User:Alpaki/sandbox

Whiteness and Social Death (my sandbox #1) (double-check and add citations later)
Whiteness is the social machinery within which we live that engenders particular historically situated power-laden global/local structure and relationships—something similar to economic, political, legal systems—and, for its pervasive yet invisible discursive ontology, hides from and mobilizes us (see Toyosaki, 2016 for the current trend of whiteness studies; Warren, 2003). This is so, some scholars argue, because of (post/neo-)colonialism that supports, naturalizes and normalizes the global dominance and privilege of white imperial/colonial subjects, their worldviews and practices (Shome, 1999). Within this schema, to be recognizable and valued human, rather than being rendered Other or social death, is to be white, and this universalization of whiteness deracializes white subjects, obliterates whiteness, and renders its universality the very form of grievable humanity (Butler, 2009; Montag, 1997; Morrison 1992).

Whiteness, according to Frankenberg (1993), has three interlocking dimensions: it is a location of structural advantage or racial privilege, a standpoint or the white gaze, and a set of unmarked/unnamed culture-laden practices and values. First, a location of structural advantage or racial privilege means that the webs within which we live such as economic, political, and social systems that organize particular kinds of institutions and relationships, such as family relationships, education, public safety, academia, and more, privilege white subjects. This is not to say white people are equally advantageous no matter what their class, gender, sexuality, etc.—for instance, poor white people. Yet, the webs are historically situated and structured in a way that sustains the privilege for white subjects. Second, a standpoint or the white gaze, connected with the first dimension, means that a location from which white subjects see themselves, others, and society gets normalized. The institutions such as education, police or media exemplify this in that the rules followed by rewards and punishments are arranged according to the white gaze. This suggests that the politics of “protecting and serving” might speak to white and non-white especially black subjects differently. Third, a set of unmarked/unnamed culture-laden practices and values, combined with the two dimensions, means that fundamental white symbols such as individualism are rendered universal human symbols (i.e., “the right way”). These layers of whiteness situate us in the social machinery where others are dehumanized (i.e., generalized through the white gaze, etc.) or inferior by nature while white subjects remain in a locus that is superior, unmarked/universalized/humanized and individually distinct. Pointing to the media representation of white savior narrative or identity, for example, Shome (1996) says that it perpetuates an illusion of the apparent superiority of white subject that is timeless and “legitimizes a rhetoric of liberal white paternalism” (p. 504). And the construction of the origin of being founder/researcher or the interest in Other can be manifested in “the presence of black people in. . . films [that] allows one to see whiteness as whiteness, and in this way related to the existential psychology [of white subjects] (Dyer, 1988, p. 48).