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Linda Mart?n Alcoff

The Future of Whiteness 1st Edition

by Linda Martín Alcoff (Author)

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White identity is in ferment. White, European Americans living in the United States will soon share an unprecedented experience of slipping below 50% of the population. The impending demographic shifts are already felt in most urban centers and the effect is a national backlash of hyper-mobilized political, and sometimes violent, activism with a stated aim that is simultaneously vague and deadly clear: 'to take our country back.' Meanwhile the spectre of 'minority status' draws closer, and the material advantages of being born white are eroding.

This is the political and cultural reality tackled by Linda Martín Alcoff in The Future of Whiteness. She argues that whiteness is here to stay, at least for a while, but that half of whites have given up on ideas of white supremacy, and the shared public, material culture is more integrated than ever. More and more, whites are becoming aware of how they appear to non-whites, both at home and abroad, and this is having profound effects on white identity in North America. The young generation of whites today, as well as all those who follow, will have never known a country in which they could take white identity as the unchallenged default that dominates the political, economic and cultural leadership. Change is on the horizon, and the most important battleground is among white people themselves.

The Future of Whiteness makes no predictions but astutely analyzes the present reaction and evaluates the current signs of turmoil. Beautifully written and cogently argued, the book looks set to spark debate in the field and to illuminate an important area of racial politics.

ISBN-10

0745685455
ISBN-13

978-0745685458
Edition

1st
Publisher

Polity
Publication date

September 15, 2015
Language

English
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
Print length

200 pages
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Editorial Reviews

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"A profound meditation on 'whiteness' – its past, its present, and its possible future - by one of our leading scholars of race. Deftly interweaving theory, autobiography, and her own personal history of antiracist activism, Linda Martín Alcoff has produced the most impressive philosophical exploration ever of this peculiar 'world-historical' social identity."
―Charles Mills, Northwestern University

"Against the contemporary backdrop of changing racial demographics and widespread condemnation of its relative power and privileges, Linda Alcoff challenges us to think in more nuanced ways about whiteness. This is a compellingly hopeful if sober analysis, offering renewed possibility for a much more modest conception of whiteness, one incorporating a commitment to racial justice as part of its raison d'être. The Future of Whiteness is a book for our times."
―David Goldberg, University of California, Irvine

"Written well and cogently argued, The Future of Whiteness will spark debate in the field and will illuminate racial politics."
―Political Studies Review

About the Author

Linda Martin Alcoff is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Polity; 1st edition (September 15, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 200 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0745685455
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0745685458
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #261,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #627 in Political Philosophy (Books)
- #930 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)
- #1,076 in Discrimination & Racism

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Art V.H.

Provocative, Performativity A Useful Frame

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 30, 2019

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It has been a while since I read this book, however I find myself even now, some two years later, thinking about Alcoff's argument about racial formations (in the USA). Which, it should be noted, this book focuses on mainly US social relations, with mentions of other nations, but without the attention to their specific histories and circumstances.

Her basic argument is that race is both a fiction (no biological distinction) and also a concrete lived reality of social production. (A la Judith Butler's argument for gender performance.) However, this lived reality is reflected in the material--people of color have worse medical care, often live in more polluted areas (or PoC areas are allowed to be more polluted, structural violence), and have higher rates of stress-related disease including hypertension.

Our belief in "race" as a signifier is what makes "race" the socioeconomic construct. The two then feed each other, as difference is created and read in the same instance.

I also appreciated her takedown of the well-meaning (but detrimental and whataboutistic) white liberal attitude of playing 'White vs All.' If racism is to lose its violence (structural and personal) then Whites must become "part of the rainbow," rather than whiteness being "the condition of splitting the rainbow" where whiteness creates all "non-whiteness."

I am reminded of the famous quote about losing versus surrendering humanity: colonized peoples had their humanity taken, tragically; but the white colonizers gave up their humanity to do so, and are now marked not by what was done to them, but by what they allowed themselves to become.
Something to ponder.

Nevertheless, Alcoffs book is a superb one, and hopefully one that can lead to not just discussion after discussion but real, material, and political change around racial inequity.

3 people found this helpful

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Rosanna Stevens

Illuminating, exciting work.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 3, 2019

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Martin Alcoff’s work is brilliant, and very naturally interdisciplinary, combining race theory with philosophising through a mixture of memoir/lived experience, historical evidence, and statistical data. Her writing and logic is clear and a true pleasure to follow.

One person found this helpful

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Andrew M

Waste of Paper and Time

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 1, 2021

Verified Purchase

Only bought this for a class in college. Complete waste of time and didn't learn anything new from it.

2 people found this helpful

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Mary

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 18, 2016

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1

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Provocative and challenging - not light reading, but many vital observations

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 8, 2015

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

This is a provocative and challenging analysis, and it demands a fair amount of effort from the reader. If you're familiar with the Polity press, you know they publish very detailed academic research, and this is no different.

If I had a wish - and this was not promised by the book, so it's no complaint - it's that it would be more accessible to general audiences. It raises strong ideas but I do think a reader needs to come with an open mind and a background in history. If you come to this book unprepared to hear that "white supremacy" is a true thing, you might be too defensive to get anything from it. The reality about "white culture" isn't that it's automatically better/worse - but it IS/WAS the supreme culture in the country, and that is now changing, and of course that culture doesn't like that.

But right now we're still in the middle of this change - so one 'side' is grasping to a fading past, and the other is rising to a more equal place. It's revolutionary, even if it doesn't seem that way.

It's tough to point to any one thing from this book to try to sum it up. This is well-presented academic research and I think an audience interested in objectively examining changes in our society will appreciate it - but this is not light reading. You need to be familiar with the expectations and demands of reading this sort of academic research to get the most from it - I'm not sure I was!

2 people found this helpful

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

An Absolute Must Read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 29, 2015

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

I don’t like to overuse the term “must read” but Linda Martin Alcoff’s The Future of Whiteness is a must-read. We live in the era of white reaction to non-whites getting equal rights, and changing demographics – by 2050 white Europeans will no longer be a majority - have created a frenzy of over-reaction on the right, and some problems on the left too, as Bernie Sanders found out when Black Lives Matter upstaged him and demanded to be heard.

When we see white supremacists courted by a major political party, and groups touting “white slavery” and “white genocide,” it’s time white people take a look at what is going on, and think, perhaps for the first time, about what being white means, what it has meant in the past, and what it will mean in the future.

As Alcoff writes, “This is a book about a topic many would rather avoid.” It is not an easy subject, racism, particularly when we are assured by the same political party courting white supremacists that we live in a post-racist world (there is a left-wing version of post-racialism too, she argues). There is a lot of white-splaining going on over at Fox News – by white men. I’m a white man, and this offends me.

How does a white male of all demographic groups get to tell non-whites how they should feel?

Alcoff points to the election of Barack Obama and to “a white reaction that can take some pretty hysterical forms.” She says that “holding a significant majority within a nation has granted whites the ability to believe in the legitimacy of a white-dominated government.” I would argue that it goes further than this, to a white “Christian” government, but Alcoff is not interested in the religious question, and you won’t even find it in the index of her book.

The subject at hand, I have to admit, is potent enough, and that would make for another book altogether. So we have a “Sturm und Drang” as she says, on the right, but we also have a white-dominated left. And white liberals, she says, “remain uncomfortable in broaching the topic, while white conservatives generally try to disguise their racial references, though the disguise is often so ineffective as to be a joke.”

This is an uncomfortable topic for liberals and progressives as well, much as we might want to deny it. I know the suggestion made me uncomfortable in reading it, but it forced me to re-examine my own reactions. Alcoff says that “the extreme unabashed right wing dominates race-talk, while all others, including the left, the liberals, and the moderates, largely maintain race avoidance.”

And that was what Bernie Sanders, for example, was accused of – ignoring systemic racism. He had been invited to speak about Social Security and Medicare. His response was a “racial justice platform” that then won praise from the BLM movement. Alcoff doesn’t address Sanders or Black Lives Matter specifically but they seem excellent examples of the forces she is addressing.

And Alcoff says we need to talk about this, and she calls the left’s tendency to separate class from race unhelpful in this regard. I thought about this, and I do think it is true that we tend to do that. She points out that “If race is basically an illusion – or a mere ideological overlay that mystifies reality, as it is on this mainstream left view – then the demographic changes make no real difference, only a difference at the level of ideology.”
From the point of view of a liberal, this means that at the very best, even if we are not part of the problem, we are also not part of the solution.
Alcoff moves on to a discussion of whiteness, what it is, what it means, and its history, and history shows that whiteness as “moveable” boundaries, as she puts it; Irish and Italians have both had to earn their white status, and she points out that even today southern Europeans and Jews are only “borderline” whites.

It’s a bet of a mess isn’t it, this “white” thing? In fact, whiteness is a “historical and social construct” rather than a “singular idea” and it has changed and continues to change. She talks about labels and the changing nature of social identities (given society itself is changing). She employs categories from around the world, including Yugoslavia after its break up, the Mason-Dixon line, and Rwanda, and offers us a brief history of “race” and a discussion of “class.”

This is no easy read and it should not be, given the complexity and importance of the subject. It is important we understand these things so that we can intelligently discuss them. These are concepts it is often difficult for us to wrap our thoughts around, even assuming we can come to some agreement on terms.

Alcoff’s chapter on white exceptionalism is particularly important today, and here she employs William Faulkner to illustrate our contradictory attitudes towards race and white supremacy. Being a philosopher, it is hardly surprising that we should also meet here Newton and Goethe and discussions of universalism versus purity.

This is a book that will make you think, and it would have very little value if it simply validated existing attitudes. Because whiteness is not an unchallenged default, this is a subject that should receive our undivided attention. I cannot recommend this book enough. It will challenge your thinking, and I can think of no higher praise.

13 people found this helpful

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