Interchange – Whiteness Is As Whiteness Does: On the Typologies of Whiteness

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Today’s show is “Whiteness Is As Whiteness Does: On the Typologies of Whiteness” with guest Heath Schultz, self-described as a “white, anti-racist, political activist.” Our opening song is already illustrative of the discussion to follow–Eric Clapton erasing Robert Johnson with his version of “HellHound On My Trail.”

I’ll begin with Melville’s Moby Dick, because all things may be found there. This is from Chapter 42, The Whiteness of the Whale:

Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.

We can say scientifically that “Race” is a social construct. There is no such thing as race except as a human concept designed to establish dominance hierarchies by creating denigrating or aggrandizing attributes for each so-called racial group. Once we commit to that then all else must be critique. “White” must then take on the full significance of its construct. All this simply means that the category WHITE is a socio-political and economic designation and it presents a spectrum of “whiteness” which orders social organization in the service of empowering and enriching particular people.

GUEST
For today’s show, we’ll look at a few ways that “Whiteness” presents itself in culture and politics with artist, writer, and activist Heath Schultz. Schultz is an assistant professor in the Art Department at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga whose video project, Typologies of Whiteness, seeks to demonstrate how whiteness as a structural position of violence is on ubiquitous display in our visual culture. The typologies include white musicians covering classic blues songs; white policing of black and brown dissent; the great white hope that makes america great again (referring a white prize fighter who can knock down the black champion); and the white love of police dramas on television with sympathetic cops for heroes.

The links below are to Heath Schultz’s videos.

SEGMENT ONE
White Men Cover Robert Johnsons’ “Helhound on my Trail”
SEGMENT TWO
White People Love the Police
SEGMENT THREE
The Great White Hope
SEGMENT FOUR
Sympathetic Cops

MUSIC
“Hellhound on My Trail” performed by Eric Clapton
“I Fought the Law” by the Bobby Fuller Four
“Authority Song” by John Mellencamp
“Dukes of Hazard Theme Song” by Waylon Jennings
“Hellhound on My Trail” by Robert Johnson

CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Studio Engineer: Wes Martin
Executive Producer: Wes Martin