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Reading reflection of George Lipsitz's "Possessive Investment in Whiteness" (1995)

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Reading reflection of George Lipsitz's "Possessive Investment in Whiteness" (1995).

In your reading reflection, you should include these 3 elements:

• What is the main argument of the reading? (1 sentence – 1 point)
• How does the author make their argument? You may answer this question by explaining a piece of evidence or examples the author provides. Alternatively, you may also answer this question by selecting a key term/vocabulary/concept the author uses and explaining what this term means. (1-2 sentences – 1 point)
• Pose a question. For your question, you might want to ask, for example, if the author's analysis can be applied to another particular situation or context, or you may try to link it to other concepts from the course, or may want to challenge the author’s view, or you might want to ask for clarification about a particular concept or idea posed by the author. (1 sentence – 0.5 points)
• The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy and the "White" Problem in American Studies Author(s): George Lipsitz Source: American Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 369-387 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2713291 . Accessed: 01/09/2011 14:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org in Whiteness: The PossessiveInvestment RacializedSocial Democracyand the "White"Problemin AmericanStudies GEORGE LIPSITZ Universityof California, San Diego SHORTLY AFTER WORLD WAR II, A FRENCH REPORTERASKED EXPATRI- ate Richard Wrighthis opinion about the "Negro problem" in the United States. The author replied "There isn't any Negro problem; thereis only a white problem."' By invertingthe reporter'squestion, Wrightcalled attentionto its hiddenassumptions-that racial polarization comes fromthe existenceof blacks ratherthanfromthe behavior of whites, that black people are a "problem" for whites ratherthan fellow citizens entitledto justice, and thatunless otherwisespecified, "Americans" means whites.2But Wright's formulationalso placed it to political mobilizationby AfricanAmericansin context,attributing the systemicpractices of aversion,exploitation,denigration,and discriminationpracticedby people who thinkof themselvesas "white." Whitenessis everywherein Americanculture,but it is veryhard to see. As Richard Dyer argues, "white power secures its dominance by As the unmarkedcategory seeming not to be anythingin particular."3 against which differenceis constructed,whitenessneverhas to speak itsname,neverhas to acknowledgeitsrole as an organizingprinciplein social and culturalrelations.4 To identify,analyze, and oppose the destructiveconsequences of whiteness,we need whatWalterBenjamin called "presence of mind." not so much out of a Benjamin wrotethatpeople visit fortune-tellers desire to know the futurebut ratherout of a fearof not noticingsome George Lipsitz is a professorof ethnic studies at the Universityof California, San Diego. His publications include Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis, Minn., 1990), Rainbow at Midnight (Urbana, Ill., 1994), and Dangerous Crossroads (New York, 1994). Vol.47, No. 3 (September1995) ( 1995AmericanStudiesAssociation AmericanQuarterly, 369 370 AMERICAN QUARTERLY importantaspect of the present."Presence of mind,"he argued,"is an abstractof the future,and precise awareness of the presentmoment more decisive thanforeknowledgeof the most distantevents."' In our society at this time,precise awareness of the presentmomentrequires an understandingof the existenceand the destructiveconsequences of "white" identity. In recentyears,an importantbody of American studies scholarship has startedto explore the role played by culturalpractices in creating "whiteness" in the United States. More than the product of private prejudices,whitenessemergedas a relevantcategoryin American life largely because of realities created by slavery and segregation,by and Indianpolicy,by conquest and colonialism. immigrationrestriction A fictiveidentityof "whiteness"appeared in law as an abstraction,and it became actualized in everydaylife in many ways. American ecoracial groups unequal access to nomic and political life gave different citizenshipand property,while culturalpractices includingwild west shows, minstrelshows, racist images in advertising,and Hollywood filmsinstitutionalizedracism by unitingethnicallydiverse EuropeanAmerican audiences into an imagined community-one called into being throughinscribedappeals to the solidarityof white supremacy.6 and pan-ethnicantiracismin culAlthoughcross-ethnicidentification ture, politics, and economics have often interruptedand resisted racialized white supremacistnotionsof American identity,fromcolonial days to the present,successful political coalitions servingdominantinterestshave oftenrelied on exclusionaryconcepts of whiteness to fuse unityamong otherwiseantagonisticindividualsand groups.7 In these accounts by American studies scholars, culturalpractices presenting,and preservhave oftenplayed crucial roles in prefiguring, ing political coalitions based on identificationwith the fiction of "whiteness." Andrew Jackson's coalition of the "common man," WoodrowWilson's "New Freedom,"and FranklinD. Roosevelt's New Deal all echoed in politicsthe alliances announcedon stage and screen minstrelshow, by D. W. Griffith'scinema, by the nineteenth-century and by Al Jolson's ethnicand racial imagery.8This impressivebody of scholarship helps us understandhow people who left Europe as Calabrians or Bohemians became somethingcalled "whites"whenthey got to America and how thatdesignationmade all the differencein the world. Yet, while culturalexpressionshave played an importantrole in the THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS 371 constructionof whitesupremacistpoliticalalliances, thereverseis also true (i.e., political activity has also played a constitutiverole in racializing U.S. culture). Race is a cultural construct,but one with sinisterstructuralcauses and consequences. Conscious and deliberate actions have institutionalizedgroup identityin the United States, not just throughthe disseminationof cultural stories but also through systematic effortsfrom colonial times to the present to create a in whitenessforEuropeanAmericans.Studies of possessive investment culturetoo farremovedfromstudies of social structureleave us with inadequate explanations for understandingracism and inadequate remediesforcombattingit. From the start,European settlers in North America established structuresencouragingpossessive investmentin whiteness.The colonial and early-nationallegal systems authorized attacks on Native Americans and encouraged the appropriationof their lands. They legitimatedracialized chattelslavery,restrictednaturalizedcitizenship to "white" immigrants,and provided pretextsfor exploiting labor, seizing property,and denying the franchise to Asian Americans, Mexican Americans,Native Americans,and AfricanAmericans. Slavpossessive identificaery and "JimCrow" segregationinstitutionalized tion withwhitenessvisiblyand openly,but an elaborate interactionof largelycovert public and privatedecisions duringand afterthe days of slaveryand segregationalso produceda powerfullegacy withenduring and rewardsin effectson theracializationof experience,opportunities, the United States possessive investmentin whitenesspervades public policy in the United States past and present-not just long ago during slavery and segregationbut in the recentpast and presentas wellthroughthe covertbut no less systematicracism inscribedwithinU.S. social democracy. Even thoughtherehas always been racismin Americanhistory,it has not always been the same racism. Political and culturalstrugglesover power shape the contoursand dimensionsof racism in any era. Mass mobilizationsagainst racism duringthe Civil War and civil rightseras meaningfullycurtailedthe reach and scope of whitesupremacy,but in each case reactionaryforcesthenengineereda renewalof racism,albeit in new forms,duringsuccessive decades. Racism changes over time, taking on differentforms and serving differentsocial purposes in eras. different Contemporaryracism is not just a residual consequence of slavery 372 AMERICAN QUARTERLY and dejure segregationbutrathersomethingthathas been createdanew in our own timeby many factorsincludingthe putativelyrace-neutral liberalsocial democraticreformsof thepast fivedecades. Despite hardfoughtbattlesforchange thatsecuredimportantconcessions duringthe 1960s in the formof civil rightslegislation,the racialized natureof social democraticpolicies in the UnitedStates since the Great Depression has, in myjudgment,actuallyincreasedthepossessive investment in whitenessamong European Americansover the past half-century. The possessive investmentin whitenessis not a simple matterof black and white; all racialized minoritygroups have sufferedfromit, albeit to different ways. Most of my argument degrees and in different here addresses relations between European Americans and African Americans because theycontain many of the most vivid oppositions and contrasts,but the possessive investmentin whiteness always emergesfroma fusedsensibilitydrawingon manysources at once-on antiblackracismto be sure,butalso on the legacies of racializationleft by federal,state,and local policies toward Native Americans,Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, and other groups designated by whitesas "racially other." During the New Deal, boththeWagnerAct and the Social Security Act excluded farmworkersand domestics fromcoverage, effectively denyingthose disproportionately minoritysectors of the work force protectionsand benefitsroutinelychanneled to whites. The Federal Housing Act of 1934 broughthome ownershipwithinreach of millions of citizens by placing the credit of the federal governmentbehind private lending to home buyers,but overtlyracist categories in the Federal Housing Administration's(FHA's) "confidential"city surveys and appraisers'manuals channeledalmostall of theloan moneytoward whitesand away fromcommunitiesof color.9In thepost-WorldWar II era, tradeunions negotiatedcontractprovisionsgivingprivatemedical insurance, pensions, and job securitylargely to the mostly white workersin unionized mass-productionindustriesratherthan fighting forfull employment,universalmedical care, and old age pensions for all or for an end to discriminatory hiringand promotionpractices by employers.10 Each of these policies widened the gap between the resources available to whitesand thoseavailable to aggrievedracial oommunities, butthe mostdamaginglong-termeffectsmay well have come fromthe impactof theracial discriminationcodifiedby thepolicies of theFHA. THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS 373 By channelingloans away fromolder inner-cityneighborhoodsand towardwhite home buyersmoving into segregatedsuburbs,the FHA and privatelendersafterWorldWar II aided and abettedthegrowthand development of increased segregationin U.S. residentialneighborhoods. For example, FHA appraisersdenied federallysupportedloans to prospective home buyers in the racially mixed Boyle Heights neighborhoodof Los Angeles because it was a "'melting pot' area literallyhoneycombedwithdiverse and subversiveracial elements."1 Similarly,mostlywhite St. Louis County secured five times as many FHA mortgagesas the more racially mixed city of St. Louis between 1943 and 1960. Home buyersin the countyreceivedsix timesas much loan money and enjoyed per capita mortgage spending 6.3 times greaterthanthose in the city.12 In concertwithFHA supportforsegregationin the suburbs,federal and state tax monies routinelyprovided water supplies and sewage facilitiesforraciallyexclusive suburbancommunitiesin the 1940s and 1950s. By the 1960s, these areas often incorporatedthemselves as independentmunicipalitiesin order to gain greateraccess to federal fundsallocated for"urbanaid."13At the same timethatFHA loans and federalhighwaybuildingprojectssubsidized the growthof segregated suburbs, urban renewal programs in cities throughoutthe country devastatedminorityneighborhoods. During the 1950s and 1960s, federally assisted urban renewal projectsdestroyed20 percentof thecentralcityhousingunitsoccupied by blacks, as opposed to only 10 percentof thoseinhabitedby whites.14 Even aftermost major urbanrenewalprogramshad been completedin the 1970s, black centralcityresidentscontinuedto lose housingunitsat a rateequal to 80 percentof whathad been lost in the 1960s. Yet white displacementdeclined back to the relativelylow levels of the 1950s.15 In addition,the refusalfirstto pass, thento enforce,fairhousing laws, has enabled realtors,buyers,and sellers to profitfromracistcollusion against minoritieswithoutfearof legal retribution. During the decades followingWorld War II, urban renewal helped constructa new "white" identityin the suburbs by helping destroy ethnicallyspecificEuropean-Americanurbaninner-city neighborhoods. Wreckingballs and bulldozers eliminatedsome of these sites, while othersbecame transformed by an influxof minorityresidentsdesperatelycompetingfora decliningnumberof affordablehousingunits.As increasingnumbersof racial minoritiesmoved into cities, increasing 374 AMERICAN QUARTERLY numbers of European-Americanethnics moved out. Consequently, ethnicdifferencesamong whitesbecame a less importantdividingline in Americanculture,while race became more important.The suburbs helped turnEuropean Americans into "whites" who could live near each other and intermarrywith relativelylittle difficulty.But this "white" unityrestedon residentialsegregationand on sharedaccess to housingand life chances largelyunavailableto communitiesof color.16 During the 1950s and 1960s, local "pro-growth"coalitions led by liberal mayorsoftenjustifiedurban renewalas a programdesigned to build more housing for poor people, but it actually destroyedmore housing than it created. Ninety percent of the low-income units removed for urban renewal were neverreplaced. Commercial, industrial,and municipalprojectsoccupied morethan80 percentof the land cleared for these projects, with less than 20 percent allocated for replacementhousing.In addition,theloss of taxable propertiesand tax abatementsgrantedto new enterprisesin urban renewal zones often meant serious tax increases forpoor, working-class,and middle-class home ownersand renters.17Althoughthe percentageof black suburban dwellersalso increasedduringthisperiod,no significantdesegregation of the suburbs took place. From 1960 to 1977, four million whites moved out of central cities, while the number of whites living in million.18During the same years,the suburbsincreasedby twenty-two inner-cityblack population grew by six million, but the number of blacks living in suburbsincreasedby only 500,000 people.19By 1993, 86 percent of suburban whites still lived in places with a black populationbelow 1 percent.At thesame time,cities withlargenumbers of minorityresidentsfoundthemselvescut offfromloans by theFHA; in 1966, because of theirgrowingblack and PuertoRican populations, Camden and Paterson,New Jersey,receivedno FHA-sponsored mortgages betweenthem.20 Federally fundedhighwaysdesigned to connect suburbancommuters with downtownplaces of employmentdestroyedalready scarce housingin minoritycommunitiesand oftendisruptedneighborhoodlife as well. Constructionof the HarborFreeway in Los Angeles, the Gulf Freeway in Houston, and the Mark Twain Freeway in St. Louis displaced thousands of residentsand bisected previously connected neighborhoods,shoppingdistricts,and political precincts.'Theprocess of urban renewal and highway constructionset in motion a vicious cycle: population loss led to decreased political power, which made THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS 375 urban minorityneighborhoodsmore likelyto be victimizedby further renewal and freewayconstruction,not to mentionmore susceptibleto the placementof prisons,waste dumps,and otherprojectsthatfurther depopulatedthese areas. In Houston, Texas-where blacks make up slightlymore than onequarterof the local population-more than 75 percentof municipal garbage incineratorsand 100 percentof thecity-ownedgarbage dumps are located in black neighborhoods.21 A 1992 studyby staffwritersfor the National Law Journal examined the EnvironmentalProtection Agency's responseto 1,177 toxic waste cases and foundthatpolluters of sites near the greatest white population received penalties 500 percenthigherthanpenaltiesimposed on pollutersin minorityareasan average of $335,566 for white areas contrastedwith $55,318 for minorityareas. Income did notaccountforthesedifferences-penalties forlow-incomeareas on average actuallyexceeded thoseforareas with the highest median incomes by about 3 percent.The penalties for violating all federal environmentallaws about air, water, and waste pollutionin minoritycommunitieswere 46 percentlower thanin white communities.In addition,Superfundremediesleftminoritycommunities withlongerwaitingtimesforbeing placed on the nationalpriority list,cleanups thatbegin from12 to 42 percentlaterthanat white sites, and a 7 percent greaterlikelihood of "containment"(walling off a hazardous site) than cleanup, while white sites experiencedtreatment and cleanup 22 percentmore oftenthancontainment.22 Urban renewalfailedas a programforprovidingnew housingforthe the U.S. urban poor, but it played an importantrole in transforming economy away fromfactoryproductionand towardproducerservices. Urban renewalprojectssubsidizedthedevelopmentof downtownoffice centers on land previouslyused for residences, and they frequently created bufferzones of empty blocks dividing poor neighborhoods fromnew shoppingcentersdesigned foraffluentcommuters.In order to help cities compete for corporate investmentby making them appealing to high-levelexecutives,federalurbanaid favoredconstruction of luxuryhousing units and culturalcenters,such as symphony halls and art museums, over affordablehousing for workers. Tax abatementsgrantedto these producer-servicescentersfurtheraggravated the fiscal crisis that cities faced, leading to tax increases on existingindustries,businesses,and residences. Workers from aggrieved racial minoritiesbore the brunt of this 376 AMERICAN QUARTERLY transformation.Because the 1964 Civil Rights Act came so late, minorityworkerswho received jobs because of it found themselves more vulnerableto seniority-basedlayoffswhen businesses automated or transferred operationsoverseas. Althoughthe act initiallymade real progress in reducing employmentdiscrimination,lessened the gaps betweenrichand poor and black and white,and helped bringminority povertyto its lowest level in historyin 1973, that year's recession initiateda reversal of minorityprogress and a reassertionof white In 1977, the U.S. Civil RightsCommission reportedon the privilege.23 impactof layoffson minorityworkers.In cases where disproportionate minorityworkersmade up only 10 to 12 percentof the work force in theirarea, theyaccountedforfrom60 to 70 percentof those laid offin 1974. The principleof seniority,a social democratictriumph,in this case workedto guaranteethatminorityworkerswould suffermostfrom technological changes because the legacy of past discriminationby theiremployersleftthemwithless senioritythanwhiteworkers.24 When housing prices doubled duringthe 1970s, whitehomeowners FHA financing who had been able to take advantageof discriminatory policies receivedincreasedequityin theirhomes,while those excluded fromthe housing marketby earlier policies found themselvesfacing higher costs of entryinto the marketin addition to the traditional obstacles presentedby the discriminatory practicesof sellers,realtors, and lenders. The contrastbetween European Americans and African Americansis instructivein thisregard.Because whiteshave access to broaderhousing choices than blacks, whitespay 15 percentless than blacks forsimilarhousingin the same neighborhood.White neighborhoods typicallyexperience housing costs 25 percent less expensive thanwould be the case if the residentswere black.25 A recent Federal Reserve Bank of Boston study showed that minorityapplicants had a 60 percentgreaterchance of being denied home loans than white applicants with the same credit-worthiness. Boston bankers made 2.9 times as many mortgage loans per one thousand housing units in neighborhoodsinhabited by low-income whites than they did to neighborhoods populated by low-income blacks.26In addition, loan officerswere far more likely to overlook flaws in the creditrecords of white applicants or to arrangecreative financingforthemthantheywere withblack applicants." A Los Angeles studyfoundthatloan officersmore frequentlyused dividend income and underlyingassets as criteriaforjudging black THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS 377 applicantsthantheydid forwhites.28In Houston, the NCNB Bank of Texas disqualified 13 percentof middle-incomewhite loan applicants Atlanta's butdisqualified36 percentofmiddle-incomeblack applicants.29 home loan institutions gave fivetimesas manyhome loans to whitesas to blacks in the late 1980s. An analysis of sixteenAtlanta neighborhoods found thathome buyersin white neighborhoodsreceived conventionalfinancingfourtimesas oftenas those in black sectionsof the city.30Nationwide, financialinstitutionsget more money in deposits fromblack neighborhoodsthantheyinvestin themin theformof home mortgageloans, making home lending a vehicle for the transferof In many capital away fromblack savers and towardwhite investors.3" locations,high-incomeblacks were denied loans more oftenthanlowincome whites.32 Federal home loan policies have placed the power of the federal Urban renewaland highway governmentbehindprivatediscrimination. constructionprograms have enhanced the possessive investmentin whiteness directlythroughgovernmentinitiatives.In addition, decisions about the location of federal jobs have also systematically supported the subsidy for whiteness. Federal civilian employment dropped by 41,419 in centralcities between 1966 and 1973, but total federalemploymentin metropolitanareas grewby 26,558.33While one mightnaturallyexpect the location of governmentbuildingsthatserve the public to follow population trends, the federal government's policies in locating offices and records centers in suburbs helped aggravate the flightof jobs to suburbanlocations less accessible to inner-cityresidents.Since racial discriminationin the privatesector forcesminorityworkersto seek governmentpositionsdisproportionate to theirnumbers,these moves exact particularhardshipson them. In addition, minoritieswho follow theirjobs to the suburbs generally encounterincreased commutercosts because housing discrimination makes it harder and more expensive for them to relocate than for whites. The racialized aspects of fiftyyears of these social democratic policies became greatly exacerbated by the anti-social democratic policies of neoconservativesin the Reagan and Bush administrations duringthe 1980s and 1990s. They clearlycontributedto the reinforcement of possessive investmentsin whitenessthroughtheirregressive policies in respect to federal aid to education and their refusal to challenge segregatededucation, housing,and hiring,as well as their 378 AMERICAN QUARTERLY consensusthrough cynicalcultivationof an antiblack,counter-subversive action and votingrightslegislation.In the U.S. attackson affirmative economy,where86 percentof availablejobs do not appear in classified advertisementsand where personal connections provide the most action importantfactorin securingemployment,attackson affirmative guaranteethatwhiteswill be rewardedfortheirhistoricaladvantagesin the labor marketratherthanfortheirindividualabilities or efforts.34 Yet even seemingly race-neutral policies supported by both neoconservativesand social democratsin the 1980s and 1990s have also increasedthe absolute value of being white.In the 1980s, changes in federaltax laws decreased the value of wage income and increased the value of investmentincome-a move harmfulto minoritieswho sufferfroman even greatergap betweentheirtotal wealth and thatof whites than in the disparitybetween theirincome and white income. Failure to raise the minimumwage between 1981 and 1989 and the more than one-thirddecline in value of Aid forFamilies with Dependent Children paymentshurtall poor people, but theyexacted special costs on nonwhitesfacingeven more constrictedmarketsforemployment,housing,and educationthanpoor whites.35 Similarly,the "tax reforms"of the 1980s made the effectiverate of taxationhigheron investmentin actual goods and servicesthanit was on profitsfromspeculativeenterprises.This encouraged the flightof capital away from industrialproductionwith its many employment thatcan be turnedover quicklyto opportunitiesand towardinvestments tax write-offs. Consequently,government allow the greatestpossible policies actually discouraged investmentsthat might produce highpayingjobs and encouragedinvestorsto stripcompanies of theirassets profits.These policies hurtalmost all in orderto make rapidshort-term workers,buttheyexactedparticularlyhighcosts fromminorityworkers who, because of employmentdiscriminationin the retail and small in blue-collarindustrialjobs. business sectors,were over-represented On the other hand, while neoconservativetax policies created incentives for employers to move their enterpriseselsewhere, they created disincentivesfor home owners to move. Measures such as California'sProposition13 grantingtax reliefto propertyownersbadly misallocate housingresourcesbecause theymake it financiallyunwise reducingthe supply fortheelderlyto move out of large houses, further of housingavailable to youngfamilies.While one can well understand the necessityforprotectingsenior citizens on fixedincomes fromtax THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS 379 increases that would make them lose their homes, the rewards and punishmentsprovided by Proposition 13 are so extreme that they preventthekindsof generationalsuccession thathave routinelyopened up housing 'to young families in the past. This reduction works particularhardshipson those who also face discriminationby sellers, realtors,and lendinginstitutions. Subsidies to the privatesectorby governmentagencies also tend to rewardthe resultsof past discrimination.Throughoutthe country,tax incrementredevelopmentprogramsgive tax-free,low-interestloans to developerswhose projectsuse public services,oftenwithouthavingto pay taxes to local school boards or county governments.Industrial developmentbonds resultedin a $7.4 billiontax loss in 1983, a loss that ordinarytax payers had to make up throughincreased payroll taxes. Compared to whiteAmericans,people of color,who are more likelyto fromthese changes be poor or workingclass, sufferdisproportionately as tax payers,as workers,and as tenants.A studyby the Citizens for Tax Justicefound that wealthy Californiansspend less than eleven cents in taxes foreverydollar earned,while poor residentsof the state paid fourteencents out of everydollar in taxes. As groups overrepresented among the poor, minoritieshave been forcedto shoulder this While burdenin orderto subsidize thetax breaksgivento thewealthy.36 and some home holding propertytax assessments for businesses ownersto about halfof theirmarketvalue, California'sProposition13 deprivedcities and counties of $13 billion a year in taxes. Businesses alone avoided $3.3 billion to $8.6 billion in taxes per year under this statute.37 Because theyare ignorantof even therecenthistoryof thepossessive investmentin whiteness-generated by slavery and segregationbut augmentedby social democraticreform-Americans produce largely cultural explanations for structuralsocial problems. The increased possessive investmentin whiteness generated by dis-investmentin American's cities,factories,and schools since the 1970s disguises the general problems posed to our society by de-industrialization,ecoand neoconservativeattackson thewelfarestateas nomic restructuring, racial problems.It fuelsa discoursethatdemonizes people of color for being victimized by these changes, while hiding the privileges of themto familyvalues, fatherhood,and forewhitenessby attributing favoritism. sight-rather thanto The demonization of black families in public discourse since the 380 AMERICAN QUARTERLY 1970s is particularlyinstructivein this regard.During the 1970s, the share of low-income households headed by blacks increased by onethird,while black familyincome fell from60 percentof whitefamily income in 1971 to 58 percent in 1980. Even when adjusting for unemploymentand for African-Americandisadvantages in life-cycle workhistories, interrupted employment(more injuries,morefrequently to jobs most susceptibleto layoffs),thewages of full-time confinement year-roundblack workers fell from 77 percent of white workers' income to 73 percentby 1986. In 1986, whiteworkerswithhighschool diplomas earned three thousand dollars per year more than African Americans with the same education.38Even when theyhad the same as whiteworkers,blacks foundthemselvesmorelikely familystructure to be poor. Among black workersbetweenthe ages of twentyand twenty-four, 46 percentheld blue-collarjobs in 1976, butthatpercentagefellto only 20 percentby 1984. Earningsby young black familieshad reached 60 percentof the amountsecured by whitefamiliesin 1973, but by 1986 they fell back to 46 percent. Younger African-Americanfamilies experienceda 50 percentdrop in real earningsbetween 1973 and 1986, withthe decline in black male wages particularlysteep.39 Many recentpopularand scholarlystudieshave explainedclearlythe causes for black economic decline over the past two decades.40 that Deindustrializationhas decimated the industrial infrastructure formerlyprovidedhigh-wagejobs and chances forupwardmobilityto black workers.Neoconservativeattacks on governmentspending for public housing, health, education, and transportationhave deprived AfricanAmericansof needed servicesand opportunitiesforjobs in the public sector.A massive retreatfromresponsibilityto enforceantidiscriminationlaws at the highestlevels of governmenthas sanctioned pervasive overt and covert racial discriminationby bankers,realtors, and employers. Yet public opinion polls conductedamong whiteAmericansdisplay little recognitionof these devastatingchanges. Seventy percent of whites in one poll said that African Americans "have the same opportunitiesto live a middle-class life as whites.""4Nearly threefourthsof whiterespondentsto a 1989 poll believed thatopportunities forblacks had improvedduringthe Reagan presidency. Optimism about the opportunitiesavailable to AfricanAmericans does not necessarily demonstrateignorance of the dire conditions THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS 381 facingblack communities,but,ifnot,itthenindicatesthatmanywhites believe thatblacks sufferdeservedly,thattheydo nottake advantageof the opportunitiesofferedthem.In the opinion polls, favorableassessments of black chances for success often accompanied extremely negativejudgments about the abilities, work habits, and characterof black people. A National Opinion Research Report in 1990 disclosed thatmorethan50 percentofAmericanwhitesviewed blacks as innately lazy and less intelligentand less patrioticthan whites.43Furthermore, more than60 percentof whitesquestionedin thatsurveysaid thatthey believed thatblacks sufferfrompoor housing and employmentopportunitiesbecause of theirown lack of willpower.Some 56.3 percentof whites said that blacks preferredwelfareto employment,while 44.6 percent contended that blacks tended toward laziness.44Even more important,researchby Mary and Thomas Byrne Edsall indicates that many whites structurenearly all of their decisions about housing, education,and politics in responseto theiraversionsto black people.45 The presentpolitical culturein thiscountrygives broad sanctionfor viewingwhitesupremacyand antiblackracismas forcesfromthepast, as demons finallyputto restby thepassage of the 1964 Civil RightsAct and the 1965 VotingRights Act.46Jurists,journalists,and politicians have generallybeen more vocal in theiroppositionto "quotas" and to "reversediscrimination"mandatingrace-specificremediesfordiscriminationthanto the thousandsof well-documentedincidentseveryyear of routine,systematic,and unyieldingdiscriminationagainstblacks. It is mycontentionthatthe starkcontrastbetweenblack experiences and white opinions duringthe past two decades cannot be attributed solely to ignoranceor intoleranceon the partof individualsbut stems inadequacy of the language of liberal insteadfromthe overdetermined As long as we define individualismto describe collectiveexperience.47 social life as the sum total of conscious and deliberate individual of personalprejudiceand activities,thenonlyindividualmanifestations hostilitywill be seen as racist. Systemic,collective, and coordinated behavior disappears fromsight. Collective exercises of group power relentlesslychannelingrewards,resources,and opportunitiesfromone group to anotherwill not appear to be "racist" fromthis perspective because they rarelyannounce theirintentionto discriminateagainst individuals. But they work to constructracial identitiesby giving life chances. races vastlydifferent people of different The gap between white perceptionsand minorityexperiences can 382 AMERICAN QUARTERLY have explosive consequences. Little more than a year afterthe 1992 highschool junior sharedher Los Angeles rebellion,a sixteen-year-old opinions with a reporterfromthe Los Angeles Times. "I don't think whitepeople owe anythingto black people," she explained. "We didn't sell theminto slavery,it was our ancestors.What theydid was wrong, but we've done our best to make up for it."48A seventeen-year-old senior echoed those comments,tellingthe reporter: I feel we spend more timein my historyclass talkingabout what whitesowe blacks thanjust about anythingelse when the issue of slavery comes up. I oftenreceived dirtylooks. This seems strangegiven thatI wasn't even alive then. And the few members of my family from that time didn't have the luxuryof owning much, let alone slaves. So why,I ask you, am I constantly made to feel guilty?49 More ominously,afterpleading guiltyto bombing two homes and to starta race war one car,to vandalizinga synagogue,and attempting by murderingRodney King and bombingLos Angeles's FirstAfrican ChristopherDavid Fisher MethodistEpiscopal Church,twenty-year-old whites were "sometimes picked on because of the color explained that Fisher's actions of theirskin.... Maybe we're blamed forslavery."50 were certainlyextreme,but his justificationof them drew knowingly and preciselyon a broadlysharednarrativeabout the victimizationof innocentwhitesby irrationaland ungratefulminorities. The commentsand questions raised about the legacy of slaveryby these young whites illuminebroadercurrentsin our culturethathave enormousimplicationsforunderstandingthe enduringsignificanceof race in our country.These young people associate black grievances at whattheyperceive as solely withslavery,and theyexpress irritation effortsto make them feel guiltyor unduly privilegedin the present because of thingsthathappened in the distantpast. Because theirown ancestorsmay not have been slave ownersor because "we've done our best to make up forit,"theyfeel thatit is unreasonableforanyone to view them as people who owe "anything"to blacks. On the contrary, Fisherfeltthathis discomfortwithbeing "picked on" and "blamed" for slaverygave him good reason to bomb homes,deface synagogues,and plot to kill black people. forour society,these young whitesaccuratelyreflect Unfortunately the logic of the language of liberal individualismand its ideological predispositionsin discussionsof race. They seem to have no knowledge THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS 383 of the disciplined, systemic,and collective group activitythat has structuredwhite identitiesin American history.They are not alone in theirignorance; in a 1979 law journal article,futureSupreme Court action "is based upon JusticeAntoninScalia argued that affirmative concepts of racial indebtedness and racial entitlementrather than individualworthand individualneed" and is thus "racist."'" Yet liberal individualismis not completelycolor blind on thisissue. As Cheryl I. Harris demonstrates,the legacy of liberal individualism has not preventedthe Supreme Courtfromrecognizingand protecting the groupinterestsof whitesin theBakke, Croson, and Wygantcases.52 action programsbecause In each case, the Court nullifiedaffirmative they judged effortsto help blacks as harmfulto whites: to white expectations of entitlement,expectations based on the possessive investmentin whitenesstheyheld as membersof a group.In the Bakke case, forinstance,neitherBakke northe courtcontestedthe legitimacy of medical school admissionsstandardsthatreservedfiveseats in each class forchildrenof wealthydonorsto the universityor thatpenalized Bakke for being older than most of the other applicants. The group rightsof not-wealthypeople or of people older than theirclassmates did notcompel theCourtor Bakke to make anyclaim of harm.But they did challenge and reject a policy designed to offsetthe effectsof past and present discriminationwhen they could construe the medical school admission policies as detrimentalto the interestsof whitesas a group-and as a consequence theyapplied the "strictscrutiny"standard to protectwhiteswhile denyingthatprotectionto people of color. In thiscase, as in so manyothers,the language of liberalindividualism serves as a cover forcoordinatedcollective group interests. Group interests are not monolithic, and aggregate figures can obscure serious differenceswithinracial groups. All whites do not benefitfromthe possessive investmentin whiteness in precisely the same way; the experiences of members of minoritygroups are not interchangeable.But the possessive investmentin whiteness always affectsindividual and group life chances and opportunities.Even in cases where minoritygroups secure political and economic power throughcollective mobilization, the terms and conditions of their collectivityand the logic of groupsolidarityare always influencedand intensifiedby the absolute value of whiteness in American politics, economics, and culture.53 In the 1960s, membersof theBlack PantherPartyused to say that"if 384 AMERICAN QUARTERLY you're notpartof thesolution,you'repartof theproblem."But those of us who are "white" can only become part of the solution if we recognizethe degreeto whichwe are alreadypartof the problem-not because of our race, but because of our possessive investmentin it. Neither conservative"free market"policies nor liberal social democraticreformscan solve the "whiteproblem"in America because both of them reinforcethe possessive investmentin whiteness. But an explicitlyantiracistpan-ethnicmovementthatacknowledges the existence and power of whiteness mightmake some importantchanges. Pan-ethnic,antiracistcoalitions have a long historyin the United States-in the political activismof JohnBrown, SojournerTruth,and the Magon brothers,among others-but we also have a rich cultural traditionof pan-ethnicantiracismconnectedto civil rightsactivismof the kind detailed so brilliantlyin rhythmand blues musician Johnny Otis's recentbook, Upside YourHead! Rhythmand Blues on Central Avenue.54These effortsby whitesto fightracism,not out of sympathy for someone else but out of a sense of self-respectand simplejustice, have never completelydisappeared; theyremain available as models forthe present.55 Walter Benjamin's praise for "presence of mind" came from his understandingof how difficultit may be to see the present.But more important,he called forpresenceof mindas the means forimplementing what he called "the only true telepathic miracle"-turning the Failureto acknowledgeour forbiddingfutureintothefulfilledpresent.56 society's possessive investmentin whitenesspreventsus fromfacing the presentopenly and honestly.It hides fromus the devastatingcosts in America's infrastructure over the past two decades of disinvestment our to reinvestin human us from responsibilities facing and keeps capital by channelingresources toward education, health,and housing-and away fromsubsidies for speculation and luxury.Aftertwo we need is to the only further disinvestment decades of disinvestment, disinvest in the ruinous pathology of whiteness that has always underminedour own best instinctsand interests.In a society suffering and an absence of responsibility, so badly froman absence of mutuality, an absence of simplejustice, presence of mind mightbe just what we need. THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS 385 NOTES 1. Raphael Tardon, "Richard WrightTells Us: The White Problem in the United States," Action, 24 Oct. 1946. Reprinted in Kenneth Kinnamon and Michel Fabre, Conversations withRichard Wright(Jackson,Miss., 1993), 99. Malcolm X and others used this same formulationin the 1960s, but I believe thatit originatedwithWright,or at least thatis the earliest citationI have found so far. 2. This is also Toni Morrison's point in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness in the LiteraryImagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1992). 3. Richard Dyer, "White," Screen 29 (fall 1988): 44. 4. I thankMichael Schudson for pointingout to me thatsince the passage of civil rightslegislation in the 1960s whitenessdares not speak its name, cannot speak in its own behalf,but ratheradvances througha color-blindlanguage radically at odds with the distinctlyracialized distributionof resources and life chances in American society. 5. Walter Benjamin, "Madame Ariane: Second Courtyardon the Left," fromOneWay Street (London, 1969), 98-99. 6. Richard Slotkin, GunfighterNation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth CenturyAmerica (New York, 1992); Eric Lott, Love and Theft(New York, 1993); David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness(New York, 1992); Michael Rogin, "Blackface White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice," Critical Inquiry 18 (spring 1992). 7. Robin Kelley, Hammer and Hoe (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1990); Lizabeth Cohen, Making A New Deal (Cambridge, 1991); George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American (New York, 1993); Edmund Morgan,American Slavery,American Freedom (New York, 1975); John Hope Franklin, The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-First Century(Columbia, Mo., 1993). 8. Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the WhiteRepublic (New York, 1992); Roediger, Wages; Michael Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie: and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley, 1987); Michael Rogin, "Blackface"; Michael Rogin, "'Democracy and BurntCork': The End of Blackface, the Beginning of Civil Rights," presentedat the Universityof California Humanities Research InstituteFilm Genres Study Group, November 1992. 9. See Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985); and Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass., 1993). 10. I thank Phil Ethingtonfor pointingout to me thatthese aspects of New Deal policies emergedout of political negotiationsbetweenthe segregationistDixiecrats and liberals fromthe northand west. My perspective is that white supremacy was not a gnawing aberrationwithinthe New Deal coalition but ratheran essential point of unity between southernwhites and northernwhiteethnics. 11. Records of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board of the Home Owners Loan Corporation. City Survey File, Los Angeles, 1939, Neighborhood D-53, National Archives,Washington,D.C., box 74, records group 195. 12. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid,54. 13. JohnR. Logan and Harvey Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley, 1987), 182. 14. Ibid., 114. 15. Ibid., 130. 386 AMERICAN QUARTERLY 16. See Gary Gerstle, "Working-Class Racism: Broaden the Focus," International Class History44 (fall 1993): 36. Labor and Working 17. Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes, 168-69. 18. Troy Duster, "Crime, Youth Unemployment,and the Black Urban Underclass," Crime and Delinquency 33 (Apr. 1987): 308. 19. Ibid., 309. 20. Massey and Denton,American Apartheid,55. 21. Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes, 113. 22. Robert D. Bullard, "EnvironmentalJustice for All," in Unequal Protection: EnvironmentalJusticeand Communitiesof Color, ed. Robert Bullard (San Francisco, 1994), 9-10. 23. Massey and Denton,American Apartheid,61. Action(Ithaca, 24. Gertrude Ezorsky,Racismand Justice:The Case forAffirmative N.Y., 1991), 25. 25. Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes, 116. 26. JimCampen, "Lending Insights:Hard ProofThat Banks Discriminate,"Dollars and Sense 191 (Jan.-Feb. 1991): 17. 27. Mitchell Zuckoff,"Study Shows Racial Bias in Lending," The Boston Globe, 9 October 1992, 1, 77, 78. 28. Paul Ong and J. Eugene Grigsby III, "Race and Life-Cycle Effectson Home Ownership in Los Angeles, 1970 to 1980," Urban AffairsQuarterly23 (June 1988): 605. 29. Massey and Denton,American Apartheid, 108. 30. Gary Orfieldand Carol Ashkinaze, The Closing Door: ConservativePolicy and Black Opportunity(Chicago, 1991), 58, 78. 31. Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes. 32. Campen, "Lending Insights," 18. 33. Gregory Squires, "'Runaway Plants,' Capital Mobility, and Black Economic PlantClosingsand JobLoss, ed. John and Capitalin Conflict: Rights,"in Community C. Raines, Lenora E. Berson, and David McI. Gracie (Philadelphia, 1982), 70. Action(Ithaca, 34. Gertrude Ezorsky,Racismand Justice:TheCase forAffirmative N.Y., 1991), 15. 35. Orfieldand Ashkinaze, The Closing Door, 225-26. 36. McClatchy News Service, "State Taxes Gouge the Poor, Study Says," Long Beach Press-Telegram, 23 April 1991, Al. 37. "Proposition 13," UC Focus (June-July1993): 2 38. William Chafe, The UnfinishedJourney(New York, 1986), 442; Noel J. Kent, "A Stacked Deck: Racial Minorities and the New American Political Economy," in EthnicStudies14 (Jan.1991): 11. Explorations 39. Kent, "Stacked Deck," 13. 40. Melvin Oliver and James Johnson,"Economic Restructuringand Black Male Joblessness in United State MetropolitanAreas," Urban Geography 12 (Nov.-Dec. 1991); Gerald David Jaynes and Robin M. Williams, Jr.,eds., A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society (Washington,D.C., 1989); Reynolds Farley and Walter R. Allen, The Color Line and the Quality ofLife in America (New York, 1987); Melvin Oliver and Tom Shapiro, "Wealth of a Nation: A Reassessment of Asset Inequality in America Shows at Least 1/3 of Households Are Asset Poor," Journal of Economics and Sociology 49 (Apr. 1990); JonathanKozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (New York, 1991); Cornell West, Race Matters (Boston, 1993). 41. Orfieldand Ashkinaze, Closing Door, 46. THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS 387 42. Ibid., 206. 43. Bart Landry, "The EnduringDilemma of Race in America," in Alan H. Wolfe, America at Century'sEnd (Berkeley, 1991), 206; Franklin,Color Line, 36-37 44. Kathleen Hall Jamieson,DirtyPolitics: Deception, Distraction,and Democracy (New York, 1992), 100. 45. Mary Edsall and Thomas Byrne Edsall, Chain Reaction (New York, 1991). Discrimination (New York, 46. Nathan Glazer makes this argumentin Affirmative 1975). here fromLouis Althusser,who uses it to 47. I borrowthe term"overdetermination" show how dominant ideologies become credible to people in part because various institutionsand agencies independentlyreplicatethemand reinforcetheirsocial power. 48. Rogena Schuyler, "Youth: We Didn't Sell Them into Slavery," Los Angeles Times, 21 June 1993, B4. 49. Ibid. 50. JimNewton, "Skinhead Leader Pleads Guilty to Violence, Plot," Los Angeles Times, 20 Oct. 1993 Al, A15. 51. Antonin Scalia, quoted in Cheryl I. Harris, "Whiteness as Property,"Harvard Law Review 106 (June 1993): 1767. 52. Ibid. 53. The rise of a black middle class and the setbacks sufferedby white workers during de-industrializationmay seem to subvertthe analysis presentedhere. Yet the black middle class remains fragile, far less able than other middle-class groups to translateadvances in income into advances in wealth and power. Similarly,the success of neoconservatismsince the 1970s has restedon securingsupportfromwhite workers for economic policies thatdo them objective harm by mobilizing counter-subversive action, while carryingout attackson electoral coalitions against busing and affirmative public institutionsand resources by representing"public" space and black space. See Oliver and Shapiro, "Wealth of a Nation." See also Logan and Harvey, Urban Fortunes. 54. Johnny Otis, Upside Your Head! Rhythmand Blues on Central Avenue (Hanover, N.H., 1993). 55. Mobilizations against plant shutdowns, for environmentalprotection,against cutbacks in education spending,and forreproductiverightsall containthe potentialfor pan-ethnicantiracistorganizing,but,too often,neglectof race as a centralmodalityfor how issues of employment,pollution,education,or reproductiverightsare experienced isolates these social movementsfromtheirbroadest possible base. 56. Walter Benjamin, "Madame Ariane: Second Courtyardon the Left," fromOneWay Street (London, 1969), 98, 99.