ETST 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: George Lipsitz, White Flight, Urban Renewal
Document Summary
Mixed-up-as-usual everyday existence = supposedly normative social disorder. Detroit"s black communities ravaged by urban renewal devastated by deindustrialization. Detroit abandoned by post wwii white flight to segregated suburbs. Whiteness: three theories: wages of whiteness, whiteness as property, possessive investment in whiteness. Du bois argues that even when white workers received a low wage, they were compensated by a public and psychological wage in the form of a higher social status and greater social gains. Cheryl harris argues that the legacy of slavery, indian land seizure established and protected an actual property interest in whiteness itself within u. s. jurisprudence. Became a vested interest, a form of property that allocated public, private benefits, entitlements protected by the law. Bestowed the legal right to exclude non-white others. Can be passively experienced as an aspect of identity, or actively deployed as a resource to exercise power, maintain control at all social, political, and institutional level.