· “Most demographers are predicting that by 2050, though the US Census Bureau says 2042, white European Americans will slip below majority status in the United States.” (Alcoff 9-10) This shows that the one day in the future that whites will be the minorities in the work which is a fear to many.
· “Whites lost five points of their market share in the overall population, dropping from 69 percent to 64 percent in just one decade. But even this number is misleading, since the category of “white” used by the 2010 Census included both North Africans and peoples of the Middle East,” (Alcoff 10) She is making the point that in one decade whites population has gone down by this much while they added two more groups under the classification of whites.
· “Holding a significant majority within a nation had granted whites the ability to believe in the legitimacy of a white-dominated government. This apparent justification of white domination will soon disappear.”(Alcoff 11) She is explaining about how we always tend to have a white president and how that can cause of an unjust way of making rules and regulations.
· “The result is that the extreme unabashed right wing dominates race-talk, while all others, including the left, the liberals, and the moderates, largely maintain race avoidance.” (Alcoff 11) She is talking about how people are trying to focus on other things in the world that make use different rather than our race.
· “Yet this sort of approach simply bolsters the avoidance of race-talk or of engaging with the critical question of the demographic shifts.”(Alcoff 12) She is talking about how the demographic shifts tie in the racial talks when it comes to groups and individuals in those groups.
· “Every white person in the Americas or Australia has some relationship to a family history of immigration, and the large majority of this immigration was economically motivated.” (Alcoff 13) She is highlighting a very important fact that everyone is forgetting, we were all immigrants at one point weather we were forced to come or came willingly. We all immigrated to this country.
· “Whiteness should not be reduced to racism or even racial privilege, even though these have been central aspects of what it means to be white.” (Alcoff 13) She is saying that the word can be used to highlight many other things.
· “To be tagged by identity terms like “Polish American” or “Lithuanian American” reminded such groups of histories many wanted to forget, especially if other Poles and Lithuanians had forced their families to leave.” (Alcoff 14) These terms are what cause a difference between us and other countries we put up this wall as if we are much better than others.
· “Instead, historians have tended to focus on the oppositional role of white workers – Teamsters, construction workers, carpenters – who violently confronted anti-war protesters, disregarded the plight of fellow Black and Brown workers, and cajoled labor's support for US military actions in Vietnam and Cambodia.” (Alcoff 19) She is explaining about the history of our wars are written to make it look like only the whites fought and won but the army had help form the blacks and browns.
· “The truth is that whiteness is not an illusion but a historically evolving identity-formation that is produced in diverse locations, while constantly undergoing reinterpretation and contestation.”(Alcoff 21) She is talking about how there is no such thing as whiteness but due to the history of the whites we end up calling that mindset and actions whiteness.
· “Because real estate remains the largest source of wealth for most Americans, and because of our liberal inheritance laws, white economic privilege vis-à-vis other groups who became middle class much more recently will continue for generations beyond these current and impending demographic shifts.” (Alcoff 24) She is explaining about how way back when only whites were paid well and were able to acquire land and properties which now it’s harder for a colored people to get these lands due to how expensive they are and this only benefits the whites that own them.
· “To approach the puzzle of what whiteness can become, or how much it can be revised in the future in a non vanguardist direction, we must come to understand all the things that whiteness has been.”(Alcoff 29) She is stating how we will have to face the fact that while whiteness is linking to some bad things in the past they also did some good things as well. In order to make things work we will have to look at the good things and not just for the whites we should do that for everyone.
· “The boundaries between racial communities are surely today becoming more porous than they have been in the past.”(Alcoff 29) She is talking about how our communities are divided racially and this divide has been increasing rather than decreasing which can lead to a bigger issue in the future.
· “In the divided areas still today, there are segregated public schools that teach children different accounts of the recent debacle, just as generations of children in the United States learned different versions of the Civil War depending on whether they happened to live north or south of the Mason Dixon line.”(Alcoff 32) She is highlighting that is different areas of country we are teaching the youth history in a made up way. We need the government to control the educational standards and keep it strictly to the truth.
· “Social identities, then, are sometimes correlated to the systems of collective meaning we happen to be immersed within, in which emotion-laden memories, perceptual attunements, and intelligible reasons operate within a shared communal organization that affects our practices of interpretation and judgment, as well as our affective responses (Markus and Moya 2010).” (Alcoff 40) She takes a quote that really helps understand how our identity is more than just a label.
· “Two interesting developments have emerged, one in regard to the science debates and another in regard to the social definitions of race.” (Alcoff 44) She is talking about how the definition of race is evolving over time and we are learning more about this word.
· “The increasingly dramatic class divide we see charted for us in the daily business reports shows reduced wages for whiteness, and even the white poor are denied a safety net of any kind.” (Alcoff 48) She is telling us about how the whites are being held to the same standard as the rest of people in their class.
· “To talk about white identities in any full and meaningful sense requires that we go beyond the structural correlations of power and resources that accrue differentially across groups to consider as well the subtle and deep ways that individuals are formed.” (Alcoff 52) She is explaining about how for us to understand the idea of whiteness we will have to learn almost every detail of what us makes unique.
· “If the category of “whiteness” had not come along, more specific and specifically locatable ethnic and national lineages might have remained.” (Alcoff 63) She is talking about is people did not point finger at the whiteness than they would find something else to blame for the past and their current situations.
· “Concepts such as whiteness refers to social kinds, bringing into play both empirical and pragmatic considerations” (Alcoff 72) She is explaining about how the concept of whiteness came into place and what it took for it come alive.
· “The context of use for whiteness has changed to such an extent that white identity can be a disadvantage in some specific situations, when a white person is a minority among other workers or other students with roughly comparable status in the workforce or classroom even though, of course, the reality of white dominance in the larger society always confers some positive status differential.” (Alcoff 74) She is explaining things have changed in society so that concept of being white can be negative when the person is individually compared to others as a minority, but that in a larger group in general being white still gives sone dominant status.
· “The overall lesson here is that how whiteness is lived, experiences, and understood is not a natural, unchangeable phenomenon.” (Alcoff 75) She wants us to see the only way you can truly understand how whiteness is lived is through the experiences.
· “We have been throwing the term racism around with less care than we should thus far. The term gets used in widely different ways in the media, in the academy, and in everyday speech, from a reference to individual prejudice or affect all the way to a focus on institutional outcomes.” (Alcoff 76) Basically we perceive everything as racism even when it’s not. She is implying we should not be so quick to use the term racism.
· “By acknowledging racism's diversity and fluidity, we can be more attentive to its power to morph into new versions.” (Alcoff 79) She is highlighting how is we keep the racism in mind and learn why it is the way it is we can work to mold it into something else that might help our society in the long run.
· “For that is what the civil rights activists were: revolutionaries. No other word can capture the spirit of people willing to risk everything, including their lives, to force change in the Old South, from the bottom up.” (Alcoff 87) I agree with Alcoff, the civil rights activists were revolutionaries because of their pursuit to fight to free slavery. This was one of many good act performed by them.
· “As a result, she opines, the white person who enters a space like Harlem “feels hated; he knows he is hateful.” (Alcoff 89) She is stating if a white person were to enter Harlem they would feet hatred from most of the people, due to majority of the population in Harlem is African Americans.
· “There is no doubt that the reason the topic of whiteness and white identity rarely comes up is because of a fear it will lead to talk of blame and shame.” (Alcoff 90) She is explaining that these two topics are not really talked about due to the fact it will lead to blame and shame.
· “People of color and white liberals are charged with overinflating the problem of racism motivated by their own paranoia, resentments, and fixation on the past.” (Alcoff 94) She is explaining how people are too focused on the past versus turning a new leaf and starting over. She thinks if people would not be so fixated on the past and resenting history then racism would not be a huge issue as it is today.
· “Whites remain less likely than any other racial group in the US to marry outside their race, and yet the numbers of white exogamous unions are steadily rising so that, by 2050, it is projected that 10 percent of whites will marry people from other races.” (Alcoff 108) This is interesting, I never actually thought about the fact most White people marry within their race. However, now that I think about it I have to agree with Alcoff. I am curious to see if by 2050 the 10% projection comes true.
· “The struggle for the future of the country and, indeed, the world is then a fight between racial groups.” (Alcoff 117) I think she makes a great point, the future of our country is dependent on how well society can cope with each other.
· “The solution will not be found in a flaccid universal humanism, nor in a pursuit of white redemption, nor in a call to race-transcendent vision of class struggle. Rather, the solution will be found in facing the truths about who we are, how we got here, and then developing an offensive strategy for achieving a future in which we can find a place.” (Alcoff 129) I agree with her the solution can only be found if we own the truth about who we are, and how we got here and come up with a strategy to achieve a successful future.
Part 2
The notion of “race” is generating the most prejudice in relationship between individuals and the main reason of their clashes. Racism has two main functions: the oppression of the racisms [people of color], and oppression that most people recognize, but also the simultaneous rise of whites. A race can be in a game, even if it is disavowed, because during modern times it was necessary to structure relations between Europeans and non-Europeans, which frequently, however not at all times, amount to whiteness. Prejudice cannot be "anti-white" as it does not define feelings of hostility or aggression; it is not synonymous with prejudgment.
Racism is systemic. Although this is manifested in the individual approach and behavior, it is not formed by them. The "whiteness" is a social construct that seeks specific advantages. In the US, whites opt for better jobs, enjoy more opportunities and get rid of being persecuted for their physical appearance or their culture (Alcoff). Although these structural advantages remain, the target of the skin continues to be the subject of heated debates, as seen during the electoral campaign. All racial groups have a biological originality, special complexes of physical characteristics that distinguish one from another. These features do not have no relation to the level of intelligence, the ability to perceive information, to create cultural values. Thus, the dissimilarity does not at all mean disparities
To conclude, whiteness must not be decreased to discrimination or although racial opportunity, though these have been fundamental features of what it belongs to be whiteness. Not any social identity can be explained through a single course through every probable background, and although white identity establishes a social drawback in some circumstances.