Contesting Race, Culture and Identity

1
Contesting Race, Culture and Identity

• Is Race an Essential Category?
• Race, Culture and Identity as Social
  Constructs
• - the origins of race theory
• - cultural performance
• - representing the Other the social
• imaginary

2
In Black and White
3
Toni Morrison

• I have never lived, nor has any of us
• lived in a world in which race did not
• matter. Such a world, one free of
• racial hierarchy, is usually imagined
• or described as dreamscape
• (Home 3).

4
Frantz Fanon

• My body was given back to me sprawled out,
  distorted,
• recolored, clad in mourning in that white winter
  day. The
• Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro
  is mean, the
• Negro is ugly look a nigger, its cold, the
  nigger is shivering
• . . . . The handsome little boy is trembling
  because he thinks
• the nigger is quivering with rage, the little boy
  throws himself
• into his mothers arms Mama, the niggers going
  to eat me
• up (Black Skin, White Masks 114).

5
Frantz Fanon

• From the opposite end of the white world a
  magical
• Negro culture was hailing me. Negro sculpture! I
• began to flush with pride. Was this our
  salvation?
• . . . . So here we have the Negro rehabilitated,
• standing before the bar, ruling the world with
  his
• intuition, the Negro recognized, set on his feet
  again,
• sought after, taken up . . . . (Black Skin,
  White Masks
• 127).

6
Carolus Linnaeus (1735)

• Americanus reddish, choleric, and erect hair
  black, straight, thick
• wide nostrils, scanty beard obstinate, merry,
  free paints himself with
• fine red lines regulated by customs.
• Asiaticus sallow, melancholy, stiff hair black
  dark eyes severe,
• haughty, avaricious covered with loose garments
  ruled by opinions.
• Africanus black, phlegmatic, relaxed hair
  black, frizzled skin silky
• nose flat lips tumid women without shame, they
  lactate profusely
• crafty, indolent, negligent anoints himself with
  grease governed by
• caprice.
• Europeaeus white, sanguine, muscular hair long,
  flowing eyes blue
• gentle, acute, inventive covers himself with
  close vestments governed
• by laws (Smedley 164).

7
Johann Blumenbach

• Caucasian/Caucasoid white race, European
• Mongolian/Mongoloid yellow race, Oriental
• Ethiopian black race, African
• American red race, American Indian
• Malay brown race, Asiatic

8
US Census Bureau

• The concept of race as used by the Census
• Bureau reflects self-identification by people
  according to the race or races with which they
  most closely identify. These categories are
  sociopolitical constructs and should not be
  interpreted as being scientific or
  anthropological in nature (quickfacts.census.gov)
  .

9
US Census Bureau

• White
• Black or African American
• American Indian and Alaska Native
• Asian
• Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander
• Some other race (multiracial, mixed or a
  Hispanic/Latino group (Mexican, Puerto Rican,
  Cuban, etc. )
• Two or more races

10
Manning Marable

• Race is first and foremost an unequal
  relationship
• between social aggregates, characterized by
• dominant and subordinate forms of social
• interaction, and reinforced by the intricate
  patterns
• of public discourse, power, ownership and
  privilege
• within the economic, social and political
  institutions
• of society (Beyond Black and White186).

11
Stuart Hall

• Identity is the narrative, the stories
• which cultures tell themselves about
• who they are and where they came
• from (Negotiating Caribbean
• Identity).

12
Stuart Hall

• identity is not only a story, a narrative which
  we tell
• ourselves about ourselves, it is stories which
  change with
• historical circumstances. And identity shifts
  with the way in
• which we think and hear them and experience them.
  Far from
• only coming from the still small point of truth
  inside us,
• identities actually come from outside, they are
  the way in
• which we are recognized and then come to step
  into the place
• of the recognitions which others give us. Without
  the others
• there is no self, there is no self-recognition
  (Negotiating
• Caribbean Identity 8).

13
Michel Foucault (1977)

• -    the normalizing gaze, a surveillance that
  makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to
  punish. It establishes over individuals a
  visibility through which one differentiates and
  judges them (Discipline and Punish 25).

14
Defining the Social Imaginary

•  The social imaginary is a discursive space in
  which communities are already constructed,
  imagined, positioned and created by hegemonic
  discourses and dominant groups.

15
Frantz Fanon

• . . . The white man . . . had woven me out of a
• thousand details, anecdotes, stories. I thought
  that
• what I had in hand was to construct a
  physiological
• self, to balance space, to localize sensations,
  and
• here I was called on for more.
• Look, a Negro!(Black Skin 111)
• And so it is not I who make a meaning for
  myself,
• but it is the meaning that was already there,
  pre-
• existing, waiting for me (Black Skin 134).

16
Renuka Sooknanan

• The end result of a sedimentary knowing of Black
  
• community is a homogenous, transparent identity
  category,
• which offers entrenched and inflexible
  boundaries. Black
• community becomes a finished product in that it
  is thought in
• advance, and to call on something called the
  Black
• community is to perform a set of erasures. Among
  the
• disappearing actsis the multiplicity and
  plurality of ethnic
• representations (Politics of Essentialism
  148).

17
Stuart Hall

• Far from being eternally fixed in some
  essentialised
• past, they are subject to the continuous play
  of
• history, culture and power. Far from being
  grounded
• in a mere recovery of the past, which is
  waiting to
• be found, and which, when found, will secure our
• sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are
  the
• names we give to the different ways we are
• positioned by, and position ourselves within, the
  
• narratives of the past (Cultural Identity and
  Diaspora
• 225).

18
Visible Minority Groups 2001 Counts, for Canada

• Canada
• Total Population
• 29,639,030
• Visible Minorities
• 3,983,845 (13 of population)
• Chinese
• 1,029,395 (25 of minorities)
• South Asians
• 917,070 (23 of minorities)
• Blacks
• 662,215 (17 of minorities)

• Toronto
• Total Population
• 4,647,960
• Visible Minorities
• 1,712,530 (37 of population)
• Chinese
• 409,530 (24 of minorities)
• South Asian
• 473,805 (28 of minorities)
• Blacks
• 310,495 (18 of minorities)

19
Manning Marable

• Our ability to transcend racial chauvinism
• and inter-ethnic hatred and the old definitions
  of
• race, to recognize the class commonalities and
• joint social-justice interests of all groups in
  the
• restructuring of this nations economy and social
  
• order, will be key to constructing a nonracist
• democracy, transcending ancient walls of white
• violence, corporate power and class (Beyond
  Black
• and White 201)