Final Flashcards
4 Frames of Colorblind Racism
- Abstract Liberalism
- Naturalization
- Cultural Racism
- Minimization of Racism
Color-Blind Racism
- The ideology that explains contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics, as the product of market dynamics, naturally occurring phenomena, and the blacks imputed cultural limitations.
- Compared to Jim Crow racism, the ideology of color blindness seems like “racism lite”
Abstract Liberalism
The fame of abstract liberalism involved using ideas associated with political liberalism (ie: “equal opportunity”) and economic liberalism (ie: choice, individualism) in an abstract manner to explain racial matters
Naturalization
Naturalization is a frame that allows whites to explain away racial phenomena by suggesting they are natural occurrences
Cultural Racism
Cultural racism is a frame that relies on culturally based arguments such as “Mexicans do not put much emphasis on education” or “blacks have too many babies” to explain the standing of minorities in society.
Minimization of Racism
Minimization of racism is a frame that suggest discrimination is no longer a central factor affecting minorities’ life changes (“it’s better now than in the past” or “there is discrimination, but there are plenty of jobs out there”)
- This frame also involves regarding talking about discrimination exclusively as all-out racist behavior
The Tom
The good Negro who always keeps the faith, never turns against his “white massa,” and remains hearty, submissive, stoic, generous, selfless, and kind
The Coon
- Amusing black buffoon
Pickaninny (Coon Sub-type)
Negro child; harmless little screwball creation whose eyes popped out, whose hair stood on end, and whose antics were pleasant and diverting
Pure Coon (Coon Sub-type)
Unreliable, crazy, lazy subhuman creatures good for nothing more than eating watermelons, stealing chickens, etc [Rastus Character]
Uncle Remus (Coon Sub-type)
Similar to Uncle Tim, but he is quaint and naive and philosophizes comically
The Tragic Mulatto
- Negro child of mixed blood; “a victim of divided racial inheritance”
- This character usually gets viewed more sympathetically in films, and s/he usually sets the moral standards as well
The Mammy
Big, overweight, cantankerous woman who usually takes care of the white children. In cinematic representations, she is desexualized, a fabrication that ensures that the figure is not a threat to hegemonic structures of power despite the fact that she controlled black men
Aunt Jemima (Sub-type of The Mammy)
An Uncle Tom blessed with religion or a Mammy who wedged herself into dominant white culture. They are generally sweet, jolly, and good tempered
The Brutal Black Buck
Plays out the fear that every black man longs for a white woman
Black Brutes
Barbaric black out to raise havoc
Black Bucks
Big “baddd [blacks]”, oversexed and savage, violent and frenzied as they lust for white flesh
Welfare Queen
A pejorative phrase used to describe someone, usually black, who collects excessive welfare payments through fraud or manipulation.
W.E.B Du Bois
- American sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist
- The “Souls of Black Folk” (1903) was his first and arguably most famous work
- His “Black Reconstruction in America” (1935) challenged the predominant idea that blacks were to blame for the failures of Reconstruction
Double Consciousness
Double consciousness is a concept that Du Bois first explores in 1903 publication, “The Souls of Black Folk”. Double consciousness describes the individual sensation of feeling as though your identity is divided into several parts, making it difficult or impossible to have one unified identity.
OscarsSoWhite
- Started by April Reign in 2015 (editor of the BroadwayBlack.com)
Reverse Racism
- prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism on the basis of race directed against a member of a dominant or privileged racial group.
- Referenced in respect to #OscarsSoWhite hashtag movement
- [Actors] cries of reverse racism and blaming actors of color for their own marginalization are commonplace in Hollywood
- These arguments falsely assume an equal playing field while dismissing institutional racial bias that privilege white actors for roles and recognition.
The Great Migration
- 1910 - 1970
- 1.8 million blacks migrated between 1910 and 1940 from the South to the North and West. Between 1940 and 1970, the Great Migration continued as 4.4 Million more blacks left the South
- As a result of housing tensions, blacks creates “cities-within-cities,” which fostered the growth of an urban African American culture.
Mass Incarceration
- Refers to the unique way the U.S. has locked up a vast population in federal and state prisons, as well as local jails.
- The United States has the highest per capita incarcerated population in the world. The incarceration rate has risen 600 percent in the past 30 years, the race influences nearly every aspect of incarceration including arrest rates, conviction rates, the probability of post incarceration employment, educational opportunities, and marriage outcomes.
- One in three black males born today can expect to spend some portion of his life behind bars
- Black youth aged 10-17, who constitute 15% of American youth, account for 25% of arrests
- The average sentences for blacks on weapons and drug charges were 49% longer than those for whites who had committed and been convicted of the same crimes - this disparity has been rising over time
- Blacks complain that police are more violent with them
White Savior Trope
- The white savior genre is recognizable through the presence of a white person as “the great leader who saves blacks from slavery or oppression, rescues people of color from poverty and disease, or leads Indians in battle for their dignity and survival”
- Enables interpretation of nonwhite characters and culture as essentially broken, marginalized, and pathological
- Shows relationships as redeemers (whites) and redeemed (blacks)
Whiteness
- Whiteness is not so much in crisis as it is an identity constructed as crisis. Whiteness is perpetually a crisis of legitimization given that it must constantly engage in the Herculean feat of claiming a superior and righteous subject position regardless of the external changes around it
- Nelseon Rodriguez and Leila Villaverde say “Whiteness has historically been appropriated in unmarked ways by strategically maintaining as colorless its color (and hence its values, belief systems, privileges, histories, experiences and modes of operation)
- Ruth Frankenberg says “Whiteness, as a set of normative cultural practices, is visible most clearly to those it definitively excludes and those to whom it does violence. Those who are securely housed within its boarders usually do not examine it”
Noble Savage
This character was deemed worthy because it was unspoiled by material developments and the trappings of modernity. It was often billed as a nonwhite, indigenous, and exotic savage that the white explorer would discover on his colonizing mission.
- Morally superior to the Europeans because the Indians were untainted by greed and modern science
- Emphasized by the European Romantics, the idealization of Indians was used as a moral measuring stick in Europe
- Appeared in John Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada (1672) as an idealized picture of “nature’s gentleman”
The Moynihan Report
- Moynihan found that the family structure was the fundamental problem with the Nergro family, and the female-headed household was the outstanding culprit
- The Moynihan Report shifted the blame for an apparent lack of progress from racism, capitalism, and patriarchy onto the shoulders of black women
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965)