Kimberly J. Pollock

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White Culture: Or the Musings of One who has decided to Define the Other instead of Being the Other

Abstract
This article focuses on the invisibility of whiteness, and the consequences of this invisibility. Based on an e-mail conversation between community colleagues, the article addresses the differences between ethnicity and race in terms of white culture, and looks at the ontological and mythological consequences of the creation of whiteness. It also focuses on the effects that the process of 'becoming white' has on whites. Relating the theme of invisibility to literature, it seeks to reverse the understanding of color as invisible, and examines the power that is inherent in the ability to define others as one is purposefully refusing to define self.

After having worked at a predominantly White community college on the West Cost for 10 years, I was actually celebrating what I considered a major success. In 1972, faculty members of color at this campus had written a proposal for the development of a Department of Ethnic Studies. In 2003, while holding that original proposal in hand, I felt a sense of triumph as the Curriculum Advisory Committee helped the members of our newly formed Diversity Caucus to midwife the birth of a Department of Ethnic and Cultural Studies for this college. It had taken many people's patience and efforts, but there was in me a sense of satisfaction which comes at the end of a hard won battle. Well aware that the war was still raging, I allowed myself this moment.
My peaceful respite was not to last as I received the following statements in an e-mail from a colleague who had made it clear that he was uncomfortable with the existence of the new course, Ethnic and Cultural Studies 102: White Culture in the U.S.:
"Kim, this is a serious question and there is no hidden agenda. What exactly do you understand by the term, "White Culture?" I asked this question of Leslie Lum (a dear comrade in the struggle and member of our faculty) earlier this year, and she said she could not adequately respond to it." (I am sure that Leslie sensed the trap in the question, and being far too intelligent to fall for such bait, refused to answer.) " Is all European-based culture being lumped together (essentially reducing it all to Anglo-Saxon culture)? How will you account for the linguistic variations, the variations in foods, in forms of dress, in traditions, in music, etc? I would really appreciate a response to this."
Unfortunately, I am not nearly as intelligent as Dr. Lum. I took the bait and what follows are my thoughts about this 'serious question.'
When I use the term 'white culture,' I am talking about race, not ethnicity. There are ways of being in the world that are ethnically culturally bound, involving language, food, religion, forms of dress, music, and traditions in terms of celebrating life, death and all that life contains. These are often tied to places of origin, but are not necessarily so. And while there are many and various European based ethnic cultures, which are unique and well worth study in and of themselves, there is also a racial identity that works as an invisible over-culture, if you will, that is based not in any particular ethnicity, (although Anglo-Saxons have definitely been the largest purveyors of this racial culture), that consists of a way of being 'white' in the world.
Being 'white' has meant being endowed with certain unearned privileges. While I will more than willingly admit that not all European based ethnicities have participated equally in 'white culture,' and each as had its separate path to 'whiteness,' nevertheless, there is a racial culture that is based upon privilege that has been conferred to those to whom the almost-never-spoken-status of 'whiteness' has been conferred.
What I see as the main source for the power that comes along with the conferred title, 'white' is the privilege of never having to name one's self in terms of race. Instead, people talk about being Euro-American, Italian, Irish, Greek, German, French, Scotts, Jewish-they talk about their ethnicities, not their race. There is a way that I am, that I exist in the world that is ethnic-African American-but there is also a way that I exist racially in the world-as a Black woman. As an African American, I have very little in common with someone born in Nigeria, because that person is Nigerian and African, but definitely not American; nor am I African. I have never been to Africa, and anything that comes to me cultural from the continent of Africa, (I know not what people my people came from) comes through the filter of my American-ness. But there is a way of being in this world that a woman from Nigeria and I have that is common to us both, and it is this way of consciously living race, of being black, that whites have "privileged themselves out" of having to experience. And this lack of their own racial identity is not just a phenomenon that is experienced only by whites in the United States of America; there seems to be something universal about the white experience that allows them to see their own filters--gender, national, ethnic, religious, class, etc. -- as not racial, except in the case of White South Africans who basically have no choice in the matter due to their physical location and proximity to Blackness.
So when I talk about 'white culture,' I am referring to the racial existence and way of being in the world that is shared by whites which is almost never identified, or spoken about, almost never seen and only indirectly felt by self. And this invisibility is a main source of power. It allows ethnicity but not race to be recognized among whites, and yet it only allows race, not ethnicity to be recognized in blackness. This is a position of extreme power. It is like an invisibility shield which allows one to strike ones enemy without being seen, so one can deny the power, the privilege, indeed, the entire racial existence because ethnicity is all that is visible.
On her journey to understand male privilege, Ruth Frankenberg, author of White Women, Race Matters (1993 U Minnesota press) came up against the invisibility of whiteness, and writes about it in her article, "Whiteness as an 'Unmarked' Cultural Category." During interviews with white women, she asked them about their own sense of identity. Frankenberg was interested in finding out, "what had formed them [white women], what they counted as cultural practices [their own or others'], and what constituted identities of which they could be proud." ( Meaning of Difference 62). In this article, she talks about the exploration of whiteness as a "location of culture and identity" (62). When this exploration takes place the invisibility of white culture becomes clear as Frankenberg found: "[F]or a significant number of young white women, being white felt like being cultureless." (62) Furthermore she states: "[T]he self, where it is part of a dominant cultural group, does not have to name itself" (62).
This is a significant recognition. One interviewee, Chris Peterson came to an understanding of the existence of white culture in the following passage:
I'm probably at the stage where I'm beginning to see that you can come up with a definition of white. Before, I didn't know that you could turn it around and say, 'Well what does white mean?' One thing is, it's taken for granted. …[To be white means to] have some sort of advantage or privilege, even if it's something as simple as not having a definition. (63)
Frankenberg's understanding had tangible consequences. "For a seemingly formless entity, then, white culture had a great deal of power, difficult to dislodge from its place in white consciousness as a point of reference for the measuring of other. (630)
And it is this power, through the distance of a created concepts of objectivism and rationalism, that has allowed for the oppression of people of color, (and of white women by white men), all over the world. The concepts of objectivism and rationalism have allowed the norms and values of whiteness to appear universal. By rejecting the concept of whiteness, whites are able to say that their norms are the norms, their values are the values. This separation of a people from their culture has had amazing consequences. 'White culture' has created a perfect, self-perpetuating system. By setting itself up as the measure of all things, 'white culture' has created its own epistemology, and through the creation of geographical concepts such as the Middle East, 'white culture' has created a history which doesn't have to look towards people of color as sources for its culture. If Egypt is not part of Africa, but is in the Middle East, then 'white culture' can claim Egypt's great accomplishments as part of its own but without having to claim 'blackness.' In this process, we can see 'white culture' as having given birth to itself-the ontology is complete. After being its own mother, 'white culture' has become the father of modernism which has included colonization, apartheid, genocide, eco-cyde and many other abuses of power and domination that has allowed one group without ever defining self to be the definer of all, and as we all know from the examinations of the mythologies of Western cultural thought going back to Genesis and the story of Adam, power lies with those who define, not with those who are defined.
At this point, if we look at modernism, we can see that 'white culture' has laid waste to many-not just people of color. Many different ethnic groups in Europe have been officially considered not 'white' and have suffered severe consequences for the offense. This is still being played out throughout Eastern Europe today. The remnants of this game of " who is 'blacker' than whom" are to be found on the streets of Belfast, and Prague.
And it is here that I think I need to directly address Jewishness. This is an interesting concept for me. Many of my Jewish friends, and often I, myself, see Jewishness as different from whiteness. Indeed, Jews have been on the receiving end of much of all that is hatefully white. This I openly see and acknowledge. Yet at the same time in the United States, there has been a movement of Jews into mainstream whiteness which has occurred more and more as secular Jewish culture has become more accepted in terms of modes of behavior.
The best example I can see of this happening is the in the phenomenon of Seinfeld. The show has made secularly cultural modes of Jewishness extremely common, and has done so by never naming itself as Jewish. Rarely in the show is there an open discussion of Jewish culture, religion, thought, food, etc. And this action without naming has allowed so much to come into mainstream American culture that 'white culture' adopts these behaviors as their own, also without having to name either self, or the culture that is being usurped. "Seinfeldism" becomes synonymous, not with Jewish culture, but with East Coast culture, and as such has really tangible affects here on the West Coast. When a person in Seattle is behaving in a traditionally ethnically Jewish manner, they are often seen as acting East Coast, and are rejected because this East Coast behavior is not acceptable here on the west coast. The person who is rejected knows the ethnic sting that has happened, but the West Coast person can deny the anti-Semitism because the connections with Jewish culture were never overtly stated and can then be ignored. "Why are you being so touchy? I was just saying that you are a little too New York for me. I never said anything about Jews." By adopting the 'white cloak of invisibility, Jewishness has become synonymous with white.
At the same time that such obvious ethnic discrimination is taking place against Jewish people, people of color see Jewishness as being acceptable 'white' modes of behavior, and see the power that this acceptance as 'white' brings. The economic status of many Jewish people in the United States has had the same kind of backlash as in Europe, but it has also given privilege here over people of color. Thus the situation of the status of Jews is admittedly complex. When a person thinks of self as Jewish, I can truly understand them as not seeing 'white culture.' Yet for many people of color the difference or ethnicity is what has been made invisible, because whiteness as race is no longer denied by the over-culture, and so the label 'white' racially is still applied.
What is equally fascinating as 'the whiteness of Jews,' is the way that white racial consciousness of self is both purposefully developed, and the way it is just as purposefully denied. In an article titled, "The Cost of Whiteness," by Thandeka, (author of Learning to be White) she discusses the experience of being 'taught' whiteness. Her works talk about the conscious creation of whiteness, and yet how this deliberate creation is denied. Thandeka refers directly to a passage in Philosopher Martha Nussbaum's work, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, where the child Nussbaum's father teaches her how to be white. The process involves, learning to "disengage her own feelings, [learning] how to dissociate herself from them" (Thandeka 245) " … Most discussions of the creation of whites over look this stage in the development of a white racial consciousness…" (254.)
Much can be learned the story of 'Jay' in the same article. In it, he "describes the rationale for his parent's decision to take him on a car tour of the 'black ghetto' when he was four" (254). He had never seen a black person before, and so his parents wanted him to have this exposure before their trip to New York. His parents were worried that Jay would stare at black people while on the trip, thus causing embarrassment to them. Thandeka's analysis of the situation described above is insightful. "The adult motivation for this mini tour of black America was to pre-empt a parental rebuke that would have occurred if Jay had indeed stared at "them" while on vacation. Jay thus learned something about what to do with his own natural curiosity. Suppress it! …The deeper implication of the message Jay received would develop over time: Don't even notice that they are there" (254). While Jay's parents never mentioned the word, the whiteness of his family was obvious. What was also obvious was the dehumanization of those blacks who were being viewed from a car window, not unlike a trip to a progressive zoo to see the animals. Thandeka recognizes the complexity of invisibility by making reference to Ellison. "Such behavior, of course, is described by Ralph Ellison's protagonist in Invisible Man: 'I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.' Jay had begun to learn not to see what he saw" (254).
For people of color, African Americans in particular, this complexity of the 'invisibility of whiteness' has played out in various forms with devastating consequences. Ralph Ellison's masterpiece, Invisible Man is a one of the greatest examples of how 'never naming white' works to make people of color believe that naming self, seeing self is wrong, impossible and this makes one insane. This insanity is the tension between the truth of the existence of a tangible, visible self, in the face of the norm which says that to be able to see or touch, or taste, or hear or smell self and then to name that self which is experienced is abnormal. Many of the masterworks of people of color in the United States deal directly with the madness of the denial of the existence of self. In addition to the works of Ellison, such themes can be found in Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Contee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Paul Laurence Dunbar, as well as such contemporary artist as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor and many more.
Ellison's character thinks of himself as invisible, never even thinking that 'whiteness' is what is truly invisible. Since the beginnings of modernism, since the 'discovery of the New World' by those who saw themselves as the measure of all things, there has been profit in keeping that self undefined. And without a tangible definition of 'whiteness,' without a name to call out when you are being struck by the injustices of the blatant inequalities of our racial circumstances, then we are truly invisible in our 'color-blind' society, for if we teach our youth to not see color, then indeed, they will never see us.
The irony here is astonishing. Whiteness has created an entire group which itself is invisible, but membership in that group gives the individual a tangible sense-of-self-as-real that is so solid, it often seems to those individuals that they are the only people who are real. Their way of being in the world becomes the 'universal norm.' While at the same time, people of color can be confident of the fact that they belong to a group, yet it is the existence of each person as an individual that is called into question because the norms of the group go universally unrecognized. It's enough to make a person of color go mad.
No where is the madness of racism more visible than in the construction of whiteness. Thandeka recounts story after story told by European Americans about how:
"[T]hey learned as youth to blunt positive feelings toward persons beyond the pale…instead of describing interracial incidents, they described intra-racial conflicts. The message they learned was repress, deny, and split off from consciousness feelings that, if expressed, would provoke racial attacks from the adults in their own community. …I learned that becoming white is the product of a child's siege mentality. It's a defense mechanism to stop racial rebukes from one's own kith and kin" (255).
So when examined closely, the process of cultural blanching of white children can be seen as the silencing, ridicule and abuse of white children by white adults. The process of becoming white must be full of extreme emotional pain.
One of the first courses that I designed as I created the Ethnic and Cultural Studies Department for my college was titled, "White Culture in the U.S." This class examines the history of whiteness in the United States, beginning with the 1790 immigration act which stated that one had to be free and white in order to become a citizen of our fair land. It examines the painful process that many once non-white ethnic groups were forced to undergo in order to receive the coveted status of whiteness. The course looks at the differences between race, ethnicity and nationality, including whiteness as a racial status. We examine white privilege and what that privilege looks like in everyday life. But what is most important is that it makes the invisible visible. Without self knowledge, one cannot gain the skills that are necessary to change a community that is simply diverse-having many different kinds of people-to a pluralistic community-one that shares the power of decision making equally with all in that community.
My colleague was not satisfied with my explanation of white culture when I sent my response to his e-mail. He has continued to try to keep this and other Ethnic and Cultural Studies courses from being taught, and when that strategy failed, he has tried to be assigned courses in the department so that he can control the ways that knowledge is being disseminated. He doesn't believe that someone like me, a Black, African-American woman with degrees in English and the Humanities could possibly be qualified to teach a course in the Social Sciences. So I open this discussion to others; it is only through dialogue, the critical exchange of ideas with others that truth is ever found. The more voices in the discussion, the closer we come to truth. If most of our voices sound the same, we all lose.

Works Cited
Frankenberg, Ruth. "Whiteness as an 'Unmarked' Cultural Category. The
Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race, Sex and
Gender, Social Class, and Sexual Orientation. Eds. Karen E. Rosenblum
and Toni-Michelle C. Travis. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003:92-8.

Thandeka. "The Cost of Whiteness." The Meaning of Difference: American
Constructions of Race, Sex and Gender, Social Class, and Sexual Orientation. Eds. Karen E. Rosenblum and Toni-Michelle C. Travis. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003: 254-60.

Biography
Kimberly Pollock is the founder and Chair of the Ethnic and Cultural Studies Department, as well as an Instructor of English at Bellevue Community College. During her 10 years at the college she has also served as Chair of the American Studies Department and was directly involved in the institution of Courageous Conversations, BCC's weekly small group employee discussions on race. Most of her work has focused on issues of diversity with a concentration on race. Currently on leave from BCC, she is teaching English at Lakeside School in Seattle.