Soci of Racial and Ethnic Inequalities in the Americas

Soci 302 Lecture 2.pptx

1. Why do race and ethnicity matter? (as social problems, as theoretical problems)

2. Overview of today’s class Persistence of differences. Does it matter to us? How? Where? When? Race and ethnicity as social. No biological sustain, Forms of social classification of people and groups. Modern knowledge, colonial, not unified. Taxonomies. Difference co-relates multiple groups . Contexts vs Content. Difference is also self – recognition. “Internal vs external”.

3. 1. Does it matter to us? Does these categories affect our everyday life? Have you ever experienced / w itnessed the weight of them? Where / when? Has multiculturalism in Vancouver erased difference?

4. Persistence From racial and ethnic categories to Multicultural / mulitiethnic / multiracial social formations. Is it a problem for us as individuals? How?  Even if not, we are part of the “matrix”. Whiteness studies. Possibilities, capacities . Defines experiences. Is it a problem in Vancouver? – For whom? City administration – Government / Nation State. It is a problem for social sciences. Research. It is a problem fro groups: differential access to resources. Collective organization, activism.

5. Social Sciences’ expectations Assumption of disappearance is based on illuminist ideas. Which? Chicago School. 1920s Robert Park. Melting pot : Contact  Competition  Accommodation  Assimilation Problem for the city and for institutions. Marx: class solidarities would prevail Weber: state rationality would prevail

6. 2. Race and Ethnicity as social Race and ethnicity have no biological sustain. http ://www.understandingrace.org They are forms of social classification of people and groups. They are based in perceived (putative) differences. Because they organize groups and their possibilities, they have very concrete material effects, ie : - Access to labor market - Health. Social relations have an effect on biology but not the other way round.

7. 3. Modern Necessary for a unified nation – Internal Others. Colonial management of people. How to govern diversity? How to make a space for white settlers? Problem of separation, organizing people around being: normal / abnormal. Citizen / non citizen. Subject of law / subject under tutelage / threatening subject . It replaced other forms of separation (mostly religion). I t is not a unified knowledge.

8. 4. Taxonomy Criteria . Refers to sameness / difference. Organizes multiplicity . Mawani: not only Self / o ther but multiple others. Degrees of difference. Erases relations between elements. Implies forms of government (“ technologies of power” )

9. Borges: “certain Chinese encyclopedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: belonging to the Emperor, ( b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies ’ reminds us that classification is arbitrary, is social, responds to specific interests (if we do not have a context any classification seems “ridiculous”).

10. Why is there power in classification? - Hierarchies. - Life / death What does Mawani find in Colonial BC?

11. Beyond the C olonial P roximities How does colonial proximities in the early 20 th century affect us today here – now in Vancouver? Are we part of these field of tensions?