Power and the Shape of Knowledge
Building on the previous chapter, we now consider further issues dealing with categories and power. Chapter 4 concerned the role of small subgroups within civil rights communities. This chapter addresses how we think about race and identity—the black-white binary, critical white studies, and Asian and Latino critical thought. Some of these issues are explosive, controversial, even divisive.
One of the more contentious issues in American racial thought today is whether the very framework we use to consider problems of race reflects an unstated binary paradigm or mindset. That paradigm, the black-white binary, effectively dictates that nonblack minority groups must compare their treatment to that of African Americans to redress their grievances. The paradigm holds that one group, blacks, constitutes the prototypical minority group. “Race” means, quintessentially, African American. Others, such as Asians, American Indians, and Latinos, are minorities only insofar as their experience and treatment can be analogized to those of blacks.
Imagine, for example, that Juan Dominguez, a Puerto Rican worker, is told by his boss, “You’re a lazy Puerto Rican just like all the rest. You’ll never get ahead as long as I’m supervisor.” Juan sues for workplace discrimination under a civil-rights-era statute designed, as most are, with blacks in mind. He wins because he can show that an African American worker, treated in similar fashion, would be entitled to redress. But suppose that Juan’s coworkers and supervisor make fun of him because of his accent, religion, or place of birth. African Americans generally do not suffer discrimination on these grounds, so Juan would likely go without recourse.
The black-white binary is said to operate in everyday culture as well. Imagine that a group of liberal television executives says to each other, “Let’s have a minority sitcom.” The group is well meaning, but their thoughts are apt to go to a program whose central characters are a black family. Later, on second thought, they might add an Asian maid or a Latino teenager who is a friend of one of the family’s children. But the essential framework for the program is likely to revolve around African American problems, in-jokes, and situations. Similarly, history textbooks may devote considerable space to the tremendously significant issue of slavery but overlook or devote scant treatment to the intense persecution of Chinese in California and elsewhere. Many may also ignore the equally important role of Conquest and the wars with Mexico and Spain in shaping Latino history. Even rarer would be a textbook that discusses the recent wave of intense anti-Muslim suspicion that gripped the country in the years following 9/11.
A closely related concept is that of black, or any other kind of, exceptionalism. Exceptionalism holds that a group’s history is so distinctive that placing it at the center of analysis is, in fact, warranted. For example, when a recent president convened a group of scholars and activists to lead a yearlong national conversation on race, at its first meeting, the chair, an eminent African American historian, proposed that the group “for the sake of simplicity” limit its consideration to African Americans. When other members of the commission protested, he backed down, still insisting that he was right. Because “America cut its eyeteeth” on discrimination against blacks, he said, if one understood that sordid history, one would also understand and know how to deal with racism against all the other groups.
Regardless of what one thinks about exceptionalism, critics of the black-white binary do make at least one valid point. The differential racialization thesis, mentioned earlier in this book (see chapter 1) and embraced by most contemporary students of race, maintains that each disfavored group in this country has been racialized in its own individual way and according to the needs of the majority group at particular times in its history. Few blacks will be yelled at and accused of being foreigners or of destroying the automobile industry. Few will be told that if they don’t like it here, they should go back where they came from. Few (except those who are foreign-born) will be ridiculed on account of their unpronounceable last names or singsong accent. Few will have a vigilante, police officer, teacher, or social worker demand to see their papers, passport, or green card. Few will be asked if they are terrorists. By the same token, few Asian-looking people will be accused of being welfare leeches or having too many children out of wedlock.
Thus, different racial groups can react disparately to racial slurs [citing cases of blacks and Mexicans subjected to racist epithets]. . . . Due to this distinction, we hold that in an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim arising out of an allegation of racial harassment, the plaintiff’s race must shape the objective inquiry into the severity of the distress.
Taylor v. Metzger, 706 A.2d 685, 698 (N.J. 1998)
Long preoccupied with issues of identity, American society prefers to place its citizens into boxes on the basis of physical attributes and culture. No science supports this practice; it is simply a matter of habit and convenience. Like other paradigms, the black-white one allows people to simplify and make sense of a complex reality. And, of course, it is helpful in looking at the historical and ongoing relationship between black and white Americans. The risk is that nonblack minority groups, not fitting into the dominant society’s idea of race in America, become marginalized, invisible, foreign, un-American.
The black-white—or any other—binary paradigm of race not only simplifies analysis dangerously, presenting racial progress as a linear progression; it can end up injuring the very group, for example, blacks, that one places at the center of discussion. It weakens solidarity, reduces opportunities for coalition, deprives a group of the benefits of the others’ experiences, makes it excessively dependent on the approval of the white establishment, and sets it up for ultimate disappointment. Consider some of the ways this can happen.
The history of minorities in the United States shows that while one group is gaining ground, another is often losing it. For example, in 1846 the United States waged a bloodthirsty war against Mexico in which it seized about one-half of that nation’s territory. Later, Anglo lawyers and land-hungry settlers colluded with courts and local authorities to deprive the Mexicans who chose to remain in the conquered territory of their lands, which were guaranteed by the peace treaty. Yet, only a few years later, the North gallantly fought an equally bloody war against the South, ostensibly to free the slaves. During Reconstruction, slavery was abolished and important legislation enacted for the benefit of the newly freed blacks. Yet at the very same time, Congress was passing the despised Indian Appropriation Act, providing that no Indian nation would be an independent entity capable of entering into a treaty with the United States. To make matters worse, not long afterward, the Dawes Act broke up land the tribes held in common, resulting in the loss of almost two-thirds of all Indian land. And in 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act; earlier California had made it a crime to employ Chinese workers.
Binary thinking, which focuses on just two groups, usually whites and one other, can thus conceal the checkerboard of racial progress and retrenchment and hide the way dominant society often casts minority groups against one another to the detriment of each. Immediately after the Civil War, the army recruited newly freed slaves to serve as Buffalo Soldiers putting down Indian rebellions in the West. Not long after, southern plantation owners urged replacing their former slaves with Chinese labor. Congress acquiesced. Consider, as well, Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, reproduced in part in chapter 2 of this book, which sharply rebuked segregation for blacks but supported his point by disparaging the Chinese, who did have the right to ride in railway cars with whites. In more recent times, during California’s Proposition 187 campaign, proponents for this anti-immigrant measure sought black votes by depicting Mexican immigrants as newcomers who took black jobs. And in recent years, anti-immigration forces whip up public sentiment against Muslims in minority and blue-collar communities by appealing to their patriotism.
In addition to pitting one minority group against another, binary thinking can induce a minority group to identify with whites in exaggerated fashion at the expense of other groups. For example, early in California’s history, Asians sought to be declared white so that they could attend schools for whites and not have to go to ones with blacks. And in the Southwest, early litigators for Mexican Americans pursued an “other white” policy, arguing that segregation of Mexican Americans was illegal because local law only countenanced segregation against blacks. Community-betterment organizations like the League of United Latin American Citizens reacted to rampant discrimination against their members by insisting that society treat Latinos as whites.
Anglocentric standards of beauty divide Mexican and black communities, enabling those who most closely conform to the Euro-American ideal to gain jobs, desirable mates, and social acceptance and, sometimes, to look down on their darker-skinned brothers and sisters. Similarly, “box checking” allows people of white or near-white appearance to gain the benefits of affirmative action without suffering the costs of being thought of and treated as black or brown.
Black-white or any other kind of binary thinking can also cause a minority group to go along with a recurring ploy in which whites select a particular group—usually a small, nonthreatening one—to serve as tokens and overseers of the others. Minorities who fall into this trap hope to gain status, while whites can tell themselves that they are not racists because they have employed a certain number of suitably grateful minorities as supervisors, assistant deans, and directors of human relations.
Finally, dichotomous thinking and exceptionalism impair the ability of groups to form coalitions. For example, neither the NAACP nor any other predominantly African American organization filed an amicus brief challenging Japanese internment in the World War II case of Korematsu v. United States. As mentioned earlier, a politically moderate litigation organization of Latinos distanced itself from other minority groups and even from darker-skinned Latinos by pursuing an “other white” strategy during the middle years of the twentieth century. And in Northern California, Asians, Mexican Americans, and blacks have been at loggerheads over admission to prestigious Lowell High School and the University of California at Berkeley and UCLA.
Will minority groups learn to put aside narrow nationalisms and binary thinking and work together to confront the forces that suppress them all? It would seem that they have much to gain, but old patterns of thought die hard. If contextualism and critical theory teach anything, it is that we rarely challenge our own preconceptions, privileges, and the standpoint from which we reason.
Although not as permanent as race or color, an accent is not easily changed for a person who was born and lived in a foreign country for a good length of time. This court cannot give legal cognizance to adverse employment decisions made simply because a person speaks with a foreign accent. The court would recognize that in some instances a foreign accent may actually prevent a person from performing tasks required for employment or promotion, . . . but otherwise, an employer should not make adverse employment decisions simply because a person possesses an accent resulting from birth and life in a foreign country.
It is the court’s opinion from the evidence and the observation of the plaintiff’s speech at trial that his accent did not impair his ability to communicate or prevent him from performing any tasks required of the supervisor of the old dental laboratory. . . . Consequently, this court finds that the decision to demote the plaintiff from the supervisory position in the old laboratory was made on the basis of his national origin and related accent, and that this decision violated the rights of the plaintiff under the provisions of Title VII.
Carino v. University of Oklahoma, 25 Fair Empl. Proc. Cas. (BNA) 1332 (W.D. Okla. 1981)
Another area of critical investigation is the study of the white race. For several centuries, at least, social scientists have been studying communities of color, discoursing learnedly about their histories, cultures, problems, and future prospects. Now a new generation of scholars has put whiteness under the lens and examined the construction of the white race. If, as most contemporary thinkers believe, race is not objective or biologically significant but constructed by social sentiment and power struggle, how did the white race in America come to exist, that is, how did it come to define itself? Ian Haney López, Cheryl Harris, Tim Wise, David Roediger, Alexander Saxton, and Theodore Allen address various aspects of this issue. The physical differences between light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned whites, just to take one example, are much less marked than those that separate polar members of either group. Why then do we draw the lines the way we do? Addressing this question includes examining what it means to be white, how whiteness became established legally, how certain groups moved in and out of the white race, “passing,” the one-drop rule, the phenomenon of white power and white supremacy, and the array of privileges that come with membership in the dominant race.
In the semantics of popular culture, whiteness is often associated with innocence and goodness. Brides wear white on their wedding day to signify purity. “Snow White” is a universal fairy tale of virtue receiving its just reward. In talk of near-death experiences, many patients report a blinding white light, perhaps a projection of a hoped-for union with a positive and benign spiritual force.
In contrast, darkness and blackness often carry connotations of evil and menace. One need only read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad to see how strongly imagery of darkness conveys evil and terror. We speak of a black gloom. Persons deemed unacceptable to a group are said to be blackballed or blacklisted. Villains are often depicted as swarthy or wearing black clothing.
Whiteness is also normative; it sets the standard in dozens of situations. It may even be a kind of property interest. Other groups, such as American Indians, Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans, are described as nonwhite. That is, they are defined in relation or opposition to whiteness—that which they are not. Literature and the media reinforce this view of minorities as the exotic other. Minorities appear in villain roles or as romantic, oversexed lovers. Science-fiction movies and television programs portray extraterrestrials with minority-like features and skin color.
If literature and popular culture reinforce white superiority, law and courts have done so as well. In the fifty years or so following the Civil War, a large influx of people sought admission to the United States, making immigration policy a point of great concern. The last decade of the nineteenth century and first two of the twentieth were a period of particularly heavy immigration. Who was the young country going to let in? In 1790 Congress had limited naturalization (acquisition of U.S. citizenship) to free white persons only. With minor modifications, this racial qualification stood on the books until 1952.
During the more than 150 years that the requirement remained in place, U.S. courts decided many cases determining who was white and who was not. Are Indians from India white? What about Persians? Or light-skinned Japanese? Or children of mixed marriages, with a father from Canada and a mother from Indonesia? Judges developed two tests—“science” and “common knowledge”—to decide these questions. Reading the history of these strained, often overtly racist judicial opinions does much to dispel any notion that the American judiciary is fair, consistent, or wise.
The legal definition of whiteness took shape in the context of immigration law, as courts decided who was to have the privilege of living in the United States. As many ordinary citizens did, judges defined the white race in opposition to blackness or some other form of otherness, an opposition that also marked a boundary between privilege and its opposite. Only those who were deemed white were worthy of entry into our community.
The appellant is a person of the Japanese race born in Japan [who] applied to the United States District Court for the Territory of Hawaii to be admitted as a citizen of the United States. His petition was opposed by the United States District Attorney. . . . Including the period of his residence in Hawaii appellant had continuously resided in the United States for 20 years. He was a graduate of the Berkeley, Cal., high school, had been nearly three years a student in the University of California, had educated his children in American schools, his family had attended American churches and he had maintained the use of the English language in his home. That he is well qualified by character and education for citizenship is conceded.
The District Court . . . however, held that, having been born in Japan and being of the Japanese race, he was not eligible to naturalization under section 2169 of the Revised Statutes . . . and denied the petition. . . .
On behalf of the appellant it is urged that we should give to [section 2169] the meaning which it had in the minds of its original framers in 1790 and that it was employed by them for the sole purpose of excluding the black or African race and the Indians then inhabiting this country. . . . It is not enough to say that the framers did not have in mind the brown or yellow races of Asia. It is necessary to go farther and be able to say that had these particular races been suggested the language of the act would have been so varied as to include them within its privileges.
The appellant, in the case now under consideration . . . is clearly of a race which is not Caucasian.
Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178, 189–90, 195, 198 (1922)
Another aspect of the construction of whiteness is the way certain groups have moved into or out of that race. For example, early in our history Irish, Jews, and Italians were considered nonwhite—that is, on a par with African Americans. Over time, they earned the prerogatives and social standing of whites by a process that included joining labor unions, swearing fealty to the Democratic Party, and acquiring wealth, sometimes by illegal or underground means. Whiteness, it turns out, is not only valuable; it is shifting and malleable.
A recent manifestation of white consciousness is its exaggerated form seen in white-supremacy and white-power groups. With these organizations, white solidarity presents problems and dangers that black solidarity does not. When members of a minority group band together for social and political support, most observers will see that action as a natural and proper response against social pressures. But what if members of the majority race band together to promote their interests at the expense of those very same minorities? The formation of Aryan-supremacist and skinhead groups stands as a constant reminder of how easy it is for quiet satisfaction in being white to deteriorate into extremism. As we write, the Tea Party movement and its followers are urging each other to “take back our country.” Some of their rallies have featured signs lampooning President Barack Obama or depicting him with exaggerated racial features. A “birther” faction still challenges his right to hold office and insists that he prove he was born in the United States. They also urge abolishing welfare, affirmative action, and other special programs of interest to poor people and minorities of color. How much of this opposition stems from discomfort with a nonwhite leader?
“White privilege” refers to the myriad of social advantages, benefits, and courtesies that come with being a member of the dominant race. Imagine a black man and a white man, equally qualified, interviewing for the same position in a business. The interviewer is white. The white candidate may feel more at ease with the interviewer because of the social connections he enjoys as a member of the same group. The interviewer may ask the white candidate to play golf later. Under the impression that few blacks golf, and not wishing to offend, he may not invite the black candidate to play. This example becomes especially telling when one considers that most corporate positions of power, despite token inroads, are still in the hands of whites.
According to a famous list compiled by Peggy McIntosh, white people enjoy and can rely on forty-six privileges that attach by reason of having white skin, including the assurance that store clerks will not follow them around, that people will not cross the street to avoid them at night, that their achievements will not be regarded as exceptional or “credits to their race,” and that their occasional mistakes will not be attributed to biological inferiority. Scholars of white privilege write that white people benefit from a system of favors, exchanges, and courtesies from which outsiders of color are frequently excluded, including hiring one’s neighbors’ kids for summer jobs, a teacher’s agreement to give a favored student an extra-credit assignment that will enable him or her to raise a grade of B+ to A−, or the kind of quiet networking that lands a borderline candidate a coveted position.
This has prompted one commentator to remark that our system of race is like a two-headed hydra. One head consists of outright racism—the oppression of some people on grounds of who they are. The other consists of white privilege—a system by which whites help and buoy each other up. If one lops off a single head, say, outright racism, but leaves the other intact, our system of white over black/brown will remain virtually unchanged. The predicament of social reform, as one writer pointed out, is that “everything must change at once.” Otherwise, change is swallowed up by the remaining elements, so that we remain roughly as we were before. Culture replicates itself forever and ineluctably.
A version of white privilege sometimes appears in discussions of affirmative action. Many whites feel that these programs victimize them, that more qualified white candidates will be required to sacrifice their positions to less qualified minorities. So, is affirmative action a case of “reverse discrimination” against whites? Part of the argument that it is rests on an implicit assumption of innocence on the part of the white person displaced by affirmative action. The narrative behind this assumption characterizes whites as innocent, a powerful metaphor, and blacks as—what? Presumably, the opposite of innocent, namely, guilty. They are like thieves who enter where they do not belong and take things that others have worked hard for.
By contrast, many critical race theorists and social scientists hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society seems quite so innocent. The interplay of meanings that one attaches to race; the stereotypes one holds of other people; the standards of looks, appearance, and beauty; and the need to guard one’s own position all powerfully determine one’s perspective. Indeed, one aspect of whiteness, according to some scholars, is its ability to seem perspectiveless or transparent. Whites do not see themselves as having a race but as being, simply, people. They do not believe that they think and reason from a white viewpoint but from a universally valid one—“the truth”—what everyone knows. By the same token, many whites will strenuously deny that they have benefited from white privilege, even in situations like the ones mentioned throughout this book (golf, summer jobs, extra-credit assignments, merchants who smile). (See Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?, 94 Am. Econ. Rev. 991 [Sept. 2004].)
Imagine a Russian Jewish girl, orphaned at the age of two, who immigrates to the United States at the age of fifteen without a penny or knowledge of English. She attends night school while working as a supermarket bagger during the day and plans to attend a community college and major in premed studies.
The person is white with blue eyes and blond hair. Is she privileged? Unprivileged? Privileged in some respects but not others?
Divide into small groups and argue this question. Then ask yourselves whether white privilege has any application beyond a narrow circle of elite prep-school products.
As the bright lines of the black-white binary blurred, critical Asian and Latino thinkers felt freer to put forward their own unique perspectives. Invigorated, perhaps, by the antiessentialist strand of critical race theory, LatCrit scholars have called attention to such issues as immigration, language rights, bilingual schooling, internal colonialism, sanctuary for Latin American refugees, and census categories for Latinos. They have begun challenging “proxy discrimination,” in which a discriminator targets a Latino on the basis of a foreign accent, name, or ancestry. They reexamine documents such as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in search of sources of protection for land, culture, and language rights. (See Lobato v. Taylor, 71 P.3d 938 [Colo. 2002]; Mabo v. Queensland, 1991 WL 1290806 [HCA 1992].) Like Asians, many Latinos vigorously oppose the English-only movement and engage in spirited discussions of passing and assimilation (see chapter 4). They deploy the sociological notion of nativism to name and explain the recent spate of measures aimed at foreigners and immigrants, including “probable cause” laws that encourage police to stop and question the foreign-looking or to punish anyone who aids, hires, or rents an apartment to an undocumented person. They point out that nativism against Latinos and Asians thrives during times of economic hardship, when the labor supply is glutted, when workers are insecure, and when politicians rail against foreigners taking American jobs. Both groups staunchly resist the black-white paradigm but try to maintain friendly relations with African Americans. They also support immigration activists, such as the student “Dreamers” and their families who are protesting draconian immigration policies and deportation. They support histories of nonblack minority groups, such as the Ellis Island Immigration Museum’s new exhibit showing stories of Mexican border-crossers and their routes and travails.
Some Asian American writers focus on accent discrimination and the “model minority myth,” according to which Asians are the perfect minority group—quiet and industrious, with intact families and high academic aspiration and achievement. This myth is unfair to the numerous Asian subgroups such as Hmong and Pacific Islanders who are likely to be poor and in need of assistance. It also causes resentment among other disfavored groups, such as African Americans, who find themselves blamed for not being as successful as Asians supposedly are. (“If they can make it, why can’t you?”).
Allied with the model minority myth is the idea that Asians are too successful—soulless, humorless drones whose home countries are at fault for the United States’ periodic economic troubles. Such was the tragic fate of the Chinese American Vincent Chin, killed in 1982 by two Detroit autoworkers upset with Japan for destroying the U.S. automotive industry by producing better cars. To make matters worse, American courts have sometimes been reluctant to punish such racially motivated crimes against Asians, handing out light sentences. For murdering Chin, the two attackers received sentences of three years’ probation and small fines. Neither served a day in jail.
During World War II, when over one hundred thousand Japanese families living on the West Coast were removed to internment camps where they spent years behind barbed wire, many losing farms and businesses in the process, few Americans protested. It turned out later that much of the evidence of disloyalty and espionage was fabricated. Indeed, most Japanese Americans supported the war effort, and many young Japanese Americans served honorably in the U.S. armed forces, fighting against the Nazis in Europe and serving as interpreters in the battle against Japan. Despite this sorry chapter in U.S. history, the United States was slow to consider compensating the Japanese for their losses. The descendants of Japanese Americans endured a legacy of suspicion and prejudice. A reparations bill did not enter into force until 1988.
Gordon Hirabayashi is an American citizen who was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1918, and is currently Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Alberta. He is of Japanese ancestry. In 1942 he was living in Seattle and was therefore subject to wartime orders requiring all persons of Japanese ancestry, whether citizens or not, to remain within their residences between 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. He was also subject to subsequent orders to report to a Civilian Control Station for . . . exclusion from the military area. Hirabayashi refused to honor the curfew or to report to the control station because he believed that the military orders were based upon racial prejudice and violated the protection the Constitution affords to all citizens. The Supreme Court reviewed his conviction for violating the curfew order and unanimously affirmed. . . .
In his coram nobis petition, Hirabayashi contended that the original report [by West Coast authorities] . . . and recently discovered related documents [proved] that the curfew and exclusion orders were in fact based upon racial prejudice rather than military exigency. . . .
The judgment . . . is reversed and the matter is remanded with instructions to grant Hirabayashi’s petition to vacate both convictions.
Hirabayashi v. United States, 828 F.2d 591, 592–93, 608 (9th Cir. 1987)
Indeed, in the 2016 presidential campaign, one candidate supported his proposal to ban Muslims from admission to the United States by citing, approvingly, President Franklin Roosevelt’s executive order assigning the Japanese to wartime internment camps.
Finally, in recent years a number of scholars of color have been examining issues at the intersection of feminism, sexual orientation, and critical race theory. Critical race feminism addresses issues of intersectionality, like those described in chapter 4. It also examines relations between men and women of color; sterilization of black, Latina, and Indian women; and the impact of changes in welfare, family policies, and child-support laws. It also analyzes the way the “reasonable man” standard that operates in many areas of the law incorporates a white male bias, making it difficult for a woman or a nonwhite person to receive justice in American courts.
LGBT (“queer-crit”) theorists examine the interplay between sexual norms and race. Why are Latino males sometimes depicted as ardent lovers, or Asian men as sexless or effeminate? Are sex and sexual orientation part of the construction of minority racial status? And what about the civil rights movement or Chicano liberation—are they historically homophobic? Accidentally or inherently so? Are gays and lesbians marginalized by the need of these groups to appear exemplary, all-American?