Race and Ethnic Relations in America

Lecture Series
Outline prepared and written by:
Dr. J ason J . Campbell:
http://jasonjcampbell.org/home.php
Existing Youtube Playlist on Race:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrLsYNgaozQ&list=PLFD2886D1E3B158A2&index=58
This Youtube Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLba_fOJ viSOIuHdrvWTYbodm_3dNeIokt
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1.0: Modernism, its Decline, and Postmodernism
Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader.

Race and Modernity:
[KEY]: By modernity we are in part referring to those discourses that
rest upon a conception of truth and knowledge governed by an ideal
value-free subject engaging in observing, comparing, ordering and
measuring in order to arrive at evidence sufficient to make valid
inferences, confirm speculative hypotheses, deduce error-proof
conclusions and verify true representations of reality, (75).

1. European Modernity was constituted during the Age of
Enlightenmentfrom the Glorious Revolution in England to the
tumultuous French Revolution, (55).
2. the transatlantic slave trade[was] the ignoble origins of
Western modernity and the criminal foundations of American
democracy, (51).
3. The Paradox: African slavery sits at the center of the grand
epoch of equality, liberty and fraternity, a center often concealed
by modern myths of progress and liberation, (51).
a. See my lecture series on Human Rights to distinguish First
and Second Generation Human Rights, HERE. Libert,
galit
1
b. The notion of colorblindness as a benefit of progressive
thought is in contrast to more than 3 centuries of African
slavery and 70 years of J im Crow, (52).
c. The future of racial harmony is argued to require an
historical amnesia about black humiliation and black
suffering, (52).
d. [KEY]: Scientific enlightenment has yielded the truth of
objectivity, which, as argued, when appropriately applied
via the scientific method, eliminates the very possibility of
prejudice. West writes, As Gadamer has notedthis
monopoly on truth entails a prejudice against prejudice,
(56). [Expalin]
e. American vacillation between Puritan purity and vulgar
materialismfragmented the intellectual tradition [Sophia]
and generated an unrestrained quest for wealth, (57).
4. Slavery became an exclusively black and white affair, (51).
a. Hence the role of the racialization of slavery.
5. White Supremacist Ideology is built on the assumption that, New
World African enter European modernity [modernity as
belonging to them] cast as disposable pieces of property, as
commodifiable bits of chattel slavery subject to arbitrary acts of
violent punishment and vicious put-down, (52).

The Decline of European Modernity: 1871-1950.
1. This period was thus well disposed toward apocalyptic, crisis-
centered views of history, which stressed shock, the violation of
expected continuities and a deep sense of futility, (64).
2. the modernist element signifies nihilism, [Explain its
signification]

Postmodernism:
1. The demythologization of science
a. raises thepossible plurality of epistemic authorities, (68)
2. the despair of modern paganism during the European modernist
period has degenerated into various forms of cynicism, fatalism,
2
hedonism and narcissism[which]revealsthe dead end to
which modern paganism has come: impotent irony, barren
skepticism and paralyzing self-parody, (68).
3. philosophical attacks on the primacy of the subject are
deepened[postmodernism]is a deepening of the decline of
modernity, with little sense of what is to follow, if anything at all,
(68).
a. via Nietzsche, the concept of European Nihilism creates a
condition in which, For the first time, European audiences
look to the United States for artistic and cultural
leadership[since the United States]has steadily gained
cultural self-confidence (68-9).
b. [Me]: The solidification of Americana and exportable.

Conceptual Foundations for American Society:
American Society as: an alienated, intensely self-conscious and deeply
anxiety-ridden society, (57).

European Dependency and National Identity
1. is a consequence of the geographic displacement of European
peoples (57)
2. is a consequence of the geographic displacement of the European
civilization whose superiority they [Americans] openly
acknowledged (57). See THIS Basic Talk video for a reference
on the concept of trust. [Explain]
3. is substantiated in an antagonism of the indigenous American
people, (57)
4. 1-3 all of which created a keen sense of isolation, and the
realization of their, i.e., American, newfound independence.

European Independency and an Emerging Unified National
Identity:
1. In his famous lecture of 1837, The American Scholar,
Emerson portrayed Europe as the symbol of the dead past, (61)
3
The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of
all naturein yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for
you to know all, it is for you to dare all. Mr. President and
Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of man
belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation,
to the American Scholar. We have listened too long
to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the
American freeman is already suspected to be timid,
i mi tati ve, tame. Public and private avarice make the air we
breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent,
complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind
of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.
[REF]
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1.1: Understanding Modern Racism PART ONE
Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader

The Genealogy of Modern Racism:
The genealogy is Wests attempt to identify the emergence or the
moment of arising, of the idea of white supremacy, (71).
1. the authority of science, undergirded by a modern
philosophypromotes and encourages the activity of observing,
comparing, measuring, and ordering the physical
characteristics of human bodies, (71). [As a consequence of
Scientific Enlightenment]
a. These practices were guided by an adherence to a new
paradigm of knowledge, an experimental method that
attempted to test hypotheses and yield objective conclusions
by appeal to evidence and observation (55-56).
b. The undeniable power [sociopolitically] derived from
Scientific Enlightenment, e.g., socially: increases in human
longevity etc, politically: militarization/weaponization fused
and weaponized social progress, via Social Darwinism etc
c. West is arguing that this weaponization [as manifested in
racism etc] is inherent within the Scientific process itself, as
an inevitable consequence of our fascination with
Aristotelian taxonomic identification and hierarchical
differentiations.
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2. Wests genealogical approach to modern racism is, a conception
of power that issubjectless, i.e., they are the indirect products
of the praxis of human subjects, (71).
3. Discursive and Nondiscursive Structures of Power



Nondiscursive structures create the conditions for the means of the
preservation/propagation of sociopolitical power, and as such the means
function to such end. The idea of discursive pertains to the epistemic
accessibility to the means, but not or less so to the condition for the
means.
EG, Bacon and eggs and Edward Bernays. Nondiscursive
Structures of Power [i.e., with relative epistemic inaccessibility] Meat
Industry, slaughterhouses the chicken farms etc. Discursive Structures
of Power [as means] create, in this example, the ability to answer the
question why, why is it important to have a good breakfast?
Presupposes that is it important to have

4. [Me], [KEY]: In applying what West has said, though he does not
say this directly, SINCE the genealogy of modern racism is a
conception of power that issubjectless, i.e., the indirect
products of the praxis of human subjects, but affects subjects the
discursive structures pertain to the observable, quantifiable,
empirically observable racism. The nondiscursive structures,
however, are those consequence of Scientific Enlightenment that
allowed for and justify, albeit indirectly observable racism.



5
[KEY]: The scientific method, then, functions as the nondiscursive
structure that has indirectly created the conditions for justifying
the discursive structures of biological racism, as the means of
securing or propagating the end, viz., socioeconomic/political power.
[Brief link to Louis Pierre Althussers discussion of the ideological
apparatus]. [West +Althusser]

Three Structures of Modern Discourse:
I understand the structures of modern discourse to be the controlling
metaphors, notions, categories and norms that shape the predominant
conceptions of truth and knowledge in the modern
West[which]are determined by three historical processes (1) the
scientific revolution, (2) Cartesianphilosophy, (3) the classical
revival (72).
1. The Scientific Revolution:
a. Signified the authority of science, (73).
b. Highlights two fundamental ideas: observation and
evidence (73)
2. Cartesian Philosophy:
a. Descartes is highly significant because his thought provided
the controlling notions of modern discourse: the primacy of
the subject and the preeminence of representation, (73).
b. the existent [thing] was definedas the objectivity of
representation, and truth as certainty of representation, (74).
i. It is this conception of the monopoly on truth by means
of the scientific method that postmodernist challenge
the very conception of truth.
ii. The postmodernist position, however, was arguably
derailed by the classical Sokal Affair. [Brief
Explanation]
3. The Classical Revival:
a. Greek ocular metaphor
b. Classical aesthetics


6
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1.2: Understanding Modern Racism PART TWO

J acqueline Fleming, Affirmative Action and Standardized Test Scores The Journal of Negro
Education, Vol. 69, No. 1/2, Knocking at Freedom's Door: Race, Equity, and Affirmative Action
in U.S. Higher Education (Winter - Spring, 2000), pp. 27-3

Eric Grodsky, J ohn Robert Warren and Erika Felts Testing and Social Stratification in
American Education, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 34 (2008), pp. 385-404.

Richard G. Lomax, Mary Maxwell West, Maryellen C. Harmon, Katherine A. Viator and George
F. Madaus, The Impact of Mandated Standardized Testing on Minority Students The Journal
of Negro Education, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 171-185

Race, Access and Standardized Testing:
[Definition]: Standardized tests present students with identical tasks
in environments that are (to the extent possible) uniform, with the hope
that variation in test performance is unrelated to variation across test
administrations and test administrators, (Grodsky, 386).

[Weber]: Weber writes, the "patent of education" came to replace
ancestry [a manifestation of European independence discussed earlier]
as a means of legitimate qualification for state office. Education in
general, and exams in particular, serve to "limit the supply of
candidates for [socially and economically advantageous] positions
and to monopolize them for the holders of educational patents."
1


The standardized testing movement has a racist history in both
Europe and the United States (Hirsch, 1981). Standardized tests have
been used to impede the social progress of Africans and African
Americans for at least two centuries, (Fleming, 28).

Five Potential Conditions for Bias in Standardized Tests:
1. A requisite knowledge of the White middle-class experience
(Fleming, 29) [is necessary for superior scores].

1
Weber M. 1978. Bureaucracy and education. in Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. G
Roth, C Wittich, pp. 998-1001. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press Young J W.

7
2. historical [and] societal prejudice, racism, or educational
disadvantage has played a role (Fleming, 29) [in the
underperformance of minority students].
3. the testing situation is a microcosm of society, and that
anxieties related to issues of dominance and submission are
activated among members of racial/ethnic minority groups
during test taking, (Fleming, 29-30).
a. biased against historically disadvantaged groups, and
thus have the pernicious effects of reinforcing social
advantage and disadvantage (Grodsky, 386).
b. because standardized tests reflect the majority culture,
minority student performance on them may not yield a fair
representation of what these students really know and can
do, given their economic and educational disadvantages
(Lomax, 172).
4. the correlation between SAT and GPA. [known as] predictive
validity, [is lower for Black students than Whites], (Fleming,
30).
5. One impact of mandated standardized testing on minority
students cited by a growing number of researchers is its role in
the denial of opportunities to minorities, (Lomax, 172).

Objective Manifestations of Racism and the Criminalization of
Black Skin:

Theoretical: Discrimination of Racial Group(s): Among Racial Groups
1. Essentially a comparative or relational affair.
2

2. Identification of the dominant group accompanied by the
normativization of group characteristics.

2
D: dominant, S: subordinant. Dominant racial characteristics are imposed and subordinant population mimics,
emulates these characteristics by assuming the aesthetical sensibilities of the dominant group.
8
Theoretical: Discrimination within Racial Group(s):
1. See the previous footnote, #2. The exported racial
characteristics having similar aesthetical value are associated
with the benefits of bearing that aesthetical identifier.
2. J im Crowism sought to operationalize an internally
discriminatory practice, which imposed a proper aesthetical
value on the collective by associating the bearer of such
aesthetic markers with the benefits of resembling the dominant
aesthetic.

Practical: Discrimination of Racial Group(s): Among Racial Groups
J ill Viglione, Lance Hannon, Robert DeFina, The impact of light skin on prison time for black
female offenders in The Social Science Journal 48 (2011) 250258
BLACK MEN
1. Public opinion studies suggest that black men are commonly
associated with images of violence and aggression (251).
a. The manner of this association is one designed to
delegitimize the any instance of violence or aggression as
warrantable.
b. The collective grouping of black men, as homogenized and
generalized as being violent justifies the racial demarcation
between the peaceful Whites and savage Blacks.
2. in an experiment using photographs of white and black men,
[comparative] police officers were more likely to falsely identify a
subject as an offender when they appeared more stereotypically
black (dark skin, broad nose, wide lips, coarse hair) (252).
a. The appearance of ones blackness is associated with the
inherency of violence.
BLACK WOMEN
1. Black men are more often stereotyped as aggressive and violent,
while black women are more commonly taken to be lazy and
chronic welfare users, (252), i.e., in comparison with their White
counterparts.


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Practical: Discrimination within Racial Group(s):
J ill Viglione, Lance Hannon, Robert DeFina, The impact of light skin on prison time for black
female offenders in The Social Science Journal 48 (2011) 250258

1. Discrimination based on ones racial group has been widely
examined in the past, but a relatively new body of research
explores discrimination within racial groups, particularly in
regard to the perceived [subjective interpretation] darkness or
lightness of a black individuals skin tone, (251).
a. [Argument]: Since the perception or appearance of
blackness among the races, i.e., in comparison between races
is used to justify violence, it follows that the same
approach can be and is used to assess proclivities toward
violence and criminal behavior within the race.
b. Colorism, then, is used to justify the similarities or
differences within a racial group, wherein those phenotypic
traits resembling the aesthetical sensibilities of the dominant
culture reap the benefits of such resemblance.
c. Thus, the resemblance is itself powerful enough to justify
disparities in incarcerations rates.
2. for an overwhelmingly male sample of black inmates in
Mississippi, those assessed as having a lighter skin shade by
correctional officers received shorter prison sentences, (251).
3. men with more stereotypically black features were more likely to
receive death sentences., (252)
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1.3: The Emergence Modern Racism and an Aesthetical Response
Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader

Cornel West is actually identifying and justifying the preconditions for
physiological normalcy.

The First Stage of the Emergence Modern Racism:
1. Wests normative gaze: an ideal from which to order and
compare observations. (75)
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2. These norms [a aesthetic beauty] were consciously projected and
promotedas the ideal or standard against which to measure
other peoples and cultures. (76).
3. What is distinctive about the role of classical aesthetics and
cultural aestheticsis that they provided an acceptable authority
for the idea of white supremacy[which]was closely linked
with the major authority of truth and knowledge [viz]the
institution of science. (76).
4. [thus] the initial basis for the idea of white supremacy is to be
found in the classificatory categories and the descriptive,
representational, order-imposing aims of natural history, (77).

The Second Stage of the Emergence Modern Racism:
1. Modern racism as a consequence of the rise of phrenology (the
reading of skulls) and physiognomy (the reading of faces) (79).
a. Phrenology and Physiognomy were consequences of
European value-laden character, [KEY]. (79).
b. For J ohann Kasper Lavaters taxonomy and theory of noses
please see this thoroughly bizarre link.
2. [KEY Assumption]: racial variations are always degenerate
ones from an ideal state (81).
a. This assumption establishes the needed biological hierarchy
necessary for social demarcations along racial lines.
Response to Modern Racism: Power in Defiance
Fanon The Wretched of the Earth

The first thing the native learns is to stay in his place, and not to go
beyond certain limits. This is why the dreams of the native are always
of muscular prowess; his dreams are of (1) action and of (2)
aggression. I dream I am jumping, swimming, running, climbing (52)
this is why any study of the colonial world should take into
consideration the phenomena of the dance and of possession. The
natives relaxation takes precisely the form of muscular orgy in which
the most acute aggressivity and most impelling violence are canalized,
transformed and conjured away. The circle of the dance is a permissive
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circle: it protects and permits. At certain timesmen and womenfling
themselves[with]shakes of the head, bending of the spinal column,
throwing of the whole body backwardmaybe decipheredasthe
huge effort of the community to exorcise itself,
3
to liberate itself, to
explain itself. [Explain] There are no limitsinside the
circlesymbolic killings, fantastic rides, imaginary mass murdersall
must be brought out. The evil humors are undimmed, and flow away
with a din as of molten lava. One step further and you are completely
possessed. In fact, these are actually organized sances of possession
and exorcisms; they include vampirism, possession by djinns, by
zombies (57)

1. A European value-laden character functions to impart evaluative
judgments, demonizing the native/oppressed population on
biological and, according to West, aesthetic grounds.
2. Remember, racial variations are always degenerate ones from an
ideal state (81).
3. [Me]: The act of possession [not supernatural/transcendental
possession] but possession of the degenerate aesthetic, the
idealization of the degenerate form cannot be incorporated into
the epistemic articulation of what is KNOWN by the
oppressor/establishment.
a. This act frees the individual from being pigeonholed, which
complicates epistemic generalization of knowing who the
individual is.
b. To exorcise ones self, then, is to valorize this degenerate
aesthetic.
4
This was famously accomplished by J ames
Browns in his song, Im Black and Im Proud.
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1.4: The Sociolinguistic Construction of Race PART ONE
Celine-Marie Pascale Making Sense of Race, Class, and Gender

3
The exorcism is not a Christian exorcism, it is an attempt to exorcise Christianity from the community.
4
Beyond the discourse of violence or nonviolence is the NEEDED discourse of the aesthetics of control and power.
As a possible aspect of nonviolent revolution or protest, one must include the functional ability of the valorization
of the degenerate aesthetic as a powerful nonviolent means of enacting the humanization of the other. [See] [See]
12
The Social Construction of Our Ability to Recognize Race:
1. historical relations of power inhere in our abilities to recognize
race, (24)
a. [KEY]: Society requires that the individual have the ability
to recognize race[as]a routine competence expected of
all people, (24). The expectation of race as identifiably
observable. EG the race of this man is obvious though it is
never stated:

A young man [clearly black] walks through chest deep flood waters after
looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday.
2. Commonsense leads us to believe that exposure to a shared
reality [i.e., the reality of race] will clarify for all what is true
(25)

Similarly:

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b. Two residents [identifiably white] wade through chest-deep
water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery
store
i. Irrespective of the distinctions in finding for the
white residents and looting for the black man is the
reality that their whiteness and blackness is never
referenced in the AP.
ii. Thus, Pascale writes, Indeed, commonsense
knowledge that race can be seen, just by looking at a
person, [makes] face-to-face questions about [their]
racial identitycompletely absurd, (24). It would be
to ask this man if he were black:
iii. hes identifiably black or this man if
hes white hes identifiably white.

[KEY]: it is the obviousness of this fact, however, that Pascale
wants to challenge. It is obvious, but how did it come to be obvious?
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1.5: The Sociolinguistic Construction of Race PART TWO
Celine-Marie Pascale Making Sense of Race, Class, and Gender

Linguistic Demarcations in Generalities and Specificities:
1. While reporters might refer to a homeless black man, as noted
earlier, in fifteen years of articles about homelessness, I found no
comparable references to a homeless white man. Whiteness
was the assumed, or unmarked, category. (26) [Author is wrong
about the category being unmarked. It is marked]

14


It is possible to mark race without explanation precisely because the
meaning of race always exceeds the context in which it is evoked. (26)
2. [KEY]: To say man is to invoke the general form that which is
sufficient for all the manifestations of this general form.
[Aristotelian not Platonic, Brief Explain] [Simply]: the essential
characteristics needed to participate/be identified with this
category comprises the set of man. Thus, man is a category for
organizing our thoughts and the corresponding word, man
directs our thoughts to its general form. It includes and excludes
membership with this form. This exists a priori, thus: it exceeds
the context [Explain].
a. Thus it is tautologically true: Man =its definition,
b. its definition =Man.
c. Though this is true, it provides no meaning
3. The Meaning of Race attains meaning because of the a
posteriori tendency to differentiate typologies within the general
form. E.g., A man BUT [which is conjunctive] this type of
man].
a. The additional content information, i.e., that which comes
AFTER BUT, is superfluous in attempting to understanding
the general form. [KEY]: i.e., the general form can be
understood without this additional context-specific
information but the type/instantiation cannot be understood
without reference to the general form. [Explain]
15
b. In terms of race the additional information (epistemically-
superfluous) adds varying degrees of socially negative
context to the general form, which is justified by Wests
claim that racial variations are always degenerate ones
from an ideal state (81).
c. The ideal state is man
d. IF the references are:
i. A man approached me at the store
ii. A black-man approached me at the store
iii. The additional content information pertains to the
mans blackness, i.e., the form of his being black,
which is a posteriori. This form of blackness, exactly
like the form of man has essential characteristics
needed to participate/be identified with the category
black.
1. WITHIN that category black is the necessary
characteristics of violence, danger, the unknown
etc. We have socially constructed the requisite
criteria for membership in this category
iv. Thus to add the content information black to man is
inherently to add the necessary characteristics of the
form black to man, which is to say all the negative
characteristics of the category black are added to the
category man.
e. IF the references are:
i. A man approached me at the store
1. Requires the interlocutor to inquire about the
content of the approach.
ii. A black-man approached me at the store
1. Requires the interlocutor to inquire about the
content of the approach, i.e., what happened and
the man, i.e., who is he what did he do.

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1.6: What are Ghetto Names?

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J . Dubner, (2005) Freakonomics: A Rogue
Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

1. the most likely cause of the explosion in distinctively Black
names was the Black Panther Movement, which sought to
accentuate African culture and fight claims of Black inferiority,
(183).
2. [Question]: What kind of parent is most likely to give a child a
distinctively black name? [Answer]: That data offer a clear
answer: an unmarried, low-income, undereducated teenage mother
from a black neighborhood who has a distinctively black name
herself, (184).
3. [Motivation]: such practices in naming is a black parents signal
of solidarity with the community, (184). [Explain].

Black Names within their Social Context
1. The authors challenge the existing assertion that audit studies,
[ABC News on J ob Prospects] are good tools for assessing the
perception and economic consequence of adopting a black name.
2. [Assumption about Audit Studies]: black sounding names
carry an economic penalty (186). However there are a litany of
complications with this approach [Explain a few].
3. [Findings]:
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The data show that, on average, a person with a
distinctively black namewhether it is a woman named
Imani or a man named DeShawndoes have a worse life
outcome than a woman named Molly or a man named J ake.
But it isnt the fault of their names. If two black boys, J ake
Williams and DeShawn Williams, are born in the same
neighborhood and into the same familial and economic
circumstances, they would likely have similar outcomes.
BUT the kind of parents who name their son J ake dont
send to live in the same neighborhood or share the same
economic circumstances with the kinds of parents who
name their son Deshawn, (188-9).

Naming as a Cultural Right
Ayanna F. Brownand J anice Tuck Lively, Selling the Farm to Buy the Cow: The Narrativized
Consequences of Black Names From Within the African American Community in Journal of
Black Studies 43(6) 667692.

1. The opportunity for African Americans to name their own
children has not been an endowed right. As enslaved people,
African Americans names and the names of their children were
chosen by their owners, (668).
2. [Mounting Tension]: African-Americans in the process of
deliberating about their childs name, experience the conflict
between solidarity with the community on the one hand and the
need for sociocultural approval mediated by the norms of
dominant society, i.e., to be accepted, on the other, (668).
3. these names are often assumed to be signifiers of poverty, limited
education, and questionable morality,(669).
a. Such signification discourages the adoption of distinctively
black names and the cultural right to name ones own child,
since it is alleged that there are negative consequences for so
doing.
b. While scholars assert that it is not the name, in-and-of-itself,
that yields negative socioeconomic consequences but those
external factors influencing parents likely to give their
children distinctively black names, for the general public
distinctively black names are stigmatized as ghetto.
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1.7: Race and Difference
Celine-Marie Pascale Making Sense of Race, Class, and Gender

Power Race and Difference:
1. Race has relevant rather than particular meaning. (27)
a. The relevancy of race pertains to its use
b. Its use is a means of preserving difference
c. The recognition of difference is essential in conflict.
2. The presence of race is itself an effect of power, (27)
a. As seen in Section 1.5, race is identifiable because it was
socially constructed to be identified [Explain]
3. The identification of race is a reification of race and potentially
racism.
a. Identification reifies/reinforces the use-function of race.
b. Once seen race cannot be unseen
c. Thus, one viable social resistance is to see all races.

Two Analytic Tensions with the Concept of Difference:
1. Material: i.e., the material conditions for difference
a. The lived experience of difference is predicated on
sameness within social categories (e.g., women, or whites)
and difference between categories (women and men, blacks
and whites) (28). [Explain]
b. With respect to difference within categories: Despite the
perceived homogeneity of a racial/ethnical identity, e.g.,
black-American we know that difference has/can be
preserved within:
i. E.g. (1) Colorism, (2) J im Crowism, (3) Horizontal
Violence
c. With respect to difference between categories: The political
project of social justiceattempts to equalize inequalities
between categories, (28)
d. Equalization requires: (1) the acknowledgment of
difference, which is essential, (2) the acknowledgment that
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such difference has sociopolitical/economic consequences,
(3) The systematic attempt to name those structures of power
in place that unfairly advantage/disadvantage members of the
population [See the next section on the concept of
disidentification].
2. Discursive: i.e., the discursive conditions for difference
a. A poststructuralist attempt to rupture the binaries of
difference, (28). The assumption is that the polemical nature
of this difference is socially constructed to enforce
distinctions that would otherwise disappear.
i. The hegemonic discourse (29) is a discourse that
seeks to preserve interethnic/interracial hostilities
and/or violence as one means of securing power.
1. Pro: if there is said to be a benefit from this
approach it is the assumption that established
power is secured insofar as racial/ethical groups
are fighting each other. This assumption,
however, is destabilized when one group
wins/dominates another ethnical group and then
seeks control of political power, emboldened by
prior success.
2. Con: The clear disadvantage of attempting to
reconcile these existing ethnical/racial
distinctions would likely result in even more
forcefully renewed attempts to preserve group
identity through exclusionary practices. Simply,
e.g., Hes not white/black no matter what they
sayand heres why, The attempt to reconcile
these difference can have disastrous
consequences.
b. Challenges the notion of a unified subject for a fluid,
fracturedmultiple subject position(ality), (28).



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1.8: Resistance and Systemic Racial Discrimination
Celine-Marie Pascale Making Sense of Race, Class, and Gender

2 Means of Reifying Racial Difference:
1. Discriminatory categoriesbecome naturalized as self-evident,
(29).
a. Not concerned with the intent to discriminate. Only
concerned with the ability to discriminate based on the self-
evidence of the distinction. Thus, it is the self-evidence of
the distinction that becomes problematic.
2. In order to resist[seeing] race as self evidentone may refuse to
see race entirely, via colorblindness, in response to the alleged
self-evidence of racial identification.
a. [Problem]: colorblindness extends inequities by ignoring or
disregarding the importance and impact of historical relations
of power, (29).
i. [KEY]: race blindnessextends historical relations of
power by reducing systematic inequalities to arbitrary
inequalities, (29).
ii. Simply colorblindness trivializes racial injustices by
suggesting that (1) it is a consequence of
arbitrary/particular practices, rather than systemic, and
(2) in so doing extends the system of exclusion on the
basis of race.

2 Necessary Conditions for Disidentification:
Disidentification: can be understood as a process of rethinking and
reconstructing discourses in ways that expose what the hegemonic
discourse conceals, (29) Accounts for and includes what the dominant
discourse marginalizes, (30).
1. Resistance toracial inequalitybegin(s) with [the] practices
that remove whiteness from the unmarked center of daily life,
(29). [See Section 1.1 here, of my Theories of Ethnicity and
21
Nationalism Lectures Series for the invisibility of ethnical
whiteness in American society, Brief Explain].
a. The missing ethnical label reinforces the power of those
free of such labels to normativize their racial/ethnical identity
as the standard bearer for all othered race/ethnic identities.
b. the meanings of race must be made visible through the
relationships that produce it, (30) which actively work to
subvert the prevailing practices of articulation, (29).
i. There is power in remaining invisible unnamed.
ii. Hegemonic discourse socially constructs identity by
appeal to race and ethnicity.
iii. Hegemonic discourse [within the US] does not itself
assume racial/ethnical identity as a means of self-
identification.
iv. This fact is what is being masked and thus requires a
refusal to allow the meaning of race to float as
everything [for those relegated to racial/ethnical
identification] and nothing [for those of the privileged
class able to forgo racial/ethnical identification] (30).
[Explain the sociolinguistic reality and the difficulties
in changing this linguist phenomena].
2. Second[we must refuse] the apparent naturalness of whiteness
[i.e., its linguistic invisibility] by including whitenessa white
racial category, not simply white peoplemore visibly in public
discourse, (30)
a. The concept is simple. We, Americans, use race as a
descriptor for everyone other than white-Americans. The
means of instituting fairness, since we cannot unsay Black-
American etc, is to begin saying White-American. [This will
be a difficult task, Explain Entrenchment].
b. Simply: fairness would require that either everyone is
identified racially/ethnically or no one is identified
racially/ethnically. Since it is unlikely to undo the
racial/ethnical identification for all other Americans, White-
American need to be identified as such.
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1.9: W.E.B. Du Boiss Double Consciousness PART ONE
Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classical Readings. Ed. Charles
Lambert 3
rd
Edition.

4 Existential Dilemmas of Double Consciousness:
1. The recognition of 2
nd
class citizenship, as a lived-experience. Du
Bois writes, I remember well when the shadows swept across
me, (164). Ive captured this experience fictionally:
Maybe I could fly in de presidents plane, battle de Reds in a fighter jet!
Huh daddy? Knick-Knack spreads his arms and emulates a fighter pilot.
Pow! Pow! Pow! yells Knick-Knack.
B48! B48! Got hit on de fuel tank. Im goin down! yells Sammy. He
spreads his arms and begins shooting. Powerful fighter jets boom loudly
in the clouds above. Knick-Knack dodges the shots and flies behind his
fathers enemy plane. He has his target in sight. Im comin to get you!
yells Knick-Knack. He places his finger on the trigger.
Mayday! Mayday! yells his father. Knick-Knacks fighter jet screams
through the clouds. He nears his fathers jet, his target in sight.
Stupid ass NIGGERS! yells a passenger as a car drives by the school.
Knick-Knacks fantasy had been thwarted. His arms slowly return to his
side. His smile stifled. The plane is only a lil black boy after all.
Sammy swallows his bitter rage. He nearly yelled. He nearly fought
back, for he too was lost in the fantasy. The word jarred them back
to their shared reality. A dangerous storyteller is one who believed his
own stories. [REF]
2. Contempt for ones systematic marginalization: shut out from
their world by a vast veil[with]no desire to tear [it] downI
heldcontempt[because]all their dazzling opportunities,
were their, not mine, (164)
a. Marginalization as a consequence of exclusionary practices,
which delimit or deny access to opportunity. #2 above
reinforces a sense and the truth of #1, i.e., I am treated as 2
nd

class because I have not been afforded the same
opportunities.
3. The religious conflict of being outcasted: Why did God make me
an outcast and a stranger in my own house? (164).
a. Black academics, not all, tend to challenge the authority of
religion and characterize it as a force of control and
domination.
23
b. The Black community, however, not all but generally, tend to
accepts to authority of the gospel as truth.
c. The tension the black academic feels is informed by this
schism.
d. Understand the interpretational difference in the following
passage: Du Bois writes, At last [Freedom] came,--
suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of
blood and passion came the message of his own plaintive
cadences:
Shout, O children!
Shout, youre free!
For God has brought your liberty! (165)
There is a sense in which one should be grateful for what has been
brought, viz., freedom. There is, however, another sense in which one is
justified in challenging the need to bring freedom where it was already
enjoyed by so many [the act of bringing freedom is itself unjust].
[Explain].

4. Self-Revelation/Consciousness as Exclusion: the negro is born
with a veilalways looking at ones self through the eyes of
others[which]only lets him see himself through the revelation
of the other world, [i.e., their world]. (164)
a. [Potential Research Topic]. Watch Lordes Royals. The
basis for double consciousness is rooted in identity through
exclusion, which should serve as a catalyst for change
BUTnot so much anymore. For those who fantasize about
wealth through reality TV the average viewer is excluded
from the community of spenders:
Image is everything in our community. [Speaking on behalf of the
entire Iranian community] For example, I might spend more
money on my handbag than I do on my rent because more people are
going to see my purse than they will my crib, [REF]. Ask yourself,
Am I part of this community?
much of what is consumed is based on the exclusion of the very
consumers purchasing the products. Thus consumer identity is
24
slavishly accepting of this dejected identity, this excluded identity
as their identity, e.g., Music:
Look at you
Now look at us
All my niggas look rich as fuck
All my niggas look rich as fuck
All my niggas look rich as fuck [REF]
LOL!! I love this song because so many poor people are not
offended by this song. [Pause to laugh at poor people]. The
implication is look at yourself you are not rich as fuck. Now look
at me, I am rich as fuck. Thus, [KEY]: your identity is constituted
as not being like mine, not looking like mine, not having what I
have.
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2.0: W.E.B. Du Boiss Double Consciousness PART TWO
Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classical Readings. Ed. Charles
Lambert 3
rd
Edition.

Understanding Double Consciousness:
1. It is a feeling of this internal conflict:
a. One ever feels his twonessan American, a negro; [notice
the absence of the conjunction and], two souls, two
thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in
one dark body; whose dogged strength alone keeps it from
being torn asunder, (164).
2. Need to fuse these divergent selves:
a. He would not Africanize the AmericanHe would not
bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white AmericanismHe
simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a
Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon
by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity
closed roughly in his face, (164-5).
3. It is a feeling of self doubt:
a. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder
souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but
25
confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the
beauty reveled to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his
larger audience despised, [Explain relation] and he could not
articulate the message of another people, p.165.
i. One aspect of double consciousness is the epistemic
inability of the black-subject to articulate/understand
the efficacious nature of ones own culture /
ethnicity/race. [Explain in detail]
ii. Another is the emotional and intellectual displacement
from both his people and the larger audience



The End
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