Theories of Race & Racism

Racial Otherness

• Edward said

  • discussion about the West & the Rest

  • colonialism’s creation of Otherness

  • representation of difference; accentuation of difference and demarcation of inferiority

  • all distinctions have histories; emerge from particular political and cultural contexts

  • all distinctions, all categorizations, are power-laden

What is Race?

• it is many things; multidimensional

• its meanings change through history and across diverse socio-political contexts

• it is relational; always understood in relation to group differences

• symbolizes body color differences

• symbolizes sociopolitical conflicts

• it is a marker of inequality

What is Racism?

• the reduction of social identities to racial categories

• using racial category differences to unjustly allocate socially valued resources

• using social structures and institutional practices to reproduce race-based inequalities in access to resources

• when the racial Other is defined as a problem and/or as a victim

Slavery

• was a product of, and expanded the development of, the capitalist world-system

• slave labor; mass exploitation; slaves were traded commodities that were central to plantation agriculture and commodity production

• race of continuing critical significance for the global economy

Race & Cultural Identities

• racial/cultural identities dynamic; change through history across the intersection of pre-colonial and post-colonial experiences

• racially/culturally subordinate groups internalize, and act back on, different particularized histories & identities

• race, notwithstanding socio-historical transformations, is also constrained by socio-historical context

Slavery’s Legacy on Racial Identity

• the impact of slavery as social death; the severing of identity, the severing of family, community and cultural narratives

• double-consciousness of African-Americans

  • looking at the self through the eyes of a world that looks on in contempt

Frederick Douglass

• African-American social reformer

• after escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement

• wrote extensively, was a sought after public speaker and held public offices

• Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all people

• contributions on the discourse of slavery

  • race as other

  • democratic universalism

W.E. B. Du Bois

• 1st African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard

• Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909

• ultimately joins the Communist party, denounces American citizenship, moves to Ghana

W.E. B. Du Bois Legacy of Slavery

• emasculation of African American men

• economic exploitation; ex-slaves reduced to subsistence

• economic, political, and cultural racism circumscribed the achievements of ex-slaves

  • racial equality necessitates the emancipation of all wage-laborers

  • racial equality must also mean gender equality

Du Bois

• standpoint of the oppressed

• exclusion from history

• issues of representation and stereotypes

• double consciousness (two souls, two thoughts, no true consciousness)

• color line is global - capitalism

The Black Middle Class

• E. Franklin Frazier (mid-20th century)

  • social and economic changes in the first half of the 20th century fostered the emergence of a black middle class

  • criticized the black middle class’s rejection of its cultural history

• produced its self-loathing racial identity

Race & Class Today

• William J. Wilson (Contemporary Theorist)

  • declining significance of race

  • economic class differences more important than race in determining blacks’ life chances/outcomes

  • race and class intersect

  • divide between the black professional/middle class and the black underclass

  • persistent divide between black and white middle class lives/experiences

Mixed Results, 2010 Census

• black adults are the only major racial & ethnic group that did not experiences a decrease in its middle-class share, which stood at 47% in 2021, about the same as in 1971

• as of the 2010 Census, black households had a median income of $43,510, placing the median black household within the second income quintile

• Blacks represented 13.2% of the total population in the United States, but 23.8% of the poverty population

Race & Community Decline

• nihilism and hopelessness in black communities as a result of the lived realities of systematic racism

• increasing incidence of suicide among black male youth

• high rates of black-on-black violence

• high rates of imprisonment of black men

Black Popular Culture

• expressed lived experiences while simultaneously projecting a fantasized reality

• accentuates consumption & consumption-derived social status

• degrades women and gays; thus reinforcing divisions among black people

New Racial Politics

• politics of conversion: local grassroots activism and accountability (Cornel West)

• emphasis on building cross-racial alliances

• emphasis on bridging intra-racial gender and sexual divisions

• American philosopher, theologian, political activist, politician, social critic, public intellectual

New Racism

• the color line is transformed into culture lines

• the appropriation and repackaging of racial difference by advertising/mass media and consumer culture

• obliterate racial differences while perpetuating racial hierarchies; racial inequality

• the displacement of biological (racial) differences by (race-based) cultural differences

• the view that people should “stick with their own kind” not because they look alike, but because they think alike

• they think and act differently than the dominant cultural group

New Racism and Technology

• technological advances make the search for racial genes more likely

• facilitates the reconstruction of racial genealogies; the discovery of individuals’ racial-cultural-historical roots

• DNA technology suggests that racial genetic composition more complex than anticipated

• will not clarify racial differences and boundaries

Patricia Hill Collins

• black women’s standpoint

  • commonality of African-American women’s experience

  • legacy of struggle against racism and sexism

  • vulnerability to assault » independence and self-reliance

  • domestic and public spheres not separate; Black women have a different history of family, work, and community than white women do

Controlling Images of Black Women

• symbols/images that maintain race, class, and gender oppression

• de-legitimate black women; suppress their voices of resistance

• stereotypical images/symbols of black women reinforce their Otherness:

  • the mammy (faithful, obedient servant)

  • the matriarch (emasculates men; unwomanly)

  • the welfare mother (intertwined laziness, poverty, and fertility)

  • the hot momma (sexually aggressive)

Black Feminist Thought

• the knowledge generated from black women’s experiences of oppression

• is outside the paradigm of objective accredited knowledge

• like all knowledge, it reflects the standpoint of its creators

• afrocentric & gender

• fosters resistance

Social Intersectionality

• interlocking race, gender, class and other social locations in which individuals are situated produce particularized experiences

• privilege and oppression always defined in relation to others; different social contexts produce different relations of privilege/oppression

• the activist knowledge that emerges from diverse intersectional contexts fosters resistance and emancipation

• individual empowerment and collective action produces social change

Black Sexual Politics

• activist knowledge must also include recognition of how sexuality is used to disempower individuals and groups

• activism against racism must include attention to persistent black divisions around gender & sexuality

• pursue social conditions that affirms the sexual autonomy of honest bodies; reject sexual degradation/violence in favor of a body politics that rejoins mind, soul, and body

• resist the commodification of black bodies that is part of the new racism