Whiteness in the Trump Era
How Donald Trump aided me in the recognition of my whiteness.
Growing up as a white kid in a heavily hispanic community, I have always felt painfully aware of my whiteness. My nickname throughout grade school was “white girl”, I was often made fun of for my paleness and inability to roll my R’s. As I got older the focus on whiteness became more hostile, and throughout my middle and high school years, when Barrack Obama was president, issues of race and privilege became more prominent. Often times I felt attacked when people spoke about white people as privileged, because how could I, a white kid from a lower class family, be more privileged than those making fun of me?
It was not until the Trump campaign had taken off that I started to recognize whiteness in America. Donald Trumps well documented overall aversion to people of color specifically highlighted the whiteness in America, and the whiteness of America. Trump led a campaign based on the idea that he was standing up for the underrepresented in America, people who had lost their say and their voice, and people who therefore lost their livelihood during Barrack Obama’s presidency, making a direct point to push these accusations onto Obama. In actuality, these people Trump was talking about had not lost their rights or their voice, but more people had gained their own voice in America. In her piece The Phenomenology of Whiteness, Sara Ahmed states “Colonialism makes the world ‘white’, which is of course a world ‘ready’ for certain kinds of bodies, as a world that puts certain objects within their reach. Bodies remember such histories, even when we forget them.” Ahmed explains that white bodies have become a norm in America, and anything that is not a white body either becomes invisible or very noticeable. Whiteness becomes habitual, and is lived out and reinforced through society. White people became so used to being the norm, they felt left out when someone else got a chance to participate.
I quickly learned that being against whiteness is nothing to take personally, and be anti-whiteness is opposing the institutionalized racism that runs so rampant in America. Whiteness is not simply white people, its the overall message that reinforces hegemonic biases, including biases on class, gender, race, sexuality, religion, and more. It is essential to acknowledge whiteness and the biases that it includes.
Living in diverse southern California I was sheltered to many of the atrocities that went on due to race, and how biased people can actually be.The Trump campaign and presidency thus far has opened my eyes to how whiteness can penetrate so many lives through simple measures. While horrible acts of racism, sexism, and hate make the news and their individual impact, the widespread smaller attacks that are less noticed at the national level create an impact as well. Some of the seemingly minuscule things that Trump has said reinforces some of the biggest inequalities that exist in modern day society. When you live as part of the whiteness, you do not realize how all of the little things add up.
So thank you, Donald Trump. You finally accomplished something.
