For example, if I asked you, a white reader, to select three adjectives that describe you, would you be likely to include to word “white”? -Barbara J. Flagg
This post is a discussion of Barbara J. Flagg’s Transparency Phenomenon. Please read her short article On Selecting Black Women as Paradigms for Race Discrimination Analyses for a quick introduction, or her book Was Blind, But Now I See for a longer one.
The transparency phenomenon is Ms. Flagg’s description of White people’s belief that Whiteness is not a race, but racelessness. It is the default, and there for invisible. It is as simple as why when news articles write about a White man he is described as a “man”, but when they write about a Black man he is described as a “Black man.” And it is complex as how there is an assumed “racelessness” by many within and without the fiber community to the word knitter.
When White people think of knitters, they think of White women.
BIPOC people already know this. The #weknittoo hashtag made by Gaye Glasspie is wonderful, and 100% a response to this very thing. White people have taken this craft probably invented in Egypt and made it theirs. Not in a lovely, respectful, thank you for teaching me this way, but in grand historical theft that makes it arduous and difficult to find depictions and records of BIPOC engaged in this work. (Marina S of @heartbunknitsandmore is putting together a collection on her Insta and several others have made Pinterest boards to collect these as well.)
White women who do not want to engage in needed discussions confronting and diffusing racism in the fiber community have posted comments about how “knitting has no race,” and for them I’m sure it doesn’t. And neither do they. Because that is how they experience being White.
They’re wrong on both counts. Whiteness is as much a racial distinction as Blackness, Asianness, Nativeness, and every other category we use to harm some and coddle others in this Colonialist system we experience humanity through. And knitting is very much coded as White. These things can be changed, however, and much of the work lies at our White feet to be done.
So the next time you pick up your needles, fellow White knitters, take off your transparency-tinted glasses and remind yourself that the craft IS for everyone, but to make that true you must come to see your own race and how it has shaped your culture and your life.
Knit One, Learn Too 