Whiteness as Property and Environmental Health

One of the concepts that Harris opens up her piece with is "passing." She then drops the strand of thought, to return to it later, when her conversation turns to affirmative action. She says that, "like 'passing,' affirmative action undermines the property interest in whiteness," (1779), but that "what passing attempts to circumvent, affirmative action moves to challenge" (1779). This is a very intriguing argument. Affirmative action is about challenging the white status quo, but in an in-your-face way, rather than working "within" the institution of whiteness, as she defines passing. Although what she talks about is a move away from the ideals of "passing" towards something structurally different, I have to wonder: what is/would modern-day "passing" mean? What would it look like? Does "passing" exist anymore in our society? It seems that more and more we are moving towards a push to reevaluate our essentialist ideas about race or origin-based identity, so that even the word "passing" might have become a slur. In the context of our past class discussion, we talked about ways that Obama might have transcended certain identity boundaries. Does this transcendence constitute a form of "passing," or is that a term that is no longer useful to our understandings of society? (The concept of colorblindness, on the other hand, that we talked extensively about, shows up blaringly in her article. She believes, as we generally concluded as a class, that the claim of "colorblindness" actually upholds and produces racism.)

A point that I thought was crucial was Harris' definition of white identity as not necessarily guaranteeing that one will win in life, but definitely guaranteeing that one will not lose (1758). A problem that has been forming in my mind the past couple of weeks regards this idea of structural racism that both Harris and Pulido define. Pulido, in her article "Rethinking Environmental Racism," reprimands studies on environmental racism that do not question racism as a structural institution. I am becoming increasingly concerned that this growing understanding of structural racism potentially removes the responsibility from the individual in dealing with racism. If racism can be removed from the individual and attributed to the structure, it becomes much easier for the individual (especially the white individual) to claim exemption from participation in both perpetrating and, conversely, solving the problem of racism. Of course acknowledging structural racism, as well as environmental racism and white privilege and whiteness as property is essential, but what is next? Where does a white person go after acknowledging and understanding the ways that she is implicated in all of these structures? Pulido says, "because most white people do not see themselves as having malicious intentions, and because racism is associated with malicious intent, whites can exonerate themselves of all racist tendencies, all teh white ignoring their investment in white privilege" (15). But once white privilege is acknowledged, then what? If a middle-class white person were to reject her privilege by moving out of the suburbs and into the "inner city," she would most likely be gentrifying. I suppose my question is this: Although this is highly improbable, if all white people in the country were to actively recognize and grapple with their white privilege, what would that struggle look like in terms of dismantling racist structures?