WGSS/RGS 101 Identity and Power

White Supremacy

the ideologies of the supremacy of white personhood, serving as a basis for the systemic oppression of non-white people

White Fragility

when a white person is confronted with their own racism and/or the systemic racism they benefit from and becomes defensive and center themselves in the issue of race

White Privilege

the social and economic power given to those perceived as white as a result of systematic oppression and whiteness being considered the default or neutral

Race

1. a social construct

2. master category/template of difference & inequality

3. “a vast group of people loosely bound together by a historically contingent, socially significant elements of theory morphology and/or ancestry”

4. “social phenomenon in which contested systems of meaning serve as the connections between physical features, faces, and personal characteristics”

5. “ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing, plastic process subject to the macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro effects of daily decision”

- Lopez 1994, 193

Capitalism

• Also called a free market or free enterprise economy

• Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of goods, rather than the state

• Investments are determined by private decision, by prices, and by production, and the distribution of goods are determined mostly by a competition in a free market

• Capitalists compete for profit through this economic system that requires an accumulation of wealth

• This capitalist mode of production results in the exploitation of labor to provide profit

Racial Capitalism

• All capitalism is racial capitalism

• The concept that recognizes that capitalism depends on violence, slavery, imperialism, genocide, and colonialism

• These systems are facilitated through the social production of racial inequalities

Marxism

• A body of doctrine developed in the mid-19th century by Karl Marx + to a lesser extent Friedrich Engels

• Mostly understood as a doctrine that critiques capitalism which they argue is a device to exploit the masses by the dominate class

Colonialism

A system or practice of domination and power where one group takes control of another group, acquiring full or partial control over the territory or country: settlers occupy another group’s land and exploit it economically (take resources and labor)

Settler

Anyone who is not indigenous, living in a settler colonial situation.

A settler can be anyone living on stolen land, though not all are privileged in the same ways as this is shaped by the racial hierarchy

Settler Colonialism

A system that relies on stealing land and replacing indigenous peoples with settlers as a way to gain power.

• As long as settlers live on stolen indigenous land, settler colonialism exists

• The continued use of this system depends on processes of racialization

• Distinct from other kinds of colonialism because the settler colonizers come to stay, the invasion is a structure not an event, and eventually the settler colonial states develop distinct identities and sovereignty

Decolonization

A complete dismantling of settler colonialism in favor of liberating colonized peoples; returning stolen land back to indigenous groups

Xenophobia

The fear, dislike, or prejudice against strangers/foreigners, immigrants, or anyone perceived as “different” or otherered due to their nationality, ethnicity, language, or customs

‘Islamic extremism’ and ‘jihadist terrorism’

popular Bush era phrases used by government officials and media to conflate a few extremists’ actions with Islam as a whole

USA PATRIOT Act (2001)

Expanded government powers for surveillance, detention, and deportation of noncitizens suspected of terrorism

Intersectionality

It is a lens of prism or analytical tool for understanding how various social identities overlap and intersect. The theory examines how various identity markers such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, religion, age, nationality, etc interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels. Intersectional theory asserts that people often face multiple sources of oppression/inequalities. It recognizes that identity markers do not exist independently of each other.