Over the past few weeks we have read several texts that have given us some insight into the installation of the black-white binary as the guidepost for racial formation in the United States. After reading Cheryl Harris's "Whiteness as Property" and Omi and Winant's Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990's as texts that give you some insight into the racial trajectory mediated by the state and social relationships mediated by the law, what is your take and how do you understand these texts in relationship to some of the visual texts we have explored?
Black and White Matters
ReplyDeleteA month ago Laura Ingraham discussed events at the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis where groups of black teenagers apparently attacked white people as they left the fair. West Allis Mayor Dan Devine in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel responded to the events saying, “thuggery has no place” at the fair or “anywhere in our society.” Ingraham, a conservative, heatedly contended that the liberal media avoided reporting the story because they did not want to appear racist. She argued that if the story had been about a large group of white teenagers attacking black people the story would have been on every major news network and newspaper.
Omi and Winant describe race as an “unstable and decentered complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle” (55). Prior to reading Harris and Omi and Winant I admit I narrowly understood racial differences in any social or political paradigm, and I overlooked the vast and powerful privilege whiteness is granted in the U.S. It is a privilege united with demanding expectation that with every freedom, right, and opportunity given to minorities, legal and political measures must be taken to circumvent any possible threat these progressions could conceivably inflict on whites. The current political rhetoric that demands harsher immigration laws or uses a state fair event as proof that the tides of racism have changed has traction. Conversations such as these play upon the fear that benefits or consideration given to minorities inherently causes loss incurred by whites. Yet, as Harris argues, white privilege “does not mean all whites will win, but simply they will not lose” (1758). When the dialogue is about how our neighborhoods, our jobs, and even our state fairs demand protection the recognition of what “our” means sharply defines whom it also excludes.
--Jeanne
The module title, “Black and White Matters” appears to offer a (relatively) simple binary oppositional framework for considering the readings contained therein. The module’s readings rejected such a framework, and often demonstrated attempts at redefining the terminology used to discuss race. Omi and Winant touch briefly on the paradigmatic methodologies of considering race in America, and dismiss all of them as “superfluous and stifling” (50). Race, they argue, is neither “essence,” nor “illusion” (54). It is, instead, “a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (55). Race exists/happens/is happening where there is conflict.
ReplyDeleteMost insidious to me was the way in which Omi and Winant argued the “right’s rearticulation of the meaning of racial equality” is “a matter of individual rather than group or collective concern,” (130). I’m not sure their concept of individual vs. group rights functions when the issue is brought to specifics. They argue that individual acts must be read individually, but set against the larger social order, and I agree in spirit.
But race is tricky.
I’m reminded of David Howard’s infamous 1999 invocation of the word niggardly while working under the (black) Mayor Anthony Williams. As a result of the use of the word, Howard was forced to resign his position with Williams, and later said, “I used to think it would be great if we could all be colorblind. That's naïve, especially for a white person, because a white person can't afford to be colorblind. They don't have to think about race every day. An African American does." How does this fit into Omi and Winant’s definition of racism? Does it “create or reproduce a structure of domination based on essentialist categories of race”? (71). Does it fit in? Or are we simply too sensitive?
Last weekend while visiting the local Burger King for dinner, I became involved in an “Imitation of Life,” but in real life—whatever real means. A Black woman, who had taken my order, was interrogating a seemingly white woman about her lack of sun exposure. Deciding to defend the sunless lifestyle that I also engage in, I said “Don’t worry, I didn’t get any sun this summer either.” The Black woman replied, “But this girl is Black! I’ve met her people, and she is half Black!” Like Sarah Jane, in the film Imitation of Life—who, if you are curious, was played by a person of Mexican Czech decent, Susan Kohner—this Burger King employee was of black descent, but had no Black racial characteristics. The woman’s racial status is not in itself particularly interesting, but the fact that others felt it was necessary to articulate her racial status is pertinent.
ReplyDeleteMichael Omi and Howard Winant put forth a theory of racial formation made up of two distinct parts: 1) racial projects, and 2) hegemony (55-56). On a micro-level, I suggest this theory applies to the above example. The act of distinguishing a person’s race is clearly a racial project, the implications of this act determines that person’s position in the social structure. If race is a social construction, and I believe it is, then who gets to determine an individual’s race? The US census? The Black woman you work with? Hegemonic forces? The individual? On the opposite side of the concept of “passing,” must be an idea of “outing.” How can “outing” be used as a theoretical frame for understanding the determination of racial status?
-Scott
I feel all the pieces for this module set up the framework of race. It would be hard to move further without doing so. It sounds like a simple step, but I think the module demonstrated how difficult it can be. I feel the pieces opened my eyes to how much the idea of race fluctuates. I tend to categorize race as Omi and Winant demonstrated in the ethnicity paradigm. Perhaps this is due to growing up in the 1980’s and early 90’s. I had to come to terms with the ways in which I thought about race. I kept wondering if I fit into one of the categories. Am I neoconservative or new right? Do I operate under an ethnicity or class theory? I admit I have bought into some of the ideas espoused by the neoconservatives. I feel Omi and Winant really challenged my view of “individual rights” versus collective and “merit” based judgments as did Harris’s piece. It was a completely new concept for me and forced me to think about the privileges I exercise in whiteness without even thinking.
ReplyDeleteOn the visual side, Walker’s art constantly caught me wondering what race each image is. It made me realize how much I rely on the color of someone’s skin to categorize them even if it is with no malicious intent. Ride with the Devil and Imitation of Life presented similar challenges in the concept of race with Holt and Sara Jane. With both characters, I wondered how they are supposed to fit into society. They defied categorization. If Holt isn’t really free, how is he supposed to act under his circumstances? How is Sara Jane supposed to act under hers? What does race mean for these characters and what do we do with that answer?
Omi and Winant call for an end to overly simplistic examinations that make race a subordinate issue in a larger field, arguing instead for a reverse treatment in which these factors themselves contribute to a historically situated understanding of the constant, pervasive presence of race and racial issues in all aspects of society. While at various points they mention how a focus on any of these categories denies the complexity of racial groups (an ethnic focus ignores internal class divisions, etc.), the issue has become even more complicated than they recognize. Whether this is a more recent phenomenon, or simply has become more visible recently, their adherence to traditional monolithic categories such as “Black” or “Asian-American” also perpetrates an erasure of internal difference. Although they recognize that these categories represent a banding together of groups of diverse national and cultural origin to combat common prejudices affecting them all, this homogenizing perspective is nonetheless frequently not their choice and obscures the variations in their histories and experiences. If being “Black” in the U.S. is simultaneously defined visually and by our history of slavery and struggle, how do we understand the difference between the grandchildren of U.S. slaves , Afro-Caribbean immigrants to the U.S. (also coming from a slave heritage), and direct immigration from Africa? What happens when these designations are crossed: how do we categorize a child of a Mexican-American and a Japanese-American? How does adoption of “third-world” and minority children by white families affect the separation of “white” from these other categories? Do these children acquire a vested interest in their parents’ “whiteness” or represent a transgression by whites of their own privilege? These complexities and border-crossings do not mean that race is no longer an issue, but this constantly shifting racial landscape may prove ever more difficult to define.
ReplyDeleteBlack and White Matters
ReplyDeleteTo “take a position” on the texts of this module has the potential to reinforce the idea of “sides” we have seen in our examination of the black/white binary. There are, of course, many more than two positions to take. I situate myself in the midst of three camps of thought. Echoing Cheryl Harris’ sentiments in Whiteness as Property, I view the privileged white existence to be a commodity that is simultaneously created, hoarded and protected both knowingly and unknowingly by the white community. At the same time, I think the strong ties we have seen portrayed between black people and Christianity (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Imitation of Life) have displayed black people’s role in the cycle quite interestingly. Religion in these depictions is used as a tool to humanize blackness. The black characters in the aforementioned play and movie are written to uphold white ideals, in the guise of Christian ones, by living out their faith in submissiveness. I see a connection between the property of whiteness and Christian custom in the theory of race formation that Omi and Winant put forward in Racial Formation. Specifically, the idea of race formation being at the same time interpretation and representation seems to link these well. I believe that the dominant culture simultaneously interprets what one’s race is and represents it as society dictates—just as the white characters did with Annie’s character in Imitation of Life. Nicole made a valid point in class about how we, today, find it difficult to approach the topics of this module. A quote from Kara Walker expresses a part of the perceived challenge. She said it with regard to her art and I think it applies to the oppression that pervaded our study this week, “There is always a beginning and there’s never a conclusion.”
Over the course of this module’s texts, I was struck by the flattening of identity we see for “raced” characters like Tom, Topsy, and Annie, among others. The bank from which they can draw their decisions, moods, and character is preordained by the dominance of hegemony; the only role they can play—whether they know it or not—is a preexisting trope defined by their race. The contours and boundaries of their identity are decided for them over time by what Michael Omi and Howard Winant theorize as racial formation.
ReplyDeleteIn essentializing identity, so too do we essentialize race because the categories of identity are so powerfully raced. Non-whiteness is an all-encompassing otherness and whiteness is the given. Cheryl Harris and Omi and Winant explain that throughout history, there have been various substantial efforts in science, religion, politics, and other fields to make non-whiteness something that can be easily and definitively qualified or determined (by one literal or figurative drop). Once racial otherness can be systematically defined, then the appropriate advantages or disadvantages are bestowed.
On the other hand, characters who are white in appearance—Jake, Sarah Jane, and Harris’ grandmother, specifically—are able to move fluidly between identities because whiteness becomes a sort of non-race. Jake can cut his hair and be reformed; Sarah Jane can pass among her classmates. They pass because their presumed whiteness is taken as a given, and they can move freely within whiteness because their race is not at the forefront of how others see and respond to them. When Sarah Jane’s race is questioned, she is no longer passing, but, instead, trespassing, and nothing else about her seems to matter. A subject’s race, when not white, is what defines them.
The first themes I attached to when reading both the text by Cheryl Harris, and the text by Omi and Winant, was the concept that American equals white, and that it always has. Because of this white dominance is able to continue unquestioned because no laws or rights are even recognized, let alone recognized as American. Because of this forceful and continuous declaration of white as the mainstream, and anything else as the “other,” disrupting social race constructions, no matter in what period of history, are always treated as a threat to the “mainstream” which in the United States means “white.” Any power given to black, ethnic, or minority groups, is seen as power taken away from whites.
ReplyDeleteWhile Harris and Omi and Winant used very different methods and evidence to explain the white dominance in this country, the idea that became very clear from both texts was the incredible depth and complexity of the racial constructions currently structuring our society. The point was made clear that this underlying discrimination and marginalization can be deconstructed, but not by oversimplifying the issue of race in the country by “colorblind” gestures, but rather by recognizing the complexity of the many issues and histories surrounding the black and white binary in the United States.
In many ways the visual texts and primary sources offered in this moduled had the same criticism of how our society oversimplifies the issue of race, but on more personal and social levels than political. Kara Walker’s art challenges your expectations and stereotypes from the moment you look at them and find yourself trying to decide what race the characters may be, and what images from history they might belong to. I even found myself immediately trying to find comparisons between the characters of I Uncle Tom’s Cabin which are where many black stereotypes are based, and the characters in Ride with the Devil rather than noticing the not-even-so-subtle but very complex differences.
--Anna
Omi and Winant challenge a variety of paradigms in their text, and insist that interdisciplinary, non-reductionist, constantly evolving theories are necessary in order to understand how this social construction we call race is developed, altered, and maintained in the United States. There are countless ways to examine and deconstruct the history of racial formation in the U.S., from Stephen Jay Gould’s debunking of the pseudo-science that informed biological determinism to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s examination of the rhetorical strategies of colorblind racism. Harris’ argument, for example, that whiteness (and therefore blackness) is best defined in terms of property, is simply one of them. I think Omi and Winant would/do probably value Harris’ take and utilize her scholarship to inform their own, and that this is really all they are arguing. As I mentioned in class today, the fact that they needed to rewrite the most crucial chapter of their book after ten years is evidence that they practice what they preach. The value of the text lays in its insistence that the social construction of race is an ongoing process and that the development of theories for examining the topic must therefore also be processes. Also, their steadfast refusal to let any one discipline, paradigm, or perspective dominate the conversation is also key, though as Andrea pointed out, their sociology backgrounds do tend to shine through.
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ReplyDeleteIn The Sociological Imagination C. Wright Mills distinguishes between personal troubles and public issues, highlighting the difference between micro and macro perspectives within sociology. Social theorists have subsequently been lumped into these two categories. The macro perspective focuses on social institutions and structures, while the micro perspective narrows the scope to theorize social interactions between individuals. The same distinction between macro and micro can be found in Racial Formation by Michael Omi and Howard Winant, both sociologists by trade. They argue that racial formation is both a macro and micro level process operating at the level of social structures, mainly the state, and in everyday life, as common sense. The macro and the micro processes of racial formation are not autonomous; they function dialectically as they co-constitute one another. In Racial Formation, Omi and Winant state there is an “active link between our view of the social structure – its demography, its laws, its customs, its threats – and our conception of what race means” in our everyday life (60). This is reiterated in their model of the racial state, which includes institutions making up the state and “the social relations in which they are imbedded” (83). It is through the hegemonic discourse of the state that racial ideology becomes common sense, enabling us to make sense of race in everyday life. Social movements, then, in their “refusal of the ‘common sense’ understandings which the hegemonic order imposes,” ultimately seek to change social institutions and structures (69). This requires a reordering of the racial structure as a whole, not just the rearticulation of personal racial identity. While many sociologists acknowledge the social construction of race and institutional or structural racism, Omi and Winant demonstrate how the state has racially ordered society and reinterpreted the meaning of race at different historical moments.
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