La Frontera
La Frontera
Books as one of the Ideological apparatus in constructing Race
In most of this week’s reading I found a strong connection with literature and its various genres. In Frantz Fanon’s article “The Negro and Psychopathology” he mentions how an image is constructed by a child in Africa about ‘Negroes’ and he in school identifies himself/herself with the ‘explorer’ or with the ‘white’. Therefore, we see that the construction of the image starts from the childhood in school with readings; it develops and strengthens till the child grows. Fanon states “…..there is a constellation of postulates, a series of proposition that slowly and subtly – with the help of books, newspapers, schools and their texts, advertisements, films, radio – work their way into one’s mind and shape one’s view of the world of the group to which one belongs.” In other words they are the ‘Ideological State apparatus’ as stated by Louis Althusser which constructs images, desires, wishes etc in our mind.
In Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s reading ‘Interrogating “whiteness”’ the above argument can very well be observed. There is a discussion on American literature in America as ‘white’ and an African – American literature as ‘black’ where the American literature or the ‘white’ literature is taught by white persons and Afro – American literature by persons of color. One can see not only the authors probably but even teachers are segregated by the color of the skin and I wonder whether students are also segregated. For instance white student will choose to study American literature and a non white student will choose Afro –American literature. However, we see in this article the important role of one of the ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ i.e. books or literature. Fishkin mentions how Dana Nelson examines ‘the ways in which seventeenth – , eighteenth – and early nineteenth – century white writers constructed versions of their own identity (and of American identity) by defining themselves as unlike various racial and ethnic “others”’. Hence, Fanon says that the root of this problem is books – the magazines, adventures of Mickey Mouse, Tarzan stories – which the Antillean child reads are written by white men for white kids so the devil or the demon is always associated either with ‘Negroes’ or ‘Indians’ which distances the African kid from her/his culture and brings her/him closer to the ‘white’ culture which is after all an illusion especially when he grows up and develops a contact with Europe. The only solution to this problem as suggested by Fanon is creation of books and magazines for the African kids and until then this problem would exist.
It is also very interesting to note that in India people are obsessed with the skin color as white. The color white is also associated with beauty. There are various creams for both men and women to become fairer and it is further interesting to see that these companies are growing faster in the market which can be understood with the demand of these products in the country. Both men and women want to get married to a white skin person. While reading these articles I was wondering whether the connection with the white skin is actually deriving from the same root as the authors in this week’s reading are arguing about.
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The excerpt from Fishkin’s book, Interrogating Whiteness was the text that really interested me this week, along with Toni Morrison’s. They actually respond to one another. In Fishkin’s text, I particularly appreciated the analysis of Segregation in Literature based on North’s quote. Isn’t it true that what we were taught at school in Literature in North America and Europe were mainly books written by white writers? (I don”t know about South America though) The situation is similar in France: the North African Francophone Literature is part of French Literature, in the sense that colonization is part of our national history, and shapes the face of immigration. The literary production of this history is part of our common culture. Ats chool now, amany kids will come from a North African background. Nevertheless, we barely study writers such as Tahar Ben Jelloun, Assia Djebar…and they barely appear in French Literary syllabus. It’s up to the teacher to be more innovative than or to go around the French Ministry of National Education guidelines.
The general question of the construction of the Classics can be asked: how does it happen? who decides of what are Classics? how does it shape our common culture? how does it reflect racism or segregation in our daily and scholar life? and how do the other works and authors are heard in the slits of Literary education and through their silence itself? I believe silence is a strong tool of the social construction of “whiteness”.
And to ask again a question asked by Jon at the beginning of the term: Is there an ethic when we read literature? and when we teach it? in what way the selection amongst what we call “literature” has an impact on these ethics ?
A sad history of racism
In the text “The Social Construction of Race”, by Ian F. Haney López, I think there are some important statements that deconstruct the social (or hegemonic, in terms of Gramsci, we might say) common ideas about “race”. For instance, he says: “[T]he confounding problem of race is that few people seem to know what race is” (966). Of course, these few people aren’t owners of a truth. He also says this important statement: “Race is neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing, plastic process subject to the macro forces of social an political struggle and the micro effects of daily decisions” (966). Finally, in the section “Biological Race”, he puts over the table the most convincing argument against the believe of the existence of races: “Rather, the notion that humankind can be divided along White, Black, and Yellow lines reveals the social rather than the scientific origin of race” (967).
I’ve lived in a country (Perú) for 25 years where these ideas are very far for being part of the social and political discourse. The roots of racism in Perú could be traced since pre-Hispanic times. The last Empire before the arrive of the Spaniards, the Quechuas (miscalled Inkas; the Inka was the Emperor, only him has that title; the society were the Quechuas) subjected other cultures to theirs, forcing them to move from their territories, to change their language, religion, etc. Then, the Spaniards came and did the same and worst. They made a distinction from them and the “Indians”. But then, emerged the “criollos” (the descendants of Spaniards borned in Perú); the “mestizos” (descendants of Spaniards and “Indians”); etc, etc. In the XVIII century the mixture provoked, that the viceroy of that time, Manuel de Amat y Juniet (famous for his romance with the popular actress called the “Perricholi”) entrusted a “scientific” work to determine the “races” in Perú.
Unfortunately, in Perú the “racial” (and “classist”) discourse is still present. “Whites” (most of them in Lima) against “mestizos” (contemptuously called “cholos”) and “indios” (from the Andes and the Amazonia) and vice versa; “whites against “blacks” or “mulatos” and vice versa; “blacks and “mulatos” against “mestizos” and “indios” and vice versa; etc. That is why some people say that in Perú there is no nation, but a mixture of nations in constant conflict. A terrible example of this is the “rule” that some “exclusive” discos have in Lima: “Se reserva el derecho de admisión” [“The right of admission is reserved”]. It means, only “white” people could enter. If one is not white, then have to pay a huge amount of money or simply received a stupid excuse such as that there is a private party or something like that. Many of these cases have been denounced and the owners of the discos still doing the same (they pay the fine and they continue). Some comments are made, but in a few days everything continues to be the same.
The text of Gloria Anzaldua (I like it very much), also reminds me another type of discrimination in Perú: the linguistic. People who come from the Andes to the coast and whose native language is the Quechua or other than Spanish, are discriminated: “they don’t speak well, they are ignorant”. But also among native Spanish speakers exists discrimination. Some people, for instance, say “dijistes” (you said) instead of “dijiste”, which is the rule. Then, when someone says that word, is consider also an ignorant for not speak in an “adequate” Spanish.
So, with all these I want to emphasize that even it is already known that races a social construction, societies (or some of them) still practice racism. Why? Maybe because we still have some prehistoric elements or simply because we feel a terrible fear of the other.
Just to finish with an irony of a connoted Political Scientist in Perú: “I am privileged in this country [Perú]: I am white in a racist society; I am of the middle-class in a classist society; I am heterosexual in a homophobic society”.
Here a recent and very interesting documental about racism in Perú with English subtitles:
Negotiating with identities and race
When reading Lopez’ Social construction on race, I couldn’t resist thinking about Canada and multiculturalism. In my early years as an immigrant, I read Uzma Shakir’s essay, Demystifying transnationalism: Canadian immigration policy and the promise of nation building, and combined with my personal experience, the whole positive and romantic image of Canada as a friendly, “neutral” society was permanently damaged.
Shakir revisited the history of Canadian immigration policy to argue that, agreeing with Lopez in many ways, marginalization and racialization are perpetuated through immigration policy and entrenched in Canadian society. The author proceeds to explain the early attempts to encourage immigration of Western European farmers (whites) to Canada as nation builders through the Sifton Plan while ensuring cheap labor and halting any attempts to settle down from non-white immigrants (i.e. Head tax). Even when the point system was introduced in 1966, social barriers still marginalize non-white groups from structures of power. This might be shifting a bit nowadays when the inclusion of one or two people of colour in high-ranked positions, but it’s definitely not a trend.
Credit: Mei-Po Kwan
Some of the questions that I usually ask to myself is that if we have to wait until the second generation can “get rid of the accent” (echoing Anzaldua) for them to get a job that matches his skills and education. But even studies from SFU show that labour racialization still persists for second and third-generation immigrants. Is total immersion a reality? I guess the immigrant will always have the advantage, for some, and burden, for others of that race plasticity that I called “identity negotiation”: you negotiate your identity according to your interest and the situation, as Anzaldua exemplifies with her own experience. In the labour market, competing forces of white and non-white might force us to always prove we can do the job and perform as any other white with the risk of being over qualified (we have to demonstrate we can speak English, follow the rules, etc.), but when the situation changes to our disadvantage, we can pretend not to be so qualified (I usually pretend not to speak English when a stranger talks to me on the bus or when I jump the queue). Here I am a Latino; in South America, I’m a Colombian; in Colombia, I’m a person from the Caribbean, and so on.
I agree with Lopez on the majority of his arguments and the social formation and competing forces in this society. However, the fact that he, and other authors, tried to oppose only two groups (whites and non-whites) might be seem reductionist. The way I see it is not that all immigrants are united against or around whites or Caucasians, because we oppose to each other as well. We play with stereotypes as well: whenever there is a car accident, I have heard comments from people from other ethnicities, such as “For sure there was a Chinese behind the wheel”, or if there is a party with loud music, “it must be a Latino”.
Negotiating with identities and race
When reading Lopez’ Social construction on race, I couldn’t resist thinking about Canada and multiculturalism. In my early years as an immigrant, I read Uzma Shakir’s essay, Demystifying transnationalism: Canadian immigration policy and the promise of nation building, and combined with my personal experience, the whole positive and romantic image of Canada as a friendly, “neutral” society was permanently damaged.
Shakir revisited the history of Canadian immigration policy to argue that, agreeing with Lopez in many ways, marginalization and racialization are perpetuated through immigration policy and entrenched in Canadian society. The author proceeds to explain the early attempts to encourage immigration of Western European farmers (whites) to Canada as nation builders through the Sifton Plan while ensuring cheap labor and halting any attempts to settle down from non-white immigrants (i.e. Head tax). Even when the point system was introduced in 1966, social barriers still marginalize non-white groups from structures of power. This might be shifting a bit nowadays when the inclusion of one or two people of colour in high-ranked positions, but it’s definitely not a trend.
Credit: Mei-Po Kwan
Some of the questions that I usually ask to myself is that if we have to wait until the second generation can “get rid of the accent” (echoing Anzaldua) for them to get a job that matches his skills and education. But even studies from SFU show that labour racialization still persists for second and third-generation immigrants. Is total immersion a reality? I guess the immigrant will always have the advantage, for some, and burden, for others of that race plasticity that I called “identity negotiation”: you negotiate your identity according to your interest and the situation, as Anzaldua exemplifies with her own experience. In the labour market, competing forces of white and non-white might force us to always prove we can do the job and perform as any other white with the risk of being over qualified (we have to demonstrate we can speak English, follow the rules, etc.), but when the situation changes to our disadvantage, we can pretend not to be so qualified (I usually pretend not to speak English when a stranger talks to me on the bus or when I jump the queue). Here I am a Latino; in South America, I’m a Colombian; in Colombia, I’m a person from the Caribbean, and so on.
I agree with Lopez on the majority of his arguments and the social formation and competing forces in this society. However, the fact that he, and other authors, tried to oppose only two groups (whites and non-whites) might be seem reductionist. The way I see it is not that all immigrants are united against or around whites or Caucasians, because we oppose to each other as well. We play with stereotypes as well: whenever there is a car accident, I have heard comments from people from other ethnicities, such as “For sure there was a Chinese behind the wheel”, or if there is a party with loud music, “it must be a Latino”.
So ….What is race?
This is the question of the week. We often hear that term, but do we really know what it entails? “Race” is one of these words that make me uncomfortable. I don’t understand it, I don’t know what people mean when they use “it” and I am even more lost when somebody ask me about […]
A small chicanería
The first I remember, before arriving to El Paso, was the color: I have never seen the profound orange and yellow that the Chihuahuan desert showed me when I was close to the city. “Where the hell are we?” I asked my wife. “I do not know” she mumbled astonished while the desert run and run and run without end. Finally, a small city appear in middle of the desert. We arrived. A friend picked us up. I remembered when I passed the door of the airport to get to the parking lot, I felt like I was really close to hell: it was hot, probably close to 40 degrees. We arrived in August. The summer was in its peak.
After two sweaty days, I remember we went to this store to buy some groceries. I was not sure how to ask for things, I mean, I knew some English grammar, but one thing is when you are in classroom full of students practicing how to say “Can I have a Coke?” and other being in a real store where your language is not the official, is the alien one. When I was making the line, thinking in how to say the correct words, repeating in my head the small phrase, counting in my pocket the dollars, that were also a new currency that I did not understand, I asked in my “correct” English “How much is that?” and the answer was “Son diez dólares y catorce centavos”. The cashier spoke to me in Spanish! I was so relieved. I paid and thank her and then we leave the store. But after a while, walking under that shiny and eternal sun, I said to my wife: “Wait, why she did answer in Spanish?”. “She probably noticed your accent”, she replied. “My accent?! How is my accent like?” “I do not know, probably a Colombian one”. (It is funny to write this in English). And then this occurred several occasions. I asked for something and immediately I received and answer in Spanish or Spanglish (expression that Anzaldua evades, but perhaps it could be useful for describing this double condition of the language).
Later I understood that people from the border have a great hearing capacity: they can easily notice when a person is from the region, from the Southwest, is mexicano or mexicana, suramericano, American, pocho, or if is from El Chuco, the name that Chicano people call El Paso. This hearing capacity let them identify how to treat the other in order they do not seem excluded, or less excluded. It is a perceptive attitude. Perhaps is related to the form that many of immigrants were treated when they started the school, the difficulties they lived in a world that demanded the use of correct English, while in home was necessary to speak in Spanish in order your parents can understand you. They live between this two languages that can be jails, or freedoms, as Anzaldua well presented.
I also noticed in some El Pasonians the characteristics that Anzaldua mentions in her text. They spoke in several levels of the language in the Academia, in the street, with their family. I remembered some of my classmates speaking this kind of mix between a high elaborated English, that they learnt in their schools, with this “rural” Spanish, that their parents and extended family speak at home, since they were campesinos immigrants with no formal education. For me it was a new phenomena since I am a Spanish speaker, and I can understand English, but I can not switch from Spanish to English that easy. I need a moment. They do not. That moment is part of them.
And I think Anzaldua makes also a defense of this condition. They can move from one shore to the other thanks to this amphibian capacity to share different spaces, and languages. This natural bilingualism let the people of la frontera to understand two ways of thinking at the same time, and they can live with these two structures in an easy way. They also have to deal with the racism of both sides: the Mexican, that notice in their accents and expressions and “incorrect” Spanish; and the American, that emphasizes in the Mexican origin.
It is true that Chicanos and Chicanas have created a new language. I am not sure if is that rebellious as Anzaldua shows it, perhaps for her, but it is a language that is alive and, in the future, I think it will input some of its expressions to English, or at least in the spoken English in some specific places in United States. I think the forked tongue is also an advantage for a world that needs people could step in someone else’s shoes to identify, to criticize and to abolish the racism in our societies.
Extra:
Question. The book emphasizes that this Ethnic and Cultural differences are important in relation with United States… but is the same in Canada? Does Canada deal with the same racial differences? Are the Chicano or African-American or Asian-American reflections the same in Canada than in USA? What about France? What about India? China? Latin America? I am not sure if these discourses, that are questioning the white-men-American supremacy, work for all these countries in the same way. Is the Nationality part of this phenomena?
A small chicanería
The first I remember, before arriving to El Paso, was the color: I have never seen the profound orange and yellow that the Chihuahuan desert showed me when I was close to the city. “Where the hell are we?” I asked my wife. “I do not know” she mumbled astonished while the desert run and run and run without end. Finally, a small city appear in middle of the desert. We arrived. A friend picked us up. I remembered when I passed the door of the airport to get to the parking lot, I felt like I was really close to hell: it was hot, probably close to 40 degrees. We arrived in August. The summer was in its peak.
After two sweaty days, I remember we went to this store to buy some groceries. I was not sure how to ask for things, I mean, I knew some English grammar, but one thing is when you are in classroom full of students practicing how to say “Can I have a Coke?” and other being in a real store where your language is not the official, is the alien one. When I was making the line, thinking in how to say the correct words, repeating in my head the small phrase, counting in my pocket the dollars, that were also a new currency that I did not understand, I asked in my “correct” English “How much is that?” and the answer was “Son diez dólares y catorce centavos”. The cashier spoke to me in Spanish! I was so relieved. I paid and thank her and then we leave the store. But after a while, walking under that shiny and eternal sun, I said to my wife: “Wait, why she did answer in Spanish?”. “She probably noticed your accent”, she replied. “My accent?! How is my accent like?” “I do not know, probably a Colombian one”. (It is funny to write this in English). And then this occurred several occasions. I asked for something and immediately I received and answer in Spanish or Spanglish (expression that Anzaldua evades, but perhaps it could be useful for describing this double condition of the language).
Later I understood that people from the border have a great hearing capacity: they can easily notice when a person is from the region, from the Southwest, is mexicano or mexicana, suramericano, American, pocho, or if is from El Chuco, the name that Chicano people call El Paso. This hearing capacity let them identify how to treat the other in order they do not seem excluded, or less excluded. It is a perceptive attitude. Perhaps is related to the form that many of immigrants were treated when they started the school, the difficulties they lived in a world that demanded the use of correct English, while in home was necessary to speak in Spanish in order your parents can understand you. They live between this two languages that can be jails, or freedoms, as Anzaldua well presented.
I also noticed in some El Pasonians the characteristics that Anzaldua mentions in her text. They spoke in several levels of the language in the Academia, in the street, with their family. I remembered some of my classmates speaking this kind of mix between a high elaborated English, that they learnt in their schools, with this “rural” Spanish, that their parents and extended family speak at home, since they were campesinos immigrants with no formal education. For me it was a new phenomena since I am a Spanish speaker, and I can understand English, but I can not switch from Spanish to English that easy. I need a moment. They do not. That moment is part of them.
And I think Anzaldua makes also a defense of this condition. They can move from one shore to the other thanks to this amphibian capacity to share different spaces, and languages. This natural bilingualism let the people of la frontera to understand two ways of thinking at the same time, and they can live with these two structures in an easy way. They also have to deal with the racism of both sides: the Mexican, that notice in their accents and expressions and “incorrect” Spanish; and the American, that emphasizes in the Mexican origin.
It is true that Chicanos and Chicanas have created a new language. I am not sure if is that rebellious as Anzaldua shows it, perhaps for her, but it is a language that is alive and, in the future, I think it will input some of its expressions to English, or at least in the spoken English in some specific places in United States. I think the forked tongue is also an advantage for a world that needs people could step in someone else’s shoes to identify, to criticize and to abolish the racism in our societies.
Extra:
Question. The book emphasizes that this Ethnic and Cultural differences are important in relation with United States… but is the same in Canada? Does Canada deal with the same racial differences? Are the Chicano or African-American or Asian-American reflections the same in Canada than in USA? What about France? What about India? China? Latin America? I am not sure if these discourses, that are questioning the white-men-American supremacy, work for all these countries in the same way. Is the Nationality part of this phenomena?
