Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society - Hardcover

Powell, John A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253006295 ISBN 13: 9780253006295

Verlag: INDIANA UNIV PR, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Renowned social justice advocate john a. powell persuasively argues that we have not achieved a post-racial society and that there is much work to do to redeem the American promise of inclusive democracy. Culled from a decade of writing about social justice and spirituality, these meditations on race, identity, and social policy provide an outline for laying claim to our shared humanity and a way toward healing ourselves and securing our future. Racing to Justice challenges us to replace attitudes and institutions that promote and perpetuate social suffering with those that foster relationships and a way of being that transcends disconnection and separation.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

john a. powell is Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor's Chair in Equity and Inclusion. He is author (with Gavin Kearney and Vina Kay) of In Pursuit of a Dream Deferred, and (with Laughlin McDonald) of The Rights of Racial Minorities: The Basic ACLU Guide to Racial Minority Rights.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Racing to Justice

Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society

By John A. Powell

Indiana University Press

Copyright © 2012 John A. Powell
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-253-00629-5

Contents

Foreword by David R. Roediger, 
Acknowledgments, 
Introduction Moving beyond the Isolated Self, 
PART ONE RACE AND RACIALIZATION, 
1 Post-Racialism or Targeted Universalism?, 
2 The Color-Blind Multiracial Dilemma: Racial Categories Reconsidered, 
3 The Racing of American Society: Race Functioning as a Verb before Signifying as a Noun, 
PART TWO WHITE PRIVILEGE, 
4 Interrogating Privilege, Transforming Whiteness, 
5 White Innocence and the Courts: Jurisprudential Devices That Obscure Privilege, 
PART THREE THE RACIALIZED SELF, 
6 Dreaming of a Self beyond Whiteness and Isolation, 
7 The Multiple Self: Implications for Law and Social Justice, 
PART FOUR ENGAGEMENT, 
8 Lessons from Suffering: How Social Justice Informs Spirituality, 
Afterword, 
Notes, 
References, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Post-Racialism or Targeted Universalism?

We hear it said nowadays that there is no "race problem," but only a "class problem." ... From a practical angle there is a point in this reasoning. But from a theoretical angle it contains escapism in new form.... And it tends to conceal the whole system of special deprivations visited upon the Negro only because he is not white.

Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma

Executive and legislative branches, which for generations now have considered these types of policies and procedures, should be permitted to employ them with candor and with confidence that a constitutional violation does not occur whenever a decisionmaker considers the impact a given approach might have on students of different races.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle

The United States made history on November 4, 2008, by electing Barack Obama as its first African American president, generating a sense of pride and a collective celebration that was shared worldwide. The installation of a black president who was supported by a significant minority of white voters was an occasion imbued with great political, social, historical, and cultural meaning. That meaning has been interpreted and expressed in many different ways, and Americans will continue to attempt to determine its contours and synthesize its various strands far into the future. As we engage in this process, different segments of society will continue to identify and promote different meanings, any of which may have important ramifications. Perhaps no aspect of the election compares, however, with the milestone that it represents with respect to the history of race. Questions about how we are to understand racial conditions in society and what the proper role of public policy and law should be in addressing – or avoiding – racial issues will gain greater salience as we seek ways of building upon the understandings the election has fostered. These questions about where we are on the issue of race are not just factual or descriptive; they are deeply political as well, having implications for how and when we respond to social problems and how we define the scope of our collective obligations.

RACE, RACISM, AND RACIALIZATION

In exploring these questions, I will add the term "racialization" to the more common terms "race" and "racism," which are understood in a way that is too limited and specific to fully address these important issues. By racialization, I refer to the set of practices, cultural norms, and institutional arrangements that both reflect and help to create and maintain race-based outcomes in society. Because racialization is a set of historical and cultural processes, it does not have one particular meaning. Instead, it describes conditions and norms that are constantly evolving and interacting with the sociopolitical environment, varying from location to location as well as throughout different periods in history. These processes are not uniformly present or static. They respond to what we collectively do and think and are therefore highly contested. As a society, however, we are not inclined to consider the nuances of race and racism. Rather, we tend to see them as a limited set of discrete practices that remain constant over time, in spite of social changes.

Even as we use "racialization" to connote the fluid nature of the phenomena we are describing and the broader context in which racial outcomes are manifested and understood, the use of this term will not automatically break us of our reflexive thinking and mental habits around race and racism. In this country, the cultural understanding of racism is most closely associated with Jim Crow. In this context, it is imagined as conscious discriminatory activity, directed at a particular victim, by racist individuals. Issues of race and racism, therefore, have come to be understood as explicit acts by individuals or explicit laws or policies implemented by institutions such as school boards or municipal governments. This overly individualistic definition of race and racism fits well with our country's individualistic approach to many life issues. Consequently, issues of race are likely to be seen primarily as deliberate psychosocial events, instigated by individual bad actors or by institutions managed or directed by them. This view was made law in the 1976 case Washington v. Davis, which sets out the Supreme Court's discriminatory purpose doctrine, requiring that a plaintiff prove intent in racial discrimination claims. From the point of view of the Court in this case, the Jim Crow system – a highly institutionalized and extensive regime of racial oppression that was only partly legal – is reduced to the behavior of bigots, whose policies can be purged or reversed in an election cycle or by excising the offending de jure rules. In this individualistic frame of analysis, if one does not engage in conscious acts of racism, or, better still, does not consciously see race, then there can be no racism or racialization.

This requirement of proof of intentional discrimination became the legal standard at the same time that our society more consciously embraced a public position of racial egalitarianism. Virtually all sectors of society now renounce racism. To call someone racist impugns not only the legality of that person's actions but also his or her morality. Indeed, to call someone racist today is seen as incendiary and a form of character assassination. The good American refuses to engage in conscious racially motivated behavior and refuses to see race or call it out. He is race-blind, purportedly embracing the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that our children "will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Unfortunately, this line is too often used to suggest that were Dr. King alive today, he would oppose policies such as affirmative action or race-conscious voluntary integration. This allows the good American to claim that as long as others share this blindness, race does not matter.

RACE BLINDNESS AND POST-RACIALISM

The conservative form of race blindness has been extremely callous at times. Consider the Supreme Court's 2007 opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. The case actually involved two school districts: Seattle, in which...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: INDIANA UNIV PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0253006295
• ISBN 13: 9780253006295
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar