“RACE” THEORY
“Race”
“Race” theory analyzes the ways in which racism works in society
and in popular culture. The most important concept here is race itself. As Stam
(2001) argues, there is “an emerging consensus within various fields” that “race”
doesn't exist: “There is no race, then, but only racism” (p. 477). Current
genetics research does indicate that there are population differences between
people and that these differences may impact our chances of getting certain
diseases, for example, but a “population” of this sort, a group of
people with some sort of key genetic similarity, does not connect meaningfully
with larger ideas about “race,” which is usually a much larger, politically
created concept, like “white” or “black.” (See this Wikipedia page for current research and thought on
this).
Lively’s (2000) review of the
history of the development of the idea of “race” is telling. Race is generally
thought to be invented only a few hundred years ago, and certainly by the time
of the enslavement of Africans, the first people enslaved because of their
race. History is full of conquering people enslaving the tribe they vanquished,
but with African slavery, various tribes (which saw themselves as different
peoples, and would, when the Western concept of “race” was absorbed into their
cultures, as different races) are united conceptually under the category of
black and enslaved, and not as a result of a war victory, either. Eventually,
under the nineteenth century’s pseudo-scientific discourse of social darwinism, folks first began to think of people as
separated into various races (of which there were better ones and worse ones),
generally settling into the caucasoid,
negroid and mongoliod
categories. Before that, people of course noticed the skin colors and facial
features which we today associate with race, but they had always been used as
markers of the more important tribal and cultural identities for which people
generally went to war.
American society has traditionally considered you
"black" if you have even an eighth part African American ancestry,
and for a time, there was even a "one drop rule." There was
presumably something called “black blood” and if you had even “one drop” in
your ancestry you were black. The same is not true the other way around. For
that matter, African Americans are actually a number of different shades. White
people are certainly not white: a yellowish, pinkish gray is the closest thing
to most varieties of "white" skin. At one point Jewish Americans,
Italian Americans and Irish American were not considered white (there are cases
of Italian men being lynched in the South in the 1800s; see this webpage).
I would venture to say that now they are considered white. “Race” is a
constantly shifting marker of social power. And popular culture is a key place
where those shifts take place.
Three Racisms
Racism, the discriminatory and prejudicial stereotyping and/or
hatred of people because of their race, is thus revealed to be more than
absurd. Sadly, though, it is still all too prevalent. This kind of overt
racism is easy to identify.
These are the kinds of statements arguing that a certain group of people
stupid, lazy, sexually promiscuous, good at math, submissive, aggressive,
criminal, etc. These kinds of things are less and less tolerated in most public
forums (although they are often enthusiastically used in private). Because such
things as overt racism are diminishing and because overtly racist practices
like slavery, Jim Crow laws and segregation have been "officially"
ended, many people commonly complain about those who invoke ideas of racism as
"playing the race card" too often. You might have heard this
complaint that "not everything is about race."
This is because much of racism today takes the form of what Stuart
Hall (1981) called inferential
racism. This is the unproblematic acceptance of racist ideas. This kind of
racism is conveniently invisible to those who subscribe to the dominant
ideologies that are inferentially racist. The best example of this kind of
thing is the way the news media reported crimes in the 1970s and 80s, and in
some places, still today. If a man holds up a liquor store and he is white, we
will generally just be told "a man held up a liquor store." If a man
holds up a liquor store and he is black, we will generally be told that he is "a
black man” or shown the picture. So white men are just men and black men are
only black men? Assuming that they have the suspect in custody and there is no
need for people to have a description for a search, labeling the perpetrator by
race (even if it is presented as "white man" and "black
man") is an inferentially racist presentation. The assumption is a racist
one that race is somehow relevant to criminality, that the man's blackness is
relevant enough to the crime to describe. Think about it. When was the last time
you heard "a brown-eyed man" or "a short man" or "a
red-headed man" committed a crime? Never. You
might see it in his picture if they flash it on the screen, but we know that
the color of your hair or your shoe size or whether you have an innie or outtie belly button has
nothing to do with your propensity for criminal behavior. But the racist idea
that skin color is related to your propensity to be a criminal is inferred in
the news story.
Of
course, having red hair once marked you as being more prone to criminal
behavior. Even for the social progressives who “knew” that it wasn’t racial
inferiority that made the Irish bad, just poverty and terrible upbringing, race
became a convenient set of blindes with which to talk
about those problems. This is why, as my family’s old saying goes, if you do
something wrong “I’m going to beat you like a red-headed step-child.” The
echoes of this are in comtemporary anti “ginger”
play/performative racism.
Stam (2001) defines an even
more abstract kind of racism, “systematic racism”: “Since racism is a
complex hierarchical system, a structured ensemble of social and institutional
practices and discourses, individuals do not have to actively express or
practice racism to be its beneficiaries . . . In a systematically racist society,
racism is the 'normal' pathology, from which virtually no on
is exempt, including even its victims” (p. 477). This is the essence of white privilege. There are
things white people get in a systematically racist society that others do not.
McIntosh (1988) gives the classic list of these things. Examples are:
“2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or
purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to
live.”
“4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured
that I will not be followed or harassed.”
“6. When I am told about our national heritage or about
"civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it
is.”
Only a particular kind of privilege (racial and/or economic) could
lead a person to believe that there is such a thing as a meritocracy.
After a certain point it is impossible to say who is the most qualified for a
position (if you've ever served on a hiring committee you know this). After
that you go with who you personally like, who you have a "feeling"
for. Inferential racism leads white men to generally pick white men if not
prodded by affirmative action.
Dyer (1997) goes further. He argues that a key element of white
privilege is the ability to see yourself as “just a
person” and not a person of race. This invisibility means whites do the looking and others
are “others,” objects and examples of their color first, their humanity second.
Nakayama and Krizek (1995) asked white people what
their race was, and many got verbal (and even a few physically) violent when
induced to label themselves as a race – they were sure they were “just” people.
It is hard to lose privilege. It is hard, as a white person, that your family
may be more successful than a nonwhite family and that it has more money and
sent more kids to college, etc. not because your family worked hard (although
it might have) or earned it, but because whites have, since the 1940s, have had
access to orders of magnitude more wealth than other groups because they were
able to buy houses in “white” neighborhoods when they were cheap and use those
rising home values to create generations with financial stability (see Krivo & Kaufman, 2004).
Essentialism
Given all of this, the representation struggle in terms of race
often happens, as it does with most representations, in between the mystified
ideologies of racism and the potential hegemonic revisions. In the case of
“race,” the ideologies mystify and naturalize through essentialism. Essentialism is the process of asserting some kind
of racial or cultural (or gender or sexual) essence to a certain group of
people. This often takes the form of stereotypes. The hot Latin lover is a good
example of this kind of idea.
(http://handson.provocateuse.com/images/photos/antonio_banderas_10.jpg)
(http://ionetheurbandaily.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/jennifer-lopez.jpg)
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nozRGV7oj-M/S-LB3-G2dYI/AAAAAAAACzs/RakZljPLYrs/s1600/rudy2.jpg)
(http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/4900000/Penelope-Cruz-penelope-cruz-4919129-1024-768.jpg)
This
essentialism still gets traction, as evidenced by Seth McFarlane’s joke at the
2013 Oscars.
How
far have we really come from a film like Big
Trouble in Little China, where every Asian American character knows martial
arts and/or magic:
Slaves
often did as little work as possible during slavery (wouldn't you?). They often
covered this up by pretending they didn't hear or didn't understand the orders
of the master or overseer. This has over time been essentialized
as the racist idea that African Americans are lazy and stupid. Such
essentialisms survive today in all sorts of places. But the process of
essentialism is a process of naturalizing racist ideologies and making them
seem like fact. So black men are inevitably portrayed on TV
as basketball fans. Jewish mothers are always written as pushy and loud.
Latino men are criminals or immigrant workers in the movies. The racism is
almost overt in these cases.
Stereotyping and essentialism are able to mask themselves as
nonracist truth by pointing to a few examples and wildly overgeneralizing from
them. People argue, especially about the representation of most criminals as
black or Latino on TV, that there are indeed such criminals. Certainly.
But are they all? Considering what crimes the media publicizes you might think
so. People who argue that it was a surprise that the Littleton, Colorado
tragedy "happened here," certainly seem to have bought into such
essentialism. White kids don't shoot each other, goes the thinking, thinking
fueled by representations. It is about proportion and balance and the extent to
which portrayals, taken as a mass, naturalize and essentialize.
This
essentialism has had a complex set of interactions over time. The assumptions
of essentialism and the question of blackness, for example, have been
abstracted over the years to a kind of acknowledged performative
mask in some cases and a kind of deep dehumanizing hatred on the other.
Pears
soap, one of the first famous brands, used race a lot in it ads. In some,
blackness was simply dirt that could be washed off, which was presumably the
reason for colonialism:
(http://sophia.smith.edu/blog/farmingtonvalleyherald/files/2012/05/4.png)
This
essentialist layer of inferiority was put on by white performers in the
vaudevillian blackface tradition, where a set of exaggerated dialect and
ridiculousness was used for a century of comedy on stage and on film, with key
points in the first sound film, The Jazz
Singer (1927) up through films like Holiday
Inn (1942):
(http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/37/3706/D1AAF00Z/posters/the-jazz-singer-al-jolson-1927.jpg)
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4ksGK-UgfSs/SzVA7vKbNaI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/w8waDNNHbOc/s400/holidayinn3.jpg)
By
1986’s Soul Man, when a white student
overdoses on tanning pills so that he can try to take an affirmative action scholarship
to Harvard Law School, blackface returns for the newly conservative Reagan era.
Although he begins his days as a pretend black man in awkward situations, bad
at basketball and women, he of course becomes excellent at both. Apparently it
rubbed off on him?
(http://justanotherworthlessblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/interracial_movies_11.jpg)
(http://criticalmassesmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/soul-man-original.jpg)
(http://v002o.popscreen.com/eGp0c3E2MTI=_o_soul-man.jpg)
This
question of blackness and how it is used and mythologized by whites is the
subject of the LaGrone article for a future class.
But blackness is also used by African Americans as well. It is important to
note that some oppressed groups use essentialism for their own ends. Some women
argued that they should get the right to vote because they were moral and pure
domestic angels. Some African Americans have embraced the idea that they have more
"soul" than whites. Whether or not such use of essentialisms to
subvert their original meanings is helpful is a subject of much debate.
Certainly even if these strategies reclaim a problematic idea for good, they still accept general ideas of race, etc., which
seem to be problematic. Still, it makes sense to take what you can get in a bad
situation to celebrate. It makes sense to try to defang the ideology that is
keeping you down by subverting it to your own meanings.
But
essentialism is used for a more instrumental reason as well. The essentialisms
that are associated with a race are not simply accidents. Some are attempts to
understand cultural differences. The belief than Asian American kids are good
at math is more of a statement of the harsh physical discipline that some of my
Asian American friends suffered when they brought home Bs
on their report cards than it has to do with anything else. A cultural practice
of an immigrant community gets turned into something more by a racist
imaginary.
But
other essentialisms are simply politically expedient. Lynchings
typically were justified by some sexual transgression: a black man looks at or
had sex with or raped a white woman. This is the legacy explored in To Kill A
Mockingbird. But many lynchings were associated
with elimination of competition. An African American economic threat (a new,
competing business, for example) was eliminated though murder. The sexuality
issue was simply a cover story (see Tolnay and Beck,
1992). So seeing a black man as a sexual predator is an essentialism with a
pernicious purpose. And what’s the first thing that happens when we meet the
first black character in the Star Wars universe? “Heeelllloooo,
what have we here?” to the white woman:
(http://www.kazmahoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Leia-C3PO-Lando-Han.jpg)
Other
politically expedient racist essentialism were the
pervasive images of servile African Americans post Reconstruction:
(http://s0.jrnl.ie/media/2013/02/jello-388x500.jpg)
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WeR5vQfdyBg/TevVz_UdWMI/AAAAAAAAAAk/YbnU78hVnTE/s1600/hires.jpg)
(http://digitallibrary.hsp.org/media/hsp_dams/images/1/5/5/5/76355_ca_object_representations_media_155522_mediumlarge.jpg)
Since
“they” were so “naturally” good at serving and since they enjoyed it so much,
perhaps we (whitey) shouldn’t feel so bad about that whole slavery thing . .
. .
The
racism becomes a convenient cover. The Mammy figure, a large, kerchief-wearing
woman who happily taught white women how to make pancakes and preferred to
serve white families and children becomes a staple in film and advertising. In Gone with the Wind, she’d rather stay
with the plantation-owning whites than be free:
She
shows up in 1959 as a housekeeper names Annie in Imitation of Life:
She
shows up again in the 80s with Gimme A Break. Watch the first 3 minutes of this clip. Nell’s
joy in life is being a quasi-mother to the white kids. He dance to Flashdance’s “Maniac”
is played for laughs, as if no one could ever sexually desire her:
The Help is an interesting current problematization
of this history. But we still have Aunt Jemima making pancakes for us (as well
as Uncle Ben making rice):
(http://www.understandingprejudice.org/slidtour/images/lawzee-l.jpg)
(http://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5690687/il_fullxfull.255375689.jpg)
(http://terylhenderson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/aunt_jemima.jpeg)
Eventually
she evolves into a figure that looks less and less like the Mammy, but even
when she is no longer a maid, teaching white people to cook, apparently she
still sells:
(http://gogd.tjs-labs.com/pictures/jemima-day-12-01-1940-055-M3.jpg)
(http://closetracist.posterous.com/the-evolution-of-aunt-jemima)
Color
In
various forms of racism, questions of color take on specific sets of meaning
that interact with essentialism but which also have different sorts of meanings
and implications. The further away from a perceived norm of whiteness a person
is, the more they might embody an essentialist stereotype, as if the two varied
together. But, paradoxically, the closer a nonwhite person is to a racist white
ideal, the essentialisms will be represented as stronger as well. This seeming
paradox has different elements.
The
influence of colorism,
or the belief that a person’s inferiority is directly proportional to their
departure from the hegemonic racial norm, remains deep. Darker skin makes you
more likely to be photographed as an object and not as a human:
(personal collection) (http://media.egotvonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/bunchen_racist_ad3.jpg?41ed4f)
X-Men’s
Storm, for example, an African Princess/Queen, is played by an actress with
lighter skin tones and different kinds of facial features in the films:
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3368/3282289970_0cb5f02677_o.png)
(http://geekleagueofamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/halle-berry-as-ororo-munroe-storm-in-x-men-1.jpg)
This
kind of colorism is common in Mexican and Mexican American
popular culture, as well. In Los Bros. Hernandez’s Love and Rockets comics series, Luba, “La India,” with darker, more Native American skin
tones, is a prostitute and manipulator. Pipo, as an
example of a lighter-skinned person, sometimes seems perfect:
(http://www.publishersweekly.com/images/cached/INGRAM/978/156/097/9781560971511.jpg)
(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw89xpNgPf1qd8xtao1_400.jpg)
(http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/4/62767-7000-95763-1-love-and-rockets_super.jpg)
(http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/4/62767-7000-95763-1-love-and-rockets_super.jpg)
(http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/77/1177591-bookcover_lucs2.jpg)
India,
where you can find a variety of skin lightening creams:
also has a popular culture with this issue. Parameswaran
and Cardoza (2009) note the way that in a popular
line of Indian comic books which illustrate Hindu scriptures the good people
are shown with much lighter skin tones than the bad:
But
at the same time, lighter skin is often associated with negative stereotyping
as well. In this case, we shift to a racism that is based more heavily on fear.
A
classic racist fear is of “miscegenation”. Miscegenation is the mixing of races
through procreation--interracial relationships. People involved in such
relationships used to be killed or put in jail. Nowadays they are still
sometimes shunned, beaten or have family who either forbid it or caution
against it or say things like "people are going to make it so hard for
you." For lighter skinned and mixed-race people, the fear of this leads to
a set of specific representations based on either the fear of a “polluted”
blood-line or of the social or sexual danger that accompanies that. Anderson (1997)
chronicles the tragic mulatta and the
jezebel figures as the only other two typical representations African
American women in the 20th century besides the Mammy.
The
first, the tragic mulatta, is a mixed-race woman who
attempts to pass for white. Her innate inferiority eventually affects her
attempts and she is destroyed. This is the case in 1949’s Pinky:
In
a variety of texts this happens. The tale gets more tragic as time goes on. In Imitation of Life from 1959,
light-skinned daughter Sarah Jane’s doomed attempt to pass for white kills her
Mammy-figure mother, who dies of a broken heart:
(http://thumbs.anyclip.com/tK624TRcc/tmb_4243_480.jpg)
The
jezebel figure, who may be light-skinned or not, and who may or may not attempt
to pass for white, is a sexually promiscuous woman, a typical stereotype in
popular culture for most nonwhite women. But because she can pass for white or
at least is light-skinned enough be considered attractive in the racial
imaginary of the time, she serves as a temptation to drag down an otherwise
moral and upstanding young white man. Sarah Jane does this as well. The jezebel
figure continues to haunt the portrayal of nonwhite women, from the “Me So
Horny” figure post- 2 Live Crew:
to the
surplus of women of color to be possessed in rap video’s like for Nelly’s “Country
Grammar” and “Hot in Herre”:
(http://www.bet.com/news/music/2011/12/10/nelly-cancels-visit-to-alaskan-military-base/_jcr_content/featuredMedia/newsitemimage.newsimage.dimg/110111-music-evolution-of-nelly-country-grammar-video.jpg)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/it/thumb/e/e9/NellyHotHerreVideo.jpg/230px-NellyHotHerreVideo.jpg)
Tokens
Progress
in racial representation has been slow. The hegemonic twist on all of this is tokenism. This is a kind of
static affirmative action that is hegemonic: it gives some concessions to
support the whole structure. So you might put an Asian American character on a
show but not give her very much dialogue, good dialogue or specific storylines.
Tokenism is the inclusion of minority figures (or women) in narratively
unimportant positions. Cho's character on the very white The Mentalist is a good example. He is the only
person of color of the central cast members. He gets very little screen time
and even less in terms of story. More importantly, he almost always serves as
someone who is reacting to the problems of the white characters. The Patil sisters in Harry Potter? Uhura is the
penultimate example of a token, a glorified black secretary on Star Trek's Enterprise, constantly calling
out "hailing frequencies open." Of course, in the remake, she has
more to do, but only barely.
It’s better to be a token, I guess, than a pernicious stereotype
like a Mammy or a thug, but I’m not sure the person-of-color-boss-hardass is exactly something which offers the possibility
of meaningful change:
(http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.97782.1319773481!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/gallery_635/gal-beverly-gilbert-r-hill-jpg.jpg)
(http://womenandcrime.wikispaces.com/file/view/law_order_driven1.jpg/80129059/law_order_driven1.jpg)
Ironic
analysis of this, with “Token” and “Toofer,” only
takes us so far:
What
is needed are more shows that give us a variety of characters of color with a
real-life variety of personalities and elements, so that individual characters
are no longer only a binary of stereotype or saint, as in the “Magical Black
Person” who helps white people figure out their stuff, as in Ghost, The Green Mile and The Legend of Bagger Vance. Few shows,
like Homicide: Life on
by Steve
Vrooman, Revised March 2013
References
Anderson, L. (1997). Mammies no more. Rowan and
Littlefield.
Hall,
S. (1981). The whites of their eyes. In (G. Bridges and R. Brunt, Eds.) Silver Linings. Lawrence
& Wishart.
KRIVO, L., & KAUFMAN, R. (2004). HOUSING AND WEALTH
INEQUALITY: RACIAL-ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN HOME EQUITY IN THE UNITED STATES. Demography, 41, 585-605.http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=14421235&site=ehost-live&scope=site
McIntosh,
P. (1988). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. http://www.case.edu/president/aaction/UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf
Nakayama, T., & Krizek, R. (1995). Whiteness: A strategic
rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of
Speech, 81, 291-310. http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=9509184612&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Parameswaran, R.,
& Cardoza, K. (2009). IMMORTAL COMICS,
EPIDERMAL POLITICS. Journal of
Children & Media, 3,
19-34. http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=36294559&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Stam, R. Cultural studies and
race.
In T. Miller (Ed.), A compansion to cultural studies (pp. 471-489). New York: Wiley. http://books.google.com/books?id=HUl68Q9K6QwC&lpg=PA471&ots=G5bvsp6VSX&dq=robert%20stam%20cultural%20studies%20and%20race&pg=PA471#v=onepage&q=robert%20stam%20cultural%20studies%20and%20race&f=false
Tolnay, S., & Beck, E.
(1992).
A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of
Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.