The danger of the default american

Frankenberg writes on the invisibility (and emerging visibility) of whiteness in America. She claims whiteness has at times been the ultimate exclamation of NOT being "the other." I think this is the underlying message that Colbert pokes fun at when claiming to not see race, and to be the default American. As we've noted before in this class, race is a social construct. While socially created, it still has massive, real-world effects. Race is tangled with stereotypes, and as Frankenberg puts it: "Stereotypes would be banal were they not so lethal, so apt to wound physically, emotionally, and spiritually." Denying white racial identity is essentially denying a part in this system.

Frankenberg also touches on the status aspect that is tied with whiteness. "White" is often seen as privileged, educated, and well off in general. I have noticed that today when people are pointing out "whiteness" it often has to do with privilege and education. This is a dangerous stereotype, as it poses white as educated and the other as not. In the past, scholars like William Julius Wilson and Oscar Lewis, have put forth the idea of a "culture of poverty," to explain differing success rates amongst racial groups like Blacks and Latinos. These theories claim that different cultures have a different set of values that keep people in poverty. These theories have had very harsh critiques (I personally think they are crap as well), but it seems to me that this idea of whiteness is sort of the other side of the coin. Does society portray white culture as a "culture of wealth," explaining their relative success? I'm interested in whether or not others have observed this, and what they think the consequences of this could be.