What is your prior experience with CRT? What experiences in your life have shaped your relationships to the course topic? How do your various identities intersect and inform your relationship to CRT? Comment your thoughts below this blog to start a discussion! Let's get into week 3 of going through Professor Keene's Introduction to Critical Race Theory. You had a bit of homework at the end of the last post, did you take the implicit bias tests? Take two Harvard Implicit Assumption Tests (IAT): https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html (“Race IAT” and “Native IAT”) Keene directs people to take these tests and then to read an article (link to article here) thereafter, which points out that while these tests blew up and seemed to be very revealing of society, they were actually rushed to be put out and are not representative of our implicit biases at all. The environment in which test takers are put in is not as controlled as it should be, and there are many more questions that should be asked to really gauge what the implicit biases a person holds are. Therefore, researchers deemed these tests to be ineffective. Why are they still up, you might ask? That is a question only Harvard can answer. Intersectionality, violence against women Women of minorities who end up seeking help in shelters often face more than one subordination, and often domestic abuse leads to them fleeing. But on top of this, they are burdened with poverty, unemployment, underemployment, child care responsibilities and lack of skills for job requirements. These women also face racial discrimination in housing and other aspects of their lives. The Immigration and Nationality Act put in place in 1990 stated that women immigrating to the states had to be "properly married" for two years before they could apply to become a citizen, and that once applying they needed application documents from both the spouse and the husband. This put many women in a difficult spot, as they had to choose between protection against their abusive husbands, or protection against deportation. Many chose to stay in the US. To escape abusive relationships at the time, women had to have evidence to support their claims from sources such as doctors notes, police reports, social service agencies and more. But these resources were not always available for all of these women. There is also the fact that culturally, admitting and reporting that a woman is in a battered situation is shunned. Unfortunately, we still see these stigmas in the Latinx community today. The politicization of Domestic Violence Researchers working on representing the true impact of domestic violence on communities in Los Angeles tried gaining access to statistics and reports on domestic violence in Black and Brown communities from the LAPD, but were told they could not gain access to these statistics for the following reasons:
Brief History of CRT It originated in the mid-1970's when Lawyers, activists and legal scholars across the country saw the civil rights era was stalling and was being rolled back. They needed new theories and strategies to approach racism, and so Critical Race Theory was born. It did not come out of the blue, and built on two already prominent movements, Critical Legal Studies and Radical Feminism. Critical Legal Studies contained the idea of legal indeterminacy, the idea that not every legal case has one correct outcome. You can decide most cases either way by emphasizing one side over the other. CRT founders also liked how CLS criticized history, and decided to carry that on within their own movement. Radical Feminism on the other hand provided CRT founders with insights into the relationship between power and the construction of social roles and the invisible collection of patterns and habits that make up the patriarchy. Critical Race Theory Beliefs
Why does it seem like there is a lack in understanding minority experiences from white populations? Critical race lawyers believe it is from lack of personal experience, and also a general lack of empathy. Because of this, CRT leaders believe there is power in storytelling. If compelling and engaging, it allows viewers to enter and experience a world that they would otherwise not be exposed to. Storytelling can also serve as support for people who are suffering in silence. Knowing that other people are going through similar struggles is empowering, and takes away the shame and isolation one feels when struggling in silence. But story telling can also be used in a negative way, like how stories told by society about Black and Brown communities being violent and criminals affects the opinions of a jury or judge before a case can even be made for clients. The rest of Critical Race Theory: An introduction by Delgado and Stefanic cover topics such as intersectionality, anti-essentialism, cultural nationalism, "critical white studies", CRT criticism, and more. You can find the book for free at the link at the end of the blog, but in the meantime, think of some answers to the following questions posed by Professor Keene and post them in our comments. Thank you for taking the time to learn with us, and we will see you again! Written By: Paula Norato Discussion Questions
Book: Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2017). Critical race theory: An introduction. NYU Press. (available online through Brown) Full text PDF: https://uniteyouthdublin.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/richard_delgado_jean_stefancic_critical_race_thbookfi-org-1.pdf
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Welcome back to our weekly posts on Critical Race Theory! For the second week, professor Keene recommended 5 different articles to read through and learn about the definitions of race. As always, this is all information taken from Keene's website, and paraphrased from academic resources that she provides. If you would like to learn more, please visit her official class page HERE. What even is race? Week 2 takes a look at race as a social construct, and how it exists in our everyday lives. The first article recommended by Keene, "Racial Formation in the United States'' by Michael Omi and Howard Winant addresses the origins and development of the race definition. The article starts by recounting a trial led by Susie Guillory Phipps who unsuccessfully sued the Louisiana Bureau of Vital Records to change her racial classification from Black to White. Phipps claimed that the 1/32 amount of Black in her blood should not immediately make her all Black. A retired professor brought in to support her case stated that every White person has 1/20 African descent in them, so to claim themselves as White when they had more of a reason to be Black than Phipps was wrong. The case, of course, was denied. Omi and Winant state that race is a modern phenomenon, which all started when religion got involved. Europeans started conquering new worlds, and discovering that there was more diversity in the human race than they initially thought. They began to ask if God had created more than one species of a man. Were the natives redeemable souls? The church and society conveniently labeled themselves as "children of God", making everyone not European "other". This made it much easier to deny them rights, take their lands, and enslave them. Scientists have tried to rank the "variations" of humankind, as race was originally thought of as a biological concept. But as we know today, race defies biological definition, it is a social concept (Omi & Winant, 2004). Biological explanations were then thrown out the window by the social sciences, looking for a social concept instead. Scientists like Franz Boas did not see the connection between race and culture, and rejected the idea of higher and lower cultural groups. "…race is indeed a pre-eminently socio-historical concept" (Omi & Winant, 2004). Race in the US is seen clear as day, with a rigid line drawn by society and those in power. The Black and White line has existed for centuries, and any racial mixture in an individual makes them "nonwhite". This reinforces the idea that being White is being "pure", which then reinforces the "one drop" rule, where one drop of another race, other than white, makes you other. When you compare this to race in Latin America, you see a contrast in approach. There is an absence of sharply defined racial groupings, where we see countries like Brazil have intermediate racial categories. This means while parents can be of one race, their own children could be of a different one (mixed is a different race). "Our compass for navigating race relations depends on preconceived notions of what each specific racial group looks like" - Omi & Winant, 2004 Let's look at how race exists in the US "Race may be America's single most confounding problem, but the confounding problem of race is that few people seem to know what race is" - Ian F. Haney López In "The Social Construction of Race," López defines race as "…neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing, plastic process subject to the macro forces of social and political struggles of the micro effects of daily decisions." López analyzes the case of Ozawa v. United States, where Japan born Takao Ozawa applied for naturalization in 1922. He made the case that he should be a citizen, which at this time also meant one had to be White, because he was white in color, in fact whiter than a Caucasian man. Ozawa also stated that race shouldn't matter when it comes to citizenship, and what should matter is belief. Someone who will work hard and wants to contribute should be allowed to be American. The supreme court, surprise, did not approve his case. They claimed he was not Caucasian, so he was not White, and could therefore not be a citizen. Ozawa, they claimed, was scientifically Mongolian. Shortly after, an Indian immigrant and Navy veteran tried applying to citizenship, stating that science said he was Caucasian. The court got around this by saying that being White is not about science, but about what the "common man" would agree upon, which is subjective. The Supreme court went against their previous statement that race was based on science. Racial Formation "race must be viewed as a social construction… human interaction rather than natural differentiation must be seen as the source and continued basis for racial categorization" - Ian F. Haney López What does the above mean? That racial formations stand on their own as a part of societal forces. López states that there are four important facets of racial formation.
Written By: Paula Norato If you want to learn more about the resources we have used for this blog, please check the links below. Follow along as we study Critical Race Theory with Professor Keene from Brown University! Introduction to Critical Race Theory, 2017, Brown University Adrienne Keene, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University |
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