Prometheus 6   

Delays, delays

It's been a while since the last Racism essay. The thing just isn't coming together the way I'd like it to.

There's two major points I need to glue together: the typical reaction to whiteness studies among white folks, and DuBois' dual soul formulation. Between the two of them I'm pretty sure the experience of segregation Black folks have can be made intellectually clear to non-Black folks without requireing them to abandon any of their views or perspectives. It would be more like seeing an Imax 3D movie as opposed to the same film shot for standard theaters. More to the point, it needs to be a set of instructions rather than a set of descriptions, and it's thereactions to whiteness studies that's the rub.

In the meantime, there's some stuff y'all can study. I am not linking to the recent Washington Post article, which was rather lame.

Language of Closet Racism: An Illustration by Paul Gorski
I think "closet racism" is an unfortunate term. I might have called it "racial conditioning." Still, the article has some valueable observations for those who can disengage their thoughts from the highly charged term.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwalkee has a Whiteness Studies site that has received some interesting mail, pre and post Washington Post. Here you get to see the good and the bad. In the "bad" category, there's a particularly long letter from a guy that's trying hard to sound reasonable that is facinating to read in light of the observations made in "Language of Closet Racism."

posted by Prometheus 6 at 7/7/2003 11:19:01 PM |