What does it mean to "inherit whiteness?"

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

In Baynard Woods' new memoir, Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness, Woods reflects on how growing up white in South Carolina impacted his life. He argues that it is crucial for white people in the U.S. to reckon with their personal histories.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's good, Joe? I'm Gene Tempe.
0:01.5	And I'm Karen Griggs-Rivates.
0:03.2	And this is Code Switch from MPR.
0:07.1	So you know on this show, we'd look at a lot of aspects of race,
0:10.4	and that includes whiteness.
0:12.4	And whenever we talk about race on the show,
0:14.4	we keep bumping up against the fact that whiteness is often invisible
0:18.0	to people who are white,
0:20.2	even though whiteness in their whiteness is not invisible or neutral
0:23.3	to those of us who aren't.
0:25.3	True.
0:26.1	So Gene, for this episode,
0:27.5	I talked to someone who's trying to make the way whiteness works
0:31.4	more visible for himself.
0:33.5	He talks about himself as a white person,
0:36.2	as opposed to just a person.
0:38.2	He's trying to make whiteness not the default for everything.
0:42.0	Okay, so who is this cat, KJB?
0:44.6	His name is Bannerd Woods.
0:46.2	He's a writer and journalist from South Carolina.
0:49.8	You know, for a state to secede,
0:51.6	one of the last states to remove the stars and bars from his flag.
	...

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