The Role Of Race And Sex In Identity Politics

In his book White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (Revised and Updated 10th anniversary edition), Ian Haney López explores the legal construction of race, and in particular

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.

Matthew Frye Jacobson’s Whiteness of a Different Color offers innovative insight into the concept of “race” and the evolution of “whiteness” throughout American history. Jacobson focuses his analysis on the instability of racial identification over time and how race has been created and perceived throughout different stages of history. He states in his introduction that “one of the tasks before the historian is to discover which racial categories are useful to whom at a given moment, and why” (p.9) and while he is successful in some respects, his analysis is somewhat incomplete in providing a full scope of the power relations that created, altered and maintained racial identities in the United States. While Jacobson offers a detailed

The meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries. Historical race concepts have varied across time and cultures, creating scientific, social, and political controversy. Of course, today’s definition varies from the scientific racism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that justified slavery and later, Jim Crow laws in the early twentieth. It is also different from the genetic inferiority argument that was present at the wake of the civil rights movement. However, despite the constantly shifting concepts, there seems to be one constant that has provided a foundation for ideas towards race: race is a matter of visually observable attributes such as skin color, facial features, and other self-evident

In Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s essay “Racial Formation”, we see how the tendency to assign each individual a specific race as misleading. This essay suggests that race is not merely biological, but rather lays more in sociology and historical perspective. Once we look at someone and say, “They’re white”, it brings forth all the stereotype’s that go along with that “race”, and once the race is assigned, it is assumed that we can know something about the person.

Although the color problem is sometimes incorporated as not an issue, it is something that stills is the talk of the town from time to time. The Categorizing of persons based on their skin complexion, is more or likely extremely rooted in the black perception. Many years ago dating back to slavery, the problem of someone’s skin color has been used for revenues of controlling and division.

The title of the paper intends to raise awareness about the large number of historians and activists still struggling to clearly define their understanding of racial identities. Given the complex use of the term “race” in biology, in everyday life, and in the social sciences, this does not come as a surprise. However, without properly addressing issues of historical and present understandings of race, both scholars and activists run the risk of reinforcing rather than challenging racial misconceptions.

Race and ethnicity are two concepts that are difficult to understand because the definitions are in constant change due to the fluid social structure of society. Individuals of different colors and backgrounds understand race and ethnicity to be concepts that are shaped by his or her own experiences. The historical definitions of different racial backgrounds compare to the current definitions explain how race is not a biological identification, but a system of recognition of different physical characteristics to oppress or privilege different racial categories. Although the United States has significantly progressed from the common outward racism, the systematic implementation of power for one one racial and ethnic group continue to create a blindness for the oppression of people of color.

Race — as a social construct, a pseudo-biological concept, and an identifying demographic — has undeniably been ubiquitous in the history of human otherness. In particular, the ascribing of racial identities to a group, or “racialization”, has played a vital role in the conception and development of minority groups. This phenomenon continues to shape ideas about race and ethnicity, albeit in less dramatic ways than in the antebellum South. Nevertheless, people blinded by privilege claim that they are “colorblind” or that society has moved into a “post-racial” paradigm. It is, therefore, especially relevant to examine processes of racialization that have defined and maintained the social concept of race throughout history. A prominent historical instance of racialization that influenced modern-day race identity is the objectification and commoditization of black people in Southern slave markets of the antebellum era. As a consequence of the chattel principle, which defined a slave’s existence as property of a slaveholder, Black Americans’ identities were permanently altered by those who used their positions of power to subjugate and dehumanize them, either deliberately or tacitly. Specifically through association between race and physical or mental ability, and false medicalization of issues in slave populations, slave traders, slaveholders, and others who endorsed chattel slavery perpetuated the racialization of black slaves.

Race and racism have been the most dominant concepts in the American ideological space. Most people see this as a way of identifying themselves while at the same time serving as a tool of separation. For the Americans, race is an identity signified by the color of the skin and the type of physical features a person has. The colors are genetically inherited; that is they are passed on from the parent to the offspring. This is highlighted as a case of both science and philosophy because people who belong to different parentage are always expected to have different physical appearances. Presently, American is made up of people with different physical appearances. It is ideally a representation of all people globally. America is a place that has the widest variety of the people that can be found. In the event that people from these races wish to segregate themselves, this will be practically easy because they will be determined by the color of their skin. The physical appearances are easy to decipher and bring out at any time. This is what has made racism easily possible in the United States; the fact that one can easily identify another from the way they appear and chose to identify them as either their own or alien.

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

In lecture, our class grappled with the concept of race as a cultural construction, and how the issues that derive from race only have meaning because we assign it to them; mankind could have chosen anything to classify themselves, but somehow settled on skin color. In the words of Clifford Geertz, “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun” – racism would be one of those webs that humanity has tangled itself up in (qtd. in Hickman). We have studied race as a mythical reality, and racism as a cultural model that people have adopted in order to deal with the complexities of the past.

According to Jonathan M. Marks and his dissertation, Scientific and Folk Ideas about Hereditary, Race can be classified as a. “property of [an individual’s] constitution, innate and assigned at birth” (178). On a biological basis, race is perceived as a naturally occurring characteristic which commonly groups certain individuals together and other individuals apart. Now, Marks argues this assumption by critically analyzing the cultural aspect and societal influence that impacts the way Race is perceived and systemized. From an anthropologist view-point, Race is not pre-determined or natural it is culturally constructed and is an unsolidified concept. Essentially, anthropologist see race as a cultural construct because it has the ability to change over time and has no definite meaning. Mark supports this when he

Combahee says “We notice that the sole those that care enough regarding U.S.A. to figure systematically for our liberation is U.S.A.. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters, and our community that permits U.S.A. to continue our struggle and work”. associate example is Identity Politics that could be a method of approaching political life during a method that centers on your own third-dimensional oppression. Politics square measure driven by your own identity. The means you approach politics is by your own identity and skill as an individual.“The collective came along at a time once several of its members were troubled to outline a liberating feminist follow aboard the control of a preponderantly white cause, and a Black

Race is a particularly salient socially-constructed identity in American society. To describe race as socially constructed is not to reduce the concept to being “made up”, i.e. fictional; rather, social construction is the intentional assignment of social meaning to some characteristic that carries no intrinsic meaning. The construction of blackness and whiteness occurred in tandem, but blackness was defined in terms of what whiteness is not, while whiteness itself remained undefined in an explicit sense. Instead, whiteness provided the racial standard against which other groups were defined [as inferior] (McDermott & Samson 2005; Swidler 1986, on