Lensmire+Summary

Lensmire, Timothy. (2008). How I became White while punching de Tar Baby. Curriculum Inquiry, 38(3), 299-322.

Summary: The article analyzes and challenges the elite power of being white and suggests that 'whiteness' is positioned more by 'othering' that even those that call themselves non-racist think (p. 317). The author argues that "elites have engaged in a series of maneuvers that divide and conquer common people, by granting limited standing and privilege to white folk while denying it to their black sisters and brothers" (314). As the author summarizes, the argument is that "the social production of white identity involves more than race and that a profound ambivalence exists at the core of white racial selves" (p. 299). By discussing and problematizing his own choice to tell a story in the style of black minstrelsy, Lensmire is able to see how he used 'blackness' to confirm his own whiteness. He discusses this by looking at three things 1. The rural aspect of the performance and how it linked to his own working class agricultural background, 2. The "othering" of the black by white working class people in order to make themselves feel special 3. How the earliest roots of the minstrelsy tradition may have been based more on sharing than greed (p. 300). Themes that run throughout the reading: 1. Discussion of how white people grow into their whiteness. Lensmire (2008) contends that white educators need to examine their position of privilege in order to critically analyze race and education issues (p. 300). 2. Lensmire (2008) points to the importance of intersections of whiteness with issues of class, gender, and sexuality, and how these change over time and place (303). Educators need to recognize that “whiteness and race are historically and socially variable” (p. 303). 3. The article discusses how white identity is socially constructed and reproduced. Lensmire (2008) argues that becoming a white person has serious consequences for black people. In essence, white people become white by using black people and black cultural products to define themselves (p. 303). In order to understand the current social situation as it relates to race and whiteness, we must understand the past experiences, “so that we might do critical and creative work with them, critical and creative work on our selves and our worlds” (p. 303). 4. Schools rarely provide children with opportunities to understand race power relations. "Because schools provide so few opportunities to explore how we think and feel about race, white children become white adults with a deep, unnamed confusion and shame about matters racial" (p. 314). 5. Oppression and privilege are the central idea for Lensmire. According to him, there is a strong need for resistance. Change will only occur when there is a discussion forum and when people "resist the official ideas and values of those in power" (p. 315). 6. Ultimately, Lensmire seems to suggest both a looking backward, to the earliest days of minstrelsy, which he defines as being a part of cross-racial solidarity, and looking forward, to the use of understanding how current racial ambivalence can move forward where the proclamation of being 'colour-blind' has failed (pp. 315-316). Lensmire's methodology and 'currere' Although Lensmire doesn't use the term 'currere' his methods, which come from autoethnography, they have a similar method and function. Lensmire's goal is to use his past storytelling experience to question the development of whiteness in himself and others and to 'pursue the arduous path of creating a 'proactive weave of story and theory'" (p. 302). Further, he discusses, as Pinar et. al suggest, the proactive power of thinking about the past, "[f]or the purpose, ultimately, of creating inventories, understanding traces, so that we might do critical and creative work with them, critical and creative work on our selves and our worlds" (p. 303).

Quotes: “More recently, I realized that there was a similar disjuncture between what I know and what I knew in relation to the word lynch” (p. 299). “I am trying to get smarter about how white people grow into and embody their whiteness, how they come to think and feel as they do, as part of a larger project on race and education” (p. 300). “Or maybe I am just stalling, for now I, we, as white people, must come to grips with our own ugly creation” (p. 306).

Glossary: 1. Blackface, in the narrow sense, is a style of theatrical makeup that originated in the United States, used to take on the appearance of certain archetypes of American racism, especially those of the "happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation" or the "dandified coon ".[1] Blackface in the broader sense includes similarly stereotyped performances even when they do not involve blackface makeup. Blackface was an important performance tradition in the American theater for roughly 100 years beginning around 1830. It quickly became popular overseas, particularly so in Britain, where the tradition lasted even longer than in the US, occurring on primetime TV as late as 1978[2] and 1981.[3] In both the United States and Britain, blackface was most commonly used in the minstrel performance tradition, but it predates that tradition, and it survived long past the heyday of the minstrel show. White blackface performers in the past used burnt cork and later greasepaint or shoe polish to blacken their skin and exaggerate their lips, often wearing woolly wigs, gloves, tailcoats, or ragged clothes to complete the transformation. Later, black artists also performed in blackface. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface)

2. Minstrelsy is the first public commercial venue in which blacks, though of course, they're not blacks, are represented on the theatrical or musical stage. It's the arena, for better or worse, in which black people come to be displayed and black issues come to the floor, in the American culture industry, beginning in the 1830s and 1840s and extending all the way to our own day. Not only does minstrelsy mirror in many ways the cultural and social predicaments of the country in the 19th century, it itself changes form and gets new life every 20 years or so until, as a stage form, it basically dies out in the 1920s and migrates to film, where it has a very long afterlife all the way to the present day in a film like Warren Beatty's Bullworth. Now its political charge varies enormously through the decades, but there are exemplars of the minstrel tradition all around us, both white, as well as black. The centrality of it as a cultural institution makes it an inescapable cultural condition for black performers moving into public. It's one of the things that defines your stance as a black public performer; there's no easy way around it.

3. "Other" is the term that Lensmire uses to discuss the white man's method of holding a mirror between his/her self and the black person in order to raise themselves into a better position. Part of Lensmire's historical analysis is that white identity, especially the white worker's identity in the American past, was created on the basis that they were 'not-black,' that though they were impoverished, things could be worse. Also, the import of 'otherness' was to create an image of blackness as both hated and longed for. Lensmire invokes Roediger and writes that "the white working class responds to fears of dependency and to a capitalist work discipline by constructing 'an image of the Black population as 'other' -- as embodying the preindustrial, erotic, careless style of life the white worker hated and longed for,'" (p. 307).

4. "Racial ambivalence/white shame" are terms invoked by Lensmire to describe what he senses may be at the heart of a lot of white belief. He discusses the failure of past attempts to mobilize white students in black causes and suggests the failure is due to the invocation of 'white guilt,' on people rather than a sense of ambivalence or shame over what has happened in past history. By looking at past research, Lensmire suggests that students who proclaim they are not at all racist end discussion in contrast to similar discussions about the possibility of confronting history and racism more effectively (p. 317).

Discussion Questions: What are the wider social justice implications of a currere such as Lensmire’s? Or is Lensmire’s currere ‘simply’ an attempt at justifying his past experiences in light of realizing and moving forward from his own ‘ugly creation’?

How can currere allow students as well as educators to situate themselves in a broader global/racial/class-based/gendered context?

How might your experiences of othering/being othered play into the creation of your own critical autobiography?

For Lensmire, what are some of the links between class and race? How does he define ‘the white wish’? Lensmire believes that white people have “an obvious attraction” for black people and that this might lead to greater “cross-racial alliances” (p. 315). What might some of these alliances be?

About the Author: Timothy Lensmire is a professor at the University of Minnesota in the department of Curriculum and Instruction. His expertise in the areas of race, reparations for slavery, education, and the souls of white folk. His teaching, research, and writing are animated by commitments to and hopes for radical democracy. His past research focused on the teaching of writing in schools and how this teaching might better serve democratic ends. As a teacher-researcher, he has taught writing in a third grade public school classroom and written about some of the problems and issues that confront teachers and students in writing workshops. His current research and writing focus on race and education, and especially on how white people learn to be white in our white supremacist society. Grounded in critical white studies, his work contributes to the ongoing effort to figure out how best to work with white students (in K-12 schools and universities, in teacher education, in teacher development) on issues of race and social justice.

Links: In the news Sept. 21: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/why-dressing-like-a-woman-is-such-a-drag/article1296077/

Example of a 1950 Blackface Minstrel show []

Blackface Minstrelsy Page []