Cheryl Harris And Claudia Rankine's Whiteness As Property

For centuries, the world has witnessed the different peculiar forms of the racism in the form of prejudice and stereotyping. Millions of the people has been haunted by this issue of racial discrimination worldwide. This essay discusses the current issues of racial inequality on the basis of color, race, sex, etc. as well as portraying the real picture of the present United States of America, where the law has come to support and legitimize benefits that accrue to white people only. Claudia Rankine in her poetry ‘Citizen – An American Lyric’ and African American legal scholar Cheryl Harris in her article ‘Whiteness as Property’ develop their arguments about the ongoing exploitation of the people of color and agree that the black community is

still under continuous threat of the racial profiling due to the white supremacy, their biased ideology as well as the ultimate power and property possessed by them due to their whiteness and the failed judiciary system. Cheryl Harris provides an analytical framework of the fundamental tenets of critical race theory which leads to the social construction of whiteness in the United States. Similarly, Claudia Rankine explores the daily life situations between blacks and whites and reveals that how little offensive denigrating conversations in the form of micro-aggressions conveyed to the black people intentionally by the whites and how these racial comments fuels the frustrations and anger among the blacks. Both the authors address the higher value and extraordinary power possessed by the whites, by which the black people has been procedurally becoming invisible and their identities have been continuously vanishing, which is fully backed by the one sided United States judiciary and law enforcement agencies; both agree that even after the abolition of slavery, how the racism still existed and the pain and agony felt by the people of color.
Both Rankine and Harris argue about the America’s binary racial paradigm and the historical construction of whiteness and the racial hierarchy created by the white system. Racial discrimination is experienced by all people of color across the globe. Although the legal system has formally eradicated the curse of racial discrimination, but it still runs rampant in the modern world in the form of recently emerged ‘micro-aggressions’. Both the authors construct their argument that the race and color play an important role in the America’s racial hierarchical system, where whites enjoy the topmost position and thus enjoying the all privileges and rights due to their whiteness. Rankine wisely explores these contemporary realities of racial hierarchy and uncovered new forms of racism in the form of micro-aggressions and symbolic stereotype racism, and thereby justify existing racial inequalities and discrimination by the whites against the blacks. In order to support her argument, Rankine explores the incident at the 2009 U.S. Open tennis tournament in which Serena Williams became infuriated with a line judge’s call and verbally accosted her. Because of her blackness and her bottom position in the racial hierarchy system, she had to face numerous discriminations and humiliations during her games and periodic expressions of outrage and joy against the gaze of her white audience. Rankine argues, "What does a victorious or defeated black woman's body in a historically white space look like?”(Rankine 25). Rankine reflects on the bitter truth and shows that it is extremely hard for black people to raise their status in the white dominant society. Serena suffered all these form of intentional micro-aggressions, which compelled her to turn into aggressive and abusive character and traumatized her. Even the system did not support her against the unfair decisions by the umpires and a bigoted press also always tried to defame her. All these things succeeded to make her identity invisible. Rankine connects her arguments with Chris Harris, who provides a similar framework for understanding the structural underpinnings of race by critically examining the same system of racial hierarchy. Harris reveals out its origins by tracking back in the systems of slavery and colonialism. Going back to the early pages of American history, when the Native Americans were removed forcefully from their tribal lands by the whites, Harris shows that the white’s supremacy and power over the blacks existed for a long period of time and how they created this racial stratification forcefully. Further, she writes about the value of hierarchical status quo, “A black person, however, could not sue for defamation if she was called "white." Because the law expressed and reinforced the social hierarchy as it existed, it was presumed that no harm could flow from such a reversal” (Harris 1736). She describes that how the law itself create a division of classes between the blacks and whites, where it is impossible to move downward in the racial hierarchy, but upward mobility is relatively less difficult. She argues that this white ideology built a wall of racist culture between them and became a root of conflict. In this way both Rankine and Harris arguments intersect and they agree that through this system of domination, whites are positioned apart from and above the people of color and this racial stratification is created by the white’s system and how this hierarchy is still maintained through the continuation of dominance through the laws and social practices established by the whites primarily for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege. Both authors mutually agree upon how a regime of white supremacy has been created and maintained in America and its impact on the life of the people of color.
Cheryl Harris and Claudia Rankine both agree that the whites are always more valued more the non-whites.

They depict that how the white supremacy and its biased ideology is being systematically established and how the system has managed to make society numb towards the oppression of the blacks rendering them invisible. Rankine constructs her argument about the systematic erasure of the black community by presenting different instances of racial discrimination, police brutality and killings of the black people by the police and the white people. In order to prove her argument, Claudia reminds us the horrible natural disaster, Hurricane Katrina, experienced by the black community in New Orleans, in 2005. The Hurricane catastrophe exposed the real racist picture of the contemporary United States, where the majority of black people struggled for their survival before and post the hurricane catastrophes. She expresses her pain for the blacks by writing, “I don’t know what the water wanted. It wanted to show you no one would come” (Rankine 94).This means that the lives of black people in the disaster were of no cost for white administration and there was no hope of help for them. The system intentionally saved the white people on the priority basis, while leaving blacks behind for dying. She connects her argument with Harris by taking us on a personal and conceptual journey through the contemporary black experience and provides an opportunity to explore our understanding of processes that reinforce the white supremacy. Similarly, Harris recounts her story of America’s racist theory and asserts that the valuation of whiteness and this similar system of erasure and creates a link between whiteness and judicial legal system. She writes, “[…]the courts protected whiteness as any other form of property (Harris 1736). She reveals that how the judicial system has been a crucial tool in protecting the property, rights, wealth and privileges etc. of the whites in the United

States. Thus, both Rankine and Harris arguments intersects and both agree on mutual understanding of the continuous efforts by the judicial system to make the blacks invisible and make it clear that in order for systematic erasure of identity of the people of color, the existing legal systems in powers around the globe are trying their best to erase the identity of the people of color.

Harris and Rankine, both argue that people of color suffer more violence, incarceration and inhumane treatment. As the both authors deepen and develop the various layers of their analysis, they introduce new elements and arguments about the continuous violence against the blacks. To prove this argument, Rankine recounts mounting racial hate crime incidences against the people of color. She narrates a hate crime incident, where a white teenager Deryl Dedman intentionally ran over his truck over a black man James Craig Anderson. That white boy passed a racial slur on Anderson and proudly says, “I ran that nigger over, itself a record-breaking hot June day in twenty-first century” (Rankine 94). This clearly show how that white guy was fully confident about the legal back up of the white dominated system and he committed a big crime without any fear. It was an intentional hate crime, a little effort by the white system to make the blacks invisible. In another similar case, a black guy Mark Duggan was brutally murdered by the police in London. These incidents clearly shows that black people are always the prime target of white system for their complete erasure. She further asserts, “because white men can't police their imagination black men are dying” ( Rankine 135). This depicts the big picture of the hate crimes and the white’s extraordinary powers to oppress the black community as well as the complete failure of the legal system and connects her argument to the Harris’s arguments. Similarly, following the chronological line of black movements out of slave era, to the present time, Harris develops the emotional, psychological, and cultural movements experienced by the blacks in America and argues about the extraordinary powers and rights possessed by the whites to oppress the black community. She writes that the legal system has always favored the whites. She writes, “Indians experienced the property laws of the colonizers and the emergent American nation as acts of violence perpetuated by the exercise of power and ratified through the rule of law”(Harris 1727). Thus the author lists the root and reason of various sorts of violence that non-whites have endured in America as the result of white culture and society striving to achieve dominance and control over non-white bodies. She follows this contention with the violence perpetrated on black people throughout history; a reference to how colonizers across America gained the control over black slaves through the support of the system. Harris contends that how the law has recognized and codified the racial group identity as an instrument of exploitation and exclusion of the blacks. This biased nature of the judiciary system leads to the inhumane treatment with the black community and helped to maintain power and preserve the white dominant ideology. Both Rankine and Harris’s arguments intersect here and both push us to take the question one step further, to ask whether the whole judicial system has failed to give equal justice to all or it is intentionally participating in the systematic erasure of the people of color. Using carefully integrated references to these black men, each of whom lost their lives as the result of what has been generally believed to be racially motivated violence, both Rankine and Harris successfully proved that the black death is rendered invisible when it has no value to the power structure.