Racialized white bodies are actively produced achievements, not biological givens.

Evidence

The World Wide Web also allows the symbols and regalia of racist youth culture to be displayed and disseminated. The Hammerskin Nation page includes a rogue’s gallery of racists displaying their tattoos as examples to assimilate and reproduce. But, more than this, these cyberstudios produce incarnate portraits of skin and bodies marked by whiteness. This highlights two further points, namely: that racialized bodies are an achievement rather than a given, they are acted upon in the creation of whiteness; and, secondly, that the processes of simulation and authenticity are being combined within these cultures. To have tattoos is the ultimate mark of white power authenticity, this is to indelibly mark and fix light skin in racialized terms. However, these images are being digitally disseminated producing fascist cyborgs that can be downloaded and admired narcissistically as artefacts of racial authenticity (see Levinas, 1990). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2557

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to social construction of race literatures and to the reader’s interest in how identities are made rather than found.
• BMF: The idea that skin/body identity is an achieved artefact ‘acted upon in the creation of whiteness’ resonates obliquely with The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s protagonist reshaping his identity through performed Americanness — both show identity as fabrication rather than inheritance.