Page 18 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

Knowing ‘whiteness’ 11
Hewitt’s study of Greenwich is explicitly examining racist action as embed-
ded within social relations: ‘we believed that perpetrators of racist harass-
ment probably did not behave in a social vacuum. It was somehow either
allowed or even encouraged by others and there was something in the local
community that enabled it to happen’ (Hewitt 1996: 2). However, although
he does quote girls’ racist comments and attitudes, it is ‘exceptional’ girls
who tend to be the main focus of attention given to girls: ‘Where the full ex-
ceptions to the general flow of racism were found, they were almost always
girls and not boys’ (Hewitt 1996: 28).
Vron Ware cautions against confining analysis of racism to ‘almost patho-
logical male-on-male violence’ (Ware 1997: 293), not least because this will
distort strategies to counter racism. She argues that:

One of the dangers with this approach is that, if racism (and fascism) is
seen to be something that white working-class men do to black working-
class men, many people may feel either unconcerned or intimidated in
the face of it. Instead, the fact that the imagery of racism is largely male
dominated, and a working-class phenomena, . . . ought to ring alarm
bells about the importance of gender and class in analyzing the continu-
ing appeal of white supremacy.
(Ware 1997: 290–1)

Ware suggests that, not only should women’s actual involvement in vio-
lent and fascist practices be examined, but also that ‘female racism’ should
be explored, particularly women’s involvement in sustaining and promulgat-
ing racist beliefs. In addition, Ware argues that there needs to be a better
understanding of the ‘codes and styles of masculinity and femininity that
express ideas about cultural superiority and difference [. . .] if we are to
break through the surface tension of everyday life in order to analyze how
gender figures in the psychological construction of whiteness’ (Ware 1997:
307–8).
Ware’s argument that we need to understand practices of racism beyond
and around those of extreme violence should be extended to include not
only women, but also a class analysis that goes beyond the idea of a ‘popular
racism’ confined to working-class culture. Working-class male whiteness is
frequently constructed within public discourses as itself deviant or, as Ware
argues, ‘pathological’. In general, analysis of elite racism has been confined to
state action (in particular immigration, police and social policy ) and cultural
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production (film, literature, media ). The racialised nature of the everyday
for the middle classes and their own expressions of racism has received much
less attention. Yet Back, for instance, found that some of the ‘most crude
forms of popular racism and ethnocentrism’ that his young black research
subjects were exposed to was from middle-class peers at university (Back
1996: 168). This finding, of the impact of middle-class racism, suggests the
need to examine the construction of whiteness from a more central loca-