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How has the United States justified racism historically?, 71rJuzmkrbL, 90,…
How has the United States justified racism historically?
Structural & Scientific Rationale
Scientific Racism and the Usage of Pseudosciences
Fields Reading "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Race is not an element of human biology...it is a social construct, a product of social thought and relations"
Concepts this text engages:
Race as ideological: She argues how race isn't a fact of biology but a system of beliefs that White people use to validate their actions.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I personally found Field's argument to be excellent. Race is not the reason slavery happened, but rather its consequence. Fields illustrates how white people CREATED differences as a means of exploitation, manipulation, and systemic abuse. It naturalizes inequity, not a biological reality.
Goldberg Reading "Racist Culture"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Science provided a language of authority in terms of which racial ideology could be developed and advanced as incontestable fact"
Concepts this text engages:
Naturalizing difference, human hierarchies, science as justification.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I chose this reading because Goldberg argues that science and reasoning isn't as "neutral" as many think. Science is often seen as purely objective, looking to advance humanity and the common good. However, his essay highlights how these same "objective" forces institutionalize racism to build hierarchy and emphasize "otherness."
Goldberg Reading "The Racial State"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Modern states have systematically structured their institutions to racialize difference"
"Scientific racism provided the rationale and the method for the state's classificatory practices"
Concepts this text engages:
The Racial State: according to Goldberg, the racial state is when both race and power structures are deeply interconnected. Race plays a huge role in the formation of hierarchy.
Race as "naturalized": the reading talks about how race is portrayed as something inherent in state discourse. White supremacy makes this inferiority appear "natural," justifying inequity and power.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Goldberg's writing belongs in this category because his primary argument is how race has became institutionalized in law-making, science, and other important power structures. These foundations are crucial to U.S. society, and when race twists the narrative, people become excluded and financially neglected. Without highlighting race as something (Whites argue) biologically inferior, we couldn't truly understand the government today!
Du Bois Reading "Of Spiritual Strivings"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a N*gro and an American" (pg. 9)
One ever feels his twoness--An American, a N*gro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings" (pg. 8-9)
Concepts this text engages:
Double Consciousness: internal feeling of inferiority. In other words, seeing the minority through the eyes of the majority.
The "Veil": Du Bois makes frequent references to this term. It stands for the color line, highlighting the intense separation between Black and White.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I included this reading in the category because he criticizes and acknowledges white society's claim to having biological superiority. He pushes for a different narrative, reinforcing the humanity Black people have. Whether it's culture or activities, Du Bois argues that the word "N*gro" is founded upon psuedoscience. This takes away from the Black identity and paints them as biologically inferior. In other words, it is rather a social construction.
Racial Formation & Relationship with Social Constructions
Omi & Winant Reading "The Theory of Racial Formation"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Racial Formation is the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed"
Concepts this text engages:
Race as product of social construction, racial formation (how racial categories are "created" by institutions and government.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I placed this text here because Omi and Winant talk about how race is a social construction that adapts over time, not an inherent, biological title. Instead, they feel we need a more fluid framework in engaging with race.
Bonilla-Silva Reading "Rethinking Racism"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Racism should be viewed as the collective and structural practices that reproduce racial inequality, not merely as individual prejudice or ideology."
Concepts this text engages:
"Colorblind" racism (racism that appears as something neutral but actually ignores past injustices and structural problems. Essentially a mask) Race as a structure not biological element.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I included this reading because Bonilla-Silva addresses how White society "boils down" race to biological essentialism. In other words, minorities are seen as "sub-human" and wrong compared to White rule. Race is a prejudice, not an inherent element in nature.
Naturalization of Race (as an Ideology)
Fields Reading "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Americans cling to race as if it were a badge of biological identity, despite every evidence to the contrary."
Concepts this text engages:
Race as common sense, naturalization of race, race created by slavery
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I included this in the naturalization of race section because Fields explains how race was invented FOLLOWING slavery, not before. This undermines the pseudoscience biological claim, showing how White society has made something like race a universal fact. Race was just a hasty justification for exploitation in Field's eyes.
Mills Reading "The Racial Contract"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The Racial Contract is a set of formal or informal agreements...to categorize the world's peoples and govern them accordingly."
"White people will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made"
Concepts this text engages:
The Racial Contract (when White people build our society where it only benefits them, putting minorities below them. It is a parasitic relationship where White society exploits Black people and other minorities), minorities legal exclusion from the word "human."
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I chose Mills "The Racial Contract" inside my race naturalization subcategory because of how the racial contract assumes White superiority as the norm and nonwhites wrongful. It sadly shows how radicalized foundations have normalized these dynamics, placing minorities in not only systemic problems but also in the eyes of the public. The racial contract makes people think "this is how society is supposed to run because it's how it always has." This essay is especially important for understanding race as inherent.
Goldberg Reading "The Racial State"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The racial state naturalizes race--it transforms historically contingent social constructions into apparently self-evident and immutable categories."
Concepts this text engages:
The Racial State, liberalism through race, inherent hierarchy.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This section fits under the defined subcategory because it further emphasizes race as a social construct. He argues that even today violence against minorities is justified through the naturalization of race. "The Racial State" (especially the word "state") infers that it is rather built by White society, not inherent. Public policies, law enforcement, and other bodies may cause people to believe so, but Goldberg sheds light on something previously thought "natural"
Coloniality & the Violence Associated
Quijano Reading "Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Coloniality is not over, it is all over"
"Eurocentrism is a perspective of knowledge whose systematic content was produced in the context of the process of European colonial domination"
Concepts this text engages:
Coloniality of Power (how the framework implemented by colonial times still transcends into our current world, especially through government and other institutions), the control of knowledge (Colonized vs colonizers relationship, colonizers write the narrative about what's right, thus colonizing the mind).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Quijano fits perfectly into my coloniality subcategory because A) he defined the term & B) Quijano looks at how our global systems still operate from racial discrimination, falling back to times of colonization and conquest. It is a sad reality but must be recognized.
Wynter Reading "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The coloniality of being consists in the systemic overrepresentation of the Western bourgeois self-conception of the human."
"The struggle of our times...is that of securing the right to define what it is to be human."
Concepts this text engages:
Epistemic violence (how the majority erases, controls, and disempowers minorities), the coloniality of being (connects with Quijano, colonial power controls the "boundaries" for being human. Rather, coloniality structures society around inferior and superior races).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I put this reading under this category/subcategory because Wynter builds upon Quijano's "coloniality" and talks about the violent history--racial domination--in our country's past. She argues we must change the narrative by decolonizing race intellectually, otherwise it cannot be done. Science was used as a weapon of othering and separating "human" from "sub-human," which is why I put it here!
Mills Reading "Racial Contract"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"White mythologies, invented narratives of racial superiority, shape not only political institutions but the very ways people think."
Concepts this text engages:
The Racial Contract (society structured for Whites), ignorance of race and racism, human vs sub-human.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading fits under my coloniality section because Mills illustrates how colonialism (which birthed the othering by "race") became the mainstream and controls Western thought. The Racial Contract painted itself as something inherently neutral but was actually a means for justifying slavery.
Legal & Institutional Codification
Immigration Laws & Struggles with Citizenship
Ngai Reading "Impossible Subjects"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The 'illegal alien' is a legal and political construction, not a natural category."
Concepts this text engages:
Impossible Subject (can never truly belong), citizenship as a means of control, how "illegality" is a legal construction, not inherent.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Fits here because it talks about how the term "illegal" has become a word synonymous with "foreigners" and immigrants--specifically Mexicans--and is another way of marginalizing these groups.
Hernandez Reading "MIGRA!"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Mexicans came to be seen not as people who crossed the border, but as the border--a threat to national integrity."
Concepts this text engages:
Criminalization of migrants, citizenship's relationship to race ("White" immigrants have easier experience), border policies as cruel.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
MIGRA! connects to this subcategory because it revolves around the experiences of Mexican migrants and the racial hierarchies, sentiments, and hostility faced. Coming to the U.S. for a better life, nativism and anti-immigrant legislation pushes against that freedom.
Saito Reading "Symbolism Under Siege"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Citizenship has never been a neutral legal status in the United States--it is racialized and historically contingent."
Concepts this text engages:
conditional belonging, "racialized" citizenship, national security as force against immigration.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Saito's writing fits here because it is a deep-dive into immigration status, citizenship, and the hardships associated seen through the internment camps for Japanese Americans.
Aroon Reading "Supreme Court"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Citizenship was not simply a matter of allegiance or acceptance, but of racial acceptability."
Concepts this text engages:
The legal construction of Whiteness (based on not on science but ideology created to "other" and exploit minorities financially), citizenship as a privilege tied to race, racist immigration laws.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Aroon is an excellent fit here because it looks at the 1923 Supreme Court case, U.S. vs Bhagat Singh Thind, which ruled immigrants aren't white because of "common understanding." Singh thus couldn't be naturalized under the law as a result. This shows how immigration laws were, by default, racist and unfair towards immigrants.
Bruyneel Reading "Third Space of Sovereignty"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"This third space reveals the legal and political contradictions at the heart of American democracy"
Concepts this text engages:
"Third Space" of Sovereignty (minorities aren't fully within or outside America, a complex identity of belonging without being accepted), colonial frameworks in U.S. legal systems (minorities are subjects, not equals; colonial discourse).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Fits under "struggles with immigration" category because it introduces the "third space" concept of belonging and criticizes how immigration law is founded upon colonialism and inequality. Defined as "legal others," not "us."
"Colorblindness" & Legal Neutrality
Bonilla-Silva Reading "Rethinking Racism"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The most effective way to reproduce a racial order is to deny its existence."
Concepts this text engages:
colorblind racism, false legal neutrality (where structures appear "neutral" when it comes to race but clearly have inherent biases), race as a structure.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading fits here because it talks about how legal systems appear as neutral entities in regards to race. However, through the discourse of colorblindness and the constant presence of racism in our society, Bonilla-Silva wants readers to see past this "neutral mask."
Goldberg Reading "Integration"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Integration has increasingly has come to mean entry without intervention, inclusion without disruption."
Concepts this text engages:
Legal and Policy neutrality as ideology, colorblindness, entry over transformation.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Goldberg's writing fits here because he illustrates how institutions try to appear neutral on race. The larger systems follow this colorblind mentality on the outside, hiding the inner exclusion and discrimination happening on the inside. In other words, Goldberg argues they don't care about structural changes but a superficial inclusion.
Stories of Redress
Saito Reading "Symbolism Under Siege"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Symbolic gestures often reinforce dominant ideologies by implying that racism is a thing of the past."
Concepts this text engages:
Performative Redress (compensation from the government in an attempt to "fix" past injustices and discrimination), addressing vs solving structural issues.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I chose this reading because it focuses on the effects of redress, specifically in the Japanese American internment camps. While redress says "we've done you wrong," it doesn't actually change the system. Saito argues redress wasn't enough for these people who lost their businesses, homes, and entire livelihood.
Goldberg Reading "Integration"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Integration, as practiced, confirms the system rather than challenging it."
"Integration increasingly has come to mean entry without intervention, inclusion without disruption."
Concepts this text engages:
Redress & inclusion (integration is like redress, depicting where the past's wrongs have been rectified: without addressing the structural issue), diversity.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Goldberg is a great fit here because he talks about how integration functions as redress. However, as we've learned through various other stories of redress, the underlying structures that caused the problem isn't changed. It is temporary solutions to a problem as old as slavery.
Education, Accessibility & Anti-Blackness in Institutions
Pirtle et al. Reading "Anti-Blackness at HSI's"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Equity initiatives frequently rely on race-neutral frameworks that reproduce anti-Black exclusion."
Concepts this text engages:
Anti-Blackness in education, how racial capitalism appears in schools (diversity as a mask for funding).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Fits into the category because it highlights how Black students can be mistreated in Academia, and, in the article's case, at HSIs. It shows how places that claim to be inclusive aren't truly what they seem sometimes.
Crenshaw Reading "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The problem is not simply that schools fail to address difference, but that they refuse to see difference as a source of vulnerability and require assimilation into dominant norms"
Concepts this text engages:
Intersectionality (crossing of experiences like gender, race, etc), invisibility in the education system.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading connects strongly with my subcategory because Crenshaw, through emphasizing the importance of intersectionality, illustrates how students in the education system can be neglected (i.e. Black female students) and the need to address it. Women of color are often overlooked in both Black and female movements, which Crenshaw brings to light.
Race as the Legal Construction of Inequality
Crenshaw Reading "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, but that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences."
Concepts this text engages:
Intersectionality, structural inequality via laws (not protecting marginalized peoples), erasure of identity (women of color, for example).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I included this reading because it talks about race's relationship with laws, which are the foundation of our society. It treats things like gender and race separately, but as Crenshaw argues, we must use an intersectional lens to help marginalized groups in the country.
Fields Reading "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The misfortune of Afro-Americans is not that they were Black, but that they were enslaved."
Concepts this text engages:
the legal codification behind race, race as a result of slavery, natural hierarchies.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I inserted this passage because Fields sheds light on how race isn't something biological or inherent, but the byproduct of an ideology (founded by the White man) that has been legally incorporated into the foundational systems of our country. Laws didn't reflect these categories but invented them to justify exploitation.
Mills Reading "Racial Liberalism"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Racial liberalism is liberalism for white people"
Concepts this text engages:
Racial liberalism (claiming to be race-neutral), The Racial Contract (structure society that keeps Whites in power), rights depending on race.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I chose Mills to fit the category because he addresses how all of our legal systems (healthcare, corporations, etc) were established by race, showing how it is the language of inequality.
Cultural Narratives, Media, & Performativity
Racialization of Fear
Saito Reading "Symbolism Under Siege"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The racialization of Arab Americans as terrorists serves to justify state violence under the guise of national security."
Concepts this text engages:
Constructed fear narratives (yellow peril, terrorism, foreignness) that make minorities appear "disloyal" and therefore hostile, fear as a method of control, scapegoating (making Japanese Americans seem like "security threats" to justify internment).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I selected Saito's reading because it discusses how the United States has weaponized fear, especially during times of crisis. Japanese Americans during the internment were victims of such fear, attaching sentiments to minorities that justify discrimination and exploitation.
Baldwin Reading "The Fire Next Time"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Color is not a human or personal reality; it is a political reality."
Concepts this text engages:
Fear as control tactic, white fragility's role in projecting fear, the identity of Black people as "inherently threatening."
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Baldwin's writing directly correlates here because he talks about how White supremacy depicts Black people as dangerous to uphold the racist structures beneath them. In other words, Whites frame this as "protection" while in reality it justifies discrimination and violence. Baldwin comments how White society is itself fearful of minorities, doing what it can to "stay on top."
Media & Cultural Representation
Morrison Reading "Recitatif"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"What the hell does it matter what their names were? It was one of those things you feel for a long time afterward."
"We looked like salt and pepper standing there and that's what the other kids called us sometimes."
Concepts this text engages:
Readers are don't get closure (as to which race each girl is) which shows representation as unreliable, how culture influences race, race constructed through assumptions.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Toni Morrison's short story belongs here because it "plays around" with how we represent and perceive race. We never find out which girl is "salt" or "pepper," which makes readers think about how they're using assumptions to try and categorize them. It plays into how media and culture shapes how we recognize race. I found this reading to be introspective.
Beltran Reading "The Trouble with Unity"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"To be seen as political subjects, Latinos are often expected to reproduce national myths of hard work, family values, and loyalty."
"Latino political identity often demands a performance of gratitude, productivity, and allegiance to the nation."
Concepts this text engages:
Unity used as erasure (grouping all Hispanic peoples into a homogenous group), consensual citizenship (have to "earn" it), media painting Hispanics in certain lights.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I grouped this reading here because it deals with how the media can change how a group is represented. It groups all "Latinos" together and erases the unique complexities found in such a broad term.
Ngai Reading "Impossible Subjects"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Impossible subjects are those who cannot be assimilated into the nation, yet who are required for its economic survival."
"The image of the Mexican illegal alien crystallized a racialized stereotype of foreignness that remains embedded in American culture."
Concepts this text engages:
"Impossible Subjects" (someone who is denied recognition yet exists in that area; only seen as a threat, not person), criminalization, media production of alienage.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading by Ngai fits perfectly into my category because it deals with how media narratives can control the minds of America. If the media paints Mexicans as "illegal aliens" or "criminals," the public sentiment then becomes that. It shows the dangers of media and how the rhetoric changes through depictions (selected) of immigrants.
Li & Nicholson Reading "When Model Minorities Become Yellow Peril"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Asian Americans are racialized as both the evidence of American tolerance and the cause of American crises."
Concepts this text engages:
Yellow Peril, "Model Minority," racial stereotyping.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I thought this category was a fine spot for Li & Nicholson because they talk about COVID-19 and how to media quickly turned Asian Americans into "public enemy number-one." Their writing really illustrates the power media has over public perception, making whatever agenda pushed the "norm" and correct way.
"White Innocence" & National Myths/Stereotypes
Glaude Reading "The Danger of White Innocence"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"White innocence is the belief that white people are somehow free of the burden of the past, that they are not implicated in the racial sins of America."
"So many Americans want to celebrate the nation's ideals while ignoring the way those very ideals have been systematically denied to others."
Concepts this text engages:
White Innocence (and the myth of it), stereotyping, deflecting blame for structural problems on minorities.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading fits perfectly into the category because it deals with how White society distorts/changes historical narratives to deny accountability. It puts the burden upon the minorities, the very same people who were mistreated! It reminds me of the new-age term "gaslighting."
Baldwin Reading "The Fire Next Time"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"It is the innocence which constitutes the crime."
"This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended you should perish."
Concepts this text engages:
White Innocence, exceptionalism, stereotyping against Black Americans.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Baldwins reading fits perfectly into the category because he is dismantling the White innocence and addressing it directly. The quotes (below) ironically use the words "innocent" and "ghetto" to both show White society as hypocrites and the forces against people of color.
Saito Reading "Symbolism Under Siege"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Selective memory allows the nation to mourn injustice without dismantling the structures that enabled it."
Concepts this text engages:
Scapegoating (Whites through white innocence), the myth of learning (the nation always acts like it is growing and learning from past mistakes when, in reality, it isn't), finding apology as the correct answer (when it doesn't solve anything)
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This connects to the category because it shows how symbolic gestures aren't enough for addressing the history. White society wants people to "move on" and "accept the apology" when it truly isn't enough. It's appearing as morally redeemed.
Fanon "The Black Man and Psychopathology"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
In the white world the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema."
"The Nxgro is an animal, the Nxgro is bad, the Nxgro is mean, the Nxgro is ugly" (Fanon, addressing what white society says about Black people)
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I included this reading because it addresses how the White perception of minorities (via stereotyping) is synonymous with American discourse. They paint Black existence, with the brush in the hands of White supremacy.
Concepts this text engages:
Stereotyping, White Innocence, how White society shapes perception.
Li & Nicholson Reading "When Model Minorities Become Yellow Peril"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The model minority stereotype enables the maintenance of white innocence by positioning Asian Americans as proof of meritocracy."
"The resurgence of yellow peril rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic reveals how Asian Americans are never fully included in the nation."
Concepts this text engages:
White innocence (White society thinks itself the victim, thinking the minorities are causing them problems and thus are not responsible for the racism), model minorities (the "good" minorities which reinforces white superiority), yellow peril as placing threat behind race.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This fits into the subcategory because it illuminates stereotypes like "model minority" and attacks how white innocence places itself atop the hierarchy. Also talks about Japanese Americans as "forever foreigners," which is addressing a deep stereotype. Talks about COVID-19 as well.
Co-opted Resistance & Institutional Inclusion
Lorde Reading "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Tokenism is not transformation."
For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support."
Concepts this text engages:
The Master's Tools (the framework, including patriarchal and white (sometimes capitalist) ideologies, cannot be used to undo the system (the master's house), calling for a different approach), tokenism (recognizing the wrong has happened) versus transformation (actually changing the system), differences as strengths (she argues Black women should use their power within themselves).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Audre Lorde's reading fits perfectly into this category and subcategory because she criticizes "tokening" minorities to appear inclusive. Lorde calls for women of color to speak up and express themselves, urging to other women that "the master's house" cannot be undone in the current structure of society (the master's tools). Empowerment, to Lorde, doesn't matter if it isn't changing the marginalizing hierarchies. The feminist movement she describes needs to fix the system or otherwise nothing will truly change!
Crenshaw Reading "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The failure to account for intersectionality leaves women of color underserved and excluded by both feminist theory and antiracist politics."
Concepts this text engages:
Intersectionality (how multiple aspects of identity can influence one's experience in the world (race, gender, class)), structural exclusion, how feminism and antiracism both include and exclude women from the conversation.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I included this reading because it brings in "intersectionality," which is extremely important for understanding institutional exclusion. It sheds light on, for example, the experiences of Black feminists during the early Womens' rights movements. Also mentions how tokenism makes such organizations appear "diverse" when they actually aren't.
Mills "Racial Liberalism"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"White liberalism historically did not regard racial justice as central to its agenda."
Concepts this text engages:
Racial Liberalism (structurally excludes non-White persons), The Racial Contract, co-opted inclusion (when minorities are present as long as they don't challenge the power structures), deception and colorblindness.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading fits into my category because it deals with how institutions appear as having "diversity" or an inclusive environment but actually exclude minorities from its community. This co-opts minority rights while maintaining the White control these institutions desperately want to upkeep.
Fanon "The Black Man and Psychopathology"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The Nxgro is comparison. There is the first truth: he is not understood to exist except in relation to the white man."
Concepts this text engages:
Inclusion through pathology (minorities only seen as objects of analysis, not as an actual being or human living in the same society as Whites), Co-optation in psychology (also found in my "sciences" organizing category, psychology presents itself as "neutral" but in reality views through the white perspective).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I've placed Fanon's reading here because: A) illustrates how Black resistance is institutionalized B) How frameworks like science and psychology follow the white perspective C) Joining the majority involves erasing one's self.
Tolerance & "Colorblind" Diversity
Evans Article "Wanted Diversity"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Diversity is desired until it disrupts the status quo"
"Companies often want people who look different, but not people who think differently."
Concepts this text engages:
Performative Diversity, colorblindness, corporate tolerance in the workplace (through race).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Evans is a great selection for my category because she illustrates how the term "diversity" has been weaponized by White society to mask racist structures and feelings. "Oh, we promote diversity." However, Evans shows us the only thing White America promotes is subservience and obedience.
Goldberg Reading "Integration"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Inclusion is premised on racial others adapting to prevailing norms rather than challenging them."
Concepts this text engages:
Colorblind diversity (when people say "race doesn't matter anymore" because places may appear to have diversity. Obviously, this statement isn't true), Conformity, not integration, tolerating diversity only when it doesn't demand restructuring, racial neoliberalism.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
Goldberg's text is applicable here because he criticizes colorblind diversity and highlights how minorities only have a surface-level inclusion, not complete integration into U.S. society. White society only tolerates minorities when obeying the racist structures already intact.
Pirtle et al. Reading "Anti-Blackness at HSI's"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"HSIs have benefitted from Black labor, activism, and cultural capital while failing to serve Black students."
"The diversity narrative at HSIs centers Latinx students and silences Black experiences, rendering Blackness invisible."
Concepts this text engages:
Anti-Blackness in diversity initiatives (HSIs ironically helping with diversity but against Black students), colorblind policies, racial capitalism (labeling itself as "diverse" and exploiting that title).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I included this article here because it is examining how HSIs claim to be inclusive but marginalize their Black students. It ties back to colorblindness and how diversity can be used to shield racial hierarchies and underlying racism. It's truly sad.
Maghbouleh Reading "The Limits of Whiteness"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"White classification fails to shield Iranian Americans from the racial scripts of suspicion, surveillance, and exclusion."
When we look Iranian, we lose our whiteness. But when we sound American, we gain it."
Concepts this text engages:
Contingent whiteness (making the category of "White" something conditional, in this case, for Iranian Americans), legal whiteness doesn't mean acceptance, myth of diversity (hides how even groups that appear White are minoritized).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading fits into my category because it critiques colorblind discourses and talks about how the classification of "white" becomes conditional. It highlights how these structures are extremely unfair and are totally outdated. Also deals with tolerance and dealing with the discrimination.
Economic Exploitation & Capitalism Rationale
Reparations and Debt Through History
Headlee Reading "Two Black Writers Debate Reparations"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"People forget that Black people were not just excluded from wealth-building--their labor was actively stolen to build the wealth of others."
"You can't fix inequality unless you go back and undo the damage that created it in the first place."
Concepts this text engages:
The "stealing" of intergenerational wealth and assets, recognizing the problem versus addressing/solving the problem, reparations and the public debate around them.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading fits perfectly inside the category because it addresses the historical and economic debt slavery and Jim Crow caused. It deals with making reparations and trying to fulfill the failed promises for Black Americans throughout history. Both Baldwin and Lorde, while having different positions, both stress the economic disparity must be recognized.
Du Bois article "Of Our Spiritual Strivings"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Would America have been America without her N*gro people?"
Concepts this text engages:
Double Consciousness (when minorities feel they aren't seen as a "whole" person but through the eyes of racism--an inner battle). "Moral debt" (this isn't a real term of his but kinda states how our country has a moral obligation (like reparations) to do Black people their justice).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I included Du Bois reading under my reparations section because it argues the importance of Black Americans to the economic independence and prosperity today. Without the tiring labor of Black Americans, the United States would never come close to the capitalist machine it is today. Rather, Du Bois is calling for a moral obligation.
Adams Reading "Evanston NBC News Article"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Critics have even noted that simply funding homeownership does not adequately address the systemic racism that makes it difficult for Black people to built wealth through the practice."
Concepts this text engages:
Reparations (trying to "right the wrongs" of the discriminatory past through payments or other forms. This term is heavily debatable as if true "reparations" can ever be made), generational trauma.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I chose the reading because the debate on reparations in Evanston, Illinois is very questionable. Sure, giving money for homes is a good thing, but it isn't addressing the systemic problem that put these people here IN THE FIRST PLACE! It is the result of racialized capitalism which controls who can have generational wealth and who cannot.
National Indian Gaming Commission Reading
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Tribal gaming, as we think of it today, dates back to the 1970's when a number of Indian tribes established bingo operations as a means of raising revenue."
Concepts this text engages:
Reparations (in the sense of giving benefits to Native Americans for the genocide brought upon them), ethical debate around reparations, gaming as voice for Native American wealth.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I included this reading here because it deals with the rise of Casinos that Native Americans used to "repair" some of the generational wealth lost due to mass genocide and colonial power. While obviously the impact can never be undone, this industry functions as a reparation for Natives to grow their wealth and be recognized.
Property, Land, and Finances
Park Reading "Money, Mortgages, and the Conquest of America"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
Mortgages served not only as financial instruments but also as tools of conquest--extending the settler's colonial project into everyday life."
Concepts this text engages:
Mortgages as colonial tools (how it makes land ownership dependent on race. Controls how minorities can lend), Dispossession of property through White superiority, land ownership converted to capitalist ideology in mind.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading fits well in this subcategory because it illustrates how colonial control was first to gain land. Settlers came to the United States and wiped out innocent native peoples. However, the motive soon turned to economic, not only capturing land for territory but the resources and financial benefits. Here, it shows how indigenous peoples were removed from their land in a desperate attempt for White prosperity.
Saito Reading "Symbolism Under Siege"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Internment entailed the loss of land, homes, livelihoods--none of which were adequately restored."
"The reparations movement for Japanese Americans...was consciously designed to be symbolic, not redistributive."
Concepts this text engages:
Economic dispossession via the government and policy-making, Symbolic (simply addressing it and saying things are fine now) versus Structural (actually reworking the frame) reparations, using race as a threat to justify economic changes ("red scare").
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading fits within the subcategory because it deals with unsubstantial reparations for Japanese Americans and the loss of businesses, assets, property, etc. They lost everything because of a racialized fear of Japanese spies.
Labor Stratification & its Connection to Capitalism
Quijano Reading "Coloniality of Power"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The control of labor, its resources and products, was perhaps the most important axis of colonial domination."
Concepts this text engages:
Global labor systems (the colonized were trapped in a global system of labor that exploited them for economic gains), racial hierarchy, racial capitalism (the colonizers not only benefited from the colonized labor but generated value and labor roles via race).
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I included this reading here because Quijano talks about colonialism assigned labor roles DIRECTLY as a result from race. Africans were seen as inferior via race which justified their reasoning for enslavement. This illustrates that capitalism rose due to racial discrimination--still present in the world we know.
Bonilla-Silva Reading "Rethinking Racism: Towards a Structural Interpretation"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The races that emerge from these systems receive differential rewards in labor markets, housing, education, and other social arenas"
Concepts this text engages:
Racism as a structural problem, colorblind capitalism (how even today when hiring people for jobs we see inequalities in how people are selected. This reinforces racism and the exploitation of minorities in our world), labor and its connection to race.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This reading makes sense here because not only does Bonilla-Silva say that racism isn't an individual prejudice, but a framework that is rooted in economic desires and labor stratification.
Hernandez Reading "MIGRA!"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Mexican migrants were desirable as laborers but undesirable as members of society"
"Deportation and exclusion became tools to preserve a seasonal, low-wage workforce."
Concepts this text engages:
Legal status as a weapon to exploit (Mexicans' undocumented status could be abused for even more labor, fear of deportation), racialization of labor (specifically Mexicans), minorities are "expendable."
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I chose this reading because it deals with how the United States exploited low-wage Mexican workers for cheap labor. However, not only did the U.S. want them for labor but as separate groups who weren't equal. Labor over humanity.
Capitalism as a Child of Slavery
Desmond Reading "American Capitalism"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The cotton plantation was America's first big business, and the enslaved worker its first essential worker."
Planters tracked enslaved people's productivity with precision...tallying pounds picked per day."
Concepts this text engages:
Plantations as corporations, violence as a planned economic strategy, slavery as forever interwoven with capitalism.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I put this reading here because it makes constant allusions to capitalism when discussing slavery, and vice-versa. Rather, the capitalist society today is just an "updated model" of the intense violence and control slavery entailed.
Fields Reading "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"It is mistaken to think that slavery was a system of race relations. Slavery was a system of labor exploitation."
"The social order required the ideology, not the other way around."
Concepts this text engages:
Continuity between capitalist structures and slavery, the role of Black hardship in American wealth, how race justifies capitalism.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I picked this reading because Fields stresses how we cannot examine capitalism as a structure without first recognizing the role of slavery. It is scary--for me at least--to see the parallels between the two. It is quite literally birthed from slavery.
Du Bois Reading "Of Our Spiritual Strivings"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"The nation has not yet found peace from its sins"
Concepts this text engages:
Double Consciousness, the importance of Black labor to America, the nation's dark past still shines today (through capitalism)
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
While Du Bois doesn't explicitly mention capitalism, it is inferred through the way he's talking about the nation's past. According to the quote (shown below), the "sins" the USA has is its treatment of minority groups as a systemic problem. Slavery was invented so the White man could better gain resources and land, making slavery a child of capitalism.
Continuing Exploitation Seen Today
Desmond Reading "American Capitalism"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"Innovations in finance and accounting--such as depreciation and amortization--can be traced to slavery's economic logic."
Concepts this text engages:
Slavery used to achieve financial means, predatory labor (which we see very often today, especially for those in lower classes) violence for work efficiency.
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
This text fits into the category because it shows how things like worker surveillance, racial wealth gaps, and other workplace aspects are directly inspired by slavery. This shows how exploitation still happens today: hundreds of years later.
Bonilla-Silva Reading "Rethinking Racism: Towards a Structural Interpretation"
Key ideas, concepts, and connections
Supporting Quote(s)
"What is missing in most explanations of racial inequality is the recognition that racism is a 'social structure'--a totality of social relations and practices."
Concepts this text engages:
Race as a structure (not individualized beliefs), how racial hierarchy mirrors the workplace, society drawn around "racial lines."
Why did I group this reading inside this category & subcategory?
I connected this reading to the subcategory because what Bonilla-Silva says about race as a system applies to the workplace today. Access to things like employment, education, and even medical care as tied to the racist foundations of our past.
