{"id":50312,"date":"2016-11-28T01:26:10","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T01:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=50312"},"modified":"2016-11-28T01:26:10","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T01:26:10","slug":"the-identity-politics-of-whiteness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=50312","title":{"rendered":"The Identity Politics of Whiteness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/27\/magazine\/the-identity-politics-of-whiteness.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>The Identity Politics of Whiteness<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/pages\/magazine\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times Magazine<\/a><br \/>\n2016-11-27<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lailalalami.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Laila Lalami<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Three years ago, I read \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn\" target=\"_blank\">Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/a>\u201d to my daughter. She smiled as she heard about <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Huckleberry_Finn\" target=\"_blank\">Huck\u2019s<\/a> mischief, his jokes, his dress-up games, but it was his relationship with the runaway slave <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jim_(Huckleberry_Finn)\" target=\"_blank\">Jim<\/a> that intrigued her most. Huck and Jim travel together as Jim seeks his freedom; at times, Huck wrestles with his decision to help. In the end, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tom_Sawyer\" target=\"_blank\">Tom Sawyer<\/a> concocts an elaborate scheme for Jim\u2019s release.<\/p>\n<p>When we finished the book, my daughter had a question: Why didn\u2019t Tom just tell Jim the truth \u2014 that Miss Watson had already freed him in her will? She is not alone in asking; scholars have long debated this issue. One answer lies in white identity, which needs black identity in order to define itself, and therefore cannot exist without it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIdentity\u201d is a vexing word. It is racial or sexual or national or religious or all those things at once. Sometimes it is proudly claimed, other times hidden or denied. But the word is almost never applied to whiteness. Racial identity is taken to be exclusive to people of color: When we speak about race, it is in connection with African-Americans or Latinos or Asians or Native People or some other group that has been designated a minority. \u201cWhite\u201d is seen as the default, the absence of race. In school curriculums, one month is reserved for the study of black history, while the rest of the year is just plain history; people will tell you they are fans of black or Latin music, but few will claim they love white music&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/27\/magazine\/the-identity-politics-of-whiteness.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Identity Politics of Whiteness The New York Times Magazine 2016-11-27 Laila Lalami Three years ago, I read \u201cAdventures of Huckleberry Finn\u201d to my daughter. She smiled as she heard about Huck\u2019s mischief, his jokes, his dress-up games, but it was his relationship with the runaway slave Jim that intrigued her most. Huck and Jim [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,26,394,20],"tags":[25567,2640,25568,2327,25566,1186],"class_list":["post-50312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-laila-lalami","tag-new-york-times","tag-new-york-times-magazine","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times-magazine","tag-whiteness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50313,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50312\/revisions\/50313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}