Race and Racialication Flashcards
False Idea of Race
A classificatory concept assuming that humans can be divided into separate groups each characterized by specific biological/genetic features
Correct Idea of Race
A classificatory concept allowing people to identify self and others as belonging to distinct groups characterized by differences in physical appearance, possibly combined with geographical origin, language, religion etc
Racialization
Racial categories are not prediscursive givens; they are social constructs, subject to change, but also quite resistant to change. Process where ethnic and racial identities are systemically constructed in a society.
Context to Race and Racialisation
Began as European colonialism/military-economic expansion ravaged from the 16-19th century including the transatlantic slave trade.
Was normalized through the Enlightement era discourse where (wrong) scientific research suggested that the white Northern European ‘race’ was cognitively and morally higher developed than other ‘races’
The White Man’s Burden
Concept arising from 19th century colonialism encompassing an insane belief that Europeans were meant to civilise non-Europeans
Franz Boas’s critique of scientific racism
1) Races as sharply delineated entities do not exist
2) Different groups of people cannot be ranked from high to low on a ‘ladder’ of development
3) Decoupling ‘race’, culture, language
4) Phenotypic differences are based on interaction of genetic and environmental factors
Eugenics
Originated at the end of the 19th century, striving for genetic ‘improvement’ of ‘races’ or populations. Focused on preventing reproduction of socially ‘undesirables’ and on ‘race’ improvement and preservation of ‘racial purity’, culminating in Nazism and mass murder of Jews, Roma, Sinti, etc
Covert racialization
After WW2, race becomes a political and scientifical taboo - yet race-based forms of discrimination continue to exist (structural, everyday)
Double Consciousness
Concept by W.E.B Du Bois, a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt
and pity.” deep fr
Intersectionality
Introduced and developed by Kimberle Crenshaw - A way of taking into consideration all of the factors that together make up our political identities: our gender, race and ethnicity, class and status in society, sexuality, physical abilities, age, national status, and so on.
