Week 6

This week the articles talked about race and power in sports in addition to dispelling the common myth of the Asian American model minority. In the first article I read Charles Fruehling Springwood and C. Richard King talk about some of the different forms of racism present in sports, namely the mascots. The debate behind changing names like the Redskins and Indians has raged for years however I feel as though many people do not know why it offends native Americans. To be objectified for a sports mascot minstrel show by cultural appropriation as well as to see colonialist pride in the ways in which these team mascots are represented it makes it easy to see why the objectification of an entire could be a bit offensive. The article continues on to address the lack of black sports mascots despite the high percentage of black athletes, citing the original white perspective during the formation of many team mascots. Black people were thought of as the total opposite of white people, and Native Americans were demonized and made mysterious, therefore making an intimidating mascot.  Finally, the racial demographics in the NBA and other sports leagues that people want to address, don’t. The court or the field is just like the regular world, a place where the color of your skin is not and should not be a measure of anything or a manner in which to categorize someone. That being said, unlike the regular world much of the sports world is based solely on ability and not other factors, making race based decisions obsolete. The model minority article I found interesting for other reasons. The single biggest detriment to the Asian American population is being stereotyped as this model minority, a perfect passive person from a foreign land. This was commonly done by showing Asian Americans as successful and skewing myths about the median income of Asian Americans. Regardless of these skews of data, many Asian Americans had to fight the glass celling, with less than 1% of CEO’s as Asian American and many being forced into second tier jobs. Despite the myth of the model minority, this group certainly hasn’t received model treatment.

Week 1

In the first article, I read “Racial formation” I got an interesting look at the past which happened to correlate very well with the Andrea Smith Article of “Heteropatriarchy and the 3 Pillars of White Supremacy”. Primarily the first article presented an argument about race being a socio-historic and socially constructed matter which I found very interesting. It argued that the history of race and racism in the US was very dependent on the history, citing other nations which had different racial views dependent on how their unique racial structures formed. The racialization of African Americans in the US can be credited for the uneven and clear racial line between African Americans and white people. The racialization started with slavery and seems to continue to this day with negative portrayals of African Americans in media and often institutionalized racism. In addition, the article brought up the differences in racial categories between different groups of people. In the United States a person who is 1/32 black may be forced to identify as black, in order to put them into a different racial category for public services. A person who has never been categorized as black in Latin America may be categorized as black once they come to the US. These differences show more of the racially constructed factor behind race and racism. Regardless of the “amateur biology” being used to try to argue different races of humans the simple matter is that many people believe these lies. In the second article, Andrea Smith went about explaining how these 3 pillars of white supremacy have shaped the US, much to do with racialization of African Americans, native Americans and foreign-born Americans. She addresses slavery/capitalism, genocide/colonialism and orientalism/war. Through her article its not hard to see how to the US is propped up by racially uneven public policy and the past and continued exploitation of the native people. In addition, she goes on to talk about how she believes different groups should come together to fight these institutions, by uniting as different groups of people of color a very positive difference can be made. Overall, these articles more so talk about just how deep the lines of racial inequality go in the US, certainly deeper than I thought and I would find it interesting to see the reaction of the average white American to some of these realities.

Week 5

The first article talks about how the Euro ethnic Jewish population assimilated in white middle class society of NY due to social mobility brought about by post war industry. Many Jews who had immigrated from Europe had brought with them applicable skills to the booming NY garment industry and eventually were the first immigrants to become small business owners. Despite their social mobility being greater than that of their fellow immigrants they often faced anti Semitism in many facets of life. Post war Anti-Semitism wasn’t a thing of the past; it had just gone more or less underground. For example, Jews were really only allowed to hold corporate positions in the industries they created, movies and garments. However, the government had expanded the definition of white in the Census, which allowed thousands of these immigrants to categorize themselves as white which gave them a push toward the middle class. The article transitioned to talk about the GI Bill and the FHS. While millions of white male servicemen qualified for thousands in academic and housing benefits guaranteed to veterans the majority of the millions of African American GI’s that were supposed to be guaranteed certain housing and job benefits saw themselves being denied their rights and forced into the lower class by institutional policy. Examples of this was not allowing black servicemen to go to white colleges, as many of the black universities were overcrowded, and denying black servicemen equal housing regardless of rank. The problem with that is with the post war boom in population made it necessary to build a lot of additional housing and restructure cities to deal with the increased population, making very specific locations where black people could live. I was this as hugely connected to the next article regarding California Lost paradise. California also had this sort of promise that it was the land of equal halves, causing thousands of black people to move to California. Well lo and behold once all of these people moved to California most African Americans were funneled to Pacoima valley, one resident described It just like Mississippi. In addition, the state passed policy which legally allowed housing discrimination by a 2-1 margin it really showed the underlying opinion of the state. This last article about the investing in whiteness really stuck with me the best. It had really never occurred to me that in no point in American history was the nation not racist.  The US was essentially the only nation giving a racial aspect to the idea of slavery, making white synonymous with free and black with slave. This is essentially the roots to all modern racism, the problem wasn’t that black people were in the US the problem was the white attitude towards it. Racism has served a different purpose for each generation, as the article states, and it went on to cite how California had segregated housing laws as struck down affirmative action. Overall, I think its interesting to go into the history of a place that might not be the most popular or publicized, what people would rather forget. But what we have to remember for today is that the remnants of these systems still hold true in the institutional ways in which white privilege is part of everyday society.