Essay On Race And Biopower

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For at least three decades race, gender and biopower have all been linked together. The three terms used, are frameworks installed by governments to manage the population by categorizing, regulating and controlling its subjects. Race, gender and biopower are intertwined to illuminate the treatment of the minority for centuries. The mistreatment, discrimination and suffering experienced by the minorities throughout history is evident in the texts provided.
Biopower, a phrase created by a French scholar, historian and social theorist. Michel Foucault 's History of Sexuality, discusses the term as the practice of states and their regulation of subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations" (Foucault 140). The idea of biopower is that the state assumes control over one’s body. There are many cases where biopower has been used, however, the Tuskegee Syphilis study brings to light how biopower and gender were closely related.
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The author suggests that racial distinctions are obscured due to the fact that one population is forced to live amongst another population and do not comprehend the repercussions of this act; for example, slaves that were taken from West Africa and put in the Southern United States. Hacking goes on to say that it is possible that “the desire of one racial group to dominate, exploit or enslave another demands legitimacy in societies” (104). Due to the history of the United States, it is clear that the white race has considered themselves superior over other races. In fact, according to Ian Hacking, most anthropologists believed there were only five races. The races were named geographically but recognized by color. Caucasian, Ethiopian, Mongolian, American and Malayan were the five

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