>The framing makes me worry. Presumably the mainstream whiteish culture is, uh, not ethnic? In other words, white remains normal; the standard from which others

>The framing makes me worry. Presumably the mainstream whiteish culture is, uh, not ethnic? In other words, white remains normal; the standard from which others deviate. It's more metaphysical than this even: "white" is without place/particularity in the world; why don't we call "white" people "European-Americans"? Edit: This is even more clear when we observe what is happening when it gets asserted that a "black" man is "white"/acting "white": the implication is that he is, from a certain perspective, attempting/pretending to divest himself of emplacement/particularity/historicity; he cannot then in any appropriate manner return to being "black", a particular, emplaced, and historical body (his white friends will say "he's not really _that_ black"; his "blacker" kindred will say he's "white", a "coon", etc.) This is why the rationalist subject of the Englightnment and all the philosophical notions that derive from that notion, while technically independent of any concrete demographic, are nevertheless seen as inextricable, concretely, from whiteness, and not only for the Black community. A part of the liberation of the Enlightenment for a positive, inclusive socio-political project lies in "re-emplacing"/"re-embodying" those bodies we designate as "white" rather than presuming a monopoly on the subject of the Enlightenment by "white" bodies. This intellectual operation should be seen as similiar to that carried out by Paul of Tarsus: the subject of Christianity does not yet adopt a universalist posture, concretely unfettered to physical properties of the body, until Paul defies the original apostles and asserts that circumsision is no longer the qualification for being a follower of Christ; that is, the embodiement of gentiles need not be altered so as to be like Hebrew bodies (like Christ's particular, Hebrew body).