The Activeness and Adaptability of Whiteness: Expanding Phenomenology's Account of Racial Identity

Abstract

Phenomenology has been used numerous times in discussions of race. Yet despite the value of the approach-and the well-known phenomenologies of race done by Frantz Fanon, Lewis Gordon, David Macey, Linda Martin Alcoff, and others-phenomenology has only rarely been used to dissect "whiteness." Much of the scholarly work on whiteness discusses it as an ideology, a product of social relations, or a set of institutionalized practices.1 Similarly, most of the work that examines race from a phenomenological perspective does not focus on the experience of whites, but instead discusses racial embodiment more broadly construed. Following the example of Sara Ahmed, I argue that it is illustrative to approach white experience from the perspective of phenomenology. 2My objective in doing this is not to validate the perspectives of whites who deny their own privilege, but to explain why whiteness is so difficult to "pin down" and how it came by its particularly "sticky" quality that makes it so hard to undermine. As I shall show, these facets of whiteness stem from the fact that whiteness-inasmuch as it is a perceivable phenomenon-has a flexible character because it is the product of a dialogical interaction between the subject and the world. Whiteness is not fixed, but can appear in many ways such that even being able to see it as harmful does not ensure one's willingness to do something about it. The question this poses for the study of whiteness is why so many whites, even after being given evidence that racism works through the society they are a part of, nevertheless refuse to see whiteness. The claim that whiteness operates invisibly does not fully explain this phenomenon, as nothing in that theory necessitates that whites react with aversion when their privilege is pointed out. That whiteness is difficult for whites to see does not mean they will resist seeing it when its presence is revealed. The lived aspect of the white experience of whiteness needs to be explained in more detail if we are to understand this phenomenon. Just as Linda Martin Alcoff resists the claim that "race is no more real than phlogiston or witchcraft," 3 we need to resist the conclusion that whiteness is experienced simply as something invisible.To explore the nature of whiteness, I will begin by reviewing the phenomenologies of race carried out by Sarah Ahmed and Linda Martin Alcoff. As I will show, while Ahmed and Alcoff make important observations about how race, and whiteness in particular, orients us within the world, they both focus on the subject's role in creating race, overlooking the active role of the world. I will