Understanding the foundations:

Race and critical race theory

Shelina Kassam
WGS-350
September 20, 2010
 Agenda
 What is race? How does it shape our experiences,
attitudes and lives?
 How is race embedded in societal institutions?
 Racial formation and racialization
 Racial projects
 Smith‟s 3 pillars of white supremacy
 Race, gender and class: Interlocking
principles/factors
 Housekeeping:
 Class roster
 Blackboard and emails
 Critical Reflection paper
 Some “homework”
 Find a recent issue/narrative (in the news, media, community, in
your life...) that tells you a „story‟ about race/gender and how
these shape our attitudes and experiences, individually and
societally
 Think about
 The story it tells;
 How you know what it tells you;
 What purpose does the story serve in the world in which we
live?
 What part of that story is not being told or silenced?
 What is race? How do we understand it‟s “meaning” in
society?
 Be prepared for discussion about these issues in class
 Race
 The case of Susie Guillory Phipps
 What is „Race‟? Is it about skin colour?
 Race as biological category vs. Race as social (or
ideological) category?
 Biological category – is it fixed, concrete objective?
 Social category – is it an „illusion‟, can it be eliminated in a non-
racial, „colour-blind‟ world?
 Race as a “...concept which signifies and symbolizes
social conflicts and interests by referring to different
types of human bodies.” (Omi & Winant, p. 55)
 The use of biological characteristics, which are selected
and interpreted to make meaning (and a certain type of
meaning) in the social world.
 Race and racialization
 Race as an unstable, decentered web of social
meanings – these are always being transformed by
changes in society;
 “Racial formation” (or racialization) – process by which
biological categories given certain types of meaning
based on social, political, ideological circumstances,
representing political or social tensions.
 Historical roots of race in organizing society, especially
in colonial times;
 The central role of race in organizing societal attitudes
and institutions;
 Can we dismiss the central importance of race in
societal structures?
 Race as a foundational code
“Race was turned into a foundational code. But as with all
foundations, (conceptual and material), it had to be
cemented into place. Racial thinkers, those seeking to
advance racial representations – scientists and
philosophers, writers and literary critics, public
intellectuals and artists, journalists and clergy,
politicians and bureaucrats – for all intents and
purposes became the day-labourers, the brick-layers, of
racial foundations.” (Goldberg, 2009, p. 4)
“Racial conception...is the view that groups of people are
marked by certain generalizable visible and heritable
traits. These generalized traits may be physical or
psychological, cultural or culturally inscribed on teh
body, and the physical and psychological, bodily and
cultural traits are usually thought somehow indelibly
connected. Thus., racialists more often than not think
that racial group members share not only these traits
but also behaviour dispositions and tendencies to think
in certain ways that those not so marked do not share.”
(Goldberg, 2009, p. 4)
 Racial projects
 “...an interpretation, representation or explanation of
racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and
redistribute resources along particular racial lines.”
 Racial projects – connect what race means (racialized
thinking and representation) with how society
(structures, everyday experiences) is structured based
on that meaning.
 Provide link between racialized thinking („making
meaning‟ of race‟) and its practical application in
organizing societal relations.
 Bring alive notions of „race-thinking‟ – the notion that the
world is made up of the „deserving‟ and the „undeserving‟
and that these categories are animated by race.
 The normalization of race
 Notions of race thinking embedded in society –societal
structures, institutions, ideologies and in psyche of
individuals/communities.
 “Our very ways of talking, walking, eating and dreaming
become racially coded simply because we live in a
society where racial awareness is so pervasive.” (Omi &
Winant, 1994, p. 60)

 „Race‟ used to justify differential treatment of racialized

peoples and groups.
 Race is, therefore, completely central to society, and yet
completely „normalized.‟
“This racial subjection is quintessentially ideological.
Everybody learns some combination, some version of
the rules of racial classification, and of her own racial
identity, often without obvious teaching or conscious
inculcation. Thus are we immersed into a
comprehensively racialized social structure. Race
becomes „common-sense‟ – a way of comprehending,
explaining, and acting in the world.” (Omi & Winant, 1994, p. 60)
Embedding race in society: Discourse
 Any written, spoken or physical (bodily) texts which comprise a
shared system of meaning;
 A means of producing and organizing meaning within a social
context;
 Narratives with ideological power
 Discourses structure our realities, how we see the world
 e.g. freedom fighter v. terrorist
 Discursive formations – ways of systematically organizing human
experience and therefore creating modes of knowledge;
 Discursive formations – have both inclusive and exclusive roles;
define what is seen as „knowledge‟ (and what does not) within any
particular context;
 An institutionalized way of thinking – defining what can be said (and
cannot be said) about something
 „the limits of acceptable thinking‟ (Butler)
 Embedding race in society:
Hegemony
 From Greek word „hegemon‟, meaning leader, guide or ruler
 Gramsci (1891-1937) used term to theorize the control of the
dominant class in capitalist societies
 Theorizes that dominant class cannot maintain control
through violence or force alone; requires consent of the
„ruled‟ classes
 Combination of coercion and consent;
 In contemporary society, instruments include media, the
church, schools, family;
 Ruling classes make some concessions to interests and
needs of subordinate classes, who then also accept the
dominance (and act in the overall interests of) the elite.
* Hegemonic discourses
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNwpiSO1L4w&
feature=related
 The discourse of „race‟ in North
American society
 History of colonialism – what does the narrative of the
nation-state say about race in North American society?
 What does this narrative say about how this society was
founded?
 What history has kept these structures in place?
 What has been the impact of racialized thinking on societal
attitudes and structures? How do we think about society today?
 3 historical conditions under which racial conceptions
operated:
 Race as maker of difference – linked to notions of curiosity
 Race served as marker of exploitability
 Race carrying notions of threat
 The discourse of „race‟ in North
American society
 Major consequences of racialized thinking on North
American society:
 Defined North American society as „white‟, negated racialized
identities of the „other‟;
 Organized the colour line, making it the fundamental division in
society; embedded in institutions and in psyches;
 Consolidated oppositional racial consciousness; e.g. created the
„native‟ (in place of specific nations) and the „black.‟
 The discourse of „new‟ racism:
Moving towards a „colour-blind‟ society?
 The notion that racism has been eliminated from society;
official (or state) racism no longer exists;
 Can we aspire to be a „colour-blind‟ society; has anti-
racism has triumphed?
 The idea that racism is about individualized acts of
bigotry; an individual problem, and not one of the
codification of race in society‟s institutions;
 Distinction between anti-racism anti-racialism
(Goldberg)
 Anti-racism – about undoing racism and its effects;
 Anti-racialism – about forgetting the codifications of race and
their effects on individuals and on society
 Erasing the language of race
 “Antiracialism is to take a stand, instrumental or
institutional, against a concept, a name, a category, a
categorizing. It does not involve standing up against (a
set of ) conditions of being or living. Antiracism, by
contrast, conjures a stance against an imposed condition,
or set of conditions….” (Goldberg, 2009, 10)
 Anti-racism struggles have had success – but have they
transformed society sufficiently?
 More inclusive society, but terms of engagement (and
power to define these) remain unchanged;
 “Equal access to unequal resources and possibilities from
positions of unequal preparation and power ultimately
entails a third-class ticket to nowhere.” (Goldberg, 2009, 19)
 “Born-again” Racism
 Born-again racism –based on anti-racialism – renders
race and its terminology invisible, unspoken.
 “A racism without race, a racism gone private, racism
without categories… without charge, cannot be named”
 Deprives anti-racist struggle of key tools (of language,
for example) to fight inequity;
 Born-again racism – erases race in public domain; no
acknowledgment of institutionalized form;
 Silences discourse about race: a denial of its existence
and of racism and its effects;
 Allows racism to flourish while being denied; allows
racism to be justified in pursuit of current political goals;
 Smith‟s Three Pillars of White
Supremacy
“Oppression Olympics”: Arguing about who is more, or
the most oppressed.
The drawbacks of such a framework in analysis of
violence:
1. It assumes that all marginalized groups are affected
by white supremacy in the same manner.
2. It assumes that we all have shared histories of
oppression.
3. It does not account for how our bodies are invested
in reinforcing relations of violence.
Native Black Arab/Musli
women women m women

Asian
Latina
American
women
women
 Three Pillars of White Supremacy
Framework
 Racism and white supremacy are not enacted in singular
fashion;
 This framework assumes that different communities of
colour have been impacted differently by racism and
white supremacy.
 White supremacy is constituted by distinct but inter-
related logics of slavery/capitalism, genocide/capitalism
and Orientalism/war.
 Strategies for liberation for different communities of
colour might be different.
• Slavery/ • Genocide/ • Orientalism
capitalism Colonialism / War
 Slavery/Capitalism
 This way of thinking assumes that:
 Black people are inherently “slave-able” – nothing more than
commodities;
 Bodies can be owned, mutilated and discarded in order for others
to profit from their labour;
 Type of slavery changes, but logic remains the same (slavery,
sharecropping, prison-industrial complex);
 Anchor of capitalist system (labour commodified)
 To keep system in place, racial hierarchy applied;
 Hierarchy tells people: “so long as you are not black, you
have opportunity to escape commodification.”
 Prison-industrial complex; moving from ownership by
slave owners to state property.
 Genocide/Colonialism
 This way of thinking assumes that:
 Indigenous people must disappear, must always be disappearing
to allow non-indigenous people “rightful claim” to land;
 Non-indigenous people become “owners” and inheritors of what
was indigenous (land, property, resources, culture, spirituality);
 Becomes the anchor for colonialism;
 Indigenous people become a permanent “present
absence” in colonial imagination;
 This „absence‟ justifies conquest (and continued
occupation) of land and resources;
 Demands the physical and psychological removal of
indigenous peoples;
 “Native wannabe” phenomenon.
 Orientalism/War
 West/East binary with the first term being seen as
superior to the second term.
 Edward Said‟s central concern in Orientalism is with the
way in which cultural production within the West has
effected a binary distinction, separating the occident
(West) and the orient (East), the latter contrived as
sometimes romantic and exciting, sometimes
dangerous, usually backward and barbaric
 The „Oriental other‟ – seen as uncivilized and/or
uncivilizable, and therefore must be defeated
 The “Oriental Other” is seen a threat to the European
„self.
 Justifies war against the Oriental (or Racial) other.
 Orientalism/War
 This way of thinking assumes that:
 Marks certain peoples/nations as inferior and posing constant
threat to empire;
 These peoples not „property‟ or „disappeared‟ but seen as
permanent threats;
 Becomes the anchor for war; allows for justification for
constant state of war;
 Justifies the targeting of certain peoples/communities
both within and outside territorial boundaries:
 E.g. Japanese internment during WW 2,
 Anti-immigration movements
 Profiling of communities of colour in the name of „security;
 “War against Terror” internationally and domestically.
The Inter-locking of the three pillars
“Orientalism also allows the United States to defend the
logic of slavery and genocide, as these practices enable
the United States to stay „strong enough‟ to fight these
constant wars” (Smith, p. 69).
 How does this work?
 Black bodies commodified for profit;
 Indigenous bodies are made to “disappear”
 Both types of bodies live at the lower end of the socio-economic
scale and are pressed into serving needs of empire;
 Black and indigenous bodies „encouraged‟ to enlist in armed
services and to participate in war against „the other‟
 People of colour invited to participate in North American society
and to perpetuate ongoing colonization of indigenous lands and
commodification of black bodies
 So what does this mean?
 Race as embedded in societal attitudes, experiences and
structures;
 Being „trapped‟ within our own pillar without understanding
the „bigger picture‟;
 Notions of oppression and complicity in keeping system in
place;
 Being more vigilant about complicity and internalization of
„logics‟ of system;
 Understanding how race, gender, class, ability, sexuality…
intersect in the lives and experiences of people;
 Building strategic alliances;