Revision: Paradigm Shift Ahead (Ataya Adams)

Paradigm Shift Ahead

 "Illustrations of Comparative Types of Races," from pages 458 and 459 of Types of Mankind 

Race as a sociological concept sees race as an illusion, where race as a category no longer holds any weight in  civilized society that has “evolved” from its overt racist legacy that saw the birth of chattel slavery and Jim crow segregation. This fascination and compartmentalizing of difference intertwines with the birth of race that is tied to religious and economic elements. The reasoning behind race as a scientific concept positions that there is a biological answer to race where nonwhite bodies are subject to be taken apart in order to make the distinction between blackness and whiteness. The film made a point and showing the ways in which Jim Crow segregation relied on ideology to explain why it was natural for blacks to be at the bottom of the ladder as social differences became naturalized with the shift from an agricultural to industrial economy. The Jim Crow ideology stemmed from  chattel slavery and the fear of black reconstruction that lasted  for a brief moment, yet put fear in the hearts of whites who saw Reconstruction as a means for Black people to compete with them for jobs, and positions of power. Once the North retreated after the civil war, whites regained their power through Jim crow laws. This type of ideology led to a downward spiral of solidifying racist social order that ultimately rationalized that the extinction of the black race was inevitable so there would be no point in trying to improve Black folk’s social conditions. This scientific basis explains the tendency of white people’s obsession with black people’s bodies and picking apart the black body, which in a sense is a type of consumption of the black body. This goes back to the way in which difference and the hyper awareness of difference is a critical ideological element, that informs the ways in which blackness is interrogated, terrorized, and categorized.

(Equal Justice Initiative Lynching in South Carolina)

Ossorio makes the claim that 85% of all variation is between people, and that there has not been time for genetic variation in skin color, which is a superficial marker. Thus, human beings have similar DNA sequence. This points out to the face that we are living in a racial smog, where meaning and assumptions about who is black and who is not black lead to social inequality and determines who has access to housing schools, and health insurance. This reminds me of the Coates piece when he talked about the way that black homeowners tried to buy into the American dream by becoming home owners in order to get their full pass as citizens. However, because of the predatory nature of the housing market that led to subprime loans and the way that state and non-state actors participated in the exploitation of Black folks, the American dream has some gaps that bring into question just who is a citizen in America. Even though these variations of difference might not mean anything on a genetic level, the social reality that is created give these racial categories real meaning.

No one had ever told be what was black, instead I was put into the American school system. When I'm asked the question regarding my identity, I have to literally pause and think about it for a moment. Not enough time has passed for me to think of myself as African American or simply Black. Both of my parents come from poor farming villages and didn't make it into the american middle class. At this point in my life I'm okay with telling people that my parents are from Haiti and St. Vincent, but identifying this way has not been the norm for me. Growing up here, what stood out for me in my experience was being made fun of once other students learned where I was from and I remember being ashamed of my father because he spoke broken english and reeked of island poverty. In middle school I knew that something about my father was "bad" but I didn't have the language or the words to describe what I was feeling. I would be ashamed to bring him around my friends, and burned with shame at the look my white middle school teachers would send me as I begrudgingly brought my father to parent teacher conferences, as I would hastily apologize while telling them that he was in fact my uncle. It took until college that I began to grapple my own internalized anti blackness and anti hatianism as I begun to reach into those hidden depths of my identity. I was haunted in a sense by own hunger to know and vanquish the fog of shame. I yearned for a place to call home as I searched for remnants of the Haitian revolutions that set the world on fire all those centuries ago. My desire to know my roots solidified my blackness.

Works Cited

Keating, A. (2008). "I'm a Citizen of the Universe": Gloria Anzaldúa's Spiritual Activism as Catalyst for Social Change. Feminist Studies, 34(1/2), 53-69. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20459180

Hartman, S. V. (2007). Lose your mother: A journey along the Atlantic slave route. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Rusert, B. (2012, October). Visualizing Kinship in Afro-Native America [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.common-place-archives.org/

E. (n.d.). Lynching in South Carolina [Photograph found in State house report, South Carolina]. Retrieved from http://www.statehousereport.com/2015/02/12/164-lynched-in-jim-crow-s-c-report-says/