Revealing whiteness to the whites

[eva_rajzman]

How paradoxal is it that white people have created the structures of whiteness and cannot even see it?
“Look, a white!” is a gift because it allows a better perception of reality, unveiling the invisibility of whiteness to the whites. I like the wording “invitation to see more” (Yancy, 10), it gives white people the opportunity to understand what their identity represents in a world in which whiteness is omnipresent for everyone but for them. Becoming aware of the privilege and oppression system that they do not encounter in their existence but actively participate in maintaining. An invitation to a Black counter-gaze is an invitation to make a step out of ignorance. I think this is what Baldwin and Yancy mean when using the word “innocence”, implicitly ignorance.
“Look a white!” is a tentative to understand the narrative from the other side, be aware of the reality, deconstructing the one that we, white people, have lived in since childhood socialization and that is perpetuated out of ignorance.
It also speaks to the idea of white normativity, as Sara Ahmed writes, “we don’t see those bodies as white bodies. We just see them as bodies” (Yancy, 9). White people are unaware that they also have a colour, the colour of privilege. I think the Kominas are trying to convey this idea of normativity by starting the video with Maher Khalil’s story, pointed out by whites because of his colour and then acting as white guys doing normal insignificant things to show the contrast of the realities they live in.

The analogy with misogyny can be found in the way that many men would say that they consider women as their equal, that they are “gender blind” in a hiring process, for example. They consider themselves as allies, but they don’t see that they participate in the reproduction of the structural hierarchy when pointing out that they just upgraded a woman to a good position, for example . It goes with the “I have black friends” type of statement, those are a veil to the reality, a bandaid on a very deep cut. It is, however, for many people easier to stay “blind” to a system of oppression they themselves created and in which they are the prinpical actors because they fear being pointed out and losing their privileges. Reversing the script is also a way of introducing “those oppressed” in the equation and value their voices, giving them agency in the narrative.