Johanna C. Luttrell - 25 July

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This book interrogates white responses to black-led movements for racial justice. Such responses are sites of clarity regarding white identity , because whiteness shows itself not only in white peoples self-regarding feelings but more so in dialogic responses to public, democratic social movements and discourse. Yet, my purpose here is not to define whiteness for its own sake but to clear the weeds of white peoples obstacles to respecting black-led social movements like Black Lives Matter (BLM). I probe reactions which often prevent white people from, according to black activists, the full range of human emotion and expression, including joy , anger , mourning , and political action .

My ultimate objective is not to indicate the ways in which white people might be racist and so deserve moral condemnation. Even though a white publics responses to black-led social movements can indeed be racist, such an approach that merely dwells upon the state of white peoples souls is unhelpful to the aims of the social movements in the first place. Instead, the aim is constructive: a philosophical self-reflection on the ways in which white reactions to BLM stand in the way of the movements important work. The hope is that coming to terms with our own reactions is a step toward cultivating better ones, responses that acknowledge human dignity , and the richness of varied forms of human expression. As such, the books aim is not to interpret BLM . That work is being done by scholars and activists whose positionality and commitment allow them insight which, as a white author, I do not and need not, possess.

Again, this work is an attempt to understand whiteness communally and individually, as seen phenomenologically in white responses to black-led social movements . It promotes white self-reflection for the purposes of political solidarity . That said, qua capacity in my own raced self, I have been trained over a lifetime not to see whiteness , its origins, effects, or agents. James Baldwin writes that white people in the United States are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.

Yet knowledge and ignorance are not simple. The ways in which I do and do not know whiteness are complex tracings of conscious and unconscious play of ignorance and awareness. It is possible that this kind of knowledge is akin to the way Plato speaks about learning, as anamnesis a remembering of what has been forgotten. Whiteness could in this sense be a process of un-learning, a mandated forgetting . Power and interests promote forgetting and make certain processes; in this case, the construction of whiteness , invisible to certain people, and hyper-visible to others. In a society structured by white supremacy , white peoples power depends on forgetting and people of colors survival depends upon remembering . Writing, then, can be a form of learning, in the Platonic sense of excavation. That is, the act of writing itself can be a way of trying to understand, remembering what one is encouraged to forget, because it is an active participation in knowledges construction. Regarding discussions on racial justice and social movements , I have felt the need to do more than just be a consumer of other peoples observations; I have found myself needing to participate in knowledges construction. I wrote this book because I think it is important that white people in the United States respect BLM , and I address some of their objections philosophically. I did not write this book because, either in my capacity as a philosopher or a white person, I am more an expert on the topic than people of color whose survival depends, in many ways, on their perceptivity to whiteness .

In the process of writing, I would like to thank the interdisciplinary faculty reading group at University of Houston for their early, very helpful comments, especially Rachel Afi Quinn and Eesha Pandit ; the Political Theory reading group at the University of Houston ; the participants of the 2017 California Roundtable on the Philosophy of Race group for their thorough feedback; Ronald Sundstrom for his early comments on a chapters working draft; Naomi Zack for her feedback and encouragement; my colleagues at the Hobby School of Public Affairs for the academic freedom and initiative they inspire. Thanks to Thibaud, who gave me confidence that this book was possible and who allowed me to finish the book while he took care of our new baby. This book is dedicated to the activists in Houston , Texas, who taught me so much about social commitment, radical love , and the revolutionary South. May the book be in some small way a help, or at least not a hindrance, to your work. I am grateful for my readers, support system, and activist community; any distortions or misrepresentations are entirely my own.