RESEARCH General Sociology

HISTORY
Book explores concept of whiteness and racial complexion of America

Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor
(217) 333-2177; a-lynn@uiuc.edu

7/1/02

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Probing deep and wide, in original directions and in ideas drawn from the latest scholarship on "whiteness," the author of a new book explores the racial complexion of America.

What historian David Roediger finds in his study of U.S. culture – past to present, pop to political – is that in its political workings, its distribution of advantages and its unspoken assumptions, the United States is a "still-white nation." Moreover, it is a still-white nation where "the process of inclusion into whiteness has always been predicated on accepting the exclusion of others," and where white identity has always been shaped by the exercise of power and privilege.

But all is not lost; there is some good news coming out of Roediger's work, which has been described as pathbreaking. White supremacy has remained a pursuit rather than an accomplished feat, divisions among whites have "mattered greatly," nonwhite alternatives have "profoundly changed" the status quo, and white supremacy "can be overcome in this century."

In his book, "Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past" (University of California Press), Roediger looks at the history and current presence of white identity as keys to understanding "continuities in oppression and the possibilities of new departures." Among his essays are vivid and challenging portraits of U.S. icons – Elvis Presley, O.J. Simpson and Rush Limbaugh among them – to demonstrate the idea that the "sway" of whiteness is not inevitable, unalterable or simple.

In his essay on Simpson, for example, which was co-written with Leola Johnson, Roediger, the Babcock Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, disputes the notion that whites colorblindedly embraced O.J. "as a man whose achievements, rather than his race, counted." Rather, the authors argue that Simpson’s popularity "called on racial images at every turn, not the least when it was used to allow whites to imagine that they had transcended perceptions of color." The book's last chapter juxtaposes the many racial crossings, impersonations and ambiguities of Elvis Presley with those of the so-called "wiggers" – white youth who imitate African Americans.

Like other scholars of whiteness studies, Roediger is not timid in stating his ultimate goal, which is to see the United States abolish whiteness, or put another way, to "create the conditions for a nonwhite society." But, how is crossing over from whiteness into nonwhiteness possible for a nation?

As Roediger sees it, the bridge into nonwhiteness would be built on "the steady, everyday work of organizing to fight against white privilege and against the miseries that make whites settle for those privileges and encourage others to aspire to whiteness.

"What James Baldwin called the 'vast amount of coercion' that went into ensuring that the marginalized 'new immigrants' from Europe would choose whiteness during the twentieth century will operate likewise in the new century if whiteness and property stay yoked and if whiteness is the only property that many of the poor and many of the poor in spirit can aspire to."