How does whiteness view the 'other'?

For educators reflecting on their identity, position and responsibility in society, it is useful to actively critique the ways in which we may inadvertently reproduce patterns of inequitable power in our social relations. For almost half a century, white supremacy has taught us to view marginalised, indigenous and racially-minoritised peoples and practices through a lens that judges them as either one or more of:

- misplaced (or out of place, see non-gender binary public toilets, accessibility for disabled communities, or surveillance of Black and brown customers and students)

- lesser (e.g. hip-hop vs classical music, or living as a traveller vs in a house)

- invisible (or hyper-visible depending on context, see 'Stop and Search' vs recruitment)

- threatening (e.g. whiteness wants to maintain the colour line, protect its power and privileges, its 'genes', its 'virtuous' psyche of 'goodness')

- deviant (whiteness is often a mirror that reflects a depraved fantasy about what it hides and despises about itself)

- desired (whiteness is often a window that looks out upon the joy that it wishes it could free itself to have, or fetishises its objectification)

- un-agentic (paternalistic pity of 'saving those in need of rescue or civilisation by the dominant')

- exploitable (extractable, expendable, or extinguishable)

Given that modern UK society was shaped by imperialism and colonialism, it should be no surprise that it takes conscious effort and critical reflection to fight against these judgements and work to eradicate the systems that reinforce them. Try thinking about each of them and when you may have fallen into reproducing one, either in your mind, in your words, in your teaching and assessments, or in your choice of book, film or reaction to a current event or news story.

The good news is that these views about marginalised groups, whether Black, GRT, or Trans communities for example, is that because the views (and the inequitable power structures that reproduce and are reproduced by them) are socially and politically manufactured, they can be socially and politically un-manufactured i.e. dismantled.

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In solidarity, learning, growth, and resistance.

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