© koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2021 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004444836_019 CHAPTER 19 Discourse and Whiteness Jenna Cushing-Leubner Related Entries: Baldwin, James; Brokennes; Colorblindness; Guilt; Privilege; Shame … To know that race itself, and whiteness in particular, is a parlor trick of epic proportion does little to pull the rug out from under its life and death impacts. As James Baldwin notes in his essay “On being ‘white,’ and other lies…,” being white is Absolutely, a moral choice (for there are no white people) [yet people socialized into whiteness] have brought humanity to the edge of extinc- tion: because they think they are white. Because they think they are white, they do not dare confront the ravage and the lie of their history. Because they think they are white, they cannot allow themselves to be tormented by the suspicion that all men are brothers. Because they think they are white, they are looking for, or bombing into existence, stable populations, cheerful natives and cheap labor. Because they think they are white, they believe, as even no child believes, in the dream of safety. Because they think they are white, however vociferous they may be and however multitudinous, they are as speechless as Lot’s wife – looking backward, changed into a pillar of salt. (Baldwin, 1984, as cited in Roediger, 2010, p. 180) As a social construct, whiteness is both imagined and unstable. It is formed out of and actively reconstitutes a social contract of both tacit and overt agree- ment with a distortion of power (Mills, 2014). It is a shapeshifter, defining itself through combinations of social factors that change depending on geopoliti- cal and sociopolitical contexts (Sen & Wasow, 2017) and expand at points of particular social and political pressure (Painter, 2010) in order to maintain its uneven and coercive control over resources and governance. Though it is trans- literated into biocultural traits (e.g., phenotypes, languages, religious signifi- ers), whiteness is ideological and is constructed and adhered to discursively. For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV