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Summary Key concepts with definition and authors - Intersectionalities: Race, Gender, and Sexuality (7332F004BY) - UvA
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The key concepts, defined by the readings and lectures (Prof. dr. Sarah Bracke).
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Final exam Intersectionalities 2023-24 - ConceptsThese are concepts from the course that should be known for the final exam. All these
concepts have been covered in one way or the other during the course – in course readings,
on the slides, during the lectures. In some cases, they have been covered in more than one
way (by more than one author, etc.). All course material (readings, lectures, slides) should be
consulted to come up with a solid understanding of these concepts. The idea is not that you
are able to reproduce definitions literally (as for instance one author in particular has
defined them) – you may paraphrase, summarize, etc. The answer that you provide on the
exam will be judged in relation to the course material. (In other words, and to avoid
misunderstanding: we are not looking for your opinions on these matters, we looking to see
if you grasp these relatively foundational concepts in the study of race, gender, sexuality,
and intersectionality.)
Race
Colour-blindness
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues that colour-blind racism is the dominant racial ideology
of the post-Civil Rights Era.
Bonilla-Silva defines colour-blind racism as the idea that using race itself is racist,
people often ask “how can one use race to try to move beyond race?”.
Bonilla-Silva writes “ the colour-blind eyeglasses whites wear nowadays are tinted
with the myth that race is no longer relevant in this nation. But their seemingly naïve colour-
blindness is just an ideology that legitimates contemporary racial inequality”.
Which he follows up with “Sadly, as all dominant ideologies, colour-blind racism
prevents whites from seeing and understanding our racial reality”.
Cultural archive (“A storehouse of particular knowledge and structures of attitudes and
references.” – Edward Said)
The notion of the cultural archive was first put forward by Edward Said, but
collaborated on in Gloria Wekker’s text on white innocence. According to Wekker, the
“cultural archive is located in many things, in the way we think, do things, and look at the
world, in what we find (sexually) attractive, in how our effective and rational economies are
organized and intertwined. Most important between our ears and in our thought.” Both Said
and Wekker belief that the cultural archive is produced during imperialism, and contains the
racial grammar of the 19th century. According to Wekker, we should conceptualise the
cultural archive along similar lines as Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus: “the presence of the past in
the present”. The cultural archive is a way of acting that people have been socialised into,
that becomes natural, escaping consciousness.
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explains racial grammar as a distillate of racial ideology (and
thus white supremacy), that maintains racial domination by shaping how we (do not) see
race in social phenomena, how we frame matters as racial, and how we feel about race
matters.
, Wekker elaborates on three ways to study the cultural archive: (1) by looking at the
visual representations in the media, (2) by studying documents in an archive, and (3) by
doing interviews with people and analysing their patterns of thought.
Everyday racism (“Racism is more than structures and ideologies, it is a process that is
routinely created and reinforced through everyday practices.” – Philomena Essed)
According to Philomena Essed, everyday racism contains three things: (1) systemic,
recurrent, familiar practices, (2) socialised attitudes and behaviours (because it is infused in
familiar practices, “interweaving of racism in the fabric of the social system”), and (3)
includes cumulative instantiation.
According to Essed, everyday racism also includes five notions: (1) notion of racism,
(2) notion of everyday (interactional perspectives and scripts), (3) notion of everyday racism,
(4) idea of experience (DuBois’ ‘double-consciousness’), and (5) notion of accounts of racism.
Essed also argues that everyday racism is a process in which (a) socialised racist
notions are integrated into meanings that make practices immediately definable and
manageable, (b) practices with racist implications can become in themselves familiar and
repetitive, and (c) underlying racial and ethnic relations are actualised and reinforced
through these routine or familiar practices in everyday situations.
Essed wanted to articulate the agency individuals have in the (re)production of
racism (shows her symbolic interactionist approach).
According to Essed, Godfrey Brandt’s notion of systemic racism comes closest to her
notion of everyday racism (“day-to-day interactions within institutions”).
Essed argues that everyday racism is racism, but not all racism is everyday racism.
Grounds for race-making
According to Stuart Hall, there are three grounds for race-making: (1) religion, (2)
biology, and (3) culture.
Religion would be about the purity of blood, the distinction of Christianity from other
semitic religions.
Biology as grounds for race-making is also called scientific racism, race biology, or
racial biology (classification based on different phenotypes and/or genotypes into discrete
races). This was very common between the 17th century and 1945, and included thinkers
such as Charles Darwin. However this thinking was formally denounced by UNESCO’s (UN)
statement “The Race Question”. According to Hall, we keep connecting race to biology,
because of the pull towards a foundational guarantee.
Race-making on grounds of culture stems from biology (classification of different
cultures / civilisations). About the superiority of Western civilisations based on “norms and
values”, and these are used to explain/justify oppression and social stratification.
According to Hall, gender and sexuality play a crucial role in race-making, especially
culturally.
Institutional racism (institutional approach) (“prejudiced people in power make
institutions racist”)
, The institutional approach was coined by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in
1967. They argue that prejudice, combined with power, allows the dominant race to
institutionalise its dominance. And that we should not only look at individual racism (Ku Klux
Klan, for example), but also at institutional racism. This was very influential at the time,
because it was during an era of the rise of Black power.
According to Carmichael & Hamilton, institutional racism is less overt than individual
racism.
Both Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Philomena Essed argue that this approach is not
enough.
Bonilla-Silva argues that their theory of institutional racism was not sufficient
because we need a more coherent theory on how racism works.
Essed argues that one major problem of structural theories on racism is the
distinction between individual and institutional racism, because it places the individual out
of the institutional, thereby severing rules, regulations, and procedures from the people who
make and enact them, as if it concerned qualitatively different racism rather than different
positions and relations through which racism operates. She also argues that the notion of
‘individual racism’ is a contradiction in itself, since racism is by definition the expression or
activation of group power.
Essed also argues that the notion of the “institutional” is difficult in sociology,
because its been given various meanings.
Race as a floating signifier
Understanding race as a floating signifier is a structuralist theory by Stuart Hall. He
argues that race has a discursive structure and works like a language. He builds his
argument upon linguistic theory (sign = signifier (object) + signified (meaning)).
Building upon this theory, Hall gives us three options where the differences we call
race come from: (1) biological differences exist and we put those into language (language as
representation), which Hall rejects because he argues that language is performative and not
representational, (2) purely linguistic-textual position (only language), as if race is
autonomous of any system of reference, Hall rejects this because he argues you cannot only
look at language, and (3) wide range of material differences that only get meaning with
discourse, Hall argues that this option is correct because what matters are the systems we
use to make sense (we have a wide range of material and physical differences which only
have meaning in discourse).
According to Hall, race is an empty sign, because even though there are signifiers (as
DuBois pointed out: hair, eyes, etc.), the signified (meanings) change over time (are
floating), and thus there is not one fixed sign called race. Hall sees race as a concept that
cannot be pinned down and is ever-changing.
Hall states that race is a discursive concept; race is a floating signifier; race functions
as a language.
Hall argues that race is more discursive and relational than essentialist or natural, it
depends on (localised) socio-historical context what race ends up being.
Race as prejudice (prejudice approach) (“individualised / personal prejudice”)
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