Background, Introducing Performance Of Race

The book has as its principal thesis the consideration of race as “a folk classification, a product of popular beliefs about human differences that evolved from 16th to 19th centuries” (Smedley, 2007, pag.24). The book also specifies three characteristics that distinguish the racial ideology in America: the absence of a category for biracial people, the homogenization of the black or African American Americans, and the impossibility to change a person’s race. (Smedley, 2007, pag.7)

Race can be defined as a generally constructed way of categorizing people, according to phonotypical characteristics that are determined genetically but not always consistent. Kwame Anthony Appiah defined race to be the same as all other major forms of identification which are central to identity politics (45). Identity provides us with a sense of belonging. Our families, our cultural backgrounds, where we live and the type of work we do all contribute to our sense of identity. Malcolm X’s shift in identity we can say came when he adopted “X” as his last name saying, since he was the descendant of slaves stolen from Africa, Little was actually a slave name - as slaves were often given the last name of their owners.

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.

These questions bring me back to my opening statement. She says she will “prove” and “promote” the fact that “blackness” as we know it is losing power in its ability to explain political and social behavior. At the end of the day, I walk away feeling as though nothing has been proven.

In the article Ms. Durrow states that in America they treat bi-racial people differently. The author states because she was black and have blue eyes. That was seen as unusual. She felt disturb that Rachel Dolezal was a white lady pretending to be black because she felt empathy towards African Americans. She was the N.A.A.C.P president till they found out she was white. She is saying that your experiences should identify you.

The impact of racial formation has never been stagnant, which is why the definition of race isn’t either. The authors define race as “a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of bodies” and racial formation as “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed” (55). They go on to explain race as being perceived through two different viewpoints: an essence, or an illusion. The idea leads to the manipulation of the meaning of race in the social structure as well as its influence on the structure. Race is often translated into treating a different group of people based on skin color along with the stereotypes and characteristics associated with it. Omi and Winant argue that “we should think of race as an element of social structure rather than as an irregularity within it,” but in order to do this, society must first “avoid both the utopian framework… and the essentialist formulation” (55). The utopian framework is the idea that we can easily get beyond the construction of race while the essentialist formulation incorporates race through an objective and biological framework. This notion of “color-blindness” is utopian in the present moment, but it is a goal that the American society hopes to

At the most basic level, race is another way which humans form connections and establish divides amongst one another. Perceived similarity and difference is the basis upon which people become conscious of their sense of safety and comfort. When discussing race, it is key to note this idea of “perceived similarity and difference.” Here, perception is reflective of race as a social construct. As wielded by those who prescribe to the dominant white standard, race has been used to both lump people deemed other together, and to create separation—depending on what was useful or consolidated white power at the time. For instance, “although the Supreme Court ruling in Glum v. Rice had formally established Chinese as colored in 1927, by 1967, the Chinese were ‘card-carrying white people” (Tong, 227). This is not to say that race was invented and used solely by whites, as this understanding limits the agency of people of color. Different groups of color have unified around their racial identity, forming communities, creating safe spaces, and pushing back against white privilege and discrimination. However, this is inextricably linked on certain levels with the oppression such groups face. In Botts’ discussion of the social construction of race, she states, “The fact is that our society operates as if race were real [. . .] It is also the case that some racial identities are associated with a history of oppression” (Tong, 224). However, this

Based on the confusing and somewhat contradictory definitions of race provided in our culture, an often-considered question is what part of racial identity is genetically inherited and what part is derived from experience connected with genetically inherited traits. The subsequent conversation here in my analysis evolves from Dolezal’s specific delineation between a genetically inherited African American identity and her self-ascribed cultural blackness. Dolezal clearly separates these two factors, insisting that she does not consider herself to be African-American, but instead identifies as black; that although her “biological identity was thrust upon [her] and married to [her]” (Harris-Perry, 2015), she primarily connects to and identifies

The space of liminality, of ambiguity, is the space through which the determination of racial classifications can become most complex and deterministic for further understandings. In this space of liminality the distinctions between races become further obscured, yet concurrently these racial distinctions are made most evident. In both the Nazi and Jim Crow contexts, the liminal space between German versus Jew, and White versus African-American becomes how race is constructed. Yet, these liminal spaces are not simple, nor binary, instead these spaces are multidimensional; German versus Jew becomes German versus German-Jew versus Jew, and White versus African-American becomes White versus less White versus African-American. In this complexity, in these liminal spaces, the fundamental question of race emerges: who is an other?

The abolishment of American slavery may have freed slaves from physical chains, but the black community has suffered from various ailments for all of American history. Following the Civil War, economic inequality and systemic racism presented overwhelming disadvantages to colored communities. Many people of multiracial ancestry were presented with the unique opportunity of racial passing, or the “deception that enables a person to adopt certain roles or identities from which he would be barred by prevailing social standards in the absence of his misleading conduct” (Kennedy 1145). That is, passing is the ability due to physical appearance to be identified as a member of another racial group. While it may seem that passing is a purely beneficial opportunity presented to mixed-race individuals, many experience psychological trauma as a result of challenging their racial identity, as shown in Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) through the novel’s protagonists Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield.

For example, a black – white adolescent girl would wear two distinct hairstyles, sometimes an Afro hairdo and sometimes straight, to represent her black and white identifications. ( Rose 49). A lady with Chinese white parentage presented herself as “I am only half Chinese”, trying to deemphasizing her Asian identity and emphasizing her Caucasian heritage. (Sung 110). In some cases, the subject was not willing to define himself and he simply let others to define him. (Sung 110). The case studies indicate that biracial children easily fall into the trap of duality, confusion about oneself’s identification, and it leads to different problems like alienation, loneliness, which they are subjected to in daily life.

In June 2015, a few days before Donald Trump declared that he was running for president, the news cycle was dominated by a different person: Rachel Dolezal. She was the head of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, an artist, a teacher of black-themed subjects – and, as it turned out, the daughter of white parents. She said she identified as black, and was living the life she felt was authentically her own. Her critics, and there were many, believed she had been living a lie, letting people assume she was black, when years before she had filed a lawsuit as a Howard University graduate student, alleging that the university had discriminated against her because she was a white woman.

First and foremost, the day mankind redefined race separating everyone, not only changed history, but changed my life. I was born into the transition of ending segregation; but I am not black by lineage. My mother is defined as White and Cherokee Indian while my father is African American. In comparison with Goffman’s dramaturgical theory and Merton’s role theory,

In text 1 the mother of Rachel Dolezal claims that she is a fraud and that she is not Afro-American but a descendant of a caucasian couple. Both of the parents says that Rachel Dolezal has wished to be someone else since 2004 where she divorced her Afro-American husband. Text 2's author Guilaine Kinouani thinks that Rachel Dolezal has brought a sense of anger and shame over the Afro-American community. Ms Kinounani thinks that Dolezal has created a strong bond with the community under false pretence with her fabricated stories about discrimination.

In the video, Race: The Floating Signifier, Stuart Hall counters the thought that race is connected with the biological aspect. Rather than considering race as due to the biological make up of an individual, it is a collection of characteristics brought together that forms one 's race. That is how Stuart Hall views race, as a floating signifier, something that is ever changing and not static. This paper will discuss the troubles of using biology/science to categorize a person, talk about a different way of thinking of race, and provide the confused case of race of Alexis Morrision, a physically white woman with the possibility of being considered black. Situational cases will also