Race Critical Theories: Text and Term Paper

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Essed notes the profound perceived threat to power experienced by those in the majority feel when even small encroachments are made by other groups into the dominant fabric of society, and how tacit racism against minorities is often allowed even by those who might not consider themselves prejudiced on an interactional and personal level (184). In short, the institutional racism of society inevitably affects interpersonal relations, even amongst people who do not harbor what we might think of as hatred in their hearts. Racism for Essed is an ideological social construct, a powerful social and philosophical method of enforcement that affects how 'people' see the world, and also the mechanisms of the justice system (185). Racist images and practices become an invisible and accepted part of daily life, and are unquestioned, thus it is not enough to simply change one's individual mind (190). Her essay, though it seems overly focused on scholarly definitions at its onset, ultimately emerges as a powerful reply to people who respond 'well, I'm not a racist' as a reason for ignoring historical legacies of racism.

Etienne Ballibar's "The Nation Form: History and Ideology" asks the potent question "What makes a nation a community? " (220). Why have certain individuals been excluded or included in what we would call the American community? Communities and the concept of community is itself an ideology, much like the concepts of gender discussed by Collins, and race as discussed by Essed.

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The state is more than the sum of its borders; rather to conceptualize the state requires an internal as well as an external shift within the dominant consciousness. A nation is an idea, not just a physical place.

Implicit is the question of national formation is who may be admitted to that status of nationhood. Of course "every national community must at some point been represented as a Chosen People," Ballibar wryly observes, noting that although the process of nationhood may be phrased in triumphant terms, it is as much about exclusion as it is inclusion, and thus it is the language of loss. Just as the concept of woman implies 'not man,' (despite the contradiction that the genders share similar physical and character traits) and 'black' implies not white (despite the physical evidence of multiracial people and the complex genetic heritage we all share as humans), nationhood is itself a false construction of identity. Although no one chooses his or her mother tongue, parents, or birthplace, membership in a nation is a mutable status, as changeable as one's clothes (227). Her analysis sheds light on the concept of race, for race has often been interchangeably with the idea of 'nation' and being of a certain race has often been conceptualized as integral to citizenship. She ends on a positive note, however, remarking how lie of nationhood is being questioned, finally, by the existence of a multiracial, international.....

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