I. Racial Formations A. Susie Guillory Phipps vs. The State of Louisiana 1. Susie Guillory Phipps sued the state of Louisiana over the right to change her racial classification from black to white 2. Due to state law which states anyone with one-thirty-second “negro blood” in them was to be classified as black 3. Her case was lost and her classification was unchanged B. Racial Categories on Birth Certificates 1. The assignments of racial categories on birth certificates was argued to be unconstitutional by Brian Begue attorney for Susie Guillory Phipps
2.Assistant Attorney General Ron Davis argued to be necessary to comply with federal record keeping requirements and for programs for prevention of genetic diseases by II. What is Race A. Discovery of the New World 1. Upon discovering the New World European explorers encountered “natives” which challenged the existing conception of the origins of the human species 2. Questions were raised as to whether all could be considered in the same “family of man” 3. Arguments over creation took place and many wondered whether God had created only one “species” of humanity 4. Europeans wondered if natives were in fact human beings 5.
Race was a central factor in determining why some people should be “free” and others enslaves, why some had rights to land and property while others did not B. Science and Biology behind Race 1. In the 18th and 19th centuries race was thought of as a biological concept 2. Most physical anthropologists and biologist have abandoned the quest for scientific basis to determine racial categories III. Race as a Social Concept A. Biological vs. Social Sciences 1. Social sciences have come to reject biological notions of race, instead going with an approach which regards race as more of a social concept 2.
Crucial in refuting the scientific racism of the early 20th century was Franz Boas 3. He did so by doing away with the connection between race and culture along with the assumption of higher and lower cultural groups B. Hypo-Descent 1. The affiliation with the subordinate rather than the superordinate group in order to avoid the ambiguity of intermediate identity 2. White and any racial mixtures make one nonwhite. Meaning any trace of nonwhite blood and you are considered the minority race no matter how little the trace maybe 3. Passing means to identify with a race you are not assigned to be IV. Racial Ideology and Racial Identity
A. Identity 1. Race is usually other than gender the first thing we notice about people upon meeting them 2. Race gives clues to who a person is, without racial identity one is in danger of having no identity B. Ideology 1 There are preconceived notions of what each racial group should look like which feed into stereotypes as to how one should act or look like based on their race 2. Race has become a common sense way of comprehending, explaining and acting in the world 3. Skin color and other physical characteristics supposedly provide clues differences such as temperament, sexuality, intelligence, athletic ability and so on
4.Continuing with the stereotypes is the media who feeds into what certain races should be like and adhere their characters as such V. Racialization: The Historical Development of Race A. Racialization 1. Signifies a race to people when is was not before B. Growth and Development 2 During the 19th century the category of “white” was challenged due to the growing number of groups who were not of the same Anglo Saxon as the founding immigrants 3. During the 19th century struggles arose with the classification of Southern Europeans, Irish, and Jews marked in the “nonwhite” category
