- So, thank you John,
for coming to Smith,
and for giving tonight's anti racism lecture
and for the time to give this interview.
And as you know, the faculty and I
were very interested in a chapter in your book,
Impolite Conversations,
that you had entitled, Obama Makes Whites Whiter,
'cause it's such a powerful chapter.
And in that chapter you put forth an argument,
one of the arguments is that
as racial diversity increases
and we see some power shifts,
such as having a first black president,
seeing people of color in visible positions of power,
we are also experience an coalescence
of white identified groups fighting
to retain white privileges, symbolic power,
if not their actual power.
So I was wondering if you could talk first a little bit,
about what prompted you to write that chapter.
- I think that's a great question.
I absolutely wanted to make sure the chapter,
and the book in general,
operated as a kind of provocation.
So when you think about race,
when you hear names like Obama,
one of the things I think that happens is,
everyone feels like they've heard it all before,
they've already thought about,
there's almost nothing new to lean.
Just because we feel so over saturated
with discourse around it.
And so I thought,
what's the way to get people
to think about race a little bit differently?
Think about this new president,
this symbolically important figure
a little bit differently.
And for me, it meant trying
to get people to recognize what was,
and still is I think,
a traditional distinction made in the social sciences
between marked social categories,
and unmarked categories.
So one of the points is to say that historically,
what's considered normative in the US,
is always stuff that is not marked as racialized
in some way.
And so there's this over arching assumption
that part of what it means to assimilate in America,
to be truly American,
is to be able to let go of all the
particular cultural, racial ethnic stuff
that makes you distinctive.
That makes you look other than
what we imagine what would be sort of
typical white American.
And so what I thought was important
to just begin to get people to see
is that, with the ascendancy of Obama,
the Obama administration,
the browning of the electorate,
that what we're seeing in part is
a whiteness now that can't always pass itself off
as unmarked, as normative,
as universal.
That it has a particular coefficient.
It operates the way
other racialized categories operate.
Doesn't mean it's biologically real,
we can deconstruct it.
It doesn't mean there's anything about whiteness
that's the same for everyone.
But it means it's harder for whiteness
to pass itself off
as somehow other than a specific,
racialized subject position.
And I think that difference is important
because it means
historically, we've only imaged
whiteness speaks itself as white
if it's yelling and screaming
and if it's donning a white hood
and talking about white supremacy.
But there's something about being able to understand
whiteness as part of a larger, eclectic,
multiracial universe
that says whiteness can be white
and have a history to it.
A history and particular past and context
that's no difference from the past and context
that makes what we imagine
to be blackness black.
That our job,
and I think this is what Obama does
almost in spite of himself.
He's a figure who slowly allows us to recognize
that whiteness has particular interests
in the context of the US body politic.
It has a very specific set of ideological coefficients
and that there's something about that
that shouldn't just be hijacked by white supremacy.
Just like, understanding blackness with the history
doesn't mean you have to be a black supremacist.
It could mean trying to recognize
that there's nothing special about whiteness
that makes it invisible.
And therefor everything else becomes visible
as particular.
And whiteness becomes general.
So Obama is think is this character
that we need I think at this time.
Because it helps us to understand
that there's nothing about whiteness
and the way it functions,
that has to be categorically, structurally different
from the way all the
other racialized subjectivities function.
Even though in the past, that's been the case.
- Yeah.
So there is a quote in your book
where you say,
I welcome a whiteness that can speak its own name
without hateful yelling or the gnashing of teeth.
Which is what you're talking about,
is sort of this move
to whiteness
as another kind of racial experience
but not necessarily where white supremacy
is sort of the only way that it can be experienced.
Is that where we're heading, do you think?
- In some ways I think
we're going in a direction,
we're becoming much more self conscious
about our racial history.
We're playing with the ways in which we talk about our past.
So for instance, you have right now
playing on Broadway,
that's so fascinating to people
because it cast the founding fathers
as immigrants, as very ethnic and racial lives.
And tells a story about the past
that actually resonates for what was going on then,
but also tells us something about who, and what we are now.
And there's gonna be more and more
of those opportunities for us
to question our preset positions
about what Americans are,
who counts as truly American
and how we expand the category.
And I think this is
sort of coupled with this investment we have,
and what I think is a very valuable aspiration,
which is the social of colorblindness.
So we've always wanted to say,
well we don't see color.
If there's ability to not see color,
we imagine that somehow that makes us better.
That makes us able to transcend
some of what we imagine to be the most
dastardly parts of our racial history.
Whereas, I think the better model
isn't race blindness,
I think it's being able to see difference
without imagining hard and fast
and genetically predetermined hierarchy.
Without imagining that there's some us versus them,
that then race begins to buttress and bolster.
And so I think it's getting out of this mindset
of having to pretend color away,
but instead seeing it more effectively,
more accurately.
Not as something that wards over us,
or predetermines our possibility,
but as something that's part of the
sort of larger landscape of culture
that we inherit.
And that it's our job to reimagine
and reinterpret as we see fit.
And hopefully in ways that are more inclusive.
Allow us to recognize just how much value
comes from difference.
There's this tendency that we have to think that
the only way that we can come together as a collective
is if we're all the same.
Whereas I think that for,
I think most of the ways
in which we wanna talk about societies flourishing,
we recognize that it's only through diversity
that you can actually have the tools,
the wide pantry panoply of tools you need
to be able to survive in difficult times.
So it's I think valuing what diversity brings
and not fearing difference
as something that's somehow
makes it less possible for us to be
a functioning body politic,
a real collective that works together.
- I mean, I don't know that we've experienced difference
that wasn't really powered.
And we don't have experience with
difference that doesn't come with power.
And I guess,
is that possible for us?
- I think there are examples,
maybe sometimes seemingly trivial examples,
all the time of
folks who can occupy different social roles
and categories,
and do it in a more or less
hegemonic and exclusionary way.
But I think that's the challenge.
The challenge to say, power's always circulating,
we're always grabbing for it,
trying to use it,
deploying it in ways
that are often about self interest.
But there's nothing about the idea
of setting up a distinction.
And I do think there's a powerful point
that I hope that chapter tries to make as well,
that we're always carving up us es and thems.
So until we figure out the us is important,
we care about the us.
And then once we decide this other group is them,
then we can almost do whatever we want to them.
Right?
Especially I they're a threat
to the folks who constitute us.
And so I think there's a way in which
we start the hierarchy there.
For the people we really care about
and really love.
And the folks who might threaten those people.
And so we don't even feel like what we're doing
is about sort of trying to grab power.
So it's already infused in our assumption
about what constitutes weak.
And so part of it I think is to
think differently about how we can figure
those circles of us es and thems.
Why do we make them so constrained and small
in their circumferences?
Are there ways to expand them,
and feel less threatened by difference?
If the difference isn't
always already considered a threat,
then I think we have less of a tendency
to be as hot and quick
with trying to use that difference
as a justification
for doing some very horrible things
in the spirit of protecting our own.
But I think you're right to say,
our job is to figure out how and why
we use these categories to justify things
that are always in some ways
steeped in a certain kind of power play.
And it's a power play usually that we
are able to justify and sleep well at night
because we say it's about defending ourselves.
And often, every defense
is also a certain kind of offense.
So trying to own both of those sides
at the same time, I think.
- And the book came out in 2014,
ahead of this election cycle,
before we knew we would have
the first female presidential nominee.
And do you think the development
of nominating a white woman in this role,
do you feel like this is
continuing a movement in the same direction?
Is it somehow a backlash?
What sense of it do you make,
in terms of looking at
sort of what's happening around the racialization of?
- That's a good question.
So it's another first.
It is amazing that we still have firsts
around categories that are so central.
You almost feel like, after Obama,
how could we have not been able to do this before?
As you see the nomination of Hillary Clinton,
you think, how could this not have been possible
ever before?
Ultimately, I do believe
one of the things that reminds us
is we can't think about any of these categories,
race or gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality,
in some sort of vacuum,
disentangled from everything else.
And so how do we make sure
we're keeping all of the productive tensions
between and among these categories,
together as we try to analyze what's happening.
Ultimately, I think our job is gonna be to figure out
what we gained as a function
of the last seven plus year, what will be eight years
of Obama.
What worked, in terms of us trying to think
critically with one another.
We always wanna have conversations on race.
I think we actually did a very poor job
over the last seven years,
of talking, really talking honestly
about what race means.
I think one of the things, hopefully,
that we'll be able to imagine
in the lead up to the next election
is to really get us to think about
how to plug this discussion about race
and racial difference and racism
into productive and fertile dialogue.
With the ongoing commitments we have to gender difference.
I often wanna think of them as blocks
we move around separately.
But hopefully, one of the things that
Clinton, who's running,
a lot of experts argue, on the legacy
and on the efforts and actions of Obama.
One of the things that might allow
her to do and her campaign to do,
is to think about the productive points
of cross fertilization between,
what he allowed us to say and not
and think about what needs to be raised,
and what her candidacy might allow us to think about
the ratio between race and gender
as these complicatedly intersecting
categories of difference,
but also of community
that we can use in ways
that actually doesn't have to be destructive for us.
- Yeah.
No, not destructive, very difficult.
I just think of social work education
and schools across the country
trying to always, continuously working
on trying to create the right kind of climates
and conversations in the classroom, even,
in sort of that tall order.
So, along that line though,
what is our role, do you think?
Schools of social work,
what is our role to play in this?
- I would probably talk about
the role of social work schools,
of social work as a profession,
in three different ways.
The first I think is,
that disabused people have often,
very impoverished notions
of what social work actually entails.
Most people have no idea of what social workers do
and the various levels
at which social workers operate.
From the macro to the micro.
Actually doing a job of reeducating people
about what social work contributes,
thinking holistically about social problems,
I think that's key.
I think the second thing that's,
I think really important for us
as a profession that's always at the center
of important issues.
Often national tragedies as well,
is to actually remind everyone that our job
is to think about the distance between theory
and practice.
Social work is one of these
I think, incredibly powerful fields
that has to understand all the most
cutting edge social science.
Evidence based theory.
But we also recognize that in the world,
one of the first things that leaves you,
of the sort of theoretical scaffoldings,
when you're in the middle of something,
in the moment and have to make a snap decision.
So I think it's getting social work students
to become social workers who can work
quickly, in the moment.
Whose instincts are the right instinct.
Instinct's about inclusion,
about connection, about community.
Then I think the third thing
that I've always found really important about social work
and the leadership role I think it can play around
a lot of these important issues.
Is I do feel like ultimately,
part of what social work is very good at doing,
it's very good at recognizing the value
of taking people serious, of listening to them.
Of understanding,
you can learn from your interlock.
No matter what status or station they are in life.
And so being able to take that sensibility,
that ability to respect the other.
To really try to understand them holistically.
Not just as a particular client
in this sort of small, narrow minded way.
Not just as one racial category,
not just as a gender,
but as a full human being.
Whose like you want to make better.
And I think that often,
so few moments when
we really celebrate our capacity,
our commitment,
to just trying to make the world a better place
in a way that isn't superficial,
that isn't besides the fact
that we don't do enough.
Really try to make sure that we do effectively.
And so I think those for me
are the things social work always does well.
We can always do a better job
at making it clear to people
that sometimes even though,
it can be done inconspicuously,
it can be done without a lot of fanfare.
That it's all the more important
for its ability to do this work
in a way that's stealth, but effective.
And that actually allows people to see and feel
the difference that social work makes in their lives.
So I think it's important stuff.
And I feel like our students,
the students you put out here,
I feel like students we're putting out
at the University of Pennsylvania
are really doing an incredible job.
And we just wanna, I think support them
so that folks recognize who they are
before they get there.
And know the skills that they're bringing with them.
- Thank you so much for taking your time.
This has been a wonderful opportunity to hear your thoughts.
- Thank you for the questions,
I appreciate them.