Representing Whiteness In The Black Imagination Summary

bell hooks in her essay, Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination, describes whiteness as terror for all those who are not white. Hooks’ approach can be intersectional in that she seems to support the black women like herself, whose sufferings are two or threefold; black, female and sometimes poor. She reiterates that just because imperialism, colonialism and apartheid are either over or illegal, it does not mean that their invisibility has seized to reach out to squeeze the life blood from the necks of the oppressed. Ruth Frankenberg’s essay on the other hand, is mainly about white women, as she describes them as oblivious to the enigma. Frankenberg was a British born author who lived in the United States. Hooks lives with racism and deals with it daily, whereas Frankenberg’s

writings dispense advice to the race of women who seem to inflict the pain caused by bigotry. This paper will attempt to illustrate that whites and other races go about their daily lives as if racism is non-existent, but it does exist. As well, I will show that contrary to popular belief, race is a result social construct.
Frankenberg’s Points of Origin, Points of Departure, contains several references that most specifically are based on biology or genetics rather than the cultural or social aspects of racial prejudice. The enormous topic of race can dominate any debate, though society makes every attempt to sweep it under the rug. The subject rears its ugly head in almost every conversation dealing with people and classes of people. Defining "race" continues to be a nemesis. Information derived from human genetic research increasingly challenges the notion that race and biology are impossible t escape from. There is now actual proof that race is not genetic, there is no biological truth, and it is socially based and created by society. It is now officially known that race is a social construction. However, there is little hope for this new finding because the public needs to believe and act on it. Thus race is mainly a social concept which has been based on skin color and ancestry. Unfortunately, studies continue to examine biological differences through skin colour.
According to Frankenberg’s writings, Whiteness is “an economic and political category maintained over time by a changing set of exclusionary practices, both legislative and customary” (p.44-45). It is important to note that racism is not simply as a result of bad attitudes, but racial discrimination is a result of economic and legal practices. In “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination”, bell hooks describes black people’s feelings on whiteness as being no less than traumatic and the pain of white racial power seems unending. She alludes to the fact that whites and blacks continue to pigeonhole themselves in their little black or white compartments of distorted belief systems. Hooks speaks out about the subject of racism, something that most authors do not possess the courage to take a stand on. Hooks’ discussion of “white control of the black gaze” (51) is so painful to understand; very few of us know of that concept, that house slaves were viciously beaten for looking at or observing their white masters . This concept seems to have remained with, where neither race can look the other in the eye, further contributing to the vast gap between them. hooks states that “blacks who imitate whites, actually continue to regard whites with suspicion, fear and even hatred” (p.49-50). Admittedly black people propagate the concept of black versus white and prolong the ordeal of a society that they view as white.
Frankenberg did not conceive that she and her fellow white female feminists were racists. However, coloured feminists accused them of being racists. She and other feminists were ignorant to racism against those of colour. As well, she admits that white women were race privileged which allowed them not to see the effects of racism and the significance of race in shaping American society (p.39). Frankenberg refers to the white race especially white women as Whiteness; race shapes white women lives, and Frankenberg gives the name whiteness to this. As well Frankenberg admits white women were race privileged which allowed them not to see effects of racism and significance in shaping their society. The notion or reasoning Frankenberg brings across is quite ignorant. It is almost as though she is saying global warming is not happening because I felt cold today.

In “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination” Hooks describes whiteness as misrepresented purity, harmful and terror.

Hook first describes “whiteness” as purity, but comes with a past that changes how people view the white race. She says “To name that whiteness in black imagination is often represented of terror: one must face the palimpsest of written histories that erase and deny that reinvent the past to make the present vision of racial harmony and pluralism more plausible.”(p.49) White is seen as a clean, safe, and humble color, yet hook sees the history of the color, which dealt with slavery and the behavior of slave masters towards slaves. In the documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance; there is a line said by a Mohawk woman who is in the resistance, “I will never bow down to them they will just step on my hands”. In this line it describes the basis of whiteness to all cultures. She seems to be saying that when we as the ‘others’ bow down to those who are the pure or white, it is never enough; it just brings us closer to the ground where they can take our land and our culture. It is so sad that after years of oppression and resistance we are seen as

savages.
In the documentary episodes Race, the power of an illusion Parts one, two, and three, it was said that we are more alike than we are different; 99.9% exactly the same. To justify genocides, segregation, and overall oppression the notion of race was created. As easy as it is to construct race it is just as easy to deconstruct it, race only justifies hate, war, famine and the like. This work puts forth an analysis of race as a social construction rather than an inherently meaningful category. Frankenberg’s position suggests that there is more diversity within one traditionally biologically defined racial category (white) than there is between two such categories (white and black). Race is socially constructed so that one race has power over others. Although it’s meaning may change over time. This does not minimize the social and political reality of race. Frankenberg’s Points of Origin, Points of Departure brings the question of prejudice home, she seems to reverberate that white women do not think racism is their problem, and therefore they believe they are not racist.
hooks say that one fantasy of whiteness is that the threatening “Other” is always represented as the terrorist. This perception enables many white people to imagine there is no representation of whiteness as terror, or terrorizing (p.49). In her discussion on whiteness and its stereotypes, hooks discusses these representations in an historical context of white hegemony. Historically, hooks argues, blacks have associated terror with whiteness. hooks concludes her discussion about the representation of whiteness in the black imagination by stating that, in contemporary society, white and black people alike believe that racism no longer exists. Frankenberg dealing with racism is not merely an option for white people; rather racism shapes white people’s lives in every facet of daily life. Although later in her chapter, she mentions race and racial differences are socially constructed. Frankenberg’s whole point is white women do not understand race, and when the topic of race is brought up white people are dumbfounded, or seem to be, by the notion of racism. Black people took time to, made it there business to learn about whites. In contrast whites were ignorant of the lives and lifestyles of black people. Cultural appropriation seems very one sided, blacks were and still are being victimized subtly but still quite significantly so.