Through the Lens of Whiteness , livre ebook

Skinner House Books - Liz Cooney , Diane S. Grimes

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98 pages

English

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An essential resource for anyone who wants to enter the next stage of their antiracist journey—recognizing, analyzing, and confronting the perpetuation of racism in our visual world.

Images in the news, social media, advertisements, memes, websites, and selfies shape how we understand ourselves, our society, and our world. Even the images we don’t see have an impact on our daily lives. But images are not innocent. And we don’t have to be passive consumers. Our racial identities, assumptions, histories, and biases filter the images we absorb and affect how we interpret them. Are they problematic? How can you tell? Why should you care?

Situated at the intersection of critical whiteness theory and visual culture, Through the Lens of Whiteness: Challenging Racialized Imagery in Pop Culture teaches readers visual literacy tools that expose racist messages, conventions, and symbols in images. Authors Diane S. Grimes and Liz Cooney help readers understand these patterns more deeply with detailed analysis of vivid image examples and personal stories to dismantle existing biases and develop an antiracist perspective. Grimes and Cooney are guided by the principle that white people bear the responsibility for dismantling racist structures and so primarily address white readers, but also offer this book in the hope that it will be a powerful tool of resistance for all readers.

Introduction

When we set out to write this book in 2019, our vision was to get more white people talking, thinking, questioning, and reading about race, white privilege, and how they perceive the world because they are white. At that time, some white people—but too few—were talking openly about racism in our society. Then 2020 happened. Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, a racial reckoning started to unfold, sparked by the murder of George Floyd. The United States has a long history of racial injustice, and the Black Lives Matter movement had been founded in 2013, but now a newer wave of involvement and activism among white people was emerging. White people marched in the streets in numbers previously unseen in BLM protests. Books about racism, white supremacy, and how to be an antiracist ally were flooding the shelves. Podcasts, documentaries, and news stories were shared on social media.

Today, three years later, we are no longer seeing protests in the news every day or activists marching in the streets. We’ve seen a few changes to policies and laws around policing, some intended to protect police officers and others to protect activists. Through all of this, the two of us continued to write. We didn’t see other writers or scholars focusing on how to see images—all images, not just those directly related to racial issues—in terms of whiteness, or on how they reflect and amplify racism and white supremacist culture.

Some activists maintain that white people should never attempt to educate others, even other white people, about racism. Because how can someone who benefits from white supremacy know how not to perpetuate it? It’s like asking fish to see the water they swim in. They’re surrounded by it, they don’t realize they’re in it, and the water allows them to survive and thrive. The same is true for us as white people in white supremacist culture. Rather, these activists argue, white people should be led by antiracist activists of color, learning from them and amplifying their work, as well as paying them for the considerable knowledge and labor they put into educating white people.

Others believe that the labor of calling in and calling out white people, having dialogue, and working to change the behavior of people with racial privilege should not and cannot rest solely on the shoulders of people of color. White people must confront racism in themselves, their communities, and their relationships. Further, some activists feel that because white people created racism and have benefited from it for centuries, it is entirely white people’s responsibility to eliminate it.

Here’s our opinion. We decided to write this book because we believe it is our duty as white people to help call other white people in to conversations and in-group work on issues of race and white privilege. There is, of course, the obvious dilemma that in writing a book aimed at white people we are centering whiteness and white people’s education while attempting to do antiracist work. But we need to call out racism as insiders, as people whom white people will be more likely to trust or believe precisely because we are white. We want to move readers to a place where they will pay better attention to activists, writers, and scholars of color. We realize that this approach is problematic, but we believe it is worth it. We are not here to educate you on the history of race, racism, or white supremacy in American or “Western” culture and society. We imagine you have some awareness of it or you would not have picked up this book. We aren’t here to take credit for the work that people of color have done to identify how white people can act in solidarity with them. Some of the many excellent works on these topics by people of color are listed in appendix C, “Additional Resources.” We are here to amplify those voices—to link white readers to ongoing conversations about racism, white privilege, and white supremacy.

We are also here to share with you our own experiences of confronting racism in our lives and in the media we consume. We do this not to center our own stories and voices, but for three reasons.

The first is to establish some common ground with our readers. We all have to start somewhere. By sharing some of the ways we’ve learned to become more antiracist and work in solidarity with people of color—and some of the many mistakes we’ve made along the way—we illustrate that each of us is a work in progress.

Few people are talking about how images we encounter in our daily lives—both still and moving images, in the news, in entertainment, on social media, and elsewhere—contribute to white supremacy. Most of us white people interpret such images through a lens of whiteness, or with white ways of seeing (we use these terms interchangeably throughout this book). Our minds interpret the images presented to our eyes on the basis of our experiences as white people, whether or not we are aware of these experiences and their effects. Our second purpose is to help you recognize racism when it appears in these images—to change the way you see them. As white authors, we recognize that we risk perpetuating white ways of seeing even in our effort to dismantle them. Again, we think the risk is worth it.

Our third goal is, by teaching white people to see images differently, to change the way we think, act, and create, including the ways we perceive and treat people. We hope to help create more antiracist white people living and working in solidarity with people of color by helping you more fully understand the perspectives of antiracist activists of color. We hope that our readers will come to understand why their existing white ways of seeing are problematic, and will develop new, more productive ways to engage with and interpret our increasingly polarized world.

As you have no doubt guessed, this book is (mostly) written for white people. As coauthors we use the collective “we” to represent both our voices and also white people as a group. This is not a universal “we.” Part of white privilege is the prerogative to think of ourselves as individuals rather than as members (and representatives) of a community. Our aim is to break through that by speaking to you from a place in our society that we all, as white people, share. In other words, there are not “good white people” and “bad white people.” Rather, all white people benefit from whiteness in some way or other, though those benefits will shift depending on our other identities. Although our individual life experiences vary, we benefit from white privilege, are often unaware of our shared white ways of seeing, and often, even if unintentionally, contribute to a racist, white supremacist culture.

We expect you, readers of this book, to have a certain level of both openness and knowledge so you can work with what we’re offering. There may be moments when you are uncomfortable or feel defensive while reading. As white people, we are not raised to know how to handle these feelings. We want to hold each other accountable for working through them. Images, whether in entertainment, advertising, news, or other media, tend to reflect the perspective of the group with the most power. We were not taught how our biases and assumptions influence the way we create, interpret, and use images. So we understand them as uncomplicated reflections of society and ignore (or are oblivious to) the perspectives of people on the margins (we have a lot more to say about this in chapter 2). We’re here to talk about how we have allowed our interpretations of them to reinforce stereotypes. We’re here to consciously recognize racial stereotypes and other visual conventions in images so that we stop reproducing them.

These commitments do not necessarily leave readers of color out of this work. It would be presumptuous of us to guess how people of color view the kinds of images explored here. If you are a person of color, you may not need this book, because you may have learned much of what is presented here in your own life, family, or community, or through formal study. However, if you grew up in a very white-inflected environment, you may still find this book useful. Visual literacy isn’t widely taught; few people discuss with others, and many people may even be unaware of, how they interpret images they encounter. People of color could be drawing, even unknowingly, on mainstream (in other words, white) ways of seeing. But we emphasize that we are calling in and calling out white people, not people of color, for the creation and perpetuation of white ways of seeing. If you are a person of color reading this book, please take our use of “we” not as exclusionary but simply as not relevant to you. Additionally, as noted by one of our reviewers, be aware that looking at the images we present could be painful for you.

When referring to individual racial groups in our writing, we identify them by their specific racial identity. However, when referring to nonwhite people or racial groups in general or collectively, we use the term people of color. We chose it because it is familiar to many people in the U.S., while recognizing that it doesn’t decenter whiteness (after all, white is a color too). And racism is not actually about different skin colors in any case, but about the meanings and histories associated with each. We know that some folks prefer other terms, such as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous People of Color), BILPOC (Black, Indigenous, Latinx People of Color), and others. Our intention in using people of color is not to lump all racialized communities into a monolithic group; quite the opposite. In each chapter we explore how visual conventions create racist images based on specific stereotypes or assumptions about particular racial groups. At the same time, we know that white ways of seeing blur those specifics and particularities, harming people of all minoritized races, though in different ways. The term people of color communicates the overarching dichotomy between white people, the supposed norm, and all other racialized groups.

We use the terms minoritized and marginalized because we want to be clear that “minority” status is not a matter of numbers. (After all, people of color outnumber white people worldwide, which is why they are sometimes called “people of the global majority.”) The -ized ending, a verbal form, points out that the dominant group has imposed a denigrated status on groups of people on the basis of their perceived race—as it also does in the word racialized. We hope you will question the word minority when you see it in other texts.

Finally, in this book we capitalize the words Black and Indigenous, but do not capitalize white. Capitalizing Black and Indigenous is accepted or mandated in many styles, including much of journalism and academia. However, there is not consensus on whether to capitalize white. We acknowledge the argument that capitalizing white along with the other terms indicates the socially constructed nature of race and prevents white from being a universal or unmarked term. Capitalizing them all treats them all equally—yet they are not equal. Capitalizing Black and Indigenous recognizes the cultural aspects of the terms, the history of the Black diasporas, and the fact that many Black people cannot use a more specific ethnic term (which would always be capitalized) because slavery stripped away knowledge of their ethnic heritage. The term whit doesn’t have any of that history. Moreover, white supremacists often capitalize it, meaning that the capitalized form can bring disturbing associations to mind. It does so for us. Honestly, we don’t want to see it capitalized hundreds of times throughout this book.

Because our book deals with visual images, it is primarily directed at readers who can see them. But those who are blind or visually impaired may also benefit from it, because they may make use of image descriptions in material they engage with. Image descriptions, like images themselves, are not neutral. No matter how straightforward they may seem, they cannot help but include the assumptions of those creating them. We hope that this book will ask questions of, and help set better expectations for, people who create image descriptions.

Introduction

1. Beginning to Identify the White Lens

2. Through the Looking Glass: Reality, Culture, and the White Lens

3. Removing Our Rose-Tinted Glasses: Representation and Black Women’s Bodies

4. On a Pedestal: Masculinity, Race, and Threat

5. Your White Savior Self(ie): Social Media, Branding, and Humanitarianism

6. Continuing the Work

Acknowledgments

Appendix A. Glossary

Appendix B. For Reading Groups

Appendix C. Additional Resources

Endnotes

Sujets

Publié par	Skinner House Books
Date de parution	31 octobre 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781558969094
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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