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)
Racial formation theory (Omi and Winant)
-Race is a social construct
American society makes race
-Makes up people for the purpose of othering and situating them on a social hierarchy
Othering
-describes how people are excluded and marginalized based on perceived differences
-Used to justify subordination, unequal treatment to structure oppression and exploitation
-Happens through racialization
Theory of hegemony (Gramsci)
-Political control and domination
-The manner in which dominant classes controlled
-People construct the social world through knowledge
-Common sense/hegemony
-Common sense ideology
-racialization
Racial projects
-Efforts to shape the ways in which human identities and social structures are racially signified, and the reciprocal ways that racial meaning becomes embedded in social structures
-Represents the relationship between social structure and cultural representation
Social Stratification (Massey)
-Involves an unequal distribution of people across social categories by differential access to scarce resources
-leads to exploitation and exclusion
Exploitation (Massey)
people in one social group expropriating and extracting resources produced by members of another group and denying them the realization of the full value of their efforts involved in producing it
Exclusion (Massey)
when one social group (or the state) restricts access to a scarce resource, either through outright denial or by exercising monopoly control over that resource
Social construction theory
-a theoretical framework that examines (explains) how individuals, groups, cultures, and societies perceive social issues and problems
-Examines how the relationship between socially constructed concepts and ideas impact peoples’ lives
-the extent to which the knowledge and ideas held by the powerful (and social institutions) can advance and impose the socially constructed concepts on others
-Facts and knowledge must be understood in the context of the culture or society that generated them
-Such knowledge is influenced by and made tangible through social interactions and institutional practices
Social constructionists
-Since there is more genetic variation within so-called racial groups than between racial groups, race is only a social concept and not a scientific one
-Refute the notion that race is biologically meaningful and thus a useful (natural) scientific category of analysis
-Race science makes essentialist claims about race that then get used to justify racial inequities
Incorrect frame of race science
Racial fiction vs racial realness
Correct frame of race science
racial constructionism vs racial essentialism
