Solorzano Ceja And Yosso Analysis
Kate Kelley
Critical Review #2
Dr. LaGarrett King
28 June 2015
The article that we read this week that I found myself identifying the strongest with was Amy Bergerson’s (2003)– this is not surprising since she is also a White woman. Her writing asked some of the questions that I have only just begun to formulate in my own head. The question of authorship is central to her discussion: can a White person be a CRT scholar? Her answer appears to be ‘sort of’ in that she advocates for White scholars to employ CRT in their scholarship but I think she stops short of stating that White people can be Critical Race Theorists. In a nutshell, she seems to be saying that employing CRT as a critical framework through which to analyze race is fine, but …show more content…
that the White scholar should also recognize that they can never actually be a theorist – a creator – of this framework since positionality and experience are central to the idea of CRT. This makes a lot of sense to me. I think in my projects the most useful way to talk about race will be CRT. It will act as a framework, a language, and a body of knowledge for me to stand on which will allow me to state things about race and racism in such a way that I can present a positionality that I do not experience myself. Reading Bergerson’s article was important for me to think through these issues of positionality and the co-optability of theoretical discourses. As to this latter idea, I think that if I commit my own positionality as a White woman, my own rhetoric will reflect a deference to the voices for whom I cannot speak, but can present on their own terms. This will be a challenge I hope to live up to. We talk about objectivity in academic work which is simply not something that is achievable. I feel like one of the things CRT stresses is that objectivity is an illusion, so encouraging the use of subjectivity as a strength in academic writing is a realist approach.
This week I was also very interested in Cheryl I. Harris’(1993) concept of Whiteness as property but it took me some time to feel like I actually know what she’s saying – at least enough that I could explain it to someone else. I think my first difficulty with it was as someone who has been raised within capitalist ideology, property is understood first as a thing or object that you own. Coexistent with this idea in modernity is the notion that we are not our bodies – that through the mind/body dualism developed first by Christian theologians and then in the Enlightenment era most ardently by Descartes, we are in essence our minds/souls. So for Descartes the ability to think rationally is the essential quality of being human. In this configuration the body is an empty shell for holding our brains. This ideas is taken further by Kant in his declaration that the ability to be a rational being is attached to the idea of morality (insofar as Kant argued that what for him was normative morality was also rational morality). Robert Wald Sussman (2014) points out that,
“Kant’s theory of race corresponded to intellectual ability and limitation…In Kant’s theory, the nature of the white race guarantees its rational and moral order, and they are in the highest position of all creatures, followed by yellow, black, and then red. Nonwhites do not have the capacity to realize reason and rational moral perfectibility through education. To Kant, color is evidence of unchanging and unchangeable moral quality and thus ultimately of free will” (p. 27).
This process through which Enlightenment thinking rejects the body (a la Descartes haha) as inessential to being human and simultaneously repurposes the body as essential to ‘othered’ people is something that I think has remained central to the worldview of White folks in the U.S.
Seen through White supremacy, as primarily a body instead of a mind/soul the ‘rational subject’ is not a status afforded to people of color. This is particularly evident in the ‘angry Black’ stereotypes that persist today. Black men have been and continue to be constructed as violent and dangerous and thus are perceived immediately as violent dangerous when they express negative emotions. This ‘angry Black’ stereotyping extends to Black women as well and causes a self-policing of outward expressions of emotion, a precautionary tactic deployed to avoid being categorized by this stereotype. In her auto ethnographic essay, Robin M. Boylon (2014) recalls: “speaking to a male student in my office, careful to smile after every few words, because I don’t want to come across as angry… I realize that I oftentimes avoid my anger and suppress expressions of it in fear that I will be viewed as an ‘angry black woman’” (Adams, Jones, & Ellis, 2014, p. 135). The inability to express subjectivity in public and private discourse squashes the perceived identity of Black men and women, causing them to develop a one dimensional affect that is deployed as they see fit. As Boylon demonstrates, the internalization of this stereotype inhibits Black women, and men by extension, from ‘being in the world’ and perceived as a rational subject through a fundamental limitation on the expression of their subjectivities. Coming back around to the idea of Whiteness as property, the ability to think rationally and act morally are framed by White supremacy as the actions of White bodies, so in the end, quite literally, our bodies are the property of our minds.
In terms of Law, Harris points specifically to the role that the identity of Whiteness has played in the development and maintenance of White supremacy by the legal system, particularly in the history of U.S. slavery and Native American land issues. She explains that “the law has established and protected an actual property interest in whiteness itself…[so much so that]…According whiteness actual legal status converted an aspect of identity into an external object of property, moving whiteness from privileged identity to a vested interest” (Harris, 1993, pp. 1724–1725 ). This makes a lot of sense to me and makes me think again about Iverson’s (2007) use of discourse analysis and how language shapes the world in not only abstract ways, but in concrete ways as well. Particularly in the arena of law, though, you have a piece of paper saying that the world should look one way, something like civil rights and racial equality for instance, but then the material conditions of the world reveal the opposite when you look through the lens of racial realism. Structures of power then reveal themselves in such a way that I can’t un-see what I have begun to see by taking this class. Finally, I think the Solorzano, Ceja and Yosso (2000) essay is very important for its treatment of microagressions and stereotype threat.
I think stereotype threat is very real and is revealed in the example in my discussion above. Microagression, however, seems to be one way to understand the link between individual and structural racism, both the perpetration and experience of racism. In terms of structural racism I think the phrase itself might obscure an understanding of how structural racism works in the world of the everyday individual. Solorzano gives an example of a student who talks about feeling invisible in class not only in terms of the subject matter, but because a stereotype has systematically framed them as the type of person to whom the subject matter does not – for lack of a better word – belong. (Actually in terms of Whiteness as property this is the perfect word). This stereotyping will then, as the authors explain, cause the instructor to be less likely to call on that student. In this instance, the structure of a system based on White supremacy causes the student to experience the racist microagression performed by the instructor who has been informed by the stereotype that frames this particular
person.
Sorry if this response is sort of disjointed – there are so many new things for me to work through and I think that’s what I’ve done here partly.
Bibliography
Adams, T. E., Jones, S. H., & Ellis, C. (2014). Autoethnography. Oxford University Press.
Bergerson, A. (2003). Critical race theory and white racism: Is there room for white scholars in fighting racism in education? QSE. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(1), 61–63.
Harris, C. (1993). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791.
Solorzano, D., Ceja, M., & Yosso, T. (2000). Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students. The Journal of Negro Education, 69(1/2), 60–73.
Sussman, R. W. (2014). The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea. Harvard University Press.
Critical Review #2
Dr. LaGarrett King
28 June 2015
The article that we read this week that I found myself identifying the strongest with was Amy Bergerson’s (2003)– this is not surprising since she is also a White woman. Her writing asked some of the questions that I have only just begun to formulate in my own head. The question of authorship is central to her discussion: can a White person be a CRT scholar? Her answer appears to be ‘sort of’ in that she advocates for White scholars to employ CRT in their scholarship but I think she stops short of stating that White people can be Critical Race Theorists. In a nutshell, she seems to be saying that employing CRT as a critical framework through which to analyze race is fine, but …show more content…
that the White scholar should also recognize that they can never actually be a theorist – a creator – of this framework since positionality and experience are central to the idea of CRT. This makes a lot of sense to me. I think in my projects the most useful way to talk about race will be CRT. It will act as a framework, a language, and a body of knowledge for me to stand on which will allow me to state things about race and racism in such a way that I can present a positionality that I do not experience myself. Reading Bergerson’s article was important for me to think through these issues of positionality and the co-optability of theoretical discourses. As to this latter idea, I think that if I commit my own positionality as a White woman, my own rhetoric will reflect a deference to the voices for whom I cannot speak, but can present on their own terms. This will be a challenge I hope to live up to. We talk about objectivity in academic work which is simply not something that is achievable. I feel like one of the things CRT stresses is that objectivity is an illusion, so encouraging the use of subjectivity as a strength in academic writing is a realist approach.
This week I was also very interested in Cheryl I. Harris’(1993) concept of Whiteness as property but it took me some time to feel like I actually know what she’s saying – at least enough that I could explain it to someone else. I think my first difficulty with it was as someone who has been raised within capitalist ideology, property is understood first as a thing or object that you own. Coexistent with this idea in modernity is the notion that we are not our bodies – that through the mind/body dualism developed first by Christian theologians and then in the Enlightenment era most ardently by Descartes, we are in essence our minds/souls. So for Descartes the ability to think rationally is the essential quality of being human. In this configuration the body is an empty shell for holding our brains. This ideas is taken further by Kant in his declaration that the ability to be a rational being is attached to the idea of morality (insofar as Kant argued that what for him was normative morality was also rational morality). Robert Wald Sussman (2014) points out that,
“Kant’s theory of race corresponded to intellectual ability and limitation…In Kant’s theory, the nature of the white race guarantees its rational and moral order, and they are in the highest position of all creatures, followed by yellow, black, and then red. Nonwhites do not have the capacity to realize reason and rational moral perfectibility through education. To Kant, color is evidence of unchanging and unchangeable moral quality and thus ultimately of free will” (p. 27).
This process through which Enlightenment thinking rejects the body (a la Descartes haha) as inessential to being human and simultaneously repurposes the body as essential to ‘othered’ people is something that I think has remained central to the worldview of White folks in the U.S.
Seen through White supremacy, as primarily a body instead of a mind/soul the ‘rational subject’ is not a status afforded to people of color. This is particularly evident in the ‘angry Black’ stereotypes that persist today. Black men have been and continue to be constructed as violent and dangerous and thus are perceived immediately as violent dangerous when they express negative emotions. This ‘angry Black’ stereotyping extends to Black women as well and causes a self-policing of outward expressions of emotion, a precautionary tactic deployed to avoid being categorized by this stereotype. In her auto ethnographic essay, Robin M. Boylon (2014) recalls: “speaking to a male student in my office, careful to smile after every few words, because I don’t want to come across as angry… I realize that I oftentimes avoid my anger and suppress expressions of it in fear that I will be viewed as an ‘angry black woman’” (Adams, Jones, & Ellis, 2014, p. 135). The inability to express subjectivity in public and private discourse squashes the perceived identity of Black men and women, causing them to develop a one dimensional affect that is deployed as they see fit. As Boylon demonstrates, the internalization of this stereotype inhibits Black women, and men by extension, from ‘being in the world’ and perceived as a rational subject through a fundamental limitation on the expression of their subjectivities. Coming back around to the idea of Whiteness as property, the ability to think rationally and act morally are framed by White supremacy as the actions of White bodies, so in the end, quite literally, our bodies are the property of our minds.
In terms of Law, Harris points specifically to the role that the identity of Whiteness has played in the development and maintenance of White supremacy by the legal system, particularly in the history of U.S. slavery and Native American land issues. She explains that “the law has established and protected an actual property interest in whiteness itself…[so much so that]…According whiteness actual legal status converted an aspect of identity into an external object of property, moving whiteness from privileged identity to a vested interest” (Harris, 1993, pp. 1724–1725 ). This makes a lot of sense to me and makes me think again about Iverson’s (2007) use of discourse analysis and how language shapes the world in not only abstract ways, but in concrete ways as well. Particularly in the arena of law, though, you have a piece of paper saying that the world should look one way, something like civil rights and racial equality for instance, but then the material conditions of the world reveal the opposite when you look through the lens of racial realism. Structures of power then reveal themselves in such a way that I can’t un-see what I have begun to see by taking this class. Finally, I think the Solorzano, Ceja and Yosso (2000) essay is very important for its treatment of microagressions and stereotype threat.
I think stereotype threat is very real and is revealed in the example in my discussion above. Microagression, however, seems to be one way to understand the link between individual and structural racism, both the perpetration and experience of racism. In terms of structural racism I think the phrase itself might obscure an understanding of how structural racism works in the world of the everyday individual. Solorzano gives an example of a student who talks about feeling invisible in class not only in terms of the subject matter, but because a stereotype has systematically framed them as the type of person to whom the subject matter does not – for lack of a better word – belong. (Actually in terms of Whiteness as property this is the perfect word). This stereotyping will then, as the authors explain, cause the instructor to be less likely to call on that student. In this instance, the structure of a system based on White supremacy causes the student to experience the racist microagression performed by the instructor who has been informed by the stereotype that frames this particular
person.
Sorry if this response is sort of disjointed – there are so many new things for me to work through and I think that’s what I’ve done here partly.
Bibliography
Adams, T. E., Jones, S. H., & Ellis, C. (2014). Autoethnography. Oxford University Press.
Bergerson, A. (2003). Critical race theory and white racism: Is there room for white scholars in fighting racism in education? QSE. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(1), 61–63.
Harris, C. (1993). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791.
Solorzano, D., Ceja, M., & Yosso, T. (2000). Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students. The Journal of Negro Education, 69(1/2), 60–73.
Sussman, R. W. (2014). The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea. Harvard University Press.