The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, Revised and Expanded EditionIn this unflinching look at white supremacy, George Lipsitz argues that racism is a matter of interests as well as attitudes, a problem of property as well as pigment. Above and beyond personal prejudice, whiteness is a structured advantage that produces unfair gains and unearned rewards for whites while imposing impediments to asset accumulation, employment, housing, and health care for minorities. Reaching beyond the black/white binary, Lipsitz shows how whiteness works in respect to Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans.Lipsitz delineates the weaknesses embedded in civil rights laws, the racial dimensions of economic restructuring and deindustrialization, and the effects of environmental racism, job discrimination and school segregation. He also analyzes the centrality of whiteness to U.S. culture, and perhaps most importantly, he identifies the sustained and perceptive critique of white privilege embedded in the radical black tradition. This revised and expanded edition also includes an essay about the impact of Hurricane Katrina on working class Blacks in New Orleans, whose perpetual struggle for dignity and self determination has been obscured by the city's image as a tourist party town. |
From inside the book
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Page v
How White People Profit from Identity Politics, Revised and Expanded Edition George Lipsitz. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION : Bill Moore's Body 1. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness 2. Law and Order : Civil Rights Laws and White Privilege 3 ...
How White People Profit from Identity Politics, Revised and Expanded Edition George Lipsitz. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION : Bill Moore's Body 1. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness 2. Law and Order : Civil Rights Laws and White Privilege 3 ...
Page vii
... investment in whiteness ” that is responsible for the racialized hierarchies of our society . I use the term possessive in- vestment both literally and figuratively . Whiteness has a cash value : it accounts for advantages that come to ...
... investment in whiteness ” that is responsible for the racialized hierarchies of our society . I use the term possessive in- vestment both literally and figuratively . Whiteness has a cash value : it accounts for advantages that come to ...
Page viii
How White People Profit from Identity Politics, Revised and Expanded Edition George Lipsitz. expend time and energy on the creation and re-creation of whiteness. Despite intense and frequent disavowal that whiteness means anything at all ...
How White People Profit from Identity Politics, Revised and Expanded Edition George Lipsitz. expend time and energy on the creation and re-creation of whiteness. Despite intense and frequent disavowal that whiteness means anything at all ...
Page ix
How White People Profit from Identity Politics, Revised and Expanded Edition George Lipsitz. raised in the deep South , Moore had been working as a post office employee in Baltimore . He had been horrified in 1962 by Mississippi governor ...
How White People Profit from Identity Politics, Revised and Expanded Edition George Lipsitz. raised in the deep South , Moore had been working as a post office employee in Baltimore . He had been horrified in 1962 by Mississippi governor ...
Page xiii
... white in a world where the advantages of whiteness were carved out of other people's disadvantages. I knew that those of us in the almost exclusively white neighborhoods on the east side of Paterson lived in better houses and had more money ...
... white in a world where the advantages of whiteness were carved out of other people's disadvantages. I knew that those of us in the almost exclusively white neighborhoods on the east side of Paterson lived in better houses and had more money ...
Contents
1 | |
24 | |
3 Immigrant Labor and Identity Politics | 48 |
4 Whiteness and War | 70 |
Inheritance Wealth and Health | 105 |
Remembering Robert Johnson | 118 |
Beyond Identity Politics | 140 |
Antiblack Racism and White Identity | 159 |
Beyond the BlackWhite Binary | 185 |
The Mississippi of the 1990s | 212 |
Learning from New Orleans | 237 |
NOTES | 249 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 277 |
INDEX | 279 |
Other editions - View all
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from ... George Lipsitz Limited preview - 2006 |
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from ... George Lipsitz No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
affirmative action African American aggrieved racial Angeles antiracist Asia Asian Americans assets blues California campaign Chicano citizens civil rights coalitions communities of color Connerly Court cultural desegregation discrimination economic ethnic European Americans fair housing federal films gender groups Himes Ibid identity immigrants important individual investment in whiteness James JAMES BALDWIN Japanese Americans justice labor Latino lives loans low-wage Malcolm Malcolm X Mexican American military Mississippi mobilized narratives Native Americans Negro neighborhoods neoconservative nonwhite officers opportunities Orleans patriotism percent policies political possessive investment practices President privileges problems Proposition 187 protection race racism Rawick Reagan Renee Stout Robert Johnson role secured segregation slavery slaves Sniderman and Piazza social society story struggle supremacist Sweet Cadillac Swing Low United University Press veterans Vietnam Vietnam War wages white supremacy women workers World York
Popular passages
Page 79 - With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, our security environment has undergone profound transformation.
Page 165 - Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction.
Page 26 - A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.
Page 22 - If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
Page 216 - The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.
Page 251 - Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States...
Page 165 - I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.
Page 1 - As the unmarked category against which difference is constructed, whiteness never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations.4 To identify, analyze, and oppose the destructive consequences of whiteness, we need what Walter Benjamin called "presence of mind.
Page 76 - What does all this mean for every one of us ? It means opportunity for all the glorious young manhood of the republic — the most virile, ambitious, impatient, militant manhood the world has ever seen.
Page 41 - Some men leave their sons money [wrote a union member to the New York Times], some large investments, some business connections, and some a profession. I have only one worthwhile thing to give: my trade. I hope to follow a centuries-old tradition and sponsor my sons for an apprenticeship. For this simple father's wish it is said that I discriminate against Negroes. Don't all of us discriminate? Which of us ... will not choose a son over all others?