Gates, Jr.: Racce as a trope
- Gates, Jr, argues that race is a trope, i.e., a word/concept that is used figuratively, what does he mean by this?
- Contiguously, is there a problem with the metaphor that he offers? More specifically, does Gates, Jr., by relegating race to an abstract concept, a metaphor, fail to account for the real, material effects fomented by race?
- Gates writes that (pp.591 of the original text) many Western writers and (pseudo)scientists have sought to reify race by arguing that it is inherently biological, i.e., on page 595 of the original reading, that it is “natural, essential, and absolute.” What, in your opinion, would prompt these writers and scientist to espouse this particular stance, and, whose interests does it serve (explain)?
- Likewise, Gates argues that there has been and continues to be an (erroneous) conflation between “race” and intelligence that permeates and pervades western thinking regarding innate ability/intelligence; who are the beneficiaries of this line of thinking?
Response to Q1 & Q3.
ReplyDeleteQ1. By arguing that race is a trope, Gates means that race is not merely an objective term of classification. Gates sees race as a trope of difference between cultures, linguistic groups, or followers of specific belief systems that also often have fundamentally opposed economic interests. I realized from the Gates reading that recognizing race as a trope is a crucial step in addressing the complex problem of cultural or ethnic difference.
Q3. In my opinion, I feel that authority, power, and economic alienation are what prompt these writers and (pseudo)scientists who advocate the stance that race is inherently biological. They want to inscribe the differences they see as fixed and finite categories that they can analyze and exploit for authority, power, and economic alienation of a culture of color. Creating these arbitrary constructs that do not reflect reality where race is more than an objective term of classification, people are marked and delimited to their category. I believe that this particular stance is serving the interests of people who uphold Western Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman cultures and traditions above cultures of color. It also serves the interests of people who seek economic order with the cultures of color being at the bottom of the economic ladder. I concluded this from the media in the past and present and the history of wars and oppression in the name of differences ascribed only to race. Gates’s account of Pope John Paul II meeting with Aveto discussing the compatibility of their belief systems really resonated with me, because the Pope worried about African customs “contrary to the will of God,” although Africans had reconstructed European religion in their own images just as much as various Western cultures did.
Gates’s piece provides an overarching and historical account of the development of race as a social construct that was used to justify racist policies and led to an indoctrination of thought that different “races” were synonymous with different levels of intelligence. It is not my intent to disagree with Gates’s rendering of the creation of the trope of race, but there is one line on page 594 in the first full paragraph that roused my interest. Gates writes, “Writing, many Europeans argued, stood alone among the fine arts as the most salient repository of “genius,” the visible sign of genius itself.”, “…writing, although secondary to reason, is nevertheless the medium of reason’s expression. We know reason by its writing, by its representations.” (Italics in the original) Within the next few paragraphs Gates also cites works of Hume and Kant that perpetuate the myth of white superiority and thinkers that gave philosophical credibility the to conflation of race and intelligence.
ReplyDeleteIt is not possible to deflect any the reality if intent that existed in either philosopher’s own written word, but perhaps it would be fairer to both philosophers to establish how the earlier stated “writing as the repository of “genius”” comment could not farther from what either philosopher believed. Both men, contemporaries, were deeply distrustful of the possibility of human experience. Hume, the founder of modern skepticism, shook the foundations of philosophical thought with his investigation of causality and was the driving impetus for Kant’s own investigation of what actually exists. In a brief and bastardized form (which I hope does not come back to haunt me) Kant asserted the objective reality of being but not the manifestations that we perceive. Hume, with whom I am not as well versed, believed he could not assert the objective reality of anything because all experience and thereby thought was mediated by senses that he himself had no sense of e.g., try thinking about the process of your thinking. Although both men’s cited written works chosen by Gates do not paint flattering pictures of either man, Gates’s earlier statement that, “many Europeans”, is falsely attributing this line of thought to these philosophers. The conception of writing as the sign of culture was an earlier pre-enlightenment concept that should be fairly attributed to the rationalist doctrines of philosophy that both Hume and Kant were reacting to. It is not my intention to defend what they wrote; rather I intend only to showcase the difficulties that arise in quick historical glazes of the history of thought.