Tonia Hughes

Will and Jack in White
permanent pigment ink
20 x 24 in.

Society does not see whiteness, nor do they see heterosexuality, able-bodies, privileged class, maleness, or patriarchal power. Society sees “Other” bodies that do not neatly fit into the categories it has established as the “norm.” This is problematic.

Further, the whiteness we are “Othered” by functions to police, punish, and control our bodies thus creating groups of oppressed peoples, many differing groups of oppressed peoples ranging from various races, ethnicities, body types and sizes, sexualities, genders, classes, ages, and (dis)abilities. In the article “White Normality, or Racism against the Abnormal” by Alia Al-Saji, he states that: “…racism affects almost every aspect of our contemporary lives, managing our relations to our own bodies as well as to those of others, and indeed molding those bodies themselves. … the oppression not only of nonwhite races but also of whites who have been judged to be abnormal. … I would say that these elements of identity operate to racialize the subjects to whom they are attributed. By being more or less normalized or construed as abnormal, they position subjects differentially with respect to whiteness – as included in or excluded from white normality.” (2010,1)

© Tonia Hughes