Analysis Of Race Matters By Cornell West

“‘Race Politics” by Luis J. Rodriguez was about him and his brother living in a place called Watts. They journey over the tracks, trying to get the “good food” for their family. They go to the store, and find themselves face to face with five teenagers who knock the food out of their hands, and beat up the main character’s older brother, causing him to vomit. The teenagers leave, with them on the floor. The purpose for writing this essay is to identify syntax, connotation, and imagery within this poem, and decide what makes it important to the overall poem. The overall impression that Luis conveys within his work is the feeling of separation.

In recent years, Americans have become more divided as a people. Many people say America has not been as divided since the Civil War as we are now. America is not supposed to be divided, but lately, it has been. Overall, Americans have been divided as a whole, and some of the main reasons are because of politics, wealth, and race.

Humans define race by how they conceive and categorize different social realities. Thus, race is often referred to as a social construct. The differences in skin color and facial characteristics have led most of society to classify humans into groups instead of individuals. These constructs affect us all, and they often result in situations where majority racial groups cause undue suffering to those that are part of the minority. The understanding of race as a social construct is best illustrated by the examination of racial issues within our own culture, specifically those that have plagued the history of the United States.

Racial Formation in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant made me readjust my understanding of race by definition and consider it as a new phenomenon. Through, Omi and Winant fulfilled their purpose of providing an account of how concepts of race are created and transformed, how they become the focus of political conflict, and how they shape and permeate both identities and institutions. I always considered race to be physical characteristic by the complexion of ones’ skin tone and the physical attributes, such as bone structure, hair texture, and facial form. I knew race to be a segregating factor, however I never considered the meaning of race as concept or signification of identity that refers to different types of human bodies, to the perceived corporal and phenotypic makers of difference and the meanings and social practices that are ascribed to these differences, in which in turn create the oppressing dominations of racialization, racial profiling, and racism. (p.111). Again connecting themes from the previous readings, my westernized influences are in a direct correlation to how to the idea of how I see race and the template it has set for the rather automatic patterns of inequalities, marginalization, and difference. I never realized how ubiquitous and evolving race is within the United States.

In “The Social Construction of Race’’, Ian Lopez states that race is constructed relationally, against one another rather than in isolation on (p.54); we cannot define what whiteness is or is not without making comparison to other entities such as blackness. Therefore, the creation of racial identities by Anglo-Saxons or white Europeans was justification for their offensive activities against other races; including rape, murder, genocide, causing famines, and taking land. Lopez states in his article that human interaction creates social construction of race and that races are constructed in comparison to one another rather than alone (p.54). We cannot define what it means to be black compared to what it means to be white; we say what whiteness

Solórzano and Yosso (2001) asserted that the aforementioned concepts act as a “camouflage for the self-interest, power and privilege of dominate groups in U.S. society” (p. 473). This means that even though over sixty years have passed since the Civil Rights Movement and over one hundred years since the Emancipation Proclamation, there are still forms of racism and oppression that are evident in higher education that require further research through the lens of critical race theory.

Race in the United States has always been a problem in the past and still remains the same in the present society. Race relations is defined by relations between members or communities of different races within one country (en.oxforddictionairies.com). Minorities have been denied legally and socially rights in the past by the dominant race, White Americans. Now in modern society minorities are the majority of the United States, but are still being racial targeted, profiled and killed by White Americans.

Despite changes in the landscape for treatment of ethnic minorities in the United States over the past 200 years, issues with racism has never stopped being an issue and continues to tarnish and tatter the very fabric of our nation. There has been a history of violence against Black people that dates back 400 years, to a time when the first slave was forcefully brought here to the USA (Rogers, 2015). From that time on, people of African descent have been dehumanized and treated as second-class citizens and this has become an ongoing community issue (Diversi, 2016). Racial classification was created as a way to condone slavery and maintain the primacy of the white race (Tolliver, Hadden, Snowden, & Manning, 2016). Aymer (2016) explains that the Critical Race Theory (CRT) provides a way to understand that the violence that Blacks face in America originates from the societal belief in White superiority and, when trying to understand the Black reality, centuries of racial oppression must be discussed (Aymer, 2016). CRT acknowledges that racism is primarily a problem in America and has contributed to the social disparities in the U.S. In addition, it notes other forms of oppression that are important to discuss and work through. CRT does not believe in the legal rhetoric that there is an impartial, equal way of dealing with individuals in the community that has nothing to do with color and everything to do with achievement and hard work. It also takes on an interdisciplinary

Critical race theory is an approach to examine race as a social construct, and it looks at the social and economic inequality among the different races in society. This theory better understands the different values of the race at different level such as individual, interactional, institutional by highlighting those narratives of minorities that typically do not have the power. The privilege is typically silence those narratives by holding more power in the social position as being White than those narratives. Social position refers to the position that is given to a person given by society and culture, which influenced by the person’s social status. The power of the social position can relate to the privilege and power of whites in politics

American society likes to believe that race relations in our country are no longer strained. We do not want to hear about the need for affirmative action or about the growing numbers of white supremacist groups. In order to appease our collective conscious, we put aside the disturbing fact that racism is alive and well in the great U.S.A. It hides in the workplace, it subtly shows its ugly face in the media, and it affects the education of minority students nationwide. In the following excerpts from an interview with a middle class African American male, the reader will find strong evidence that race plays a major role in determining the type and quality of education a student receives.

In 1492 Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue. Everyone knows the story of Christopher Columbus; they are taught it in grade school if not before then. When he landed in America by accident, he had no idea that he would be creating the world's largest Melting Pot. This "melting pot" provided means for a new country, made from a mixture of many cultures and beliefs, thus creating a new country with a new and ever-changing culture. One complication with a Melting Pot is that you cannot put people of different race and ethnicity together without conflict.

Race relations are an ever prominent issue in American society. Controversies focusing around race are a commonly seen smeared across the front page of the newspaper or headlining on the evening news. The opposition is usually between a minority group and "The Man," a colloquialism used by many Blacks to refer to the overwhelming power stemming from white racist tendencies. This racial tension can sometimes can cause the oppressed to band together against the oppressor. Many times, the most prevalent link is between the African American community and the Latino community. Here we find two groups of people with very similar lifestyles who find camaraderie between themselves when dealing

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First, the overall idea of America is being united, or undivided. However, separation is a big part of this society. American people go through a categorization process of being split, labeled, and placed in groups, and this process has its own negative effects

Omi and Winant’s discussion from “Racial Formations” are generally about race being a social construct and is also demonstrated in the viewing of Race - The power of an illusion. Omi and Winant have both agreed that race is socially constructed in society. Ultimately this means that race is seen differently in different societies and different cultures. Media, politics, school, economy and family helps alter society’s structure of race. In the viewing , also media as well as history seemed to create race by showing how social norms have evolved in different racial groups.