Cultural studies
I really enjoyed this week’s reading I think that like gender and feminist studies and theory ethnic literary and cultural studies really talk about current and important issues. One of the things that stood out to me was a quote by Haney Lopez, which stated “Race may be American’s single most confounding problem, but the confounding problem of race is that few people seem to know what race is”(966) I think this really describes much of the racial discrimination and problems. One of the reasons why it is so hard to define “Race” is because race its self is not a biological aspect but a social construct Lopez mentions that: “the referents of terms like Black and White are social groups, not genetically distinct branches of human kind” (966). That is why the personal example Lopez gives of him and his brother and how both are half Salvadorian and half Irish but he considers himself Latino but his brother identifies more with the Anglo side of the family. Showing that race really is a construct and the individual plays a role in defining himself. Yet self-definition of what race is not the only thing that defines what race we are but also other social aspects. Lopez highlights that the law has always influenced our concept of race he says “law serves not only to reflect but to solidify social prejudice making law a prime instrument in the construction and reinforcements of racial subordination”(965) Like the Hudgins V. Wright who decided how to determine some one’s race and set a precedent for the future. Another thing that caught my attention was the notion of the time when Irish became white how they passed form not being discriminated to being part of the white supremacist culture. Showing how this is a constructed idea and can change (maybe someday we will all become part of it). But why doesn’t it change? Well Fishkin says that the reason is that everyone overvalues “whiteness” not just white people but everyone and reminds me of many racist comments Spanish people say and how they overvalue whiteness (of course here I’m overgeneralizing). But in conclusion because race is constructed it can also be deconstructed and this should be our aim to have a race-less world (and genderless too).
Cultural studies
I really enjoyed this week’s reading I think that like gender and feminist studies and theory ethnic literary and cultural studies really talk about current and important issues. One of the things that stood out to me was a quote by Haney Lopez, which stated “Race may be American’s single most confounding problem, but the confounding problem of race is that few people seem to know what race is”(966) I think this really describes much of the racial discrimination and problems. One of the reasons why it is so hard to define “Race” is because race its self is not a biological aspect but a social construct Lopez mentions that: “the referents of terms like Black and White are social groups, not genetically distinct branches of human kind” (966). That is why the personal example Lopez gives of him and his brother and how both are half Salvadorian and half Irish but he considers himself Latino but his brother identifies more with the Anglo side of the family. Showing that race really is a construct and the individual plays a role in defining himself. Yet self-definition of what race is not the only thing that defines what race we are but also other social aspects. Lopez highlights that the law has always influenced our concept of race he says “law serves not only to reflect but to solidify social prejudice making law a prime instrument in the construction and reinforcements of racial subordination”(965) Like the Hudgins V. Wright who decided how to determine some one’s race and set a precedent for the future. Another thing that caught my attention was the notion of the time when Irish became white how they passed form not being discriminated to being part of the white supremacist culture. Showing how this is a constructed idea and can change (maybe someday we will all become part of it). But why doesn’t it change? Well Fishkin says that the reason is that everyone overvalues “whiteness” not just white people but everyone and reminds me of many racist comments Spanish people say and how they overvalue whiteness (of course here I’m overgeneralizing). But in conclusion because race is constructed it can also be deconstructed and this should be our aim to have a race-less world (and genderless too).
About Race
It seems like racial problems discussed more intensely within the border of United States where multicultures separate as well as blend in this land. Ian F. Haney Lopez gave an definition about “race”: it’s “a vast group of people loosely bound together by historically contient, socially significant elements of their morphologie and /or ancestry”. Moreover, “Race is neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing, plastic process subject to the macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro effects of daily decisions.” Indeed it needs a social and historical background to support the existence of race, if the colonial settlement never occured, there would be less conscern about the race.
I got the concept of race since junior high school by reading the powerful speech of “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King, the leader in African-American Civil Rights Movement. The movement has great influence on political aspect, because the legislation finally admit the equal rights among whites and blacks. it is a great victory in the history, but what about literature?
Toni Morrison provides us an perspective that the White population takes an “Africanist” presence for granted. She firstly has an assumption as a reader, and finds out that blacks made no appearance in the imagination of white American writers. Then she began to read as a writer, and she came to realize that “the subject of the dream is the dreamer”, “an extraordinary meditation on the self”. A case in point is Willa Cather’s Sapphira and the slave girl, where shows exactly how Americans choked in representation of an Africanist presence. For Morrison, the slave girl Nancy is a fugitive within the household but the identity of a white woman triggers moral debate. Sappira too is a fugitive in this novel commited to escape. The final fugitive is the the novel itself, which escapes from the pages of fiction into nonfiction. The whole “escape” process proves that the neglection of blacks among the creation of the american writers. Intendedly or unconsciously, this circumstances isn’t it a another form of inequality in literature?
Politically or literally, it seems to me that, whether Africans or Acians, the groups of people that loosely bound together all have the same purpose to identify the group they are situate, and to urge for the same rights and same attentions as the dominating group in the multicutural society.
When It Gets Personal
I found this week to be one of the most diverse groups of readings that we have encountered, and I really enjoyed that we were able to investigate articles on “whiteness,” as it’s called in several articles, as well texts that focus on black/African-American, Chicano and Asian-American theoretical principles.
A common theme that I saw throughout the readings, particularly the second half of the readings for this week, was that many of the authors, like other authors we’ve seen in studying other types of theory, adopted a personal approach. Some described their lives as they lived them, growing up in the United States, such as Anzaldua does. Others took literature and examined it, compiling other writers’ experiences to make their points. I found it interesting, however, that almost all of the authors in this week’s readings come from the same ethnic background about which they are writing. I found it even more interesting that in her article, Toni Morrison makes the illusion that this may be detrimental to her (and by inference, other writers’) credibility: “I am vulnerable to the inference here that my inquiry has vested interests; that because I am African-American and a writer I stand to benefit in ways not limited to intellectual fulfillment from this line of questioning: (Rivkin and Ryan 1000).
It is an interesting point, but it brings me back to what Fishkin says in her article: that sometimes when people of another ethnicity borrow stories from from each other, they may distort them.
I immediately thought of an article I recently read (even though it was published in 2011) about the bestselling book The Help, and how author Kathryn Stockett allegedly stole a significant amount of biographical information from her brother’s family’s maid, Abilene (who even shares the same name as the protagonist in the book, though the spelling is changed to Abileen). Abilene argued (and Stockett’s brother even agreed) that Stockett garnered a bunch of private information without her consent then refused to pay her royalties. The case was ultimately dismissed, but it was an example of how one woman’s life story was transformed into a tale of whites helping blacks. Abilene’s laywer ultimately argued that “The Help’s big appeal is to white people. It makes them feel good because it’s about a white woman who reaches across the racial divide to help poor black servants.”
This caters perfectly to Fisher’s point, and as such, I think it’s important to address the second half of Morrison’s quote from the beginning of this post. She does stand to benefit, it’s true, but then she writes the following: “I will have to risk the accusation because the point is too important.” (My italics)
Yes, sometimes writers stand to benefit from their own writings. But in the case of injustice, surely the person who stands to benefit should be just as reputable in their coming forward, if not more so. Inequality is too important an issue to ignore, and who better to address it than those that are treated unfairly? Nobody understands their own history better than someone who’s lived it personally.
race = a product of the social construction
In “The Social Construction of Race”, Lopez discusses the ideas of race and how they came to be. Lopez argues that race does not biologically differentiate humans since “there are no genetic characteristics possessed by all black but not by non-blacks; similarly there is no gene or cluster of genes common to all Whites but not to all non-Whites” (967). Race is not a construction of biology or a natural assertion, but a cultural and social construction, a method to establish a hierarchical system. Lopez says, “ race is neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing, plastic process subject to the macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro effects of daily decisions” (966). This is a quote I found very important in pointing out the fact that race is merely socially constructed and not biological. In addition to that, it is hard to categorize a group of people based on physical features. Skin color, he says, “differs greatly among persons of the same race, even among Anglo-Saxons, ranging by imperceptible gradations from the fair blond to the swarthy brunette…” (968). Indeed, the affiliation of skin pigment or hair color with race; classifying people according to skin-tone is something impossible to achieve. For example Lopez also talked about the case Ozawa v. United States, which argued that when a fair-skinned Japanese man applied for citizenship and put that he was a “white person” because the color of his skin, but the Supreme Court was not convinced by Ozawa’s counsel. Lopez also talks about “racial fabrication”, emphasizing the idea that racial division is primarily based on social integration of competing forces through the history of humankind rather than differences between physical characteristics of this or that racial type. For example, Lopez cites the case of Hudgins v. Wright, a landmark 19th-century court decision that defined the racial features of African Americans, to illustrate how the dominant culture constructed racial categorizations. The same process continues to exist through the current racialization of Mexicans and most recent immigrants. I also believe that race is just a categorization that labels a person or a group of people making them different from one another and it is based upon our desire to create categories and binaries. Organizing race is, like organizing sexuality, an exercise of power.
Lopez "The Social Construction of race"
Lopez and "The Social Construction of Race" Since the concept of race dates several hundred years ago, there have been numerous attempts in defining it. Lopez, himself a social constructed person regarding race, argues that race should be considered a social phenomenon where physical features and other personal characteristics are mixed in order to give the race a new meaning. For Lopez race is "a vast group of people loosely bound together by historically contingent, socially significant elements of their morphology and/or ancestry. I argue that race must be understood as a … social phenomenon in which contested systems of meaning serve as the connections between physical features, races, and personal characteristics. In other words, social meanings connect our faces to our souls." In other words, for him race is not genetically determined, but rather socially. In order to convince, Lopez takes his own case and says that basically he was given his race by the name he received and that name infuenced his entire racial affiliation. He says that race is practically a formation, a process. He uses a meaningful expression : "racial fabrication" and offers four steps involved in this concept. First, he says race should be related closely to its human nature. Before perceiving the race in a person we should rather consider the human side with all affiliated implications. Second, race is just a part of our human profil. Another important factor is the pace at which people change or evoluate. The last important thing is that races are determined by relations established among people. Consequently race seems to be a process defined by inconstancy. The interactions between people influence the concept of race or these relations offer a subjective trait that is harder to monitor. In other words race is rather defined by perception, how one perceives oneself and how one is perceived by others.Lopez "The Social Construction of race"
Lopez and "The Social Construction of Race" Since the concept of race dates several hundred years ago, there have been numerous attempts in defining it. Lopez, himself a social constructed person regarding race, argues that race should be considered a social phenomenon where physical features and other personal characteristics are mixed in order to give the race a new meaning. For Lopez race is "a vast group of people loosely bound together by historically contingent, socially significant elements of their morphology and/or ancestry. I argue that race must be understood as a … social phenomenon in which contested systems of meaning serve as the connections between physical features, races, and personal characteristics. In other words, social meanings connect our faces to our souls." In other words, for him race is not genetically determined, but rather socially. In order to convince, Lopez takes his own case and says that basically he was given his race by the name he received and that name infuenced his entire racial affiliation. He says that race is practically a formation, a process. He uses a meaningful expression : "racial fabrication" and offers four steps involved in this concept. First, he says race should be related closely to its human nature. Before perceiving the race in a person we should rather consider the human side with all affiliated implications. Second, race is just a part of our human profil. Another important factor is the pace at which people change or evoluate. The last important thing is that races are determined by relations established among people. Consequently race seems to be a process defined by inconstancy. The interactions between people influence the concept of race or these relations offer a subjective trait that is harder to monitor. In other words race is rather defined by perception, how one perceives oneself and how one is perceived by others.Race constructed in the society
In a book I was reading I found these tow pictures above, both of them represent the imagine of Chinese in Western people’s mind. The picture on the left comes from the Jesuit publication Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (Paris, 1687). This picture, where Confucius depicted as a scholar-sage, was widely reproduced in Europe and epitomized the 17th and 18th century positive view of the Chinese. The picture on the right, “The Miracle Teapot”, is a Russian depiction of the Chinese around 1901. “Six soldiers in the teapot appear to represent the primary nations that contributed troops to the international force sent in 1900 to lift the Boxer siege of the foreign legations in Beijing”. (Mungello, 13) Obviously, this picture on the right show how negative the Western view of the Chinese had become in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The article of López, The Social Construction of Race, reminded me of these pictures. As he argues in the essay, “Race must be understood as a sui generis social phenomenon in which contested systems of meaning serve as the connections between physical features, faces and personal characteristics. In other words, social meanings connect our faces to our souls. Race is neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing, plastic process subject to the macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro effects of daily decisions.” (966) Back to those two pictures, why is the differences of western views of the Chinese? The Chinese still have the same hair, the same eyes, the same language, but opinions changed from the positive to the negative. All the same, during China’s early history, geographical separation had fostered the Sinocentrism. At that time the ancient Chinese regarded the country as the center of the world and the non-Chinese world referred to three zones and one of these three zones, was Waiyi, an outer zone that consisted of “outer barbarians”, which included Southeast Asia, South Asia and Europe. The world pattern is changing with the time, these judgments about races go with the world pattern. Biological racial differences possibly make no sense without the social context and its relationship to the others. Again, as López says, “races are categories of difference which exist only in society: they are produced by myriad conflicting social forces; they overlap and inform other social categories; they are fluid rather than static and fixed; and they make sense only in relationship to other racial categories, having no meaning or independent existence.” (971)
Language and Identity
Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” really made me think of the inseparable bond between language and identity. Perhaps this is not surprising as it is one of the main topics of the excerpt – and it is even reflected at the linguistic level of the text itself; English is interspersed with Spanish and concrete examples flood the pages (“The first time I heard two women, a Puerto Rican and a Cuban, say the word ‘nosotras,’ I was shocked. I had not known the word existed. Chicanas use ‘nosotros’ whether we’re male or female. We are robbed of our female being by the masculine plural” 1023).
I really think that Anzaldua’s argument about language as a foundational tenet of identity is spot-on; and her discussion of the colonial past in North and Latin America immediately made me think of Orwell’s famous point that if one really wants to oppress a people, then you oppress their language. There are many examples of this in history, in all parts of the world – although obviously no two situations are the same and cannot be compared at face value, but some of the ones that immediately come to my mind is the censure of euskera under the Franco dictatorship in Spain, (1939 to 1965) the banning (and subsequent corporal punishment if it was spoken) of First Nations languages in the Canadian Residential System, the prohibition of speaking the Welsh language in schools in Wales, etc. To this end, the portion of Anzaldua’s text that most stands out to me as I’m thinking about the intrinsic connection between language and identity is the following:
Chicanos did not know we were a people until 1965 when Ceasar Chavez and the farmworkers united and I Am Joaquin was published and la Raza Unida party was formed in Texas. With that recognition, we became a distinct people. Something happened to the Chicano soul – we became aware of our reality and acquired a name and a language (Chicano Spanish) that reflected that reality. (1029)
I find this section of the essay to be very important because it nicely sums up the connection between a lot of the cultural elements that Anzaldua discusses at other points in her essay, namely literature and music and the way that language is such an integral part of identity; following Anzaldua’s writing in this section, it can be inferred that once this consciousness of the distinct Chicano identity developed, what was crucial in cementing it was to acquire a name and a language that reflected the reality of the people (and the concept of a name is, of course, inherently dependent on the concept of language, underscoring the significance of language once again).
Maybe I still have last week on my mind, but as I was reading this article, I kept thinking back to one of the best movies that I have seen recently on the question of Latino identities in the United States; in this case the movie touches on the specific issues of immigration. Rather than give the plotline away, I instead leave you with the trailer and highly recommend that you watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaLSBdL-zCY
Language and Identity
Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” really made me think of the inseparable bond between language and identity. Perhaps this is not surprising as it is one of the main topics of the excerpt – and it is even reflected at the linguistic level of the text itself; English is interspersed with Spanish and concrete examples flood the pages (“The first time I heard two women, a Puerto Rican and a Cuban, say the word ‘nosotras,’ I was shocked. I had not known the word existed. Chicanas use ‘nosotros’ whether we’re male or female. We are robbed of our female being by the masculine plural” 1023).
I really think that Anzaldua’s argument about language as a foundational tenet of identity is spot-on; and her discussion of the colonial past in North and Latin America immediately made me think of Orwell’s famous point that if one really wants to oppress a people, then you oppress their language. There are many examples of this in history, in all parts of the world – although obviously no two situations are the same and cannot be compared at face value, but some of the ones that immediately come to my mind is the censure of euskera under the Franco dictatorship in Spain, (1939 to 1965) the banning (and subsequent corporal punishment if it was spoken) of First Nations languages in the Canadian Residential System, the prohibition of speaking the Welsh language in schools in Wales, etc. To this end, the portion of Anzaldua’s text that most stands out to me as I’m thinking about the intrinsic connection between language and identity is the following:
Chicanos did not know we were a people until 1965 when Ceasar Chavez and the farmworkers united and I Am Joaquin was published and la Raza Unida party was formed in Texas. With that recognition, we became a distinct people. Something happened to the Chicano soul – we became aware of our reality and acquired a name and a language (Chicano Spanish) that reflected that reality. (1029)
I find this section of the essay to be very important because it nicely sums up the connection between a lot of the cultural elements that Anzaldua discusses at other points in her essay, namely literature and music and the way that language is such an integral part of identity; following Anzaldua’s writing in this section, it can be inferred that once this consciousness of the distinct Chicano identity developed, what was crucial in cementing it was to acquire a name and a language that reflected the reality of the people (and the concept of a name is, of course, inherently dependent on the concept of language, underscoring the significance of language once again).
Maybe I still have last week on my mind, but as I was reading this article, I kept thinking back to one of the best movies that I have seen recently on the question of Latino identities in the United States; in this case the movie touches on the specific issues of immigration. Rather than give the plotline away, I instead leave you with the trailer and highly recommend that you watch it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaLSBdL-zCY
