05 Nov Critical Race and other thoughts on a disappearing Saturday

I’ve been sneaking off to Seattle University every two months to engage in a Critical Race Theory reading group sponsored by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. The group has consistently had the same two law students from SU and a Dental student from UW, and then has had a smattering of others who revolve in and out. It has been incredibly delightful – a mixture of graduate students from UW Geography and Poli Sci, Law students from SU, and professors from everything from Education to Law to Political Science.

This last meeting was particularly useful in thinking about some of the issues that have been materializing over the past 12 months. I’ve been struggling with coming to terms with where ‘race’ belongs within, particularly, the Occupy movement, lately. Paul Gilroy, in his push to get us to move beyond race-based identities, points out that it is the very oppressive nature of raciology that actually makes it difficult to move out of it. How do we move beyond the “precious forms of solidarity and community that have been created by …subordination”? And how to do it without eliding histories?

At the same time, one of the group members emailed me after our meeting to point out that ‘race’ “is a rudimentary way of of thinking…the facade of race mask(s) the disparity in wealth. Its a way to keep the masses (99%) fighting amongst each other and not uniting to challenge the 1%.” Paul Gilroy says:

…the defense of communal interests has often mobilized the fantasy of a frozen culture, of arrested cultural development. Particularity can be maintained and communal interests protected if they are fixed in their most authentic and glorious postures of resistance. This understandable and inadequate response to the prospect of losing one’s identity reduces cultural traditions to the simple process of invariant repetition. It has helped to secure deeply conservative notions that supply real comfort in dismal timers but do little justice… (Against Race, 13)

He goes on to contend that we are trapped in tradition which becomes nothing more than a rigid set of rules. It is here that Cynthia Enloe provides a rather blunt antidote:

Being curious takes energy. It may thus be a distorted form of “energy conservation” that makes certain ideas so alluring. Take, for instance, the loaded adjective “natural.” If one takes for granted that something is “natural”…it saves mental energy. After all, what is deemed natural hasn’t been self-consciously created…”Tradition” serves much the same misguided energy-saving purpose. If something is accepted as being “traditional”…then it too can be swathed in a protective blanket, making it almost immune to bothersome questioning (The Curious Feminist, 1-2)

But the tradition of identity that is self-ascribed is not what Enloe is pointing to. For her, it is “tradition” as constructed by those with the power to make overarching hegemonic claims to what is or is not “tradition.” So is “tradition” the right frame for thinking about ‘race’ when trying to move out of raciology? Edward Said points out that the ontological and epistemological distinctions made between places and people are real and often unquestioned differences (Orientalism, 2). But the question remains: who is constructing the difference and does the ownership have an  impact on the continuation of the distinction?

What does it mean to never be allowed to forget that you are a person of color? How does that impact the willingness to relinquish “hard-won, oppositional identities it supports” (Gilroy, 12)? How much of the construction of racial identity tied to class? And who gets to claim that it is no longer a useful marker of identity? Certainly not my rather well-off, white, male, lives-in-Medina, is a board member at the Institute for Humane Studies philosophy professor who, one day complained: “When are black people going to stop playing the race card? Can’t we just come up with a final dollar amount for reparations and be done with it? And i can say this because my best friend is married to a black woman.”

Never mind that he never mentioned her by name, even as he had named his best friend (who unit that day in Week 10, remained un-married, to us) multiple times throughout the quarter…

…and i fizzle out…