During the month of February, Eastern hosted several events celebrating African American History Month including “How Did I Get So White?” a lecture that addressed the issue of “Whiteness.”

Former director of African American studies Michael Loudon said African American literature and African American voices are key components to the study and the deconstruction of whiteness.

“In fact this would be impossible in the absence of black voices,” he said.

Loudon, now an English professor, said whites need to look into the issue and understand how history has affected them as well as minority groups.

“You have to understand that their inequality is your own inequality,” he said.

Loudon said by deconstruction, whites will understand how some people have privilege over minority groups.

“The construction of privilege has been possible only through the deprivation of opportunity for other people,” he said.

Loudon said he hates to see whites who are unwilling to look at how whiteness was constructed.

“The whites who still rely on some half-based sense of natural hierarchy that was disputed and overturned by science in the early in the 20th century,” he said.

Lastly, Loudon said an individual has to hear those voices, and then deconstruct individual whiteness and it will make more sense.

Tim Engles, English professor and lecturer of the event said it is an odd topic for African American History Month.

“But one of the points I make is that white people tend to not know much about what it means to be white even though they are white,” he said.

Engles said an idea that whiteness is invisible occurs especially in white people.

“For white people, the fact that we are white is significant to our lives,” he said.

Engles said white students need to be aware of the ideas of whiteness.

“People think we do not live in a racist country and that racism no longer exists,” he said.

Engles said whiteness has more to do with who and what we are than most of us realize.

The lecture was based on elements of Critical Whiteness studies, an area of study that has existed for “about 12 years” according to Engles.

“This area of study goes against the idea that racism is no longer a problem,” he said.

Engles said one of the fundamental presumptions in Critical Whiteness studies is that we still live in a racist society.

Engles said if a white-dominated society instill an inferiority complex into non-white children, then does it not also instill the opposite into white children?

“White favoritism in America and the sheer demographic preponderance of white people tend to instill a sense of inferiority within non-white children,” he said.

In closing Engles ended the lecture with a quote by Socrates.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Spenser Nobles can be reached at 581-7942 or at swnlobles@eiu.edu.