Emily Bazelon reviews the development of the concept “white” as she analyzes current discussions of the term and ideas surrounding it. “For a long time, many white people assumed it was our due, as the majority, to encounter various racial others and marvel at the exotic things they ate, built or wore. Now we can go online and find people of color doing the gawking, offering jokes and anthropological scrutiny about white people’s underseasoning food, mistreating potato salad or eschewing washcloths. Chief among our remarked-upon habits is our often-claimed colorblindness and affinity for individuality, a supposed indifference to race that often reads more like ignorance of it.”
To read her complete essay, click here.