property/propriety, inheritance/infection

"Dear friend,
I am black.
I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. In the past, I have attempted to alert white people to my racial identity in advance. Unfortunately, this invariably causes them to react to me as pushy, manipulative, or socially inappropriate. Therefore, my policy is to assume that white people do not make these remarks, even when they believe there are no black people present, and to distribute this card when they do.
I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you, just as I am sure you regret the discomfort your racism is causing me."
-Adrian Piper, text from My Calling (Card) #1, 1986, lithograph on paper

An important figure in Conceptual art, performance art, and philosophy, Adrian Piper is known for introducing race and gender politics into a field formerly (and, arguably, still) dominated by white men. As a light-skinned African American woman, Piper has created pieces that challenge predominant associations of blackness with inferiority and whiteness with superiority, openly defying her ability to "pass" as white, as in her video installation Cornered (1988) (part 1, part 2). "But, you see, I have no choice," she says, confrontational, posed in the corner of a blank, white room, "I'm cornered: If I tell you who I am, you become nervous and uncomfortable, or antagonized. But if I don't tell you who I am, then I have to pass for white, and why should I have to do that?" (pt. 1, 4:28-52)

Piper refers to whiteness as a "racial club" (pt. 1, 2:25-30), even as a sort of haven - "...because if someone can look and sound like me and still be black, then no one is safely, unquestionably white" (pt. 1, 6:32-46), she states sardonically - a "social fact" reinterpreted as a metaphorical space that allows its insiders greater opportunities than those who are excluded. Cheryl I. Harris echoes these ideas: recalling the story of her light-skinned grandmother's move to Chicago and integration into white society, Harris writes, "...she could thus enter the white world...not merely passing, but trespassing." (1711) Thus whiteness becomes both a property in the attributive sense as well as a property in the material sense, both a personal trait and a personal possession.

Conversely, blackness too becomes a property in a way both opposite and parallel to the propertization of whiteness; obviously, the privileges of being white contrasts sharply with the disadvantages of being black, yet both blackness and whiteness are inheritable, statuses that pass down, along with their associated opportunities (or lack thereof), to younger generations. While the inheritance of whiteness comes more in the form of material and immaterial advantages, the inheritance of blackness can be construed as something more bodily and visceral; take, for example, the concept of hypodescent, or the "one-drop" rule, in which blackness becomes inherited through blood.

Inheritance through blood, or infection? Race becomes disease, a contaminant, which spreads into real estate property: Laura Pulido writes, "'Too many' people of color might reduce a neighborhood's status, property value, or general level of comfort for white people." (16) The immateriality of race becomes realized through the politics of property: who has access to what. If whites can inherit privilege, as well as monetary and real estate gains, then do nonwhites inherit pollution?

Piper undermines the idea of hypodescent, however, by asserting that "some researchers estimate that almost all purportedly white Americans have between 5 and 20% black ancestry. Well, this country's entrenched conventions classify a person as black if they have any black ancestry. So, most purportedly white Americans are in fact black." (pt. 1, 6:47-7:14) With this assertion Piper reimagines and reverses the black-white racial hierarchy, describing a "black majority" (pt. 2, 0:37-0:41) and a "white minority" (pt. 2, 1:43-55), and a society in which, though whiteness is still elite, blackness may be a property worth investing in: "Or will you feel disappointed [if you discover you are certifiably white], deprived of something special? Perhaps you'll even lie and tell people you're black even if you're not. There's a nice, subversive strategy for you." (pt. 2, 2:46-3:03)