CORPOREAL FEMINISM III: THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER, ETHNIC AND RACED IDENTITY
White racism is not just part of American history. Instead, White racist culture today organizes racist practices in White-dominated institutions such as schools and health-care facilities, and everyday choices and behaviors by the vast majority of Whites operating as individuals. White racist culture is shaped by a “White racial frame,” “an organized set of racialized ideas, stereotypes, emotions, and inclinations to discriminate” (Feagin 2006:27), along with interpretations that rationalize the discrimination against people of color that is indeed old (dating back to the earliest stages of the oppression of people of African descent by Whites in the New World), but continues as a vivid fact of life in the contemporary United States. The impacts . . . are of such generality, and such a magnitude, as to suggest strongly that racism must be practiced in some way by a very substantial number of Whites, at every level of class and status. To render their practices invisible, and to tolerate or to discount their effects, Whites must share negative stereotypes of people of color, permitting them to blame these victims. How are such stereotypes produced and reproduced among people who deny that they are racist and who claim to abhor racism in word and deed (Bonilla-Silva 2003; Feagin and Vera 1995)?
—Jane H. Hill, The Everyday Language of White Racism (4)
Required Readings
- Trechter, Ch. 18: “A Marked Man: The Contexts of Gender and Ethnicity,” (423-443), in Holmes and Meyerhoff The Handbook of Language and Gender
- Hill, Jane, The Everyday Language of White Racism, Preface (vi-ix), Ch. 1 “The Persistence of White Racism” (1-30), Ch. 2 “Language in White Racism: An Overview” (31-48); Ch. 5 “Covert Racist Discourse: Metaphors, Mocking, and the Racialization of Historically Spanish-Speaking Populations in the United States” (119-157), Ch. 6 “Linguistic Appropriation: The History of White Racism is Embedded in American English” (158-174), Ch. 7 “Everyday Language, White Racist Culture, Respect, and Civility” (175-182) [Free e-book, see Atkins Library]