The white lens is that through which white Americans see the world. It is like a pair of glasses nearly all of them wear. It keeps them from seeing the world as it is, allowing them to feel comfortable with their privileged position in it. It is something that Nezua the Unapologetic Mexican writes about at length.
Nezua says American society is like a train passing through a land full of dead bodies. When white people, or anyone with a white lens, looks out the window they do not see the bodies – just beautiful countryside. Those without a white lens see the dead bodies.
You do not have to be white to wear a white lens: it comes as part of the brainwashing you get from school and television in America – no matter what your colour. It makes you to look at the world in a way that suits white rule, not you:
- It makes you see white as right and people of colour as no good.
- It makes you seek personal success within a racist society as it stands.
- It makes you give up parts of yourself, like your culture and history, without looking back.
If you have ever looked at your face and thought your nose was too wide, your lips too big, your skin too dark or your hair no good, you were most likely looking at yourself through a white lens.
Very few white people even notice the white lens – they think they are seeing the world as it is and not in some twisted form.
Most people of colour, on the other hand, notice that something is not quite right, though it may take them years to notice it and years more to undo its damaging effects. Some never notice the lens, like Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas and Michelle Malkin.
The white lens accounts for:
- Why whites can be racist without even knowing it.
- Why whites do not see their own race, just that of others.
- Why whites think people of colour are “oversensitive”.
- Why Don Imus called the women basketball players at Rutgers “nappy-headed hoes” – because that is how they look through the white lens.
- Why passing for white does not work for people of colour in the long run – because they are not seeing or being their true selves, even if they seem “successful”.
Nezua says he has nothing against whites – just the white lens. That allows him to see whites as brainwashed innocents.
I like how the white lens ties together much of what I have been writing about lately: the delusional whiteness of Barbara Bush, the poor reading skills of Roissy, the single story, the just world doctrine, how whites are not neutral like they think, etc.
But I do not completely agree with Nezua: I think whites do see the dead bodies out of the corner of their eye. Because their benevolent cluelessness often seems to be an act.
See also:
- The Unapologetic Mexican: The White Lens
- La Lente Blanca Entries – his series on the white lens, some of it excellent, particularly his post about growing up half-Mexican in white suburbia and Don Imus.
Because this idea strikes at one of the main themes of this blog, it is a portal into a good share of it:
- white gaze – same idea but in a form that is too weak
- Some examples of the white lens in action:
- affecting white people:
- affecting people of colour (internalized racism):
- What the white lens does not seem to account for:
- white people – general topics:
Abagond 
Good post. They don’t care to see the dead bodies because they don’t have to….yet.
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Why passing for white or just acting white does not work for people of colour in the long run – because they are not seeing or being their true selves, even if they seem “successful”.
Sorry if I missed the post, but is there one where you describe the way people of color are supposed to act so we can be considered “our true selves”?
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Not sure if that comment was sarcastic, rhetorical or what, so I will simply take it at face value: No one can tell you how to act to be yourself. That is something only you can know.
To take a simple example: people often judge us by the kind of music we listen to. If you listen to a particular kind of music not because you truly love it but just to fit in, to avoid being asked certain questions, then you are not being yourself.
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As usual, an excellent post.
One example of the White lens is claiming that Blacks are racist for voting for Obama, while completely ignoring that many Whites voted against Obama because he is Black (or half-Black)!! See this often when right wingers post letters on webzines.
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As far as how people of color are “supposed” to act, I’d say with self-acceptance.
Many in my family see the world through the white lens and it translates to a view of self-hatred at worst, self-denial at best.
How can you be healthy in mind and heart when you reject how the world sees and defines you, when you reject what you are?
My cousin told me that she wouldn’t see a black doctor because she feels they are inferior to white ones. I looked at her brown skin, the same color as my own and felt her statement was simply sad. She was saying she feels that she is inferior too.
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Good examples. Thanks.
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Excellent post, Aba
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Great post, but I’m too (like other commenters seem to be) am stuck on this whole notion of “acting white”. I would agree that trying to pass for white (which I do not believe you have to be a specific shade to attempt) is definitely dangerous, and a sign that one isn’t truly comfortable in their skin, but acting white? Can one really act a certain ethnicity or a race?
I mean saying someone is acting white, say for speaking a certain way or getting themselves educated (which usually seems to be the requirements for a Black person to be branded as such) is fairly ignorant in my opinion. No one race has a certain way of behaving pigeonholed. Just because I am Black doesn’t mean I have to speak Ebonics, listen to hip-hop and act in stereotypically “black” behaviour modes. On the other hand I shouldn’t do things just to simply appease whitey either.
I’ve seen far too many Black people “act black” that still in the end hate themselves. I worked with a girl who “acted black” by all accounts, yet she was still stuck on the fact she had to relax what she referred to as her “nigger hair” to get it to behave. I also went to a Black hair stylist who worked out of her house who proclaimed to hate white people. When I went to use her bathroom I was shocked to see a large bottle of skin lightening body wash on the ledge of her bathtub.
As I looked around her apartment I realized that in every photo she had around her home of herself she was a different shade. Sure she was all “f*** whitey” but I believe that deep down this surface facade was just an act to hide the fact that she was resentful of not having been born white.
IDK, maybe I’m completely off but I really hate this worldview that dictates races act a specific way. I don’t think it actually is possible to do. Now POC trying to pass is another story. Acting and passing are not one and the same IMO.
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Good point. I pulled “acting white” from the post because it does have that unfortunate sense of getting good grades, etc. That is harmful to no one.
Americans, both black and white, try to put us into boxes based on how we look. If we try to fit ourselves into those boxes, we are betraying ourselves, we are limiting our humanity to the small-minded ideas of small-minded people. And, on top of that, we are setting a bad example for others – our friends, our children, even strangers. We are feeding into a narrow, racist idea of what it means to be human. And that is just plain, dead wrong.
You only live once and you should use that once to be yourself, the person God made you to be. God did not make us to live out racist stereotypes of any sort.
But if you are a person of colour and view yourself through a white lens then you will think that if you look or act more like a white person life will be easier and better for you, like being able to get and hold a better-paying job. Those skin lightening ads that have been posted on this blog of late play nakedly on just that idea.
But the thing is, that only works in the short run. Because it is based on self-hatred.
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Ohhh. Is that what it’s called? The white lens? Is this a common term? Because I made up my own term about something similar. I call it, at least for now, ‘split vision’. It’s what I call my ability (and I’m guessing other POCs too) of being able to slip in and out of the white/POC lens.
For example, I’d be eating with a bunch of Asian friends in a restaurant in a Western country. One minute I’d be sitting there and enjoying the company and the jokes we’re cracking. I’m there. I’m with the others. Basically, I’m looking at things from an Asian lens. But the next minute I can slip out of it (I suppose sort of like an intellectual out of body experience), and look at our group from a white lens. When I do that, the fun is gone because I see ‘Weird looking, loud, weird acting, rude Asians.’ And then I’ll think, Oh, screw this, why should I care what they think? And slip out of the white lens and slip back into my Asian lens and start enjoying the moment again.
Does anyone know what I’m talking about? Sometimes I wish I don’t know how to switch to the white lens because it spoils the fun. And sometimes I get embarrassed by my migrant parents who can’t switch to the white lens, and act ‘all Asian’. Or maybe it’s not that they can’t switch, maybe they just don’t care what white ppl might think since they don’t have internalized racism like I do since they didn’t grow up in a white environment.
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Of course they dont care – it doesnt affect them. Due to white privileged they dont have to worry about or think about the things that “colored folk” do. Do not even try to question them about it or challenge them! They will argue you to the death as if you are wrong.
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fromthetropics:
I got the term “white lens” from Nezua the Unapologetic Mexican. While he does make up his own words, a Google search shows that it is used even by scholars.
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Does anyone know what I’m talking about? Sometimes I wish I don’t know how to switch to the white lens because it spoils the fun. And sometimes I get embarrassed by my migrant parents who can’t switch to the white lens, and act ‘all Asian’. Or maybe it’s not that they can’t switch, maybe they just don’t care what white ppl might think since they don’t have internalized racism like I do since they didn’t grow up in a white environment.
There is another term that may somewhat explain what you are dealing with called Double Consciousness that was coined by WE Dubois, a Black scholar over 120 years ago, in the Soul of Black Folk. In this term, loosely it means of acknowledging with one’s own self concept, one’s own identity within the Black community and putting on a mask or switching to a White consciousness and being able to live and see within the White community.
….the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,–a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,–an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
http://www.bartleby.com/114/1.html
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To add to what Mayhue was getting at, double consciousness is a function that allows Black people to view themselves as humans, but also through a white lens as a separate entity known as Black. To white folks, other white people are just people (think of the terms used to refer to races of people living in the US…Caucasians are referred to as Americans, while Blacks are usually referred to as African Americans, Asians as Asian Americans, why aren’t they all just Americans? Because the white lens is at work).
Most of the time I don’t think of myself as Black. I’m just me, and that is defined by however I wish for it to be defined. When I enter into a setting with whites however, I become simply black. Its amusing though how sometimes when white people get to know me, this second entity vanishes, and I get to be an actual individual human being (that’s another function of the white lens…it allows whites to be individuals and POC to be grouped).
I actually had a white co-worker refer to me as “one of us, and “not like them” simply because I was adopted by white people. Often, amazingly enough when white people kind of drop the white lens (not completely) and see me as human if I refer to myself as dark skinned (something I am not ashamed of) they will counter with “you’re really not that dark”. This I find to be the most amusing and telling. To them, I’m not that dark because they are viewing me as a human, and not simply as a Black.
I remember reading a comment on another blog about Phillip Craig Garrido (the guy who kidnapped a girl at age 11 and was found 18 years later) proclaiming that people like the kidnapper who do horrible acts should be painted brown as a warning to the population. And that is the perfect example of the white lens in action.
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@BLACKkittenRoar
I get the “You’re not all THAT dark.” from white people and very few black people I even got “Why are you cussing yourself for?” Like being called dark is a insult. It’s not it is the truth I am a dark skinned black girl.
And as for painted brown as a warning that is eight kinds of stupid. Someone of a darker hue is evil by default “it’s just in their nature.”
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That reminds me (and here goes my rant) of when I was talking about racism with a white friend (the convo didn’t go down well at all). My friend seemed to end up thinking I was insecure about my skin color (the rationale was that since I thought racism was widespread, it must be because I’m totally insecure right?…not!). The friend said, ‘But you have beautiful skin. Look at my skin, it’s white and ugly.’ I had never been as infuriated as I was when they said that. It felt was so very horrendously patronizing. I said (almost shouting, but not quite), ‘I KNOW that I have nice skin (color), I don’t need YOU to tell me!!’ I felt infantilized, as though I needed their approval for the way my skin looks (and I wasn’t even talking about skin). Like, I don’t. End of rant.
Thanks for the Dubois tip and the comments about double consciousness guys. I’ve heard of him, but haven’t read him. I will now.
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@ fromthetropics
Wow that reminds me of the Abagond’s Roissy Sydrome post of home some white people read want they want to read and I guess your friend heard what they wanted to hear
Your friend was patronizing you and treating you like you are a child by making you feel better by making that comment(for some reason I hear the words “are you happy now” coming after that) OH and of course thinking that it’s just you since they do not experience what you are experiencing then it does not exist.
You know I have never understood that way of thinking with some people I hae never experienced what it’s like to get bit by a shark but I assume it hurts.
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the white lens makes me think about how on cartoons they get white people to voice black characters sometimes (like in a couple of hanna-barbera cartoons and a couple of family guy related stuff)…
it just rubs me the wrong way that they couldn’t find a black person out of millions of black people to play the voice of someone who is black! its like saying only whites can do it…and because its animation one may never know it so its easy to get away with it.
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omg! it is really sooo sad to realize that lots of people are just going through life with their “white lenses” on. It is all about a “brainwash” process…
Incredible, how the media also contributes on it! awesome post, I’ll twitter it !
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212, 313, jojo, Ahab, Emerson, Thoreau, etc all seem to be sock puppets of BklynBryan.
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Why am I not surprised?
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So “Thoreau” was the original person?
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[…] the white lens, Abagond argues that there exists a dominant white world view that “suits white rule” […]
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Your site is very enlightening. I love the knowledge you reveal.
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Any thinking person can ascertain that it has been easier to be white than black in the U.S. in general. I would still rather be Harry Belafonte or Halle Barry than a poor, disabled or disadvantaged(for whatever reason) white person but most blacks don’t even think about such comparisons or scenarios. It is ALL about RACE with them and that’s it. The fact that many blacks were born with some advantages that some whites weren’t born with( talent, athletic ability,brains, good parents, a heritage of faith,etc.) doesn’t seem to cross their minds. Who would you rather be? Will Smith or a Jewish teenager who died in the holocaust? Beyonce Knowles or a poor, Irish immigrant kid who lived and died in a New York slum. No one asked to be born or was consulted about the circumstances they would be born into. Neither whites nor blacks had anything to say about who would be born with loving or cruel parents, intelligentsia,talent, wit, looks, a sane mind or the lack there of, in a democracy or a dictatorship, and on and on. Why can’t you TRY to look at life without perpetually looking at it through the LENS of RACE?
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@Lisa,
Why do you try to identify extremes of comparisons between 21st century part-black celebrities and 19th century / early 20th century poor European immigrants or disenfranchised people in Europe? Do you feel you are making apples-to-apples comparisons?
Would you rather be a a poor, disabled or disadvantaged white person or a poor, disabled or disadvantaged black person? Would it even make sense to ask you such a question?
But Lisa, that seems to be exactly what you are doing.
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I’m not denying some races and people groups haven’t had it harder than others. My analogies could have been more accurate. I’m trying to get you to see that your not JUST black. The human condition is rough for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. Also, individual blacks have things to be thankful for that members of other groups may not. You can divide people in a lot of ways. You have healthy and unhealthy. You have smart and not so smart. You have children who are loved and unloved, and on and on. To see yourself as divided or united to others only through the LENS of RACE is to limit what it means to understand this world and the human condition. Its to do yourself a disservice.
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@Lisa,
You might want to read this
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/you-see-racism-in-everything/)
Yet, that is EXACTLY what you did when you make statements like the following:
“many blacks were born with some advantages that some whites weren’t born ”
“individual blacks have things to be thankful for that members of other groups may not.”
” I’m trying to get you to see that your not JUST black.”
Why are you consistently looking at things through the lens of race if that is such a wrong thing?
The White Lens includes the public facade of viewing US society as colour-blind.
Also, many of the commenters here are not black, myself included.
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@Lisa: since when is anyone here DENYING that other forms of oppression or hardship exist? This is an anti-racism forum, so of course it’s going to be a lot of talk about racism and race-related issues here.
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“The human condition is rough for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. Also, individual blacks have things to be thankful for that members of other groups may not.”
{{Unbelievable.}}
Pass go. Do not collect $200.00. Go directly to Broken Records!
@ Mike
Lisa needs to find a Racism 101 course somewhere and enroll herself in it.
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So I take it Lisa’s the new Biff, only slightly polished and refined for further banhammer-proofing.
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@ Lisa
Blacks in the US cannot forget that they are Black because Whites do not let them forget:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/race-conscious/
I was brought up to overlook race, so I have seen it from both sides. Things make WAY MORE sense, at least in the US, if you take race into account. It is not even close:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/why-i-write-about-racism/
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Oh. I thought this would be about cameras, and, because lenses are made in Germany and Japan, they are made in a way that they only make whites and asiatics look good. Those lense-grinders just did not realize that blacks would use those lenses as well.
Is there a post out there on that topic?
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I found something: http://www.buzzfeed.com/syreetamcfadden/teaching-the-camera-to-see-my-skin
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@ Jeff
No post, but it is something I have been wanting to post on. Thanks for the link.
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Talking to the average white person can be infuriating because of their white lens. The white lens portrays white opinions of people, places and things as facts instead of a limited point of view.
For example, when I tell white people on the East Coast that I’m from San Francisco, they immediately tell me it must have been rough relocating from SF to Baltimore because Baltimore is so much “worse” in their eyes. But I grew up in an inner city neighborhood in San Francisco which is statistically no different than the worst neighborhood in Baltimore in terms of crime, violence, poverty and lack of opportunity. It is ironic that even Baltimore is nicer as a whole for black people than SF because at least blacks wield a great amount of political power in Baltimore whereas blacks in SF, as a whole, are sitting ducks in roach motels owned by the city and are set to leave as soon as the city takes a wrecking ball to their building and replaces it with million dollar condos.
But according to the white collective consciousness, San Francisco is a “nice place” because whites far outnumber blacks and blacks there are confined to far out pockets of poverty in places like Hunter’s Point where well-off white people and tourists never really ever tread. White people look at Oakland as the “bad place” in the Bay Area because whites are collectively outnumbered by minorities there 3 to 1. Ironically, Oakland is a nicer place for black people to live as a whole compared to San Francisco because Oakland has a sizable black middle class whereas the vast majority of SF’s relatively tiny population resides in deteriorating public housing projects in places like Hunter’s Point, Potrero Hill and Sunnydale. The black murder rate in SF was double the rate of Oakland for years because of this disparity.
https://news.vice.com/article/tech-money-is-helping-sweep-away-san-franciscos-black-community
Yet, white people refuse to believe San Francisco has the same issues of crime, ghettoization and poverty within communities of color because SF is a “nice place” known for its white hippies and white gay people. Despite the fact that San Francisco has experienced the most acute case of black flight in the country and the black population there has dropped from 13% to 3.9% in 30 years, SF is a “nice place” according to white people. The fact that the average white San Franciscan does not come into contact with black people makes it “nice”, but this is never vocalized unless its Dave Chappelle commenting on Bay Area race relations in a stand up comedy special.
The white lens definitely applies to my race as well as it is perceived by white people. Even though I’m mixed, most white people never label me as such. To white people, I’m just as Asian as a full-blooded Chinese person who came to America yesterday. And the white lens tries apply stereotypes even when they clearly do not fit. I’ve noticed that insecure white men who I have encountered who are shorter than average or even handicapped like to constantly remind me that I’m “Asian” and not mixed as if being Asian is some unforgivable mark of disgrace. I always put these guys in their place by reminding them that they are a bunch privileged whiners.
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@ SanFranpsycho415
They never heard of The Tenderloin? 🙂
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp4eAkQbieQ)
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