"We are all familiar with the way that the citizens of the United States, as a group, seem unwilling and unable to see themselves as others see them and that this hurts the country’s pursuit of its foreign policy interests. After 9/11 it seemed that a concerted effort was made to correct this, but what other countries say about the United States ran so counter to its image of itself that the disconnect was intolerable and the attempt could not be sustained. Something similar happens with whites as a group in spite of the fact that here too there is a mass of material to go to in order to correct the deficiency. Instead, many whites today seek out other races because they want acceptance and acknowledgment. This clearly puts an intolerable burden upon those who are thus victimized by what amounts to a new form of exploitation. It is difficult to guard against because white desire for acceptance does not necessarily operate wholly at the conscious level.
Among whites, avowed racists seem more ready to admit it than the liberals who are worried about causing offense, but it has long been known there is an allure to racial difference, the allure of the exotic. In academia this can play out as multiculturalism, or in ordinary life as travel to exotic places or, as Frantz Fanon reminds me, in one’s musical tastes. Whites reach out to the racial Other in the expectation of receiving what is foreign to us. It is easier to document how dangerous this gesture has been, than the good it has done."
- Robert Bernasconi, “Waking Up White and in Memphis” White on White/Black on Black
