All the recent media highlights pertaining racial injustice stimulates
many comparisons between racism and sexism.
Which we are working on the "thinking in images" project many
images dealing with racial profiling emerge.
Dr. J posted an article written by a Rhodes alumnus Jarrett Tate wrote earlier a week and a half ago about racial
profiling in the Rhodes community and the Rhodes campus. His article –linked
bellow- is a great perspective on how racial profiling can lead to many
injustices.
http://knowledgeovereducation.blogspot.com/2012/04/stranger-on-my-own-campus-open-letter.html
In reply to the article an anonymous writer posted justifying the racial
profiling on campus, he mentioned, “As a student, whenever they announce that a crime has occurred
nearby and they give a description of the suspect it is literally ALWAYS an
African-American male. I'm not being racist or talking about stereotypes, but
this is the profile of people committing crimes in the area.” And I just don’t
know what to think about that!
I do encourage you to read the article, the anonymous post and tell me
what you think! I’m just sorta thrown off really!
Taking this article and putting it in the context of Spelman’s essay
that we previously read, draws us to analyze how certain layers of ones’ self
can override other layers.
There is a lot of light on racial profiling right now because of the
Trayvon Martin case and the shaymaa case. Do you feel like this is just a trend
or is it a new awakening to the issue and hopefully solving it? Do you have any
comments on the article? How do you feel like it relates to the ampersand
problem?
I hope everyone had a great Easter break!
I think racial profiling relates to the ampersand problem in that, especially for black men, their "maleness" is affected by their "blackness." Black men are not considered men in the same way that white men or that Hispanic men are. In other words, their masculinity is affected by their blackness. In prof. Perry's lecture today she used the phrase, the "criminalization of blackness" which I think is very astute. Blackness, in general is something that is negative, deviant, A deviance from the white norm, and Other in most cultures. But black men and women experience blackness differently due to gender. Although there are very similar stereotypes for both: black people as noisy, black people as hyper-sexual---there are specific caricatures of black men in which black men are stereotyped as the extreme man--the extreme version of masculinity. Often, black men are bestialized, considered to super-strong or super-athletic, and seen as law-less.
ReplyDeleteI think that hip-hop and the popularity of hip-hop exemplifies this. Hip-Hop is one of the most popular genres of music today, but, and I know this will surprise people, the top consumers of hip hop are young white males. (This may be a numbers thing considering that black people are only roughly 12% of the American population). This is interesting, and there's a lot of literature out there that argues that whites (and blacks) are buying commodified stereotypes. When we watch hip-hop videos and listen to songs (which are exaggerated versions of manliness, hypersexualized, and saturated with female objectification more often that not) what are we really buying?
I'd also like to piggy-back off of Noor's question and ask what would happen if we divorce profiling from race. I know often we think of profiling simply as a racial thing. But what would it look like to profile on the basis of perceived gender,perceived religion or ethnic group? perceived sexual orientation, class, etc, etc. Are women raped based on sexual profiling, for example?
I feel like these sorts of incidents do reflect what Dr. J discussed in her speech on Trayvon Martin. With incidents of unjust actions of racism many people see it as "perpetrator, the act, and the victim" rather than the entire culture of racism that allows for the incident. There are no singular incidents of racism, there are cultures that allow for people to be seen and profiled based on such things. For anything on campus to be furthered, everyone would have to admit that we are part of the problem.
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