I want to agree with Appiah in saying that race is not real in any rigid ontological sense. Race is not a biological category. Race is not known a priori. We cannot know race without recourse to experience, and even then, it is a concept used to structure our experience and explain divergences after the fact. It has a certain social and political utility, sometimes used to monstrous ends, and, in this country (as in most) it has become an indelible part of any individual's ideology. Race has become a lens through which we see the world; cultural-historical, not biological.
It is not a fixed concept. Any "truth" it has is contingent on the individual and the context in which the term forms a conceptual framework. There are many conceptions of "race," not a single, true one. This is another way of saying that race means and signifies different things for different people. But words, it seems to me, never quite shed their etymologies. When we refer to someone who is mixed race, we think that the person is descended form parents of two different races (this is evident from the phrase itself). And descent is here the important word. In our common use of race, we are unable to rid ourselves of the notion of blood. In common usage, we become raced by dint of our being born to certain parents. In this sense, Du Bois' use of the word seems faithful to its history.
What Montagu and Appiah (and von Herder, I would claim, considering I'm sympathetic to his insistence that we refer to "peoples" and not races)* retrospectively prove is that one can adequately and persuasively explain how the ways in which we organize our experience are based off of false premises, and still, people will go on talking and acting exactly as they have before. Intellectual, theoretical work is seldom embraced en masse. Especially in America, where intellectual is a byword for elitist.
We have the great luxury of attending an institution where we are challenged to rethink the world around us. We have access to Appiah, and Du Bois, and others through their texts. We have professors to help explain those concepts which we don't readily grasp. Through our liberal arts education, we have the vocabulary to make sense of our social situation. Most folks don't. Without education, one can go through life relying on the same small set of seldom-challenged beliefs. The complex forces that govern economics and social stratification are, without equally complex modes of thought, incomprehensible. Frustration and anger find expression in scapegoating and othering. We know the rest...
Without education, this does not change. Without changing the everyday use of language, this does not change. And we're just as much bound to "race," I think, despite our education. One still plays host to the thousand representations of Others that one has seen or heard throughout one's life, and those are not so easily removed, either. We are stuck playing the race game. The lens is fixed in the eye.
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* von Herder, as distinct from Hegel. Hegel says the race of Africans are children; von Herder says all peoples are nations in their own right and there are no races. I'm still wondering what history might have looked like if we had embraced Herder's distinction instead of the one Hegel inherits from Bernier and Kant.
Education does play a role in how we view everything. A lot of subject matter is foreign to us and when this is the case, we often rely on the generalizations made in our society to approach it because we do not know any better. It is hard to change your vocabulary and mindset in a productive way when you are not getting a well rounded history but only bits and pieces. I think you raise an important point when you say that "we're just as much bound to "race", I think, despite our education". The ideal is that education will open our eyes to the way things ought to be but it is hard to rid ourselves completely of the views we have sheltered for so long.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with point of your points. Even after we are made aware of distinctions between biological, historical, and socio-cultural distinctions when defining the concept and value of race in both past and present societies, it is hard to put that knowledge to use in daily life. We are enculturated into a world where many people still are not privileged with receiving the same type of education that we have here at Rhodes. Many people never even think the challenge the base assumptions provided in mainstream society about broad, complex topics such as race. I have constantly found myself frustrated with the lack of understanding or ignorance of others and a lack of desire to further educate themselves on issues such as race relations, gender and sexuality, religious diversity, etc. How are we to utilize this knowledge that is inherited through our education if the majority of others around us do not posses, understand, or seek to obtain the same type of wisdom? How can we hold on to it and apply it in our daily lives if it seems that everything else (individual people and larger organizations/systems/institutions) seems to be rejecting the absorption of this philosophy in their epistemological assumptions? How can we create/open up these issues for discourse when despite claims to the contrary, topics (such as race) are still relatively taboo?
ReplyDeleteMicheal, well said; however, I would perhaps change the word Ontological, to empirical (specifying one epistemology), biological, or metaphysical. Ontology refers to a way of being in the world, which includes the potential for persuasive ideologies to shape that cultural consciousness, or way of collectively understanding the world. You suggest that words have an inertia and that they are never able to rid themselves of their etymologies. But, through re-appropriation, political organization, and education, like you said, signifier can change all of the time. In my opinion, education sets that process into motion, but it is clear that, especially pre-collegiate institutions, value one epistemological framework that insists on an objective interpretation of events. Such a frame work ultimately effaces the individual experiences of those on the periphery of power. Even when it becomes impossible to cast the powers at be in a positive light, the truth is whitewashed, and rendered impotent. At the bottom line, education is not enough. A new kind of education is in order, an education that does not insist upon the singularity valued so highly in the natural sciences.
ReplyDeleteGood post, I think it really captures a lot of what we have been studying. I agree, 'truth' is entirely contingent on the society which claims it. I think the fact that science has gotten such an authority of truth just shows the climate in which we currently live: despite the fact that there is constantly data from every opinion, and that opinions change frequently, anything said by a scientist or doctor is an appeal to authority and considered to be true.
ReplyDeleteTo go off of your original post and Tim's comment, I agree that education is one of if not the most necessary aspect to changing perceptions, constructions, and appeals to truth. The fact that education has become a lower and lower priority in America reflects poorly on our society. Everyone wants progress but without putting the work needed into actually achieving that progress. The fact that we are still having opposing legislation about abstinence only education can attest to just how little people really realize how important it is to start progress in our lower levels of education.