ES 101

Ethnic Studies as a discipline

• interdisciplinary, comparative and relational study of race, ethnicity and indigeneity in the US.

• POC community has been shaped by systems of domination

• including to white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism.

• The domination and acts of resistance create and recreate racial subjects

Race as a social construct

• Race is not biological,

• system of classification created and maintained by societies 

• Racial categories change overtime and location

Racial formation theory

• sociohistorical process by which racial identities are created, transformed, and destroyed

• Race is a social construct of how society is structured, and resource are distributed

• Micheal Omi and Howard Winant created the meaning of the interplay between social structures and everyday life.

Racial projects

• Links racial ideology to social structures ->

• organizes our understanding of race as “common sense” ->

• help us navigate our social world ->

• it is through racial project that the process of racialization occurs

Racialization

• The process of transmiting social and symbolic meaning to perceived phenotypical differences.

• It is historically specific, evolves, occurs at macro and micro levels, and intersects with other forms of identity

  • Macro: ideology and culture

  • Meso: Organizations and institutions

  • Micro: Individual bias and lived experiences

Intersectionality

• type of oppression that could not be understood by traditional discrimination law

• Race, class, gender, and sexuality as interlocking and mutually constitutive 

Moynihan Report

• Tried to explain poverty rates among African Americans

• Unemployment, crime, and welfare dependency to the non traditional families, and the rise of single parent households. And poor and working class African American families.

Heteropatriarchy

• A social system where heterosexuality and patriarchy are seen as the norm and are enforced in the dominant societal structure 

  • Normalizes: Male dominance, gender binaries, and heterosexuality (which is the normative idea of a family)

Settler colonialism

• Systems of domination defined by displacement and replacement of indigenous populations with a new settler society

  • Logic of elimination 

    • Genocidal violence

    • Displacement

    • Dispossion 

    • Cultural erasure

    • Racial hierarchy 

  • Purpose: Creation of a permanent settler society

Doctrine of Discovery

• Used by Europe to justify conquest of the new world. Premised on cultural, racial government, and religious superiority 

• Pope granted lands that were not in actual possession of any “Christian King” 

• Elements:

  • Christianity 

  • Civilization 

  • First discovery 

  • Actual occupancy and possession 

  • Preemption 

  • indian / native title 

  • Limited indigenous sovereign and commercial rights

  • Continuity 

  • Terra nullius 

  • Conquest

Johnson v. M’Intosh

• Johnson bought the land from the Native Americans 

• M’Intosh bought the land from the Government

• Can Native American tribes transfer land?

• As soon as the British owned the land Native Americans were not able/owners of land

• M’Intosh was decided as the owner

U.S. Dawes Act (General Allotment)

• authorized the president to break up reservation land into individual sections. Excess land was given to settlers and business interests.

• Forced Native people to become American Citizens and subject to the state in which they resided. Losing literary political voting power 

• Seen as civilizing project

Manifest Destiny

•  Texas annexation and mexican american war

  • Ideology that Americans were destined to expand their nation across the continent 

    • Divine Right: expansion of the US was God will 

    • US exceptionalism: US was uniquely and had a duty to spread its institution across the continent 

    • Racial and cultural superiority: Anglo superiority used to justify taking of non - white lands

    • National identity: functioned to cohere an American Identity 

U.S. Annexation of Texas

Factors for annexation: racial fitness and issue. Which set in motion Mexican American War

Mexican American War

Texas claimed independence from Mexico and later annexed by the US. Border dispute on the southern board. The US claimed the Rio Grande as the border while Mexico claimed it was the Nueces river.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Empire

• Ended the mexican american war

  • Mexico gave up California and New mexico 

  • Rio Grande agreed as the southern boundary with the US 

  • US paid MX $15,000,000

  • US agreed to pay American citizen debts owned to the MX gov

  • US agreed to protect property and civil rights of MX nationals living with the new boundaries

Spanish American War

• Cuba was fighting for independence from Spain. US had major economic interest and land holding in Cuba 

  • Spain agrees and begins peace process

  • US emerges as a global power expanding its influence in the Caribbean and the Pacific 

Treaty of Paris

• Spain gave up several territories to the US

  • Puerto Rico, Guam, and Philippines became US territories 

  • Cuban Independence

  • End of the Spanish Colonial Empire

  • Rise of USA as an imperial power

Platt Amendment

• dictated the withdrawal of US troops in Cuba, and conditions for US intervention in Cuban affairs 

• US rights to intervene to preserve Cuban independence

• Limited Cuba’s ability to enter into treaties

• Limited Cuba from going into debt

• Cuba required to lease land for US naval stations

• Platt Amendment repealed in 1934 except Guantanamo Bay

Downes v. Bidwell

• Supreme Court case on the rights of US territories.

• The court found that constitutional rights do not automatically extend to newly acquired territories

• Unincorporated territories not subject to the constitution, only to the power of congress 

Annexation of Hawai’i

• Monarchical government

• US missionaries arrive on Hawaiian islands

• Plantations established by American business

• private property system introduced. Allowing foreigners to buy land

• Treaty gave the US exclusive rights to Pearl Harbor 

Whiteness as property

• benefits and privileges including

  • Social

  • Economic

  • Legal

• The right to exclude, the right to use, enjoyment, the right of disposition and reputation (value)

Possessive investment in whiteness

• Focuses on the economic and social structure that maintain white privilege 

• Whiteness functions as an investment

• EX: housing, employment, education

Plessy v. Ferguson

• Concepts:

  • Louisiana adopted the Separate Car Act that required companies to provide racially segregated accomodations.

  • Prosecuted Homer Plessy a man who was ⅞ white and ⅛ black. Refusing to leave a passenger car designated for whites. Plessy’s lawyers argued that the separate car Act violated the 14th amendment 

• Policies: The 14th amendment established equality for the races before the law, but held that separate treatment not implying inferiority. 

• Upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation (seperate but equal)

• Perserved white spaces

• Maintained value of whiteness

• Whiteness as an exclusive legal statues

Brown v. Board of Education

• Concepts: African American students had been denied admittance to certain public schools based on laws allowing public education to be segregated by race

• Policies: The court reasoned that the segregation of public education based on race instilled a sense of inferiority that has a hugely detrimental effect on the education and personal growth of African American children 

• Declared racial segregation unconstitutional (overturns separate but equal)

• Denied whiteness the right to exclude through de jure segregation

• Preserved whiteness as a form of property

Federal Housing Act

• Part of the New Deal Program (responds to the great depression)

• Goal to increase home ownership

• Created Federal Housing Administration to provide mortgage insurance

  • Lowers risk for lenders. Encourages them to offer more generous loans with lower down payments

  • Subsidized builders/developers to create new subdivisions

  • Institutionalized segregation in housing through redlining and encouraging racial covenants

Redlining

• A policiy where government and financial institutions would color code neigborhoods on maps to indicate risk for lending

• Would categorized as Hazardous or dangerous

• Consequence: denial of government insured loads and divestment from colors and mixed race neighborhoods 

• Becomes ilegal under the fair housing act

• Impacts: wealth and investment gaps, property values, health and enviorment impacts

Racial covenants

• Causes in propert deeds that legally prohib certain races from buying, leasing or occupying a property

• Used to enforce segregation by private sellers