WHAT IS Racial Domination PDF

Preview

Summary

what is racial domination...

Description

WHAT IS RACIAL DOMINATION? WHAT IS RACE? Race is a social fabrication a symbolic category, based on phenotype or ancestry and constructed according to specific social and historical contexts, that is misrecognized as a natural category. - Symbolic category: realm of ideas, meaning making and language. Something actively created and recreated by human beings rather than pregiven, needing only to be labelled. They mark differences btw grouped people or things bringing those people or things into existence (“Native American” all peoples indigenous to the land that is known today as USA). -

Phenotype or ancestry: a person’s phenotype is her or his physical appearance and constitution, including skeletal structure, height, hair texture, eye colour and skin tone. A person’s ancestry is her or his family lineage, which often includes tribal, regional or national affiliations. The symbolic category of race organizes people into bounded grouping based on their phenotype, ancestry or both. In some settings, ancestry trumps phenotype, in others, the opposite is true. Immigrants classified in one of the racial categories because of their phenotype reject ancestry. People rely on their phenotype, although grouped in another racial category based on their ancestry.

-

Social and historical contexts: racial taxonomies are bound to their specific social and historical contexts. Systems of racial classification vary greatly from one country to the next. Racial categories are place-specific, bound to certain geographic and social contexts. They also are time-specific, changing btw different historical eras. Race is quite new beginning of the 19th century. Blackness (bondage, inferiority and social death) vs whiteness (freedom, superiority and life). White supremacy was legitimated by racial discourses in philosophy, literature and science.

-

Misrecognized as natural: process of naturalization something created by humans is mistaken as something dictated by nature. Racial categories are naturalized these symbolic groupings are wrongly conceived as natural and unchangeable. Misrecognize race as natural think racial cleavages and inequalities can be explained by pointing to attributes somehow inherent in the race itself instead of understanding how social powers, economic forces, political institutions and cultural practices have brought about these divisions. Race is a well-founded fiction.

-

Ethnicity and nationality: ethnicity refer to a shared lifestyle informed by cultural, historical, religious and/or national affiliations. Nationality is equated with citizenship, membership in a specific politically delineated territory controlled by a government. They are ascribed and achieved, both marked and made.

FIVE FALLACIES ABOUT RACISM -

Individualistic fallacy: racism is assumed to belong to the realm of ideas and prejudices. Racism is only the collection of nasty thoughts that a racist individual has about another group. Divides the world into two types of people: those guilty of the crime of racism (racists) and those innocent of the crime(non-racist). Intentionality.

-

Legalistic fallacy: de jure legal progress with de facto racial progress. Assumes that abolishing racist laws (racism in principle) automatically leads to the abolition of racism writ large (racism in practice).

-

Tokenistic fallacy: assumes that the presence of people of colour in influential positions is evidence of the eradication of racial obstacles. Non-whites remain disadvantaged.

-

Ahistorical fallacy: renders history impotent.

-

Fixed fallacy: racism is fixed immutable, constant across time and space. Has racism increased or decreased in the past decade? --> things have gotten better.

RACIAL DOMINATION Institutional racism and interpersonal racism - Institutional racism: systematic white domination of people of colour, embedded and operating in corporations, universities, legal systems, political bodies, cultural life and other social collectives. Encompasses: symbolic power to classify one group of people as “normal” and other groups as “abnormal”, political power to withhold basic rights from people of colour and power of the state to segregation and inequality, social power to deny people of colour full inclusion or membership in associational life and the economic power that privileges Whites in terms of job placement, achievement, advancement, wealth and poverty accumulation. -

Interpersonal racism: racial domination manifests in everyday interactions and practices. Can be overt, but most of the time covert found in the habitual, commonsensical and ordinary practices of our lives. World structured by racial domination develop racial dispositions that guide our thoughts and behaviours.

CONFLICT BETWEEN RACIALLY DOMINATED GROUPS SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE process of passing judgement to ethnic minorities to undermine them. People of colour and Whites alike develop thoughts and practices moulded by racism, people of colour and Whites alike develop stereotypes about other racial groups. People of colour often internalize prejudice aimed at their own racial group,

unintentionally contributing to the reproduction of racial domination oppression” or “internalized racism”. INTERSECTING MODES OF DOMINATION Racial domination intersects with other forms of domination gender, class, sexuality, religion, nationhood, ability…

“internalized

those based on...