Chapter 5

Taylor poses the following question at the beginning of the chapter: in a society where 'color consciousness' is frowned upon, why is it seen as acceptable in the conjugal sphere?  Intra-racial relationships and marriages are considered the norm, while interracial relationships are subjected to scrutiny and varying degrees of discrimination, because they are often deemed 'unnatural' or 'unusual.'  As I mentioned in a previous post, when my cousin had a black boyfriend, she was met with much disapproval and at times accused of betraying her fellow 'whites,' advised  to 'stick with vanilla' and the like.  A definite portion of the backlash was the result of resisting social pressures, particularly from family members--especially those of older generations   If the idea of 'market solidarity'  is not a concern for whites, what exactly is at work here? Is it the result of  years of negative conceptions about black people and  the promotion of white aesthetics and superiority? The entrenched and dated attitudes of people in my grandparents' generation? In terms of the idea of relationship capital, did people perceive my cousin to be 'lowering'  her own status?

And this doesn't even touch upon her boyfriend's experience and the backlash he received, of which I know little. I can definitely understand to an extent the arguments of 'cultural preservation,' although they don't hold given that race is a social construct. I can see how dating or marrying a member of the dominant, oppressive race--although this individual may not be responsible for said oppression--could be seen as a betrayal of sorts. A race that enslaved, discriminated, and subsequently appropriated the culture and practices it originally tried to stamp out. But how we will ever cease our social differentiation along racial lines if we remain within the us vs. them mindset and create separate racial coalitions and such? As Taylor says, "...the real key to equality is a much exogamy...as possible. After all, advocates of this view have said, why would I discriminate against my own relative?" (165). We already face the barrier of largely separate white and black social spheres thanks to zoning, real estate, job discrimination, wealth gaps, etc. 

I have never heard the argument that interracial relationships could be an expression of self-hatred before. This reminded me of high school when my Asian friend was telling us how excited his mom was that he was taking a 'white girl' to prom rather than an Asian girl. Was she expressing self-hatred when she said this and a desire for her son to improve his social capital through association? Or was she happy that he didn't feel obligated to stick to his own kind? I'm not sure what was exactly at play here, but I feel as though the self-hatred argument is too weak to adequately prove. Instead, we must be aware of our attitudes and their sources. Also, Taylor  argued that JJ's decisions were less important than those of a role model in the public sphere. While that person does have a much greater influence and  audience,  I don't think either one of them should be expected to choose life partners on the basis of their racial identity so as to prevent psychological harm to their race. Yes, perhaps their choices and their ideas of beauty and sexuality are largely influenced by white supremacy, but how can we prove that their relationships are based upon self-hatred and not love, and how would creating the obligation of intra-racial marriages do anything then perpetuate the patterns that are already in place? What's more, the continued stigma between interracial relations will continue the social segregation already at play in the US. It's much more effective to target the conditions that produce problematic individual choices instead of vice versa. Then within the conjugal sphere  given "other things being equal... [we are able to] focus on character, not color" (159). 

Taylor also discussed affirmative action policies. I can remember during the college application process in high school students would complain about how they wished they had some sort of ethnicity that would give them the edge they needed for their first choice school or make statements like "she only got in to that school because she's black."Upon further examination, these arguments are rather flimsy and only based upon problematic assumptions. After all, the greatest beneficiaries of affirmative action are white women. It wasn't until I took an intro Sociology course and we discussed the objectives of affirmative action (namely, giving under-represented groups and populations who are socially situated in ways that disadvantage them a foot in the door, an opportunity they might not other wise have) that I truly understood its benefits and necessity.  I don't think quota filling is a noble pursuit, but I do see the merit in fighting historical discrimination and providing outreach and inclusion for those who have been systematically oppressed and excluded. We always run into issues with our heavily individualistic American perspective, which fails to look at the good of the collective people and instead places people in cutthroat competition with one another for social goods like education and jobs. 

Yet, at the same time, Taylor pointed out that affirmative action policies were concessions to Civil Rights leaders to contain and satisfy the opposition.  This is something I had never considered before and it concerns me how it aligns so well with the concept of 'rule by consent." If that's the case, then is affirmative action just a false prize that distracts from the root problems of racism and racial inequality? As it stands, I think it is a necessary set of policies for attempting to make up for historical inequality, but is it really doing its job?

Ch. 4: Existentialism and Race

I found Taylor's focus on identity to be particularly important. Namely, his point that it is incredibly difficult to get people to see you as you wish to be seen, particularly in the face of negative conceptions of race, stereotypes, and prejudice. Within this society, our social capital is largely dependent upon how we are perceived by the world, rather than our internal perceptions of ourselves and our values, goals, etc. As a white, middle class American, I possess countless privileges, such as invisibility through normalization (aka I am seen as the "norm" and not called out for racial or ethnic differences). Although it is not as extreme as racial discrimination and stereotyping, I can, however, sympathize from the standpoint of a woman within a patriarchal society when attempting to shape my social identity, which is largely out of my hands. There's the fear of voicing my opinion in male-dominated environments and the risk of being dismissed or not taken seriously. Or having my behavior  generalized as "the way girls act/are."  I think this idea of fear of social identity can also apply to why we have a guilt obsession in our class and such trouble maintaining conversations, particularly for us white students. I've noticed many of my classmates making qualifying statements like "I'm not prejudice because..." or "Yes I enjoy these privileges, but I didn't ask for them..." We want to show we are sympathetic to injustices and want no part of past and current racism, yet it doesn't always seem genuine. We are trying to present the image of non-racists, because we don't want others to see as politically incorrect or intolerant (and it may be true that we don't have conscious prejudice or racist thoughts, but our motivations for telling the class this are questionable and doing so doesn't add any substance to the conversation). At he same time, we want frank discussions in our class but don't seem able to. This may be in part because we don't want our comments to jeopardize how others perceive us. I am definitely guilty of this at times, and I'm wondering how to get past this anxiety in order to have real, effective conversation.
To turn it back to race, nonwhites are fighting against years of stereotyping, restrictive racial scripts (that often come in conflict with other "scripts" from other societal groups they belong to), framing as alien "others," fear of whether their actions or words will reflect badly upon their race. For example when I took the writing fellows course, we talked about how minorities often struggle to make their voice heard in the class room because oftentimes teachers and fellow classmates see them as representatives of their entire race and not their individual beliefs. What's more, there's the idea that one should adhere to certain loyalties and values as per their racial scripts, regardless of their personal preferences.

Understandably, this leads to existential crises and questions like "why bother?" Why bother to be ambitious when no one will take me seriously? Why bother to fight against systemic racism when it seems to adapt and grow stronger? This  brought me back to part of the discussion we had last class. In the face of so much oppression and knowledge of historical and systemic injustices, it's hard not to feel apathetic and hopeless. This reminded me of the conversation between Florka and Tyrell about capitalism and white supremacy. I could sympathize with Tyrell when he said something along the lines of  "It doesn't seem very likely that the current scheme of things will ever change." In the face of such ubiquitous systems and dominant yet invisible ideologies, it's hard to see how our society could change as drastically as we need it to. Yet, at the same time, there's no guarantee that these systems will remain or worsen. To borrow from Taylor, I think this is why the idea of "double consciousness" is so important and in this instance I'm talking about the double consciousness that white people need to adopt: the dual acknowledgement of past and current violence and prejudice and the knowledge that there were/are many whites against these systems.  Apathy only perpetuates the systems and makes one a participant in the inequalities, indirectly or not. 

Ch. 3

Although Taylor only briefly brought up the drastic difference in rates between  intra-racial marriage and inter-racial marriage and the concept of racialized relationship capital, it definitely resonated with me. I can recall so many conversations or situations that are a direct consequence of "....deeply ingrained, subtly established, and thoroughly racialized preferences about romance, eroticism, status, and beauty" (83). For instance, when my cousin had a black boyfriend, my uncle was so upset and angry and quite a few people told her that she should "stick to white boys." I can also remember when  I was eight and my good family friend brought her black friend up to her parent's cabin house for a weekend. It was a gathering of a bunch of people who my parents grew up and went to school with as well as their families. A lot of them are pretty conservative rednecks, which I only came to realize as I got older and my parents would get into heated conversations with them. I watched these people I'd grown up around either making snide remarks or talking about how 'brave' she was to bring her friend to her parent's cabin, which struck me as absurd. It was very disturbing to hear people who'd been in my life since infancy express such blatant prejudice.

Most recently, I was having a conversation with a friend, who is pretty liberal and open-minded--or so I thought--and the topic of inter-racial dating and marriage came up. He told me how he thought inter-racial couples were "weird" and didn't understand how they could they be attracted to each other. He said he could objectively say that a black woman is good-looking, but he would never be physically or emotionally attracted to her. I tried to push back, arguing that it's not as though we're different species and love doesn't stem from looking similar, but he wouldn't budge in his view. His own defiance against the possibility and investment in social constructs prevents him from finding black women attractive, not a natural inclination.  I was completely shocked by the obvious distaste in his voice and how adamant he was. I never would've thought that he would express such views, and it made me realize just how prevalent this attitude is and how I've even lapsed into a milder version of this viewpoint at times. Cultural differences and racialized social differences do not make us so fundamentally different that it's strange or wrong to develop friendship or feelings for people who fall in other racial categories other than our own.

As Taylor pointed out that to a large degree we are "...still committed to producing and reproducing racially homogenous populations" (83). What's more, we still rely so heavily upon racialized symbolic value and the stereotypes that are products of this. I sometimes find myself thinking in stereotypical terms, and I have to be constantly vigilant to keep myself from falling into these easy patterns of differentiation that permeate our society. 

 Last class we struggled to interrogate the concept of racism and what it means to truly be racist. Not only because it is a complicated issue with many different ways of looking at it, but also because it is such a charged word  that is difficult to talk about for fear of saying "the wrong thing."  Is it  systemic or is it inter-personal? Is it ignorance or is it deliberate? Are all white people racist? Can nonwhites be racist? I thought it was important that Taylor pointed out that we don't have to reduce the idea of racism--or race-thinking for that matter--to a single narrative or model. Instead, if we look at the idea of disregard, we can begin to understand the pluralist ways in which racism is manifested and the ways in which we can work to end it. What's more, Taylor also touched on the idea of indirect racists, which describes people who benefit from the system by merit of their identity (namely, white), as well as the fact that seemingly racist behavior of nonwhite people is insignificant compared to the structural violence of white supremacy. A lot of the  discussions in this chapter reminded me of some of what I've learned from reading feminist theory and queer theory. Mainly, that  the white, heterosexual male identity is seen as the default and standard of being a human (much like monogenism discussed in the chapter, where other races are seen as degenerate versions of the "original" white race), while other identities are classified as "other." Rather than considered a representative of humanity, their ways of life are seen as abject in comparison to the supposed norm. Since our society is constantly engaged with the ideology of white dominance, it becomes "normal" and masquerades itself as "the way things are." In fact, being white often isn't seen as having a race. It's only when non-dominant voices and opinions are heard that we can question the dominant ones, which seems to be what Joel Osmundson is trying to get at in the article "Love Letter to White People": "Let us learn to trust truths that we cannot live in. Let us question our own implication in these narratives." As scary as it is, I think it's extremely important to questions the status quo and our own individual participation within unequal institutions, particularly if we benefit from the current social hierarchy (like myself  as I am white and middle class). I definitely think awareness and education are crucial, but what I'm currently grappling with is how do we change the system? And even if we can enact anti-racist policies, how do we change ideologies? 

I was born in Chester, Pa, where the majority of people are black, until I was eight years old. While I was there, I attended private school about 20 minutes away, and  I can clearly remember when I had birthday parties or invited classmates over, some of their parents wouldn't let them come over. My parents explained to me that although we were in fact safe, many people believed that our neighborhood was dangerous, which

always baffled me, because I'd never had a reason to believe that it was dangerous. I always heard plenty of sirens and knew there were supposed "bad" sections of the city, but that was all very abstract to me. When I was eight years old, we moved about 15 minutes away to the more affluent and demographically white suburbs. Despite the close proximity between the suburbs and the city, the conditions of living are vastly superior and there is minimal interaction with or acknowledgement of Chester. When my new classmates talked about the city, it was usually to remark that you might get shot if you went there and when I told them that I used to live there, I was usually met with disbelief. For the majority of my schooling, when racism and race differences were mentioned it was usually the white washed history, in which slavery was emphasized and the civil rights movement was superficially covered.We were taught that Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream and that dream came true. Racism was approached as an individual moral problem and it wasn't until later in high school that we discussed racism as a system and ideology. Subtle racism was was definitely all around us, but never acknowledged unless it was expressed in an overt way. 

I found the first chapter of the book really interesting, because so often race is accepted as a logical, concrete thing. We don't often interrogate our language and how it structures every day social interactions. What's more, although race is an invention with inconsistencies in terms of who fits what category globally, it still has a very real impact in terms of power relations and social goods. I thought it related well to what we briefly talked about in class, when we touched on how Irish and Italians were originally discriminated when they began emigrating to the United States, until they were eventually assimilated into the "white" category. It seems that humans always desire to partition the world around them, particularly when it comes to the concept of us vs. them in order to validate their particular way of life.