“One
particular symptom of this wound of racism in white people is a perverse form
of ignorance. Being white is having the privilege of functioning in society
blind to the system into which one is born and from which one benefits. Part of
what it means to be “white” involves the internalization of an epistemology
that precludes self-transparency and genuine self-understanding of social
relations in regard to race . . . . To grow up as a white person in America is
a complex process that involves internalizing the assumption of the normativity
of one’s racial existence. This normativity of whiteness functions by being
invisible to white people. To use the term whiteness
is to displace the location of being white as unmarked and invisible and to
bring it to a place of visibility. Through naming whiteness, the raced social
location of being white comes into view, calling its normativity into
question.”
Laurie
M. Cassidy, ““Becoming Black with God”: Toward an Understanding of the Vocation
of the White Catholic Theologian in the United States,” in Interrupting
White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence, eds. Laurie M.
Cassidy and Alex Mikulich (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007) 147, 151.
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