The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics

Lipsitz explains that racism is sometimes difficult to recognize when it does not appear in its more conspicuous forms of exclusion and hostility. He argues that the possessive investment of whiteness also can involve a fascination with people of color and their cultures, although frequently in condescending ways. The embrace of a sort of primitive authenticity that whites imagine about the cultural production of people of color is associated with a white investment in these images created by whites. The fascination is based on an imaginary created by whites but often does not correspond to historical reality. For Lipsitz, the emotional attachment of white people to Black culture is part of the dynamic of white desire. He examines white desire in relation to the blues music of Robert Johnson.

Lipsitz sees no contradiction between European Americans’ possessive investment in whiteness and the concurrent “deep affective investment” in Robert Johnson’s blues (162). The two investments depend on the other. The persistence of racism contributes to the mystique and the allure of Black culture. Lipsitz claims that this romantic vision of Robert Johnson obscures the historical moment in which the music was created; that is, in the segregated South. The mythos around Robert Johnson at the crossroads in Mississippi is based on the idea that for him to play the guitar so skillfully, he had to sell his soul to the devil.