The notion of “color-blindness” is now more likely to be advanced by political groups seeking to dismantle policies, such as affirmative action, initially designed to mitigate racial inequality. Racial discourse is now littered with confused and contradictory meanings. Demographically, the nation is becoming less White and the dominant Black-White paradigm of race relations is challenged by the dramatic growth and increasing visibility of Hispanics and Asians.Īll these changes have had a tremendous impact on racial identity, consciousness, and politics. The federal government’s ability to expand social programs, redistribute resources, and ensure social justice has been dramatically curtailed by fiscal constraints and the rejection of liberal social reforms of the 1960s. Domestic economic restructuring and the transnational flow of capital and labor have created a new economic context for situating race and racism. The strategic push of the Movement in its initial phase was toward racial integration in various institutional arenas-e.g., schools, public transportation, and public accommodations-and the extension of legal equality for all regardless of “color.” This took place in a national context of economic growth and the expansion of the role and scope of the federal government. Shifts in what “race” means are indicative of reconfigurations in the nature of “racialized power” and emphasize the need to interrogate specific concepts of racism. Real issues and debates about race-from the Federal Standards for Racial and Ethnic Classification to studies of economic inequality-need to be approached from a perspective that makes the concept of race problematic.Ī second point is the importance of discerning the relationship between race and racism, and being attentive to transformations in the nature of “racialized power.” The distribution of power-and its expression in structures, ideologies, and practices at various institutional and individual levels-is significantly racialized in our society. Attempting to do so only serves, ultimately, to emphasize the importance of critically examining how specific concepts of race are conceived of and deployed in areas such as social-science research, public-policy initiatives, cultural representations, and political discourse. Race cannot be seen simply as an objective fact, nor treated as an independent variable. My general point is that the meaning of race in the United States has been and probably always will be fluid and subject to multiple determinations. My intent is to raise a series of points to be used as frames of reference, to facilitate and deepen the conversation about race. I attempt to survey ways of thinking about, bringing into context, and interrogating the changing meaning of race in the United States. The following discussion is much more modest. Each of these topics would require an extensive treatise on possible variables But merely asserting that race is socially constructed does not get at how specific racial concepts come into existence, what the fundamental determinants of racialization are, and how race articulates with other major axes of stratification and “difference,” such as gender and class. Thus, although race may have no biological meaning, as used in reference to human differences, it has an extremely important and highly contested social one.Ĭlearly, there is an enormous gap between the scientific rejection of race as a concept, and the popular acceptance of it as an important organizing principle of individual identity and collective consciousness. Nevertheless, race is commonly and popularly defined in terms of biological traits-phenotypic differences in skin color, hair texture, and other physical attributes, often perceived as surface manifestations of deeper, underlying differences in intelligence, temperament, physical prowess, and sexuality. Nobody is asking the question, ‘What is race?’ It is a biologically meaningless category” (quoted in Petit, 1998:A1).īiologists, geneticists, and physical anthropologists, among others, long ago reached a common understanding that race is not a “scientific” concept rooted in discernible biological differences. John’s University in New York, who said: “This dialogue on race is driving me up the wall. One such comment was made by Jefferson Fish, a psychologist at St. The 1997 President’s Initiative on Race elicited numerous comments regarding its intent and focus.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |