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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