Breaking the code of good intentions: Everyday forms of whiteness.
Item
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Title
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Breaking the code of good intentions: Everyday forms of whiteness.
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Identifier
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AAI3047198
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identifier
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3047198
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Creator
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Bush, Melanie E. L.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Leith Mullings
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Date
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2002
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | Education, Higher | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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The past three decades of economic and political transitions and related transformations in the United States and globally, have shifted public opinion from a presumption of collective responsibility for the common good and toward a belief in the social survival of the fittest. This dissertation explores the extent to which these transitions, that brought an end to the Second Reconstruction and undermined the bargaining power of an increasingly global workforce, led to the acute sense of victimization and of the world being stacked against white citizens, as portrayed by the media. The project analyzes the role that race, racialization and racism play within this framework and in the process of uniting or dividing ordinary people.;Using research conducted between 1998 and 2000 at a college within the largest urban public university in the nation, the study explores students' perceptions and beliefs about issues of identity, privilege, democracy and intergroup relations. The dissertation examines why most white people in the United States believe that we have achieved racial equality though social and economic indicators suggest otherwise. It explores mechanisms expressed through attitudes and views held particularly, although not exclusively by whites, that reinforce their adherence to dominant narratives. These mechanisms function to maintain and reproduce racialized structures of inequality, for the system could not be held intact without the engagement of widespread support for, or complicity with, ideological explanations and justifications of the status quo. The dissertation also provides evidence of "cracks in the wall of whiteness," circumstances when the opportunity to foster understanding about systemic patterns is apparent. Identification of these mechanisms and openings contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of power and subordination in U.S. society.;Breaking the Code of Good Intentions. Everyday Forms of Whiteness places the current day "white experience" within a political, economic and social context and identifies the mechanisms of ideological construction that support structures of racial inequality and injustice and the agency of ordinary whites. The project is thus framed so that our collective imagination can forge hope for a different and better world for all.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
