Whiteness
Consider what it means to be White.
Whitney Dow Projects
Supplementary material for September 1st - A Conversation About Being White
"Whiteness Project is an interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as white, or partially white, understand and experience their race."
Whiteness Project’s first installment, Inside the White/Caucasian Box, is a collection of 21 interviews filmed in Buffalo, NY, in July 2014 and released in October 2014. The latest installment, Intersection of I, is a collection of 23 interviews filmed in Dallas, Texas, in July 2015 and released in April 2016. This second installment features a cross-section of Millennials, ages 15-27, who share their views about race and identity. The project is ongoing.
Click on the image to begin watching. Toggle between the installments (Dallas vs. Buffalo) using the box at the project's top left titled "Series". (The site is a bit slow when it first loads but navigation is quicker after that.)
Watch a CBS discussion with Whitney Dow (5:10), creator of the Whiteness Project, and check out a Guardian article, "The Whiteness Project will make you wince..." , both from 2014 when the initial (Buffalo) installment was aired on PBS/POV.
Whitney Dow (1961 - ) is a documentary filmmaker, producer, and director dedicated to making films about race and identity and has been doing so for close to 20 years. He is best known for Two Towns of Jasper (co-directed by Marco Williams) a film about the murder of a black man committed by three white men in Jasper, Texas, which received a George Foster Peabody Award and an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award.
According to the 2010 Census, 77% of Americans identify as “white.” Despite this fact, white Americans generally think of “race” as primarily pertaining to racial and ethnic minorities. By surveying and interviewing white participants from three parts of the country, Facing Whiteness explores the ways that a diverse group of white Americans understand their own racial and ethnic identities. A collaboration with filmmaker Whitney Dow, this interdisciplinary project between the social sciences and humanities seeks to engage in an open discussion about whiteness in America, motivated by the idea that "not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced" (James Baldwin).
"Why are so many poor and working-class white Americans endorsing policies that are literally killing them?
This is the core question addressed in Jonathan M. Metzl's book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland.
The question, and Metzl's book, came up in our June 23 conversation on Racial Healthcare Disparities.
Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University and director of its Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. He is the author of several books and a prominent expert on gun violence and mental illness. He hails from Kansas City, Missouri, and lives in Nashville, Tennessee
Above, Jonathan Metzl on Amanpour and Company (March 29, 2019) introducing his book and its conclusions (15:51). Right, a review of the book from Daily Kos (September 10, 2019).
Ralph Friedin shares his experience of 'driving while white'.
Driving While White modified.pdf