Becky Thompson and Veronica T. Watson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496805553
- eISBN:
- 9781496805591
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496805553.003.0010
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
In this paper we will be drawing upon historical work on race consciousness, contemporary work on trauma, and scholarship on activism and social change to offer a vision of what a critical white ...
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In this paper we will be drawing upon historical work on race consciousness, contemporary work on trauma, and scholarship on activism and social change to offer a vision of what a critical white double consciousness might look like. We juxtapose this critical white consciousness with what Veronica Watson has termed a “white schizophrenic subjectivity” which has been explored by intellectuals like Du Bois, Charles Chesnutt, James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. Each of these writers called attention to a whiteness that works to maintain disconnection from people of color and disassociation from their own moral selves, a white schizophrenic subjectivity that prevented white folks from acknowledging or challenging racism while still continuing to think of themselves as moral and upstanding citizens of their communities and nation.Less
In this paper we will be drawing upon historical work on race consciousness, contemporary work on trauma, and scholarship on activism and social change to offer a vision of what a critical white double consciousness might look like. We juxtapose this critical white consciousness with what Veronica Watson has termed a “white schizophrenic subjectivity” which has been explored by intellectuals like Du Bois, Charles Chesnutt, James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. Each of these writers called attention to a whiteness that works to maintain disconnection from people of color and disassociation from their own moral selves, a white schizophrenic subjectivity that prevented white folks from acknowledging or challenging racism while still continuing to think of themselves as moral and upstanding citizens of their communities and nation.
Veronica T. Watson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617038891
- eISBN:
- 9781621039808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617038891.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter considers the insights and contributions of Melba Patillo Beals as well as other African American artists and intellectuals of the Civil Rights era who struggled not only to document ...
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This chapter considers the insights and contributions of Melba Patillo Beals as well as other African American artists and intellectuals of the Civil Rights era who struggled not only to document White violence and terror, but also to highlight the multiple levels at which it worked to reinforce white identity and sociology in the U.S. Beals’ recounting of the year she spent integrating the segregated space of Little Rock’s Central High introduces a postmodern understanding of identity to existing analyses of White violence. The key to surviving her year at Central High when she was a teen, and to crafting a revealing and compelling memoir as an adult, is rooted in Beals’ ability to understand how White identity was forged through particular uses of space, place and violence. A critical double consciousness provides the means for examining how violence and space interacted to produce Whiteness in a specific context.Less
This chapter considers the insights and contributions of Melba Patillo Beals as well as other African American artists and intellectuals of the Civil Rights era who struggled not only to document White violence and terror, but also to highlight the multiple levels at which it worked to reinforce white identity and sociology in the U.S. Beals’ recounting of the year she spent integrating the segregated space of Little Rock’s Central High introduces a postmodern understanding of identity to existing analyses of White violence. The key to surviving her year at Central High when she was a teen, and to crafting a revealing and compelling memoir as an adult, is rooted in Beals’ ability to understand how White identity was forged through particular uses of space, place and violence. A critical double consciousness provides the means for examining how violence and space interacted to produce Whiteness in a specific context.
