Whiteness in Historical Research - Essay Example

WHITENESS IN HISTORICAL RESEARCH 2007 Whiteness in Historical Research The highly controversial issue of 'whiteness' has been of intensive public and scholarly debate in the U.K. and U.S. over the last decades. The recent rapid proliferation of publication dedicated to the theme is also impressive with hundreds of British, Australian, and especially American historians and scholars specialized in a variety of disciplines from law and sociology to pedagogic and cultural studies producing numerous article and books with such titles as Forever White, The Wages of Whiteness, The White Scourge, How the Irish Became White, How the British Working Class Became White, Making Whiteness, The Invention of the White Race, and Whiteness in Crisis (Bonnett, 1993, 1998 and 2000; Roediger, 1993; Allen, 1994). These studies are normally addressed as 'whiteness studies'. Although the term 'whiteness studies' is often perceived negatively as promoting white identity and being an element of a racist discrediting of political correctness and increasingly popular tendency of multiculturalism in all spheres of life, such perception is not fully correct. On the contrary, virtually all the whiteness studies tend to confront white privilege, which is the cornerstone of modern racism, while their authors "...see a close link between their scholarly efforts and the goal of creating a more humane social order" (Kolchin, 2002). There are many approaches in whiteness studies (e.g. white identity construction, public policies, economics, education, etc), but the primary goal of whiteness theory is make white cultural and political assumptions and privileges visible so that those with white skin do not assume that their own position is neutral or normal (Jensen, 2005). However, the whiteness theory should in no way be considered a synonym for multicultural theory: these two are distinct perspectives though their goals may be similar. Multicultural theory usually seeks to promote an appreciation of minor cultures within the contexts of dominant cultures and may also involve criticism of some assumptions fostered within the dominant culture. Yet, since the multicultural perspective is predominantly concerned with fostering authentic understanding of minor cultures, they usually do not focus on the issue of how the dominant white culture in such countries as the U.K., U.S. promotes and maintains the established patterns of the whiteness typically associated with the so-called 'white privilege'. By contrast, whiteness theory highlights the problem of whiteness as a sum of political, social, and cultural status and identity which, to a large extent, are gained at the expense of non-white group (Hague et al., 2005). Although the issue of whiteness - in some or other form - has been with the Western countries for ages, the recent explosion of whiteness related publications relies upon a solid body of research literature written largely by writers of non-white descent over the last fifty years (Roediger, 1999). These works predominantly explore the concept and definitions of race and the social construction of white and non-white identities within the numerous contexts of slavery, citizenship, colonial settlement, growth of cities and industrial labour, etc. (Bonnett, 2000). Modern authors lean toward the opinion that the concept of whiteness was first identified with racial issues by Europeans whom made it into essence of their community. From this perspective, European discourse of whiteness differs from, for example, Asian discourse which has never been 'racialised' (Dyer, 1997). Although there is ongoing debate on the first use of racial whiteness, Jordan (1977) traces the evolution of the legally defined line between 'blacks' and 'whites' to British colonial government efforts to prevent cross-racial revolts among unpaid labourers in the early 1600's. Allen (1994) believes that racialisation of whiteness occurred in the 18th century U.S. when the country's business and political elites attempted to separate low-wage, or no-wage, labourers from each other. Such explanation highlights the economic reasons for emergence of 'whiteness', namely protection of the interests of the developing capitalistic system accomplished through the introduction of white skin privilege laws on the one hand, and limiting rights of non-white populations African Americans and Indigenous Americans on the other hand. This economic perspective also provides a reasonable explanation why immigrants of the European descent (for example, Irish) were not initially recognised as whites in the 19th century (Roediger, 1991; Ignatiev, 1996). Whatever the origins of whiteness might be, one obvious result of centuries-long reinforcement of the racialised whiteness concept was perception of white as normal while attributing the concept of race to non-white people. White population was taught to believe that all achievements of a white person should be accounted for in terms of individual qualities, not the colour of skin: "It is intolerable to realise that we may get a job or a nice house, or a helpful response at school or in hospitals because of our skin colour, not because of the unique, achieving individual we must believe ourselves to be" (Dyer, 1997: 9). This belief had huge effects on the process of identity formation in both groups: white and non-white. By lapse of time, promotion of such attitude to non-white population led to decontextualisation and dehistorisation of the whiteness concept: it turned into "...a homogeneous and self-identical category" (Dyer, 1997) which had to be accepted per se without any reference to specific historical, economic or social conditions of the time when it was called into being. Such view was dominant in the European and American context for ages, and only the latest scholarly research in the field of whiteness took serious efforts to disprove this erroneous stereotype by contextualising the racialised image of whiteness in a specific historic-cultural context. Such approach vividly demonstrates the problems associated with homogenised concepts of whiteness (Pgliese, 2002). Although there is no independent discipline exploring the psychological effects of whiteness, the existing body of psychological knowledge, both theoretical and empirical, contributes to our understanding of how whiteness that affects individuals and society on the psychological level. The racism, prejudice, and discrimination related research has a solid history in the science of social psychology. Particularly, the processes and factors that produce and facilitate such phenomena as prejudice and individual racism are sufficiently explored. People are social beings who have strong need for other representatives of their specie to feel comfortable and secure. Therefore, affiliation with a certain group is an essential aspect of any individual's life. Yet, being affiliated with one group the individual starts to distinguish between his/her group and people who belong to other groups which results in development of two concepts: in-group and out-group. In-group is defined as " a group to which a person belongs and which forms a part of his or her social identity" while out-group is "any group to which a person does not belong" (Franzoi, 1996: 272). The major difference between the individual's perception of in-group and out-group members is the following: members of in-groups possess overwhelmingly good personal qualities, while out-group members are perceived with a certain share of negativism. This specific feature of perception makes European Americans be sure that they have been endowed with industry, intelligence, reason, honesty, and other positive traits of character, while African Americans and other minorities are perceived lacking these features. Thus, Cushman (1995) claims that the phenomenon of whiteness resulted in the white people "...constructing the 'other' in such a way as to define and justify the white self by demonstrating what it was not" (p. 346). The indigenous populations of Americas and Australia and immigrants and slaves from Africa were the most appropriate images for the European colonists and immigrants to contrast themselves. In other word the presence of Africans in Britain was one of the necessary conditions for the imagining of Britain as 'white' (Bonnett, 2000). Numerous historical events and developments which have ten place in the U.K. and especially U.S. clearly shows that the tendency to oppose whites to non-whites persisted for ages, which finale led to white population strongly denying its relationship with non-white population and even dehumanizing it (Jordan, 1977). As a result, any group of immigrants which did not belong to the Anglo-Saxon group associated with whiteness had sacrifice their native identity in some or other way to adjust to the standards of whiteness within "WASP cultural and society" (Thandeka, 1999: 29). The history of whiteness research provides an insightful account of the political and social underpinning of whiteness in the modern world. However, the variety of opinions and ideas expressed by different authors in relation to 'whiteness' suggests that any analysis of this concept is not likely to result in a clear cut distinction - either social, economic, psychological, educational or other - between whiteness and non-whiteness. Furthermore, it is barely possible to even trace the origins of distinctions between white and non-white identities to particular historical events. Modern whiteness related research can perhaps be addressed as an attempt to look at the concept of race from the new angle and obtain additional evidences that the concept of race is a purely social construct with no physiological underpinning. Although criticism of the race concept can be traced back to Darwin, whom put in question the notion that human races existed per se, the modern reconceptualisation of history from the positions of the whiteness theory is a more promising approach. The major areas of modern whiteness research encompass virtually all aspects of social, political, economic, and cultural studies, namely the nature of white identity and privilege, the relation of culture to white identity, the historical process by which a white racial identity was created, transformation of the white identity, etc. Whiteness studies should still be address as an emerging field of research, but the existing research in the field has already shown that traditional theories of race rely are largely obsolete. The idea of whiteness as it has developed over time has not been stable or fixed: it has rather been fluid and complex manifesting itself at various levels of social, economic and political life. Historical questions regarding who was considered fitting the standards of whiteness as well as how the boundaries between whites and non-whites transformed over ages are exceptionally useful in finding out how whiteness determines racial, religious, ethnic, cultural, regional, and gender distinctions and inequalities in the modern world. Furthermore, comparative exploration of the domestic and international, public and personal aspects of whiteness offer a number of ways in which the historical research of whiteness can improve our understand of racial relations in the modern world. Issues ranging from slave laws to media representations and historicize their continuities and discontinuities, seeking to illuminate the virtually innumerable elements buttressing the historical construction of whiteness. References Allen, T. W. 1994, The Invention of the White Race: Volume One; Racial Oppression and Social Control, London: Verso. Bonnett, A. 1993, 'Forever white', New Community, Vol.20, No.1, 173-180. Bonnett, A. 1998, 'Geography, 'race' and whiteness: invisible traditions and current challenges', Area, Vol.29, No.3, 193-99. Bonnett, A. 1998, 'How the British working class became white', Journal of Historical Sociology, Vol.11, No.3, 316-340. Bonnett, A. 2000, White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives Harlow, Prentice Hall. Bonnett, A. 2000a, 'Whiteness in crisis', History Today, Vol.50, No.12, 38-40. Cushman, P. 1995, Constructing the Self, Constructing America, Reading, MA:Addison-Wesley. Dyer, R. 1997, White, London, Routledge. Franzoi, S. 1996, Social Psychology, Toronto: Brown and Benchmark. Jensen, R. 2005, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism And White Privilege, San. Francisco: City Lights. Jordan, W. 1977, White over Black: American attitudes toward the negro, 1550-1812, W W Norton & Co Inc. Hague, E., B. Giordano & E.H. Sebasta 2005, 'Whiteness, Multiculturalism and Nationalist Appropriation of Celtic Culture: The Case of the League of the South and the Lega Nord', Cultural Geographies, Vol.12, 151-173. Ignatiev. N. 1996, How the Irish became white, Routledge. Kolchin, P. 2002, 'Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America [electronic version', The Journal of American History, Vol.89, No.1. Retrieved 22 May 2007 from . Pugliese J. 2002, 'Race as Category Crisis: Whiteness and the Topical Assignation of Race', Social Semiotics, Vol.12, No. 2, 149-168. Roediger, D. 1991, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, London: Verso. Roediger, D. 1999, Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White, Schocken. Thandeka, B. 1999, Learning to be white: Money, race, and God in America, New York: Continuum. Read More