Society - Whitewashed: Unmasking the World of Whiteness

Using amateur footage collected over the course of several years, the video records the voices of white people reflecting on race, racism, and white identity. For over a decade Mark has been talking to white people about racism and what it is like to be a white person. Drawing from those that would speak with him, this documentary shares some of what they had to say. Here are some of the testimonies: I dont have any trouble admitting that Im a racist. I think its absurd to try to fight with that. I grew up in this society, I was conditioned by it, I think internally in my psyche I have grounded and rooted those attitudes and I see them all the time. I dont like being a white man and thats what I am, because I know what Ive done, what people like me have done. Part of being white is just not in any way acknowledging what it means to be white. I have a white skin and with that white skin comes along a whole mass of privileges that I have and I dont ask for them, theyre just there. How did the ancestors get turned into white people? You can only be something if theres something else to negate so I guess we became white because there are bunch of other races to set us off. The reason was the assimilation in the United States when lot of European ethnics came over and assimilated for a variety of reasons, primary being to elevate their socioeconomic status. So to get jobs, to find places to live, lot of the Europeans altered their last names to sound more mainstream, a lot of them changed the clothing that they wore, foods they ate, so they were conforming to the dominant white culture. The reality is that those persons who are white and who are considered white and treated as such in the society by virtue of being white, they had to give up who they really were. All these European ethnics who are not white anglo-saxon protestants had to give up their actual identities for the sake of whiteness.