Discussion Board Posts
Main post starting a thread: Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, "Chapter One" Racecraft (New York: Verso, 2012.) pp. 1-24.
In chapter one of their book, Fields and Fields warn against an early celebration of the post-racial age, as people from minority groups continue to suffer from racial injustice. The authors talk about the racist concepts that continue to affect the way discussions about race are conducted in present-day America. The authors state that racist concepts are extremely harmful because they not only categorize people in obsolete racial groups that do not reflect their genealogical reality, but they are also politically and socially loaded, being associated with different stereotypes which have limited the way in which people belonging to those groups. The authors correlate the talk about race in the so-called post –racial age with the problem of poverty in communities of color.
Fields and Fields use the term racecraft to refer to the sum of historical conceptions and narratives about race which pervade the society, leaving a mark in the way in which, even today, people of different backgrounds look at each other. While it is not based on scientific fact, ‘racecraft’ nevertheless fills the society with stereotypical images regarding people who look in a certain way, or come from a certain ethnical or social background. The authors seem to imply that race is nothing than a word, but its historical and current effects pervade the entire society, dividing communities and casting a negative light upon groups who have been historically oppressed due to the color of their skin or other physical characteristics.
Fields and Fields make an interesting point in saying that, while children are trained, from childhood to reject superstitious beliefs and to think rationally, they are not equally trained to reject “racecraft”, that is, the sum of racist beliefs and actions which lead to social injustice and stereotyping entire groups of people. Since people continue to believe that the entirety of racist narratives and beliefs that comprise ‘racecraft’ seems familiar and continues to be part of our daily lives, instead of appearing to appear as strange and unfamiliar as ‘witchcraft’, it is premature to talk about a post-racial era. The ideas expressed by the author are extremely valuable because today, to many people unknowingly continue to promote racial beliefs, while being certain that they are not racist. For example, microaggressions which have currently become visible, particularly in the academic space, where students fight against them by means of awareness campaigns, are based in the same racecraft that continues to shape how society looks at, and treats, people from different racial backgrounds.
Post Responding to Others’ Discussion Thread: Race, Class and Gender, Article 9, "Are Asian Americans Becoming 'White'?" pp.88-93.
Zhou’s article on the situation of Asian-Americans reflects the absurd status of people with Asian ancestry, who are becoming ‘honorary white’ due to the fact that many of them have become successful and raised to a higher social position as compared to all of the other minorities in America. This statute, while imposing particular obligations on people from this group, and placing unfair pressure on the group to continue to to better than everyone else, still does not allow Americans of Asian ancestry to be simply perceived as Americans. They continue to remain outsiders and to be seen as alien, or outside the dominant group, due to their racial characteristics which separate them from the dominant group, the “Whites”.
While the author notices that Asian –Americans may be on their way to become ‘white’ due to the fact that they have a higher status than other racial minorities, and this tends to erase race distinctions, it is worth noting that most young and educated Americans of Asian origin, reject the ‘white’ label, and prefer to remain anchored to their own racial group, and their own cultures and traditions. The idea that people can become ‘white’ simply by reaching a privileged status which has been reserved to Whites, or Caucasians, comes to contradict the beliefs in biological racial differences that separate different communities. In the end, becoming simply American seems today more difficult than becoming ‘honorary white’.
Post Responding to Others’ Discussion Thread: “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination” by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan.
Racial discrimination on the employment market is not news, it is reality, and this article comes to confirm, once again, that beyond studies and experience, being African- American continues to hinder one’s chances of earning a job or a promotion, becoming financially independent or changing one’s social class. This has serious political and social implication, because it justifies the affirmative action strategies, which continue to be necessarily in the allegedly ‘post- racial’ American society. Racist beliefs about the inferior intelligence or lower competence of African Americans are based on historical assumptions regarding the superiority of the White race. It continues to impact the lives of African-Americans. This article essentially proves that racial discrimination in employment is real, rather than being based on a victim culture, or being the result of lower efforts made by African- Americans to find jobs, as some people may believe. This draws an alarm signal regarding inequality in employment, which is particularly disturbing because it continues to limit African-American’s chances to become successful. A sociologist could also study such indicators of discrimination in employment as wage levels and promotion opportunities for people of color as compared to Whites.
In this article, the author introduces concepts related to homosexuality, and discusses the present-day attitudes of scholars towards sexuality, gender identity. These attitudes powerfully contrasts with the attitude of most people in the society, who cannot understand how someone who is born a ‘female’ can reject this biological and divinely assigned denomination, and chose instead to adopt a masculine identity, or the other way around. Understanding that sexuality and gender identity are more flexible than people are typically taught to perceive them requires not only reading about it, but also accepting that this is true, and people’s values often stop them from doing so. In this book, the authors seem to do a great job at opening the eyes of the readers regarding the reality of the gender continuum, because of the examples they provide, which challenge the two-gender assumptions that most people hold.
These examples provide an insight into the cultural practices of non-Western people, who have no problem accepting non-biologically conforming genders. Since Western societies are strict in this respect, to the extent that people have been ostracized, isolated and banished form communities due to their alternative sexuality or gender identity, one must question whether the male-female duality that the society assumes to be unquestionable, is in fact a result of socialization, traditional religious beliefs and the result of cultural pressures.
Because this view of gender duality is shared by the dominant group in the society, it has influenced the perception of other groups, such as Native Americans, to give up their own flexible view of gender identity, and adopt the same view of sexuality as Westerners have. Because European-based strict views on the parallel relationship between biological sex and gender identity dominant most of the occidental world, native groups and cultures in these former colonies have been forced to give up their own traditional views on sexuality, and to adopt the White perception on the matter. Furthermore, the globalization process has caused the same Eurocentric views to be shared throughout the world, and has led to many traditional cultures being undermined by the American culture. Across the world, individuals who had been living happily with a third gender identity, or who have ancestors that did so, are now forced to experience stigmatization, or to hide their true identity due to the globalizing forces.
Post Responding to Others’ Discussion Thread: Prisons for Our Bodies, Closets for Our Minds
In this article, the author discusses the relationship between racism and heterosexism by arguing that there is a close connection between the ways in which the two phenomena work to oppress minority people of both groups. The perspective of the LGBT community of color is particularly important, because individuals who identify themselves as both Black and a member of the LGBT community, are likely to experience both forms of oppression at the same time. This situates Black LGBT people as outsiders both within their communities, and within the larger society. The author explains that the racist mechanisms that drive this social exclusion are based upon the assumption that Blacks are heterosexual, and that all LGBT people are White. From this perspective, being LGBT seems to represent a social phenomenon that only characterizes the White society. On the contrary, Blacks need to maintain the heterosexist norms imposed by the same White society, in order to avoid further stigmatization and the loss of reputation for the already stigmatized racial minority. Consequently, Black LGBT people find no place within their own communities, and are also perceived with distrust at the level of the wider society. Their experiences show how people can lose their solidarity and turn against each other, in an attempt to gain a certain status in the society, and to join a privileged status, which assumes the adoption of a White way of living, and White social norms.
Post Responding to Others’ Discussion Thread: Interpreting and Experiencing Anti-Queer Violence," by Doug Meyer
Hate crime, as a method of social control, assumes that individuals who self-identify as members of the dominant group feel that they have the authority, or even the duty, to punish transgressions at the level of the society. Punishing a person’s gender performance as a way of regulating his or her sexuality reflects the racist patriarchal values of the capitalist society, in which privileged White males feel entitled to punish non-conforming individuals in the society. In the article, the author showed that, in case when victims of violence were both from a racial and a gender minority, it was difficult for them to understand whether the abuse was determined by one characteristic or the other. The author explains how this lack of clarity hinders Black members of the LGBT communities, since identifying the abuse as bias-motivated is crucial to having the abuser sentenced to a more lengthy sentence. Hate crime victims are not a homogenous group, and identifying their experiences as unique across different lines of race, class, gender and sexuality can help to understand their experiences, and to promote their rights.
