The Politics of Multiracialism: Challenging Racial Thinking

11. PROTECTING RACIAL COMFORT, PROTECTING WHITE PRIVILEGE

ELEVEN PROTECTING RACIAL COMFORT, PROTECTING WHITE PRIVILEGE HEATHER M. DALMAGE RESEARCH HAS SHOWN that multiracial organizations are disproportionately attended and directed by white parents, particularly white mothers, in multiracial families.1 Based on open-ended, recorded, and transcribed interviews conducted with seventeen white members of black/white multiracial families, I explore the construction of racial identities among whites that join multiracial family organizations. Many whites join multiracial family organizations in the hopes of making connections with others who are “like them and their children.” These connections are important in a society in which multiracial family members face discrimination from all sides. Moreover , when whites cross the color line in their family relationships, they lose some of the privileges of whiteness; they lose the control of some racial spaces, and then experience to varying degrees the terror of whiteness. The experiences shatter much of the psychological, if not the material comfort that whiteness had previously provided. These whites begin searching for ways to address racism and gain control of their racial space. The desire to once again feel comfortable and safe leads many of these whites to multiracial family organizations. I argue that these organizations become, in part, sites for whites to rearticulate their racial identities and develop connections and networks with others who share their racial space.2 Unfortunately, the rearticulation of their white racial identities, for some, is based on ideologies 203 204 HEATHER DALMAGE of Americanness and rugged individualism and thus rather than a transformation , the rearticulation of identity becomes a redoubling and reinscribing of white privilege. By exploring the construction of racial identities of whites who join multiracial family organizations we can better understand the political ideologies that drive the Multiracial Movement and ultimately how to create a more progressive agenda. ON BEING COMFORTABLE IN THE WORLD While people of color experience, to vary degrees, the terror of whiteness and Americanness, whites (also to varying degrees) experience privilege and view whiteness and Americanness as representative of goodness. Richard Dyer suggests that because whites are socialized into a belief that whiteness is both superior and good “they do not imagine that the way whiteness makes its presence felt in black life, most often as terrorizing imposition, a power that wounds, hurts, tortures.”3 Following the attack on the World Trade Centers, the media interviewed a number of whites who expressed “shock,” “surprise,” and “disbelief ” that anyone would hate or want to attack the United States. When that shock quickly turned to a broader fear, the government , along with the business community, proactively worked to return America to “normal.” The threat had to be identified and contained. In short, they worked to reassure the citizenry that some level of safety could be achieved, even though that meant trampling on the civil liberties of perceived transgressors and anti-citizens, and committing to a war without spatial or temporal borders. Almost twenty years ago, James Baldwin poetically wrote about such a chain of events as the basis of white Americanness: Because they think they’re white, they do not dare confront the ravage and the lie of their history. Because they are white, they cannot be tormented by the suspicion that all men are brothers. Because they are white, they are looking for, or bombing into existence , stable populations, cheerful natives, and cheap labor. Because they are white, they believe, as even no child believes, in the dream of safety.4 Whiteness as an institutionalized norm leads many whites to feel entitled to being safe and comfortable racially in the world. U.S. institutions intersect to ensure that racial ideology reproduces a context in which whites can continue to command and demand control of the racial spaces they occupy. Our political and legal system has been created through images and definitions of whiteness, white people, and white privilege.5 Cheryl Harris writes: PROTECTING RACIAL COMFORT, PROTECTING WHITE PRIVILEGE 205 The concept of whiteness was carefully protected because so much was contingent upon it. Whiteness conferred on its owners aspects of citizenship that were even more valued because they were denied to others. Indeed, the very fact of citizenship itself was linked to white racial identity. The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted citizenship to persons who resided in the United States for two years, who could establish their good character in court, and who were “white.”6 This process of racial formation and “citizen formation” defined whites...