1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786430803321

Autore

Sullivan Shannon <1967->

Titolo

Good white people : the problem with middle-class white anti-racism / / Shannon Sullivan

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Albany : , : SUNY Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

1-4384-5170-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (x, 214 pages)

Collana

SUNY series, Philosophy and Race

Disciplina

305.800973

Soggetti

White people - United States - Attitudes

Middle class - United States

Anti-racism - United States

United States Race relations

United States Social conditions 1980-2020

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: Good white liberals -- Dumping on white trash : etiquette, abjection, and radical inclusion -- Demonizing white ancestors : unconscious histories and racial responsibilities -- The dis-ease of color blindness : racial absences and invisibilities in the reproduction of whiteness -- The dangers of white guilt, shame, and betrayal : toward white self-love -- Conclusion: Struggles over love.

Sommario/riassunto

Building on her book Revealing Whiteness, Shannon Sullivan identifies a constellation of attitudes common among well-meaning white liberals that she sums up as "white middle-class goodness," an orientation she critiques for being more concerned with establishing anti-racist bona fides than with confronting systematic racism and privilege. Sullivan untangles the complex relationships between class and race in contemporary white identity and outlines four ways this orientation is expressed, each serving to establish one's lack of racism: the denigration of lower-class white people as responsible for ongoing white racism, the demonization of antebellum slaveholders, an emphasis on colorblindness--especially in the context of white childrearing--and the cultivation of attitudes of white guilt, shame, and



betrayal. To move beyond these distancing strategies, Sullivan argues, white people need a new ethos that acknowledges and transforms their whiteness in the pursuit of racial justice rather than seeking a self-righteous distance from it.--Publisher description.