WHITE NOISE
VANILLA ICE, GRUNGE, AND STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE
Thursday, March 8, 2012, 7PM
CUNY Graduate Center, The Proshansky Auditorium, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Featuring:
DAN CHARNAS (The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip Hop),
NEGIN FARSAD (50 Funniest Women, Huffington Post),
CHRISTIAN LANDER (Stuff White People Like),
DAVID ROEDIGER (Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class),
REIHAN SALAM (Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream),
JAMIA WILSON (Women’s Media Center),
NEELA VASWANI (You Have Given Me A Country)
Exhibits: Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby,” Grunge, white multiracial identity, the white audience for ethnic humor, Sassy Magazine
Titled after Don DeLillo’s White Noise, in which identity politics reaches its reductio ad absurdum in a Hitler Studies department, this evening explores the curious phenomenon of white ethnic identity in the 1990s. Think back to a time when Bill Clinton was called the “first African American President,” when Samuel Huntington claimed we were in a “Clash of Civilizations,” when the militia movement erupted in the Waco shootout and the Oklahoma City bombings–and when Asian Americans were positioned as “honorary whites” in the affirmative action debates. We’ve asked influential US labor historian and pioneer of critical whiteness studies, David Roediger (Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, University of Illinois), to join Christian Lander, the mind behind the meme and NY Times bestselling book Stuff White People Like, and National Review Contributing Editor Reihan Salam to talk about white racial formation. Dan Charnas explains what Vanilla Ice can tell us about race. American Book Award-winner Neela Vaswani, a multiracial author of Indian and Irish descent, talks about her white ethnic heritage. Jamia Wilson (CSPAN, CBS News, Good Magazine) talks Sassy Magazine and Negin Farsad (Nerdcore Rising, The Watch List on Comedy Central) talks about doing stand-up for white audiences. See www.aaww.org/1989 for more details.
