The ideology of Whiteness excludes by delineating its boundaries, marking the "other" as the outside of these boundaries, as an inferior category that is not yet human. Setting up its own rules for what counts and how, Whiteness then goes on to circulate its hegemonic form through the active exclusion of the other. Turning these rules into universals, Whiteness ensures it perpetuates its hegemony.
These hegemonic logics of Whiteness reproduce themselves within postcolonial contexts.
After all, the technique of marking the other as inferior that enabled the White master to rule also serves colonial rule by postcolonial elites. These postcolonial elites are descendants of the local elite class in the colonies that collaborated with the colonizer in running the imperial projects. The god-granted privilege of these elites to rule over the popular other is intrinsically tied to their continual production of the other as inferior, lacking, backward, traditional. The figure of the postcolonial elite educated in Anglo-Saxon structures forms the ruling configuration of postcolonial societies, his/her Angloness as close proximity to Whiteness, and thus, the unquestioned basis of the legitimacy to rule.
In British postcolonies for instance, schools, universities, bureaucracies (this is where a large cross-section of postcolonial elites locate themselves), political structures, clubs are all set up on the principle of Whiteness, working through language, etiquette, and networks to hold up the privilege of the postcolonial elite. Convent education forms a key resource of the Whiteness regime in the postcolony. Postcolonial elites and their children, trained in the norms of British English, deploy everyday linguistic games to mark the inferior other that is the outside. Notions of merit deeply immersed in the ideology of Whiteness form the basis of postcolonial elite power and control.
Paradoxically, the politics of exclusion that forms the basis of Whiteness thus comes to be mimicked powerfully by postcolonial theorists in the global metropole. Having arrived from postcolonial structures, marked by their brownness, this postcolonial elite can perform "victimhood" in the White structures of the anglo-saxon academe, erasing their position as members of the oppressor class back home. Simultaneously, with the language trapeze he/she is equipped to play, this postcolonial elite makes its claim to high theory in the White metropole. For White multiculturalism, the tokenistic performance of postcolonial theory, often with vacuous claims, works well to keep White hegemony intact, disengaged from the interrogation and disruption of White power and its corresponding captalist-neocolonialist logics.
The emergence of the postcolonial theorist on the White metropole then is an extension of the performance of Whiteness. The postcolonial theorist can use his/her elite status in the White academe to create games of exclusion that work on the marking of the inferior other, the outside of the elite club. This or that scholar from the postcolony is not worth engaging because he/she teaches vocational skills. This or that scholar from the postcolony is not worth speaking with because you know, he/she teaches in a teaching college. This or that graduate student from the postcolony is not worth acknowledging because he/she is too far below in the hierarchy of elite power. The norms of Whiteness reproduce cultures of "postcolonial babus (dadas)" and "postcolonial divas (didis)" that thrive on the exclusion of the inferior other, and work continuously to produce this inferior category. It is in this inferior category that the postcolonial elite see their elite status.
To belong to the club of the postcolonial club of boys and girls, you have to come with the right networks, connections, and diction training. You have to go to the right convent and the right college. You have to aspire to climb toward the next level, ensuring continuously that you strategically erase all those pathways that enabled you to get there. The reflection of Whiteness in the faith "I am special" produces the sort of shallow opportunism in postcolonial elites that is continually seeking affirmation from the very structures of Whiteness that one critiques, while simultaneously deploying the strategies of Whiteness to close off the gates on postcolonial others. The game of marking the inferior (in this instance through the vacuous posturing of high theory) perfected by postcolonial theorists in the Western metropole is the precise game of Whiteness.
The seduction of being the brown boy/girl in the White club results in continual invention of strategies to undercut postcolonial others, and particularly those postcolonial others perceived as threats because they might be stronger creatively or intellectually. The ongoing delegitimizing of struggling and junior postcolonial academics forms the culture of postcolonial babu-dom/diva-dom.
One is lucky as a junior postcolonial academic if the postcolonial diva even looks at you, let alone talk to you. The power alleys of postcolonial academia are rife with stories of mistreatments, harassment, and bullying of graduate students and junior academics from the postcolony. Other narratives account for experiences such as approaching a postcolonial babu/diva at say a conference only to be ignored or to be made to feel poorly about self. As a junior academic cultivated into postcolonial babu/diva-dom, one quickly learns to perform servility to the Gods of theory, what with the rituals of head bowing and namaskars and feet touching.
In this postcolonial babu/diva-dom, the shallow brand name of institutions and organizations takes over possibilities for honest intellectual engagement and camarederie. Because babu/diva-dom is itself a game placed squarely within the logics of Whiteness, it thrives on the active erasure of mediocre pasts in order to formulate a story of excellence. For instance, in judging where a postcolonial other is located (in order to mark him/her as the outside of the elite club), the postcolonial babu/diva actively erases the oh-so-mediocre list of places and institutions in his/her trajectory or his/her mediocre performance so that an image of exceptionalism can be propped up. Much like Whiteness, the claim to excellence or to high flouting theory is often a strategy for hiding one's mediocrity, laziness, and/or intellectual vacuity.
For transformation then of the politics of Whiteness, postcolonial incrementalism will certainly find news ways of rewarding postcolonial elites but would do little in dismantling Whiteness. Any incremental movements to simply get more postcolonial representation in the structures of Whiteness would unfortunately reify and reproduce those very structures by keeping intact elite structures.
I have far too often seen the unfortunate enactments of Whiteness in postcolonial elite clubs of self-proclaimed theorists to recognize that the radical transformation of Whiteness lies in activist politics that seeks to dismantle the very logics of the game in academia. The inequalities within postcolonial spaces and by extension, within postcolonial academic circuits ought to be rendered visible, asking questions such as: Whose labour counts? What labour counts? Who decides what labour counts? These conversations on postcolonial inequalities need to be located in relationship with class and caste struggles within postcolonial contexts. The very structures of Whiteness and their complicity with postcolonial formations ought to be the sites of resistance through unions and academic collectives that bring together all forms of labour at the margins that is exploited to prop up Whiteness.