Whiteness in Country Clubs
Whiteness in Country Clubs
Whiteness studies dealing with the whiteness social construction focusing on its normalizing and invisible function were initially established by Du Boise as he challenged Marxism. Marxism regards class analysis as a key tool prior to the spur of racial groupings (Allen). The whiteness theory considers whiteness as a social construction, rather than a biological category. As much as whiteness is regarded as natural, it is also considered as a scientific category or a personal attribute. According to Cheryl Harris whiteness is best consideration of as a type of property. Envisaged of as cultural or legal property, whiteness may be seen to present symbolic and material privilege to whites, those posing as white, and occasionally honorary whites. Illustration of material privileges would comprise improved access to advanced education or a option of secure neighborhoods in which to reside; figurative white privilege comprises of conceptions of intelligence or beauty that not only are attached to whiteness but that absolutely exclude brownness or blackness.
White privilege is dissimilar from plain Eurocentrism. The term Eurocentrism refers to principles and ideals that originate from European-based experience and culture that either denigrates or ignores other cultural experience and values. The setback with Eurocentrism is a malfunction of pluralism, a deficiency in appreciation for different cultures. As much as white values in intelligence or beauty are simply parochial or narrow, they are Eurocentric. In contrast, white privilege relies on the deflation of non-whites. As mush as white standards of intelligence or beauty depend on an implicit opposition or dichotomy between white purity, and for instance black primitivism, they generate a class structure that cannot be overcome by cultural pluralism.
Whiteness-privileging structures work in diverse, at times paradoxical ways. For instance, on the one hand, whiteness is regularized; it is underestimated and consequently invisible. Conversely, it is treated as favorable. While whiteness is not regarded as a race, and therefore is invisible, brownness or blackness are marked racial groupings, therefore, departures from the racial standard. Every so often, this departure would be marked as foreign; at times, as a dissimilarity that well-intentioned whites politely disregard. More frequently, it would be marked as a problem, a special interest or a type of deviance.
Every whiteness theory problematizes the naturalization and normalization of whiteness. Rejecting the concept of white values as a colorblind norm, or a generic they indicate how the category of whiteness as a standard is a privilege. Paradoxically, even as whiteness is indiscernible as the backdrop of connotation, it may be hyper discernible as either a threatened or preferred status. It is regarded as a vulnerable status when whites sense that they are dropping the privileges to which they are entitled, for instance control over country clubs. It is regarded as a preferred status whilst whiteness is linked with the highest cultural standards (for instance the ostensible Protestant work ethic contrary to hypothetical brown or black lack of ambition or laziness).
The top of the racial hierarchy is under-analyzed. This only strengthens the group’s overriding position by strengthening it as the subconscious and conscious standard against which every other racial grouping are evaluated and subsequently, by description, defined as “other”. Understanding the concept of whiteness, how the concept developed over time and the advantages that membership conveys is critical to understanding what remains of the racial hierarchy. The lack of prominence on investigation of whiteness disregards the very intricate history of a variable definition of what it denotes to be white and the meaning of race means generally. A century ago, numerous European immigrants in America were not regarded as “white.” They were permitted into the coalition by existing white elites who sought to consolidate economic and electoral power among a more sustainable category. This was a complex process that the majority of people in the present day are entirely ignorant of. However, the description of white in the present day is fundamentally unquestioned. The traditional criticism of critical white studies, whilst predictable, is in addition worth scrutiny. It is alleged that any argument in relation to what is meant by whiteness or how whiteness relates to racialized repression is only an endeavor to demonize the whites. In addition, the proponents of whiteness are adamant that racism is exclusively an interpersonal and individual phenomenon that is not worth of discussion as it is been proscribed for a generation. The image of any past discrimination as immaterial to in the present day is a crucial feature of safeguarding racial hierarchy. Regrettably, this is one of the reasons that several people refer to in rationalizing why the civil rights law of the 1960s did not stop racial disenfranchisement. It may be argued that these decrees legitimatized racial disparity in a manner by exclusively categorizing racial discrimination and racial tyranny in the interpersonal and individual frame.
The postulation that whiteness is a social construction entails the function of white ideology with regard to the structure of hegemonic discourse. In an endeavor to establish white ideology as a structure that serves as a means for the abstract establishment of the social actors, it is an imminent charge to take in hand the fundamental relation connecting the discourse influenced by the power maneuvers, and abstract construction ingrained in white ideology.
The abstract construction is very critical, for it is the legitimatization process of the discourse that forms identity construction of an individual. This leads to the compliance of the objectified ideology. If this was expressed differently, in order to precisely comprehend the whiteness social construction, it is necessary to critically scrutinize the white ideology and its structure functions all the way through an assortment of social settings in the historical contingency.
In country clubs, whiteness is evaluated, constituted, and revised in countless disparate milieus. Its content and structure are fashioned by the long race history in the US, but its quirks and contours, which originate from the local adaptations and impact of that history, outline a definite distance or do away with the outline of whiteness nationally. Its contemporary popularity whiteness may maintain its presence in a diversity of manifestations in country clubs. But historians, and particularly in American labor, may do well to cross-examine the concept, as well as the methodologies utilized by those who practice it, far more intimately than in the past. If whiteness is to continue as a critical conception, its proponents require demonstrating that above the scholars’ imagination or aspirations are involved.
The consciousness of an individual’s positionality functions to provide at least two major elements. Firstly it offers a more ethical and positive view of examining racism by which the whites scrutinize their identity in an objective way. Secondly, it prevents potential nefarious outcomes brought about by lack of the cross-examination in the implication of whiteness as well as its exchangeable categories. Consequently, the studies in relation to whiteness ought to aim at the reconstruction of whiteness, and enlighten individuals to be conscious of their racial identities to scrutinize their positionality. Whites should be seen as being white, nonetheless whiteness as race exist in in indiscernible properties while whiteness as power is sustained by being invisible.
Conclusion
Nothing ought to suggest that the issues of racial identity, and race in general, as well as whiteness in particular are not extremely imperative subjects that deserve the interest they have acquired and ought to acquire in the future. To a certain extent, this paper has demonstrated how whiteness in country clubs is highly problematic. The nonessential and invisibility nature of whiteness is included by contemporary whiteness scholars as a major focus. In line with this focus, the hegemonic configuration of whiteness as well as its universal identity, which creates the dominance of power, should be critically studied. One fundamental debate created in whiteness studies is linked with the unsecured theory whiteness. Two most important hypothetical approaches in the definition of whiteness include class and race analyses. Whereas whiteness studies founded in critical race hypothesis endeavor to get to the bottom of whiteness predicament with its practical appliance of race scrutiny, the whiteness of critical pedagogy provides a basis to generate intellectual situation with its class scrutiny in order to lift consciousness in regard to white supremacy. This is the genesis of whiteness in country clubs.
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