Does "Blackness" Exist?
with John McWhorter
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A reader recently wrote in expressing concern about John’s use of the term “white culture,” a phrase, the reader says, used more or less only by white racists and Kendian “antiracists.” Obviously, neither John nor I would want to affiliate ourselves with either group, and John says it was an inaccurate choice of words on his part. That led us to a larger question. If there is really no such thing as “white culture,” then should we use the word “blackness” either, as though all people with dark skin shared some essential racial quality? We don’t, of course. John and I discuss the problem in this clip from a recent Q&A.
This is an interesting topic that I rarely get to discuss. I grew up (60s-70s) in a multicultural lower middle-class neighborhood (Glenn might know the south side of Maywood) that experienced both white flight and black flight (including my best friend's family) as west side Chicago families moved in, escaping but also bringing poverty, violence, and drugs. We ended up being the only white family for over a mile.
I absorbed all the culture - yes, Marvin Gaye and Gladys Knight, but also Proviso East basketball, natural hair, Adventist church, friends correcting their parents saying "Colored" and their grandparents saying "Negro." My friends said that I walked black, and my brother became the soloist in a gospel choir. I got the head nod of acknowledgement from black friends, but only if they were with other people I knew. I also saw how mixed families and especially black kids with red hair and/or freckles were treated horribly, and kids who were academically inclined were called "acting-white" and "Oreos."
So, I was immersed in a culture that might be called "blackness," but that's just a name. I had the benefit of attending a high school that was 45% white, 35% black, and 20% Hispanic. There was even a class division among "whites" between north Maywood (mostly German ancestry from 1800s), Melrose Park (mostly 2nd-3rd generation Italian), and lower-class folks like me. There were cliques based on these observable traits, but not nearly as much as groups that cut across these lines. I was most comfortable in academics, sports, and music, whose groups were very diverse.
In college and beyond, I lost the "in-group" black recognition because there was no one to vouch for me, and I did not keep up with the evolving culture. I have black friends and they know about my background, but adopting the walk and the talk and the nod would now be insulting. I understand the "whiteness" idea as shorthand for in-group culture, akin to the older WASP acronym, and see that Irish, Jews, Italians, etc. took a generation or two to acculturate. The School House Rock video "Great American Melting Pot" summed this up with a grandma waving an American flag, then revealing a button – "Kiss Me I'm Polish." I understand that there is a mainstream culture in the US, complicated by not having a real ethnic basis, but formalizing "whiteness" and "blackness" to my mind has made things worse.
It has created both a disincentive for black people to join mainstream culture—leading to disintegrated social groups, anti-academic attitudes, treating hair-braiding as cultural appropriation, viewing Jamaican and African blacks as outgroup—and an incentive for white people to become less inclusive. Identities based on what everyone can see on the outside has made cultural exchange and integration more difficult. On social media, if I’m not fighting folks who think anyone right of Mitt Romney is a racist bigot homophobe, or MAGA heads cheering everything Trump, I’m fighting people insinuating IQ by ethnicity is deterministic or linking crime to race.
"Whiteness" is a concept we wrestle with in my family. If you saw me on the street, you might assume that this is a generic white dude. But I'm Jewish, the son of a Soviet emigre on one side, and there are "white people" things that, as a member of a ethno-religious minority, I laughingly associate with "the other."
I take off my shoes in the house--I do this in an ethnic way, not the Mr. Rogers way. I use my hands when I talk. And heaven forbid I should see someone putting peanut butter on a bagel.
My wife is a non-Jew who supported me in converting our kids to Judaism and attends services with me more than most Jews I know. But she often resents it when I mockingly say, "that's white people stuff," as a cypher for things that are boring, generic, vanilla American--un-Jewish. I am a very proud American and many of the things I mock are things that I love. But I feel entitled to this gentle ribbing of the mainstream as someone with at least one foot outside the mainstream.
Truth be told, were the shoe (or, indoors, the slipper) on the other foot, if a non-Jew said, "that's so Jewish," I'd be very uncomfortable. Even if it came from a dear friend or a non-Jewish family member. So why am I so comfortable as a theoretical outsider mocking Whiteness where I would take deep offense to anyone but another Jew laughing at my Jewishness?