Whitney's Dow's The Whiteness Project is an interactive documentary series that looks at how Americans who identify as white, or partially white, experience their race. In the first installment, called Inside the White/Caucasian Box, Dow talked to 21 people in Buffalo about how they experience their whiteness. The new edition, Intersection of I, focuses on Dallas: Dow talked to 23 Dallas millennials about their whiteness, and got a fascinating range of responses. The Dallas project went live Wednesday, and it's showing as an installation at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Dow, who is white, is very good at this kind of thing. For the 2002 documentary Two Towns of Jasper, he took a white film crew to Jasper, Tex. following the horrific dragging murder of James Byrd, Jr. and talked to white residents. His filmmaking partner, Marco Williams, who is black, took a black a crew and talked to the town's black residents. Not surprisingly, they got two very different stories.
Dow's overarching point, then and now, is that race matters, as much as many would like to think it doesn't in a supposedly post-racial society. Some of Dow's subjects seem to think the idea of racism is a mere distraction. Others seem to be quite aware of their white privilege. They appear one by one before a white background, looking into the camera and spilling their guts. "Stop talking about racism," urges 17-year-old Leilani. "Just stop." "There's so much privilege I have," concedes 17-year-old Ella, "and there's so much I can't experience."
Each short interview is followed by a statistic. After 27-year-old Eric explains that his black friends usually tab him to talk to the cops, should such an occasion arise, we learn that 68% of young white voters trust police officers to treat them fairly, while the number drops to 46% for young black voters.
The idea of whiteness studies has drawn criticism over the years, from minorities who wonder about the purpose of studying the majority and from whites who see it as an exercise in liberal guilt. But the value of The Whiteness Project is clear. Blunt conversation is a must if we are to hold onto the idea of getting along and moving ahead. And if the majority feels compelled to remain silent, dialogue is all but impossible. Of course, the demographics are shifting quickly: There are currently four majority minority-states in the U.S., and Texas is one of them.
