The dialectic between critical whiteness and anti-racism

Whiteness only gains fertile ground for discussion when the place has ethnic-racial conflicts, that is, would it be possible to discuss ethnic relations if there are no whites, blacks, indigenous peoples or Asians? Then whiteness presents itself as a player in racial relations.

As the sociologist Ruth Frankenberg points explain, whiteness is a product of history and manifests itself in a dimension beyond the individual, composing a system that hat imposes the idea of ​​racial identity. In the society white subject assumes the identity of "universal human being" read as the representation of the "ideal human being." Edith Piza elucidates that this subject places themself in the condition of “unmarked” or “invisible” since they do not see themself as racialized.

Thus, the individual who looks like Whiteness benefits from the structure of domination and superiority, a system that separates everything that is different, denying plurality in its spaces of power, reserving the place of subordination to the other.

On the other hand, the “other” is the one who does not resemble the aesthetics of the world imposed by whiteness so the other should not be recognized as a human being. Therefore, the conditions of scarcity of humanity “of the other” are not surprising.

I remember in my childhood: those who were black were called “neguinho”, but those who were white were called “German”. In the context described, note that “neguinho” has no nationality. Pejorative treatment aims to deprive him of humanity or at least diminish him while less human. “German” not only constitutes direct aspects related to the phenotypic identity of the white subject, but also denotes the character of European nationality.

It is worth saying that whiteness presupposes a Eurocentered perspective, that is, the phenotype of the white European subject was the model adopted by the West as the ideal to achieve power and prestige. In power, read: the predominance in narratives, institutions, religions and territories.

For the white system to work, whiteness must deny its privilege. It means denying that it holds the hegemony of the political-legal state and the media, whiteness operates by sterilizing the historical, aesthetic and narrative set of black people, which is why black people will appear stereotyped in their narrative of the world such as "passive ”, “meek”, “vague”, “servile” or “bandit” and, especially, far from rationality.

Whiteness emphasizes that they donnot see such historical advantages, naturalizing superiority as a consequence merit. However, the merit argument falls apart, because they owner the narrative, repeatedly promoting oppression, whiteness also operate passivity when it is convenient. An example of this is the hiding or omitting the color of historical personalities such as the Brazilians writer Machado de Assis, the engineer André Rebouças, the psychoanalyst Virgínia Bicudo and the artist Chiquinha Gonzaga.

The absence or omission of qualitative and quantitative appearance in the audiovisual of narratives in which blacks appear in other ways than taking up arms or being arrested. In the case of women in conditions of domestic or sexual service.

In institutions, especially at the highest levels of public power and large corporations, black people do not appear or if they do appear, they are in the minority. Once again, whiteness reserves subordination to the “other”.

There is also the demonization of religions that are not part of hegemony, as in the case of traditional and African-based communities, which are harassed or become a reason for mockery and disrespect.

A symptomatic response could be directly related to black people's lack of education. It so happens that the IBGE has already realized that blacks are part of the 50% of people who enter universities.

To be anti-racist and think policies in this regard, it is essential to understand the dialectic between whiteness and racism constituting what intellectuals have called "critical whiteness", that is, to be someone who disapproves of taking advantage of a system that produces not only discrimination direct – the one that promotes cursing and humiliation, but that does not condone structural racism, in order to reject the maintenance of its privileges, actively working to untie this system, as it understood that the starting points are historically unequal.