This week’s articles carry a couple related, if not common, themes of imagined, if not artificial, constructs of race and identity. Martha Hodes’ article, “The mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story,” offers a narrative based examination of the malleable terms on which race was defined. To accomplish this she examines the story of Eunice Connolly and her family and social life as a window into understanding the changing dimensions of race in nineteenth-century America and the Caribbean, specifically New England and Grand Cayman. While Hodes’ article examines the construction of race in the Americas, Ali A. Mazrui’s piece, “The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Sai, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond,” looks at the construction of African identity. Although different in geographic loci, the two articles similarly examine the shaping influences of race and identity and the power held in ‘the Other’ to those ends. Hodes article places itself in the theoretical framing of Fields, Holt, and Stoler to argue “the scrutiny of day-to-day lives demonstrates not only the mutability of race but also, and with equal force, the abiding power of race in local settings.” By examining Eunice’s day-to-day experience, Hodes seeks to show how even though the identifiability of race may change from place-to-place and period-to-period, the power of race to effect lives is not challenged. Eunice’s story is an interesting one to highlight the changing nature of race construction. After the death of Eunice’s first husband, she found herself forced to do work she previously saw as work of black women. This helps strengthen Hodes’ argument of the power of race because just as Eunice was forced to work these jobs to survive, so... ... middle of paper ... ...mean to belittle the lasting legacy of racism, but given these examples of 'Other,' beyond the black/white dichotomy, that still hold lasting legacies, perhaps race is simply another form of identity creation that has had long lasting consequences. I believe these comments would be accepted by the author read this week with the caveat that there are never really “two sides of a coin,” but multiple three dimensional sides. It is however, the construction of dichotomies like these that Hodes would argue holds the power within the descriptions. Works Cited Hodes, Martha. "The Mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story." The American Historical Review 108, no. 1 (February 2003): 84-118. Mazrui, Ali A. "The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Said, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond." Research in African Literatures 36, no. 3 (Autumn 2005): 68-82.
In the first Chapter of the book ‘A Different Mirror’ by (Takaki, 1993) the author embarks on a descriptive narrative that tries to elaborate the concept of a multiracial America. The chapter begins with the author taking a taxi ride in which he is subjected to racial discrimination. The taxi driver questions the author’s origin owing to the fact that his English is perfect and eloquent. This incident prompts a discussion that transpires throughout the chapter as the author tries to explain to his audience that America is a multiracial country with different ethnic groups that moved from their homelands to settle in the United States. The chapter discusses the settlement of various racial groups such as; English immigrants, African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos and the Irish.
Fiero, Gloria K. "Africa: Gods, Rulers, and the Social Order." The Humanistic Tradition. 6th ed.
The ambitious individuals often follow a course of action involving the persecution of their own fellow brothers and the adoption of the features of their ideal, or higher, society. In trying to push herself to a level above the black folks, Mrs. Turner, a mulatto woman who is convinced of her superi...
Stack, Carol B. All Our Kin : Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Internal conflict caused by culture is a concept that Edward Hall explores in his book “Beyond Culture”. In this examination of intercultural interactions, Hall argues that people are born into the cultural prison of one’s primary culture. He then goes on to claim that from people can only be free of this prison and experiencing being lost in another (Hall). For Coates, this cultural prison is the permeating fear resulting from the blackness of his body. His internal conflict is therefore created when seeing the world of white, suburban culture. Because this world of pot-roasts and ice cream Sundays seems impossibly distant from the world of fear for his black body, Coates comes to feel the contrast of cultures. He tells his son, “I knew my portion of the American galaxy, where bodies were enslaved by tenacious gravity, was black and that the other, liberated portion was not” (21). As a result of the shocking divide, Coates comprehends the burden of his race. Coates therefore feels “a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an biding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape (21). The quality of life between the culture belonging to Coates’s skin in contrast to the culture of suburban America creates for Coates a sense of otherness between himself and the rest of the world. Disillusioned, Coates avidly pursues answers to this divide. Coates thereby embarks on a quest to satiate this internal conflict of cultures, beginning his journey towards
Parl, You-me and Galyle Wald. "Native Daughters in the Promised Land: Gender, Race, and Question of Separate Spheres". American Literature 70 (3) (1998) 14 Oct 2000 <http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org/webz/FSQER...:entityemailfullresultset=1%7.html>.
Muhammad Ali, a famous boxer, once said, “Hating People because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. I’s just plain wrong” (Goodreads, 2015). For many centuries, ethnic conflict between the humans have existed immortally due the never changing differences of culture and values, spinning the cycle of war. Fortunately, some have ended however some still remain immortal in the eyes of those who have experience struggle to this date. The lack of awareness of problems in a cultural crisis concerning those who fall victim to a system and society that discriminates and alienates. With assistance of Critical Race Theory, this essay will examine how the role of race with has affected has caused consequences within the lives of marginalized groups within society through the lives and their relationship with those in their communities.
Did the five-generation family known as the Grayson’s chronicled in detail by Claudio Saunt in his non-fiction book, Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American deny their common origins to conform to “America’s racial hierarchy?” Furthermore, use “America’s racial hierarchy as a survival strategy?” I do not agree with Saunt’s argument whole-heartedly. I refute that the Grayson family members used free will and made conscious choices regarding the direction of their family and personal lives. In my opinion, their cultural surroundings significantly shaped their survival strategy and not racial hierarchy. Thus, I will discuss the commonality of siblings Katy Grayson and William Grayson social norms growing up, the sibling’s first childbearing experiences, and the sibling’s political experience with issues such as chattel slavery versus kinship slavery.
Trupin, James E. West Africa - A Background Book from Ancient Kingdoms to Modern Times, Parent's Magazine Press. New York, 1991.
Race-thinking: what is it? Isn’t the world past the issue of race? Do races even exist and if so, what does it mean to have a racial identity? Is colorblindness possible and how important is it? These are the questions Paul Taylor addresses in the book “Race: A Philosophical Introduction”. Paul Taylor is a self-proclaimed “radical constructionist” who will maintain that race is very real in our world and in the United States as a whole (p. 80). Taylor takes care to ensure he addresses the real needs concerning racial dynamics in the U.S., referencing historical events, prevailing policy affairs, and even pop culture to explain that everyone capable of forming opinions ought to have some sort of grasp of the concept of race-thinking. As Taylor will analyze, race and race-thinking “has shaped and continues to shape private interactions as well as the largest political choices” (p. 8). In other words, race-thinking encompasses everything we do and every interaction we have. In this paper I will attempt to interpret and expound Taylor’s views and definitions of race, concepts associated with race, and input my own interpretations as they are appropriate.
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
“Black, white and brown are merely skin colors. But we attach to them meanings and assumptions, even laws that create enduring social inequality.”(Adelman and Smith 2003). When I first heard this quote in this film, I was not surprised about it. Each human is unique compared to the other; however, we are group together based on uncontrollable physical characteristics. Eyes, hair texture, and skin tone became a way to separate who belongs where. Each group was labeled as having the same traits. African Americans were physically superior, Asians were the more intellectual race, and Indians were the advanced farmers. Certain races became superior to the next and society shaped their hierarchy on what genes you inherited.
Adas, Michael. 1989. “Africa: Primitive Tools and the Savage Mind” In Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance, from Historical Problems of Imperial Africa. Edited by Robert O. Collins and James M. Burns, 30-39. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers.
The inhabited islands clustered in the Caribbean Sea are an interesting study in cultural and social identity. Colonized by european powers from the Fifteenth Century, the Caribbean islands have become mixtures of cultures from Europe, Africa, and India, as well as from the original inhabitants of the islands. As a result, describing and defining the Caribbean is a much more difficult task than it appears on the surface. The norms and ideas of identity and history that exist on one island are vastly different than those that exist on a near neighbor, despite similarities in geography and history.
...econd African Writers Conference, Stockholm, 1986. Ed. Kirsten Holst Petersen. Upsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1998. 173-202.