The Changing Face of Whiteness

[marmar]

The Changing Face of Whiteness

Sunday, 05 June 2016 00:00
By William C. Anderson, Truthout | News Analysis


When Guido Menzio sat down on a regional jet for a short flight from Philadelphia to Syracuse, New York, he certainly couldn't have guessed what was going to happen. The 40-year-old economist was profiled as a terror suspect for being focused too intently on a math problem. The differential equation he was working on was possibly mistaken for terrorist scrawlings by the nervous passenger next to him, who was concerned that Menzio wasn't polite enough, looked suspicious and was too distracted by his foreign scribblings.

After delaying the flight and profiling Menzio, the media would soon report on the "Ivy League economist" who was "ethnically profiled" for doing math on a plane. Focal points of this story were Menzio's whiteness as an Italian and his stature as an Ivy League economist -- both of which should assure him no suspicion from authorities, unless he should be mistaken for a person of color. Amid the reverberating outcry around Menzio's treatment, the fact that no one should be treated that way may have gotten lost. After all, the passenger followed what is protocol for many; she saw something and she said something. But what is it she saw? She saw someone she was scared of and someone who was possibly not white.

What does it mean to be "possibly not white"? If we examine this incident in the context of this country's past, we will be reminded that the definition of "whiteness" is and has always been changing.

Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia is a landmark white supremacist text that serves as a canonical work for the establishment of US whiteness. As a "founding father" and a co-author of many of the nation's founding texts, Jefferson's thoughts were given extraordinary reverence as observations worthy of real consideration. In this book, Jefferson pontificates about his many bigoted and regressive ideas while explaining his thoughts on why Native and Black people are lesser than whites. Jefferson expresses a particular disdain for Blackness, presenting Black people as an antithesis to white humanity -- a subspecies, if you will.

.....(snip).....

By most standards of today's definitions of whiteness, Guido Menzio's being Italian would categorize him as white. However, his ethnic -- or non-WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) --brand of whiteness recalls an era in this country when not everyone who is now considered "white" would have been previously. Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans and Irish-Americans, among others, have all had complicated histories in this country in regard to their identities. Each group has been alienated and shunned from whiteness at various points in US history. Keep in mind that white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and various neo-Nazi groups have often barred white people who are not of "pure" WASP descent. And even that is subject to change at times. ......................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36292-the-changing-face-of-whiteness

[Igel]

1. A few years back had an Argentine student.

Those of Central-American assumed she wasn't Latino.

She, of course, was. Blue eyes and light hair notwithstanding.

When they finally accepted she was a Latino, some of the more "progressive" also included her as a "person of color." She had paler skin than I did, lighter hair, lighter eyes. My stock is entirely from the islands off the NW coast of France and Belgium.

Such identity games are pretty much always self-parodying in the end, and only the desire to believe makes them any less foolish than young-earth creationists and their Jesus-on-a-dinosaur drawings. We must focus on words, not things; we must make sure all the words line up in the right boxes to make our emotions happy, regardless of what we do to their meanings. Only our intent matters; we are the Deciders for definitions and intentions, our own and others. Seven unrelated problems, just one answer.

Truly, sometimes "Truth, out!" is the right name for that site.