Understanding whiteness Part 9: Dirty Dancing, white liberalism, and lessons from 'Baby'
It was the summer of 1963, everyone called her Baby, and it didn’t occur to her to mind.
So begins the opening to a film I keep returning to, have written about before, and will undoubtedly write about again: Dirty Dancing starring Patrick Swayze and, in the role of ‘Baby’, Jennifer Grey. As this Substack series continues to stride into the deep territory of understanding whiteness, we find ourselves at a point where, yes, Dirty Dancing can help illuminate some of the finer details of how whiteness operates. And if you haven’t seen the film, don’t worry: all will be revealed.
Liberal impulses
Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman is the embodiment of white liberal idealism – principled, clever and knowledgeable but almost arrogant, yet deeply inexperienced, blinkered and naive. The first time we meet baby she is sitting in the back seat of the family car reading a book about class inequality while being chauffeured to a holiday resort. She wants to join the Peace Corps and travel the world doing good deeds, at her convenience. Baby believes she can save the world through her idealism but she blindly relies on her economic status, her socioeconomic privileges, and her father, in no particular order. In the latter case, she effectively relies on a construction of masculinity that is directly at odds with her feminist instinct. It’s revealing that Baby, at this point in her story, doesn’t think she’ll ever find a guy ‘as great as [her] dad’. She’s ready to swoop in to save others but doesn’t yet know herself.
White liberalism is very much like this. I saw it in full bloom on that black square Instagram day back in June 2020, when millions of (mainly white) people decided to post up black squares of absolutely nothing in support of hashtag BlackLivesMatter. This was performative allyship of the highest order: well-meaning, useless gestures, motivated by ego, guilt, shame, or some slippery combination of the three.
If we stretch the comparison even further, I wonder if whiteness (like Baby) will ever find a significant other as great as its father – namely, white supremacy. Remember, it’s white supremacy that gives whiteness its privilege and power. White supremacy protects whiteness in the same way that an overbearing father protects his beloved child. Until that child breaks free and the father is no longer the strongest influence on her life. In the previous instalment of this series, I wrote at length about the toxic paternalism of white supremacy, (focusing on villainous father’s in comic book and sci-fi fables). Now, I want you to think about what the patronised child needs to be like (in temperament, attitude and character) in order for the patronising parent to continue being powerful…
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