Higher Education and Institutionalized Racism "Making democracy matter: identity and activism in Los Angeles" by Karen Brodkin, (Rutgers University Press: 2007) ------------------------- Book Review, August 18, 2013 After having read some of the this mandatory class text I want to introduce some relevant facts I have encountered that run contrary to the author’s belief system regarding human variation and behavior. I want to note these factors up-front because I do not want in any way to associate my name with misinformation regarding so-called race. I met my wife on Cal State Dominguez campus in 1992 around the time of the so-called Rodney King race riots. It just so happens that my wife and I have visible phenotypic differences that Ms. Brodkin refers to as black and white race. We also have offspring. I and my family must live with the outcome of political race rhetoric such as Ms. Brodkin favors while she in turn derives profit from it. The results are neither benign nor desirable for us and many others; I have received more than enough antisocial commentary and treatment arising from such beliefs, as have my wife and child. Ms. Brodkin in her text repeatedly and consistently invokes a color-coded race schema for which there is no warrant other than it is a culturally acquired dogma she favors, using the following categories among others, for example, without working definitions: • Asians: Asia is the largest continent and the most populous, with a wide variety of cultures and ethnic groups, many languages, and varied history; there is no Asian race or generalized Asian ethnicity, nor is there universal tolerance among Asians. • Black people: In Los Angeles, the focus of interest for Ms. Brodkin, black tells you nothing of a person’s national origin, their ancestors, or their socioeconomic status. There are many so-called blacks here that are natives of African states, from Caribbean nations, from South America, and others whose families have been here for several hundred years. • People of color: Whatever that means. The term remains undefined. • White people: This, too, includes a vast range of ethnicities. The author appears to be a so-called white person, but so do many Arabs, French, Russians, Spanish, Mexicans, Persians, and Hungarians, to name a few possibilities among people I know or have known. The only terms I know so far that she does define are as follows: • "Chicana/o refers to a Mexican-American. Latina/o refers more generally to people of Latin-American ancestry." (Notes, p. 193) The terms in question are not universally accepted and typically mean different things to different users. An associate of mine, as white as any other so-called white person, claimed she was not white but rather Latina because her parents, from New Mexico, had Spanish ancestors and she could speak Spanish. Further, she claimed that Spanish persons in Europe are not white people. Obviously my friend’s usage of these terms is at variance with Ms. Brodkin’s schema, and in fact such variance is common. Typical race schemas are based on arbitrary points of similarity and dissimilarity in visible phenotype. There are also race schemas based on culturally acquired ethnicity, e.g., native language or religious affiliation. Some race schemas are a combination of both. In any case, they are all ultimately ill-conceived and of no biological significance. Human beings are not a mixture of pure races. Since the discovery of the molecular basis of inheritance it has been shown that human beings are all the same species. Ms. Brodkin clearly disagrees. A small sample of excerpts from her text below show that she believes that human beings occupy arbitrary categories of race. Note that Ms. Brodkin differentiates race—an assumption about biology—from ethnicity: • “. . . cross-ethnic and racial contact at work differ from those in neighborhoods.” (Page 22) • “. . . activist climate that began to link class, race, and human-rights issues.” (Page 26) • “. . . students and faculty across the race and gender spectrum.” (Page 29) • “. . . to meet and talk across racial and ethnic lines . . .” (Page 30) • “. . . friendships and political networks across race and ethnicity.” (Page 33) • “. . . an independent multiracial slate led to conflict . . .” (Page 34) • “. . . movements across the ethnic and racial spectrum in Los Angeles.” (Page 44) Ms. Brodkin’s appeal to ethnocentric thinking and race identity denotes strongly held opinions regarding the nature of human variation and behavior—opinions that are far outside the realm of the current state of knowledge of human evolutionary biology, not to mention ethics. Ms. Brodkin almost certainly invoked her schema because her personal perception is that it seemed to appeal politically to certain ethnocentric individuals who are her target audience. I do not know from what source Ms. Brodkin derives her peculiar race schema, but whether that source is her imagination, the U.S. Census Bureau, or simply an agreement among a small group of like-minded friends, it is completely arbitrary. In my opinion there is never justification to promote defunct race schemas, no matter how noble the cause or how sincere the supporters of the cause. Once people are convinced that there exists race, they tend to also erroneously ascribe attributes to arbitrary racial categories, as does Ms. Brodkin. Typical of Ms. Brodkin’s use of her race schema is the following example of a straw-man fallacy: • "The ideological mainstream in the United States tends to stereotype all nonwhite cultures as adhering to “traditional”—macho and patriarchal—gender ideologies and practices against which it celebrates an American modernity of gender egalitarianism." (Page 89) Ms. Brodkin provides no evidence that the claim above represents the norm; it is certainly not my view nor that of my wife and child. Many of us outside of her clique have never shared her perception that the population of the United States is composed exclusively of white and “nonwhite” persons. That is not to say that she could not find someone who fits the mold if she looked around, but just that the first place for her to look would be in a mirror or at the faces of her associates. Among Ms. Brodkin and her followers the human world is indeed categorized using the undefined term people of color, which probably includes anything but native speakers of English who happen to be fair skinned: • “I could . . . have more chance as a person of color to help kind of push and change unions to organize Asian-Americans and other people of color.” (Joann Lo, Page 31, italics added) Ironically, Ms. Brodkin appears to be a so-called white person occupying a relatively privileged and protected socioeconomic status for her entire career. When the text at issue was published she had been teaching at UCLA for some years and is due to retire in 2013. UCLA is part of a university system for which I am taxed but to which I have never had access due to my own relatively low socioeconomic status. Likewise the activists whom she enthusiastically promotes in her book, much like commercial media promotes professional celebrities and politicians, constitute a small sample of convenience selected largely from her former students. Clearly they, like Ms. Brodkin, had advantageous access to UCLA or other schools due to relatively high socioeconomic status of access to financial resources, i.e., they were, and probably still are, economically privileged. For example: • "Tori Taehui Kim immigrated to the United States from Korea in 1978 when she was six years old. She grew up in Colorado, and attended college and law school at Harvard University. After graduating from college in 1993, Tori lived in Korea for a year and a half, seeking to reconnect with her Korean roots and learn about the social and political movements that had dominated the country after her emigration. Upon returning to the United States, Tori began work with Korean immigrant Workers Alliance in Los Angeles, where she served as a staff attorney…" (Page xvi) Such luxuries do not come cheaply and are beyond the financial resources of many if not most of the rest of us. Most of us cannot attend elite universities or travel the world, but that is not because most of are stupid or lazy. It is due to our socioeconomic status within a system where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It is interesting to note that Ms. Kim left directly after the 1992 Los Angeles race riots wherein Korean immigrant store owners in South Central Los Angeles were being targeted as neo-colonial exploiters of the African-American community. Promoting a race schema without proof simply as a matter of cultural and political dogma is unwarranted. There is a great difference between proving that some individuals are racist and proving that race exists. That is a point that Ms. Brodkin completely missed. Anthropology is supposed to be science, not political propaganda. Ms. Brodkin in regard to so-called race apparently disagrees. Ms. Brodkin is about five years older than me, thus I am sure that she was, like me, around when the Human Genome Project was completed in 2001 and after. She has had ample opportunity to educate herself better in regard to human biology and genetics but has not. No amount of political or race rhetoric can make up for that intellectually fatal lack of interest. There are other active anthropologists who are far better educated in these matters than Ms. Brodkin. This is explained succinctly below: • ". . . there are numerous physical anthropologists who argue that race is a meaningless concept when applied to humans. Race is seen as an outdated creation of the human mind that attempts to simplify biological complexity by organizing it into categories. Thus, human races are a product of the human tendency to superimpose order on complex natural phenomena. While classification may have been an acceptable approach some 150 years ago, it is no longer valid given the current state of genetic and evolutionary science." --- From “Introduction to Physical Anthropology 10th edition” by Robert Jurmain, Lynn Kilgore, and Wanda Trevathan (Wadsworth: 2006); Page 400. Ms. Brodkin has built an elaborate political worldview based almost entirely on a race schema. In this world no matter what you are, there is someone who hates you for it. Ms. Brodkin has added to that unfortunate state of affairs. Ethnocentrism is a global phenomenon and has occurred throughout world history. But just because there are racists among us is not a valid reason to promote more of the same. Ms. Brodkin, I am sure, does not appreciate or share my view. She has consistently and erroneously categorized human beings by an arbitrary race schema and has assigned collective responsibility and personas according to the same schema. Dhamma claims that all there is of good and evil arises from mind, and that there are three strong roots of evil: greed, hatred, and delusion. today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/PRN-081010_karen-brodkin_feminst-anthropology_retire.aspx
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 21:34:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015