I'll warn you, it's just over 7 pages, and still needs some work, but I thought I would post it here so that anyone brave enough to go through with it could give me some editing tips if they felt so inclined. In any case, here it is:The Myth of Race, and the Reality of Racism
In the American social system, there has long been a powerful disparity between the ruling class and the ruled. The powerful systematic domination of whites in American society has been justified in many ways, both scientifically and fantastically. While the manifestations of this system have sometimes changed, the essence of it lies in the perceived social and legal definitions of race. An understanding of how race has been, and is today categorized, labeled and defined, and the accumulated effects of these labels is essential to an understanding of how the American model of capitalism functions.
Biologically, geneticists have shown that there is no difference between the many cultures and peoples on Earth. But when society is stratified, domination of one group over another becomes a systematic phenomenon rather than a unique element of the society. This requires that the dominating group must define terms by which acceptable members are categorized, often these definitions fall along perceived lines of “racial” difference. As Anthropologist Jorge Klor de Alva has said, these racial labels can have different contexts within different cultures. (Cornel West 500)
Humans are uniquely endowed with the ability to communicate with language. One element of this communications system is the necessity to name and label things in the environment, including members of the community, in order that effective communication can take place between individuals in a society. (al-Madani 10-16-07) Language itself was used to define the parameters of race in the 19th century when nationalists used the work of linguists to classify people who spoke related Indo-European languages as being of a common biological race. (MacDougal 119) When different cultures and individual members are required to interact however, in addition to the language differences, there may exist a cultural difference in the meanings of their naming systems. Dichotomizing/Polarization is a labeling process that identifies an object or attribute and contrasts it with all other possible objects, related or unrelated. (ibid) Dehumanization, or stigmatizing is the process of proving the validity or superiority of an object or attribute by merely naming the shortcomings of the contrasted objects, rather than the benefits or superiority of the actual object. A fine example of this can often be seen in the American political system during a campaign. (ibid) Ethnicity according to Conrad Kottak is a feeling of belonging to, or identification with a group to the extent that one feels excluded from other groups because of this association. (Kottak 60/61)
Biological Race
In order that a true unique biological race can be created, the genetic material of a population must be isolated from that of another population for an extremely long time before the two groups can be considered to be different. (al Madani 10-15-07) Geneticists have determined that among the species Homo sapiens, there is no biologically identifiable subspecies. (Race: The Power of an Illusion vol. 3) In practice this means that any sexually viable pair can mate and produce sexually viable offspring. For example, a horse and a donkey can reproduce, but their offspring, a mule is not able to reproduce. There are two ways of accepting this scientific evidence. Essentialism is the idea that among members of a distinct species there are essential universal traits. Among Homo sapiens some of these are the use of language and bipedalism. Constructionism on the other hand describes a model of race as a biological category in which, in the absence of scientific evidence, proof of racial differences within a species is manufactured. (al Madani 10-15-07)
The visible differences within the human species, skin color, hair form etc., are often referred to as racial markers, or Phenotypes and are simply the physical attributes associated with anatomy. (Kottak 71) These markers, taken by alone are merely an indication of the variety of human geographical origin. The first approach to racial markers is purely scientific. The second approach gives deeper, unscientific meaning to these visible markers. Stereotyping assumes that an individual will behave as the observer expects, because of their markers. (ibid)
This classification of people into distinct groups, or social races based on their racial markers purely unscientific, yet many people, some without ever realizing it accept it as factual. In the United States this has taken on a particularly sinister character in the concept of hypodescent, wherein a person is classified into a minority group on the basis of an ancestor in that group. (Kottak 65) The result is that the group in power is able to essentially insulate themselves within the social hierarchy from any challenge by classifying others as outside the group based on the so called one drop rule. (Cornel West 501)
Racism
Racism manifests incrementally within society, and is reinforced in different ways. Ethnocentrism is the belief, or thought that ones race is superior or better than others. Prejudice is the carrying out of those thoughts in daily action, and finally discrimination is the carrying out of those prejudices as policy. (Kottak 77) Discrimination occurs on two recognized levels, the individual, and the institutional levels. Individual discrimination occurs as the name implies, between individuals, wherein one person decides to exclude, disfavor, or mistreat someone based solely on their perceived race. Institutional discrimination is somewhat more complex and involves the systematic exercising of discriminatory practices and policies based on perceived race within an organization of any kind. (al Madani 10-16-07) This kind of systematic exclusion requires the definition of what classifies a person as one particular race or another.
Whiteness - Within the post-colonial social structure of the United States, the question of race has inevitably involved the classification and defining of what constitutes white and non-white. As an independent nation the United States was begun as a collection of English colonial states led by men of Anglo-Saxon descent. As the social hierarchy developed, and immigration expanded the cultural diversity of the nation, in order to maintain their power, it became necessary for the political elite to define who could take part in the decision making process.
Citizenship was a prerequisite for participation in American democracy. Without legal citizenship, defined by Congress in 1790 as limited to “free whites”, an individual could not vote. While citizenship was extended to blacks after the Civil War, segregation and Jim Crow laws prevented the exercise of the black vote, and so political power was still restricted to the whites. It became the jurisdiction of the federal court to determine who could be classified as a citizen and thus “white”, but the criteria were ambiguous, and arbitrarily applied, sometimes on the basis of science, and sometimes not. In 1922 the case of a Japanese immigrant, Takao Ozawa’s application for citizenship was refused on the basis of ancestral origin, while later that year that of Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian was refused on the basis of subjective cultural definitions. (Race: The Power of an Illusion vol. 3)
In the case of European immigrants however the story was decidedly different. While southern, and eastern Europeans had long been considered inferior, it was assumed by the political system that they would be eligible for citizenship once they had been assimilated into American Culture, that is, when they were sufficiently Americanized. The Unionization of skilled labor and union practices effectively locked non-Europeans out, keeping them restricted to unskilled, domestic and migrant work where they remained in constant poverty. Thus the image of the hardworking (European) immigrant who had pulled themselves up “by their bootstraps” was born. In this environment of racial dichotomy, the older distinctions between whites themselves began to disappear, and after the conclusion of World War 2 the distinction between white and everything else became even more pronounced. (F)
With the return of American soldiers from overseas, there was a huge demand for new housing. The Federal Housing Administration, an organization created as part of the National Housing act of 1934, was created to make home ownership possible for the average person. While this stimulated a tremendous boom in home loans and construction, it proved to be quite discriminatory. It was perceived by many in the FHA itself that if black families were allowed to move into all white neighborhoods financed by the FHA, the Real Estate values would plummet. Since the 1930’s Real Estate investors had categorized neighborhoods based on the concept of integrated neighborhoods being socially and financially unstable. This “redlining” of white neighborhoods was used by aggressive real estate entrepreneurs to scare whites into selling their homes cheaply so they could then be sold to blacks at higher prices. (Race: The Power of an Illusion vol. 3) (Horwitt 328)
In the post civil-rights movement era, it has been widely assumed by many people that the idea of discrimination on an institutional level has been dealt. The 1968 Fair Housing Act removed racial language from federal housing policy, but since then the trend of property devaluation in minority neighborhoods has continued. The problem lies in the fact that the Fair Housing Act, and many other anti-discrimination laws did nothing to address the generations of racial inequalities and privilege that came before.
White Privilege
After hundreds of years of social stratification based on race, a distinct pattern has emerged. The benefits of social superiority are passed down from previous advantaged generations to the next. When the parents die their children inherit their wealth and property, and in turn pass it on to their own children, in essence giving the next generation a head start. This is called Accumulated Differential Advantages, and it means that over the generations, the privileges are compounded, and the distance between the privileged and underprivileged grows ever wider. (al Madani 10-16-07) (Race: The Power of an Illusion vol. 3)
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was the Lyndon Johnson Administrations response to black militancy and civil unrest in the face of discrimination, and was intended to correct some of this systemic discrimination , but it included many exemptions and was even used to prosecute civil rights leaders. (Zinn 461) Affirmative Action laws are another more recent attempt to address the effect of accumulated advantages, the purpose being to guarantee underprivileged minorities some measure of access to universities and employment, either through the use of quotas, preferential treatment or recruitment. (al Madani 10-16-07) Opponents of Affirmative action have succeeded in many cases in challenging the laws in court, claiming that it is “reverse racism” and the cause of low black-self esteem. (Cornel West 496) In many cases this challenge has been successful and Affirmative action practices have been effectively banned.
Science has continually refuted any claim that there is any biological difference within the variety of humanity. In order to establish and maintain a structure of dominance however, it has been necessary for the white elite to manufacture a legal system of oppression which preys upon fictitious and equally manufactured racial differences. In the course of the 20th and 21st centuries this system has been slowly, but only partially and against great resistance revealed for what it is. Some measures, although usually only temporarily effective, have been undertaken to address the present discriminatory practices, but nothing has been done to redress the historical and very real cumulative disadvantage to which non-whites are daily subjected. Until this is done, and the foundation of racism upon which American capitalism is built, there cannot be racial equality.
Horwitt, Sanford D.
Let Them Call Me Rebel. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1989
Kottak, Conrad Phillip.
Mirror For Humanity Fifth Edition. New York: McGraw Hill, 2007
MacDougal, Hugh A.
Racial Myth in English History. Montreal: Harvest House, 1982
West, Cornell.
The Cornel West Reader. New York: Civitas, 1999
Zinn, Howard.
A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Collins, 2001
I went to class today right after shoveling a giant delicious vegan breakfast into my fuel hole.
