Blinded by the whites: why race still matters in 21st-century America

《被白人至上主义致盲》：为什么在第二十一世纪的美国种族仍然是重要的

Book Review: For many Americans, Barack Obama's election in 2008 as the first African-American president of the United States sealed the reality of the country's post-racialism. He was a new type of president for a new age in which skin colour and ancestry no longer determined the possibility of upward mobility or defined its limits. The president, it seemed, was the embodiment of meritocracy. Although merit is quite important for mobility, the actual outworkings of the Obama presidency and expanding social upheaval across the nation have demonstrated conclusively the deep-rootedness of American racism. Ironically, positive changes in race relations have occurred within, and obscured, America's persistently rigid system of racialized social inequality. This obscuration is the theme of David Ikard's cleverly titledBlinded by the W Bruce Springsteen'sBlinded by the Light, made famous by the British/South African rock band, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Ikard argues that the hegemonic white supremacy permeating the society is so thorough, Americans – both whites and people of colour, the historical victims of this supremacy – continuously replicate racialized social inequality, philosophically, and through their deeds. They live in a sort of day dream that can be effectively countered only by becoming aware of the pervasiveness and inter-locking nature of the society's inequalities. Thus, the problem is not simply race, but also class and gender, all acting together to perpetuate the systematic subordination of particular groups.

It could be argued that the idea of post-racialism is not a surprising one, considering the need of stratified societies to legitimate themselves over time. Since, historically, much of the inequality in the United States has revolved around race, it was to be expected that a counter-narrative, denying the centrality of race, would develop. This counter-narrative, best embodied in the American creed's enshrinement of merit as the way to upward mobility, seized on indicators of improved race relations to make its case. It is a case, Ikard shows, that is without merit. He does so by deftly interweaving cultural and literary criticism with sociological da by the Whitesconsists of six essays (plus an Introduction and Epilogue) that are bound together by a critique of post-racialism rooted, theoretically, in intersectionality. This perspective sharpens his critique. For instance, in ‘‘Stop Making the Rest of Us Look Bad’: How Class Matters in the Attacks Against the MoviePrecious’, he argues that though highlighting the problems of the black poor can reify white supremacist ideas, these problems create much pain and that pain needs to be acknowledged. Criticism of the film, he argues, implies a monolithic view of whites which holds that they are unable to distinguish socio-economic distinctions among African Americans. And in ‘Easier Said than Done: Making Black Feminism Transformative for Black Men’, Ikard demonstrates the usefulness of the black feminist perspective in helping him – and, by extension, black men, in general – understand the damaging effects of hidden but systemic gender biases. In fact, to a large extent,Blinded By the Whites revolves around a critique of the failure to engage with black feminism in analysing social inequality. As noted, Ikard is very committed to Intersectionality, and his insertion of snippets of his personal biography into the various chapters effectively demonstrates the theory's power. This intermeshing of personal biography, sociological analysis, and literary criticism – potentially problematic in the hands of a less skilled writer – is one of the book's most appealing features.

At times, Ikard's argument leads him down potentially tricky paths. For instance, his critique of reactions to the movie,Precious, rejects the elitism of a DuBoisian ‘talented tenth’ that frowns on the airing of the black community's ‘dirty laundry’. Yet, his social and professional status (middle class and a professor) places him squarely within this ‘talented tenth’. How then to criticize black elitism and the black poor without being elitist? Ikard attempts to resolve this dilemma by emphasizing his self-awareness. Noting the ‘razor-thin line between challenging the white supremacist status quo and accommodating it’ (148), he argues that the viewpoints of the black poor are typically ignored and that ‘middle- class blacks operate as the unofficial stand-in for all black America’ (149). Yet, his focus onPreciousbetrays an underlying fear that American society might not be as oblivious to the voices of the black poor as he asserts. But Ikard is likely correct in assigning a special status to middle-class African Americans because (and this point could have been made a bit more clearly) society, recognizing their relative success, weighs their opinions more heavily than those of the black poor. Moreover, Ikard, pointing to his of his own upward mobility out of a poor southern town, argues that these more fortunate blacks have a responsibility to recognize, report on, and help the black poor.

InBlinded By the Light, the singer informs us: ‘Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun’, emphasizing its dangers and the need to turn away. Similarly, Ikard is imploring Americans, particularly African Americans, to turn away from a historical white hegemonic understanding of society (not white individuals, per se, but a system) that, in its pervasiveness, justifies notions of black inferiority, even while making the source of these feelings, and the relationship between gender and race-based inequality, invisible. In Ikard's terms, this invisibility represents beingBlinded by the Whites, and the remedy is to unflinchingly unearth hidden hierarchies and assumptions based on class, gender, and race. As he notes:

If the chief power of white supremacist ideology is to dictate what counts as reality – whether the issue at hand is racial experience, history, politics, violence, gender, sexuality, or nationhood – then the challenge before blacks and people of color is to defy this reality-making apparatus of power; to legitimate the illegitimate, make the invisible visible and speak the unspeakable. (54)

书评：对许多美国人来说，贝拉克·奥巴马在2008年当选为第一位非洲裔美国总统掩盖了国家后种族主义的现实。他是一个新的时代的一个新的总统，肤色和祖先不再决定向上流动的可能性，或规定它们的限制。总统似乎是精英教育的体现。虽然品德对阶层流动性是相当重要的，但是奥巴马总统任期实际的外在工作和全国范围扩大的社会动荡确切地证明美国种族主义仍然根深蒂固。具有讽刺意味的是，在美国顽固而严格的社会不平等制度里，种族关系已经出现了模糊的积极变化。这个模糊是大卫·伊卡德巧妙地为书《被白人至上主义致盲》命名的主题。借用布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀的书《被光致盲》，该书由英国/南非的摇滚乐队和Manfred Mann的地球乐队而闻名，伊卡德认为霸权的白人至上的社会渗透是如此彻底，美国人–无论白人和有色人种，都是这种霸权的历史受害者–通过他们的行为，不断复制种族的社会不平等及其哲学。他们生活在一个白日梦中，只有意识到这个普遍性和互锁的社会不平等的性质才可以有效地反击这个梦。因此，这个问题不仅仅是种族的，也是阶级的和性别的，所有因素的共同作用使特定群体保持对该系统的从属性。

可以说，考虑到随着时间的推移而合法化自己分层的社会需要，后种族主义的想法并不令人惊讶。因为从历史上看，在美国大部分的不平等都是围绕着种族而起，可以预料，反叙事的、否认种族中心化的思想将发展。这种反叙事，最完美地体现在美国信奉美德作为向上流动方式的信条，抓住改善种族关系的指标作为案例。伊卡德所显示的这个案例，是没有这种美德的。于是他巧妙地把文化和文学批评与社会学数据交织在一起。《被白人至上主义致盲》一书由六篇短文（另加一个引言和结语）组成，它对从理论上、交叉性上根深蒂固的后种族主义进行了批判。这个视角使他的批评更加尖锐。例如，在“别让我们看起来很糟糕：阶级在攻击电影《珍贵》中的重要性”中，他认为，虽然突出了黑人贫困的问题可以把白人至上主义者的观点具体化，这些问题也产生了很多的痛苦，这些痛苦需要被承认。他认为，对这部电影的批评，意味着白人的一致观点认为，他们无法区分非洲裔美国人的社会经济差异。在“说起来容易做起来难：黑人女权主义转化为黑人”，伊卡德论证了黑人女性主义视角在帮助他的作用–总体延伸到黑人男性–了解隐含的但系统性性别偏见的破坏性影响。事实上，在很大程度上，由于没有对不平等的黑人女性主义的分析，《被白人至上主义致盲》受到批评。值得注意的是，伊卡德非常致力于交叉性，他将他的个人传记片段插入各章节有效地证明该理论的力量。这种将个人传记，社会学的分析，和文学批评–潜在的问题交织在一个不太熟练的作家手中–是这本书的一个最吸引人的一个特征之一。

有时，伊卡德的论调将他引入潜在的复杂微妙的路径上。例如，他对电影《珍贵》反映的批评，拒绝一个 “第十个天才” Duboisian的精英化，不赞成播放黑人社区的“肮脏的洗衣房”。然而，他的社会和职业地位（中产阶级和教授）正好把他自己放在这个“第十个天才”上。那么如何批评黑色精英主义和非精英的贫困黑人？伊卡德试图通过强调自我意识来解决这个困境。注意到了挑战白人至上的现状和宽容它两者之间的剃刀线般狭窄的空间（148），他认为黑人穷人的观点通常被忽略，中产阶级的黑人成为所有美国黑人非官方的立场代表（149）。然而，他专注于《珍贵》泄露了一个潜在的恐惧，即，美国社会可能不会像他声称的那样无视黑人穷人的声音。但伊卡德给中产阶级的非洲裔美国人指定特殊地位这一点可能正确，因为（这一点可以阐述得更清楚一点）社会，认识到他们的相对成功，认为他们的意见比黑人穷人的更重要。此外，伊卡德，指着他自己向上流动出的一个贫穷的南部城镇，认为这些更幸运的黑人有责任识别、报告和帮助贫困的黑人。

在《被光蒙蔽的眼睛》这首歌里，这位歌手告诉我们：“妈妈总是告诉我不要看太阳的眼睛”，强调它的危险和需要移开。同样，伊卡德正在恳求美国人，特别是非洲裔美国人，远离历史的、白人霸权所理解的社会（不是白人个体，而是一个系统），基于其存在的普遍性，证明黑人劣等性的概念，甚至当寻找这些情绪的来源时，性别和种族的不平等之间的关系都是不可见的。按照伊卡德的说法，这种不可见代表着《被白人至上主义致盲》，而补救的办法就是坚定不移地挖掘基于阶级，性别，种族的隐藏的社会层次结构和假设。正像他写到：

如果白人至上主义思想的主要力量独裁地决定什么是现实问题–不管手头的问题是种族经历、历史、政治、暴力、性别、性或国家–然后才是黑人和有色人种面临的挑战，这就是对抗这一现实–权利的制造机构：将非法的合法化，使看不见的可见，使不能说的说出来(54)。

作者：Vickerman, Milton