Deflective Whiteness: Co-Opting Black and Latinx Identity Politics: Race and Mediated Cultures
Autor Hannah Noelen Paperback – 13 noi 2022
White deflection offers a script for how social justice rhetoric and the emotions of victimization are appropriated to conjure a hegemonic White identity. Using derivative language, deflection claims Whiteness as the aggrieved social status. Through case studies of cultural moments and archives including Twitter, country music, the Black Lives Matter movement, and more, Deflective Whiteness exposes the various forms of tacit White supremacy that operate under the alibi of injury and that ultimately serve to deepen racial inequities. By understanding how, where, and why White deflection is used, Noel argues, scholars and social justice advocates can trace, tag, and deconstruct covert White supremacy at its rhetorical foundations.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814258545
ISBN-10: 0814258549
Pagini: 226
Ilustrații: 4 b&w images, 1 table
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.35 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria Race and Mediated Cultures
ISBN-10: 0814258549
Pagini: 226
Ilustrații: 4 b&w images, 1 table
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.35 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria Race and Mediated Cultures
Recenzii
“Noel offers her readers an important toolkit for identifying and taking apart the inner workings of everyday white supremacist discourse. For this reason, Deflective Whiteness is a useful book not only for students and scholars of rhetoric and media, but for all critical observers of US political discourses.” —Andrei Belibou, European Journal of American Studies
“In drawing on history, rhetoric, cultural studies, and other fields to explore a key manifestation of white supremacy’s entrenchment today, Deflective Whiteness is a model for interdisciplinary scholarship. Noel displays a breathtaking understanding of the history of and crevices within critical whiteness studies.” ––Lee Bebout, author of Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the U.S. Racial Imagination in Brown and White
“In drawing on history, rhetoric, cultural studies, and other fields to explore a key manifestation of white supremacy’s entrenchment today, Deflective Whiteness is a model for interdisciplinary scholarship. Noel displays a breathtaking understanding of the history of and crevices within critical whiteness studies.” ––Lee Bebout, author of Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the U.S. Racial Imagination in Brown and White
Notă biografică
Hannah Noel is an Associate Professor at a public liberal arts college in New England. Her articles have appeared in Diálogo, Kalfou, and The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Media.
Extras
This book is a study in White deflection. Contemporary White deflection is a predictable two-step dialectic: (1) calls of White victimhood, accompanied by (2) the appropriation of racial justice rhetoric. White deflection offers a script for how the emotion of victimization is mobilized by Whites to evoke the appropriation of social justice rhetoric, discursively conjuring a hegemonic White identity. An expression of White identity politics, White deflection works in the support of systemic inequality and injustice through using derivative language that claims Whiteness as the aggrieved social status. By understanding how, where, and why White deflection is used, scholars and social justice advocates can tag, deconstruct, and trace covert White supremacy at its rhetorical foundations.
Many of the characteristics of deflective Whiteness will not be new to scholars of critical race theory. Nevertheless, the concept has unique and distinct values for students, teachers, and scholars of rhetoric and media studies. First, it is a discursive pattern that deflects and willfully ignores the critiques of those who challenge White supremacy and White fragility. Second, this analysis extends David Roediger’s (1999) elaboration of W. E. B. Du Bois’s concept of the “wages of whiteness,” as deflective Whiteness offers an affective benefit to those invested in White supremacy by deflecting critiques. When confronted with a challenge to White supremacy, deflective Whiteness reestablishes racial equilibrium and White racial comfort. Third, my theorization of deflective Whiteness engages with the work of Drew Lopenzina (2012) on unwitnessing and Charles W. Mills (1997) on the epistemic impact of Whiteness, and applies it in cross-media spaces. Lopenzina describes the “absolute absence in the colonial archive” of Native viewpoints as a type of “cultural amnesia” that allows Whites to witness the impact of White supremacy on Native people yet also “unwitness” this experience in the dominant historical memory. Deflective Whiteness often unwitnesses, or willfully misremembers, the systemic and institutional disenfranchisement of historically marginalized groups. Deflective Whiteness is similar to Mills’s “racial contract”; it is a “conceptual bridge” designed to traverse the gap between hegemonic White histories and the experiences of people of color. Mills writes that Whiteness “is just taken for granted; it is the background against which other systems, which we are to see as political, are highlighted.” Although often unnamed, deflective Whiteness shows that the racial contract of Whiteness is still very much present, and it emerges in cross-media spaces with a seemingly contradictory dualism: overtly offensive or racist statements often accompany the deracialized rhetoric of colorblindness. Finally, deflective Whiteness is a representational strategy of White identity politics. As such, it allows rhetors to deploy a deliberate process of White invisibility.
--
Deflective Whiteness augments Jane H. Hill’s (2008) discussion of the folk theory of race. In the folk theory of race and racism, folk theorists are not trained in the skills of gathering contradictory evidence and critical analysis. Hill maintains, then, that when faced with contradictions—for example, that Blacks are significantly more likely than Whites to be victims of police violence—they are ignored through “erasure,” a type of deliberate forgetting. With the addition of deflective rhetoric, my research demonstrates that this erasure can work aggressively in cross-media spaces both to deflect accusations that a speaker may be racist and to obscure the speaker’s intrinsic investment in White supremacy. The myth of White victimhood—the notion that the United States is a meritocracy and Whiteness must be defended against unfair bias—is also a motivating factor behind deflective Whiteness. For instance, in folk understandings of race, Whiteness has long remained invisible. Karyn McKinney (2005) studied the autobiographies of Whites and found that that many did not perceive themselves as having a racial identity; of those who did, “most fail[ed] to recognize white privilege or take responsibility for dismantling racism.” When Whites did consider their racial identity, they represented their Whiteness as “empty, socially/culturally stigmatized, and economically disadvantaged—a liability.” Disregarding the history of and presently existing socioeconomic advantages of Whiteness, according to McKinney, left Whites feeling as “victims of racial disadvantages” that they associated with programs like affirmative action. Rather than representing the rhetoric of a systematically victimized and stigmatized group, deflective Whiteness emerges as a reactionary manifestation of “white fright,” or a defensive position taken when confronted with the statistic that US White racial groups will soon become demographic minorities. In this way, deflective Whiteness works as a smokescreen that obscures an individual’s investment in White supremacy through deriding minorities as morally degenerate and anti-American; generally minimalizing the experiences of people of color.
Many of the characteristics of deflective Whiteness will not be new to scholars of critical race theory. Nevertheless, the concept has unique and distinct values for students, teachers, and scholars of rhetoric and media studies. First, it is a discursive pattern that deflects and willfully ignores the critiques of those who challenge White supremacy and White fragility. Second, this analysis extends David Roediger’s (1999) elaboration of W. E. B. Du Bois’s concept of the “wages of whiteness,” as deflective Whiteness offers an affective benefit to those invested in White supremacy by deflecting critiques. When confronted with a challenge to White supremacy, deflective Whiteness reestablishes racial equilibrium and White racial comfort. Third, my theorization of deflective Whiteness engages with the work of Drew Lopenzina (2012) on unwitnessing and Charles W. Mills (1997) on the epistemic impact of Whiteness, and applies it in cross-media spaces. Lopenzina describes the “absolute absence in the colonial archive” of Native viewpoints as a type of “cultural amnesia” that allows Whites to witness the impact of White supremacy on Native people yet also “unwitness” this experience in the dominant historical memory. Deflective Whiteness often unwitnesses, or willfully misremembers, the systemic and institutional disenfranchisement of historically marginalized groups. Deflective Whiteness is similar to Mills’s “racial contract”; it is a “conceptual bridge” designed to traverse the gap between hegemonic White histories and the experiences of people of color. Mills writes that Whiteness “is just taken for granted; it is the background against which other systems, which we are to see as political, are highlighted.” Although often unnamed, deflective Whiteness shows that the racial contract of Whiteness is still very much present, and it emerges in cross-media spaces with a seemingly contradictory dualism: overtly offensive or racist statements often accompany the deracialized rhetoric of colorblindness. Finally, deflective Whiteness is a representational strategy of White identity politics. As such, it allows rhetors to deploy a deliberate process of White invisibility.
--
Deflective Whiteness augments Jane H. Hill’s (2008) discussion of the folk theory of race. In the folk theory of race and racism, folk theorists are not trained in the skills of gathering contradictory evidence and critical analysis. Hill maintains, then, that when faced with contradictions—for example, that Blacks are significantly more likely than Whites to be victims of police violence—they are ignored through “erasure,” a type of deliberate forgetting. With the addition of deflective rhetoric, my research demonstrates that this erasure can work aggressively in cross-media spaces both to deflect accusations that a speaker may be racist and to obscure the speaker’s intrinsic investment in White supremacy. The myth of White victimhood—the notion that the United States is a meritocracy and Whiteness must be defended against unfair bias—is also a motivating factor behind deflective Whiteness. For instance, in folk understandings of race, Whiteness has long remained invisible. Karyn McKinney (2005) studied the autobiographies of Whites and found that that many did not perceive themselves as having a racial identity; of those who did, “most fail[ed] to recognize white privilege or take responsibility for dismantling racism.” When Whites did consider their racial identity, they represented their Whiteness as “empty, socially/culturally stigmatized, and economically disadvantaged—a liability.” Disregarding the history of and presently existing socioeconomic advantages of Whiteness, according to McKinney, left Whites feeling as “victims of racial disadvantages” that they associated with programs like affirmative action. Rather than representing the rhetoric of a systematically victimized and stigmatized group, deflective Whiteness emerges as a reactionary manifestation of “white fright,” or a defensive position taken when confronted with the statistic that US White racial groups will soon become demographic minorities. In this way, deflective Whiteness works as a smokescreen that obscures an individual’s investment in White supremacy through deriding minorities as morally degenerate and anti-American; generally minimalizing the experiences of people of color.
Cuprins
Introduction White Deflection: The Parasitic Nature of White Identity Politics
Part 1 Overt White Deflection
Chapter 1 Of Memes, Militancy, and Masculinity: White Rhetoric and Racial Fabrication in Online Discourse
Chapter 2 Feminized Racial Pain: Cisgender Women, Whiteness, and Digital Masculine Rhetoric
Chapter 3 Trash Music: A Third-Wave Whiteness Approach to Bro-Country and Country-Rap
Part 2 Inferential Deflective Whiteness
Chapter 4 Brand Liberal: Ethical Consumption and Latina Representation under Racial Capitalism
Chapter 5 Framing Immigration: Legal Violence in NPR’s Coverage of the Postville Raid
Epilogue Performative Allyship and the Future of Critical Whiteness Studies
Appendix 1 Blue Lives Matter “About Us”
Appendix 2 Letter to Dov Charney
Part 1 Overt White Deflection
Chapter 1 Of Memes, Militancy, and Masculinity: White Rhetoric and Racial Fabrication in Online Discourse
Chapter 2 Feminized Racial Pain: Cisgender Women, Whiteness, and Digital Masculine Rhetoric
Chapter 3 Trash Music: A Third-Wave Whiteness Approach to Bro-Country and Country-Rap
Part 2 Inferential Deflective Whiteness
Chapter 4 Brand Liberal: Ethical Consumption and Latina Representation under Racial Capitalism
Chapter 5 Framing Immigration: Legal Violence in NPR’s Coverage of the Postville Raid
Epilogue Performative Allyship and the Future of Critical Whiteness Studies
Appendix 1 Blue Lives Matter “About Us”
Appendix 2 Letter to Dov Charney
Descriere
Details the appropriation of social justice rhetoric to claim Whiteness as an aggrieved social status, enabling White supremacy and deepening racial inequities.