We can't help what race we are but weight management is an issue of self-control.
That's not entirely true, which is why to a certain extent the condition is immutable, just like race. Our bodies want to store fat to protect us against future famines. That's in our genes, for some of us more than others.
The self-control part of it isn't all that simple, either. There are lots of cultural and psychological issues.
The notion that it's all about self-control is an underlying factor in the bigotry. OTOH, many ignore the salient "self-inflicted" aspect of it and claim than any observation of obesity is bigotry, which it isn't. Obesity is a public health and public accommodation issue, as well.
I find it fascinating to watch the interplay between the bigots and the professional victims in all arenas, including both race and fat.
In the race arena, this appeared in today's Post.
Hue and Cry on 'Whiteness Studies'
An Academic Field's Take on Race Stirs Interest and Anger
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2003; Page A01
AMHERST, Mass. -- Naomi Cairns was among the leaders in the privilege walk, and she wasn't happy about it.
The exercise, which recently involved Cairns and her classmates in a course at the University of Massachusetts, had two simple rules: When the moderator read a statement that applied to you, you stepped forward; if it didn't, you stepped back. After the moderator asked if you were certain you could get a bank loan whenever you wanted, Cairns thought, "Oh my God, here we go again," and took yet another step forward.
"You looked behind you and became really uncomfortable," said Cairns, a 24-year-old junior who stood at the front of the classroom with other white students. Asian and black students she admired were near the back. "We all started together," she said, "and now were so separated."
The privilege walk was part of a course in whiteness studies, a controversial and relatively new academic field that seeks to change how white people think about race. The field is based on a left-leaning interpretation of history by scholars who say the concept of race was created by a rich white European and American elite, and has been used to deny property, power and status to nonwhite groups for two centuries.
Advocates of whiteness studies -- most of whom are white liberals who hope to dismantle notions of race -- believe that white Americans are so accustomed to being part of a privileged majority they do not see themselves as part of a race.
"Historically, it has been common to see whites as a people who don't have a race, to see racial identity as something others have," said Howard Winant, a white professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a strong proponent of whiteness studies. "It's a great advance to start looking at whiteness as a group."
Winant said whiteness studies advocates must be careful not to paint white heritage with a broad brush, or stray from the historical record. Generalizations, he said, will only demonize whiteness.
But opponents say whiteness studies has already done that. David Horowitz, a conservative social critic who is white, said whiteness studies is leftist philosophy spiraling out of control. "Black studies celebrates blackness, Chicano studies celebrates Chicanos, women's studies celebrates women, and white studies attacks white people as evil," Horowitz said.
"It's so evil that one author has called for the abolition of whiteness," he said. "I have read their books, and it's just despicable."
Whiteness studies, said Matthew Spalding, is "a derogatory name for Western civilization." Its study is important only to those who think "black studies and Chicano studies haven't gone far enough in removing the baggage of Anglo-European traditions," said Spalding, director of the Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
"The notion that you can get rid of a historical tradition as a way to further current . . . concerns strikes me as intellectually misleading," Spalding said. "It makes certain assumptions and looks for certain outcomes. It's close-minded."
Whiteness studies can be traced to the writings of black intellectuals such as W.E.B. DuBois and James Baldwin, but the field did not coalesce until liberal white scholars embraced it about eight years ago, according to some who helped shape it.
Now, despite widespread criticism and what some opponents view as major flaws in the curriculum, at least 30 institutions -- from Princeton University to the University of California at Los Angeles -- teach courses in whiteness studies.
The courses are emerging at a pivotal time. Scientists have determined that there is scant genetic distinction between races, and the 2000 Census allowed residents to define themselves by multiple racial categories for the first time. Dozens of books, such as "The Invention of the White Race," "How the Irish Became White" and "Memoir of a Race Traitor," are standard reading for people who study whiteness. Recently, the Public Broadcasting System aired a documentary titled "Race: The Power of an Illusion."
"If you ask 10 people what is race, you're likely to get 10 different answers," said Larry Adelman, who conceived, produced and co-directed that documentary. "How many races would there be? Where did the idea come from?"
At U-Mass., those questions and others were raised in "The Social Construction of Whiteness and Women," one of two whiteness studies courses Cairns took last semester.
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