Today during our discussion of Locke, I found it really interesting how his anti-essentialist attitude towards race was very reminisce of different gender theory essays. Many people believe that if you see someone's outward appearance (their body, their gender presentation, their race, their clothing) that you can extrapolate very specific and personal attributes about them based on their essential nature. The impact of believing there are essential natures to things like race and gender allows for hierarchies to be formed.
A brilliant philosopher Judith Butler made famous the idea of 'gender performativity'. She posits that someone acts in particular ways NOT because it is how a person of a particular sex acts naturally, but rather because society conditions then to act in certain ways. When a young boy is reprimanded for acting in a 'womanly' way, his gender presentation is being reinforced through punishment. People are performing when they act as a certain gender, because there is no real way to be a gender. Butler says the way to get away from gender performativity is to stop gender essentialism. She says we must break down the believed natural connection between sex and gender and acknowledge it as a cultural influence.
Reading Locke, it was hard not to see the similarities in his argument. People believed that different races essentially acted differently based on genetics. White people were predetermined to be one way, black people another, etc. I think our classroom discussion agreed with Locke. Children are not born with some sort of basketball gene or hockey gene, but rather they are conditioned (possibly in a similar way to how boys and girls are conditioned to act like their gender is socially expected to act) by their cultures to be a certain way. Do you think race is performed in a way similar to gender?
When society has stereotypes, expectations, and cultural norms, it's hard for people to not see them influencing their actions. Locke says that can't just get rid of race because of how important it has become in society. Do you all agree? Personally I think it would be impossible to erase race (as well as gender) from discussion because of how influential it is in all of our actions.
I agree that it would be impossible to erase race (and gender) from our society, but I do think society as a whole needs to limit the scope of those terms due to conditioning. I think it's important to remember that if a lot of people in a race or gender like something, it's not necessarily due to their race or gender that they like it, but rather due to the way they were raised. While race cannot be erased, it's important to remind people that the genes that go toward skin color and hair texture have no bearing on personality.
ReplyDeleteI think it is important, also, to acknowledge how these performances are contingent upon a given atmosphere, and audience. Although, yes, race, like gender, has performative attributes, I think as the American population begins to acculturate an anti-esstinalist attitude, which I would argue is occurring, people will stop equating these performances with a gene, and start acknowledging them as a choice. Although, Butler would argue that these performances begin at such a young age that they become second nature by adulthood, that reality has become somewhat destabilized. As a culture, we have so much access to different manifestations of Masculinity and Femininity, whiteness and Blackness, that a fixed, absolute, performance is not so easily socially ingrained.
ReplyDeleteBuilding from what y'all, especially Tim, wrote, I think it's really interesting to look at how these socially-constructed identities interact with one another and how much control we have in the performance of each. The markers of gender performance are at once extremely personal and entirely communal, built from cultural standards that help to define what are and are not men and women and what can and cannot be masculinity and femininity. As a white woman in the South, there were a really specific set of expectations placed on me by my family and community from a very early age. I had a cheerleading uniform with an SEC team name on it before I could walk properly. There was an impressive collection of bows hanging on my wall long after I stopped wearing them. The performance of womanhood started from birth, from before birth really, when the nursery was painted and the name was picked. I learned performance specific to my race, class, and cultural markers, and society's response to me depended on my performance. Interestingly, no matter how well (or usually, how poorly) I performed femininity and womanhood, my whiteness was always there. While race is a socially constructed category, our ability to control race is pretty much non-existent. This is not to say that controlling gender and gender performance is particularly easy, especially with the kind of social policing that occurs when people step out of line, but there is something to be said for the ability of LGB or, less often, trans people to pass where people of color cannot. It's also interesting to consider how a doubly othered person, such as a woman or LGBT person of color, might negotiate gender performance differently than a white person. All that rambling is to say, looking at the intersections of socially constructed identities raises a lot of interesting and difficult questions and I wonder what y'all think about the impact of race on gender and gender performativity.
ReplyDeletethere is no way to get rid of race. it is so culturally and socially engrained, that to 'not see race,' or to 'be colorblind' is actually problematic. race is a part of a person's life experience, and to take that aspect from her/his experience, is essentially to deny part of who they are and how they interact with the world. it's like if tim came up to sarah and said, 'i don't see people in terms of gender or sex.' how are you supposed to feel? *good* that he raised you to the level of a man? no, you're going to feel worse than when you assumed he assumed you're lesser than since you're a woman. all i'm trying to say is race has its place in understanding folks, and it's not goin anywhere; not with our society built up the way it is.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that we can not erase "race" and I agree that the phrases "acting white/black/feminine/etc." are also problematic. Just like we discussed in class, there is no gene that predetermines behavioral characteristics. However, these characteristics learned at very early ages from a child's environment. I myself experienced a culture shock when I moved from Knoxville to Memphis. Once I entered middle school and it came time to impress girls through one way or another, the one phrase I continually heard was, "why you talk white". They meant that I spoke proper, which would be considered normal in most places. However, at the time I was ashamed ever time I heard the phrase and would try my best to cut words short or slur them to fit into the norm.
ReplyDeleteLong story short, people will try to act in any way that they perceive others will accept them, rather it be by acting black, white, or feminine.