A glimpse into the psychosis of Critical Whiteness Studies. A 🧵 on Zeus Leonardo’s, Pale/Ontology. Some highlights,“Kill The White, Save The Human”-“key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race .. 1/ @ConceptualJames @wokal_distance @TVPUAC @e2hd7a Image
so long as the white race exists, all movements against racism are doomed to fail” - “whiteness is not only false and oppressive, it is nothing but false and oppressive- Roediger “dismantling of whiteness becomes a racial means to a Marxist end”- Alcoff 2/
“abolishing whiteness sees no redeeming aspects of it and as long as White people think they are White, Baldwin once opined that there is no hope for them.” “It seems that a Marxist intervention has failed to galvanize a genuine class struggle because of racial divisions.” 3/
“abolishing whiteness (and by implication, race) removes one of the obstacles so that the “real revolution” can get under way”4/
“If abolitionism accomplishes its goal of dismantling whiteness, which in itself is deemed defensible, why should it matter that it contains an ulterior,Marxist motive?”-“Race treason encourages Whites to disrupt this process by pledging their disallegiance to the“White club.”5/
Race traitors are white bodies that no longer act like and as White people.”-“If whiteness disappears,so do White people”-“abolitionism is tantamount to promoting a certain self-hatred and shame among Whites,guilting them into accepting a movement that does not recognize…6/
their complexity.” - “heliocentric critical theory puts whiteness in its rightful place in racial cosmology, as largely dependent and parasitic on the labor and identity of people of color.” 7/
“The rearticulation of whiteness is part of an overall emancipatory project that implicates a host of institutions from economic to educational.”-“ ‘Whiteness’ . . . becomes less a matter of creating a new form of identity politics than an attempt to rearticulate ‘whiteness’..8/
as part of a broader project of cultural, social, and political citizenship” -Giroux - “critical educators insert hope in White people as hermeneutic subjects who may interpret social life in liberating ways and not as hopelessly stuck in the molasses of racism.”9/
“In the dialectics of whiteness, Whites search for positive articulations in history as well as facing up to the contradictions of what it means to be anti- racist in a racist society. Seen this way, the current formulations of whiteness are racist” 10/
“Just as Lenin once remarked that whereas the proletariat must merely be educated and the bourgeoisie must be revolutionized (see Althusser, 1976), so must Whites be transformed or experience a transformative education.” 11/
“we cannot say the same for the bourgeoisie and Whites who must be “reborn” like the phoenix” -Freire - “making whiteness rather than white racism the focus of study is an important pedagogical strategy” -Giroux “12/
“power-strategic politics that refuses to accept‘whiteness’as a racial category that has only one purpose,which is closely tied to,if not defined by,shifting narratives of domination and oppression”- Giroux“Whiteness is not a hopeless disease and may be rehabilitated”McLaren 14/
Whites to rethink their identity around a new, progressive, assertive, counter-hegemonic, antiracist notion of whiteness.” -Kincheloe -“Whites already enter racial/ethnic circles with confidence. The phenomenon of racial exoticization and tourism already encourages Whites…15/
to enter non-White spaces in a way that only a colonizer can” -Memmi “A theory of White reconstructionism comes with certain interventions that make it a viable political movement. To the reconstructionist, it offers a way into whiteness rather than a way out of it… 16/
It encourages Whites to own their whiteness rather than disowning it. Reconstructionism is not an idealist politics but a critical, pragmatic one.”-Kincheloe -“reconstructionism may find its way into education as a pedagogical principle.”17/
“opting out of whiteness is a racial privilege that people of color cannot enact” - “Whites alone can opt out of their racial identity” - “It is as if some race traitors want to disconnect with all liabilities of whiteness (its association with racism and blandness)” 17/
“One might even go so far as saying that dismantling whiteness and racism leads to the eventual breakdown of White people as a social category. Against reconstructionism, abolitionism suggests that there is little empirical proof of a positive iteration of whiteness… 19/
and searching for examples of positivity is as elusive as the holy grail.”- “The attempt to save whiteness by reducing it to ethnic identity is futile . . . I therefore conclude that, although white persons need not feel guilty about who they are, they should not aspire…20/
to a positive ethno-racial identification in the way that blacks and other oppressed racial minorities might.”-Ingram - “even when Whites commit morally supportable acts, these do not fall within the domain of whiteness but rather within otherness… 21/
Is this a double standard and part of racial entrapment?” - “Americanism retains false premises and is quite oppressive worldwide, but it is not only oppressive and false.” - “the point is not to interpret whiteness but to abolish it”-Ignatiev 22/
“the abolitionist sees little purpose in giving whiteness another chance.” - “people of color who side too close with whiteness have been labeled as inauthentic and implicated with whiteness. With a different force and outcome, both have been guilty of racial blasphemy.” 22/
Interested in returning Whites to their full humanity, Roediger opts for a racio-economic perspective and struggle Roediger makes sincere attempts to build a race/class analysis.” “Searching for an identity that is both white and anti-racist, we may be tempted to conjure up a 23/
“new white American,” a “transformed white global subject.” - “purpose of whiteness as a parasitic ideology and social practice. Whiteness exists in order to prey upon its racialized counterparts and it has always existed in this manner” 25/
“even anti-racism is doomed to fail because it acknowledges the existence of races.” - “ It is hardly subversive for Whites to announce that they are not White. This is already their inclination” 26/
“Rather than erase these inscriptions as a first step, we need a period of reinscription to redescribe and reunderstand what we see when we see race” at the same time that we may be able to project the emptiness of whiteness” 27/
“which unlike ethnic identities…has no other substantive cultural content”Alcoff“the abolitionist position may not have started the story but would likely end it.”-“there is a way that reconstructionism would provide the entrance into whiteness and abolitionism its exit.” 28/28
Some reminders of what the ideology calls “whiteness” “white supremacy”, and “white culture”, which they’d like to “abolish” ImageImageImage

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with ThinkB4Learning

ThinkB4Learning Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(