great Emancipator in the 19th century and the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s. Whereas previously racism was expressed through slavery or Jim Crow, today it is expressed through white normativity—whiteness as a normal mindset. Bhandura (2013) states that “rather than waging war on non-whites, post-Civil Rights America normalizes whiteness,” which pushes “non-whites” into a battle of survival as they are pitted against one another by the culture of whiteness propagated by the ruling class and its culture industry (p. 223). “White” people who have good intentions, may want to do something to end this otherwise endless culture war—but as DiAngelo (2011) points out, “white people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress” (p. 54). In other words, “white” people tend to live outside the environments where race-based violence actually occurs: they have no real or tangible sense of how whiteness, white normativity and the ruling class actually impact non-whites. This is problematic because in order for white normativity to be addressed, the “whites” who profit from white normativity need to be more mindful of what it is like for non-whites in America.
As a person of mixed-races, I find it problematic that we are still talking about “whites” and “blacks” and “others” at all in those terms. Race is not a strong or even a good categorizer—except for racists who want to use race to serve their own interests in the power structure. As Baran (20070 has shown, the concept of race was born out of a need for the ruling classes to organize society according to racist lines and doctrines. The reality is that we live in a multi-racial world, where most people have more than one “race” within themselves. Even among “whites” there are so many ethnic and racial variations that it is impossible to believe that “white” serves as a satisfactory categorization for a group of people from, say, Eastern Europe, Italy, Spain, England, Germany or Russia. There are multiple races just in that one group—yet most of that group would be classified as “white” simply because of skin tone. The irony is that only those from England and perhaps Germany would really believe in the “whiteness” of white normativity; the others would identify more according to ethnic and cultural lines—and that is because whiteness is essentially a WASP construct. That is the main source of the problem in America: a white culture or culture of whiteness has been promulgated and perpetuated by the ruling classes.
The white culture in the U.S. is superior in itself, and it is not a point of discussion, focus, or examination by others. On the other hand, aspects that are different and discordant to their culture are made objects of attention and discussion. According to Hitchcock and Flint (1997), since historical time white people have overwhelmingly focused on studying and discussing other racial groups while inherently the racial aspect of the white people are not discussed or studied instead it is depicted as taboo in white culture to bring a discussion or study the white race. Thus, there is a central hypocrisy in white normativity.
Though a negative manner is depicting racism, “white” Americans consider themselves as not “black,” not “people of color,” and not “foreigners”—therefore, they are not a marginalized group. This is where the essence of white fragility comes into play (DiAngelo, 2011): “whites” have no sense of what life is like for Americans who live outside the protective bubble of white privilege. From their protective bubble of privilege, “whites” take themselves and their culture as superior, and they will only adopt the values of others out their own choice or necessity triggered by environmental and not from coercion from other cultural groups. As Wise (2012) indicates, “whites” view “blacks” as being held back by their own “behavioral pathologies, personal choices and dysfunctional cultural values” (p. 40). Those who uphold whiteness view blackness or otherness (foreigners) as lacking in the simple cultural values that make whites so successful in America—the problem is that this view is delusional and smacks of delusions of grandeur. “Whites” have benefitted from whiteness to the extent that they have participated in the perpetuation of white normativity. “Whites” who have not have had to struggle and fight as though they were outsiders in a system, like blacks or
Asians or Latinos. The Irish immigrants, for example, did not have it easy in New York City: they had to organize their own political machine, which became known as Tammany Hall and was reviled by the WASP establishment. The same was true of the Nation of Islam, which organized itself thanks to the leadership of Malcolm X. Thus, both some non-WASP, non-“white” “whites” and some “blacks” have shown the ability to organize themselves—and so race really has nothing to do with it. It is all about culture and identity.
Nonetheless, in upbringing their children, “whites” who embrace white normativity pass on cultural values that are learned as simply the way things are done and not alternatives (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). The white culture is also presented in such an environment as an absolute permitting no other competing set of attributes. The white culture is pushed upon other races by taking advantage of their dominance. The white culture entrenches an attribute of dominance in their human values thus enforcing the assertion that white people are not subject to common attribute that other human cultures share—the essence of having a sense of entitlement that other cultures cannot ascribe to and the ideal measures of character between good and bad cannot be subjected to them. Because of this sense of entitlement, they are seen as extreme about being good or evil (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). To some people, being white is inherently considered to be evil in its entirety constituting only power and privilege. This has been the case in South Africa, where some blacks in South Africa want to confiscate the land of the white farmers.
This type of failure to meet eye to eye in culture and society is not unique to America. In Africa, a struggle between Bantus and Khoisan resulted in the near extermination of the latter, because they refused to be integrated in with the former. As Cole (2014) shows, the Khoisan were once “kings of the planet”—and then other groups began to grow and develop, while the Khoisan (bushmen) stayed the same, maintaining their ways and traditions in the face of aggression from others. Just as the Bantus never fully accepted the Khoisan, “whites” in America have really accepted “others”—whether they were Catholic, African American, Native American, or Asian American. The WASP Establishment was at the top of the power structure and it dictated who could be legitimized and who could not. Gradually, every group had to be “whited”—Catholics were “whited,” blacks were “whited” and Asians were “whited”—all in the latter half of the 20th century when so many changes took place. Blacks today go through all sorts of physical contortions to have “white” hair—even though it damages their natural hair follicles and can cause them health problems—that is how entrenched and ingrained whiteness has become for people in America (Thompson, 2008). Access to power and resources according to the white culture is pegged upon adherence to the central values within the culture and showing a temperament to act in its defense. White culture, never fully accepts the assertion of people of color to share its central values having defined people of color as outsiders.
We actually live in a multi-racial America and should start recognizing that fact as important. A characteristic of multiracial society, aside from living and working in common, is that people lack racial boundaries that may distinctly define one from the other. In a society such as this, although access may require some form of shared beliefs, these beliefs are not affiliated to background racial as boundary origins and the skin color (Bamberg et al., 2011). Most non-“whites” understand this. The shared beliefs in the multiracial society are but an expression of an idea, indeed one that other monoracial cultures and the white culture also embrace to some degree. Still, whether it has at any time been truly recognized by any multiracial society at a time in the United States is arguable. However, as an ideal, it is likely to have been lived in practice, to have been approached equally in theory, and to have been subjugated to the notions and illusions of environmental and historical stresses within the societies that have ever embraced the multiracial character (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997).
In the United States, three types of multiracial societies have existed, and continue to exist. There is the interracial society, the group of people interracially living together as partners, those that have formed interracial families through adoption, or those who acknowledge being of interracial descent. The interracial society is a small but a rapidly growing section of the society. Slowly it growth is setting out an opportunity to view itself as a society, developing its media, and its stances on issues (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997).
There are unintentional societies where racial boundaries have been weak enough that intermixing in work and family settings have come about. Often this has happened among non-white groups, such as Native Americans, African Americans and Hispanic Americans. Less often it has included the presence of white people, quite probably because the boundary between white and non-white has been more effectively policed than, say, the boundary between black and non-black (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997).
Lastly, there are intentional societies where various racial groups, white people included, have set out to produce either an organization or an actual society based on a multiracial vision. Initiatives such as these are underway today, as well as existing in the past (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997).
According to Bamberg et al. (2011), multiracial society building up can be done in degrees. A person living in a monoracial family can locate inside a multiracial neighborhood, work for a multiracial entity, go to a multiracial church, and generally place a premium on the settings where multiracial norms are openly observed and spoken. By a "premium," the author means to say a monoracial person has a willingness to travel further, pay more, or work harder to access to these settings contrary to value they are for access to a monoracial environment specifically the monoracial setting of their racial group.
The condition that in a multiracial society there are no racial boundaries means that the white people must have the opportunity for inclusion, as must any racial group. History shows that this is one privilege the white culture has rarely extended to its members (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). "Going native," as it were, assuming the values of a non-white culture, be it a multiracial one or a monoracial one, has always contributed to negative sanctions from the white culture upon those white people who would stray (Bamberg et al., 2011).
Multiracial societies are composed entirely, or nearly entirely, of non-white racial or cultural groups that have existed throughout the United States’ history. These societies provide examples of multiracial sustenance and their history ought to be studied along with the history of multiracial societies that include members from white cultures. In separated regions, and throughout periodic times, conditions have favored the emergence of these multiracial societies from their usually limited perspective to the point of visibility in conventional society. At other times, multiracial societies have been suppressed ruthlessly by white culture, with the intent to ensure that they no longer exist as feasible social entities (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997).
On a contemporary basis, multiracial society building has not risen to a status where it can be recognized as a collective entity. Nonetheless, centers of multiracial society building do exist, whether as interracial families and intentionally incorporated societies. In literature, there is no known general agreement on what constitutes multiracial society building. In this paper, the term has been coined to facilitate the author’s intentions of advancing an opinion and argument. There exists no known actual description of a multiracial society building as an intentional process, though it is the conviction of the author that it is likely that a description exists. Nonetheless, it is possible to suggest some principles that might apply to such an effort. In my opinion, the ideal multiracial society building should meet the following prerequisite and attain the ideal compounding aspects as discussed below:
Have a critical mass of people from two or more racial groups
It’s more than one race is needed for multiracial society building. By critical mass, it means enough people of each racial/cultural group must be present so that they can sustain their own cultural experience within the society without having to subsume that experience under a monoracial/cultural orientation. For example, many white neighborhoods and schools claim to be "integrated" because they have a proportionally small non-white population of perhaps 3-5%. With so few people of color, the white culture will continue to be in the center, possibly seeking to accommodate the people of color who are present (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). But multiracial society building will not take place unless a more significant number of people from each racial group are present.
Create local multiracial centers for activities and living
People interested in multiracial society building need to find centers of activity, societies, organizations, and employers. This would be a place where people from several racial backgrounds are working and living together. Though few and far between, these centers exist and where none are present, people need to take the initiative to create them (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997).
Place the multiracial society at the center of one’s life
Even among people interested in multiracial and multicultural activities, many are still committed to a monoracial lifestyle. Indeed, a monoracial lifestyle is and should remain an option for people, but multiracial society building, if it is to become significant, requires people to commit themselves to the interest of this society above and beyond their monoracial interests (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997).
Acknowledge monoracial society centers and their connections
Multiracial society building needs not to require its participants to desert their monoracial heritage. Even individuals of multiracial heritage have ties to monoracial societies. Instead, it might be expected that people in the multiracial societies will still be supportive of efforts among monoracial societies to achieve harmony and racial equality. It must also be assumed that people who are attracted to a multiracial society building will take some interest in being involved with other racial/cultural groups (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997).
Change the view of the world in multiracial vs. monoracial dimension
For people engaged in building multiracial societies, sometimes this is the only way the world will make sense. Each monoracial society can make some efforts to frustrate its members from shifting their bond from a monoracial center to a multiracial one (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). Each person in a multiracial society is thus subject to cohesion from their racial group to acknowledge the prominence of their monoracial ties, and place as secondary or disavow the task of building a multiracial society.
Identify, name and support other local centers of multiracial activity and living
Creating multiracial societies is difficult to work and can only be done on a small scale at the onset in the American culture. But to attract more significant numbers of people, to develop a greater sense of society, and to benefit and learn from the experiences of existing efforts it is necessary to name, identify and support the local attempts.
Educate within and without, and learning about what is needful to sustain a small, multiracial society
The learning here is experiential it’s in the doing. Unless and until people build multiracial societies, the necessary steps for creating and sustaining such societies will only be speculative. There is a need to draw lessons from actual projects and actual communities, and people sharing real experiences.
Place a claim on central values of America
Multiracial societies today exist on the margins of the margins. To speak the virtues of true multiracial involvement is held by many to be speaking of something odd at best, if not misguided, bizarre, or even disloyal (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). While many people are willing to espouse colorblindness, shared personhood, and common humanity, the actual practitioner of multiracial society building, still feels as if they have to apologize to someone for something or find a spot so secluded that the more significant and more powerful racial forces in America do not tear their efforts asunder (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997).
Whether by entrenching anonymity, or by introducing itself as socially insignificant, or an avocation, or as an innocuous matter of personal preference, multiracial society building ventures need to stop apologizing on its behalf (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). The observation made in this paper asserts that multiracial societies need to take an active role and a center stage in the present-day operation of the nation. This action will propel them through integration into a pivotal position of understanding the attributes that compound to deliver the cohesive society and Nation that the United States is to date. Owing to the growing multiracial numbers and the increase in their interest in the Nations operations, ought to expand their operation to interact with the center and learn more on how they can perpetuate their interests in the society, in policies, and the nation at large.
As far as numbers are concerned the multiracial may have the force to take up a central position in the society, a place that the white race dominates. However owing to the limitations in action and penetration of the inner circle, it is not yet time for them to take such a position. Although it is likely that white dominance is on the verge of extinction, the ideal entity (multiracial society) is ill-prepared to step in and give direction owing to their laid-back apprehensive attitude (Hitchcock & Flint, 1997). The white is remained strongly entrenched in the American society’s center position until such a time the multiracial society takes up active roles and starts to influence policies and impacts core attributes of the society.




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WHY MIXED-RACE AMERICANS WILL NOT SAVE THE COUNTRY
by
Alexandros Orphanides

Americans like to fantasize that a mixed-race future will free them from the clutches of racism.
But this illusion is incompatible with an America in which the presidential election was won by the candidate who ran a "Make America Great Again" campaign, which many critics have pointed out was widely heard as a call to "Make America White Again."
If the election results are a vindication for those championing the politics of President Trump, the demographic trends point in the opposite direction. Today, the United States' mixed-race population is growing three times faster than the general population, and optimism about the impact that mixed-race people can have on a racially-divided country abounds.
"What Biracial People Know," a recent op-ed in The New York Times, argues that the growing multiracial population may act as a "vaccine" to the bigotry that buoyed Trump's campaign, granting America "immunity" to the longstanding politics of exclusion shaped by racism.
But this hope that a mixed-race future will result in a paradise of interracial and ethnically-ambiguous babies is misleading. It presents racism as passive — a vestigial reflex that will fade with the presence of interracial offspring, rather than as an active system that can change with time. A 2015 study by Pew Research Center concluded that mixed-race Americans describe experiences of discrimination in the form of slurs, poor customer service, and police encounters. These figures were highest among people of black-white and black-Native American descent.
In their personal lives, mixed-race people may feel pressure to identify with one group or the other. They may have their sense of identity or belonging dismissed by the groups to which they belong, or by the dominant society.
Diana Sanchez, an associate professor in psychology at Rutgers University and a scholar of multiracial identity and experiences, says mixed-race individuals may face subtle forms of aggression in their daily interactions. "People have trouble putting multiracial people in a box ... and have opinions about how they should be racially categorized," she explained. In such instances, mixed-race people may not seamlessly blend in with others' perceptions, but rather be told that they do not belong to a group, or that they must choose only one, contrary to their personal identity. For some, this disconnects between their sense of self and how the world identifies them can be difficult to navigate.
But when it comes to systemic barriers, experts point out that instances of racial discrimination for mixed-race people may not be very different from the experiences of people who identify as belonging to a single race. Tanya Hernandez, professor of law at Fordham University and the author of the forthcoming book Multiracials and Civil Rights, points out that in legal cases covering a wide-range of contexts, including education, employment, public accommodations, and criminal justice, "people who identify as mixed-race ... describe ... strikingly binary, black/white or White/non-white forms of discrimination." Hernandez adds that many mixed-race people find themselves discriminated against, not explicitly because of their mixed-ness, but because of their belonging to a non-white group. She explained that in most of these cases, "the individual...is lumped together in stark contrast to whites, so it's a white/non-white racial hierarchy."
The fact that mixed-race people who present as non-white face discrimination because of their proximity to a non-white group reinforces the idea of racial discrimination emphasizing categorization with one group, rather than hybridity. As Sanchez notes, regardless of personal identity, "a lot of research points [out that] mixed-race people tend to be perceived along the lines of their minority identity."
But what happens to those who aren't easily categorized?
While not all mixed-race people are considered racially ambiguous, and not everyone perceived as racially ambiguous is of mixed parentage, there is evidence that the inability to categorize people as one race or the other may itself present new forms of bias. Sanchez's research suggests that white people from less-diverse neighborhoods have more difficulty processing the faces of mixed-race individuals, and that this may result in bias. White people with less exposure to non-whites "have more discomfort trying to make decisions about mixed-race people...and that has consequences for their beliefs around those groups," she notes.
The upshot, according to Sanchez, is that "the more [people] are exposed to racially-ambiguous individuals, the more likely they are to see race as a social construct, not a biological one." That realization, that race is a social fiction, "would be a step in the right direction ... in terms of trying to reduce racial prejudice and social inequalities," she says. If people are willing to accept that race is a human fabrication, they may also be more willing to shift their attitudes and perceptions about other groups.
Still, Hernandez, whose work often compares discrimination in the United States to parts of Latin America, is not particularly optimistic. She points out that the myth of racial mixture leading to societal harmony has long been a feature of many Latin American countries. She illustrates the point with the popular notion that Brazil has eluded racism through racial mixture, or the idea that Venezuela is a "café con leche" society in which everyone is racially mixed and free of prejudice. In these cases, Hernandez reiterated that the mere existence of multiracial communities "has not undermined the continuing racial hierarchy, in which the darker you are, the worse you are thought of ... White supremacy is alive and well in Latin America."

Acknowledging that mixed-race people may experience discrimination and that institutional racism, along with individual prejudice, can take forms that target mixed-race people, is central to developing policies that address the dynamic face of racism and the effects it has on our communities. But realizing that a mixed-race society can also uphold racism is crucial to a nuanced understanding of the challenge of recognizing and overcoming racism and bias.

Ultimately, the narrative that imagines mixed-race people as a panacea for racism is a flawed one that reinforces ideas around the very existence of race. Instead, we might want to refocus our conversation around how the collective fiction of race is weaponized to limit access to equality and justice for some groups and not others, then maybe we're onto something.


Alexandros Orphanides is a New York City-based writer of mixed-race descent. His work covers political, social and cultural issues.