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Theories of Culture: Race Summary
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Een samenvatting over het thema Race van Theories of Culture. Essentiele discussies rondom ras en etniciteit komen aan bod.
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SUMMARY TOC TEST ON RACERace and Ethnicity
The traditional definition of race and ethnicity is related to biological and sociological factors
respectively. Race refers to a person's physical appearance, such as skin color, eye color, hair
color, bone/jaw structure etc. Ethnicity, on the other hand, relates to cultural factors such as
nationality, culture, ancestry, language and beliefs.
AN INTRODUCTION TO RACE – LECTURE NOTES (WEEK 6)
Race, what do we think about?
- Biological (skin color)
- Sociological (…)
- Cultural (religion)
- Historical (origin)
- Political (civil rights, policies on immigration)
Terminology
- Negro (old word, Southern US)
- Colored (mid- to late 20th century)
- Afro-American (emphasizing being part of the country)
- Black
- African-American (1980s)
Race as a biological concept (as an essence)
- A human group with common biological features
- Usually associated with blood
- Genes have replaced blood
- “racial” groups differ from one another in about 6% of their genes
There is greater variety within “racial” groups than between them
- Blood endures discursively
- One-drop rule
Race in the US
- The colonial encounter
- Trans-Atlantic slave trade
- The post-colonial condition
- Continuing significance of race
- It was always on bad terms
Race and the age of reason
, - The word ‘race’ had been used in European languages for several hundred years
before the Enlightenment
- What emerged with the Enlightenment was the search for evidence that would support
racial categorization
Scientific racism
Johann Friederich Blumenbach, “On the Natural Variety of Mankind”, 1775
- First use of the concept of “human race”
- Craniological research (examination of skulls and their span)
- Division of human species in five classes
Caucasian, or white race
Mongolian, or yellow race
Malayan, or brown race
Ethiopian, or black race
American, or red race
Samuel G. Morton, “Crania Americana”, 1839
- A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South
America
- Morton’s hierarchy of races
Caucasians (“highest intellectual endowment”)
Asians (“susceptible to learning”)
Native Americans (“averse to the restraints of education, untrainable”)
Africans (“lowest grade of humanity”)
One-drop rule (one drop of black blood, makes you sociably black)
- 1662: colony of Virginia enacted “one-drop rule”
- The “blood-fractions laws” of 1705 ruled that anyone who was at least one-eighth
black (one black great-grandparent) could not be labeled as white
- The 1890 Census included categories for racial mixtures such as quadroon (one-fourth
black and octoroon (one-eighth black)
- The “one-drop rule” came back into effect on the Census by the 1930s, so Americans
could only check one box if they had black ancestry
- A 1970 Louisiana law defined black anyone who had at least 1/32 African-American
blood and this law was upheld in state court in 1985
- Starting with the 2000 Census, Americans were allowed to check more than one race
Seven million people, about 2,4% of the population, reported being more than one
race
- Many biracial Americans identify as only black
- In 2010, President Obama self-identified as black on the Census
- POWERFUL DISCOURS IN US SOCIETY ON BEING BLACK!
Minstrelsy
- Minstrel shows:
, Expressed class identification and hostility
Performers and audiences all working-class men
Conveyed ethnic satire as well as social and political commentary of wide-ranging,
sometimes radical character
Often contained explicitly sexual, homosexual, and pornographic references
- in the frontier, wild-west, man-area’s
- forced blacks and whites to co-exist, both groups wanting to go to the shows
- Comparison to ‘Zwarte Piet’
Raboteau’s article “Who is Zwarte Piet?”
Eugenics
- A theory and practice of improving a human population by controlled breeding
“use of genetics to improve the human race”
“self-direction of human evolution”
- Desirable vs. undesirable (i.e. ‘degenerate’) characteristics
- Nazi eugenics: sterilization of more than 400,000 people
Positive eugenics
- The promotion of “better breeding”, campaigns encouraged young people to marry
“well” and improve the human genetic stock by reproducing positive traits
Better baby contests
Negative eugenics
- Eliminating drags on human revolution by preventing reproduction
Sterilization, especially of woman
The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy (1920)
- Colored people (meaning non-Nordics “outbreeding” Nordics
- Non-Nordics inherently lazy, diseased, etc.
- Salvation of civilization depends on better breeding
Buck v. Bell (1927)
- Virginia case sought to empower the state to sterilize those deemed unproductive
citizens (mentally retarded, poor, immoral)
- Great victory for eugenicists, it freed states to sterilize citizens for compelling public
interest
Reproduction was not a private concern, but a public concern
Race as a taboo subject
- After the holocaust, race gradually disappeared from the literature of the natural
sciences
, - In the 1960s, anthropology took a constructionist stance by affirming that race does
not exist
- Should we avoid (or, erase) the word race?
- Is the US a post-racial society?
Does color blindness work?
- “Refusing to acknowledge the fact of racial classification, feelings, and actions, and
refusing to measure their consequences will not eliminate racial inequalities. At best, it
will preserve the status quo.”
Is Race real?
- If biologically unsound, it is still an experiential reality
- exclusions on the basis of race are still significant
- Institutional racism
Affirmative Action
- Can racial quotas solve the problem?
Race as a social construct
- “The origins of racial distinctions are to be found in culture and social structure, not in
biology” (Paul Spickard)
- “Race is an American fixation…perhaps nowhere else is race quite so
phenomenological and real” (Brian Nero)
- “much of what is said about races nowadays in American social life, while literally
false if understood as being about biological races, can be interpreted as reporting
truths about social groups” (Anthony Appiah)
- Stuart Hall
Argues that race is a discursive construct whose meaning is fundamentally
unstable. It shifts and slides in relation to the cultural context in which it is used.
Passing
- Physical markers vs. cultural markers
Feminism in racial matters
- Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981)
- Feminism overlooked the importance of racial oppression
- “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”
- Black feminist movement
- Forms of oppression via race, class and gender intersect
Race as a positive tool
- Shared history of oppression
- Source of belonging
- Foundation for the production of political voices
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