Unit 1 Flashcards
Ferguson’s beliefs
-race studies as a body of knowledge
-economic and political formations
-race rendered the body a text (racialization)
Racialization
-rooted in historical discourses, rendering some bodies as full human beings and others as not
-signifies the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group
-names a process that produces race within social/political conjectures rather than a universal category of analysis
-Racialization is an ideological process (a historically specific one)
-It is how race gets operationalized
-The linkage between race and racism
US constitution
most people who were not white/male were left out of constitution
15th amendment
-1865
-voting rights were granted to Black men (mostly on paper)
19th amendment
-1920
-voting rights were granted to (mostly) white women
-black women were largely left out
Intersectionality
belonging to two or more subordinated/oppressed groups simultaneously
Created equal film
-white is a racial category (invisible and omnipresent)
-intersectionality analysis of whiteness and maleness (two privileged groups)
-race and gender were used to enshrine white supremacy into US constitution and define personhood
Roberts “Race”
-racialized slavery was a system, structure, and institution that is foundational to the US settler colonial project
-race was socially constructed to institute permanent enslavement of Black People
-race was in part created in law
-virginia’s racial classification laws helped invent meaning of race (virginia slave law 1662)
Heteropatriarchy
a social construct that gives authority to cisgender and heterosexual men over other
Race as a tool of subjugation and belonging
human being- individual- personhood- citizenship
Leroi’s beliefs (race as biology)
-racial essentialism
-visible characteristics and markers signal deeper differences within our bodies (difference in genes)
-genes can tell us something meaningful about race and vis versa
-genetic reality (we can’t find genetic markers that define race)
Hammond’s beliefs (race isn’t biologically real)
-opposes Leroi’s framing of race
-more important question: is race social or essential (not if its real)
-thinks Leroi’s explanation propagates notions of using biology to explain racial differences (which implies racial inequalities are due to biology not the system)
-genetic variety does not map onto race in meaningful ways
Mono-genetic theory (Anto Diop)
-all humans originated from one single human African population (not several)
Fausto Sterling’s beliefs
genes are not fixed blueprints (cells are impacted by social/natural environments)
Racial essentialism
-belief that race is a fixed biological property that determines a person’s characteristics and abilities
-can lead to perception that people of different races are fundamentally different and less worthy of assistance
Theory
-forms of explanation
-Give us some indication of the nature of a particular phenomenon and why it occurs
-Relationship between evidence, data gathering, analyses, and formulation, development, support, or discrediting of theoretical explanations
-An explanation of social phenomena
Black Dramatic Theory
-Black protest theatre (Lorraine Hansberry, a raisin in the sun)
-Black theatrical stories and portrayal of real-life experiences of black people
-How real-life is as well as how real-life should be
-Black dramatic theory is a tool that aids in the analysis examination, and explanation of Black dramatic structure, aesthetics, performance style, and aims of Black drama and theatre
-It helps guide the production of the play
Madison’s beliefs about theory
-Social theory: rely on social theory to interpret or illuminate a social action, social structure, organization
-Intellectual rebellion
-Theory-method nexus: interpretative lens (connects theories)
Madison’s beliefs about race
-Race is a product of social classification and identification
-Product of racial common sense
(Census, law, education, politics, media, culture)
-Ruling class ideologies
(Heteronormative family as ideology vs house/ball (black/LGBTQ) culture)
(Gender ideology vs gender theory/evidence)
Racial essentialism vs constructionism
-Essentialists hold that natural is repressed by the social
-Constructionists hold that the natural is produced by the social
Fields’s definition of ideology
-The descriptive vocab of day-to-day existence through which people make rough sense of the social reality that they live and create from day to day
-Not scientifically accurate (not material entity)
Althusser (Marxhist)’s definition of ideology
-Represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence
-Ideology shapes and has a material existence
-Ideological state apparatuses vs repressive state apparatuses
Race ideology
-represents an imagined relationship between human difference and social hierarchy
-represents an illusory or false relationship to the real
Lopez’s beliefs
-Virginia 1662 law: slave status followed the maternal line
-Legal construction of race (1806 hudgins vs wright)
-Ancestry as evidenced by skin color, shape of nose, bone structure
-Race must be understood as a sui generis (unique) social phenomenon
-Race ideology becomes racial common sense that become racial materiality (social structure)
