* Dismantling Whiteness in US Higher Ed
* Posted by Chithra KarunaKaran , Social Sciences at CUNY on April 13, 2009 at 12:30pm EDT
*
Through its new students' orientation agenda, Holyoke is hopefully demonstrating its sincerity and willingness to further discursive engagement on US racialized identity construction, by facilitating discussion on how the US Whiteness System of unearned white skin privilege is deployed as POWER; everyone performs Whiteness in the System -- from the plantation to the Census, to the President, the Supreme Court and the Congress, to the mainstream media, to the student in the classroom, to the child in the home, to the marketplace -- and all points in between.
Hope the international students also get the 'treament' -- I recall being clueless on White racism, the racialized victimization of Blacks and immigrant persons of color, until I got here and had some firsthand, lived experience.
Remember how Obama had to address Race as a hot-seat, make-or-break campaign issue but Hillary didn't have to? That's the Whiteness system operating in real time. And when Obama describes himself self-deprecatingly as a "mutt" he's performing Whiteness (he's already half there!) in language that makes him less threatening to whites. It's a System, remember.
Good effort, Holyoke.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
Theory of Systemic Whiteness & related articles
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/13/holyoke#Comments
Orientation for Whites by Scott Jaschik
April 13, 2009
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