"Race," Writing, and Difference

"Race," Writing, and Difference
Edited by Henry Louis Gates

This book is a hot mess.

And yet, like the protagonists described in every song I know of with that title…it still kind of works.

The book consists of a collection of essays by various people, with an introduction by Gates. Those parts? They're the mess. At the end, though, there are responses to the collection. Those responses are the hot, in more ways than one; every one of them, from Tzvetan Todorov's denouncement of the entire project as falling short of its goal to Gates's response to the responses, has undertones (and sometimes overtones and midtones) of outrage, as they argue over what the goals of the project and individual essays within it were—and debate the actual outcomes of it.

I'm going to try to briefly summarize the primary points each writer makes in her or his response, then discuss how accurate I feel these criticisms of the volume to have been.

Todorov: Argues that the essays are reifying the construct of race and fall into the trap of portraying contemporary critical theory as infallible or at least not in need of deconstruction. Also, people are too mean to Enlightenment philosophy when they accuse it of creating racialism. Writers didn’t do their homework, as evidenced by their failure to refer to "the critical school of thought which long attempted to explain literary differences by racial differences" (375).Accuses Gates of racialism. Criticizes essays as a whole for academic language and inaccessibility. Says there's too much focus on the Other in European literature in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Notable remark:

"In proudly describing ourselves as antiracist, we can give ourselves a good conscience at almost no expense. What else, then, do I recommend that we do? Certainly not endorse the racist credo just for the sake of making a more unconventional choice, but, at the very least, become aware of the problem and carefully question the commonplaces of contemporary good conscience." (378)

Houston A. Baker, Jr.: Suggests that Gates is confused in his goals and desires, having stated a desire for the vernacular but then editing a volume which has almost none of that present. Annoyed that Appiah dismisses physical features as "mere" physical differences in his reliance on genetic science to show that race is not a biological construct, because those physical features are what others react to. Argues that this "we're all the same" insistence ignores reality and obscures racism. Charges several writers with having created a "whitemale confessional" (388). Says that the base argument of many writers and activists is the "we're just as good as" model, which is a fundamentally losing model. Extremely lengthy consideration of Caliban and how if we see Caliban as not a defective version of Prospero but his own individual, he has value in that.

Notable remark:

"[The] signal shortcoming of 'Race,' Writing, and Difference is the paucity of Caliban's sound. The issue chooses instead to repeatedly sound (perhaps, of academic necessity) 'subtle' phonics of academic discourse." (389)

Harold Fromm: Pretty much says that Gates can bite him, then reams Pratt for committing the same error she criticizes in colonial literature. Claims she is using academic discourse as a colonizing mechanism to further her own individual aims and ends by urging that "'Physician, heal thyself'…be the first moral exhortation of the day" (398).

Notable remark:

"[Here] I was, daring to use words without quotation marks, actually believing that I referred to something identifiable when I spoke of black people, Americans, musicians, and whatnot, and being told that it was all just my own narcissistic and preemptive fantasy." (396)

Pratt's response to Fromm: Okay, fine, Fromm has some points about academic discourse, but why's he picking on me? What did I do differently? Who am I colonizing, anyhow? How is it better to have stable categories? Going well till the baffling "can't we all just get along/let's do something completely different" ending which fails to suggest what the different might be.

Notable remark:

"[The] name for such interventions is not colonialism, it is critique—or, ,if you like, critical inquiry. They are attempts to change the culture one lives in." (400)

Gates: Primarily responds to Todorov and somewhat Fromm. Argues for necessity of undermining essentialism. Calls Todorov out on his definition of racism as "the display of contempt or aggressiveness toward other people on account of physical differences," pointing out that that definition is limited and specious (403). Accuses Todorov of creating a straw-man argument in opposition to Gates as a way of attempting to re-legitimatize literature canon. Refutes pretty much all of Todorov's claims about racialism and racism.

Notable remark:

"Todorov can't even hear us, Houston, when we talk his academic talk; how he gonna hear us if we 'talk that talk,' the talk of the black idiom?" (409)

Whew. All right. Now that we have that all out there, let's take a look at some of the claims. I think Gates does a pretty good job of responding to Todorov's claims about what he says in the introduction; Todorov seems to be working from some definition of racism where not being racist equates to "well it's not like I've lynched anybody today," and I'm too tired to play racism bingo today, so we'll just let that one lie. I couldn't resist giving you his baffling discussion of how being antiracist is popular and easy, and the resultant solution that is not, you know, actually acting against racism but is instead to…what? Reconsider whether racism might be a good idea after all? But that's enough of that.

So. I'm going to limit this to considering two particular points that were brought up by Todorov, Fromm, and Houston (because otherwise we'd be here all day, especially if I started talking about essentialism, cause that is a whole lot of complicated—a hot mess, you might say, or at least, I might).

First, there is the discussion of language and accessibility. This, I think, is particularly interesting in a volume entitled "Race," Writing, and Difference that has a surprisingly narrow discussion of writing, more discussion of colonialism than race, and barely a nod to difference. It might seem like that's a brutal criticism; it's not. The book may well be mis-titled, but so are many others. What I was expecting, though, was some discussion of how literacy, forced education, and formal education interplay with ideas of race and difference. I probably would have liked that more, but, you know, judging a book by its cover is ill-advised and all that.

While I'm all for writing in the vernacular (you've probably noticed that by now), or at least the approachable…sometimes that's not possible. And for the subject matter of most of these essays, that simply wasn't possible. So that might be an accurate critique on the part of the responders, but it should be phrased as an initial critique of the subject matter, rather than treating terminology, phrasing, and topic as separable items.

This brings us to the second point, which is indeed about subject matter. Todorov points out that the contributors focus extremely heavily on colonial texts of the 19th and 20th centuries, a criticism that Houston echoes when he discusses whitemale confessionals, and an accusation that (I think) lies at the base of Fromm's finger-pointing at Pratt (but I could be wrong about this; Fromm's contentions are difficult to discern).

To this criticism, I say: Word, y'all.

See, I have a confession to make. It's this: I never read Heart of Darkness. I didn't even watch Apocalypse Now, which I'm told is based on Conrad's novel. Back in senior year of high school, I was supposed to do both, but instead I stared out the window, read the copy of Brave New World that was on the bookshelf behind me, and wrote a story about aliens. I tried reading it, but got to the point where I was told that Marlow "resembled an idol," and was annoyed. Then I read Marlow's interminable speech and got to the point where he referred to Africa as previously having been a "blank space" and put the book down and never picked it back up. Moby Dick was after that, and I never read that one, either.

This might make more sense if I summarize the plot of nearly every book on our reading list in A.P. high school English: White guy is sad. Life ain't all it was cracked up to be. Disillusionment. But wait! Conflict with women/people of color/creature-as-stand-in-for-women-or-people-of-color/nature-as-stand-in-for-women-or-people-of-color. OMG. What to do? Oh! I know! Reestablish dominance! There we go. Whew. That was close for a moment there. Anyways, back to business as usual.

By that point in high school, I was seriously tired of reading whitemale confessionals (this is a fantastic term and one that I wish I'd had before). Hemingway. Conrad. Hawthorne. Steinbeck. Eliot. Twain. Fitzgerald. Melville. Thoreau.

The thing is…how many essays do we really, truly need that rehash the same content without providing us anything new? Conrad is mentioned in at least four, perhaps more, of the essays in this book. Conrad shows the colonialist mindset! Conrad shows the postcolonial mindset! Conrad fetishes black people! Conrad highlights the flaws of racialism! Conrad...blah blah blah. While I don't think that Fromm's insistence that Pratt in particular was "colonizing" was supported by sufficient evidence or argument, the fact remains that education, and particularly the literary and art canons, are used to further hegemonic dominance and as paintbrushes for the whitening of history. And so I have to ask: How much is that furthered when every time we talk about race and literature, we talk about the same authors, and oftentimes the same ideas about those authors?

Pratt says that these "interventions" are "attempts to change the culture one lives in." But in academic culture, reinterpreting Twain, Conrad, et al., is part of the standard, the norm, not a change. Some (most) years, Twain and Conrad are in favor. Sometimes, they're out. But they keep coming back, and panning them isn't academically dangerous or risky. In fact, it's about one of the safest things there is. So yeah, as Todorov noted, it's easy to say you're antiracist. I'm going to go ahead and differ on him on the solution, though.

How about we try doing what Gates initially suggested, and look at literature created by black folks? How about we try engaging in an actual critique of some of these books, where instead of constantly revolving around the question of how the Other is portrayed, we question how white maleness is constructed? How about instead of talking about white men, white women as property of white men, black men as threats to white men, and black women as existing only in terms of sexuality, we look at the entire context and see what else is there? Cause y'all, if that's all that's there, why the hell are we still talking about it? We already know. Done and done, checkmate, end game, finis.

Gates edited this volume in 1986. Since then, some people have done it different. But not a whole lot.

How the Irish Became White

How the Irish Became White
Noel Ignatiev

"The Irish who emigrated to America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were fleeing caste oppression and a system of landlordism that made the material conditions of the Irish peasant comparable to those of an American slave" (2).

"To Irish laborers, to become white meant at first that they could sell themselves piecemeal instead of being sold for life, and later that they could compete for jobs in all spheres instead of being confined to certain work; to Irish entrepreneurs, it meant that they could function outside of a segregated market. To both of these groups it meant that they were citizens of a democratic republic, with the right to elect and be elected, to be tried by a jury of their peers, to live wherever they could afford, and to spend, without racially imposed restrictions, whatever money they managed to acquire" (3).

These are the assertions that Ignatiev makes in the introduction to his historical study of Irish immigrants to America, primarily focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While he provides a solid historical grounding for his study of laborers and their intra- and interethnic relationships and hostilities, if one a little too heavily focused on Boston and Philadelphia, Ignatiev provides a less clear theoretical grounding for his claim that the Irish became white. I generally tend to feel that Amazon reviews, particularly one-star reviews, are of dubious worth, I do feel at least some sense of sympathy with the reviewer who suggested that the title was chosen more for its value in catching the eye than for its connection to the topic of the book.

This might seem like an accusation of deliberate misdirection on the part of Ignatiev, but I would suggest that it is instead a possible, and difficult to avoid, pitfall of attempts to remedy the pre-existing blindness to race in the bulk of labor studies. The problem, as I (possibly incoherently) attempted to suggest in my discussion of Are Italians White?, is that whiteness and citizenship are conflated while blackness, oppression, slavery, and poverty are tied together. Thus, the story of how the Irish "became white" is really the story of how the Irish became American, at a point in time when "American" absolutely meant "white." Perhaps this seems like a minor quibble with an otherwise worthwhile, interesting, and thought-provoking study.

It's not.

Consider the first quotation above, the one that suggests that the conditions for Irish Catholic peasants were comparable to those of an American slave. Comparable: similar, equivalent, proportionate, commensurate, equivalent.

What is equivalent to slavery?

This is a serious question.

It is the corollary to the question I would ask of every white person who makes a declaration about "reverse racism": If you think that white people really have it worse, then why don't you switch? You don't need proof to be black. You just need to say you are. Nobody goes around double-checking to make sure that black folks are really black. You know why? Because people don't pretend to be black. For all the claims that suburban white kids are "acting black," not a one of those claims suggests that anyone is actually claiming to be black. I can assure you from personal experience that if you say you're black and people didn't think you were, they will say things like, "Oh, looks like you got lucky in the gene lottery!"

So, in this case, let's look at slavery in America versus Catholicism in Ireland under British Protestant rule; which of them wins in an oppression death match? Well, Catholics couldn't "open or teach in a school…take part in the manufacture or sale of arms, newspapers, or books…own a horse worth more than five pounds," and suffered beneath myriad other laws—laws which were undoubtedly oppressive, no question about that (40). But they were not bought and sold. They were not chattel. I see nothing indicating that Catholic women were regularly raped by Protestant landlords so as to produce more property to sell, or anything suggesting that families were forced apart by the sale of some of their members, or anything showing that literacy was a crime in and of itself.

Please note: by and large, I don't think that oppression Olympics are helpful. When it comes down to it, that's the very reason I object to phrases like "comparable to slavery." Oppression appears in many forms, and it is terribly unlikely that many of them are comparable except insofar as they are all oppression, and as Andrea Smith points out so eloquently, attempts to "rank" oppressions generally silence at least one group and usually more. Each of us is placed differently within the set of hierarchical structures that frame American society and culture, and attempting to compare everything to slavery is about as useful as accusing all possessors of privilege of being like Hitler.

Leaving the issue of comparable/equivalent aside, I'd like to consider what Ignatiev is really saying in the second quotation I began this post with. There, he equates whiteness with privilege, self-ownership, and citizenship, without ever questioning the connection there. It's not that I'm arguing whiteness and citizenship are not confluent and dependent; in America, by the end of the eighteenth century, they were, and to a large extent, still are. The problem is that if what we are studying is the creation of the conditions that helped institute and continue to support the connection between whiteness and citizenship, then we have an obligation to examine our language and assumptions.

In this instance, and throughout the book, Ignatiev uses whiteness as a shorthand for citizenship, as when he conflates nativism and racism, concluding that "strong tendencies existed in antebellum America to consign the Irish, if not to the black race, then to an intermediate race located socially between black and white" (89). However, there is very little to support this claim. Were the Irish perceived as lesser than "Americans"? Yes. Were they perceived as better suited for dirty, unpleasant, back-breaking (in some cases literally) jobs than "Americans"? Yes. Does this mean that they were not white?

Only if you see "white" and "American" as synonymous. And that's the idea that Ignatiev's unexamined choice of language perpetuates (while also, at many points, presuming that the history of labor is the history of men).

Are Italians White?

Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America
Edited by Jennifer Guglielmo & Salvatore Salerno

Although the title of the book, Are Italians White?, implies that the essays contained within it will explore that question, the answer to it is provided in the introduction: "Italians were positioned as white in the most critical of ways immediately upon their arrival in the United States" (8). While the editors go on to say that an Italian-American identity as white "took longer to form," they set the premise firmly as exploring the ways that Italian-Americans have related to (and been assigned places on) the color line and to people of other races, rather than literally the question of whether Italians are white, despite the fact that it is still a burning question for many people.

I am…ambivalent…about the book, about the essays, about the authors.

race
color
ethnicity

Everyone "knows" a definition for each of those words, and in the end, as far as I can tell, they only serve two possible purposes. First, we use them to determine who gets to be unmarked. When I tell you about a guy* I talked to while I was in line at the grocery store, was he "this guy in front of me" (white)? Or was he "this black guy" or "this Asian guy" or "this Mexican guy"? Second, we use them to determine who gets to choose to claim a cultural heritage and nationality. See, the black guy or the Asian guy or the Mexican guy doesn't get to choose. He already has one.

It might not be an accurate one. Maybe "this black guy" is African or maybe he's from the Caribbean or maybe he's British or maybe he's straight-out everyone-in-his-family-was-born-in-the-U.S.-as-far-back-as-anyone-remembers American, just like maybe "this Mexican guy" wasn't Mexican at all but is actually Puerto Rican or Colombian or straight-out everyone-in-his-family-was-born-in-the-U.S.-as-far-back-as-anyone-remembers American. None of that matters, though, because once he's marked as "this black guy" or "this Mexican guy," then there is a set of assumptions about his identity that goes along with that marking.

"This guy in front of me," though, he gets to choose. He can be American or white (like those are really different) or he can be Irish-American or Italian-American or German-American, but you wouldn't know about any of those unless he decides to tell you about them…unless he has something that defines him as "not American," by which I mean, he has an accent or he doesn't speak English. That means he might be white, but he's marked anyhow, because he's not American (even if really he is).

That's what a lot of the essays in this book are about: People who were recent enough immigrants to the U.S. from Italy that they were defined as "not American." And, oddly, that's something that, by and large, is not addressed explicitly in these essays. While some make reference to ancestors who did not speak English, e.g., Manifest's comment that his relatives "conveniently [forgot]" about his great-grandfather, who "stubbornly refused to learn, let alone speak, a word of English" (146), none of the authors really explore whether there is or should be any distinction made between "white" and "American" and "citizen," at the same time that the themes of their essays revolve around that question. While several of the essays discuss historical aspects of immigrant citizenship, none of them fully explores the issue of how nationalism and racism interact and affect these definitions, particularly from an Italian-American perspective.

Instead, in discussing whether Italians are or were "white," they debate and consider skin color, as when Louise DeSalvo points out that her grandmother's citizenship documents claimed that her "color" was "white" but her "complexion" was "dark" (25), or Kym Ragusa's discussion of her grandmother's and mother's skin color and hair, or Edvige Giunta's exploration of the differentiation between northern Italians and southern Italians who were considered "dark like the earth" (229), or the poems and short essays by Ronnie Mae Painter and Rosette Capotorto.

And this is the center, if not the source, of my ambivalence.

Consider:

"As anyone could see, [my grandmother's] complexion was fair though the document insists that it was dark" (25).

"My father is black. That's plain by his skin and his pain" (251).

"I attended events where I was one of two or three white women…I am attracted to people of color. The aesthetic…is more pleasing and more comfortable for me and my Italian/Sicilian/American self…'My mother is black'" (256).

Blackness or darkness, they are mostly negatives, in these tales. They are categories assigned by others that these authors reject, because belonging to those categories means being lesser. The exception is Capotorto's claim that her mother is black, but then Capotorto claims whiteness for herself. What does it mean to identify and be identified as white, while occasionally using blackness when convenient? Well, cultural appropriation comes to mind as a term.

I don't think that these authors intended to suggest that blackness/darkness is bad. Indeed, in some cases, they were trying to combat the insistence of others that it is. And yet, when the first step is to identify oneself, or, sometimes, Italians overall, as having light-colored skin—to insist upon it, in fact—then I have to question the motivations behind that. It's the Not That There's Anything Wrong With That defense, and it always makes me ambivalent, because on the one hand, we all want to be identified accurately, don't we?

But on the other hand, the vehemence of the insistence is rather suspect, isn't it?


*Gender doesn't get to be unmarked. Deborah Tannen argues otherwise, making the claim that "being male is the unmarked case," but while in some specific areas, I agree with her, overall, I think her argument is too reductive and specific (or, perhaps, just lacking somewhat in theoretical explanation). For instance, if I say I went on a date with "someone," it is incredibly difficult for me to keep telling you about the date without indicating gender, because we don't have gender-neutral pronouns.

how race survived U.S. history

How Race Survived U.S. History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon
David Roediger


The title of Roediger's work, How Race Survived U.S. History, implies that the central point of the book is to address the question of how something as divisive as the idea of race could have survived throughout the years. This could also be phrased as he puts it in his introduction: how the United States has handled the "American dilemma" of how to reconcile "the nation's commitments to freedom and equality…with the enduring practices of slavery and segregation" (xii). What Roediger truly ends up arguing, however, is that rather than being a confusing and contradictory aspect of American culture, the construction of race and racism "was a response to sharp social divisions among settlers and sought to create an ersatz unity among whites" (3). In other words, racial constructions were instrumental, not coincidental.

In support of this argument, he provides a discussion of how race has been central to ideas of citizenship and nationalism throughout history. Overall, Roediger provides a valuable and comprehensive discussion of the significance of race in U.S. history, validating his eventual argument that the eradication of racism requires active effort rather than being something that will just happen on its own.

Among the points that I would have liked to see explored in more detail, however, are the connections that Roediger makes between Christianity, whiteness, and the right to freedom early on in the book, as he discusses colonial Virginia. At this point, Roediger argues, lines of racial division were not yet in place, with class distinctions more fundamental than racial ones. In 1676, during Bacon's rebellion, "Negroes and servants" were "offered freedom 'from their slavery'" by authorities if they opposed the rebellion, while "rebels…feared that they would all be made into 'slaves, man, woman & child.'" Roediger's analysis of this phrasing is that "the promise of liberation" shows "how imperfectly class predicaments aligned with any firm sense of racial division" (5).

To some extent, I question this analysis, and would have appreciated more primary-source wording to support Roediger's interpretation. The phrasing he quotes seems to me to suggest more that "Negroes" were fundamentally considered to be of a different category; after all, if there were truly no racial divisions, but the authorities wanted to make clear that their offer of freedom extended to all, it seems as though it would have been phrased as "servants, Negroes and others," or something similar. The actual wording instead seems to imply that "Negroes" are inherently unfree. I also would not put as much emphasis on the promise of liberation as Roediger seems to, given that terms like "slavery" and "freedom" still are tossed around today without consideration of their history.

Roediger goes on to address the ways that "Christian" became synonymous with "white," e.g., with the passage of laws that dictated whippings for "any 'negroe or other [Indian] slave' attacking 'any Christian'" (6). Particularly as Roediger goes on to discuss settlers' concerns about the "laziness" of Indians or Africans—and their fear that Englishmen might be similarly "lazy," if provided the chance—more exploration of how Christianity appeared as a marker and separator meaning whiteness would have been both interesting and valuable.

For instance, was this focus on Christianity as the defining factor because the colonists were already separating themselves from England? Was it because of the lingering legacy of the Crusades, where the primary distinction was between Christians and "heathen"? Did it relate to the colonists' identification of themselves as fleeing from religious persecution, thereby creating religion as their primary aspect of identity?

While these may seem to be idle or insignificant questions, the answers to them are relevant, because they would explain more about the creation of concepts of what "an American" was and is. For instance, if the reason for the initial differentiation between Christian/not-Christian was due to the colonists' self-identification on the basis of religion, then this would play into the construction of white womanhood that Roediger addresses, albeit briefly, later. If Christianity is the determining factor of whiteness and later citizenship, then accusing a woman of being unchaste simultaneously divests her of whiteness, citizenship, and religion all at once—an application of heteropatriarchal white supremacy.

Roediger states that his goal in the book is to provide "a spare, vigorous, and accessible account of the ways white supremacy has lurked, morphed, and survived" because such an account "is most likely to reach large numbers of busy and perhaps skeptical readers" (xiv). He does provide that, but in some areas, his efforts to provide a "spare" account result in eliding significant ways that raciality has affected and affects women. The skeleton of that information is within the book, and he repeatedly references "white maleness" as the power structure being created, but I have concerns about an account that reinforces the historical invisibility of women, whether black, white, Indian, or Asian; in many ways, they exist in Roediger's narrative only to indicate racial differentiation between men.

This is particularly apparent in the afterword, when Roediger discusses the events of the 2008 primaries in regard to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The book was published prior to the results of all the primaries and the presidential election, although Roediger did make a statement two days post-election. His commentary is relatively vague, but he does state that "insistent efforts to brand Obama 'not one of us'—playing on his name and his alleged sympathy for Islam—fell equally flat," an assertion I'm not sure I agree with. Would the question of Obama's citizenship ever have been raised if he were white? Would claims that he is not Christian have been made if he were white? Would Sarah Palin have the support she does if she weren't presenting herself as a "real American," in contrast to Obama's presumably dubious Americanness?

The issues of gender, race, and religion should be as present in any discussion of the 2008 election or current reactions to Obama as they should have been in any discussion of pre-Revolutionary-War Virginia. Roediger points out that Obama "portrays today's issues as simply cutting across racial lines," an accusation that is accurate—and perhaps the only reason he was able to be elected (228). But we cannot portray racial issues as cutting across gender lines, either. The history that Roediger provides is more a history of race and men's labor than a universal U.S. history, and as such, it is extremely valuable in identifying and explaining many aspects of the creation, reinforcement, and persistence of white male supremacy over men of color, but not in providing a full consideration of the ways that other factors have also furthered that hierarchy (e.g., how care work reinforces the structure of capitalist white supremacy).

black is a country

Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy
Nikhil Pal Singh

When I was a kid, people used to ask me all the time, "What are you?"

Sometimes I went with "human" as my response, or occasionally the Miss-Manners-esque "What would make you ask that?" Neither of these worked, since the asker generally then decided that I was none too bright and narrowed it down to, "What race are you?"

See, my skin is usually somewhere around the hex value CD853F, although that varies depending on how much time I've spent in the sun. This would be enough to put me firmly in the category of "must be black," except that I have long hair that also varies a lot in color, and all that makes people less certain. People feel anxious when they can't label someone.

Sometime in the late 80s or maybe in the 90s, though, it became rude to ever directly reference race. I'm guessing that it was probably right around the time that the Supreme Court started approving hack-and-slash routines on affirmative actions programs. So: Talking about race is rude. At least, it is if you're white. In my more cynical moments, I think that white people must perceive it as rude for the same reason that it's rude to talk about how much more money you make than someone else—you're rubbing it in that you're doing better than they are. But cynicism is boring and generally at least as wrong as optimism, so most of the time, I figure it's because somehow now we live in a cultural environment where talking about race is somehow supposed to be racist, and people are trying to be polite.

It's a shame that they fail.

Singh quotes Antonin Scalia saying in 1995, "In the eyes of the government, we are just one race here. It is American" (10). As Singh goes on to explain, this is the policy of colorblindness, the idea that "there exists an universalizing tendency within this nation that inevitably wins out," a concept that is simply wrong (14). The history of United States and the history of the struggle for civil rights is a history of how "one nation, under God, indivisible" is a white nation, a male nation, a Christian nation. Everyone might have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but rights don't mean much if attempts to claim them result in accusations of "reverse racism" or "identity politics."

As Singh examines the history of race, racism, and the fight for full legal, social, and cultural citizenship in the United States, he considers the relationship between constructions of blackness and what "an American" has been and is supposed to be. Part of his argument is that at the same time that "black" is defined as different, citizenship is supposed to be racially neutral. Per the rhetoric of the United States, we are all supposed to have equal rights. The only model for this generally presented by mainstream culture is assimilation, however, and that is a problematic proposition.

In the 1940s, Myrdal, a Swedish economist chosen by the Carnegie Foundation to study "the Negro problem," issued a report in book form called The American Dilemma. Singh points out that for the president of the Foundation, "it was inconceivable that a black intellectual could be in charge" (134). Although a number of black intellectuals contributed very significantly to the book, it was published only under Myrdal's name. Part of his conclusion was that "it is to the advantage of American Negroes as individuals and as a group to become assimilated into American culture, to acquire traits held in esteem by the dominant white Americans," making it clear by his wording, whether deliberate or accidental, that "American culture" and "white American culture" are synonymous (145). It is not an act of disloyalty for blacks to question how American they are; it is an acknowledgment of reality.

(And one still true today. When, in asking "What is an American?" someone asserts that "a generation ago," "American culture was more unified," or when people refer to the good old days when "everyone had the same values," I think: Not for people like me. Cause a generation ago? I wouldn't be at this school. I wouldn't be reading this book. I wouldn't be writing this post. The nostalgia for the golden past is one that, as always, rewrites history to erase the injustice and inequality that have always been at the heart of American citizenship.)

One of the most interesting points that Singh makes is that historically, black Americans have taken a transnational approach to ideals of liberty and freedom, opposing the colonialist actions of the United States in its foreign affairs and military actions. He concludes his book by arguing that "the disavowal of the nation-form of boundary drawing might be the necessary beginning for any future dismantling of invidious uses of race," a suggestion that almost certainly would bring forth accusations of treason, disloyalty, and socialism (224).

In support of Singh's argument that the history of civil rights has been one of repetition, with brief advances that are often retracted, as well as a history of accusations of being communist or unpatriotic for those who protest inequality, President Obama is being accused of treason for objecting to Arizona's blatantly unconstitutional immigration laws and is simultaneously accused of supporting the drug trade and illegal use of the National Guard to combat the drug trade.

Where were these objections to domestic use of the National Guard when it was used to quell rioting about racial inequality? Where were the accusations of unconstitutional governmental interference with civil liberties when Japanese-Americans were interned in World War 2? For a country founded on dissent and revolution, it seems as though members of "the American race" have an ever-narrowing tolerance for any form of disagreement—and even less for any suggestions that "equality for all" is a myth rather than a reality.

These days, people don't ask me what race I am. Instead, they ask, "What is your nationality?" or sometimes, "Where are you from?" ("Pittsburgh" is not the answer they are seeking.) I live in a slightly smaller Indiana town now. My neighbors down the street have a Confederate flag in their window and very few people say hi to me on the street. At least once a week, someone asks me if I speak English, or they compliment me on my command of English.

I don't know whether I agree that black is a country, and I don't think that's really what Singh is trying to argue in his book. But here's what I do know: Black and brown and red and yellow?

They're not American.

a hideous monster of the mind

A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic
Bruce Dain

As he makes clear in the preface to his book, Dain's work is based on the assumption that racial theory and slavery debates revolved around the question of whether blacks could truly participate in citizenship or were incapable, whether such incapacity was due to genetic inferiority or the damages of slavery. To show this, Dain presents what he calls "an integrated intellectual history…of these first major rationalizations of race" (viii). While Dain's discussion of writings on race illustrates the variability in views both over time and within the same eras, as well as the connections and differences between racial theories, he does not spend much time addressing what impact these theories had on the general public or how much these theories reflected prevailing cultural attitudes.

The explanation of Dain's theoretical approach is provided only in the few pages of the preface, and both an extension of the preface and some sort of conclusion would have helped a great deal in tying together the evidence he presents. There are three primary points that I would have liked to see more discussion of in Dain's work.

First, as I mentioned above, while Dain contextualizes the theories of race he presents in relationship to other theories of race, he does not contextualize these theories in relationship to overall cultural attitudes. Thus, when we begin by discussing Jefferson's Notes, Dain states that his intent is to "begin to present a fresh interpretation of late eighteenth-century Enlightened American discourse on race" (6), but what I wanted to know was: Who was part of this discourse and what impact did it have on those who were not part of it? The institution of slavery existed prior to the beginning of this discourse; what "explanations" were used then? What was the rationale of those slaveholders who were not part of this discourse?

Similarly, although many of the racial theories Dain delineates purport to be scientific, and Dain casts doubt upon the credibility of their claims to scientific approaches, dismissing the majority of "early polygenists" as "just sloppy thinkers" (74). Despite this seeming willingness to take on the role of assessing scientific rigor, however, he avoids any real consideration of the ways that "scientific objectivity" has been constructed as a neutral although in reality the concept has consistently and historically been used to reinforce cultural structures of domination. Instead, Dain implies that there is a way to address race scientifically, or at least does not deny it as a possibility.

This brings us to my second issue with the text: It is at no point clear to the reader what Dain's theoretical stance is in racial theory. While it may be that his intent was to let the facts speak for themselves, or, in other words, to simply present the progression of theories as a set of historical ideas, this, again, presumes that it is possible to create a non-ideological narrative. Dain includes the writings of a number of black racial theorists and in fact asserts that Jefferson is responding to Phillis Wheatley, an interesting claim; taken together, these suggest that he might believe previous histories of racial theorists have been lacking, but since he chooses not to address this other than to note in the preface what he is including, it's hard to be sure what his reasons were.

Additionally, Dain varies between referring to blacks as "Negroes," "African-Americans," and "blacks." Given that choices of racial descriptions have a significant amount of baggage and history attached to them, I would have liked an explanation of Dain's rationale for his choices.

At the end of Hideous Monster, the question that stuck with me was: What did Dain hope to accomplish with this book? This is not, as it might seem, a suggestion that nothing was accomplished; Dain provides a comprehensive, well-written, informative review and analysis of racial theories. The problem is that I'm not sure whether this is provided as an effort to correct the record of such histories—and if so, what Dain's objections to them might have been—or is an indication of a new theoretical approach, or perhaps leads to new conclusions about the current state of racial theory in the United States.

CRT: the cutting edge

"One of the most characteristic and ubiquitous features of the world as experienced by oppressed people is the double bind – situations in which options are reduced to a very few and all of them expose one to penalty, censure or deprivation…One can only choose to risk one’s preferred form and rate of annihilation.

"Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not see why a bird would gave trouble going past the wires to get anywhere…It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon."

- from "Oppression" by Marilyn Frye

When I first encountered Frye's birdcage analogy, it was presented to me as an analogy for patriarchy. It wasn't until I reread it a couple of years ago in preparation for teaching an Intro to Gender Studies class that I realized, whether Frye intended it to be or not, that it is in fact both an analogy for the way that multiple hierarchies interact, and an explanation for much of the reasoning behind legal and governmental policy decisions that further hierarchical structures. The introduction to Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge notes that one of the premises of CRT is that "racism is normal, not aberrant, in American society." If we expand this premise to argue that oppression overall is normal in American society, and thus any form of oppression "looks ordinary and natural to persons in the culture," then the birdcage treatment of oppression is understandable (xvi). When all forms of oppression are treated as aberrant, then the idea of an interlocking system of oppressive hierarchies is simply inconceivable.

This becomes apparent in "A Hair Piece: Perspectives on the Intersection of Race and Gender," in which Paulette M. Caldwell discusses the case of Rogers v. American Airlines, where the courts upheld employers' bans on braided hairstyles in the workplace. As she analyzes the decision, Caldwell points out that the court assumed that racism and sexism "are fundamentally unrelated phenomena" (279). Similarly, Darren Lenard Hutchinson argues in "A Racial Critique of Gay and Lesbian Legal Theory" that police treatment of the Rivera case as a drug-related death, rather than a hate-crime murder based on both homophobia and racism, despite the fact that the perpetrators were white supremacists, one of whom directly stated that they "killed Rivera because he was gay," was due to the "broader social context of racial, class, and sexual subordination" (327).

If we consider Juan F. Perea's discussion of paradigms in "The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race," it becomes clear that the primary paradigm is that American society is perceived as fundamentally equal, with a few aberrant situations in which people are treated on unfairly on the basis of race or gender. This paradigm includes the assumption that race and gender are both binary and essential categories: In any case of racial discrimination, it is perpetrated by a white person upon a person of color (and is largely only recognized when reminiscent of Jim Crow), while in any case of sexism, it is perpetrated by a man upon a woman (and is largely only recognized when reminiscent of coverture).

As Perea notes, "Paradigms define relevancy" (344). Thus, with the above two paradigms for understanding racism and sexism, it is irrelevant if a rule, ordinance, or custom such as banning braided hairstyles specifically negatively affects black women, because there is no clear "racism" in the way that racism is recognized in that paradigm—it's not "no blacks allowed." Nor is there "sexism," because women are not being told "you can't work here" or "you must look pretty." Teachers who ignore children of Asian descent in classes because of the stereotype that "Asians girls are quiet by nature" are not engaging in racism, because they are not banning children from the classroom, and many (white) people might well see such stereotyping as "positive."

Another element lies within these paradigms, however. Returning to the idea of the binary and essential categories, the courts have only consistently ruled against discrimination when it was based on immutable, essential characteristics. Skin color and gender are presumed to be immutable, determined at birth, and essential. A person is female or male, and everyone is able to identify what "male" and what "female" mean. A person is black or white, and everyone is able to identify what "black" and "white" look like. One effect of this is that ambiguity is neither acknowledged nor tolerated, because it is irrelevant to the paradigm. Transgendered or bisexual people are not part of the male/female gay/straight binaries. Latina/o or American Indian people are difficult to fit into the black/white binary. The solution is that Latino/as are instead placed into the American/foreign binary, while American Indians are made invisible. To make an argument against oppression, it is necessary to find a binary to place oneself in—and a clear parallel to Jim-Crow-type policies.

The other significant effect of these paradigms requires returning to the part of the paradigm that characterizes oppression as unnatural and infrequent in American society. Because "society as usual" consists of a series of methods for perpetuating oppression, it is difficult for anyone who views oppression as an aberration to identify it when it is not a clear case of segregation. In many cases, however, oppression takes the form of forcing people to conform to the norms of dominant culture and painting any nonconformity as a question of "choice." By this rationale, non-English speakers are not discriminated against, because they "choose" not to learn English. People who are beaten to death for not conforming to gender roles are not victims of hate crimes because they "choose" to be "different." Black women who are labeled "unprofessional" for wearing their hair naturally or in braids are not victims of discrimination because they "choose" how to style their hair. Immigrants who live in poverty are not worth worrying about because they "choose" to be in the United States, and if they don't like it, they can "choose" to go home. Those who are different from the norm are the ones who are at fault if they receive different treatment.

What this paradigm never asks is: Who sets the standards? Why do the standards exist? What function do they serve? Instead, it says: If you want to be treated like everyone else, you have to be like everyone else—and thus makes invisible the entire system of oppression which simultaneously creates the standards for what "people" are like. One wire of the birdcage seems innocuous, so the paradigm acts to ensure that only one wire is focused on at a time, while those who have the power of the oppressors say, "Why can't you just walk around the wire?" But buying into the paradigm is not a solution, even if it were both possible and desirable to change integral aspects of identity, because attempting to conform does not result in equality, just as passing does not result in ending racism. The best this paradigm allows for is getting a nicer birdcage.

crt: key writings that informed the movement (pt. 2)

an ignoble (and ignorable) anecdote

I need to set the stage.

WOST 100, Introduction to Women's Studies. This is my first women's studies class. We are one-third of the way through the semester. I am just coming to the realization that it is possible to study things that matter in college. The time is 7:50 p.m., Tuesday night, the beginning of October, and this is what we are discussing.

1848.

Seneca Falls.

The Declaration of Sentiments.

Abolition.

Women's rights.

I am engaged, fascinated, involved, intrigued, and above all, angry. I didn't know there even was a fight for women's right to vote.

(My history books had always said things like, "The 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote." As though it had always been intended that women should vote, and it was some baffling and somewhat embarrassing oversight that had prevented them from voting until that point, when someone noticed the error and corrected it. Kind of like a Community Chest card in Monopoly: The bank error was in men's favor, but don't worry, we fixed it.)

(Slavery was similar: Oops, it was the South, they just didn't understand, but the North came in and freed the slaves and gave them the right to vote [well, not all of them, not the women] and then things would have been good, except those darned Southerners couldn't get their heads around the idea that we're all equal now, so we had Brown v. Board of Education and then the Civil Rights Act, but now, now everything is good.)

We are talking about the conflict between those who wanted to push for abolition and those who wanted to push for women's emancipation. I raise my hand. (I'm a hand-raiser, inherently; others generally speak when they have something to say, but I always want to be recognized before I begin speaking. This is a detriment in many circumstances.) I am about to say that the conflict is engineered, a product of society, because as long as you can convince people that oppressions are discrete, you can hope that they will battle each other rather than the system.

My professor ignores my hand-raising (as I said, this trait of mine is not a helpful one) and says: "In the end, the mistake the First Wave women made was allowing concerns about abolition and African-Americans' rights to interfere with their commitment to getting the vote."

Several people nod in agreement. I look around the classroom, and I realize something. Every person in that room is a white woman. Every one of them. Except me.

Usually I'm aware of the fact that I am the only non-white person in a room. It happens all the time. For many of the classes for my MA, I was not only the only person in the room who wasn't white, I was the only person in the room who didn't have blue eyes. Indiana, you know? But that time, I'd almost forgotten, because we were supportive. We were raising each others' consciousnesses. We were sisters.

You know what screws up sisterly relationships? Pointing out that the system favors your sisters and ignores you.

You see, as my professor explained to me later (years later, actually, when I had to take a class with her again to complete my women's studies minor), you have to make a choice. It's the same choice that they had to make at Seneca Falls: You make the choice between rights for "minorities" (she said it like that, with the finger quotes and all) or rights for women.

"But both of those ways screw me," I pointed out.

She looked at me, and in that moment, I could feel my grade dropping. Then she said, "That's the problem with some people. They always want their problems to be special."

You remember what I said back there at the beginning? How, above all else, my women's studies classes made me angry?

That's still true.

---

In "A Critique of 'Our Constitution Is Color-Blind,'" Neil Gotanda categorizes the ways that Constitutional law has interpreted race, arguing that primarily, the Supreme Court has tended toward what he labels "the formal-race approach," which means that "strict scrutiny" is required "to evaluate any racial classification" (268). Anything related to race is regarded with extreme suspicion without any consideration of the actual history of race in the United States; from the "strict scrutiny" perspective, affirmative-action programs and Jim Crow are all in the same category, and, as Gotanda points out, this stance actively supports the continuation of white supremacy. Cheryl Harris makes a related argument in "Whiteness as Property," suggesting that whiteness not only leads to property ownership but is itself a form of property: As the law legitimated the categorization of black people as property, it simultaneously created the category of whiteness as property as something that free human beings had.

The basis for both Gotanda and Harris's arguments lies in the racial history of the United States; Harris explicitly states, "The construction of white identity and the ideology of racial hierarchy were intimately tied to the evolution and expansion of the system of chattel slavery" (278). This—the idea that racialization in the United States is an exceptional and unique process—is a claim that I have encountered on multiple occasions and in various articles and books.

The thing is, I am unsure about this on two levels. I am not convinced that the evidence fully supports this claim; while the British Empire (to my knowledge) generally skirted the bounds of engaging in full-fledged chattel slavery, travel and adventure narratives of the 18th century clearly indicate the racialization of the Other, both in the form of the "noble savage" and of the "wild beast." The other, more significant concern that I have about that analysis of racialization is that it over-simplifies the issue of race, ignores the issue of gender, and glosses over the fundamental bases of hierarchy, thereby promoting conflicts among non-dominant groups. Harris argues that whiteness-as-property "functioned…to stifle class tensions among whites" (284), but I would argue that each "dominant attribute" (whiteness, maleness, citizenship, and so forth) functions, among those who possess it, to smother possibilities of collusion among or between non-dominant groups.

In her exploration of how intersectionality creates a fundamentally different experience for women of color from the experience of white women or men of color, Kimberle Crenshaw addresses the frequent silencing of discussion about rape or abuse of women of color, both from white feminism and from anti-racist activists. Crenshaw argues that the singular focus, either on "women" as a monolithic entity that uses white women as its baseline, or on "people of color" as a monolithic entity that uses black men as its baseline, makes invisible the experiences of women of color. It is the engagement with anti-sexist or anti-racist work itself that directly causes this silencing, as white feminists, in an effort to draw mainstream concern, try to avoid the implication that domestic violence is a problem that only happens to women of color, while anti-racism activists, in an effort to resist stereotyping of men of color as violent, also try to avoid the implication that domestic violence is a problem that happens to women of color.

Those approaches, as well as the focus on slavery alone as the creator and legitimization of white supremacy in the United States, all reinforce the idea that a choice must be made, wherein either gender or race must be the organizing principle of domination and thus the primary battle. However, none of the axes of domination are discrete; each relies upon the others to keep it in place, and all maintain each other. Harris, in discussing whiteness as property, remarks that "it does not mean that all whites will win, but simply that they will not lose, if losing is defined as being on the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy" (287). It is this that gives each person in the system a vested interest in maintaining systems of oppression—while many people may give up on reaching the top, they can ensure that they are not at the bottom.

This is not to say that all hierarchies are equal in power and effect. I am not arguing that gender, race, sexuality, religion, citizenship, and so forth are identical; indeed, I would say that they have different significance and impact for eras and individuals. However, I am suggesting that a focus solely and entirely upon one results in an incomplete analysis of hierarchy. Thus, while Gotanda and Harris both provide a number of valuable and thought-provoking points, both analyses feel slightly lacking, not least because it is difficult to see how we can fit people of color who are not black into them. Crenshaw's inclusion of gender (and other groups, including those who do not speak English) as an area of analysis provides a more complete picture, but Crenshaw uses domestic violence and rape to illustrate her point, where Gotanda and Harris seem to be attempting more universally applicable arguments.

I would have liked to see a theoretical argument in the nature of Gotanda's or Harris's that included gender as one of the lenses for perspective. Although detailed examples often (as in Crenshaw's article, for instance) brilliantly illustrate exactly how oppression plays out in society, there seems to be something of a vacancy in the realm of theoretical discussion of the roles that gender and race play in the overall systems of hierarchical oppression.

Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations

"Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations"
Mari Matsuda
Part 2: Critical Race Theory and Critical Legal Studies: Contestation and Coalition from Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement

Above is a bumper sticker I encountered in what billed itself as the World's Largest As-Seen-on-T.V. Store, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I'm not sure what the "this" is that it's referring to; my best guess is the loss and subsequent subordination of the Confederate States to the Union. But I wasn't raised in the South, I'm not white, and the norms that would allow for a "correct" interpretation of that bumper sticker are ones I'm not familiar with; I'm not even sure where I would begin to look or who I would begin to ask for an interpretation, although I'm betting that people driving cars with Confederate flags would be most likely to buy that bumper sticker and thus a good start (assuming they'd be willing to talk to me, which doesn't seem likely). On the other hand, those most likely to encounter and disagree with the bumper sticker—like, say, descendants of slaves in the South—would almost certainly have a different interpretation.

In Matsuda's article, she notes that while critical legal theory rejects the idea of a universally-accepted, ideologically-neutral method of addressing conflicts, or, in other words, repudiates Enlightenment ideals of instrumental reason as a way to solve all problems, critical legal scholars have not yet established any other method. The solution Matsuda suggests is examining problems from the perspective of those who historically have been disadvantaged and oppressed. She first discusses ways in which those "on the bottom" have found a double consciousness that acts as a strength, allowing them to combat injustice "through the process of appropriation and transformation" (64), then goes on to examine reparations claims as an extended example of how to apply this approach. The analysis Matsuda does of the ways that people of color have used their double consciousness as a strength is both compelling and interesting, but might have benefited more from a lengthier explanation of how exactly "looking to the bottom" functions in practice prior to delving into a somewhat lengthy example as an illustration.

The point Matsuda is arguing here is one of the critical issues that debates in feminist standpoint theory revolve around, because even having concluded that prioritizing the voices of those who have previously been silenced, that does not provide a clear path forward. Matsuda claims that when value conflicts "are examined…from the position of groups who have suffered through history, moral relativism recedes and identifiable normative priorities emerge" (63). However, this seems dangerously close to promoting the idea that people of color all share the same priorities. How do we resolve value conflicts within an oppressed group? Additionally, individual experiences differ; for instance, the experience of a black middle-class straight woman is different from the experience of a Latina working-class lesbian woman. Should we play oppression Olympics and award the winner the prize of being heard?

I should note here that I do not say this as an indictment of standpoint theory or "looking to the bottom"; regardless of the problems that lie within the looking-to-the-bottom paradigm, it remains one more likely to lead to lessening injustice than the paradigm of meritocracy that supports, justifies, and perpetuates racism. That said, both models suffer from the flaw of assuming that the path to justice is simple—we just need to figure out who to listen to, listen to them, and all will be clear. But it's not as easy as Indiana Jones rejecting the pretty, shiny cup in favor of the battered and dented Grail. In that setup, we are already buying into the assumption that Indy has to choose a cup; the only question is whether he can choose the correct one.

This is the issue that I have with Matsuda's argument: It does not go far enough in questioning the base assumptions. Matsuda points out that "the standard legal claim" looks like this:

"Plaintiff A (individual victim)
v.
Defendant B (perpetrator of recent wrong-doing)"

whereas "a claim in reparations looks like this:

Plaintiff Class A (victim group members)
v.
Defendant Class B (perpetrator descendants and current beneficiaries of past injustice)"

and goes on to explain how despite this difference, it is still possible to conceive of the second example as a valid legal claim (70). However, in building this argument, Matsuda relies on the assumption that the dominant class, i.e., the "current beneficiaries," owes the "victim group." To a significant degree, this relies on the scenario of perpetrator/victim, and this is one of the difficulties with discussing racism overall—when what we look at is "business as usual," it is very hard to clearly define a "perpetrator." This is why we run into discussions of intentionality, why "playing the race card" is an accusation that somehow is supposed to negate the validity of racism, why a defense against reparations is that it would increase racism: we're always looking for who is at fault and how much fault there is, with the assumption that we need to prove sufficient fault to justify punishing the perp; if we don't have enough fault for that, then victims ought to "let it go."

Particularly in the cases that Matsuda discusses, though, of reparations to native Hawaiians (for the American theft of Hawaiian land and overthrow of its government) and to Japanese-Americans (for their brutal internment during World War 2), we have a clearly identified perpetrator: the United States government. Framing it as an issue of "perpetrator descendants" obscures that fact, which is problematic for two reasons. First, it suggests that payments for reparations would come directly from the perpetrator descendants, leading us into a murky labyrinth of arguments about who exactly qualifies as a perpetrator descendant. Second, and more importantly, it suggests that the government is somehow not responsible for providing justice to all of its citizens, in direct contradiction to the Preamble to the Constitution: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…"

The "ideological traps of traditional rights thinking" that Matsuda refers to still lie within the premise of the argument she presents (75), because that argument assumes that we need an outside justification and perpetrator to justify the remedying of injustice. We don't. We already have the justification, we already have the perpetrator, and the perpetrator already is responsible, by the very document that created its existence, for righting these wrongs. Statistics clearly indicate that by any measure, neither justice, wellbeing, nor the blessings of liberty are possessed in equal measure by all citizens. Reparation* is owed not as retribution against the beneficiaries or the dominant class, but because we have a positive right to governmental intervention in the case of systemic and systematically-perpetrated inequity.

* I'm dodging part of this argument; I think that actual cash reparations the way that they usually seem to be conceived of would not be particularly helpful, so by "reparation," I mean "repair" rather than specifically "reparations" in the sense of "making amends."

discussion of an introduction to critical race theory

Critical Race Theory: An Introduction
Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic


Per the title, Delgado and Stefancic's goal is to provide an introduction to critical race theory (CRT) for non-legal scholars. They begin by providing an overview of four themes in critical race theory, then address those themes in more detail in later chapters, as they discuss the key issues and debates within CRT, including a brief description of critiques of CRT, as well as responses to those critiques. While Delgado and Stefancic provide a good introduction to the crucial concepts of CRT, the book's exploration of debates within and critiques of CRT feels somewhat shallow, although perhaps necessarily so, considering that an "introduction" to any given topic is rarely extremely lengthy.

Overall, the authors seem to put more emphasis on delivering a historical outline of and description of CRT than on engaging with theory in depth. Their goal may have been to ensure that the material remained accessible to readers from a variety of backgrounds and at a variety of levels, and while the book meets that goal in one sense—very little, if any, of the explanation and vocabulary provided would be difficult to comprehend in a literal sense—the presentation is perhaps a little too facile, implying at points that the questions we might ask about CRT or how racism is constructed are easily answered.

The authors seem to have a basic assumption about who and what their target audience is; at one point, they note that "most readers of this book will know" that "the number of young black men in prison or jail is larger than the number attending college" (113). This suggests that to some extent, the authors' intent is to preach to the choir; we're all singing the same song already, so they're going to teach us where the words came from. I question this assumption of solidarity, however, particularly given that in many ways, the book seems geared toward those who are just beginning to consider the implications of race and racism. Someone beginning this book without a clear conception of the impact of structural inequality might well be alienated very early on.

Supporting the idea that this is intended as a tool to be used during the course of teaching an introductory course on racism, a set of discussion points follows each chapter, asking questions such as whether critical race theory is pessimistic because it "holds that racism is ordinary, normal, and embedded in society…Or is it optimistic because it believes that race is a social construction?" (13). One of the later sets of questions has a series of questions regarding affirmative action and racial profiling situations, with each question ending in, "Is that fair?", such as, "If corporations and government agencies locate 50 percent of the bio-hazards in minority communities, and 10 percent in white ones, is that fair?" (123). Many of the questions presume a binary. Things are fair or they aren't; CRT is pessimistic or optimistic; explanations are logical (and thus, presumably correct) or illogical (and thus, presumably wrong).

Similarly, when they discuss the two main paths in critical race scholarship, the authors divide these paths into "the 'real world' school" and "discourse analysts"—a distinction that may not be theirs originally, but their decision to embrace it nonetheless carries significant weight (120). The authors refer to conservative political groups co-opting the language of colorblindness used by Martin Luther King, Jr., and yet those same groups often argue that the problem with academics is that they are not engaged in the "real world," or that people who are in favor of affirmative action do not understand how it plays out in the "real world." Labeling one school of thought "real world" immediately implies that the other is fundamentally insignificant, as it has to do with not-real things. Although the authors go on to point out that the two schools overlap to some extent and provide a brief defense of the discourse analysts' stance, the two realms are presented as inherently different from each other.

These binaries are especially surprising in a book arguing that "objective truth…does not exist, at least in social science and politics. In these realms, truth is a social construct created to suit the purposes of the dominant group" (92), addressing the danger of a binary paradigm with regard to race, and promoting the value of examining situations on a contextual, case-by-case basis. While Delgado and Stefancic present a great deal of valuable information in a way that is easy to understand, there are points where the form of its presentation seems to contradict some of the premises that underlie critical theory.

The accusation could be made, of course, that my discussion of Critical Race Theory: An Introduction is criticizing the authors for not having written the book I wish they had written. To be honest, I think this would not be an unjust accusation. I rely significantly on discourse analysis, and the characterization of it as unrelated to the "real world" was both off-putting and, I think, simply inaccurate—discourse both reflects and frames our views of the world. If discourse frames blackness as negative, then the "double-consciousness" that W.E.B. DuBois describes in The Souls of Black Folk, the "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," leads only to negativity (11). DuBois discusses "the all-pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil" (15). It is discourse that perpetuates this disdain, and this disdain has real-world effects on both people of color and white people.

Consider the Amazon reviews for Critical Race Theory. I do not agree with either of the two extremely negative reviews, and yet, they do both point out what I think is an issue; many discussions of race and racism fall into what Delgado and Stefancic describe as the empathic fallacy: "The idea that a better, fairer script can readily substitute for the older, prejudiced one" (29). Racism is unfair, but what motivation do whites have to change it?

The authors question whether white privilege is something universally enjoyed and equally bestowed upon all whites, particularly in some of the discussion questions regarding affirmative action, but they do not provide a detailed explanation of how intersectionality affects white people, or address in depth how racism supports the hierarchical class system in ways that directly disadvantage all those but the very wealthiest. Thus, it seems likely that those who are leaning toward joining, but not already wholly committed to, the choir would be alienated in ways similar to, though likely not as hostile as, the two reviewers who so disliked this book.

These issues of dichotomous presentation and, at points, lack of depth seem almost certainly to be due to the authors' attempt to create a volume to provide a "just-the-facts-ma'am" view of critical race theory. While brief narratives to illustrate points abound in the text, the book lacks an overall narrative, perhaps out of an attempt to avoid forcing a narrative upon the reader. Without such a narrative, however, the presentation is significantly less compelling. Additionally, I would argue that any compilation of information includes a narrative, whether deliberately chosen or accidental. In this case, the seemingly accidental narrative acts to weaken some of the major points.