Understanding whiteness Part 5: Neurotic behaviour and psychological protection

So far in this series we’ve been introduced to the concept of dominant whiteness, linked to wider white supremacy. Previous posts have explores how the story of whiteness can help us to understand what racism is and how it operates. Now, we go further, examining the presentation of whiteness as the central character in a story being told by white supremacy.

I know I’m writing this stuff, but for real, it’s important. Please, go and prepare your beverage of choice, sit back (or lean forward), and join me in this fifth instalment of Understanding Whiteness. Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.

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Dominant whiteness: Who is it?

So far, one conclusion is clear: Dominant whiteness can be suffocating. As a character, it fills the scene, every room. But what is its personality? As a character, who is it? The central conceit of this series is the turning of dominant whiteness form a disembodied concept into a sentient, relatable being. It’s an act of anthropomorphism, the likes of which Disney has made good money out of by given human personalities to animals, toys, even abstract emotions, to name a few examples.

So an experiment. I want you to consider: when you see the words ‘dominant whiteness’, what have you been picturing? Have you been picturing a man? A woman? Not sure? How old? I assume they’re white, but how so? Blonde? From a particular ethnic background? Any signifiers of heritage that you have subconsciously assigned?

These are pertinent considerations. The characteristics you have unwittingly given to dominant whiteness might reveal deeper subconscious ideas about what whiteness is to you, and perhaps even how whiteness has been constructed for you over the years of your lived experience.

Is your dominant whiteness ugly, or beautiful, according to whatever metric you judge beauty to be? Default whiteness assumes a default ‘normality’ that is almost certainly ‘neutral’, in the imagination of those of us who have breathed the oxygen of white supremacy. We can see this in the European beauty standards that have typified popular entertainment for successive generations, and pop culture’s tendency to lean towards a ‘normality’ which is actually a highly subjective, exclusive vision of preference. That’s where the term ‘Caucasian’ comes from, a supposedly neutral, thought-to-be politically correct descriptor for whiteness that actually originates from a scientifically racist belief (popularised in 1785 by the German philosopher Christoph Meiners), that the most beautiful humans could be found in the Caucus mountains.

Neurotic by design

The best protagonists are flawed protagonists. Lead characters with a psychological tension or hang up that keeps tripping them up on their journey towards resolution. It’s fascinating to watch, knowing that the main character is getting in the way of their own success, for reasons that they struggle to even see for themselves. The technical term for this is dramatic irony, and it’s part of the reason that we get so absorbed/ invested in stories about other people.