Race Theory

Decolonization

Decolonization is a violent process, but colonization is most violent. Colonizing is a regime of violence against and in a nation of people by a small group deployed to occupy, appropriate, and terrorize on behalf of another nation.

Frantz Fanon highlights the violence involved in breaking with colonialism both at the physical, geographic level as well as the cultural and theoretical level by pointing to the unrestrained violence against those who were colonized. That same lack of restraint by which they were colonized must be used to decolonize-- "to  smash every obstacle encountered" even to have a "murderous and decisive confrontation" (365). The colonized must be willing to resort to "every means" by which the order of society is constructed to destroy it.

The colonized are up against "a world divided in two" (366). First by physical/geographical barriers "the borders" set by "barracks and police stations"; second by controlling bodily mobility through agents of the colonies (both "spokesperson for the colonizer" and surveillance) such as police officers and soldiers; and third through compulsory education both moral and academic to smother them in "a mood of submission and inhibition" (366).

--"As soon as they are born it is obvious to them that their cramped world, riddled with taboos, can only be challenged by out-and-out violence" (Fanon in ST 366).

The movie Sarafina demonstrates the struggle of students living in a colonized apartheid South Africa who use the very classroom intended to enforce their submission for a site of resistance. They are emboldened by their instructor's alignment with their resistance.--

Through these means of colonization Fanon plainly states, "It is the colonist who fabricated and continues to fabricate the colonized subject" (365). The colonized are known and know themselves in contrast to the colonizer.  Rationalizing the subjugation of colonized people necessitates an ideology of "difference" (512, 522). Fanon points out that although black Americans' "existential problems differed from those faced by the Africans" that the "common denominator" was "that they all defined themselves in relation to whites" (366). The attempt to demystify the fabrication-- identifying it as an unnatural, artificial rhetorical/discursive project--is through the violent struggle of identity.

Identity and Race Theory

When considering race theory, one must consider the concept of identity. How is identity shaped? What does it mean to struggle for identity individually and communally against a backdrop of oppression that seeks to—and often succeeds at—questioning your very humanity.  Storey, West and others point to the idea that White identity was formed as an oppositional binary to “others.” White became an identity only when Europeans encountered non-white people. When non-white peoples were “discovered”, it became the trend to seek to devalue them based on concepts of “reason.” “The urge toward the systematization of all human knowledge (by which we characterize the Enlightenment) led directly to the relegation of black people to a lower place in the great chain of being…” (523).

Phyllis Wheatley

Henry Louis Gates outlines the way that writing—considered by Enlightenment minds to be “the medium of reason’s expression” (523-524)—functioned as a tool to dehumanize as well as a site of contestation and human identity formation for enslaved Africans in America during the 18^th century. Those who sought to devalue African Americans’ humanity suggested that the illiteracy of enslaved African was proof of their sub-human status. Gates does not ignore the irony of the fact that many enslaved Africans were illiterate only because it was illegal for them to be taught to read or write.  Gates argues that the literature that was produced by enslaved Africans such as Phyllis Wheatley “indicted the received order of Western culture, of which slavery was to them the most salient sign” (526). The activity of the African American early literary personalities did not have the full desired effect, however. “We accepted a false premise by assuming that racism would be destroyed once white racists became convinced that we were human” (526). Instead, black literature became another way of differentiating the “race” from the norms of Western literature. Black people had achieved human identity, but that did not, as they had hoped, produce freedom or equality.

Writing is not the only way in which people of color have sought to carve out identity. West argues that black people in the West have struggled for identity amidst a “modern Black diaspora problematic of invisibility and namelessness” (517). This falls in line with many theorists as Black people are often forced to forge identities in environments where their humanity is treated as an absence.  The site of struggle for Black identity for West resides in “Black efforts to hold self-doubt, self-contempt and self-hatred at bay” (518). West cites strategies that have been used historically to attempt to create a Black identity that could combat the negative representations of Blacks created by Western pseudo-science and politics as “moralistic in content and communal in character” (518). The content of this strategy had to do with convincing the world that Blacks were morally similar to Whites. The communal character of the strategy lay in the monolithic characterization of Blackness that was presented to the world. ‘We are just like you and we are all alike in our quality of character’ is the nature of this attempt to forge a positive identity. For some, this strategy was the weakness of the civil rights movement. What might happen if those who were invested in this assimilationist strategy were forced to encounter today's Black culture? Here's ONE idea (ok I jut really think it's funny but QUITE relevant.)

 

(I apologize in advance if this offends)

West challenges the validity of these strategies based on the fact that the strategies were assimilationist in nature and had a homogenizing influence on Black identity. These strategies sought acceptance by denying difference. West argues that true and powerful identity for Black people can only be achieved if we embrace difference and investigate the places of difference in culture by demystification of power relations and suggestions for transformative praxis that highlight human agency.

Gloria Anzaldua writes of her identity as a lesbian of color with a background of Indian/Spanish (Mexican) descent. She speaks of the horrors of American appropriation of the land of her people and the dangers of living in the borderlands as integral to the shaping of her identity. Anzaldua acknowledges that, “unlike Chicanas and other women of color who grew up white or who have only recently returned to their native cultural roots, I was totally immersed in mine” (558). Anzaldua is careful to neither reject her heritage simply because it has, on occasion, rejected her as a woman and a lesbian nor glorify it to the extent that she does not address the problems in it. As a matter of fact, she sees her critique as part of her culture’s traditions. She writes, “My Chicana identity is grounded in the Indian woman’s history of resistance. The Aztec female rites of mourning were rites of defiance protesting the cultural changes which disrupted the equality and balance between female and male” (557-558). Anzaldua believes that to live well in the space of her identity requires honoring her culture with integrity while critiquing it with that same integrity. She cites her full immersion in her culture and her exposure to influences beyond her culture as the space where her identity exists and finds its uniqueness.

The Matrix of Domination and Black Feminist Thought

Gloria Anzaldua’s position as an outside insider in her community points to another concern that has become prevalent in race theory (as well as feminist theory) in recent years. This concept is the Matrix of Domination. Because Anzaldua is a woman of color and a lesbian, is vulnerable to racism, sexism and heterosexism. Because she comes from people who have been historically exploited and whose citizenship and humanity are constantly questioned and contested, she is vulnerable to classism. These oppressions cannot and should not be considered apart from one another according to those who study the matrix of domination. They should, instead be considered different axes in a matrix. The axes intersect one another at the levels of personal experience, community engagement and social institutions. The forces acting in the matrix, instead of a series of separate oppressions, are a set of “interlocking oppressions” (541) where, “each system needs the others in order to function” (542).

For Patricia Hill Collins, the best articulation of the matrix of domination as experienced by Black women is the intersection between race, class and gender. This is not to say that Black women do not experience domination on other axes nor is it to say that Black women are the only people who experience the matrix along these three axes. These three axes are just the most likely to be experienced by all women of color to varying degrees. The matrix of domination affects everyone.  No one escapes it and there are “few pure victims or oppressors” (546). Everyone can identify a space in which they are oppressed and some space in which they might be privileged.

Besides varying degrees and the multiplicity of axes upon which domination can operate, Collins also points to different levels of domination, “the level of personal biography; the group or community level of the cultural context created by race, class and gender; and the systemic level of social institutions” (545). The individual biography helps the woman to make meaning. That meaning is validated, invalidated or adjusted within the community context and helps the woman navigate institutions. The importance of the individual biography and the cultural context for meaning-making in Black Feminist Thought is the reason why, unlike other feminisms requires, “Living as an African American woman,” is a “necessary prerequisite for producing Black feminist thought” (547).

If only Black women can participate in Black feminist thought, how can they challenge the matrix of domination on any real level? Collins argues that the space for challenging the matrix consists in the understanding that all knowledge is situated, subjugated and partial. If we remain conscious of these conditions of knowledge, then we become capable of having, “dialogue with empathy,” which includes centering each voice as it speaks in the larger dialogue while acknowledging the partial nature of all standpoints (551). All voices can be heard and all subjects understand each other as speaking from separate standpoints in the same discourse.

Questions for Reflection:

1) Do you see yourself in your current situation as oppressed within the matrix of domination? Do you see yourself as privileged? Explain how for each.

2) If you were asked to define your primary identity in ten words or less, how would you do it. Would race be a factor? Would the races of others who are different from you be a factor? How so?

3) Has decolonization thoroughly taken place? Is the removal of physical barriers and the scientific acknowledgement that "Human biology does not divide people into different 'races'" end colonization (167)?

4) According to Fanon, West, and Gates, what is the role of the intellectual or the teacher in the struggle against "essentialist rhetorics" deployed against people of color  (519)?