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Essay / Understanding Whiteness: Its Impact on Race...
Whiteness is a term that has been discussed throughout history and by academic authors. Whiteness is defined in several ways, according to Kress: “the omnipresent non-presence, its invisibility.” Whiteness sometimes seems to be everywhere and nowhere, even present throughout American history, and yet it has no history of its own. Whiteness as a historically rooted cultural practice is then enacted at the unconscious level. Knowledge created from the perspective of whiteness is thus transformed into “common sense,” while practices or behaviors adopted based on the unspoken norms of whiteness become the only acceptable way of being” (Kress, 2008, p. 43). By this definition, for example, whiteness has become hegemony. I define it as racial ideologies that have been established throughout history. This formed racial segregation between whites and non-whites, and led to discrimination and injustice. White privilege has also been a factor in whiteness; it is privilege that white people get better benefits. In today's society, media has become a very important factor in everyone's life. We communicate with media, with memes, videos, images and animated gifs to create meaning. We especially see ideals of whiteness in sports. Through memes, we stereotype certain racial groups like Latinos as lazy or African Americans as weak or uneducated. Memes show athletes as less strong than white athletes. In today's society we have what is called colorblind racism, meaning that "race does not shape a person's experience or life changes, but racial inequality remains the difference culture between different groups” (Dickerson, 2015, p. 4). So even today, there are racial inequalities, and whiteness continues to shape social norms, and the media shows racism and inequality. But in my opinion racism is sometimes unconscious because we are trying to become a more society