Scott Martin - Creative Connector: Chpt. 6
“Theories of White racial identity development clearly demonstrate there is more than one way of being White.”
This is an interesting thought. Of course every theory determines them to be right… but I wonder if in fact any of them are at all? Or do we need a taste of one, a bit of another in order to understand what it means to “being White”? I almost wonder if that is even a loaded statement. I understand that Howard writes about understanding your own racial identity in order to co-exist with other cultures. It just makes me a bit uncomfortable acting white. I guess that means I am not as far along on Howard’s identity theory then I expected I was.
“there is no single way of ‘acting white’, and Whites in one stage of development often experience conflict with their white peers in other stages.”
This statement has obvious truth on the face value. No one can deny that each White person has a different worldview on other races. I begin to wonder if all of this identity development holds true for every other culture. It brings to mind Obama’s presidential campaign. For many Blacks, Obama was too white. For many others he wasn’t close to being black enough.
I also thought that it was a sad state for our country when his "blackness" was being questioned. Did it really matter what color of skin the person had? Shouldn't we chose our President based on their platform?
ReplyDeleteThis is a Time Magazine article that was published during his campaign. Its titled "Is Obama Black Enough?" The last sentence is "Barack Obama's real problem isn't that he's too white — it's that he's too black."
Read More Here:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1584736,00.html
Quite an interesting article….! thanks for the link. That last line is CRAZY… looking at it from the perspective of our book and a social comment. It may just be that… a complete statement that Obama is black and that the white privilege of American will eventually get him.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note… I laughed that there was a spark to this article because of a comment made by Joe Biden about Obama. This was in 2007 and now he is his VP. Ironic… wonder what the comment made was!