Day: February 12, 2018

Embodiment in post-racial terms in the context of the aforementioned quote indicates that fetishizing blackness in post-racial terms, or in other words, fetishizing blackness while erasing black identity, reinforces the racial power inequalities that be. Furthermore, this erasure has caused a “white queer politics of injury” that presents white queerness as the state of being ‘other’ without taking into account the major privileges involved in racial identity in order for white queers to take the stance of a victimized ‘other.’ By ignoring race in talking about queer identities, a major privilege is thus ignored and it is therefore counterproductive to view queerness in terms of the neoliberal concept of being ‘colorblind.’ As society stands, race is intimately intertwined with all a person’s identities whether such intimate involvement is acknowledged or not. By not acknowledging race and by ignoring it in queer theory, white supremacy is further enabled with the framing of being progressive, rather than addressing the inequalities and power structures that progressive politics are intended to address and dismantle. Amber Musser made clear the importance of addressing race in the context of all of a person’s identities in “Re-membering Audre,” “While Lorde was unapologetic about claiming a multiplicity of identities—mother, poet, warrior, lesbian, black—these identities made her aware of multiple forms of marginalization and enabled her to imagine a feminism robust enough to tackle difference and create authentic community.” However, in labeling Lorde as queer, rather than as a black, mother, poet, warrior, lesbian, her racial, maternal, personal identities are erased for the sake of being ‘colorblind,’ but the reality of this erasure only supports the “hegemonic understandings of race,” as Reed put it. Clearly, although queer theory is useful for addressing issues of queerness, its current state of whiteness means it still needs to take into account other identities in order to develop a fuller, more inclusive, more progressive understanding of identity politics and how queerness is seen in the contemporary societal context.

Alison Reed, “The Whiter the Bread, the Quicker You’re Dead. Spectacular Absence and Post-Racialized Blackness in (White) Queer Theory”

Amber Jamilla Musser, “Re-membering Audre. Adding Lesbian Feminist Mother Poet to Black”

Allison Reed’s comments about the fetishization of blackness deal with an overarching issue of white queer politics to appropriate or present blackness in a way that furthers white political injury. From my understanding of the reading, when Reed says “embodiment in post-racial terms” she means the way in which blackness is represented in so called ‘colorblind’ politics.  These colorblind politics often depict race in a manner that downplays its importance in our culture, both presently and historically. It glosses over all of the challenges faced by people of color both in the past and currently in favor of focusing on another issue, in this case LGBTQ+ politics. It exploits the visibility of blackness to promote the narrative of injury put forth by white queers. In doing so, whiteness is ignored as black people and other people of color are used to further a goal that affects people of all races, while ignoring and smoothing over many of the issues faced specifically by people of color. This dynamic promotes the idea of white supremacy, as in this dynamic white queers politics are taking advantage of queer people of color in order to help their own cause, while not giving anything in return to those they take advantage of; it still promotes the idea of white dominance. The ‘hypervisibility’ of black bodies for a ‘white queer politics of injury’ can be understood as utilizing the struggles and stigmatization faced by black queers to further the image of white queers being victims as well by appropriating their struggles as their own. By co-opting the idea of colorblindness, the struggles they face become one under the umbrella of ‘queer’, ignoring the fact that race is a very real factor in oppression. It erases all of the suffering caused to black bodies via systems upheld and promoted by white bodies and claims those hardships for white bodies themselves under the banner of queerness, despite the fact that those people would never and have never faced those issues because of their whiteness.

Alison Reed in her piece, “The Whiter the Bread, the Quicker You’re Dead,” exposes the ways in which queer studies deploys racialized bodies as “spectacular markers of queerness” (Reed 49).  Reed goes on to write that this “… fetishization of blackness produces its own logics of disavowal, reinforcing hegemonic understandings of race by articulating embodiment in post-racial terms” (Reed 57).  In “articulating embodiment in post-racial terms,” Reed is suggesting that we are reproducing colorblind logics. Therefore, “embodiment in post-racial terms” is the embodiment of race and racialized individuals in a society that chooses to believe that race is no longer an issue.  In separating race and racism, race is thus, in Reed’s opinion, mobilized in colorblind ways to divorce discussions of structural racism from racialized embodiment” (Reed 52).   With this separation, queer theory scholars tend to preserve white supremacy.

Reed continues her argument by stating that, “Whiteness, then, goes unacknowledged and unexamined, while uncritically reproducing multiculturalist logics that mainstream visibility can smooth over ongoing injustices, precisely by exploiting the hypervisibility of black bodies for a white queer politics of injury” (Reed 57).   From my understanding, Reed is drawing on how the white queer political movement has connected itself to the struggles and oppressions of all queer people, including racial minorities as well. By doing this, it fails to both incorporate and differentiate between the experiences of white queer people and black queer people for example. Whiteness is seen as the normative default in society and acts largely as an invisible category. I don’t think that the injustices white queer people face can be attributed to their race, however, I do think a black queer person faces injustice on the premise of both their sexual identity and their race. Black bodies have historically been hypervisible and hypersexualized as they stood in opposition to their white counterparts and identity politics comes into play as one cannot separate their sexuality from their whiteness as this fosters and reinforces what Reed refers to as white queer politics of injury.

Citation:

Alison Reed, “The Whiter the Bread, the Quicker You’re Dead. Spectacular Absence and Post-Racialized Blackness in (White) Queer Theory.”

In Alison Reed’s essay, “The Whiter the Bread,” Reed says, “…fetishization of blackness produces its own logics of disavowal, reinforcing hegemonic understandings of race by articulating embodiment in post-racial terms. Whiteness, then, goes unacknowledged and unexamined, while uncritically reproducing multiculturalist logics that mainstream visibility can smooth over ongoing injustices, precisely by exploiting the hypervisibility of black bodies for a white queer politics of injury” (57).​ When Reed discusses the “embodiment in post-racial terms,” (57) Reed highlights the point that many think that racism and the race problem have been over since the civil rights movement. Reed discusses colorblind politics and how treating everyone the same, as in we all have the same experiences regardless of race, is a disadvantage. Systematic racism must be taken into account to have an inclusive and intersectional view of queer theory rather than just the white queer theory that has become so popular.

Reed also discusses “the hypervisibility of black bodies for a white queer politics of injury” (57). Reed is referring to the tokenization of black individuals in the queer movement. This tokenization leads to many thinking that the queer movement is inclusive of these individuals when in fact their concerns are often not addressed within queer politics. Further, the inclusion of black bodies adds in the illusion of white queer people not having racial privilege because they are in an injured state or have a sense of otherness. We can clearly see in countless examples how black bodies are tokenized. Black individuals, although seemingly present in the queer movement, are often not given a chance to voice their concerns and the injustices they may face. Rather than being colorblind to these injustices, it would add the queer movement to become more inclusive and unpack the layers of privilege that may be present.

 

Alison Reed “The Whiter the Bread, the Quicker You’re Dead. Spectacular Absence and Post-Racialized Blackness in (White) Queer Theory, in No Tea, No Shade. New Writings in Black Queer Studies , ed. E. Patrick Johnson (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 287-301.

In the essay “The Whiter the Bread…” Alison Reed argues that post-racial refers to a society that attempts to argue that it “sees past race” due to supposed social progress that has occurred. This notion fails to address the nuance with race relations in American society, implying that because there are so many ways in which bodies are discriminated against culturally and under the law due to race, it is impossible to pretend that everything has progressed to a point where race is irrelevant (the “colorblindness” that Reed mentions). The idea that everybody is viewed as equal requires a strong re-working of the system that facilitated (and still facilitates) racial violence and cannot come from a moral shift. This moral shift also skirts discussions of accountability in American society, making people think that “racism was so long ago” despite it still being prevalent in the US.

Regarding “the hypervisibility of black bodies for a white queer politics of injury” (Reed 57), I understand that as meaning the fetishization and intentional centering of black bodies in white queer rhetoric in order to distance oneself from whiteness. This can come off as self-serving because the ways in which people of color are provided opportunities and visibility in certain realms can come off as more of the white author distancing themselves from their white identity, or acting as if the connection to people of color “queers” their identity in any way.

This can also be present in the way in which queer theory is presented, where there are racialized politics regarding the way in which queer theory relates to society. Reed mentions this by saying that “queer theory at the same time spectacularly represents racialized embodiment as a way into its stylized origin narrative of trauma” (Reed 57). Because the way in which people experience trauma is intersectional, this notion also appears in the preexisting writings regarding queer theory.

SOURCE:

Johnson, E. Patrick, and Alison Reed. No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies. Duke University Press, 2016.