What is race?

I have talked about race a lot in my life. I have thought about it even more. (The whole growing-up-biracial thing tend to do that.) I realized today, though, that I'm still not sure exactly what that is. My urban education class just finished reading Jay MacLeod's Ain't No Makin' It, which looks at a small sample of "project kids" and their experiences over twenty years. (Quite an interesting read.) Some of them (mostly white) have checked out of the system, rejecting school because they don't think that it will make any difference in their circumstances. Another group (mostly black) are determined to play the game and make something of themselves by graduating from high school. The results are varied (and the sample size is small), but to me the most startling aspect was how much worse off the black students who checked out of the game ended up than their mostly white friends- although all were poor, addicted to drugs, and had frequent run-ins with the police. It seems as though race matters more than attitude, even among people in the same socioeconomic class. Now I am wondering: what do I do with this? The truth is, working hard will not necessarily fix your problems when the deck is so stacked against you, but not working at all makes things even worse.
Back to my original question: what is race? I have no idea. To some extent its a social construct, but it has a physical (biological) aspect as well. The genetics of race are still hazy (are you what you have the most genes of? How do you define someone with genes from multiple races, which is most of us these days?) Race affects how people view you and how you view others. It can be a way to define who is like you and who is not. It gets tangled up with ethnicity and appearance. Race can mean skin color or eye shape. It can mean who you were raised by. Although race has played such a major role in how I think about the world, I have trouble coming up with a concise definition of just what it means. Thoughts? Read more...

More Grey than Black and White

I recently attended a lecture entitled "Working with Race" about confronting race in a classroom setting and how to create a space where race can be openly explored. Originally, I attended because my favorite professor was on the panel, but am glad I went as the lecture has spawned great discussions with fellow feminists.
I was intrigued by the labeling of our society as "post racial" and the realization that the discussion boiled down to a discussion about confronting black-ness. I was disturbed by this for three reasons. 1) there was no discussion of what "post racial" meant; 2) if, in fact, we are living in a post racial society, what does that mean that we only discussed white and black? and 3) what does it mean for people hailing from a women's studies discipline (which focuses on giving voice to people who have been marginalized and oppressed) to disregard or to lump all minorities in with African-American?

"Post racial" society. The leader of the discussion who deemed this a "post racial" society cited President Barack Obama as prove of this, meaning that we must be beyond race if we have elected a black president. However, Obama is mixed rather than black, a point which gets forgotten when convenient. The fact that he is mixed, I think points more to a "post racial" society more than simply because he is a powerful black man. My point is this: why is a post racial society contingent on the election of a black man? Why is Black the marker for post-racial society, or for us to supposedly be beyond racism? Furthermore, why is it contingent on the success of a black man? Wouldn't the true marker of "post racial" be one where all minorities, both men and women, can achieve the same level of success and have access to the same opportunities as white men? Additionally, as pointed out here and here, the election of a Black man does not mean that all other issues facing minority men and women will be immediately solved.

I struggle with the idea that race is black and white that seems to be prevalent in discussions about race, whether in the field of women's studies, or in general conversations. The second wave of feminism opened up a new approach when Black women clarified to the predominately white-led movement that they did not appreciate being spoken for. The concerns and issues facing Black women and white women were different, are still are. From this, came the wonderful writings of bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde, to name a few. The rise of multicultural feminism and global feminism gave women from all cultures the forum to raise their own issues and to not have white women speak on their behalf. How, then, can the discipline of women's studies partake in discussions of race that leave out anyone but white and black? How can a field that is so conscious of the detriments of marginalization accept a discussion that effectively marginalizes any other minority group? It is as if we have created a hierarchy of race issues that says "we can only deal with black issues right now. we'll get to the rest later." To me, this is eerily reminiscent of those second wave white women who declared the issues of women (meaning white, middle class women) to be more important than the issues of black or other minority women. Even feminists who discuss the implications of race tend to generalize all women of color as having the same Black experience. This piece points out some of the debate surrounding race and feminism, and this is a great piece about issues concerning women of color. While both are great discussions of race and feminism, both also illustrate my point about discussion of race being very broadly about all minorities, until examples are given which are limited to experiences of Black women. Why does the term "women of color" become another way to talk about the experience of Black women?

I think that both of these issues are the result of the same thing. We, as a society, are not prepared to discuss something from more than one angle. It was pointed out to me (by my wonderful co-author!) that there is not as much research done for/by/ and about other women of color. While I accept that this is true, why is that? If we claim to be moving forward, and progressing to a point that is "race-equal", there is no excuse as to why these issues have taken a backseat. It is not as if it was just discovered that Latina women face oppression in a different way than white or black women do. This is not a new concept. And that should no longer be our excuse.

I am not saying that the election of President Obama is not a marker of how race relations have progressed, or that continued discussions concerning white and black are somehow unnecessary or undeserved. We need to keep having those discussions. But we need to start having them about other minority groups as well.

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