{"id":41620,"date":"2019-02-18T10:46:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T14:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=41620"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:46:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T14:46:26","slug":"whiteness-as-default-in-a-majority-minority-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2019\/02\/whiteness-as-default-in-a-majority-minority-nation.html","title":{"rendered":"Whiteness as Default in a Majority Minority Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Sparks flew last week when the March 2019 edition of Esquire was released. \u201cAn American Boy<\/a>,\u201d the headline on the cover reads. \u201cWhat it\u2019s like to grow up white, middle class, and male in the era of social media, school shootings, toxic masculinity, #MeToo, and a divided country,\u201d the byline adds. The cover features an image of a white teenage boy sitting on a bed putting on his sneakers, staring into the camera.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The article itself is uninspiring. The article\u2019s subject doesn\u2019t have that much to say. He\u2019s not terribly politically interested. He\u2019s no David Hogg<\/a>. Maybe that was the point, but it doesn\u2019t make for particularly interesting reading. This is a story we know\u2014a white boy in the Midwest who likes to hunt, hang out with his girlfriend, and play video games.<\/p>\n

My issue here is with the framing.<\/p>\n

While the cover\u2019s byline makes it clear that the article is only ever intended to be about white boys, the headline does not make this distinction. \u201cAn American Boy,\u201d it declares. One wonders. Would Esquire have given the same title to a profile of a black teen, or a Hispanic teen? This article, after all, isn\u2019t really about what it\u2019s like to be an American boy. It\u2019s about what it\u2019s like to be a particular<\/em> type<\/em> of American boy\u2014a white, semi-rural Midwestern one.<\/p>\n

Whiteness is frequently treated as some sort of default.\u00a0I\u2019m reminded of the American Girl dolls I grew up with. Each doll was placed in a different historical period. The only black doll was an escaped slave set during the Civil War. The Revolutionary War doll was white; the pioneer doll was white; the Victorian era doll was white; the Depression era doll was white; the WWII doll was white. To be an American girl was to be white\u2014unless one lived in a brief historical moment when being non-white was part of the story. (This is also why black people disappear from U.S. history textbooks between Reconstruction and the rise of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s.)<\/p>\n

(I am not forgetting Josefina. Pleasant Company did do some things well. Josefina familiarized a generation of girls with long history of Hispanic peoples living within what are now the boundaries of the United States\u2014and opened their eyes to the fact that portions of the United States were once part of Mexico. I am also not anti-Addy. I am simply making a point that all the generic<\/em> historical moments got white<\/em> dolls. Because generic American girls are white.)<\/p>\n

The generic American boy is white. Of course<\/em> he is. As with American Girl dolls, white is treated as the default. An American boy<\/em>\u00a0is by default white. But is he really?<\/p>\n

Fewer than 50% of children born in the U.S. today are white. As of 2017, 51% of children overall were white, while 49% of children under 5 were white.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since its founding, the United States has always been made up of different peoples. A hundred years ago, Anglo-Saxon Protestants were treated as the default; Catholic immigrants and immigrants from eastern and southern Europe were othered and viewed as less than American. Today, these groups have attained whiteness. This is not the case, however, for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans. As a result, the new default is a generic whiteness.<\/p>\n

The black teen living in Milwaukee is just as much an American boy<\/em> as the white suburban subject of Esquire\u2019s story. So, too, is the Hispanic teen living in Chicago; the Hmong teen living in Minneapolis; and the Native American boy living in Menominee. An article following the lives of these five teenage boys would have given us a far more rounded picture of the life of an American boy in our composite nation, without even broadening the geographic scope.<\/p>\n

Of course, the framing issue I\u2019m having could also have been fixed by changing the article\u2019s title. This story was never about the life of teenage boys in America, and it wasn\u2019t intended as such. It was always about the life of a specific type of white, middle class American boy. \u201cGrowing Up White and Male in Middle America\u201d would have been a far more accurate title. Or perhaps, shorter and more in the tone of the article, \u201cAge of Confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have a <\/b>Patreon<\/b><\/a>! Please support my writing!\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The black teen living in Milwaukee is just as much an American boy as the white suburban subject of Esquire’s story. So, too, is the Hispanic teen living in Chicago, and the Hmong teen living in Minneapolis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":41665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feminism","category-christian-patriarchy","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nWhiteness as Default in a Majority Minority Nation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The black teen living in Milwaukee is just as much an American boy as the white suburban subject of Esquire's story. 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