White Self-Criticality Beyond Anti-Racism: How Does It Feel to Be a White Problem? by George Yancy

Author:George Yancy [Yancy, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: social, Social Science, undefined, philosophy, Discrimination
ISBN: 9780739189498
Google: MiLFoQEACAAJ
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2015-11-15T00:15:29.704522+00:00

Chapter 9

Being a White Problem and Feeling It

Bridget M. Newell

To the real question, “How does it feel to be a problem,” I answer seldom a word. And yet, being a problem is a strange experience—peculiar, even for one who has never been anything else save perhaps in boyhood and in Europe.”—W. E. B. Du Bois[1]

In the early 1900s, W. E. B. Du Bois explored what it meant and how it felt to be seen as a problem due to his race.[2] Now, little more than a century later, I have been asked to “flip the script,” to consider what it means to be a problem due to my race. What, from my perspective, does it mean and how does it feel to be a white problem?

For a long time I considered various ways to approach this question, and I grappled with the important, yet daunting request that I include in my response—as Du Bois did—some of my own personal history in coming to see whiteness, including my own whiteness, as a problem. Like any academic, as part of my planning process, I went to the source, Du Bois’s own words. I was struck by the fact that I and many other white people could begin the conversation using the exact same words as Du Bois. To the question, “How does it feel to be a white problem?” I, like many whites, “answer seldom a word.”

Of course, this question is not usually posed in such an explicit fashion to white people, but it does arise in multiple forms, and when it does, we whites are often silent. We answer seldom a word. We cannot or do not want to answer. Unlike Du Bois, however, we whites do not live with constant reminders that we are seen as problems due to our race. We do not usually explore how it feels or what it means to be white or “have” a race. When we do address race, the focus is on people of color. That is, race is about black people, or Latinos, or . . . it is not about whites. Moreover, within the context of racism, if the idea of whites or whiteness arises, we focus on other whites—those racist whites—but not ourselves.

Given this, we “say seldom a word” because the idea of having to explore our own whiteness, let alone the idea that we ourselves might be a problem due to our race/whiteness, does not occur to us.

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