In search of the power of whiteness: A genealogical exploration of negotiated racial identities in America’s ethnic past

Posted in Articles, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Louisiana, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2011-08-24 23:54Z by Steven

In search of the power of whiteness: A genealogical exploration of negotiated racial identities in America’s ethnic past

Communication Quarterly
Volume 50, Issue 3-4 (2002)
pages 391-409
DOI: 10.1080/01463370209385674

Roberto Avant‐Mier, Associate Professor of Communication
University of Texas, El Paso

Marouf Hasian Jr., Professor of Communation
University of Utah

In this essay, the authors explore some of the relational, intersectional, and contextual dimensions of negotiated racial identities. By employing a genealogical method of analysis that looks at three key cases (Anastasie Desarzant, Homer Plessy, and Suzie Phipps), they investigate how various historically‐situated communities in Louisiana have dealt with some of the contradictions, multiplicities and tensions of racial and ethnic identity formation. They then apply these insights in an analysis of issues relating to colorblindness versus color consciousness and commentaries on contemporary examples of how negotiated identities might affect various present‐day publics, debates, and politics.

Americans have always had ambivalent feelings regarding the question of what to do about the nation’s racial identities, and this was especially true when citizens had to deal with the ambiguities of the Enlightenment ideals. During the time of the Founders, civic leaders talked about the importance of the notion that “all men [sic] are created equal,” but when these ideals were put into practice, they had to compete with the economic and social hierarchies that were considered to be mirrors of natural inequalities. Given these normative expectations, it should come as no surprise that in 1790, the first Congress voted that a person must be “white” in order to be a citizen (Nakayama & Krizek, 1995; Omi & Winant, 1994; Roediger, 1994). Since that time, the very notion of what it means to have either a “racial” or an “ethnic” identity has gotten even more complicated, as layers of legal, political, and cultural meanings have pulled us in the competing directions of defending either color con-…

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