What is racism in 2021? It may not have anything to do with, well race

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Rooted in America’s ugly history of white supremacy, indigenous dispossession and anti-blackness, multiracial whiteness is an ideology invested in the unequal distribution of land, wealth, power and privilege — a form of hierarchy in which the standing of one section of the population is premised on the debasement of others. Multiracial whiteness reflects an understanding of whiteness as a political color and not simply a racial identity — a discriminatory worldview in which feelings of freedom and belonging are produced through the persecution and dehumanization of others.

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America’s racial divide is not simply between Whites and non-Whites. Thinking in terms of multiracial whiteness helps us recognize that much of today’s political rift is a division between those who are drawn to and remain invested in a politics of whiteness and those who seek something better.

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Depending on the scholar, the phenomenon of “whiteness” can be attributed to anyone with an ideological affinity for “racial capitalism.” The word whiteness, the theory’s proponents explain, doesn’t describe racial characteristics but ideological proclivities.

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The Americans of Latino heritage who voted Republican in numbers sufficient to shock poll-watchers last November had supposedly succumbed to the temptations of “white supremacy.” Asian-American students have outperformed their peers and are now overrepresented in institutions of higher learning only because they “push black and brown bodies down,” rendering Asians “white supremacy’s one success.” A 2015 sociological study aptly titled “expanding the boundaries of whiteness” posited that the frequency with which Indian-Americans, Asian-Americans, and even black Americans are marrying interracially suggests that “most members in these groups are on the path to whiteness.”

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If you’re confused about how this racially deterministic idea can be applied so broadly, it’s only because you’re ignorant.

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And yet, according to the author and activist Paul Kivel, “racism is based on the concept of whiteness—a powerful fiction enforced by power and violence.” So, whiteness isn’t necessarily indicative of a capacity for violence, but a capacity for violence is indicated by whiteness. Whiteness isn’t a purely racial theory, but it is racial when racism is identified in whites. Whiteness isn’t exclusive to whites, but the benefits derived from whiteness most certainly are.

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