Andrew Carlquist
10/14/08
CRT Unit II Reflection
In unit two, we were to look at “racial difference in a politics of recognition,” which I’ve come to understand as the struggle of individuals (as well as groups) to be recognized within society at large. The struggle of racialized groups, particularly blacks, is characterized by many different aspects: fighting “invisibility” to become noticed in the first place, then being recognized as a legitimate and equally endowed group of people within a system that does not treat them as such. For example, one way to “recognize” a group within a democratic society is to enfranchise them, give them a voice. For a very long time, blacks and women were disenfranchised, by both de facto and de jure methods. Recognition is difficult to obtain for those who are oppressed, for many reasons. How individuals tend to treat blacks in general, and how race is approached/discussed as a society (it usually isn’t) tends to resist efforts for recognition. Often times, the reality of how race affects the lives of whites and blacks alike is either passed off as “playing the race card” or cast aside by claims of “colorblindness,” rather than discussed in a straightforward and honest manner. I’d like to reflect on some reasons why it is so difficult for the oppressed to be recognized. In the next couple of paragraphs, I’m going to cover two interesting topics that I believe can be related to each to each other in a productive way, or at least be interesting, towards the end of showing a significant hurdle in the path of oppressed peoples to be recognized.
The first comes from Anti-Semite and Jew, when Sartre talks about how the anti-Semite fears being singled out, and thus seeks to fade into the crowd. This is interesting to me because the mode of oppression for not only Jews but any marginalized group is to judge members of said groups based solely upon their group association; in short, in order to satisfy their need to belong and to be cloaked in the crowd, the oppressors force the “other” into an oppositional group, and then characterize all members of said group in a lockstep fashion. Look at racism in just this way: the removal of self-consciousness by self-absorption into a group could be considered a mode of bad faith, if by bad faith we mean denying our facticity and our absolute freedom within that facticity, insofar as we humans are individuals, and thus very and essentially alone in this world. In Sartre’s own words, “Anti-Semitism, in short, is fear of the human condition,” (Sartre, 54). The requirement to be self-reliant and responsible is stressful, and one way of denying this responsibility–of living in bad faith–is to create a “we.” This necessarily creates a “them”; Sartre says it himself when he says that “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him” (19). By this, Sartre is not speaking specifically of the Jew, but of the other. I’d like to digress into this topic momentarily.
“…an anti-Semite is necessarily a Negrophobe” (Fanon, 190). We devoted a large chunk of time in class to my question regarding the interchangeability of various oppressed people; at the time I did not agree with the assertion that racism and anti-Semitism, and hateful oppressions in general, are all basically the same. My argument was based off my observations of differences in execution, but did not focus on the purpose of the hatred. I understand now that the creation of a secure section of life and becoming “like a stone” is the fundamental motivation of hatred. The nature of the oppression varies, just as the different races and groups of oppressed peoples do, but the oppression itself has a universal purpose.
The next topic is “white as normative,” which includes all of the assumptions that come along with this ultimate assumption, including how the corporeal schema of the body (the body is that through which we humans act out our freedom) is assumed to be universal, as well as the creation of the “norm of humanity” such that all the qualities that are associated with “whiteness” are those that which establish a person as fully human; i.e., whites are rational. This latter point is the most important to the current discussion. The qualities that characterize the in-group (anti-Semites, anti-blacks) are the proper human ones, the ones that any “good” person should be endowed with. This is the standard which negritude poetry fights against, the European (or French, in the case of Anti-Semite and Jew) standard of being. Rationality is a “white” quality, emotionality a “black” one, etc. The point is that there is a rubric of character that is held to each member of society, from which the quality of that person is determined, and that rubric is typically based off of qualities that characterize a specific group.
Connecting the two topics is the essentialized nature of being a black person (or Jew). This essentialization is an interesting factor. We thought about why being black, or being a Jew, was essentialized, and came to an answer that pointed us towards essence as a justification for difference; the black is essentially different, there is just something about the black that sets them apart, so it is easy to cast them out. However, I feel like stopping here and solely relying on this one explanation for essentialization would be a bad idea, because I think that there is another way to look at essentialization.
Sartre asserts the passionate nature of anti-Semitism (and thus by extension anti-black racism) by demonstrating that hate and oppression are a means to an end rather than a rationally justified action based upon information or experience, so I feel like a passionate explanation of essentialization is warranted; something that relies on fear or discomfort, the sources of the anti-Semite’s behavior. Furthermore, when Sartre says “Thus the anti-Semite takes his stand from the start on the ground of irrationalism” (25), it makes me want to push for an “irrational” (or non-rational) reason. What purpose would essentialization serve, other than as a pseudo-justification for hate? One explanation, I think, is essentialization is one more security system for the anti-Semite to set up between himself and the Jew. By casting Jewish-ness (or black-ness) as an essential quality, it also makes it something that can be neither be gotten rid of nor transmitted (the latter has specific exceptions, just as procreation). Thus, the Frenchmen (or white person) is safe within their whiteness; one can not become a Jew if one did not start as one (and vice versa), and thus the naturalized Frenchmen can never fall out of “Frenchness”; he becomes impenetrable like a stone. So, if we, instead of considering essentialized qualities as a justification for discrimination (we discriminate, and these essential qualities are why), view essentialization as part of the act of discriminating (we discriminate by essentializing qualities; in other words, say that the act of essentialization is an act of discrimination) then we can see how this gives the member of the dominant group another layer upon which he can rest and feel safe within his established place in the world, and I feel like this fits into Sartre’s conception of anti-Semitism fairly well.
How does this particular line of thought fit into the politics of recognition? The above sets up a situation in which a member of a marginalized group can never be recognized, because it would completely shatter a part of the foundation of the anti-Semite’s or racist’s safe-zone. To recognize the other would be to say that he can move into the realm of the norm, the safe-zone. This is a classic immovable object meets unstoppable force situation; one must give, but neither can. The anti-Semite simply can’t not essentialize the Jew, just as the anti-black can’t not essentialize the black man; to do so would be to recognize him and thus would compromise the security of his world view. The oppressor would never willingly do that because in doing so, in un-essentializing the marginalized, the oppressor also recognizes that his station in life is just as transient. He once again becomes an isolated unit, able to be sloughed off from the group if he fails to perform: “Merit has to be sought… Once acquired, it is perpetually in question: a false step, an error, and it flies away” (Sartre, 27). Thus, it does not suit the oppressor to recognize the oppressed.
Negritude poetry fits into this framework of recognition, in that it is the establishment of a foundation to be recognized from. The oppressors, by way of their customs, language, system of government, etc., force the oppressed first into a system of thought or worldview, then force them to the bottom of the inherent hierarchy of that worldview. In other words, the white person establishes what it means to be white and black in this world, and by virtue of his position of power, forces that meaning upon the black person. Negritude poetry, as we have discussed, is one avenue of casting off that set of chains in order to re-form what it means to be black. This is necessary, as there are only two ways to be recognized: change the system or work outside of it. Changing the system, flipping the hierarchy, is the ultimate goal, but the way it is set up ultimately prevents the recognition of the oppressed. Since it appears that an inside-out approach is prevented by the will of the oppressors, an outside-in one seems to be in order; this is negritude poetry. Rather than remain forced down, the oppressed step outside of the oppression and stand up. Even though temporally they remain under the thumb of the oppressor, blacks now have a place to stand from, wearing an identity not given to them, but created by them.
