The Heart of Whiteness- Analysis
The Heart of Whiteness Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege Robert Jenson Comm-365-X01 October 5, 2011 Joshua J. Shepherd I. Introduction: In this paper, I will be reviewing Robert Jensen’s “The Heart of Whiteness. Confronting Race, Racism, and White privilege”, along with developing a critical analysis of this work. I will be comparing my analysis with the opinions of others that have reviewed this book along with utilizing concepts from James W. Neulieps textbook, Intercultural Communication.
II. Synopsis In his book, Jenson reviews the history of racism in the United States and its evolution into a closeted mentality, which still holds a power over many non-white citizens. It is this subtle power relationship that Jensen contends is the reason why the United States is a white supremacist nation. With radical honesty, hard facts, and an abundance of difficult, personal experience, Robert Jensen lays out strategies for recognizing and dismantling white privilege.
He attempts at demonstrating that if white people are to make a meaningful contribution to ending white supremacy, they have to be willing to be harsh in their assessment of themselves personally, while at the same time staying focused on the importance of a larger system of power. He believes that we have to go deeply into ourselves and simultaneously connect to a larger political analysis and movement.
As Jenson expresses, our history books speak much more lightly on the evolution of our country, which minimizes our responsibility of creating and maintaining this white supremacist society we have developed. Jensen’s approach on addressing this topic is to create emotion, and provoke questioning the foundations we have built our belief systems upon, which could easily take a reader down a path of frustration, anger, confusion and sadness. I personally felt all of these emotions, and more, while reading this book. III. Analysis
Jenson writes about the mechanics of racism and white privilege, and how whites maintain the racial hierarchy through their unwillingness to address the fact that we live in a white supremacist society. Rather than merely examining the affects of racism on people of color, the book turns its attention to whiteness and how a system of white privilege, supported and perpetuated by whites, also damages whites by inhibiting them from making meaningful connections with other human beings. Until I almost reached the end of this book I was uncomfortable and disturbed by the way the book made me feel.
As a white male, I am aware of the pain that my ancestors have created for others to advance the free world. I have pain for those who suffered and disagree with actions that were taken by my white predecessors. But I believed that we are now in a much more advanced world where we have chosen the first black president and equality was a focus of most Americans. Identifying with my culture as currently being a white supremacist society is something I have never considered, or would not want to consider.
In Neuliep, within the Coudon and Yousef’s Value orientations, we perceive the human nature orientation within the United States with people being essentially rational. This term, rational, can be somewhat subjective. And if we continue with the same value system, and look from ‘the self’ values, we foster our self-identities from the influence of our culture’s values. If we are to reflect truthfully to how our country evolved and what we ‘had to do’ to create our freedom by limiting the freedom of other, how would we then perceive ourselves or create our self-identity?
This should be reality, per Jenson, but this is also potentially a great fear of white people. Adapting our cultural values to include the recognition of our white supremacy and the unearned privileges we are given have to be brought up at an early age to embed these values before we develop the blinders of our whiteness. Jenson says, “… a cultural focus can easily overwhelm, the political when white people do not want to confront white supremacy and white privilege. (3) Jensen was born in and earlier generation that I was and I believe that from birth, the culture that I have learned, starting at a young age, promoted more of an equal balance between whites and non-whites, though there the lingering racism will take decades and decades to penetrate effectively. IV. Conclusion Jensen forces us with overwhelming evidence and history that we are living in a society where are still infected with racism where the cure is not spoken about in public circles. A reviewer of Jensen’s work states it clearly, “Color blindness has always been synonymous with color consciousness, the most American of problems. (Walia, The Heart of Whiteness) Changing the view of whites in a white-supremacist society is first about people seeing their denial and recognizing it then working to change the views of our future generations. Accomplishing this is something the United States is attempting first by electing our first black President and reflecting on many of the racial hurdles we ran into just by accomplishing this feat. Racism is a problem that is not limited to the United States but a problem for humanity. Fear, anger, sadness are only a few of the emotions continuous racism bring but hope is where we need to maintain the focus.
Hope will allow us to move forward in this fight. Hope is the idea of raising our children in a world where the color of the skin is where the differences of individuals end. My experience differs greatly to Robert Jensen’s with race and as I teach my daughter to respect everyone without attention to the color of their skin, I hope that her children’s experiences with racism will continually be different than mine. Work Cited Walia, Shelley. “The Heart of Whiteness. ” Free Book Reviews | Book Summaries | Shvoong – Summaries & Reviews. 19 Nov. 2007. Web. 06 Oct. 2011. <http://www. shvoong. com/humanities/1708546-heart-whiteness/>.
