Medium Post 9/9

Before immersing myself in the materials, I had a general understanding of the racial constructs created by the institution of slavery and the biases that society has continually perpetuated since the colonization era. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, the white majority dehumanized African Americans in order to profit from their labor. This in turn established deep rooted standards of the “other”, a group that lacked refinement and civility. Although the Civil War eventually won emancipation, numerous obstacles were enacted including Jim Crow Laws that denied African Americans basic human rights. Today, black people continue their strife against the white majority for equality. Several portions of the materials struck me as particularly off putting, including the justifications for slavery and their development over time. In “Look, A Negro!”, Pinn explains how Europeans and Americans initially justified slavery through an economic lens. White peoples filled the need for a dispensable, cheap, labor force by purchasing African Americans. Only further in history did the need for social justifications become more urgent. When their power and resources began to feel jeopardized, white people expanded upon their racial validations. Pinn demonstrates how African Americans were reduced to object status in order to deny their autonomy. The biological “evidence” cited to draw concrete distinctions between racial groups bolstered institutionalized racism. This material felt especially off putting because as a lover of science, I believed that historically biology has exposed the truth and contrasted preconceived religious beliefs, especially during the Enlightenment era. The notion of using “anatomy” to categorize a group of people as subhuman is utterly disturbing. DuBois points out the provocative notion of double-consciousness, the struggle between existence in two separate worlds. One world promotes dehumanization which some black people have internalized over time. These stereotypes are perpetuated in “Birth of A Nation”, displaying African American men as savage beasts who threaten the safety of white purity. These ideas still exist in the BLM movement. Some modern riots and protests are critiqued as being excessively violent and aggressive, which connects back to the ideas of criminality and barbarity. African Americans cannot express their voices without being brought down under the same themes of fear. Not until this fear is addressed will these ingrained ideologies begin to dismantle. #relg102