Contesting Constructed Indian-ness by Taylor Michael;

Author:Taylor, Michael;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

White Identity, White Ideologies, and Conditions of Whiteness

The Seneca youth who performed the act of the Noble Savage in the school gymnasium played a role that fit the scripted notions of the performance of Indian-ness, these notions derived from stereotypes and expectations of what an Indian is and how it behaves. These notions, stereotypes, and expectations are ideas which are held by mainstream Americans because they are grounded collective American popular culture which makes things Indian an object. As a symbolically white-derived populace, America uses Whiteness as a mirror to determine its favored readings of Indian-ness. These elements were combined and publically displayed by the Seneca teenager. The costume of the young man had the requisite long feathered headdress, the tomahawk, moccasins, fringed clothing, and stoic demeanor. The white members of the audience saw what they desired in terms of the ideal constructed Indian body. The white color of the leather outfit worn by the young Seneca man was unmarred by stain or color; thus, it symbolically reflected back whiteness.

Whiteness, and the contributing dimensions of it, is connected to the idealized notion of the Native American–based mascots as a construct with which it is used to locate difference, both physically and socioculturally, between Native Americans and native-born Americans. The idea of whiteness informs these social and physical parameters to create a condition of difference which is used by the white mainstream to validate ideas of power and privilege against and over Native American peoples. The use of physical differences between groups of people in order to distinguish one group from another is one function of the process that has had racialized and ethnocized contexts attached to its application in regards to colonialized people.

By constructing an evaluated system like physical differences as a marker, a hierarchical categorization construct becomes grounded, one which places values on skin color, hair texture, and facial features among other similar items as criteria. In constructing whiteness using “race” as the valuating principle, these criteria define whiteness for what it is and what it is not in relation to those other groups. This is accomplished through the idea that whiteness is a global factor that is located within the hegemonic ideals of the West and applied as a cultural influence world-wide. Following behind the mechanisms of colonialism, the West has become a cultural transporter to places outside of the scope of the continental United States or of the European continent, too. In 1998, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) published a statement on the use of the idea and construction of race as a socially engendered operational practice which has no basis in human biology. The AAA concluded that this idealization of race as a legitimate item was created in order to continue the forms of power that perpetuate social, economic, and spatial differences.[1] Also, the ideas of difference used as constructions of race are transportable. Richard Drinnon writes of this process in his work, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (1980). He observes that

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