The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current, March 03, 1997, Page 2, Image 2
■ But one academic movement says a posi tive white identity is impossible. RQJSELLE, N.J. (AP) -r Jeff Hitchcock thought he was pretty knowledgeable about living in a multicultural society. After all, the 45-year-old psycholo gist dealt with race issues both in his career as a diversity consultant, con ducting cultural sensitivity workshops for companies, and in his interracial marriage to a black woman. _But Hitchcock was unprepared when an interview subject, discussing what people of various cultures need to do to get along in a multicultural world, said that white people needed to be more aware of their whiteness. “I had been half-listening, but when he said that, it just struck me,” Hitchcock says. “1 thought, 'What is he talking about?’ because I never re ally thought of myself as having a ra cial identity as a white person. “Then I realized that if I was go ing to do this kind of work, I really needed to think about it.” In April 1995, Hitchcock started the Center for the Study of White American Culture to carry out that task. Operating out of a small office in his Roselle home, the center has an Internet site and a newsletter. Last year I ; ._ it sponsored a conference that brought together about 50 people from around the country to discuss the issue. Non-racist models “The only models we have for dis cussing whiteness are coming out of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Na tion, and that’s not right,” Hitchcock says. “We have to examinevwhat it means to be white, but in a non-rac ist, non-supremacist way.” The organization’s goal is to get white people to talk about and recog nize themselves as a distinct cultural and racial group and to examine what role that group plays in the larger American society. Hitchcock says many whites find it difficult to talk about themselves in terms of race, but sees it as vital if race relations are to improve. “Whites think of themselves as the norm in America and race as some thing people of color have. We see ourselves as plain Americans, and we claim center stage for ourselves,” Hitchcock says. Hitchcock is not alone. There’s a growing interest at colleges and uni versities in taking a critical look at white culture. While minority scholars have ex amined the issue for years, main stream academic interest is relatively new, says David Roediger, chairman of the American studies department at the University of Minnesota. “It was always easy to dismiss stud ies of whiteness from writers of color,” Roediger says. “But with the increased diversity in this society, white privi lege is coming under attack. White normalcy is being challenged.” Removing racial myths Benjamin Bowser, a sociologist at the California State University at Hay ward, says it’s a myth that all Euro pean immigrants eagerly assimilated into the American ideal of rugged in dividualism. Belieying that myth, most whites cannot relate to immi grants of color who seem more reluc tant to assimilate and let go of where they came from, he says. “When whites study their history, they see their roots are different from what they are led to believe,” Bowser says. “They understand that they were forced to give up their cultures, their languages, their traditions to fit into what a dominant English minority considered American culture,” he says. “Studying it opens emotional traumas, but whites who do it become aware of their similarities to other communities.” Hitchcock hopes studying the is sues will help whites gain a positive self-identity. “Many whites feel they have no culture, or they feel ashamed to be white because they think it’s only about oppression,” he says. ‘That shouldn’t be the case. “People should feel both pride and II UNFORTUNATELY THIS IS WHERE PEOPLE ARE PUTTING TOO MANY RETIREMENT DOLLARS. Every year, a lot of people make a huge mistake on their taxes. 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' CREF certificate* are distributed by TIAA-CREF Individual and Institutional Services. Inc. For more complete information, including charges and expenses, call I 800 842-2735, extension 5509, for a current CREF prospectus. Read the prospectus carefully before you invest or send money. Date of first use: 2/97. 66 We have to examine what it means to be white, but in a non-racist, non-supremacist way.” Jeff Hitchcock psychologist i . . ^ shame because all cultures have good and bad points. We’re not interested in building up the white culture, but we’re not going to tear it down either.” Positive white identity? Another school of thought among some academics, known as the New Abolitionist movement, takes a more negative view. “There is no possibility of a posi tive white identity,” says Noel Ignatiev, a lecturer at Harvard and an editor for Race lYaitor, the journal of the New Abolitionists. “There may be positives to various European ethnic identities, but white ness is purely about the maintenance of privilege. “Working-class people accept the benefits of being white over the ben efits of a better work situation. Instead of working with others in the same position, they say, ‘However bad we’ve got it, at least we’re white.*” Others see no value to studying whiteness. They see it as part of an mhealthy obsession with difference hat ignores the shared culture of America. “Under the multiculturalism push, we are putting ourselves into little x)xes. We are driving lines into our culture,” says David Murray, a re searcher at a statistical research foun dation in Washington, D.C. “There are no real biological ra cial differences. Social class has more consequences than race per se. I’m sick of what we in the counterculture tiave done to this country by empha sizing differences.” Those who are studying whiteness call that viewpoint naive. “Race is the most controversial is sue in this society, and we need to ad dress it,” Bowser says. “Until we can bring all players to the table, we won’t be able to resolve it.” Monkeys reproduced from cloned embryos Scientists say there are now fewer barriers to cloning humans. WASHINGTON (AP)—Scientists in Oregon have produced monkeys from cloned embryos, marking the 1 first time a species closely related to humans has been cloned. The scientists used a technique similar to the one used by Scottish re searchers last week to clone a sheep, The Washington Post reported in Sun- 1 day editions. The Oregon success adds to a 1 growing body of evidence that there are no insurmountable biological bar riers to creating multiple copies of a 1 human being, the Post reported. 1 “It demands that we take seriously 1 the issue of human cloning,” Arthur 1 Caplan, a bioethicist at the University ■ of Pennsylvania, told the Post. But he said cloning is still far too expensive and results in too many ab normal embryos to be practical for humans, notwithstanding the public outcry over prospects of human clon ing. “You’re probably heading down the path to criminal arrest, not the Nobel Prize, if you try this in people,” Caplan said. The Post said two Oregon monkeys 3om in August were cloned from cells aken from embryos, not an adult mon cey — a crucial difference between hem and Dolly, the sheep cloned by Scottish researchers from ah adult sheep. The cloned monkeys thus are not genetically identical to any adult mon cey. The Post said lead researcher Don Wolf, a senior scientist at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center in Beaverton and director of the human n vitro fertilization laboratory at Or egon Health Sciences University in Portland, said researchers do not plan o produce clones from adult monkeys. “This is really an effort to see if ve can create genetically identical nonkeys for research,” he said. He explained that fewer carbon-copy re search animals would be needed in irug experiments, for example, be cause their sameness would eliminate nuch of the genetic differences that eonfound such experiments. The two monkeys cloned in Or egon are not identical to each other because they were taken from differ ent embryos. But researchers told the Post the technique could be used to create eight [>r more identical monkeys from a single embryo, and that further ad vances could lead to the ability to make elones of adults as well. Questions? Comments? 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