by Ian Williams
“far too shocked to have any real reaction.” James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012), 165.
“The disaffection, the demoralization.” “James Baldwin vs. William Buckley.”
anti-Black racism as the weather. Sharpe extends the metaphor:
“In what I am calling the weather, anti-Blackness is pervasive as climate. The weather necessitates changeability and improvisation; it is the atmospheric condition of time and place; it produces new ecologies.”
See chapter 4 of In the Wake: On Being and Blackness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016) or read an excerpt at The New Inquiry (website), thenewinquiry.com/the-weather.
I just didn’t see you. This scenario is paraphrased from Claudia Rankine’s Citizen (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2014), 77.
Why go and make the incident out to be a microaggression? The term microaggression is fairly popular now, but as background: the term was invented in 1970 by Chester Pierce and popularized by Claudia Rankine to describe the numerous hostilities enacted against Black people. Ibram X. Kendi prefers to call microaggressions outright racist abuse. A related term for the perplexing position of Asian-Americanness is minor feelings (that term’s from Cathy Park Hong). Yet there’s nothing micro or minor about the effect of race in these grey interactions. We can spend days getting our heads back on right.
Ten Bullets on Whiteness
“One can never really see into the heart.” James Baldwin, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” Collected Essays, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Library of America, 1998), 284.
Whiteness also exists as a cluster of ethnicities. Hamid Dabashi writes an accessible, though very opinionated, article on the subject. If anything, it’s worth checking out his additional sources:
In his monumental two-volume study, The Invention of the White Race (Revised edition, 2012), as early as in the 1960s Theodore W. Allen had documented the manner in which the ruling elite in the United States had devised the category of “white people” by way of economic exploitation of the African slaves and the social control of the emerging polities. More recently, in her Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today (2013), Jacqueline Battalora has offered an examination of the enduring issue of race in the US tracing it back to when “white people” were invented through legislations and enactment of laws.
Hamid Dabashi, “The Invention of the White People,” AlJazeera.com, August 28, 2017, aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/08/invention-white-people-170824095046840.html.
The people are disposable. The poor, white people who supported Trump, believing that their whiteness connected them, held them in common, believing in a vicarious access to his ethos/wealth/power, were in the end only an accessory to power, and realizing this, they resorted to intense white power as the only thing they could mobilize.
originates in the Black body. I like the term Black, capital B, because it points to how Black people are unified by our loss of heritage, the unknowability of our lineage in all details, unlike white people, whose category breaks down into German, Scottish, French, etc. I like the term racialized too, because it shows that race has been enacted upon people. There is a full, living person beneath racialization.
“god term.” Here’s Richard M. Weaver’s definition: “By ‘god term’ we mean that expression about which all other expressions are ranked as subordinate and serving dominations and powers. Its force imparts to the others their lesser degree of force, and fixes the scale by which degrees of comparison are understood.” The Ethics of Rhetoric (Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1953), 212.
Consider the price of kidneys. The costs are from around 2003. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “Keeping an Eye on the Global Traffic in Human Organs,” Lancet 361.9369 (2003): 1645–48, doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(03)13305-3. Check out the Organs Watch Project.
price of a Black slave. Samuel H. Williamson and Louis P. Cain estimate that “the ‘real price’ of $400 in 1850 [average price of a slave then] would be approximately $12,000 in 2016 prices.” Samuel H. Williamson and Louis Cain, “Measuring Slavery in 2016 Dollars,” MeasuringWorth.com, 2021, measuringworth.com/slavery.php [inactive].
not the domain of a single race. “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?” Ta-Nehisi Coates quotes Saul Bellow. The answer: “ ‘Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus,’ wrote [Ralph] Wiley. ‘Unless you find a profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership.’ ” Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015), 43, 56.
capitalism requires inequities to thrive. See Eric Williams’s landmark examination, Capitalism and Slavery (1944).
over one hundred military bases in foreign countries. According to David Vine writing in Politico Magazine in 2015 (“Where in the World Is the US Military?”):
Despite recently closing hundreds of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad—from giant “Little Americas” to small radar facilities. Britain, France and Russia, by contrast, have about 30 foreign bases combined. politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-bases-around-the-world-119321#:~:text=Despite%20recently%20closing%20hundreds%20of,about%2030%20foreign%20bases%20combined.
the white, male body as the unit of humanity. Things are changing, but in 1992 Rebecca Dresser was still asking, “How did white males come to be the prototype of the human research subject?” There is a difference between prototype and experimental site; unethical studies were conducted on the Black body. Rebecca Dresser, “Wanted Single, White Male for Medical Research,” Hastings Center Report 22.1 (1992): 24–29, doi.org/10.2307/3562720.
Jacobs’s autobiography. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Project Gutenberg, gutenberg.org/1/1/0/3/11030/.
whiteness relies on Blackness to understand itself. James Baldwin writes about the interaction between Blacks and whites as foundational to the American identity in The Fire Next Time.
We buy ourselves as white people. In the interest of efficiency, here’s an optional restatement of the formerly unstated thesis, using all keywords: Whiteness exists by centring and (over)valuing itself. At all costs, it preserves itself by being adaptable, even if contradictory. It oppresses others with its power and gains power from its oppression. It finds these postulations insulting, coming from a Black person.
Four to Eighteen Days
bright sweaters tied around their necks. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015), 127.
guess which profile attracted more responses. You can read the story and see photos in this Lifestyle article on the CTV News website (March 8, 2017): “Black Woman, ‘White’ Profile: Exposing Racism in Online Dating,” ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/black-woman-white-profile-exposing-racism-in-online-dating-1.3315826.
People rank moving as the most stressful life event. These worst-fear surveys are everywhere. For one example, see SWNS, “Many Claim This Event Is More Stressful than Divorce or Having Kids,” New York Post, September 30, 2020, nypost.com/2020/09/30/some-people-claim-this-is-more-stressful-than-marriage-divorce-and-even-having-kids/#:~:text=Next%20in%20line%20for%20life’s,things%20they’ve%20ever%20experienced.
Between Us
90 percent of people who marry do so within their race. According to Pew Research, “In 2015, that number [of all interracial marriages] stood at 11 million—10% of all married people.” Gretchen Livingston and Anna Brown, “Trends and Patterns in Intermarriage,” Pew Research Center, Social and Demographic Trends, May 18, 2017, pewsocialtrends.org/2017/05/18/1-trends-and-patterns-in-intermarriage/#fn-22844-4.
Only 26 percent of Black women are married. These numbers are from the 2016 US census. The article “Black Marriage in America” on the Black Demographics website includes the one I cited among other interesting stats. blackdemographics.co
m/households/marriage-in-black-america/
The Multiculturalism Act. You can read the 1988 Government of Canada document online at laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-18.7/page-1.html.
By the most recent census numbers. “National Household Survey (NHS) Profile, 2016,” www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/index-eng.cfm
Headlines. Tyler Stiem, “Race and Real Estate: How Hot Chinese Money Is Making Vancouver Unlivable,” Guardian, July 7, 2016, theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/07/vancouver-chinese-city-racism-meets-real-estate-british-columbia.
Headlines. Douglas Todd, “Immigration Has ‘Undoubtedly’ Escalated Housing Prices in Vancouver, Toronto, Says Study,” Vancouver Sun, December 27, 2017, vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-canadas-immigration-targets-a-form-of-housing-policy-says-study.
Headlines. Jackie Northam, “Vancouver Has Been Transformed by Chinese Immigrants,” All Things Considered, NPR, June 5, 2019, npr.org/2019/06/05/726531803/vancouver-has-been-transformed-by-chinese-immigrants.
Headlines. Douglas Todd, “Does China’s Money Threaten Canada’s Sovereignty?” Vancouver Sun, August 1, 2017, vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-does-chinas-money-threaten-canadas-sovereignty.
Headlines. Paul Roberts, “Is Your City Being Sold Off to Global Elites?” Mother Jones, May/June 2017, motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/hedge-city-vancouver-chinese-foreign-capital/.
you’ll find large Chinese populations in Burnaby and Richmond. “Census Profile, 2016 Census Vancouver [Census metropolitan area], British Columbia and British Columbia [Province] Ethnic Origin,” Statistics Canada; and “Profile of Ethnic Origin and Visible Minorities for Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, 2006 Census,” archived October 30, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. The demographic information of both cities is summarized on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Metro_Vancouver.
profitable malls. “2 of Canada’s Top 3 Most Profitable Malls Are in Vancouver,” Daily Hive Vancouver, January 15, 2019, dailyhive.com/vancouver/most-profitable-malls-vancouver-2019.
Again, of course, there are Asians in Vancouver for whom none of this is true. Definitely in the U.S., wealth disparity among Asians is greater than among other races. The Pew Research Center reports that “Asians displaced blacks as the most economically divided racial or ethnic group in the U.S.” More precisely, “In 2016, Asians at the 90th percentile of their income distribution had 10.7 times the income of Asians at the 10th percentile. The 90/10 ratio among Asians was notably greater than the ratio among blacks (9.8), whites (7.8) and Hispanics (7.8).” https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/07/12/income-inequality-in-the-u-s-is-rising-most-rapidly-among-asians/
The private education industry in Korea. According to a Korean survey, “72.8 percent of elementary, middle and high school students were receiving private education last year.” The valuations of the private education industry are from 2019. See Kim Jae-heun, “Private Education Cost Reaches Record High,” Korea Times, March 12, 2019, koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/03/181_265235.html.
routinely rated lower on such evaluations. Kerry Chávez and Kristina M.W. Mitchell, “Exploring Bias in Student Evaluations: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity, PS: Political Science & Politics 53.2 (April 2020): 270–74, doi.org/10.1017/S1049096519001744.
The Only
to see and also be seen by “lusty folk.” The original language in Middle English is: “for to se, and eek for to be seye.” Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath Prologue,” The Canterbury Tales, line 552.
the act of seeing involved emitting a ray from your eye. You can get an overview of the history of optics on Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optics#Classical_optics.
degrees of concern. Here’s Claudia Rankine’s preferred term: “I told the students I preferred internalized dominance [to white privilege, i.e., Robin DiAngelo’s term]. Robin DiAngelo states, ‘for the dominant group being socialized to see the minority group as inferior, it conveys the dominant group is superior. The sense of superiority is often not explicit but internalized deep beneath the surface. The process causes members of the dominant group to see themselves as normal, correct, and more valuable, thus more entitled to the resources of society.’ ” Claudia Rankine’s talk “On Whiteness,” Arts Emerson, Boston, March 24, 2017, youtube.com/watch?v=uCEfUMesedE (36:07 onward).
there were two Black tables in the corner of the cafeteria. See Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity (New York: Basic Books, 1997).
“Du Bois believes the Talented Tenth.” W.E.B. Du Bois in The Negro Problem, Project Gutenberg, gutenberg.org/1/5/0/4/15041.
Being the Only is often reflected back to you as if it were a privilege. From the earliest times of integration, the narrative of Black people in schools is shaped as an achievement. I think of Dorothy Counts, the fifteen-year-old girl integrating into high school while being heckled by her white classmates. In a situation like that, the only thing one wants, I think, is company.
Earlier, I mentioned the scholar Christina Sharpe. See In the Wake: On Being and Blackness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).
to see if Black people were, in fact, as rare as I recall. For a different take on the graph, here are the numbers of Black kids to non-Black kids in my classes:
Grade 6: no data, couldn’t afford a yearbook
Grade 7: 2 of 18
Grade 8: 1 of 20
Grade 9: couldn’t afford a yearbook
Grade 10: 8 of 374
Grade 11: 5 of 333
Grade 12: 8 of 333
Graduating class at university: 8 of 397
Certain kinds of trauma. Toni Morrison’s MLA talk was later published. Toni Morrison, “Guest Column: Roundtable on the Future of the Humanities in a Fragmented World,” PMLA 120.3 (2005): 717.
The question of “speaking as.” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Questions of Multiculturalism,” interview with Sneja Gunew, The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1993), 195.
“The white man takes the astonishment as tribute.” James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012), 168.
The Drive Home
police in Colorado drew their guns. Oliver Milman, “Police Draw Guns on Black Woman and Children in Mistaken Stolen Car Stop,” Guardian, August 4, 2020, theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/04/colorado-police-draw-guns-mistaken-stolen-car-stop-video-black-woman-brittney-gilliam.
“Can you prove that you bought this car?” “Danny Rose Reveals Racist Treatment in Everyday Life,” Skysports.com, August 3, 2020, skysports.com/football/news/11095/12041656/danny-rose-reveals-racist-treatment-in-everyday-life.
Two Eyes, a Nose, and a Mouth
“and he needs you to account for that.” Claudia Rankine, Citizen (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2014), 46.
“respiratory depression.” Richard J. Levy, “Clinical Effects and Lethal and Forensic Aspects of Propofol,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 56.1 (January 2011): S142–47, doi.org/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2010.01583.x.
“airway obstruction.” Joanne M. Goralka, “Propofol,” chap. 226 in Poisoning & Drug Overdose (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012).
“read the autopsy report.” The person who posted goes by pat4merica. instagram.com/p/CCpepLGnLN0/?igshid=najuy2bpkasm
“Nobody says nothing about that.” You can watch a clip of Oprah’s interview with Michael Jackson on YouTube, youtube.com/watch?v=w20H0L555cE.
“Yeah, but so did a lot of people that I know.” Listen around 27:30 of the Oprah interview, youtube.com/watch?v=CqxAL4L-3bg.
“without loss of their ethnic identity” and Black patients ask for reduced width. Adeyiza O. Momoh et al., “Rhinoplasty: The African American Patient,” Seminars in Plastic Surgery 23.3 (2009): 223–31, doi.org/10.1055/s-0029-1224802.
Lil’ Kim posted photos to her Instagram. The original post of Lil’ Kim’s transformation has since been removed by Lil’ Kim, but remnants are everywhere. See Victoria Anderson, “Lil’ Kim and the Unbearable Whiteness of Being,” The Conversation, April 28, 2016, theconversation.com/lil-kim-and-the-unbearable-whiteness-of-being-58459.
“When it comes to Black people.” Treasure also says, “I act and think like a white person.”
Video: “ ‘When It Comes to Black People, I Think They’re All Ugly,’ Says 16-Year-Old African-American,” Dr. Phil YouTube channel, posted October 24, 2018, youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=2TPFBI2sYik&feature=emb_logo.
Article: Yesha Callahan, “16-Year-Old Black Teen Tells Dr. Phil She’s White and Hates Black People,” Essence, October 25, 2018, essence.com/news/16-year-old-black-teen-tells-dr-phil-shes-white-and-hates-black-people/.
direction of these transracial desires. Incidentally, I don’t mean to conflate transgender movements with transracial thought. Totally separate.
“It’s a unique kind of beauty” and other quotations. Leon Talley’s comments are part of a segment on Alek Wek produced by FashionTV: “Alek Wek: Controversial Modeling Debut,” YouTube video posted August 31, 2013, youtube.com/watch?v=envPStPNPXI&feature=youtu.be.
Cladisticizing. The term is Wayde Compton’s. See After Canaan (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010), 25.
There is no deception on their part. Pheneticized is the term Wayde Compton uses to put the fault of the error on the viewer. See Ibid., 23–24.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Excerpts of “Disorientation” appeared in Granta; “The Drive Home” in The Globe and Mail; “Two Eyes, a Nose, and a Mouth” in The Kenyon Review; “More than Half of Americans Can’t Swim” was delivered as the Pelham Edgar Lecture at Victoria College, University of Toronto, and an excerpt published in Publishers Weekly; “Four to Eighteen Days” was part of the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Skin Hunger project. Thank you to the editors and programmers: Josie Mitchell, Mark Medley, Nicole Terez Dutton, Angela Esterhammer, Edward Nawotka, Brianna Cooze.