by Seth Sandronsky
If being white in America is "normal" then what are the rest of us? A recent Salt Lake City shopping mall shooting spree by a young white man described as "average"-looking once again reveals the "white-as-normative" syndrome as pervasive in American life. Inevitably, it seems, whites are shocked to witness insane, homicidal behavior by people that look like them, while appearing to anticipate in advance anti-social conduct from non-whites.
White as ‘Average' and ‘Normal'
by Seth Sandronsky
"A culture which normalizes whiteness as a U.S. standard."
A woman employee at a shopping mall in Salt Lake City, Utah - where a young gunman recently maimed and murdered people - said he appeared to be "an average Joe," the AP reported. Yes, daily journalism is the first draft of history. Yet her description of him raises a question.
That is, what are the meanings of "average" in the USA? One unstated meaning, I maintain, is that average is a person with white skin. This description fit the Utah killer, an immigrant teen from Bosnia, who was shot dead.
His status as a white person upon arrival in the U.S. from his war-torn country was likely never in doubt. This is hardly a new trend nationwide. For perceptive analysis on the roots of this European racial formation upon arrival in the U.S. between 1890 and 1945, see historian David R. Roediger's Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (Basic Books, 2005).
By contrast to the experience of European immigrants in the current era, non-white immigrants fleeing armed conflicts fueled by capitalist imperialism in their homelands (African, Caribbean and Latin American) do not whiten when they come to the U.S., as best I can determine. Thus, in the
sense of the quote attributed to the witness during the Utah mall shootings, "average" probably does not mean an Asian, black or brown person.
"This racial insanity is for all purposes a taboo topic nationwide."
One would have to suffer from a racial blind spot to miss the towering presence of a culture which normalizes whiteness as a U.S. standard. This racial insanity is for all purposes a taboo topic nationwide, institutionally speaking, with corporate journalism at the front of the pack. Therefore, I suggest that a misperception of white skin as being average is embedded in a description of the homicidal teen.
Now let us back up a bit and look at the social context of the Utah bloodletting. This tragic event took place as the U.S. population is becoming increasingly female, non-white and wage-earners. This trend flows from capitalism's constant drive to increase labor productivity, bringing ever-cheaper goods and services for sale in the marketplace.
Thus in the world's third most populous nation, non-white females are average in the sense of their class roles as producers and consumers that mirror millions of white males. To this end, a grass-roots discussion of what constitutes an average American could help to raise people's political consciousness. In other words, the Utah tragedy could provide an opportunity for Americans to better see who they really are.
Sight unseen is sight not thought.
Seth Sandronsky is a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and a co-editor
of Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive paper www.bpmnews.org/.
He can be reached at: bpmnews@nicetechnology.com.
The undemocratically imposed bourgeois political misleaders in Haiti must be understood as tools of imperialism that have led the country into its ongoing crisis.
In the latest repellent display, western media are hailing the rescue of four Israeli hostages at the cost of 270 Palestinian lives.
While the new government includes parties neutral about Israel’s war on Gaza, ANC insists it will still support Palestine. South Africa took the lead in charging Israel with genocide but its level of…
This week, we hear from a formerly incarcerated person about efforts in the state of California to end slavery in the prison system and we discuss the need for an enlarged housing voucher program in…
Milton Perez joins us to discuss the lack of affordable housing in New York City and the housing access voucher program.
