Race Census Aff – MAGS
Compiled by Lenny Brahin
Jaden Lessnick
Jillian Gordners
Brian Roche
1AC
The census has always been a powerful means of state surveillance—from
its very inception, census-taking has been a means to maintain a violent
social order
Mezey, 3 – Professor of Law at Georgetown University (Naomi, “Erasure and
Recognition: The Census, Race and the National Imagination”, 97 Nw. U. L. Rev. 17011768 (2003) Northwestern University Law Review, 2003)//jml
The Power to Discipline But power, needless to say, is at once affirmative and repressive, and the power
of enumeration is no exception. Even to the extent it fulfilled its purpose of documenting American excep- tionalism
and fueling the national imagination, the census did so partly by implicit and explicit reference to
outsiders and others, by identifying and exercising authority over the more
undesirable and unproductive citizens and non-citizens. Official statistics (and most
social and economic statistics are official in the sense that they are gathered by the state) are generally compiled by
means of a census, and early census-taking began as a method of surveil- lance,
conscription, tax assessment, manners control, and exclusion of un- wanted elements.71 The pre-modern census was,
as Paul Starr contends, "unambiguously an instrument of state power and social control ."72 While
Starr maintains that modem censuses have replaced coercion with coopera- tion, I suggest that even in the heady days of nineteenth
century America, where statistics and state-building made a giddy pair, there
remained an as- pect of social
control to the enterprise of numbering the people, and indeed, there remains such an
aspect today.73 This was especially evident when it came to naming and numbering by
race. How the modern census functions as an exercise of state disciplinary power and
social control requires expla- nation. One subtle aspect of social control made possible by
statistics was the creation of the idea of "the average person" and its corollary, the
deviant. Thus, statistics introduced two mutually dependent and thoroughly modem
concepts: the norm and deviance. Ian Hacking, in his remarkable book, The Taming of Chance, argues that
statistics gave rise to more than new concepts; they ushered in epistemological change as well.74 Hacking identi- fies what he calls
the "avalanche of numbers" at the beginning of the nine- teenth century as the beginning of a profound change in the way Americans
and Europeans thought about people, an epistemological shift away from the prevailing belief in determinism and causality to the
modem idea of probability and the laws of chance.75 The
laws of chance, unlike the preced- ing laws of
nature, emerged from the gathering of statistics of large popula- tions. "The imperialism
ofprobabilities could occur only as the world itself became numerical."76 But this new kind of information, in addition to pro- viding
sound bites for a growing empire, also occasioned a new kind of so- cial control.77 Society became statistical. A new
type of law came into being, analogous to the laws of nature, but pertaining to people. These new laws were expressed in terms of
probability. They carried with them the connotations of normalcy and of deviations from the norm. The cardinal concept of the
psychology of the Enlightenment had been, simply, human nature. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was being replaced by
something different: normal people."
Specifically, racial categorization on the census is used to maintain a
colonial order of racial exclusion
Kertzer and Arel, 2 - * PhD, Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science,
Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University **PhD,
Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University
of Ottawa, Canada (David and Dominique, “Census and Identity: The Politics of Race,
Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses,” 2002)//jml
State modernity and the impetus to categorize The
significance of official state certification of collective
identities through a variety of official registration procedures can be gleaned by
contrasting these government efforts with the situation that existed be- fore such
bureaucratic categorization began. Collective identities are, of course, far from a recent innovation in human
history. However, before the emergence of modern states, such identities had great fluidity
and im- plied no necessary exclusivity. The very notion that the cultural identities of populations mattered in
public life was utterly alien to the pre-modern state (Gellner 1983). That state periodically required some
assessment of its population for purposes of taxation and conscription, yet remained
largely indifferent to recording the myriad cultural identities of its sub- jects. As a result, there was little
social pressure on people to rank-order their localized and overlapping identities. People
often had the sense of simply being “from here.” The development of the modern state, however, increasingly
instilled a resolve among its elites to categorize populations, setting boundaries, so to speak,
across pre-existing shifting identities. James Scott refers to this process as the “state’s attempt
to make a society legible,” which he regards as a “central problem of statecraft.” In order to
grasp the complex social reality of the society over which they rule, leaders must devise a means of radically
simplifying that reality through what Scott refers to as a “series of typifications.” Once these are made,
it is in the interest of state authorities that people be understandable through the
categories in which they fall. “The builders of the modern nation-state,” Scott writes, “do not
merely describe, observe, and map; they strive to shape a people and landscape that will fit these
techniques of observation” (1998:2–3, 76–77, 81). The emergence of nationalism as a new
narrative of political legitimacy required the identification of the sovereign “nation” along
either legal or cultural criteria, or a combination of both. The rise of colonialism, based on the denial that the
colonized had political rights, required a clear demarcation between the settlers and the
indigenes. The “Others” had to be collectively identified. In the United States, the
refusal to enfranchise Blacks and native Americans led to the development of racial
categories. The categorization of identities became part and parcel of the legitimating
narratives of the national, colonial, and “New World” state. States thus became
interested in representing their population, at the aggregate level, along identity
criteria. The census, in this respect, emerged as the most visible, and arguably the most politically
impor- tant, means by which states statistically depict collective identities. It is by no means the sole
categorizing tool at the state’s disposal, however. Birth certificates are often used by states to compile statistics on the ba- sis of
identity categories. These include ethnic nationality (a widespread practice in Eastern Europe); mother tongue, as in Finland and
Quebec (Courbage 1998: 49); and race, in the United States (Snipp 1989: 33). Migration documents have also, in some cases,
recorded cultural iden- tities. The Soviet Union, for instance, generated statistics on migra- tion across Soviet republics according to
ethnicity. The US Immigration Service, from 1899 to 1920, classified newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island according to a list of
forty-eight “races or peoples,” gener- ally determined by language rather than physical traits (Brown 1996).
The categorization of racial identity on the census demands a static
recognition based in the politics of state surveillance to crowd out
alternative conceptions of cultural identity based in hybridity and mutuality
Torres 99 (maría de los Angeles. Maria is the director and professor of Latin American
and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago, she has a PhD in Political
Science from the University of Michigan, “In the land of mirrors: Cuban exile politics in
the United States,” University of Michigan Press, 1999. pp. pp. 188-189, LB)
Furthermore. although these home countries were not direct colonies of the United States (with While rooted in the experience of
slavery, ideas
about race have affected conceptions of nationality as well. People of certain
nationalities, Latin Americans included, are often not considered white (the exception of Puerto
Rico), they do share some of the same dynamics of European countries and their colonies.
The United States essentially took over the postcolonial relationship between Europe and its others in the southern part of the
Western hemisphere. This
economic and political relationship is accompanied by a conceptual
framework that sees Latin America and Latin Americans as others. At the turn of the century U.S.
views of Latin Americans were blatantly racist. While such images have given way to more
sophisticated portrayals of Latin Americans, they are still influenced by these
perspectives. Once in the United States, emigres from Latin America live and work in a society
that has often excluded people of different cultures from full participation through a
process of racialization. Unlike European societies, the United States had legalized slavery, along with which came a
racist conception of who was entitled to participate in the public sphere. Racism permeated society.5 . For example,
government forms ask applicants whether they are white, black, or
Hispanic. "Hispanic"-an ethnic category-is equated conceptually with the
racial categories of "white" and "black." While color is a concept that was
part of the language of colonization, in the United States, it has unique elements that
influence the way that exclusion and, consequently, struggles for inclusion
have been waged. 6 Yet, instead of challenging the categories themselves as
exclusionary practices, many of the empowerment movements of the 1960s reproduced
the same categories, albeit in a positive light. Race, ethnicity, and gender were exalted as essential elements in
defining one's identity. For immigrant communities, these movements sought a reconnection to their
cultural roots, a notion which suggested a return to a lost territory. In the past ten years rigid
categories have given way to more complex understandings of ethnic and cultural identity. Curiously, some of these new ways of
looking at identity are not direct responses to exclusionary categories of race and culture but, rather, a response to categories
promoted by progressive movements that, in trying to develop a discourse of inclusion, promoted exclusionary categories
themselves. As such, the conceptual paradigms were not transformed but applied differently. In
the 1990s intellectuals,
particularly artists and writers, began proposing more complex ways of understanding
multiple identities and multiple points of cultural and political references that inform
the postmodern experience and that have been particularly evident in communities
made up of large numbers of immigrants. 7 There is a rich intellectual tradition in Latin America that can
contribute to these debates. Unlike the British, whose settlement patterns led colonial societies to create rigid categories of insider
and outsider (note the "one drop of blood" rule), the Spanish relied on armies to implement colonialism. In addition, the military
was accompanied by Catholic missionaries who believed that, if converted, natives could be considered full human beings. As a
result, in the Spanish colonies there was more intermingling of different peoples and a more flexible view of blending than in the
British colonial tradition. Mestizaje and syncretism have long been accepted as contributing to the formation of Latin American
identity. 8 There
is an important debate about identity issues taking place in postcolonial
Europe that can enrich the American debate. 9 One perspective that can be discerned from both is the need to
understand cultures and, consequently, identities both as hybrids and as ongoing processes. In diaspora communities
in particular the transculturation, or practice of clearly identifiable multiple cultures
previously conceived as homogeneous (home and host cultures), produces new forms of cultural
practices that can best be described as hybrid. In contrast to a paradigm that sees these cultures as proof of
cultural diversity, Homi Bhabha suggests that they demonstrate the hybridity of cultures themselves. This may open the
way "to conceptualizing an international culture based not on exoticism of
multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of
culture's hybridity" and in politics as a place "not located in any particular geographic
space, nor ... tied to a single predetermined political position."
This hybridity is polyculturalism, the recognition that racial and cultural
categories are not only socially constructed but also historically intertwined
such that their state categorization is nothing but an arbitrary imposition of
power. A polycultural understanding of race is a necessary check on
colonial racism
Prashad 2011 (vijay, director of the international studies program at trinity college,
everyone was kung fu fighting: afro-asian connections and the myth of cultural purity,
project muse, LB)
This "racism with a distance" ignores our mulatto history, the long waves of linkage that
tie people together in ways we tend to forget. Can we think of "Indian food" (that
imputed essence of the Indian subcontinent), for example, without the tomato (that fruit first
harvested among the Amerindians)? Are not the Maya, then, part of contemporary "Indian culture"?
Is this desire for cultural discreteness part of the bourgeois nationalist (and bourgeois diasporic)
nostalgia for authenticity?5 In search of our mulatto history, there is no end to the kinds
of strange connections one can find. Of course, these links are only "strange" if we take for
granted the preconceived boundaries between peoples, if we forget that the notion of
Africa andAsia, for instance, is very modern and that people have created cross-fertilized
histories for millennia without concern for modern geography. The linguistic ties across the
Indian Ocean, for example, obviate any attempt to say that Gujarat and Tanzania are
disconnected places: Swahili is the ultimate illustration [End Page 52] of our mulatto history, or what
historian Robin Kelley so nicely called our "polycultural" history.6 Bloodlines, biologists now show us, are not
pure, and those sociobiologists who persist in the search for a biologically determined
idea of race miss the mark by far.7 "So-called ‘mixed-race' children are not the only ones
with a claim to multiple heritages. All of us, and I mean ALL of us," Kelley argues, "are the
inheritors of European, African, Native American, and even Asian pasts, even if we can't
exactly trace our blood lines to all of these continents."8 Embarrassed by biological racialism, many
scholars turn to culture as the determinant for social formations (where communities
constructed on biological terms now find the same boundaries intact, but as cultural
ones). Of course centuries of racism have in reality produced racial communities, so that
"race" is indeed a social fact today. But cultural formations are not as discrete as is often
assumed, a revelation that gives rise to notions such as hybrid, which retains within it
ideas of purity and origins (two things melded together).9 Rejecting the posture of racism with a distance, Kelley
argues that our various nominated cultures "have never been easily identifiable, secure in their
boundaries, or clear to all people who live in or outside our skin. We were multi-ethnic
and polycultural from the get go."10 The theory of the polycultural does not mean that
we reinvent humanism without ethnicity, but that we acknowledge that our notion of
cultural community should not be built inside the high walls of parochialism and
ethnonationalism. The framework of polyculturalism uncouples the notions of origins and
authenticity from that of culture. Culture is a process (that may sometimes be seen as a thing), which
has no identifiable origin, and therefore no cultural actor can, in good faith, claim
proprietary interest in what is claimed to be his or her authentic culture. "All the culture
to be had is culture in the making," notes anthropologist Gerd Baumann. "All cultural differences are acts of
differentiation, and all cultural identities are acts of cultural identification."11 Multiculturalism tends toward a
static view of history, with cultures already forged and with people enjoined to respect
and tolerate each cultural world. Polyculturalism, on the other hand, offers a dynamic
view of history, mainly because it argues for cultural complexity, and it suggests that our
communities of the present are historically formed [End Page 53] and that these
communities move between the dialectic of cultural presence and antiracism, between a
demand for acknowledgment and for an obliteration of hierarchy. Bruce Lee's polycultural world
sets in motion an antiracist ethos that destabilizes the pretense of superiority put in place by white supremacy.
Polyculturalism accepts the existence of differences in cultural practice, but it forbids us
to see culture as static and antiracist critique as impossible.
No moral order is possible while racism is tolerated—ethics are
meaningless without a prior rejection of it
Memmi 2K (Albert, Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ U of Paris, Naiteire, Racism, Translated by Steve Martinot, p. 163165)
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without
remission, probably never achieved. Yet, for this very reason, it is a struggle to be
undertaken without surcease and without concessions. One cannot be indulgent
toward racism; one must not even let the monster in the house, especially not in
a mask. To give it merely a foothold means to augment the bestial part in us and in
other people, which is to diminish what is human. T o accept the racist universe to
the slightest degree is to endorse fear, injustice, and violence . It is to accept the
persistence of the dark history in which we still largely live. it is to agree that the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which
man is not himself an outsider relative to someone else?. Racism
illustrates, in sum, the inevitable negativity
of the condition of the dominated that is, it illuminates in a certain sense the entire human condition. The anti-racist
struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of the prologues to the ultimate passage from animosity to
humanity. In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge. However, it remains true that one’s moral conduit only
emerges from a choice: one
has to want it. It is a choice
among other choices, and always debatable in its
foundations and its consequences. Let us say, broadly speaking, that the choice to conduct oneself morally is the condition for the
establishment of a human order, for which racism is the very negation. This is almost a redundancy.
One cannot
found a moral order, let alone a legislative order, on racism, because
racism signifies the exclusion of the other , and his or her subjection to violence
and domination. From an ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little religious language, racism is ‘the truly
capital sin. It is not an accident that almost all of humanity’s spiritual traditions counsels respect for the weak, for orphans,
widows, or strangers. It is not just a question of theoretical morality and disinterested commandments. Such unanimity in the
safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of such sentiments. All things considered, we
have an interest in
banishing injustice, because injustice engenders violence and death. Of course, this is debatable.
There are those who think that if one is strong enough, the assault on and oppression of others is permissible. Bur no one is ever
sure of remaining the strongest. One day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed. All
unjust society contains within
itself the seeds of its own death. It is probably smarter to treat others with respect so that they treat you with respect.
“Recall.” says the Bible, “that you were once a stranger in Egypt,” which means both that you ought to respect the stranger because
you were a stranger yourself and that you risk becoming one again someday. It is an ethical and a practical appeal—indeed, it is a
contract, however implicit it might be. In
short, the refusal of racism is the condition for all
theoretical and practical morality because, in the end, the ethical choice commands
the political choice, a just society must be a society accepted by all . If this
contractual principle is not accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will be
our lot. If it is accepted, we can hope someday to live in peace . True, it is a wager, but the
stakes are irresistible.
Hence the plan: The United States Federal Government should eliminate
racial categorization on the United States Census.
Total elimination of racial categories on the census is necessary—reform
isn’t enough
CAPLAN 2012 (Arthur Caplan is head of the division of medical ethics at New York University's Langone Medical Center,
“Time to drop racial categories in census,” Chicago Tribune, August 16, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-16/site/ctpersepc-0816-race-20120816_1_racial-categories-race-and-ethnicity-questions-quadroons)
The U.S. Census Bureau announced that it wants to make a number of changes in how it counts
membership in a race. The change is based on an experiment the bureau conducted during the last census in which nearly
500,000 households were given forms with the race and ethnicity questions worded differently from the traditional categories. The
results showed that many people who filled out the traditional form did not feel they fit within the five government-defined
categories of race: white, black, Asian, Pacific Islander and American Indian/Alaska Native. If Congress approves, the bureau says it
plans to stop using the word "Negro" as part of a question asking if a person was "black, African-American or Negro." There are a
number of other changes planned for counting Hispanics and Arab-Americans.
These changes may seem like improvements. They are not. The bureau and Congress ought to
be considering a more radical overhaul of the census — dropping questions about race entirely. There
are a lot of reasons why.
First, the concept of "race" makes no biological sense. None. The classifications Americans use to divide people into
groups and categories have nothing to do with genetics or biology.
The notion that there is a black genome or an Hispanic genome or a Native American genome is ludicrous. There is tremendous
variation in the genomes of the most common racial categories used in America. Think about it — what is the biological basis for the
Asian category? There is far more in common genetically between the Census Bureau's racial groups than there are differences. If
advances in genetics have shown us anything since the mapping of the human genome 15 years ago it is that there is zero overlap
between the terms the census is using and biology.
Worse, the
terms are the product of nothing but racism. The old "one-drop" rule continues
to apply in how many people divide whites from blacks — any black ancestry makes you black.
Remember the old days of quadroons and mulattos — the racism that inspired these racial categories simply became unacceptable in
American society? Nothing changed about biology.
Who is a Native American? A person who may be of mixed ancestry who may look anything but stereotypically Native American but
who speaks a tribal language and holds a high office in a tribal government? Is
there any reason other than racism
to lump together Hispanics as a class that captures anything significant except a
connection to Spanish and Spanish colonialism?
Consider how other parts of the world with very different histories than ours think about racial categories. India has all manner of
divisions of its people that would never even occur to an American. When the British controlled India they introduced a whole
scheme of "races" based upon the assumption that certain groups were more warlike and combative than others. They divided the
entire spectrum of Indian ethnic groups into two categories: a "martial race" and a "nonmartial race." Dogras, Gurkhas, Garhwalis,
Devars, Sikhs, Jats and Pashtuns were the martial races — as it turns out they were also the groups who were initially more accepting
of British rule. The
everyday classification of racial groups in the Balkans, Africa, China,
Japan, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa (pre- and post-apartheid) shows that what we think of as
natural racial divisions are not seen that way in other countries. By using our race
categories decade after decade, the Census Bureau reinforces categories that are nothing
more than the results of a racism-tainted tale of who got to America first and who
followed — combined with a hefty dollop of 18th-century European colonialist thinking.
The attempt to put everyone into a totally fabricated, socially constructed box also means that the growing number of mixed-race
Americans have to make a choice or become "other." Even President Barack Obama is described as black when
Why force the notion of
mixed race on anyone much less let it be an accepted part of government policy?
there is no reason he could not be classified as white but for the racist past of the country he was born in.
The lobby to keep race as a key driver in the census is powerful. Many see their jobs and futures tied to resources that are allocated
by race. Others
fear a loss of identity if racial categorizations are allowed to erode. They are
wrong.
India did away with divisive, historically racist, racial categories in its census in 1951. It
is time for Congress to tell the Census Bureau to do the same.
There is no alternative to state engagement—we have to engage the policy
details of the census to confront racist violence
Thompson, 10 – PhD candidate (poli sci) at University of Toronto (Debra Elizabeth,
“Seeing Like a Racial State: The Census and the Politics of Race in the United States,
Great Britain and Canada” A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for
the degree Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science, 2010)//jml
A more focused lens is necessary in order to examine how policy-makers propose and
evaluate alternatives and come to decisions about the methods that will be employed in
the enumeration of the multiracial population. Though the census is a racial
project, it is also a policy sphere, inhabited by elites, bureaucrats, “experts,”
data users, academics, interest groups, and members of the public. These conceptualizations of
the census are not mutually exclusive. As a racial project the census connects
meanings of race – meanings which, I have argued, often exist beyond national boundaries – with different means of
(racially) organizing societies. I contend that the organization of race occurs through census
policy schema in the creation of aggregate or dispersed racial taxonomies, the standardization of
racial classifications, the conceptualization of racial categories as discrete or multiple, and the determination of which groups can access government
who gets a seat at the table within this policy universe, the relative power or influence
of its denizens and how they connect ideas about race to their preferred method of organization are at the crux of the production
of this racial project. The first section of this chapter establishes a conceptual framework that identifies important characteristics of
programming. Moreover,
policy networks and demonstrates their congruency with this dissertation’s overarching exploration of the schematic state. It details Marsh and Smith’s
macro-level
structures such as ideas and institutions shape the scope and power of policy networks;
2) processes of network policy formation institutionalize path-dependencies and access
points for network participants; and 3) network structure dovetails with network
interactions – that is, agent skills, bargaining and resources – and leads to the policy
outcomes of these cases.
(2000) dialectical approach to policy networks, which will be used in subsequent sections to examine the ways in which: 1)
Debates about identity, surveillance, and power must start with the
census—state classification renders subjects into objects of observation and
control
Mezey, 3 – Professor of Law at Georgetown University (Naomi, “Erasure and
Recognition: The Census, Race and the National Imagination”, 97 Nw. U. L. Rev. 17011768 (2003) Northwestern University Law Review, 2003)//jml
In modem America, the census epitomizes the examination as an in- strument of
power. In a sense the examination is for Foucault any ritualized form of documenting the
individual, and the census is a national rite of mass individual documentation. It is a
regularly administered, probing questionnaire, to which the state requires a response,
inquiring into myriad details of life which are at once mundane and intimate. 9 The
census makes each person
seen and known by an invisible bureaucracy; each person be- comes an object of
observation, a subject of surveillance.9 3 Where once the documentation of a life was saved for nobles
and heroes, in the modem age it has been democratized, and "it functions as a procedure of objectification
and subjection."94 And yet the census as examination also obscures the in- dividuality of
people by incorporating them into a bewildering mass of sta- tistics, into a comparative
system of collective facts that sets and adjusts our sense of the normal.95 It takes
individuals and turns them into "statistical people." 96 David Theo Goldberg has analyzed the
racial categories of the census from a Foucaultian perspective, focusing perceptively on the ways in which the literal bureaucratic
forms, used by the
Census Bureau and now count- less other agencies and organizations, reflect, reproduce, and
distribute ra- cial identity. 97 He locates the bureaucratic form as part and product of the epistemic shift that both
Foucault and Hacking detail, noting that statistics and forms emerge around the same time and as
part of the same process: forms give structure, order, and logic to data, allowing it to be
'formalized," to be turned into "information."9 The ordering of knowledge in this fashion is
intertwined with the creation and regulatory control of identity. "Formal identity is
identity conceived, manufactured, and fabricated in and through forms.... The form, and
the identity prompted and promoted by the form, is regulatory and regulative. The form
furnishes uniformity ... to identity, rendering it accordingly accessible to administration .... The form is the technology of scientific
management par excellence."9 9 Thus the
census and its attendant standardized forms can be seen as
a Foucaultian examination, a primary instrument by which the state exercises
disciplinary power on individuals. It is evident in the way it creates, counts, and arranges
objects; in its classifying and ordering of living beings; in its plotting of people into tables and forms in
order to best observe the most in- timate details of their lives: their living arrangements, the number of televi- sions and toilets in
their home, their commute times, their wealth, their skin color. This
power to make and arrange objects of
inquiry is particularly evident with respect to racial classification because race has
been one of the main axes of state disciplinary power in this country. This view of the
census, as examination and disciplinary instrument, is not limited to high theorists. In fact, currently this position is most ardently
espoused by some conservatives and civil libertarians, who argue that the census should be scaled back to fulfill only the minimum
requirement of "actual enumeration" set by the Constitution. In particular, these opponents of the census regard the questions about
income, race, and standards and style of living as overly intrusive, an invasion of privacy, and irrelevant to the Constitutional
purpose of the census.°° While civil libertarian concerns about the census are aimed primarily at the way the routine business of government regulation and redistribution invade citizens' privacy,'' they
also fo- cus on the issue of racial
documentation and surveillance. To substantiate their fears of government misuse of
census data, civil libertarians remind us that the federal government used racial
identifiers taken from census data to help round up Japanese Americans for internment
in camps during World War II,102 despite a strict policy of confidentiality. 13 Taken to its most ex- treme, the
disciplinary power exercised through the census does more than just see us, know us,
and tell us what is normal. It makes us who we are and situates us with respect
to others. It also makes evident that the power to dis- cipline and the power to
recognize are an indivisible power. As Foucault himself acknowledged, the disciplinary power that
operates through the documentation of the individual is not just repressive and
censoring, it is also, as I have argued above, creative and aspirational. "[I]t produces reality; it
produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of
him belong to this production.""' 4
There’s no benefit to state programs based on race until the categories are
deconstructed—welfare programs solidify violent categories and
undermine struggles for justice
ESPINOZA 1997 (Leslie, Associate Professor of Law, Boston College Law School, California Law Review, October)
Race certainly is operational. 80 For each group, race provides benefits and burdens. As a hierarchical system, the benefits and
burdens are distributed in a grossly unequal and unjust way. Other
systems of oppression, such as misogyny,
homophobia and poverty, intersect with racism and synergistically operate to
disempower some and empower others. 81 Yet for all the complexity, we recognize race as a correlate, negative
and positive, to well-being. At the moment we recognize it, however, we also discount it - it could be capitalism, sexism, colonialism,
etc. The
complexity of oppression contributes to, and indeed may be at the heart of, our inability to
understand race. In the same way that we think we know who is white, who is black, who is brown, and who is [*1611]
yellow, we think that we know why she is poor, why she was fired, why she cannot read and why she is in jail. Naming and
understanding oppression seems like a catch-22. We use the master's tools to try to
dismantle the master's house and think we are making headway, only to discover that
the destruction of this house was part of a larger "urban renewal" plan to build a
"Master's Fortress." For example, as we break down racial categories, we find that each group
has a stake in maintaining their place in the racial order. Undocumented workers break
their back in the hot sun, but are grateful for work; women, in dilapidated housing and with
no hope for education or child care, raise small children and are thankful for a welfare check; sweatshop
slaves work interminable hours for a pittance but are relieved to pay off the cost of their
passage to America. And there are those who have moved up a step to own a small house in the
barrio or a vegetable cart in the market; or those whose third-cousin's daughter managed to finish technical school and who have
hope that one of their children will be in college instead of in a gang.
It is the focus on the crumb thrown their
way that keeps even the most oppressed from taking action for change. 82 There are
many examples of small benefit programs that are premised on definitional categories
for racially oppressed groups:bracero work permits, welfare benefits, refugee
immigration exceptions, targeted lending grants, minority business set-asides and affirmative action. The benefits
are always tenuous because the benefactor can alter the application and understanding
of the definitional category. This ambiguity is often used to pit different groups against
each other in a scramble for benefits. 83 It is also used to pit persons within categories
against each other. 84 [*1612] Tension and conflict within and between oppressed racial
groups keep us from forming coalitions. Yet, united action is the only hope for effectively
changing the vast disparities in wealth between social strata in this country. Racial outsiders
are stuck in the "bottom of the well" 85 if they buy into the myth that equality means
individual equality of opportunity. "Opportunity" has competition conceptually built into
it. Equality is viewed as the responsibility of the individual to take advantage of
opportunity. It is not understood as actual equality of basic material needs and it is not
understood as something derived from group action. Race definitions operate to define the "have-nots"
and to mask the correlation between race and the "haves." American social discourse attaches negative
characteristics by group; for example, he is poor because he is a lazy Spic. We do not attach success by racial group. Success is the
reward of individual characteristics, e.g., he is rich because he is smart, he works hard and he is ruthless. We
do not
acknowledge that, as a statistical reality, he is rich because he is a white male. Race
definitions go to the heart of our conception of equality. We learn that being racially
identified can hurt us: we are part of a group that is unfairly stereotyped and unfairly
treated. Likewise, we are taught that group identity does not lead to material success.
We "race" ourselves in a way that leaves us lonely, isolated and mired in poverty.
Our strategy is distinct from colorblindness and multiculturalism, both of
which have only served to circulate white supremacy—polyculturalism
allows us to build on the limited successes scored against white supremacy
to constitute more far-reaching resistance
Wendland 2003 (joe, peace activist in Michigan and Ohio and teaches in the Ethnic
Studies Department at Bowling green State University. Chopping Through the
Foundations of Racism With Vijay Prashad,
http://www.frictionmagazine.com/imprint/books/kung_fu.asp, LB)
Racism, like racialism, is not natural to human social relations. More specifically, Prashad shows with
devastating accuracy that, "White supremacy emerged in the throes of capitalism's planetary
birth to justify the expropriation of people off their land and the exploitation of people
for their labor." Although societies pre-dating capitalism and those outside of Europe did use slave
labor and were sometimes xenophobic and ethnocentric, Prashad argues that, "It would be inaccurate to reduce
this xenophobia or ethnocentrism to racism." Cultural and national differences
developed and recognized before the system of private expropriation of socially
produced value was transplanted by European (mostly English, Dutch, Portuguese and
Spanish) imperialism and were based primarily in language and geography -- not in
human bodies. Prashad concretely asserts historical and linguistic evidence that the primacy of color in the Indian caste
system emerged with the advent of British conquests. Another important aspect of this work is the discussion of fascism. Prashad
notes that, "Fascism
or a movement with fascistic tendencies has at its core hierarchy,
racism, and militarism." It tends to define the "nation" as "unitary" and tries to exclude or erase difference -- primarily
that of ethnicity or race. Such a movement tries every strategy or tactic to set aside the "mess of
democracy" and promotes the popularity of racial nationalism. Though readers likely will recognize
the US right-wing in this definition, Prashad also argues that elites in colonized (or formerly colonized)
countries are not immune to these tendencies. Especially within neocolonial frameworks
elites tend to try to emulate the sort of ideological and material practices of repression in
order to assert their own power over the colonized working class. The result is highly hierarchical
societies in which right-wing ruling cliques rely on imperialism (initially British, now American) to rule their countries. They
build their power on the ability to repress dissent and difference within their countries
and by orienting the labor and resources of their countries to imperialist interests. But,
even within this general picture of domination and fascism, the oppressed have historically fought back and, in so doing, built
unique and sometimes forgotten alliances. These
alliances, contrary to common misperceptions, have
a deep and powerful history among Asians and Africans. Prashad documents ancient links between
Africans and Chinese and Asian Indian merchant explorers. He notes Calcutta-born religious activist William Quinn, one of the
founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He linksMarcus Garvey with Ho Chi Minh and Ghandi. Ho visited UNIA offices
while traveling in the US; Ghandi, while a leader of the anti-racist movement in South Africa, relied on Garveyite formulations and
followers to develop a message for his constituents in the Indian National Congress; and Ghandi influenced and was impressed by
the work of the leaders who formed the organizations that would become the African National Congress and the South African
Communist Party. By the mid-20th century, these tenuous relations had been transformed into full-fledged alliances among Third
World peoples. Rastafarianism
and its cultural expressions were likely as much the result of
the styles and habits of East Indian residents of Caribbean islands as they were of
African descended people. Racially oppressed Dalits in India emulated the organization and rhetoric of the Black
Panther Party, and representatives of the National Liberation Front (Vietnam) claimed to be "Yellow Panthers." Among Americans,
Asian American, Chicano, Black, Puerto Rican, and American Indian radicals borrowed from and left their marks on a broad
movement for social revolution. This
larger social trend was encapsulated, for Prashad, in the
martial arts films of Bruce Lee. This aspect of Prashad's work should open up doors for
greater detailed study of these movements. A powerful countervailing force to fascism -whether from the imperialists or from the compradors (intermediaries) -- in Prashad's
view, is an anti-racist and anti-imperialist national liberation movement formulated on
shared social position, customs and practices, rather than skin color or desire to
maintain class dominance. A true anti-imperialist strategy is a socialist-based movement. Prashad's description and
criticism of racism and its various disguises is crucial for contemporary cultural studies students and political activists. He
contrasts two forms of racism (white supremacy) -- colorblindness and liberal
multiculturalism. One of the successes of the civil rights movement, though it
did not end white supremacy, was to reform the terrain on which white
supremacists could operate. (Even Trent Lott and Phil Gramm -- one-time members of the White Citizen's
Council and KKK, respectively -- had to change the framework, or hide, how they moved within these circles in order to maintain
legitimacy.) Crude
blatant racist became sophisticated "colorblind" libertarians. They
appropriated and re-worded the rhetoric of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and demanded
the erasure of race. What they sought in reality was a political stick to use against the
mild gains of the civil rights movement -- affirmative action or other protections against
discrimination. Colorblindness was a way of normalizing the already normal white that dominates US society. To this
Prashad contrasts liberal multiculturalism. This version of white supremacy sets in
motion a variety of racialized and essentialized cultural positions, assumed to exist in
nature and to occupy the pre-designated skin tone and body shape of people, in order to
manage the complexity of a multicultural society. Diversity, rather than colorblindness,
is the political tool of social control and maintenance of class relations. When it comes down to it,
both of these ideologies translate race into a device for forcing working-class people to compete for vital but scarce resources falling
off the tables of capitalists. The
latter, however, as Prashad indicates, opens space within which
true anti-racist and anti-capitalist alliances can be organized and cultivated.
Identity categories are in constant flux—ontologizing race only reinscribes
violence
Hipwell, 4 - Department of Geography, College of Social Sciences, Kyungpook
National University (William T., ‘A Deleuzian critique of resource-use management
politics in Industria’ The Canadian Geographer 48, no 3 (2004) 356–377)//jml
Identity. When you begin making decisions and cutting it up, rules and names appear. And once rules and names appear, you should
know when to stop. (Tao Te Ching, quoted in Scott 1998, 262) The Deleuzian critique most important to this discussion is directed
against ontological ‘identity’— which Deleuze argues has underlain western thought since Plato. In simple terms, ontological
identity assumes that the ‘total field’ of reality can be reduced to discrete points or
‘identities’ that interact atomistically, much like balls on a billiard table. Deleuze shows that belief in
ontological identity is an error, since reality is a continuum (an unbounded ‘whole’),
not an aggregation of separate ‘points’. In this discussion, I use the word ‘identitarianism’ to
refer to the set of ideas arising from an ontology of identity. Identity is a useful fiction, employed to
make intellectual epistemologies of calculation and measurement possible. However, when its fictionality is forgotten,
identitarianism quickly contributes to serious social, political and ecological problems. A
list of identity categories familiar to readers would include human races, animal species and academic disciplines. Identities
are generalisations based upon some agreed-upon norm. Identitarianism
masks, misrepresents or excludes transitional or marginal cases that do not fit easily
into the identity category under consideration. Deleuze undertakes the most systematic and rigorous critique
of identity in Difference and Repetition (Deleuze 1994). His project is to show that the being supposed in an
ontology of identity is defined by what it is not; that it relies on a negative, external
support (the ‘is/is not’ duality, or Hegel’s thesis/antithesis’) and is thus ‘no being at all’ (Hardt 1993, 114). Ontological
identity denies the positive movement of being, or ‘becoming’, and thus creates a static,
negative and, ultimately, false picture of the world (Doel 1996, 430). In practice, the most
significant feature of identitarianism is the process of ‘striation’: Deleuze and Guattari’s term for the
mental or physical imposition of fixed, sedentary boundaries (enclosures) onto hitherto smooth space to create what philosopher
Paul Patton (2000, 112) has called a ‘homogeneous space of quantitative multiplicity’. Representational intellect In Deleuze’s view,
the myth of identity has had profound epistemological implications. This
is so because intellectual
epistemologies are necessitated by a belief in ontological identity. That is to say, identitarian
thinking holds that the only way of gaining reliable knowledge about the world, and to
make accurate predictions, is through conscious, intellect-based approaches, grounded in logic. This, Deleuze
suggests, is a mistake. Of course, if reality truly were made up of discrete identities, then measuring them and logically
calculating their interactions would surely be the soundest way of gaining access to knowledge about the real world. Deleuze does
recognise that logic and reason are very frequently successful strategies; he merely emphasises that they should not be granted
exclusive epistemological status. His argument is that reality is not, in fact, fundamentally atomistic and that therefore an
identitarian epistemology, how- ever useful, is ultimately inadequate. He shows that representation
is the inevitable
outcome of the privileging of intellect over intuition. Moreover, he argues that the fluid and
mobile nature of reality—which the intellect on its own can never adequately grasp—means that
representation is doomed to perpetual error. Arran Garrue (1995, 70) argues that representation
results from Platonic thought’s ‘celebration of eternal forms and its denigration of the changing, sensible world’ (on this point see
also Deleuze 1994, 59). In Deleuze’s view, the representational intellect cannot truly understand the continuity and flow that
characterise the world. Instead, we
see the world through our intellect as series of moments,
aggregations of units. Representation also leads directly to reductionism, where complex
ideas and conditions are simplified to the point of minimising, obscuring and distorting
them (Random House Webster 1998, 1618). John Ralston Saul (1993) has called this the ‘dictatorship of reason’. Deleuze would
almost certainly have agreed. Difference Chaos is not a stable condition or fixed state. It is a process, it is dynamic. It is more like the
changing relationship between things than the things them- selves. (Merry 1995, 11) For Deleuze, static
identities are
dangerous illusions: the real world is, by contrast, always fluid and mobile; reality is
ontologically characterised by ‘difference’. This difference is not, as it might seem, difference between things (an
identitarian notion) but rather the idea that reality is a continuum of interplay, interpenetration and interconnectedness and that
‘things’ are merely intensities in this continuum, internally constituted by the interplay of different forces, and themselves
interacting and interpenetrating with everything around them. In this sense, allegedly
separate entities are
mutually constitutive and interdependent, and treating them as entirely separate
inevitably does intellectual and physical violence to the world. In an ontology
of difference, the world is viewed holistically. Differential being is defined on the basis of
what it is rather than what it is not. It is dynamic, not static. As Deleuze (1988, 123) puts it, ‘the
important thing is to understand life, each living individuality, not as a form, or a
development of form, but as a complex relation between different velocities’. While we may,
for practical purposes, speak of ‘a tree’, ‘a fish’, ‘the human species’, etc., awareness of ontological difference reminds us that it is a
mistake to abstract such things from their dynamic and continuous context. Prior to striation by identitarian forces, the world is
made of ‘smooth space’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 474–500), or what Patton (2000, 112) has called ‘the heterogeneous space of
qualitative multiplicity’. In smooth space, diverse and unexpected interconnections may appear and reconfigure (‘lines of flight’).
Smooth space is continually in flux; it is difficult to know intellectually and (therefore) difficult to control. To know
one’s way in the tangle of primeval forest or other ‘wild zones’ (Dalby 2001), one must have good instincts.
Words matter—our exposure of racial tradeoffs can help to disrupt white
supremacy. The state is important but words on the census are proof that
the circulation of categories in language also forms the social world in
which we live
HARRIS 1994 (Angela, Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, California Law
Review, July)
Discourse theory relies on a social constructionist understanding of the concepts "language" and "power." 151 The central insight of
discourse theory with respect to language is the blurring of the line between the "real" and the "ideal." 152 Discourse
theory
puts language at the center of human experience by asserting that language not only
describes the world, it makes it. 153 We only make sense of experience through the
conceptual categories [*773] we use to interpret and classify it. Even sensory perception itself, which we
tend to think of as an unmediated encounter with pure "reality," is better described as a process of interpretation in which our brains
pick and choose the stimuli to which to pay attention on the basis of preestablished conceptual frameworks. 154 This view of
language suggests
an important role for "power" in creating and maintaining the world. 155
As theorists have recognized, one of the most potent kinds of power one can have is the power to
label experience. 156 The struggle over what to call things, and hence how to understand
and ultimately experience them, is a struggle over social power. Just as history is written
by the winners, language is shaped by the socially dominant. 157 In post-structuralist theory, however,
"power" is not only negative or repressive - an infringement on prior liberty - but also productive and creative. If "power" is
understood simply as the human interactions that stabilize social meanings and practices, then the concept includes the power to do
something as well as power over someone. 158 In this broad account of "power," there is no individual or social group completely
lacking in power. 159 Power
circulates, in Foucault's terms, from the bottom up, not [*774] just from the
top down; resistance is always possible even when power is at its most repressive. 160 In
discourse theory, then, language is implemented through power relations which, in turn, are
shaped by social understandings created through language. A "discourse" refers both to a system of
concepts - the set of all things we can say about a particular subject - and to the relations of power that maintain that subject's
existence. The
project of post-structuralist theory is to tell stories about how certain
discourses emerge, shift, and submerge again. Under a post-structuralist account, then,
"race" is neither a natural fact simply there in "reality," nor a wrong idea, eradicable by
an act of will. "Race" is real, and pervasive: our very perceptions of the world, some theorists
argue, are filtered through a screen of "race." 161 And because the meaning of "race" is
neither unitary nor fixed, while some groups use notions of "race" to further the
subordination of people of color, other groups use "race" as a tool of resistance. 162 The
task of a discourse theory of race would be to chart this history. In Omi and Winant's phrase, "race"
is "an unstable and "decentered' complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle": 163 the concept
with which, John Calmore says, CRT begins. 164
Case
Advantage
Impacts
*The census creates a perception of the world that brackets off individuals
into neat identity classifications
Kertzer and Arel, 2 - * PhD, Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science,
Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University **PhD,
Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University
of Ottawa, Canada (David and Dominique, “Census and Identity: The Politics of Race,
Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses,” 2002)//jml
In short, the use of identity categories in censuses – as in other mecha- nisms of state administration –
creates a particular vision of social reality. All people are assigned to a single category,
and hence are conceptualized as sharing, with a certain number of others, a common collective
identity. This, in turn, encourages people to view the world as composed of distinct groups
of people and may focus attention on whatever criteria are utilized to distinguish among
these categories (Urla 1993). Rather than view so- cial links as complex and social groupings situational, the view
promoted by the census is one in which populations are divided into neat
categories. Appadurai’s (1993: 334) comment is apropos here: “statistics are to bod- ies and social types
what maps are to territories: they flatten and enclose.” In Europe, national statistics-gathering was
developing in the nine- teenth century as a major means of modernizing the state. International congresses were held where the
latest statistical and census developments were hawked to government representatives from across the continent. Knowledge was
power, and the knowledge of the population produced by the census gave those in power insight into social conditions, allowing
them to know the population and devise appropriate plans for dealing with them. As Urla (1993: 819) put it, “With the
professionalization and regularization of statistics-gathering in the nineteenth century, social statistics, once primarily an
instrument of the state, became a uniquely privileged way of ‘knowing’ the social body and a central technology in diagnosing its ills
and managing its welfare.” Such
language, not coincidentally, brings to mind Foucault, and his
view of the emergence of a modern state that progressively manages its population by
extending greater surveillance over it. In examining state action in the construction of collective identities, we
enter into the com- plex debates over what is meant by “the state.” The state itself is, of course, an abstraction,
not something one can touch. Such a perspective impels us to examine the multiplicity
of actors who together represent state power, and discourages us from the view that “the
state” necessarily acts with a single motive or a single design. An inquiry into censuses
and identity for- mation, then, requires examination of just which individuals and
groups representing state power are involved, and how they interrelate with one another as well as with the
general population. Pioneering research of this sort has been done on the impact of various advocacy groups. Espe- cially valuable
work has been done on the Census Advisory Committee on Spanish Origin Population in formulating the “Hispanic” category in the
1980 US census (Choldin 1986). Similarly important work has been done on the role of ethnographers, geographers, and party
activists in devising an official list of ethnic “nationalities” for the first Soviet census of 1926 (Hirsch 1997). Sorely needed are more
ethnographic efforts at examining the workings of state agencies of various kinds – from legis- latures to census-takers – in their
interactions with each other and with the people under their surveillance.3 That
the kind of counting and
categorizing that goes on in censuses is an imposition of central state authorities, and
thereby a means of extending central control, has long been recognized. Indeed, ever since the
first census-takers ventured into the field, struggles between local people and state authorities over
attempts to collect such information were common. Such was the case in mid-eighteenth-century France,
when various at- tempts to collect population data by the central government had to be abandoned. Opposition came not only from a
suspicious populace but also from local governments. Each feared that the information was be- ing gathered to facilitate new state
taxes (Starr 1987: 12–13). These first population enumerations were typically identified with attempts to tax (often newly acquired)
populations, as well as to conscript them for labor or military service.
The census is a form of racial ordering that creates processes of
assimilation into the categories of whiteness
Mezey, 3 – Professor of Law at Georgetown University (Naomi, “Erasure and
Recognition: The Census, Race and the National Imagination”, 97 Nw. U. L. Rev. 17011768 (2003) Northwestern University Law Review, 2003)//jml
But protecting traditional race categories and race-based rights and at the same time allowing for a
radical rethinking of identity does not come without costs. One cost may be the very thing the
traditional civil rights groups feared most from a single multiracial category: movement
of more minorities away from a single racial identity and potentially toward white- ness.
Of course this is not just the result of individual choice, but occurs through the reclassification of bodies based on changes to the
categories. In discussing the oft-cited projections that the United States will be a minority- majority country by 2060 based on
current immigration trends, john powell notes that he is skeptical "that we will categorize those immigrants such that the majority is
non-white. When
we talk about changing demographics we must remember that we are in
control of how we categorize our popula-tion. Racial ordering is not a natural
phenomenon." If history is any in- dication, enough people will be allowed to claim whiteness that
the country can maintain a white majority, with its attendant white power and privilege, and the nation as
currently imagined can be preserved. There is already a good deal of flexibility in the white category even as it is currently defined, as
a person "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa," '64 and there
is reason
to expect this definition will continue to change with time. Even if it does not, racial
performance will undoubtedly continue to inform our legal definitions.365 Immigrants, much
like they did one hundred years ago, are changing the meaning of whiteness. There were 28 million foreign-born residents of the
U.S. in 2000; two-thirds reported that they were white. 66 Not
only are American race categories somewhat
meaningless to many immigrants, but to the ex- tent they have meaning it is abundantly
clear that immigrants "equate 3'67 whiteness with opportunity and inclusion." Furthermore, the
His- panic/Latino category, an already ambiguous ethnicity, is another possible gateway to whiteness. In 2000, nearly half of all
Hispanics classified them- selves as white. 68 But of course, the OMB did not undo the basic race categories nor did it create a
separate multiracial category. Hence, another
important cost in its final decision is to those who
understand themselves as multiracial and who feel that they exist in liminal spaces on
official forms, in the national imagination, and in communities and even families. This
nonrecognition is acknowledged and perhaps exacerbated by the Census
Bureau when it re- 3'69 fers to multiracial people as "The Two or More Races
Population." By not fundamentally changing the categories by which we understand and
struggle with race, the check-all-that-apply decision continues to discipline and discount those who do not fit within them.
This statitization of racial identity furthers state control and reinforces
racial domination
Nobles, 2 - Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science at MIT (Melissa,
“Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National
Censuses,” “Racial categorization and censuses” 2002)//jml
Race as discourse To count by race presumes, of course, that there is something to be counted.
Intellectuals, political elites, scientists, and ordinary citizens have considered race an
elemental component of human identity, of what it means to be human. The weight of scientific thought about
race can hardly be overestimated, especially in census-taking. As the historian Nancy Stepan observes, the modern period of 1800 to
1960 was one in which European and American scientists were “preoccupied by race” (Stepan 1982: x). There
have been,
and still are, popular understandings of race and of proper racial identifications. These
popular understandings are sometimes directly at odds with elite and scientific understandings. They are, as often, informed by
them, with variation. Given
then that race was (and continues to be) thought elemental to
human identity, it would seem no surprise that the census counts by race. The connection
between race and census-taking would seemingly end there. Every human body has a racial identity, and population censuses count
bodies, so racial data are obtained through the counting of bodies. But
if we question the supposed rigid
quality of race and explore its evident plastic qualities, the way is opened to better
explaining what race is and to understanding the role of the census in
creating it. The scholarship that refers to race in one way or another is vast and
continues to grow. However that portion of it that examines the concept of race itself is less voluminous, though still
substantial. An intellectual consensus exists today whereby most agree that racial categories
have no biological basis. This is true even as persons still commonly refer to individuals and groups on the basis of
similar and dissimilar physical characteristics, and use the term 'race' and its accompanying discourse, however incoherent, to
substantiate these distinctions. With
racial categories believed to have no biological basis, the task
for scholars has shifted to defining, explaining, describing, and analyzing race. The resulting
theories vary as widely as the disciplines. According to the sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant, race is “a concept
which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests referring to different types
of human bodies” (1994: 55). The historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham understands race to have various faces: race, then,
is a “social construction”; “a highly contested representation of relations of power between
social categories by which individuals are identified and identify themselves”; “a myth”;
“a global sign”; and a “metalanguage” (1992: 251–74). The philosopher David Theo Goldberg argues that race is an
“irreducibly political category, ” in that “racial creation and management acquire import in framing and giving specificity to the body
politic” (1992: 563). The American Anthropological Association today views race as a concept with little scientific validity, burdened
by its association with racist practices, and less useful than ethnicity in capturing the “human variability” of the American people.
According to the legal scholar Ian Haney-Lopez, the
law constructs race legally by fixing the
boundaries of races, by defining the content of racial identities, and by specifying their relative disadvantage and
privilege in American society (1996: 10). Literary critic Henry Louis Gates sees race as the “ultimate trope of difference because it is
so very arbitrary in its application” (1986: 5). Historians
of ideas have traced the development of racial
thought in various countries and different historical epochs (Jordan 1968; Horsman 1981; Gould 1981;
Barkan 1992; Skidmore 1993). Political scientists view race as a tool, used both by white
elites, to insure white domination, and by blacks and other nonwhites, as a
potential weapon to resist such domination by blacks and other nonwhites (Hanchard 1994;
Marx 1998). We are a long way, indeed, from seeing race as fixed, objective, and in significant ways, deriving its existence from
human bodies at all. Race stems from and rests in language, in social practices, in legal definitions, in ideas, in structural
arrangements, and in political contests over power. This chapter builds on certain trends of this theoretical work. It treats race as a
discourse, meaning that race
is a set of shifting claims that describe and explain what race is and
what it means. Although this discourse has various sources in religion, law, and science, it is the latter – science – that has
been the most influential in census-taking in the United States and Brazil. Indeed, the influence of scientific thinking argues against
viewing racial discourse as merely a tool to be manipulated by elites or masses. While it is true that political and intellectual elites
were largely responsible for creating and promulgating scientific racial thought, they did so not only to manipulate and control;
rather, they thought that they were adhering to nature's laws of human diversity. However, because
scientific
investigation results from human endeavor, it is inevitably shaped by larger political,
social, and cultural processes. Racial discourse, then, does not exist without its various
agents or its institutional channels. Scholars are right in stressing race's discursive nature. Yet their theoretical
formulations run the risk of obscuring the institutional sites of its construction, maintenance, and perpetuation. Census
Bureaus are such sites because they help to create, maintain, and advance
racial discourse. As we will see, in both countries racial discourse and racial categorization on censuses have
focused on the ideas of “whiteness, ” “blackness, ” and “mulattoness. ” However, racial
discourse has been applied to other groups as well. In the United States, elite concerns
about other “nonwhite” people – the Chinese, Japanese, and especially Native
Americans – were also reflected and advanced by the census, although to a far lesser degree.
Twentieth-century Brazilian censuses did not enumerate indigenous persons separately (with an indigenous category) until the 1991
census. Racial
discourse supplies the boundaries of racial memberships and their content,
and is itself context specific. It therefore varies from one national setting to the next. In nineteenth-century colonial
Malaysia, for example, race pertained to the broad grouping of Europeans, Malays, Chinese, Indians, and others (Hirschman 1986),
and by 1901 censuses counted them as “races” (Hirschman 1987). In Guatemala, Ladinos and Mayas are the two major racial groups.
Twentieth-century Guatemalan censuses have supposedly charted the decrease in Mayas, thereby making Guatemala a “whiter, less
Indian” nation, according to its political elites (Lovell, Lutz 1994: 137). Likewise,
the relation of such discourse
to census-taking may vary in its particularities, but the general pattern holds: censustaking reflects, upholds, and often furthers racial discourse.
Slavery impact
Wander et al. 93 (Philip Wander has specialized in slavery, Native American, and
foreign policy rhetoric. He has a Ph.D from University of Pittsburgh and is a presidential
professor at Loyola, 1993. http://www.geraldbivens.com/rd/wander-roots-of-racialclassification.pdf) JG
At first there were white and black slaves who suffered alike from the overwhelming English and European passion for material and
the move from racial classification to
racialization—as slave and black become synonymous. According to some scholars, this move was
due to two unique characteristics of the American colonial experience. The first was the prevailing attitude toward
property. For centuries, Europeans held a firm belief that the best in life was the expansion of
self through property and property began and ended with possession of one’s body (Kovel, 1984, p. 18). However, this law
was violated by New World slavery, and it differed in this way from other slave systems. The slave owners, in
proclaiming ownership of the bodies of the slaves, detached the body from the self and then
reduced his self to sub-human status (justified by the racial categorization system). Slave
spiritual expansion. A closer look at U.S. colonial history reveals
property became totally identified with people who happened to have black skin, the color that had always horrified the West (Kovel,
1984, p.21)
Slavery impact #2
Wander et al 93 (Philip Wander has specialized in slavery, Native American, and
foreign policy rhetoric. He has a Ph.D from University of Pittsburgh and is a presidential
professor at Loyola, 1993. http://www.geraldbivens.com/rd/wander-roots-of-racialclassification.pdf) JG
The roots of racial classification emerge from the naturalistic science of the 18th and 19th century. During this time, scientific
studies extended the classifications of humankind developed by zoologists and physical
anthropologists by systematically measuring and describing differences in hair texture. skin
color, average height, and cranial capacity in various races. These studies reflected a naturalist
tradition—an assumption that the physical world had an intrinsically hierarchical order
in which whites were the last and most developed link in "the great chain of being. (Webster,
1992. p. 4.)… How were these categories used socially and politically? To answer these questions. we must examine the historical
contexts in which this scholarship occurred This
scholarship occurred during a period of global
expansion by European powers and of westward expansion in the United States. The research on
racial categories supported these efforts--often aimed at subjugating nonwhite peoples
(Fusser Rosenberg, 1999: Omi & Winant, 1994). Anthropologists and Egyptologists found evidence of
cultural, social, technological, and spiritual inferiority of nonwhite races throughout human history.
These conclusions were corroborated by colonial officials and newspaper reports that described and discussed the inferiority of nonwhites in colonies and potential colonies throughout the world. By
using the research findings described above,
race theory helped to explain and justify the expansion and colonizing by white peoples,
their subjugation of nonwhite peoples in Africa, Asia. and the Orient, and the continuing
domination of nonwhite peoples—slaves, peasants, aborigines, and the poor at home.
Racism turns nuke war
Racism make nuclear war inevitable
KOVEL 1988 (Joel, Distinguished Professor of Social Studies at Bard University, White Racism: A Psychohistory, 1988, p. xxix-xxx)
As people become dehumanized, the states become more powerful and warlike. Metaracism signifies the
triumph of technical reasoning in the racial sphere. The same technocracy applies to militarization in general, where it has led to the inexorable drive
There is an indubitable although largely
link between the inner dynamic of a society, including its racism, and the external
projection of social violence. Both involve actions taken toward an Other, a term we may define as
the negation of the socially affirmed self. Communist, black, Jew—all have been Other to the white West. The Jew has, for a while at
least, stepped outside of the role thanks to the integration of Israel within the nations of the West, leaving the black
and the Communist to suffer the respective technocratic violences of metaracism and thermonuclear deterrence. Since the initial writing of
toward thermonuclear weaponry and the transformation of the state into the nuclear state.
obscure,
WHITE RACISM, these closely linked phenomena have grown enormously. Of course, there is a major, cataclysmic difference between the types of
technocratic domination. Metaracism can be played out quite a while longer. Indeed, since it is a racism that proceeds on the basis of anti-racism, it
appears capable of a vastly greater degree of integration than either dominative or aversive racism, at least under the firmly entrenched conditions of
Thermonuclear deterrence, on the other hand, has already decayed into the
apocalyptic logic of first-strike capability (or counterforce means of pursing nuclear war), which threatens to
put an end to history itself. Thus the nuclear crisis is now the leading item on the global agenda. If it is not resolved civilization will
late capitalist society.
be exterminated while if it is resolved, the terms of society and the state will undoubtedly be greatly altered. This will of course profoundly affect the
racial situation. At the same time
the disposition of racism will play a key role in the outcome of the
nuclear crisis. For one thing, the effectiveness of an antinuclear movement will depend heavily on its ability to involve people of all races—in
contrast to its present makeup, which is almost entirely white and middle class. To achieve such mobilization and carry it through, however, the
movement will have to be able to make the linkages between militarization and racial oppression very clearly and forcefully. For if the third, and last
world war becomes thermonuclear, it will most likely be in a place defined by racial oppositions.
Polyculturalism
Prioritizing certain forms of oppression over another fails to actualize
political change – the exclusion of certain identity categories locks in
hierarchies of power
Prashad 2011 (vijay, director of the international studies program at trinity college,
everyone was kung fu fighting: afro-asian connections and the myth of cultural purity,
project muse, LB)
In 1971, Lee was touted to play Caine in the television show Kung Fu (then called The Warrior), but the studio rejected
him as "too Chinese," a rejection that sent Lee back to Hong Kong and history. Kung Fu became all that Lee rejected. Set in
the nineteenth century, the show has Caine [End Page 57] (half-Chinese, half-white) take on racism by his own individual,
superhuman initiative; other Asians appear as passive and exotic. The
half-white man, a left Chinese American
periodical argued, is guided by "the feudal landlord philosophies of ancient China," and
even the portrayal of nineteenth-century China "is pictured as a place abstracted from
time and place." The Taiping and Boxer revolts have no room in what is essentially a very conservative view of China and
social change.23 Lee would not have played Caine in this light. "It was hard as hell for Bruce to become an
actor," remembers Jim Kelly, the African American kung fu star of Enter the Dragon. And the reason why was
because he was Chinese. America did not want a Chinese hero, and that's why he left for Hong Kong. He was down and
out. He was hurt financially. He told me that he tried to stick it out, but he couldn't get the work he wanted. So he said, "Hey, I'm
gone." My understanding, from talking to Bruce, was that the Kung Fuseries was written for him, and Bruce wanted to do that. But
the bottom line was that the networks did not want to project a Chinese guy as the main hero. But Bruce explained to me that he
believed that all things happened for a reason. Even though he was very upset about it, he felt that everything would work out. He
wasn't going to be denied. I have so much respect for Bruce, because I understand what he went through just by being black in
America. He was able to find a way to get around all those problems. He stuck in there, and wouldn't give up. He knew my struggle,
and I knew his.24 They knew each other's fights.
From 1968 until the late 1970s, the terrain of left
political struggle in the United States was replete with organizations, and many of the
most energetic ones formed themselves cognizant of the problem of racism. In 1967, Stokely
Carmichael and Charles Hamilton's manifesto Black Power argued that coalitions could only be built if each party within the
compact is empowered ("before a group can enter an open society, it must first close ranks").25 Oppressed
groups
should form their own organizations to hold discussions impossible to hold before the
eyes of all people, and they should forge the strength for mutual respect in
broad coalitions.26 While some activists in the late 1960s took positions such
as that the most oppressed must lead the movement, most of those among
the oppressed created organizations under the banner of the "Third World"
as a prelude to the united front. The Black Panther Party, formed in 1967, led the way, but right on their heels came the Young Lords
Organization (a gang from 1956, rectified by Cha Cha Jimenez in 1967), the Brown Berets (a Chicano formation of 1968), the
American Indian Movement (formed in Minneapolis in 1968), the Red Guard Party (of Chinese Americans in San Francisco, in 1969)
and the I Wor Kuen (from New York's Chinatown in 1969).27 Poor white folk formed the Patriot Party as well as Rising Up Angry
(an offshoot of the Hank Williams chapter of Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] and Join ERAP Project). Bernardine Dohrn,
within SDS in 1968, expressed the view that "the best thing that we can do for ourselves, as well as for the Panthers and the
revolutionary black liberation struggle is to build a fucking white revolutionary movement."28 Against
the liberalism of
support came the revolutionary instinct of self-interest politics, here in the guise of the
Weather Underground. Four women of the SDS sounded the clarion call for an autonomous womens' organization when
they wrote in mid-1967, "We find that women are in a colonial relationship to men and we
recognize ourselves as part of the Third World."29 The logic of self-determination as the
preliminary stage for a united front platform, to some extent, explains the proliferation
of left groups constituted around nationality. But each of these organizations worked closely with others in a
piecemeal coalition. The Young Lords worked in close concert with I Wor Kuen, and in 1971, the central committee member Juan
Gonzalez traveled to San Francisco's Chinatown to meet with Asian revolutionaries and others.30 When Amerindian radicals took
Alcatraz in 1970, a detachment of Japanese American radicals unfurled a huge banner, "Japanese Americans Support Native
Americans," painted signs reading, "This is Indian Property" and "Red Power," as well as brought them food.31 The Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) offered their solidarity with Amerindians, Stokely Carmichael offered the keynote statement at the
Arab Student Convention in 1968, the Black Panthers took up the cause of the forty-one Iranian students set for deportation from
the United States because of anti-shah activities, and the Wei Min made common cause with the liberation urges of the Ethiopian
Students Union of Northern California: a vibrant [End Page 59] world of internationalism through nationality, of particular
universalism.32 These
movements acknowledged the strategic importance of
unity, but they knew that unity could not be forged without space for the
efflorescence of oppressed cultures as well as the development of
leadership within the different "nations." In late 1969, Amy Uyematsu at UCLA
wrote, "Yellow power and black power must be two independently-powerful, joint forces
within the Third World revolution to free all exploited and oppressed people of color."33
"Independently-powerful" and yet "joint forces": the movement allowed these two impulses to grow in a dialectical relationship,
without allowing one to gain priority over the other. When DeAnna Lee asked Bobby Seale in 1970 if he had a message for Asians, he
said that "I
see the Asian people playing a very significant part in solving the problems of
their own community in coalition, unity and alliance with Black people because the
problems are basically the same as they are for Brown, Red and poor White Americans—
the basic problem of poverty and oppression that we are all subjected to."34 The problems are
the same, but the political organizations must work independently, and jointly, to create a united front in practice. The complexity of
segregated neighborhoods meant that the idea of nation could not sustain itself at each turn. Asians along the West Coast of the
United States lived among blacks, so that when
the Black Panther Party was formed, Asians gravitated
to it (in much the same way as Asians of another generation worked within the civil rights ambit). Yuri Kochiyama had already
made contact with Malcolm X, but in the late 1960s, several Asians joined the Panthers, such as Richard Aoki (made immortal by
Bobby Seale as "a Japanese radical cat," who "had guns for a motherfucker"35 ), the Chinese Jamaican filmmaker Lee Lew-Lee, and
Guy Kurose of Seattle.36 Aoki, raised in the Topaz concentration camp and then in West Oakland with Huey P. Newton and Seale,
was a charter member of the Panthers and its field marshall, who went underground into the Asian American Political Alliance at UC
Berkeley. Three decades later, Aoki said, "If
you are a person of color there's no other way for you to
go except to be part of the Black liberation struggle. It doesn't mean submerge your own
political identity or your whatever, but the job that has to be done in front, you got to be
there. And I was there. What can I say."37 The welcome by black radicals was not [End Page 60] always so clear.
Moritsuga "Mo" Nishida was raised in Los Angeles, joined a gang (the Constituents from the westside on Crenshaw), and moved into
the orbit of black radicalism. But he was not welcomed: "We
ain't Black so we get this, especially from nonCalifornia bred Blacks who don't understand the Asian oppression and struggle, so to
them, if you're not Black then you're White. So we getting all kind of bullshit like
that."38 If some Asian men found it hard to make the connections, "some sisters were
really politicized," and they interacted with the Panthers in Oakland.39
Racial essentialism is bad – the dualism reinforces violent and exclusionary
forms of community that are impossible to sustain
Gosine, 2 - Professor in the Sociology department at Brock University, St. Catharines,
ON (Kevin, Essentialism Versus Complexity: Conceptions of Racial Identity
Construction in Educational Scholarship, 2002, Google Scholar)//jml
In all, Fordham and Ogbu appear content to depict a somewhat one- dimensional Black consciousness, forged and projected in
relation to prevailing, stigmatized constructions of Blackness within the dominant White society. Their
analyses imply
an either/or scenario between Black and White culture. They portray the spaces in
between these discrete cultures, such as the spaces occupied by Fordham’s high-achieving raceless students, as
spaces of isolation and emotional torment rather than legitimate sites for the production
of hybrid, intersubjective identities as scholars such as Bhabha (1990, p. 4) and Walcott (1997, p. 42) have
characterized these “in between” locations. To claim that someone can adopt a raceless persona
implies that recognizable racial identities exist to which they do not conform. Such a
perspective implies the need for people to belong to one community or the other,
with there being discrete, clear- cut ramifications for socioeconomic mobility for each
community. My quarrel is not with the contention that the Black underclass community in Fordham’s and Ogbu’s research
intersubjectively constructs the oppositional collective identity to which these investigators point. On the contrary, studies (e.g.,
Fordham & Ogbu, 1992) that explore such defensively situated collective identities are invaluable for the insight they provide into
the alienation and anger marginalized groups feel living within the context of a Eurocentric, racist society. Rather, my concern with
these studies is twofold. First, as indicated above, the
ways in which class, ethnicity, and gender combine
to shape the construction of this collective identity in different ways at different
moments are virtually ignored by Fordham and Ogbu. Instead, their analyses imply that the static
communal consciousness they depict is something to which virtually all Black
Americans subscribe. Second, the complexities and contradictions that lie behind this
outwardly projected, oppositional collective consciousness are far from adequately
explored because the authors reduce such complexity to a homogeneous, clearly
bounded racial essence. Although Fordham and Ogbu (1992) detail the experiences of Black students with strong
academic potential, they depict such students as withdrawing from the educational system in various ways in conformity with the
anti-academic Black sub-culture that the authors describe, hence implying the existence of virtually impenetrable and immovable
communal boundaries. Put another way, the
agency exercised by racialized subjects is portrayed as
unable to escape the confines of a clearly bounded Blackness, resulting in the
reinforcement of reified and socially constructed notions of racial
difference and its conflation with immutable cultural difference.
Subjectivities that transgress these confines are characterized in outsider terms (e.g.,
Fordham’s raceless youth) rather than as forms of agency that challenge, stretch, and possibly
shift and demonstrate overlap in the imagined boundaries that separate different
racialized communities.
Strategic essentialism bad
Reconceptualizing identity away from essentialism allows individuals to
challenge the boundaries of identity
Gosine, 2 - Professor in the Sociology department at Brock University, St. Catharines,
ON (Kevin, Essentialism Versus Complexity: Conceptions of Racial Identity
Construction in Educational Scholarship, 2002, Google Scholar)//jml
In this article I have traced a progressive, theoretical evolution in the way North American scholars have taken up issues of culture
and identity. Scholars
have portrayed Western societies such as Canada as contexts where the dominant
society represents racialized minorities as a stigmatized Other, people who are constructed as having fixed,
settled, and stable identities that are rooted outside of — and therefore are deviant from
— the European Whiteness that constitutes the imaginary (normative) glue of Canada as well as other Western nation
states. The identity-related studies I have reviewed in this article demonstrate the various
ways scholars have conceptualized both communal and individual identity construction
on the part of racialized people in relation to the dominant society. In this literature, scholars have
demonstrated a shift in thinking about identity to see defensively situated forms of consciousness as contingent and tentative and
beneath which lie intra-communal ambivalence, rupture, and complexity. Scholars such as Fordham and Ogbu (1992)
presented a somewhat stable, essentialist, oppositional Black culture with little explicit
consideration for the various social statuses that interact with race to shape this
collective consciousness, such as class or gender. Fordham and Ogbu also gave scant attention to the
heterogeneity and complexities that underlie the contingent, oppositional, collective consciousness that they point to. Waters (1994)
considered the intersection of multiple social statuses, but for her these statuses
seemed to coalesce into
seemingly fixed, easily recognizable, and mutually exclusive ethnic and
racial identities. Like Fordham and Ogbu, she failed to entertain the possibility that her identity categories
are contingent, defensively situated, essentialisms that screen a multiplicity
of ambivalent and complex subjectivities. Scholars such as James (1997) and, in particular, Yon
(2000) have advanced the way identity is conceptualized by abandoning the coherence and the
fixity that comes with overemphasizing collective identities in favour of fragmentation,
contradiction, hybridity, and fluidity. Scholars (e.g., Yon, 2000) who elucidate such a postmodern perspective on
identity formation remain mindful of the reality that racialized, gendered, heterosexist, and ageist arrangements of knowledge and
power that prevail within the broader society influence the production of multifaceted subjectivities. At the same  92 KEVIN
GOSINE time, because of their agency, the
people who are objectified by such arrangements of
knowledge and power continually test, push, and redraw the boundaries of such
hegemonic discourses.
An overemphasis on essentialist identity communities strips individuals of
agency
Gosine, 2 - Professor in the Sociology department at Brock University, St. Catharines,
ON (Kevin, Essentialism Versus Complexity: Conceptions of Racial Identity
Construction in Educational Scholarship, 2002, Google Scholar)//jml
Failure to excavate outwardly projected communal identities when thinking about issues of race,
educational achievement, and social mobility leads to an overemphasis on culture or collective
identities, thereby homogenizing racialized youth who, in turn, are stripped of any
real sense of agency. Individuals are encased in their static cultural or communal
environments which furnish the basis for interventions that gloss over the unique,
constantly shifting relationships individual members of such “imagined communities”
(Anderson, 1991) make with their own communities and aspects of the dominant society. Such a
perspective on identity makes it easy for people to conclude that Asians do well in school
because of these aspects of their culture, or Blacks fail to do well because of these
cultural tendencies (e.g., their oppositional outlook), hence suppressing intra-group difference and possibly minimizing the
effects of structural barriers such as a Eurocentric curriculum or differential treatment from teachers, administrators, and so on. In
postmodern approaches to culture and identity construction, by contrast, cultural or communal
identities are not afforded such deterministic clout. In this perspective, although
communities may project oppositional, seemingly homogeneous collective identities in the
face of perceived oppression and unequal treatment, it is recognized that behind such
outwardly projected communal identities different cultural influences and other social
statuses interact, collide, and are negotiated in different ways at different moments by different
people. Hence, the approach eschews simple, culturally reductionist and essentialist explanations for issues such as the educational
underachievement of particular groups.
Essentialist conceptions of identity create objectification of individuals – a
reformulation of this conception is necessary
Gosine, 2 - Professor in the Sociology department at Brock University, St. Catharines,
ON (Kevin, Essentialism Versus Complexity: Conceptions of Racial Identity
Construction in Educational Scholarship, 2002, Google Scholar)//jml
In this article, I have argued for the integration of various elements of the education-related literature on racial identity to construct
a model that encourages researchers to explicitly account for two levels of identity. First, investigators need to examine the ways in
which various social statuses interlock at particular moments and particular social locations to shape the production of essentialist,
defensively situated collective identities on the part of racialized people. As Fordham and Ogbu (1992) and Waters (1994) contend,
such defensively situated identities represent collective efforts to challenge or counteract
dominant, negatively represented constructions of a given social group. When looking at such
imagined communities, anyone concerned will find that the key issue is not what these collective
identities look like in any kind of objective sense, but what the people who project such
intersubjective identities want them to look like to those constructed as outsiders at
specific locations and moments. Researchers might consider employing postmodern perspectives to highlight the
various ways individuals negotiate, engage, and resist such collective identifications from the multiplicity of subject positions that
comprise a given racial community. Put differently, it
is important to account for the unique ways
different social statuses continually intersect to complicate collective strivings for
coherent racial identities. Although collective or intersubjective forms of racial identity
can frequently work to protect and empower racialized youth living within a hostile,
Eurocentric environment (Miller, 1999), the imposition of defensively situated (counterhegemonic) essentialisms can be, as Yon’s (2000) interviews with Trevor and Margaret illustrate, just as
confining or oppressive as the negatively valued representations that circulate
within the dominant society. In both cases, human subjects are objectified through
the imposition of confining, static labels — a situation that provides fertile ground for intra-communal
classism, sexism, and homophobia. For this reason, it is worthwhile to explore the diverse effects of these
racialized communal forms of consciousness along with the multiplicity of ways in
which individuals negotiate and make sense of them. Accounting for intra-group division, ambivalence, and
rupture exposes the unstable and fluid nature of collective identities.
Impact framing
D rule claim
Memmi 2K (Albert, Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ U of Paris, Naiteire, Racism, Translated by Steve Martinot, p. 163165)
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without
remission, probably never achieved. Yet, for this very reason, it is a struggle to be
undertaken without surcease and without concessions. One cannot be indulgent
toward racism; one must not even let the monster in the house, especially not
in a mask. To give it merely a foothold means to augment the bestial part in us and
in other people, which is to diminish what is human. T o accept the racist
universe to the slightest degree is to endorse fear, injustice, and
violence . It is to accept the persistence of the dark history in which we still largely live. it is to agree that the outsider will
always be a possible victim (and which man is not himself an outsider relative to someone else?. Racism illustrates, in
sum, the inevitable negativity of the condition of the dominated that is, it illuminates in a certain sense the
entire human condition. The anti-racist struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of
the prologues to the ultimate passage from animosity to humanity. In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge.
However, it remains true that one’s moral conduit only emerges from a choice: one
choice
has to want it. It is a
among other choices, and always debatable in its foundations and its consequences. Let us say, broadly speaking,
that the choice to conduct oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of a human order, for which racism is the very
negation. This is almost a redundancy.
One cannot found a moral order, let alone a
legislative order, on racism, because racism signifies the exclusion of the
other , and his or her subjection to violence and domination. From an ethical point of view, if
one can deploy a little religious language, racism is ‘the truly capital sin. It is not an accident that almost all of
humanity’s spiritual traditions counsels respect for the weak, for orphans, widows, or strangers. It is not just a question of
theoretical morality and disinterested commandments. Such unanimity in the safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility
of such sentiments. All things considered, we
have an interest in banishing injustice, because
injustice engenders violence and death. Of course, this is debatable. There are those who think that if one is
strong enough, the assault on and oppression of others is permissible. Bur no one is ever sure of remaining the strongest. One
day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed. All
unjust society contains within itself the seeds of its own
death. It is probably smarter to treat others with respect so that they treat you with respect. “Recall.” says the Bible, “that you
were once a stranger in Egypt,” which means both that you ought to respect the stranger because you were a stranger yourself
and that you risk becoming one again someday. It is an ethical and a practical appeal—indeed, it is a contract, however implicit it
might be. In
short, the refusal of racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical
morality because, in the end, the ethical choice commands the political
choice, a just society must be a society accepted by all . If this contractual
principle is not accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will be our lot.
If it is accepted, we can hope someday to live in peace . True, it is a wager, but the stakes
are irresistible.
Their turns case arguments are why nothing ever changes
Omolade 84 (Barbara, sociologist and educator, dean at calvin college, women of color
and the nuclear holocaust, WSQ v12 n2, LB)
To raise these issues effectively, the movement for nuclear disarmament must overcome
its reluctance to speak in terms of power, of institutional racism, and imperialist
military terror. The issues of nuclear disarmament and peace have been mystified because they
have been placed within a doomsday frame which separates these issues from other
ones, saying, "How can we talk about struggles against racism, poverty, and
exploitation when there will be no world after they drop the bombs?" The
struggle for peace cannot be separated from, nor considered more sacrosanct than, other
struggles concerned with human life and change. In April, 1979, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency released a report on the effects of nuclear war that concludes that, in a general nuclear
war between the United States and the Soviet Union, 25 to 100 million people would be
killed. This is approximately the same number of African people who died between 1492
and 1890 as a result of the African slave trade to the New World. The same federal report also
comments on the destruction of urban housing that would cause massive shortages after a nuclear war, as well as on the crops that
would be lost, causing massive food shortages. Of course, for
people of color the world over, starvation is
already a common problem, when, for example, a nation's crops are grown for export
rather than to feed its own people. And the housing of people of color throughout the world's urban areas is already
blighted and inhumane: families live in shacks, shanty towns, or on the streets; even in the urban areas of North America, the poor
may live without heat or running water. For people of color, the
world as we knew it ended centuries ago.
Our world, with its own languages, customs and ways, ended. And we are only now
beginning to see with increasing clarity that our task is to reclaim that world, struggle
for it, and rebuld it in our, own image. The "death culture" we live in has convinced
many to be more concerned with death than with life, more willing to demonstrate for
"survival at any cost" than to struggle for liberty and peace with dignity. Nuclear disarmament
becomes a safe issue when it is not linked to the daily and historic issues of racism, to the ways in which people of color continue to
be murdered. Acts
of war, nuclear holocausts, and genocide have already been declared on
our jobs, our housing, our schools, our families, and our lands. As women of color, we are warriors,
not pacifists. We must fight as a people on all fronts, or we will continue to die as a people . We
have fought in people's wars in China, in Cuba, in GuineaBissau, and in such struggles as the civil rights movement, the women's
movement, and in countless daily encounters with landlords, welfare departments, and schools. These
struggles are not
abstractions, but the only means by which we have gained the ability to eat and to
provide for the future of our people.
Epist da
Be skeptical of their evidence – their authors are victims of absurdist
constructions
Webster 2k – Prof CSU Los Angeles, http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2000/06/01/twenty-onearguments-for-abolishing-racial-classification/, 6/26/15 BRoche
Races are a categorization of certain biological characteristics. Indeed, the concept of race
refers not to persons but arbitrarily selected anatomical attributes. It follows that persons do not
belong to races. Black people and white people are not conceptually identifiable, although
there are persons with varying shades of skin color, facial form, hair type, shape of skull, and innumerable
other characteristics. Thus the idea of race relations is a misnomer. Instead of exposing the absurdities in the practice of racial
classification, on that basis, refuse to conduct research on race relations, social scientists are generally content to claim that race is a
social construct. This
facilitates continuing research on and conservation of "race relations."
In this sense, there are no liberal and conservative perspectives "race." The entire
project of race relations studies, organization, and policies is eminently conservative of
an absurdity.
At: but science !!!!
Racial categories have no scientific basis
Change and Dodd 01 (Heewon Chang has a PhD in Education and Anthropology and
is a professor at Eastern University. Timothy Dodd is a professor at Eastern University
“International Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity: An Annotated Bibliography” 2001.
Web. http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/chang_dodd.html) JG
Classification of humans into distinct racial groups claims to draw on scientific facts. This endeavor is a
facade lacking genuine scientific validity for at least two reasons. First, racial classification assumes
that pure phenotypes exist. This premise is difficult to prove, even if one accepts the conjecture that pure phenotypes
had existed in the early stage of human existence. Biological intermixing between people of apparently different phenotypes
complicates today's "scientific" attempt to sort people out purely by phenotypic traits. Second, any
claim that racial
differences are based on biological differences ignores the fact that people with identical
physical attributes are often classified differently and hold different social positions in
societies. Brazil's complicated racial categories based on skin shade (Stam 1998) do not coincide with the black-white-colored
paradigm sustained in South African apartheid racial discourse (Deng, 1997). Koreans and Japanese who can be easily classified into
the same racial category are considered two different "races" by Japanese due to their notion of differing "blood" affinities
(Dikks•ter, 1997; Min, 1992). Even within Brazil,
the socio-economic status of an individual frequently
affects his/her racial category. This is reflected in the popular ideology, "Money whitens," whereby a darker-skinned
person may become "white" based on economic status (Hanchard, 1994; Reichmann, 1999; Twine, 1998). Both of these problems are
apparent in Mexican society where scholars have noted that it is often impossible to distinguish between Indians and Mestizos
phenotypically. Instead, individuals of both groups are more commonly categorized according to social and cultural traits.
At: census good
The Census is problematic because it attempts to make subjective categories
of identity objective, which constructs a form of reality that reifies state
control
Kertzer and Arel, 2 - * PhD, Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science,
Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University **PhD,
Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University
of Ottawa, Canada (David and Dominique, “Census and Identity: The Politics of Race,
Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses,” 2002)//jml
The validity of defining cultural identity in the census As the discussion has so far amply demonstrated, the formulation of
census questions and categories is inextricably embroiled in politics. This raises the
question of whether the collection of census data on cultural categories can have any
scientific validity. Does the politicization of the census represent the undermining of an exercise that should be left in the
hands of scientific experts? Social science does not speak with one voice on the matter, due in part to conflicting disciplinary
assumptions and a certain compartmentalization of research. The assertion that statistical science can stand above politics assumes
that the object to be enumerated “exists previous to and outside of statistics” (Labbé 2000). From this perspective, the
task of
the statistician, and thus of the census expert, is to establish methodological rules
protecting data collection from imprecision and sundry distortions, thereby attempting
to describe with the greatest accuracy the object under study. The problem with this approach is that,
by focusing mainly on the technical aspects of measurement, it takes for
granted the existence of the category itself. This is unproblematic when categories refer to objective
markers such as “age. ” But to assume that categories denoting cultural affiliation can be
enumerated as objectively as age is to assume that identities can be reduced to an
essential core within each individual, a core that exists outside of politics. The notion
that cultural categories can be reduced to an objective core, called “statistical realism” by
Labbé, is dangerously close to the primordialist notion of timeless identities, much discredited in
recent social science, particularly among anthropologists. Nonetheless, statistical realism appears to have many
adherents among demographers. Labbé relates the case of an ambitious project undertaken by the French Institute
of Demography, aiming at assessing the reliability of all available demographic data in the Balkans. One of the issues concerns the
underregistration of Romas (Gypsies) in the last Hungarian census. The project apparently does not question the criteria used to
define the category “Roma” in the first place and whether someone of Roma descent could not legitimately declare him or herself as
“Hungarian” (Labbé 2000). The same mindset characterized the European experts sent to Macedonia in 1994 to devise and conduct
a special census aimed at verifying whether ethnic Albanians had been undercounted in the 1991 Macedonian census, as Albanian
activists claimed they had been. The experts “thought they were going to be overseeing the technical aspects of a statistical exercise, ”
but were instead shocked by the level of political passion their very exercise reignited, and baffled by the sheer ethnographic
complexity of the area (Friedman 1996, 94). How is a Macedonianspeaking Muslim to be counted? As the experts discovered, two
diametrically opposed views existed on the matter, and statistical realism was of little help to adjudicate the issue. Anthropologists
emphasize the fact that identities
are social constructions, that is, intrinsically dependent on
social incentives and political projects, as opposed to deriving from some unalterable
kernel that could be discovered in an ideal “state of nature. ” Some conclude from this that identities
are “not real” and therefore inappropriate for enumeration, or for political recognition, for that matter. Others, however, point out
that while
identities have no reality independent of people's perceptions, the belief by
social actors that their identities are real is itself a social fact. In other words, identities are
socially “real, ” inasmuch as socially significant acts are based on ideas of identities (Labbé
2000). For instance, while there is no objective “Macedonian” identity, there is little doubt that social movements and political
parties exist whose action is based on the belief in such an identity. The social import of these movements and parties is certainly
“real” and, at the same time, likely to affect how individuals define themselves. In this vein, enumerating identities is akin to sorting
out how people subjectively define themselves vis-à-vis others. As Bulmer claimed, during a debate on the merits of introducing a
race/ethnicity question on the British census: The
use of “race” (and the term itself is unsatisfactory and even misleading)
in the context of social research refers to the way in which members of a society perceive
differences between groups in that society and define the boundaries of such groups,
taking into account physical characteristics and skin colour… What the ethnic question is trying to do is
to find out in as objective a manner as possible how members of British society identify themselves. (Bulmer 1980: 5) In other
words, the
census sets its goal as that of objectively assessing the state of
subjective identities. As has already become clear from our discussion of contemporary Western cases, however,
the categorization of subjective categories by census-makers is more often than not a
matter of political negotiation, rather than objective assessment.
U.S. Census is a privacy risk
EPIC 2K (Epic.org is the Electronic Privacy Information Center, “The Census and
Privacy, 2000, https://epic.org/privacy/census/) JG
The risks that accompany the electronic compilation personal information include re-identification, which is the
practice of linking individuals identities to anonymous census records; marketing solicitations; and even more serious
consequences of political abuse. The use of information to identify individuals rather than for the
statistical collection of information offers room for abuses of privacy and confidentiality.∂ Risks regarding
privacy and confidentiality are not new issues for the Census. According to Thomas S. Mayer, privacy interests have
evolved from the very first census in 1790. In the history of the American census, these privacy concerns have
regulated the confidentiality of released information and the privacy considerations of individuals. Recorded protest in 1870 up until
1960 reflect the constitutional issues resulting from the requirement for US residents to provide sensitive personal information.
Questions on the census about diseases, mortgage values, and other items have raised many risks.∂ The
census forms the
most inclusive federal database of American citizens. The information it contains is protected under law
from disclosure, yet with the advent of technology many of the traditional legislative protection are
inadequate. The recent use of computers has dramatically altered the structure of the US
census. It has allowed the Census Bureau to retain information in an efficient format, while also challenging the traditional
methods of information collection. Along with this growing technology, the potential harm has
grown exponentially. Technology has allowed the collection of information to move at
remarkable speeds and the protection of such information remains a struggle.
At: ethnicity
Our aff only deals with race, which is legally distinct from ethnicity in
conversations about the census
Kertzer and Arel, 2 - * PhD, Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science,
Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University **PhD,
Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University
of Ottawa, Canada (David and Dominique, “Census and Identity: The Politics of Race,
Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses,” 2002)//jml
In the United States, as mentioned earlier, a question on race has appeared in all
censuses since 1790. A growing number of categories supplemented this original
distinction between White and Black over the years. Indians (in the sense of Native American) and Chinese
appeared in 1870, Japanese in 1890, Filipino, Hindu and Korean in 1920 (the last two categories disappearing in 1950), Mexican in
1930 (and only in that year), and Hawaiian, Aleut and Eskimo in 1960. In the 1970s, buffeted by changing political winds, having to
respond to civil rights legislation, and facing increasingly vocal “ethnic” or “racial” lobbying groups, census officials found they had
less and less control over the categorization system that they administered. In 1977, Directive No. 15 of the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) enunciated a policy for distinguishing races and ethnic groups in all federal statistics including, of course, the
census (Nobles, this volume). As a result, several
“racial” categories were added to the 1980 census:
Korean, Vietnamese, Asian Indian, Guamanian, and Samoan. A separate question on
Hispanic ancestry was also added to the census, as mandated by the OMB directive, thanks
to intense lobbying from Hispanic groups (Choldin 1986). Twenty years later the categories were largely unchanged. As in Britain
and Canada, these categories became linked to specific anti-discrimination legislation: in this case, the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
requiring that the decennial redrawing of congressional districts produce a fair representation of selected minorities (Jenkins 2000).
American census-makers have also, in recent years, been tackling the question of ethnic origin.
Previous to 1980, the only question about origin had to do with the country of birth of the
respondent and their parents, never venturing beyond the second generation. That question is
useful to gauge the current wave of immigrants but is a poor indicator of ethnic identity, since most countries of origin are
multiethnic. Thus, a study conducted at the turn of the century showed that only 2 percent of the “Russian” immigrants to the
United States, i.e., immigrants from (Imperial) Russia, could be classified as ethnic Russians, the great majority being either Jewish
or Polish (Petersen 1987: 219), or claimed as such by leaders of Jewish and Polish ethnic organizations in the U. S. 9 The 1980
census marked the first time an attempt was made to attach an ethnic label to every member of the population, regardless of how
long a person's ancestors had been in the country. Before that, data on ethnicity were only gathered indirectly, by combining
information on place of birth and language (McKenney and Cresce 1993: 176). The census language data, however, were unreliable
because the questions were poorly formulated and frequently altered (Crawford 1992: 126). Beginning in the 1970s, the rise of
“multiculturalism” created pressure on enumerative bodies to pay attention to the “ethnic” make-up of the population. The
US
Census Bureau began to experiment with a question on “ancestry. ” As happened in Canada,
whether an ethnic group was listed or not as an example in the ancestry question made a huge difference in the number of
respondents identifying with that particular group. Thus, the number of Americans of Slovak, Croat, and French Canadian ancestry
more than doubled between the 1980 and 1990 censuses, while the number of Cajuns increased sixty-fold – all four categories which
were not listed in 1980, but were in 1990 (Passel 1994). On the other hand, no significant popular resistance to ethnic enumeration,
in the genre of the “Count Me Canadian!” campaign, arose in the United States (Goldscheider, this volume). In Australia, another of
the historic countries of immigration, similar developments were observed. In preparing for the 1991 census, a government
committee found that more than the indirect indicators of place of birth, religion, or language used at home – the questions
previously used in Australian censuses – were needed to properly distinguish an ethnic group. Committee members concluded that
such was the complexity of ethnicity (involving a sense of history, of cultural tradition, of being “racially conspicuous, ” etc.) that a
specific ethnic question should be asked. Among their arguments was that third and subsequent generation immigrants to Australia
could not be distinguished by these indirect indicators, while people born in British colonies who themselves came from British
stock were being erroneously assigned to the ethnic category of the colonized (Cornish 1993: 308–11). Even though the concepts of
race and ethnicity tend to be used in a confusing manner in contemporary censuses of the Western countries of the former British
Empire, census
categories of “race” and “ethnicity” are kept separate (except in
they serve different political purposes. While the enumeration of
“races, ” or “visible minorities, ” is directly linked to the politics of entitlement, the
enumeration of “ethnic groups” is linked to a renewed pride in one's ancestry, generally
without individual benefits. (In Britain, as we saw above, the largely racial classification is actually called “ethnic”.)
Britain) because
Non-White recognized minorities, such as “Japanese, ” can benefit from policies of
implicit or explicit positive discrimination, while Whites of a minority ethnic
background, such as Ukrainians, cannot. A key question is whether such political distinctions are sustainable in
the long run.
At: people should choose
Self-identification fails – still recreates the boundaries of distinct categories
by relying on certain directions and labels
Kertzer and Arel, 2 - * PhD, Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science,
Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University **PhD,
Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University
of Ottawa, Canada (David and Dominique, “Census and Identity: The Politics of Race,
Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses,” 2002)//jml
One other relatively new element of censuses should be considered in this context: the move from census forms
filled out by enumerators to those filled out by the respondents themselves. The notion
that only the individual has the right to decide which identity category he or she should
be placed in is a powerful force in the world today. This can be viewed as part of the western ideology of
modern individualism, which Handler (1988: 51) refers to – following Macpherson – as “possessive individualism. ” The idea here is
that people demonstrate their individuality through making choices for themselves; their
identity is something that
they themselves produce, and so own. 13 Self-identification for the census, however, has
its practical, and sometimes ideological, limits. As tabulated results can list only so many entries, some
identities get either lumped in an “Other” category or subsumed into
existing ones. The latter occurs when an identity is unrecognized by census
authorities. As Abramson explains in his chapter, in the last Soviet census of 1989 there were almost seven times as many selfidentified “nationalities” (823) as recognized ones (128). Thus, even when self-identification is allowed, the
recoding of people's responses into a smaller set of categories plays a large role in the
statistical representation of groups. This move to place the respondent in charge of filling out the census form only
became possible when and where literacy became universal, and so is still not found in many countries of the world. However,
where people now compile their own form, racial and ethnic categorization must cope
with a much more chaotic hodgepodge of self-labeling processes. Even, for example, if
directions indicate that an individual of mixed “Indian” and “Negro” “blood” should
identify with the category reflecting the greatest proportion of “blood, ” many
individuals who identify as native American simply list themselves as native Americans.
This reminds us, once more, that what is measured by the census is a
particular kind of politicized social construction of reality.
Self-identification cannot solve within the black/white paradigm of limited
racial categories
Trucious-Haynes 01 (Enid Trucious-Haynes is a professor of law at Brandeis School
of Law of the University of Louisville, and has a J.D. from Stanford Law School, “Why
‘Race Matters: LatCrit Theory and Latina/o Racial identity” 2001. La Raza Law Journal
Vol. 12: 1.) JG
Self-identification for many Latinas/os includes experiences not recognized within the
dominant Black-White paradigm for racial discourse in the United States. For example, some
Latinas/os possess a racial identity intertwined with their cultural identity.' Some segments of the Latinas/os community already
understand their racial position within the U.S. Black-White paradigm, despite their multidimensionality in terms of color, race,
language, culture, national origin, citizenship status and other ictors.'9 Those
who perceive their racial identity
as intertwined with their cultural identity, may recognize a broader concept of racial
identity than the seemingly narrow racial categories in the United States under the BlackWhite paradigm.' A broader, more contextualized understanding of racial identity may lead to more inclusive racial
discrimination remedies and a broad-based effort to combat subordination in U.S. society
At: race category good
Race categorization not needed on census
Prewitt 13 (Kenneth Prewit is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia
University. His books include The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of
Census Mobilization. He served as director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to
2001. What Is Your Race?: The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans
Print. 2013. GoogleBooks.) JG
I will urge that a race question not appear on the decennial census form. To justify this
recommendation I emphasize that the fundamental, constitutionally mandated task of the census is
to count every American once, only once, and in the right place. What is needed for this purpose ate the number of
people in the household, the address of the household, and such additional questions as allow the Census Bureau to determine if the
information given is accurate.
Race and ethnicity are not needed for this constitutionally
mandated task. Yet simply inspecting the form leads to the conclusion that the government
wants to know more about my ethnicity and race than anything else, including things I might think
to be more important: am I healthy? a veteran? married? employed? Those questions left to the ACS and other surveys. In this way,
the census sends a message.
Race question not key on U.S. census
Anderson 10 (Tom Anderson, MBA, MEA, founded Anderson Analytics and appointed
the “Uncrowned Father of Web 3.0 Marketing Research” by Research Business Report
in 2009. “Refusing to Answer Census Race Question” 3/19/10,
http://www.tomhcanderson.com/2010/03/19/refusing-to-answer-census-racequestion/) JG
While I completely understand that ‘race’ may have been more important given our unfortunate history with slavery and
segregation, today I feel it has become far less important. I rather prefer
the approach of countries such as
France where citizens are never asked ethnicity or religion in order to prevent
discrimination.∂ As a consumer behavior researcher, I would be the first to ask race in a client survey if I believed it would
help with planning/selling products. However, in reality the ethnic question has become less and less relevant
in consumer/market research each year. While race/ethnicity does correlate somewhat to income and
education, these latter two questions are far more important than race. Interestingly, Income and
Education are missing from the census form.∂ The fact is that in the America of 2010 the main hindrance to
social mobility is not race/ethnicity but socio economic. We are far more likely to be able to predict someone’s chances for success in
life given the income and education level of their parents than their ethnicity. I think the ultimate example of course would be
President Obama.∂ The fact of the matter is, unfortunately, if your parents are poor and uneducated, then you are very likely to also
be poor and uneducated. By focusing on race instead of these socioeconomic factors we are hiding the true problems in the USA.∂
Beyond this the
whole idea of race is racist in and of itself. And even when you ask the
question, the answer is totally arbitrary. How do you think Obama would/should answer the question?
Millions possess mixed ancestry and change their racial category over their
lifetime
Morin 15[Rich Morin – senior editor at Pew Research Center, “Among multiracial
adults, racial identity can be fluid”, Pew Research Center, 6/16/15,
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/16/among-multiracial-adults-racialidentity-can-be-fluid/] JG
Is race purely about the races in your family tree? A new Pew Research Center survey of multiracial adults
suggests there’s more to racial identity that goes beyond one’s ancestry.∂ The survey of 1,555
multiracial adults found that three-in-ten say they have changed how they viewed their racial identity over the course of their
lifetimes.∂ About one-in-five multiracial Americans, including about a third of all black mixed-race adults, have dressed or behaved
in a certain way in an attempt to influence how others see their race.∂ Taken together, these findings suggest that, for
many
multiracial Americans, racial identity can change over the life course. It is a mix of
biology, family upbringing and the perceptions that others have about them.∂ According to our
survey, fully 21% of mixed-race adults have attempted to influence how others saw their race. About one-in-ten multiracial adults
have talked (12%), dressed (11%) or worn their hair (11%) in a certain way in order to affect how others saw their race. A similar
share (11%) say they associated with certain people to alter how others saw their racial background. (The survey did not ask
respondents to identify which race or races they sought to resemble.)∂ These efforts to change or clarify how others saw their race
varied widely across the largest multiracial groups. Among black multiracial groups, 32% have looked or acted in ways to influence
how others perceived their racial background. That includes 42% of black and American Indian biracial adults, 33% of those with a
white, black and American Indian background, and 20% of white and black biracial adults.∂ Some Mixed-Race Groups More Likely
than Others to Try to Change How People See Them. A quarter of white and Asian biracial adults say that, at some point, they have
tried to look or behave a certain way to influence how people thought about their race. Among the largest biracial subgroup – white
and American Indian adults – only about one-in-ten (11%) say they have done this. A third (34%) of Hispanics who report two or
more races also say they have made an effort to change the way people saw their race.∂ In addition to looking or acting in ways to
shape how others saw their race, about
three-in-ten multiracial Americans say they have changed
how they view their racial identity over time.∂ Some 29% of mixed-race adults who now report more than one
race for themselves say they used to see themselves as just one race. But among those who have parents or grandparents of a
different race, an identical share have switched their racial identity: 29% say they once saw themselves as more than one race but
now see themselves as one race.∂ The Census Bureau also found that more than 10 million Americans changed their race or Hispanic
origin in 2010 from what they had reported in the 2000 census.∂ About the Pew Research survey: These findings are based on a
nationally representative survey of 1,555 multiracial Americans ages 18 and older, conducted online from Feb. 6 to April 6, 2015. The
sample of multiracial adults was identified after contacting and collecting basic demographic information on more than 21,000
adults nationwide. Margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points and larger for subgroups.
Historically, static concepts of race have been used to reinforce
institutional racism
Zimmer, 12-24-14 [Carl, Lecturer & Fellow at Yale University, Visiting Scholar at
New York University, former Senior Editor @ Discover Magazine, winner of science
writing awards from the National Academies of Science, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, Pan American Health Organization and American Institute of
Biological Sciences, former fellow at Guggenheim and Alfred Sloan Foundations; New
York Times, 12-24-2014; “White? Black? A Murky Distinction Grows Still Murkier, “
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/science/23andme-genetic-ethnicitystudy.html?_r=0]
In 1924, the State of Virginia attempted to define what it means to be white. The state’s
Racial Integrity Act, which barred marriages between whites and people of other races,
defined whites as people “whose blood is entirely white, having no known, demonstrable or ascertainable
admixture of the blood of another race.” There was just one problem. As originally written, the law would
have classified many of Virginia’s most prominent families as not white, because they
claimed to be descended from Pocahontas. So the Virginia legislature revised the act,
establishing what came to be known as the “Pocahontas exception.” Virginians could be up to
one-sixteenth Native American and still be white in the eyes of the law. People who were
one-sixteenth black, on the other hand, were still black. In the United States, there is a long
tradition of trying to draw sharp lines between ethnic groups, but our ancestry is a fluid and complex
matter. In recent years geneticists have been uncovering new evidence about our shared heritage, and last week a team of scientists
published the biggest genetic profile of the United States to date, based on a study of 160,000 people.
The census also recreates categories of ethnicity
Goldscheider, 2 - Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Sociology
and Faculty Associate of the Population Studies and Training Center (Calvin, “Census
and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses,”
“Racial categorization and censuses” Ethnic categorizations in censuses: comparative
observations from Israel, Canada, and the United States 2002)//jml
Censuses and other official documents gather information to carry out a variety of
political, economic, and social objectives. In counting and categorizing residents of the state, the census
has to cope in an official way with who is defined as a member of the society and how
they should be identified in the count. Issues of counting are elementary but not simple. Who is counted
as a legitimate resident of the state (e.g., how are non-legal residents and temporary workers treated in official
statistics) and what does residence mean (is it limited to de facto residents or are those temporarily living elsewhere
included among the state's population) appear on the surface to be straightforward questions, but are
at the center of some of the most complex and politically torturous issues facing old and
new states. In the global world where movement between states is increasing and taking on new forms, where returning “home”
has become more routine, where cases of escape and resettlement can be counted in the millions annually, questions about who are
the legitimate residents to be counted in censuses and how they should be classified and categorized are not only technical
bureaucratic questions. Membership in a state involves decisions in the formation of policies. Do particular policies apply only to
citizens? Who has representation in local or national governments? Who has rights and entitlements? Questions
of how to
categorize persons (by simple categories such as age, gender, and marital status – in what category do we place
cohabitants? – or even more complex ethnic origin or racial categories, our current focus) always
involve decisions that are implicitly political and anchored in ideology and norms.
There are no simple, objective census questions, even though researchers often
analyze the answers to census questions as if the information in the census were
unbiased and objective. Turning the question on its head, official documents reveal the formal
construction of categories and groups, and the political contexts in which they are
shaped. Often the official constructions reinforce a particular view of groups within society and convey a “theory” of groupness.
What would we know about ethnicity if we only had the census definition or categories?
If our only text about ethnic divisions and categories in a society came from official documents, what would be missing? Historically,
if all we knew about ethnicity was derived from census categories and classifications, our understanding of the political, cultural, and
social meanings of ethnicity would be severely limited and, indeed, largely distorted. Census
definitions of ethnicity
tell us more about the construction of ethnic categories within political ideologies than
the reality of ethnic divisions. I focus in this chapter on several illustrations of how these official constructions of
ethnic group membership have developed in censuses and other official data collection systems. I draw upon examples from Israel,
Canada, and the United States, with some references to European countries. There
are, of course, ethnic issues in
the statistical collections of most countries. 1 I review illustrations from these three countries not for how
ethnic differences are salient in differentiating their populations, in perpetuating inequalities or reinforcing ethnic cultures. Rather
my goal is to address the following questions:
what do we learn about the construction of ethnic group
categories from official data in these countries? Are we constrained in our
understanding of ethnicity when we focus exclusively on these official constructions?
What is the “theory” underlying what the census categories mean? If we only knew
ethnicity from census definitions and categorization, what kind of ethnicity would we be
describing? I also want to briefly address how the construction of ethnic categories in the census may define the nature of
groups and may reinforce one among several conceptions of ethnic categories.
Census racial categories are antiquated
Fernández 14 (Belén Fernández is the author of “The Imperial Messenger: Thomas
Friedman at Work,” and a contributing editor at Jacobin magazine. 4/22/14, “Junk data
in census makes us a nation of ‘others’”
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/4/u-s-censusbureaulatinosraceethnicity.html) JG
We are becoming a nation of write-ins. So found a report released last month by the U.S. Census Bureau. When
filling out
census forms in 2010 (the year of the last national population tally), more people than ever before did not
choose one of the race options provided; they chose “some other race.”∂ The report, part of a years-long project to reexamine the census’ racial and ethnic categories, underscores the extent to which
demographic changes in the U.S. have outpaced our methods of documenting them.∂ The
bureau’s concerns about the unrepresentative nature of its census categories appear to be well-founded. Approximately one-third of
the 47.4 million respondents who self-identified as ethnically Hispanic also self-identified as “some other race.”
A full 96.8
percent of all people claiming to be “some other race” were Hispanic.∂ The Pew Research Center’s
summary of the report noted, “The ‘some other race’ option … was never intended to be a category selected by so many
respondents. The category was added to the 1980 census form to capture the small numbers of people who did not select one of the
official race categories. But since then, it has
grown to become the third-largest race category in the
census.”∂ To understand why this may be so, let’s take a look at the census form (PDF). The race question is preceded by the
ethnicity question, which asks if you are “of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin.” (The broad-stroke distinction that is usually made
between ethnicity and race is that race is biologically determined while ethnicity takes more cultural factors into account. For
example, I might be racially classified as black but ethnically identify as Arab or Cuban.) The questions are accompanied by a note:
“For this census, Hispanic origins are not races.”∂ One would think, of course, that a country as diverse as the U.S. would provide
more ethnic options than Hispanic/Latino/Spanish or not-Hispanic/Latino/Spanish, but these are — inexplicably — the only two.
(Persons who select the first category are given a space to further identity themselves by country.) The racial identity options are
similarly puzzling in their apparent arbitrariness; they include “white,” “black, African Am., or Negro,” “American Indian or Alaska
Native,” “Filipino,” “Vietnamese,” “Guamanian or Chamorro” and “Samoan,” along with several others. The “other Asian” category
comes with instructions to “print race, for example, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian and so on,” and self-identified
“other Pacific Islanders” are told to “print race, for example, Fijian, Tongan and so on.”∂ What the census questions suggest is that
race may coincide with national origin if you’re Laotian or Fijian but not if you hail from one of the 21 Spanish-speaking countries in
the world. In other cases, skin color designates race — but not if you’re brown.∂ Behind the times∂ The U.S. government
“periodically alters race and ethnicity questions to keep up with shifts in the social fabric of the nation,” according to the optimistic
wording of a 2013 USA Today article. How well it actually keeps up is debatable. It was not until 2000 that census respondents were
permitted to check more than one box for race. The article speculates that the racial category “‘Negro’ may finally be dropped in
2020.”∂ Survey methodology, too, is far from cutting-edge. Kenneth Prewitt, a former Census Bureau director, argues in his book,
“What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans,” that “21st
century statistics should
not be governed by race thinking that is two and a half centuries out of date”— referring to
racial divisions proposed in 1776 by German scientist Johann Blumenbach. The U.S. is, Prewitt writes, “the only
country in the world firmly wedded to an 18th century racial taxonomy” in which were
embedded “theories of a racial hierarchy: There were not just different races but
superior and inferior races.”
AT: Racial Profiling Good
Racial profiling fails – 7 reasons
Head No Date (Tom Head holds a Ph.D in religion and society from Edith Cowan
University, as well as an M.A. in humanities from California State University. He is also
a Civil Liberties activist and academic specializing in the history of ideas. “Why Racial
Profiling is a Bad Idea” CivilLiberty.com,
http://civilliberty.about.com/od/lawenforcementterrorism/tp/Against-RacialProfiling.htm) JG
The hardest thing about advocating reform of racial profiling practices, at a policy level, is convincing political leaders that it
isn't just a "politically incorrect" or "racially insensitive" practice, but rather a destructive, illconceived, and ultimately ineffective law enforcement technique. This means looking hard at what
racial profiling does, what it doesn't do, and what it says about our system of law enforcement. We need to be able to explain what,
specifically, is wrong with racial profiling.∂ - ∂ 1. Racial profiling doesn't work.∂ One of the great myths about racial
profiling is that it would work if only law enforcement agencies could use it--that by not using racial profiling, they're tying one hand
behind their backs in the name of civil rights.∂ This simply isn't true:∂ An ACLU lawsuit uncovered police data indicating that while
73 percent of suspects pulled over on I-95 between 1995 and 1997 were black, black suspects were no more likely to actually have
drugs or illegal weapons in their cars than white suspects.∂ According to the Public Health Service, approximately 70%
of drug
users are white, 15% are black, and 8% are Latino. But the Department of Justice reports that among those
imprisoned on drug charges, 26% are white, 45% are black, and 21% are Latino.∂ 2. Racial profiling
distracts law enforcement agencies from more useful approaches.∂ When suspects are detained
based on suspicious behavior rather than race, police catch more suspects.∂ A 2005 report by the Missouri attorney general is
testimony to the ineffectiveness of racial profiling. White drivers, pulled over and searched on the basis of suspicious behavior, were
found to have drugs or other illegal material 24% of the time. Black drivers, pulled over or searched in a manner that reflected a
pattern of racial profiling, were found to have drugs or other illegal material 19% of the time.∂ The
effectiveness of
searches, in Missouri and everywhere else, is reduced--not enhanced--by racial profiling. When racial profiling is
used, officers end up wasting their limited time on innocent suspects.∂ 3. Racial profiling prevents police from
serving the entire community.∂ Law enforcement agencies are responsible, or generally seen as responsible, for
protecting law-abiding citizens from criminals.∂ When a law enforcement agency practices racial profiling, it sends the message that
whites are assumed to be law-abiding citizens while blacks and Latinos are assumed to be criminals. Racial
profiling
policies set up law enforcement agencies as enemies of entire communities--communities that
tend to be disproportionately affected by crime--when law enforcement agencies should be in the business of protecting crime
victims and helping them find justice.∂
4. Racial profiling prevents communities from working with
law enforcement.∂ Unlike racial profiling, community policing has consistently been shown to work. The better the
relationship between residents and police, the more likely residents are to report crimes, come forward as witnesses, and otherwise
cooperate in police investigations.∂ But racial profiling tends to alienate black and Latino communities,
reducing the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate crime in these communities. If police have already established
themselves as enemies of a low-income black neighborhood, if there is no trust or rapport between police and residents, then
community policing can't work. Racial profiling sabotages community policing efforts, and offers nothing useful in return.∂ 5.
Racial profiling is a blatant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.∂ The Fourteenth Amendment
states, very clearly, that no state may "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws." Racial profiling is, by definition, based on a standard of unequal
protection. Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be searched by police and less likely to be treated as law-abiding citizens;
whites are less likely to be searched by police and more likely to be treated as law-abiding citizens. This is incompatible with the
concept of equal protection.∂ 6.
Racial profiling can easily escalate into racially-motivated
violence.∂ Racial profiling encourages police to use a lower standard of evidence for blacks and Latinos than they would for
whites--and this lower standard of evidence can easily lead police, private security, and armed citizens to respond violently to blacks
and Latinos out of a perceived "self-defense" concern. The case of Amidou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant who was killed in a
hail of 41 bullets by the NYPD for attempting to show officers his driver's license, is only one case among many. Reports of
suspicious deaths involving unarmed Latino and black suspects trickle out of our nation's major cities on a regular basis.∂ 7.
Racial profiling is morally wrong.∂ Racial profiling is Jim Crow applied as a law
enforcement policy. It promotes the internal segregation of suspects within the minds of police officers, and it creates
a second-class citizenship for black and Latino Americans.∂ If one has reason to know or believe that a
specific suspect is of a certain racial or ethnic background, then it makes sense to include that information in the profile. But that
isn't what people generally mean when they talk about racial profiling. They mean discrimination prior to the introduction of data-the very definition of racial prejudice.∂ When we allow or encourage law enforcement agencies to practice racial profiling, we are
ourselves practicing vicarious racial discrimination. That is unacceptable.
Racial profiling especially for terrorists fails – empirics prove
Schneier 10 (Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and author of several books on
computer security, including Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an
Uncertain World. NYTIMES.com “Profiling Makes Us Less Safe” 1-4-10
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/will-profiling-make-adifference/) JG
∂ There are two kinds of profiling. There’s behavioral profiling based on how someone acts, and there’s automatic profiling
based on name, nationality, method of ticket purchase, and so on. The first one can be effective, but is very hard to do
right. The second one makes us all less safe. The problem with automatic profiling is that it doesn’t work.∂
Terrorists can figure out how to beat any profiling system.∂ Terrorists don’t fit a profile
and cannot be plucked out of crowds by computers. They’re European, Asian, African, Hispanic, and
Middle Eastern, male and female, young and old. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was Nigerian. Richard Reid, the
shoe bomber, was British with a Jamaican father. Germaine Lindsay, one of the 7/7 London bombers,
was Afro-Caribbean. Dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla was Hispanic-American. The 2002
Bali terrorists were Indonesian. Timothy McVeigh was a white American. So was the
Unabomber. The Chechen terrorists who blew up two Russian planes in 2004 were female. Palestinian terrorists
routinely recruit “clean” suicide bombers, and have used unsuspecting Westerners as bomb carriers.∂ ∂
Without an accurate profile, the system can be statistically demonstrated to be no more effective
than random screening.∂ ∂ And, even worse, profiling creates two paths through security: one with less scrutiny and one
with more. And once you do that, you invite the terrorists to take the path with less scrutiny. That is, a terrorist group can
safely probe any profiling system and figure out how to beat the profile. And once they do,
they’re going to get through airport security with the minimum level of screening every time.∂ ∂ As counterintuitive as it may seem,
we’re all more secure when we randomly select people for secondary screening — even if it
means occasionally screening wheelchair-bound grandmothers and innocent looking children. And, as an added bonus, it
doesn’t needlessly anger the ethnic groups we need on our side if we’re going to be more
secure against terrorism.∂ ∂
Racial profiling is bad and fails – especially in counter-terror measures
Al-Marayati 10 (Salam Al-Marayati is executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs
Council, a public policy organization that focuses on U.S.-Muslim world relations,
Middle East peacemaking, counter-terrorism and faith-based initiatives.
NYTIMES.com, “Get the Intelligence Right” 1-4-10,
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/will-profiling-make-adifference/) JG
Profiling communities in counter-terrorism efforts is ineffective. Focus on one
particular ethnicity or country of origin, and the terrorists will recruit from somewhere
else. Many terrorism suspects came from within the United States and European Union countries. Profiling does not help against
individuals with names and ethnic backgrounds like Richard Reid, Jose Padilla, David Headley and Michael Finton. ∂ Treating
all Muslims as suspects undermines our efforts to gain intelligence on terrorists.∂ We
shouldn’t be profiling the very communities we need information from to catch the bad
guys. Umar Abdul-Muttallab’s father gave us such information to prevent the Dec. 25 terror plot.∂ Yet the message we’re now
sending is: we will profile you for your courageous and just effort. We ignored the father when he wanted to help the United States
and now we punish him for our mistakes. We are dismissing our assets and leveraging our weaknesses in our attempt to counter
violent extremism. That lack of logic will resonate among all global citizens, not just Muslims.∂ We
need to focus less on
tactics, and more on developing intelligence against terrorists. Our strategies put us in a defensive
mode that focuses too much on what terrorists did last time. Technologies, and worse, ethnic and religious profiling,
are expensive in terms of our civil liberties, privacy and money. They are also easily
defeated by terrorists.∂ There is no foolproof technology preventing terrorists from smuggling dangerous items on board a
flight. An undercover investigation in 2006 by the Government Accountability Office found airport screeners failed to detect bomb
making materials 21 out of 21 times.∂ This glaring problem along with the airport profiling of potentially hundreds of thousands of
people every year will create more busy work that lacks precision and effectiveness. Fixing the bureaucratic incompetence behind
information failures requires strong executive and Congressional leadership, not throwing away our precious liberties and limited
resources.
Racial profiling is ineffective and unconstitutional
German 10 (Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent, is policy counsel for the
Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union and the author of
Thinking Like a Terrorist. NYTIMES.com, “Wrong and Unworkable” 1-4-10,
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/will-profiling-make-adifference/) JG
The recent attempted airline attack screams loudly for better security measures from our government. But the government’s
plan to subject citizens of certain countries to enhanced security does not fit the bill. It is a
pretext for racial profiling, which is both ineffective and unconstitutional.∂ Racial
profiling is a shortcut based on bias rather than evidence. There simply is no reliable
“terrorist profile.” Take, for instance, the Belgian woman who became a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2005; or “shoe bomber”
Richard Reid and London subway bomber Germaine Lindsay, who were both British citizens of Jamaican descent. Terrorists
do not come in a particular color or from a particular place.∂ Racial profiling is also
unworkable. Once aware of national profiling, terrorists will simply use people from “nonprofiled” countries or origins, like FBI most-wanted Qaeda suspect Adam Gadahn, an American. What will we do?
Keep adding more countries to the list of 14 until we’ve covered the whole globe?∂ Some people want to target Muslims, figuring
some are bound to be “radicalized.” But what do we go by? Name? Appearance? The vast majority of Arab Americans, for instance,
are not only innocent of sympathy for terrorism, they’re actually Christian.
To profile Muslims you’d have to
target blacks, Asians, whites and Hispanics (remember Jose Padilla?). How could that work, and would it
really help identify those who are intending harm or would it simply divert resources
that could be better used on investigations?∂ Finally, and not inconsequentially, racial profiling is
wrong, un-American and unconstitutional. It is institutionalized racism. And when we
abandon our principles, we not only betray our values, we also run the risk of
undermining international and community support for counterterrorism efforts by
providing an injustice for terrorists to exploit as a way of justifying further acts of terrorism.∂ After each terrorist event over the last
several years, including the most recent, we have found that the government had ample empirical evidence to suggest the individuals
involved posed a threat.
Plots that have been thwarted were uncovered by the hard work of
connecting the facts with raw intelligence. That’s what works. We need to direct resources to
investigations based on facts rather than bias.
Narrative
So, what are you?" I don't know how many times people have asked me that. "Are you
Puerto Rican? Dominican? Indian or something? You must be mixed."
My stock answer has rarely changed:
"My mom is from Jamaica but grew up in New York, and my father was from North
Carolina but grew up in Boston. Both black."
My family has lived with "the question" for as long as I can remember. We're "exotics," all cursed with "good
hair" and strange accents—we don't sound like we from da Souf or the Norwth, and
don't have that West Coast-by-way-of-Texas Calabama thang going on. The only one with the real
West Indian singsong vibe is my grandmother, who looks even more East Indian than my sisters. Whatever Jamaican
patois my mom possessed was pummeled out of her by cruel preteens who never had
sensitivity seminars in diversity. The result for us was a nondescript way of talking,
walking, and being that made us not black enough, not white enough—just a bunch of not-quitenappy-headed enigmas. My mother never fit the "black momma" media image. A beautiful, demure, light brown woman, she didn't
drink, smoke, curse, or say things like "Lawd Jesus" or "hallelujah," nor did she cook chitlins or gumbo. A vegetarian, she played the
harmonium (a foot-pumped miniature organ), spoke softly with textbook diction, meditated, followed the teachings of Paramahansa
Yogananda, and had wild hair like Chaka Khan. She burned incense in our tiny Harlem apartment, sometimes walked the streets
barefoot, and, when she could afford it, cooked foods from the East. To this day, my
big sister gets misidentified for
Pakistani or Bengali or Ethiopian. (Of course, changing her name from Sheral Anne Kelley to Makani Themba has
not helped.) Not long ago, an Oakland cab driver, apparently a Sikh who had immigrated from
India, treated my sister like dirt until he discovered that she was not a "scoundrel from
Sri Lanka," but a common black American. Talk about ironic: How often are black women
spared indignities because they are African American?
"What are you?" dogged my little brother more than any of us. He came out looking just
like his father, who was white. In the black communities of Los Angeles and Pasadena, my baby bro' had to
fight his way into blackness, usually winning only when he invited his friends to the
house. When he got tired of this, he became what people thought he was—a cool white boy. Today he lives in Tokyo, speaks fluent
Japanese, and is happily married to a Japanese woman (who is actually Korean passing as Japanese!). He stands as the
perfect example of our mulattoness: a black boy trapped in a white body who speaks
English with a slight Japanese accent and has a son who will spend his life confronting
"the question."
That was Robin Kelley in 1999 (robin, Gary B. Nash Professor of American History
at UCLA.From 2006 to 2011, he was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at
the University of Southern California (USC), Polycultural Me,
http://www.utne.com/politics/the-people-in-me.aspx, LB)
AT: Case turns
Top level
Government profiling yields zero societal benefits – there’s only a risk it
perpetuates racism
Cox 08 – Major, Civil Rights Activist, http://majorcox.com/blog/2008/10/stop-asking-about-race-in-census/,
6/26/15 BRoche
In a recent column [~1997], George Will of the Washington Post, makes a thoughtful contribution to the national dialogue on race. In that column, Mr. Will calls for the
elimination of race classifications in the government census. Regular readers know that is a position I have long advocated. I welcome Mr. Will to my side of the debate. In his
Abolishing Census Categories Could Make Us All Americans,” Mr. Will acknowledges that racial
identities do not fall into “fixed, easily definable categories.” He notes for example, the law once
classified the “Irish” race as nonwhite. At the same time, he opens the door to include the following as members of the white brotherhood:
column, “
Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Jesse Owns and Roy Campanella; by virtue of the fact that each of these Americans had a white parent. He affirms in the white-race
cousinhood Martin Luther King, who had a white grandmother, as well as W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X, who had white ancestry. When President Clinton called on Americans
. The President expected the
conversation about race to be conducted within the traditional black/white racial
paradigm; the way Americans always talk about race (white domination and black
victimization). That didn’t happen, because many Americans are getting over their obsession with race
and becoming more inclusive and tolerant of others who look different. More Americans are marrying
other-race spouses than ever before. According to the census, the number of interracial children in 1990 exceeded 2
million. Will says, the census racial category ‘Other’ doesn’t correctly describe these children. As
he put it, “…the ‘other’ category is unsatisfactory, because it does not contribute to an accurate
snapshot of the population, and it offends sensibilities: Why should a child of a whiteblack marriage be required to identify with one parent, or as an ‘Other’?” The answer to Will’s question, is this; Many Americans, and
to begin a constructive dialogue about race, I am confident he didn’t expect to hear from George Will
the President may be among them, don’t want to eliminate government racial categories. These Americans say that if we end race classifications there will be no way for the
To those who argue that we
need government racial bean-counters to track race discrimination; I say, “cow manure.”
Clearly, it doesn’t take the United States government to tell you when somebody is being
discriminated against. Just watch the U.S. Senate debate on C-SPAN or look at a picture of the members of the board
of directors of any major corporation. You would not be reading this column if you were oblivious to the fact that far too few
women and people of color are in either picture. At the same time, you are equally blinded if you
see skin color, by itself, as the determining factor in anything: not rates of poverty, not
crime, not fatherlessness, nor any of the other social pathologies government racial
bean-counters so often ascribe to dark-skinned Americans. The sad reality is race classification
taints the individual’s internalized value system, spoiling the way individuals views
themselves. Classifying individuals into racial groups results in group-thinking, with
members of the group exchanging individuality for a group-identity. In America, both
stereotypes; white superiority and black inferiority, stem from group-thinking. Our
culture tends to program many white people to see themselves as superior to non-white
people. Therefore, non-white folks are forced to accept an inferior view of themselves or
re-internalize their perceived inferior status as one of victimization. George Will’s column does the American
people a great service by providing wide publication of some of the absurdities surrounding government racial classifications. As Americans learn to
identify and avoid the irrational aspects of racial-group-think politics, our nationhood
will be strengthened. Until that time, we will continue to be divided by such mundane
human traits as skin color, hair texture and eye appearance.
responsible agencies of government to track the progress, or lack thereof, toward eliminating racial discrimination.
Census data gets misused – Japanese internment proves
Minkel 7 [JR Minken is a lab technician and freelance journalist, and has written one
book, Instant Egghead Guide: The Universe. “Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau
Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II” 3-30-07
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/] JG
Despite decades of denials, government records confirm that the U.S. Census Bureau provided the
U.S. Secret Service with names and addresses of Japanese-Americans during World War
II.∂ The Census Bureau surveys the population every decade with detailed questionnaires but is barred by law from revealing data
that could be linked to specific individuals. The Second War Powers Act of 1942 temporarily repealed that protection to assist in the
roundup of Japanese-Americans for imprisonment in internment camps in California and six other states during the war. The
Bureau previously has acknowledged that it provided neighborhood information on Japanese-Americans for that purpose, but it has
maintained that it never provided "microdata," meaning names and specific information about them, to other agencies. ∂ A new
study of U.S. Department of Commerce documents now shows that the
Census Bureau complied with an August 4,
1943, request by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau for the names and locations of all
people of Japanese ancestry in the Washington, D.C., area, according to historian Margo Anderson of
the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and statistician William Seltzer of Fordham University in New York City. The records,
however, do not indicate that the Bureau was asked for or divulged such information for Japanese-Americans in other parts of the
country.∂ Anderson and Seltzer discovered in 2000 that the
Census Bureau released block-by-block data
during WW II that alerted officials to neighborhoods in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah,
Idaho and Arkansas where Japanese-Americans were living. "We had suggestive but not very conclusive evidence
that they had also provided microdata for surveillance," Anderson says.
Census doesn’t accurately collect race data – this has severe implications
for minority groups
Schmitt 1 [Eric Schmitt, Count of 2000 Census Said to Err by Millions, New York
Times, 3-16-2001,http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/us/count-of-2000-censussaid-to-err-by-millions.html]
ARLINGTON, Va., March 15— The Bush administration has described the 2000 census as the most accurate in American history,
but the
Census Bureau said today that it missed at least 6.4 million people last year and
counted at least 3.1 million people twice.∂ Census officials have yet to complete their analysis of last year's count.
By one measure, Howard Hogan, a chief statistician for the 2000 census, estimated that as
many as 7.6 million people might have been missed, and 4.3 million more could have been counted twice.
That is an improvement over the 1990 census, which overlooked 8.4 million and counted 4.4 million others twice, for a net
undercount of 4 million.∂ The
data released today underscores that vast numbers of
minority members, renters and the poor, the people most often missed in the
decennial head counts, are likely to be denied hundreds of millions of dollars
in federal assistance unless the 2000 census data is adjusted to make up for uncounted people.∂ The Census Bureau's
acting director said today that the agency would recommend by this fall whether to use statistically adjusted data in allocating
federal aid that is based on population. About $185 billion a year was distributed based on population counts from the 1990 census.∂
''We're going to be working on a process where by the end of the summer we can make a recommendation as to whether these data
should be adjusted for other purposes,'' William G. Barron Jr., the bureau's acting director, told a meeting of census advisory
committees here.∂
Criminal justice
Criminal justice is super racist
Quigley 2010 (Bill, prof at the university of Loyola law school "14 Shocking Facts That
Prove the Criminal Justice System Is Racist." Alternet. N.p., 26 July 2010. Web. 30 June
2015.
http://www.alternet.org/story/147639/14_shocking_facts_that_prove_the_criminal_j
ustice_system_is_racist, LB)
Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system -- from the use of
drugs, police stops, arrests, getting out on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole and freedom.
Look what these facts show. One. The
US has seen a surge in arrests and putting people in jail
over the last four decades. Most of the reason is the war on drugs. Yet whites and blacks
engage in drug offenses, possession and sales, at roughly comparable rates – according to a
report on race and drug enforcement published by Human Rights Watch in May 2008. While African Americans
comprise 13% of the US population and 14% of monthly drug users they are 37% of the
people arrested for drug offenses – according to 2009 Congressional testimony by Marc Mauer of The Sentencing
Project. Two. The police stop blacks and Latinos at rates that are much higher than whites .
In New York City, where people of color make up about half of the population, 80% of the NYPD stops were of
blacks and Latinos. When whites were stopped, only 8% were frisked. When blacks and
Latinos are stopped 85% were frisked according to information provided by the NYPD.
The same is true most other places as well. In a California study, the ACLU found blacks are three times more
likely to be stopped than whites. Three. Since 1970, drug arrests have skyrocketed rising
from 320,000 to close to 1.6 million according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice.
African Americans are arrested for drug offenses at rates 2 to 11 times higher than the
rate for whites – according to a May 2009 report on disparity in drug arrests by Human Rights Watch. Four. Once
arrested, blacks are more likely to remain in prison awaiting trial than whites. For example, the
New York state division of criminal justice did a 1995 review of disparities in processing
felony arrests and found that in some parts of New York blacks are 33% more likely to
be detained awaiting felony trials than whites facing felony trials. Five. Once arrested, 80% of
the people in the criminal justice system get a public defender for their lawyer. Race plays a
big role here as well. Stop in any urban courtroom and look a the color of the people who are
waiting for public defenders. Despite often heroic efforts by public defenders the system gives them much more work
and much less money than the prosecution. The American Bar Association, not a radical bunch, reviewed the US
public defender system in 2004 and concluded “All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they
are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights or what is occurring…The
fundamental right to a lawyer that America assumes applies to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in
practice for countless people across the US.” Six. African
Americans are frequently illegally excluded
from criminal jury service according to a June 2010 study released by the Equal Justice Initiative. For example in
Houston County, Alabama, 8 out of 10 African Americans qualified for jury service have been
struck by prosecutors from serving on death penalty cases. Seven. Trials are rare. Only 3
to 5 percent of criminal cases go to trial – the rest are plea bargained. Most African Americans
defendants never get a trial. Most plea bargains consist of promise of a longer sentence if a
person exercises their constitutional right to trial. As a result, people caught up in the system, as the
American Bar Association points out, plead guilty even when innocent. Why? As one young man told me
recently, “Who wouldn’t rather do three years for a crime they didn’t commit than risk
twenty-five years for a crime they didn’t do?” Eight. The U.S. Sentencing Commission
reported in March 2010 that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that
are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crimes. Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project reports
African Americans are 21% more likely to receive mandatory minimum sentences than white defendants and 20% more like to be
sentenced to prison than white drug defendants. Nine.
The longer the sentence, the more likely it is that
non-white people will be the ones getting it. A July 2009 report by the Sentencing Project found that twothirds of the people in the US with life sentences are non-white. In New York, it is 83%. Ten. As a result, African Americans,
who are 13% of the population and 14% of drug users, are not only 37% of the people
arrested for drugs but 56% of the people in state prisons for drug offenses. Marc Mauer May
2009 Congressional Testimony for The Sentencing Project. Eleven. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes that the
chance of a black male born in 2001 of going to jail is 32% or 1 in three. Latino males have a
17% chance and white males have a 6% chance. Thus black boys are five times and Latino
boys nearly three times as likely as white boys to go to jail. Twelve. So, while African
American juvenile youth is but 16% of the population, they are 28% of juvenile arrests,
37% of the youth in juvenile jails and 58% of the youth sent to adult prisons. 2009 Criminal
Justice Primer, The Sentencing Project. Thirteen. Remember that the US leads the world in putting our own people into jail and
prison. The
New York Times reported in 2008 that the US has five percent of the world’s
population but a quarter of the world’s prisoners, over 2.3 million people behind bars,
dwarfing other nations. The US rate of incarceration is five to eight times higher than other highly developed countries
and black males are the largest percentage of inmates according to ABC News. Fourteen. Even when released from prison, race
17% of white job
applicants with criminal records received call backs from employers while only 5% of
black job applicants with criminal records received call backs. Race is so prominent in
that study that whites with criminal records actually received better treatment than
blacks without criminal records!
continues to dominate. A study by Professor Devah Pager of the University of Wisconsin found that
Alt cause – institutional racism
Goodman 2014 (John. "Is the Criminal Justice System Racist?" Townhall.com. N.p.,
17 Aug. 2014. Web. 30 June 2015.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johncgoodman/2014/08/17/is-the-criminal-justicesystem-racist-n1879690/page/full, LB)
Events in Ferguson, Missouri raise this question: Is the criminal justice system unfair to minorities,
especially blacks? Liberal blogger Ezra Klein says it is. And libertarian Rand Paul agrees. Klein serves up these statistics: ·
Of people impacted by a SWAT deployment, at least 54 percent were minorities. · White
and black people are similarly likely to use drugs, but black people are 3.6 times likelier
to be arrested for drug use than white people. · Until 2010, triggering the mandatory 5year sentence for cocaine, which is used more often in the white community, required
possession of 100 times as much of the drug as for crack, which is used more heavily in
the black community. After the 2010 reforms, the disparity was brought down to a (still
huge) 18:1. · Prison sentences for black men tend to be almost 20 percent longer than
prison sentences for white men who commit similar crimes. · The result is that more than 60
percent of the people in prison are minorities. Among black males in their 30s, more
than one in 10 is in prison on any given day. Neither Klein nor Paul are saying that judges are racists. Or
legislators. Or even cops on the beat. What they are saying is that the system has a disparate impact on blacks.
But what Paul surely realizes, if Klein does not, is that most government intervention has a disparate racial
impact – including interventions favored by liberals like Klein. If you started out with the goal of ensuring
that our prisons are going to be filled with thousands of young black men, it’s hard to
think of anything more effective that trapping poor black children in rotten public
schools and then imposing labor market restrictions that prevent them from obtaining
entry level jobs. Economist Walter Williams, who knows what it is like to grow up in a single-parent, low-income, black
household, has this to say: The best way to sabotage chances for upward mobility of a youngster
from a single-parent household, who resides in a violent slum and has attended poorquality schools is to make it unprofitable for any employer to hire him. The way to
accomplish that is to mandate an employer to pay such a person a wage that exceeds his
skill level.
Empirics
Employment
Education
Factually incorrect
Department of Education 2011 ("More Than 40% of Low-Income Schools Don't Get
a Fair Share of State and Local Funds, Department of Education Research Finds." More
Than 40% of Low-Income Schools Don't Get a Fair Share of State and Local Funds,
Department of Education Research Finds. N.p., 30 Nov. 2011. Web. 29 June 2015.
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/more-40-low-income-schools-dont-get-fairshare-state-and-local-funds-department-education-research-finds, LB)
A new report from the U.S. Department of Education documents that schools serving lowincome students are being shortchanged because school districts across the country are
inequitably distributing their state and local funds. The analysis of new data on 2008-09 school-level
expenditures shows that many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and
local funding, leaving students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than
schools attended by their wealthier peers. The data reveal that more than 40 percent of schools that
receive federal Title I money to serve disadvantaged students spent less state and local
money on teachers and other personnel than schools that don't receive Title I money at
the same grade level in the same district. "Educators across the country understand that low-income
students need extra support and resources to succeed, but in far too many places
policies for assigning teachers and allocating resources are perpetuating the problem
rather than solving it," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. "The good news in this report is that it is
feasible for districts to address this problem and it will have a significant impact on educational opportunities for our nation's
poorest children." In a policy brief that accompanies the report, a Department analysis found that providing low-income schools
with comparable spending would cost as little as 1 percent of the average district's total spending. The analysis also found that extra
resources would make a big impact by adding as much as between 4 percent and 15 percent to the budget of schools serving high
numbers of students who live in poverty. The Title I program is designed to provide extra resources to high-poverty schools to help
them meet the greater challenges of educating at-risk students. The
law includes a requirement that districts
ensure that Title I schools receive "comparability of services" from state and local funds,
so that federal funds can serve their intended purpose of supplementing equitable state
and local funding. In recent years a growing number of researchers, education advocates, and legislators have highlighted
that by not requiring districts to consider actual school-level expenditures in calculating "comparability of services," the existing
comparability requirement doesn't address fundamental spending inequities within districts. Instead, districts
can show
comparability in a number of easier ways, such as by using a districtwide salary
schedule. This masks the fact that schools serving disadvantaged students often have
less experienced teachers who are paid less. It also undermines the purpose of Title I funding, as districts can
use federal funds to fill state and local funding gaps instead of providing additional services to students in poverty. For the study,
Education Department researchers analyzed new school-level spending and teacher salary data submitted by more than 13,000
school districts as required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. This school level expenditure data was
made available for the first time ever in this data collection.
Your reforms are bad and you should feel bad
Klein 2014 (Rebecca. "Minority Students Don't Only Get Less Experienced Teachers,
They Also Get Less Effective Ones." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11
Apr. 2014. Web. 29 June 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/11/minoritystudents-worse-teachers_n_5135153.html, LB)
It's already known that low-income students of color generally have less experienced teachers,
but a new study from the Center for American Progress reveals they have less effective
teachers, too. The Center For American Progress report, released Friday, analyzed the evaluation scores of teachers in lowincome and affluent districts in both Massachusetts and Louisiana. Throughout the past few years, states have been
incentivized to adopt new teacher evaluation systems through Race To The Top funding.
The teacher evaluations in Massachusetts and Louisiana -- two states that are unique in making evaluation
scores public -- rate teachers based on measures like student scores on standardized
tests and effectiveness during classroom observation sessions. In Louisiana, where teachers are rated
as either "ineffective," "effective-emerging," "effective-proficient" or "highly effective," researchers found that “a student in a
school in the highest-poverty quartile is almost three times as likely to be taught by a
teacher rated ineffective as a student in a school in the lowest-poverty quartile.” The graphic
below shows the breakdown of scores: Similarly, students in schools with a high concentration of
minorities are more than twice as likely to have an ineffective teacher than students in
schools with a low minority enrollment. Massachusetts teachers receive ratings such as "unsatisfactory," "needs
improvement," "proficient" or "exemplary." Although Massachusetts has fewer teachers with poor ratings than Louisiana, students
in high-poverty schools are three times as likely to be taught by a teacher rated "unsatisfactory" than students in low-poverty
schools, the report notes. See the graphic below: Results are similar for schools with a high concentration of minority students.
Another Center For American Progress study, also out Friday, analyzed the root causes for what is called the unequal distribution of
teachers. The
report noted that while No Child Left Behind previously asked states to devise
plans that would ensure the equitable distribution of teachers, subsequent waivers gave
states flexibility from these requirements. “Regardless of how it is measured, teacher quality is not distributed
equitably across schools and districts. Poor students and students of color are less likely to get wellqualified or high-value teachers than students from higher-income families or students
who are white,” says the report. Jenny DeMonte, associate director for education research at American Progress, told The
Huffington Post that both studies indicate, “we’ve got some work to do.” In order to fix these problems, she said, districts should
incentivize effective teachers to work in disadvantaged districts and create mentorship programs that pair effective teachers with
struggling ones. “Regardless of how you splice it or measure it, this continues to be something we need to think about. Having an
effective teacher is a key driver in whether a student achieves and learns a lot,” DeMonte said.
Government funding hurts the people who need it
Resmovits 2014 (Joy. "American Schools Are STILL Racist, Government Report
Finds." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 21 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/21/schoolsdiscrimination_n_5002954.html, LB)
Public school students of color get more punishment and less access to veteran teachers
than their white peers, according to surveys released Friday by the U.S. Education Department that include data from
every U.S. school district. Black students are suspended or expelled at triple the rate of their
white peers, according to the U.S. Education Department's 2011-2012 Civil Rights Data
Collection, a survey conducted every two years. Five percent of white students were suspended
annually, compared with 16 percent of black students, according to the report. Black
girls were suspended at a rate of 12 percent -- far greater than girls of other ethnicities
and most categories of boys. At the same time, minority students have less access to
experienced teachers. Most minority students and English language learners are stuck in schools with the most new
teachers. Seven percent of black students attend schools where as many as 20 percent of
teachers fail to meet license and certification requirements. And one in four school
districts pay teachers in less-diverse high schools $5,000 more than teachers in schools
with higher black and Latino student enrollment. Such discrimination lowers academic
performance for minority students and puts them at greater risk of dropping out of school, according to previous research.
The new research also shows the shortcomings of decades of legal and political moves to ensure equal rights to education. The
Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling banned school segregation and affirmed the right to quality
education for all children. The 1964 Civil Rights Act guaranteed equal access to education. "This
data collection shines
a clear, unbiased light on places that are delivering on the promise of an equal education
for every child and places where the largest gaps remain," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said
in a statement. "In all, it is clear that the United States has a great distance to go to meet our
goal of providing opportunities for every student to succeed." Duncan and Attorney General Eric
Holder plan to announce the survey results on Friday. The information, part of an ongoing survey by the Education Department's
Office of Civil Rights, highlights longstanding inequities in how schools leave minority students and students with disabilities at a
disadvantage. For the first time since 2000, the new version of the survey includes results from all 16,500 American school districts,
representing 49 million students. "Unfortunately, too
many children don’t have equitable access to
experienced and fully licensed teachers, as has again been proven by the data in this
report," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union. "This is
a problem that can and must be addressed." Daria Hall, K-12 policy director at the Education Trust, an
advocacy group, also called for action. "The report shines a new light on something that research and
experience have long told us -- that students of color get less than their fair share of
access to the in-school factors that matter for achievement," she said. "Students of color get
less access to high level courses. Black students in particular get less instructional time
because they're far more likely to receive out of school suspensions or expulsions. And
students of color get less access to teachers who've had at least a year on the job and who
have at least basic certification. Of course, it's not enough to just shine a light on the
problem. We have to fix it." Though 16 percent of America's public school students are black, they
represent 27 percent of students referred by schools to law enforcement, and 31 percent
of students arrested for an offense committed in school, according to the survey.
Fair housing
Wow this is racist
Coates 2014 (Ta-Nehisi. "The Racist Housing Policies That Built Ferguson." The
Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 17 Oct. 2014. Web. 29 June 2015.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/the-racist-housing-policiesthat-built-ferguson/381595/, LB)
That governmental actions, not mere private prejudice, were responsible for segregating
greater St. Louis was once conventional informed opinion. In 1974, a three-judge panel of the federal
Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that “segregated housing in the St. Louis metropolitan area was … in large measure the
result of deliberate racial discrimination in the housing market by the real estate industry and by agencies of the federal, state, and
local governments.” Similar observations accurately describe every other large metropolitan area; in St. Louis, the Department of
Justice stipulated to this truth but took no action in response. In 1980, a
federal court order included an
instruction for the state, county, and city governments to devise plans to integrate
schools by integrating housing. Public officials ignored this aspect of the order, devising
only a voluntary busing plan to integrate schools, but no programs to combat housing
segregation. A lot of what's here—redlining, housing covenants, blockbusting, etc.—will be
well-known to those with a good handle on 20th-century American history. I focused on this particular era in my case for
reparations. But it bears constant repeating: The geography of America would be unrecognizable today without the racist social
engineering of the mid-20th century. The policy included—but was not limited to—mortgage loans backed by the Federal Housing
Authority and the Veteran's Administration: At its peak in 1943 when civilian construction was limited, the FHA financed 80 percent
of all private home construction nationwide. During the postwar period, it dropped to one-third. But even when subdivisions were
not built with advance FHA commitments, individual homebuyers needed access to FHA or VA insured mortgages, so similar
standards for new construction pertained. Subdivisions throughout St. Louis County were developed in this way, with FHA advance
commitments for the builders and a resulting whites-only sale policy.
The FHA’s suburban whites-only policy
continued through the postwar housing boom that lasted through the mid-1960s. In
1947, the FHA sanitized its manual, removing literal race references but still demanding
“compatibility among neighborhood occupants” for mortgage guarantees.
“Neighborhoods constituted of families that are congenial,” the FHA manual explained, “…
generally exhibit strong appeal and stability.” This very slightly sanitized language
suggested no change in policy, and the FHA continued to finance builders with open
policies of racial exclusion for another 15 years. In 1959, the United States Commission
on Civil Rights concluded that only 2 percent of all FHA-backed loans had gone to
blacks. "Most of this housing," concluded the report, "has been in all-Negro developments in the South." As it relates to black
America, segregation must always be understood, as a system of plunder. Once the big game has been fenced off, then comes the
hunt: According to a study by the St. Louis nonprofit Better Together, Ferguson receives nearly one-quarter of its revenue from court
fees; for some surrounding towns it approaches 50 percent. Municipal reliance on revenue generated from traffic stops adds
pressure to make more of them. One town, Sycamore Hills, has stationed a radar-gun-wielding police officer on its 250-foot
northbound stretch of Interstate.
With primarily white police forces that rely disproportionately on
traffic citation revenue, blacks are pulled over, cited and arrested in numbers far
exceeding their population share, according to a recent report from Missouri’s attorney
general. In Ferguson last year, 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches and 93 percent of
arrests were of black people—despite the fact that police officers were far less likely to
find contraband on black drivers (22 percent versus 34 percent of whites). This worsens
inequality, as struggling blacks do more to fund local government than relatively
affluent whites.
Fair for whom?
Cohen 2015 (Rachel. "We Can't Talk About Housing Policy Without Talking About
Racism." The American Prospect. N.p., 19 May 2015. Web. 29 June 2015.
http://prospect.org/article/we-cant-talk-about-housing-policy-without-talking-aboutracism, LB)
A case in point is HUD’s Clinton-era Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program, the subject of a new study by Harvard economists Raj
Chetty, Nathan Hendren, and Lawrence Katz. Focusing on MTO’s long-term economic impacts, the study sheds more positive light
on a program long considered to be a failure. Running from 1994 to 1998, MTO was a housing experiment that involved moving
individuals out of high-poverty neighborhoods with vouchers and into census-tracts with less than 10 percent poverty to see if this
would improve their life outcomes. The results were mixed. While critics of the program have dubbed it a failure for not significantly
improving children’s school performance or the financial situation of their parents, there was a lot about it that proved successful.
MTO yielded significant gains in mental health for adults, for instance, including decreased stress levels and lower rates of
depression. It
also greatly lowered obesity rates and improved the psychological well being
of young girls. The new Harvard study further bucks the notion that MTO failed. Instead of
looking at MTO’s economic impact on parents, it looks at the adult earnings of their children. Such an analysis simply
wasn’t possible to do a decade ago, given that the kids were still too young. Researchers
now find that poor children who moved into better neighborhoods were more likely to
attend college and earned significantly more in the workforce than similar adults who
never moved. The researchers also ranked which cities were “the worst” in terms of
facilitating upward mobility. Out of the nation’s 100 largest counties, the authors found, Baltimore came in dead last.
Many writers were quick to make the connection between Baltimore’s low chances for social mobility and the recent bouts of unrest
surrounding the death of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray. However, few seemed interested in connecting the new Harvard study with the
politics of why we have segregated communities and concentrated poverty in the first place. Emily Badger’s Washington Post writeup of the study framed the ills people face in Baltimore as a city failure, rather than a state or federal one. She discusses the
“downward drag that Baltimore exerts on poor kids” and says that Baltimore “itself
appears to be acting on poor children, constraining their opportunity, molding them
over time into the kind of adults who will likely remain poor.” Badger acknowledges that maybe this
has to do with struggling schools and less social capital. “Change where these children live, though,” she writes, “and you might well
change their outcomes.” In The Wall Street Journal, Holman W. Jenkins Jr. looks at the new Harvard study and concludes:
“Neighborhoods
themselves are clearly transmitters of poverty. The problem for
residents isn’t racism: It’s where they live.” Such narrow portrayals of Baltimore and its residents are only
possible if we exclude decades of state and federal policy from our frame of analysis. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy
Institute wrote something I suggest reading in its entirety. But to quote:
In Baltimore and elsewhere, the
distressed condition of African American working- and lower-middle-class families is
almost entirely attributable to federal policy that prohibited black families from
accumulating housing equity during the suburban boom that moved white families into
single-family homes from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s—and thus from bequeathing
that wealth to their children and grandchildren, as white suburbanites have done. Slate’s
Jamelle Bouie traces not only how efforts to segregate Baltimore succeeded, but also how there’s never been a sustained attempt to
undo them. The simple fact is that major progress in Baltimore—and other, similar cities—requires major investment and major
reform from state and federal government. It requires patience, investment, and a national commitment to ending scourges of
generational poverty—not just ameliorating them.
Health care
Laundry list of disparities in treatment
Randall 1993 (Vernellia, prof of law @ the university of dayton "Racist Health
Care." Racism.org. N.p., 1993. Web. 29 June 2015.
http://www.racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1424%3Arac
isthealthcare&catid=88&Itemid=274&showall=&limitstart=3, LB)
Racial barriers to access is only one aspect of institutional racism. Another aspect of institutional
racism is the occurrence of racial disparities in type of services ordered and in the provision of medical treatment itself, welldocumented in studies done in cardiology, cardiac surgery, kidney disease, organ transplantation, internal medicine and obstetrics.
Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery. African-Americans and European-Americans
have similar rates of hospitalization for circulatory system disease. Yet, studies have
found that European-Americans are one-third more likely to undergo coronary
angiography and two to three times more likely to undergo bypass surgery. Kidney
Disease and Kidney Transplantation. The aggressive treatment of long-term
kidney disease is based in part on race. Studies indicate that European-Americans are 5% to 15% more likely to
receive aggressive treatment. In fact, the most favored patient for long term hemodialysis is a
European-American male between the ages of 25 to 44. A European-American on
dialysis is two-thirds more likely to receive a kidney transplant than a non-EuropeanAmerican. While the likelihood of receiving a kidney transplant is related to income, the
effects of income and race are independent from each other, meaning that middleincome African-Americans are less likely to receive a kidney transplant than middleincome European-Americans. Internal Medical Treatment. The patient's race has
been correlated with the intensity of medical treatment. For example, when hospitalized
with pneumonia, African-Americans were less likely than European-Americans to
receive intensive care. This disparity in medical treatment persisted even after controlling for clinical characteristics and
income. Obstetrical Treatment. African-Americans were more likely to be classified as
“clinic” patients despite comparable ability to pay for care. Private patients were more
likely than clinic patients to have caesarean sections. This is true even though clinic
patients were in poorer health and were more likely to have low birth weight babies.
Health care is racist
1. barriers to hospitals
Randall 1993 (Vernellia, prof of law @ the university of dayton "Racist Health
Care." Racism.org. N.p., 1993. Web. 29 June 2015.
http://www.racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1424%3Arac
isthealthcare&catid=88&Itemid=274&showall=&limitstart=3, LB)
1. Barriers to Hospitals The institutional racism that exists in many hospitals manifests itself in a
number of ways including the adoption, administration and implementation of policies
that restrict admission; the closure, relocation or privatization of hospitals that serve the
African-American community; and the transfer of unwanted patients (known as “patient dumping”) by hospitals and
institutions. ADMISSION RESTRICTIONS. Many hospitals discriminate by using patient
referral and acceptance practice standards that limit access. These practices restrict the admission of
African-Americans to hospitals. Discriminatory admission practices include: • Layoffs of recently hired African-
American physicians - where those African-American physicians admit most of the
African-American patients served by the hospital; • Not having physicians on staff who
can accept Medicaid patients; • Requiring pre-admission deposits as a condition of
obtaining care; • Refusing to participate in programs to finance care for low-income
patients not eligible for Medicaid; and, • Accepting only patients of physicians with staff
privileges when the patients of such physicians do not reflect the racial composition of
the local community. Such practices may have a devastating effect on AfricanAmericans. The practices may banish African-Americans to distinctly substandard institutions treating mostly minority
groups. They may completely prevent care where African-Americans have no access to other sources of care. COMMUNITY
AVAILABILITY. Racial barriers to health care access are based, in large part, on the
unavailability of services in a community. Increasingly, hospitals that serve the AfricanAmerican community are either closing, relocating or becoming private. In a study done
between 1937-1977, researchers showed that the likelihood of a hospital's closing was
directly related to the percentage of African-Americans in the population. Throughout the
1980s many hospitals relocated from heavily African-American communities to predominantly European-American suburban
communities. This
loss of services to the community resulted in reduced access to AfricanAmericans. Geographic availability and proximity are important determinants to
seeking health care services early. If African-Americans fail to seek early health care, they are more likely to be
sicker when they do enter the system; and the cost for the patient to receive service and for the system to provide services at that
point is likely to be greater than at an earlier state. Therefore, not
only does the loss of services significantly
increase health care costs to African-Americans, but also, it increases health care costs
to the society in general. Another devastating trend that affects the access of AfricanAmericans to health care is the privatization of public hospitals. Quite a few hospitals
(public and non-profit) have elected to restructure as private, for-profit corporations. As
public hospitals, many were obligated to provide uncompensated care under the HillBurton Act. As private hospitals, these institutions are most likely to discontinue providing
general health services to the indigent populations, and essential primary health care
services to serve African-American communities. The problem of limited resources is not new and has
plagued the African-American community since slavery. Historically, African-American communities
attempted to address the problem by establishing African-American hospitals. At one point
there were more than 200 African-American hospitals in the United States. African-Americans
relied on these institutions to “heal and save their lives.” Now, these institutions are
fighting for their own survival. By the 1960s, only 90 African-American hospitals remained. Between 1961 and 1988,
57 African-American hospitals closed and 14 others either merged, converted or
consolidated. By 1991, only 12 hospitals continued to “struggle daily just to keep their
doors open”. As a result of closures, relocations, and privatization, many AfricanAmericans are left with limited, if any, access to hospitals. PATIENT DUMPING. An
African-American seeking care at a private hospital faces the possibility of being
“dumped”, that is, the hospital may transfer an “undesirable” patient to a different
facility. The transfer is medically appropriate only when the care required is not
available at the transferring hospital. However, many transfers are for economic reasons, i.e., the patient was
either uninsured or unable to make admission deposits. African-Americans are disproportionately affected
by these practices.
2. barriers to nursing homes
Randall 1993 (Vernellia, prof of law @ the university of dayton "Racist Health
Care." Racism.org. N.p., 1993. Web. 29 June 2015.
http://www.racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1424%3Arac
isthealthcare&catid=88&Itemid=274&showall=&limitstart=3, LB)
2. Barriers to Nursing Homes Nursing homes are the most segregated publicly licensed health care
facilities in the United States. Smith, in his study, concludes that racial discrimination is the major
factor explaining that type of segregation. It has been suggested that any difference in AfricanAmerican use of nursing homes can be explained by cultural biases against using
nursing homes as care source for disabled or aged family members. However, in some areas
(such as Delaware and Detroit Metropolitan) African-Americans make up a higher
portion of nursing home residents than European-Americans. This suggests that
African-Americans do not consistently decide against nursing homes. Furthermore, even
where racially neutral policies exist, institutional racism is still a factor. For instance, evidence
about the use of nursing homes under Medicaid demonstrates that institutional racism has an impact even without regard to
economic class. For instance, although
African-Americans constitute only 12% of the nation's total
population, the African-American poverty rate (31%) is three times greater than the
European-American poverty rate (10%). However, African-Americans constitute only 29% of the Medicaid
population and 23% of the elderly poor. Medicaid expenditures for African-Americans are only 18% of total expenditures. If, indeed,
African-Americans are sicker, then Medicaid expenditures for African-Americans should at least be equal to, if not greater than, the
percentage of Medicaid's African-American population. It is this combination of under-representation and under-spending in
Medicaid that suggests racism. In part, this
disparity in expenditure is based on the limited access
that African-Americans on Medicaid have to nursing homes, both intermediate and
skilled nursing facilities. Only 10% of Medicaid intermediate care patients are African-Americans. Similarly, only 9%
of Medicaid skilled nursing care facilities' patients are African-Americans. This disparity
may be due in part to a policy allowing limited bed certification. Under limited bed certification,
nursing homes determine the number of beds that are certified to participate in Medicaid. Federal regulations permit a distinct part
of intermediate care facilities to be certified. Some states will certify a limited number of beds. Thus, the
certified portion
of a facility need not contain all intermediate care facilities residents. Furthermore,
some states will certify beds which are not in a separately administered unit of a facility,
but are instead part of a wing or ward that also contains non-certified beds. Limited bed
certification programs allow nursing home operators to give preference to private pay patients by reserving for their exclusive use
beds which are unavailable to Medicaid patients. It
also allows the nursing home operators to change the
bed certification, resulting in disruption of the care of Medicaid patients by displacing
them after they have been admitted to a nursing home. Displacement can occur in several ways. It
occurs when a patient exhausts his or her financial resources. The patient needs to make a transition
from private pay to Medicaid. At that point, a patient may be told that his or her bed is no longer
available. Furthermore, displacement occurs when a patient with insurance (private, medicaid or medicare) is transferred from
a skilled nursing facility to an intermediate care facility. If the insurance will not cover intermediate care,
the patient may not have financial resources to continue obtaining nursing home care.
Similarly, displacement can occur when a patient already on Medicaid and authorized to
receive skilled nursing care is reclassified for intermediate care only
3. barriers to physicians
Randall 1993 (Vernellia, prof of law @ the university of dayton "Racist Health
Care." Racism.org. N.p., 1993. Web. 29 June 2015.
http://www.racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1424%3Arac
isthealthcare&catid=88&Itemid=274&showall=&limitstart=3, LB)
3. Barriers to Physicians and Other Providers Another important aspect of access to care is the
availability of health care providers who serve the African-American communities. It
should go without saying that proximity increases utilization. At this point, data on the actual numbers of white
physicians who have offices in the African-American community are not available. There
are probably very few. Consequently, African-American physicians have been an important aspect of
filling the availability gap. Without physicians and providers in their communities,
African-Americans are likely to delay seeking health care. That delay can result in more
severe illness, increased health care cost, increased mortality and increased costs to
society. Given the increased morbidity and mortality among African-Americans logically one would expect more health care
providers in their communities not fewer, and more African-Americans in health care fields. Scrutiny of the physicians heading in
the Yellow Pages of any major city, clearly indicates that many physicians do not physically serve the African-American community.
Furthermore, despite being 12% of the population, African-Americans
are seriously under-represented in
health care professions. Only 3% of the physicians in the United States are AfricanAmericans; only 2.5% of the dentists in the United States are African-Americans; and
only 3.6% of the United States pharmacists are African-Americans. While this lack of
representation is particularly significant for African-American communities which rely on African-American physicians for care, it
also impacts the entire community. Shortage of adequate care results in sicker individuals and an increase in overall health care
costs. If
African-Americans are sicker, they need more physicians, not fewer. Yet, we see
the same limited availability of providers, as of hospitals, to service African-American
communities. The shortage of African-American professionals further affects health care availability by limiting AfricanAmerican input into the health care system. While the control of health care distribution is ultimately in the hands of the individual
physician, that control is influenced and limited by law, hospital practices and policies, and the medical organization of the
physician's practice. With so few African-American health care professionals, the control of the health care system lies almost
exclusively in European-American hands. The
result is an inadequate, if not ineffective, voice on
African-American health care issues. This lack of African-American voice leads to
increased ignorance on the part of European-Americans regarding issues pertaining to
African-American health. When health care issues are defined, the policy makers'
ignorance results in their overlooking African-Americans' health concerns.
Health care is awful
1. We Spend the Most Money on Health Care, But Get the Least in Return
Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the
American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-americanhealth-care-system.aspx, LB)
The US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan,
Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia, yet the US
ranks last in health and mortality when compared with 17 other developed nations. Sadly,
30 cents of every dollar spent on medical care in America is wasted, which amounts to $750 billion annually. That is the same
amount the Department of Defense estimates we spent on the ENTIRE Iraq War!
This $750 billion of waste is
made up of inefficient delivery of care and excessive administrative costs, unnecessary
services, inflated prices, prevention failures, and outright fraud. The largest defrauder of
the federal government is the pharmaceutical industry.7 Thirty-five percent of Americans have difficulty
paying their medical bills,8 and nearly two-thirds of all bankruptcies are linked to inability to pay medical bills due to being
uninsured or underinsured. Medical impoverishment is nearly unheard of in wealthy nations, other than the US, because all have
some form of national health insurance.9 By dissecting medical bills, Time Magazine writer Steven Brill says we can see exactly how
and why you are overspending and where your money is going. Americans are being grossly overcharged; even nonprofit hospitals
are making greater profits than some prosperous for-profit businesses. The
entire system unfairly affects the
poor and uninsured as they are charged the FULL inflated price, while those with
coverage have their costs radically reduced through pre-negotiated lowered rates. How
much will you spend for a hospital stay? Certainly more than you would pay for even the
most extravagant vacation! The average cost of a hospital say is $18,000, compared to $6,200 among OECD nations,
according to this George Washington University infographic.10 Things add up quickly when you're in an American hospital. For
example, a liter of normal saline rings up at $546.11 This one-liter bag of saline contains about nine grams of salt (less than two
teaspoons), which costs 44 cents to a dollar to produce. But then the bag makes its way from the manufacturer through a series of
giant group-purchasing middlemen and distributors before arriving at your hospital's pharmacy. Upon
arrival, that IV
bag has a mystery formula applied to it, and a price is magically determined, which is
then recorded on your hospital's "chargemaster." No one really understands how these
prices are calculated. Only recently did the federal government release the prices that hospitals charge for the 100 most
common medical procedures, revealing tremendous and seemingly random variation in the costs of services.12 For example, if
you need a hip replacement, you can spend $5,300 in Ada, Oklahoma, or you can fork
over $223,000 for exactly the same procedure in Monterrey Park, California.13 You can find
out how your state compares in average fees for service using an interactive online chart created by the Washington Post.14
2. Our Chronic Disease Rates Are Extraordinarily High
Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the
American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-americanhealth-care-system.aspx, LB)
Americans have the second highest rate of chronic disease of the seven countries
examined, with Australia being number one. With all of the money we're spending, what are we missing? This statistic
reflects poor preventative care and lack of attention to lifestyle habits, such as diet,
exercise, stress, sleep, and "electron deficiency" (insufficient contact with the Earth). The majority of
Americans (adults and children) are becoming insulin-resistant due to their junk food based diets, loaded withsugar, processed
grains, and chemical additives. Insulin
dysfunction is putting many in a state of perpetual
inflammation and driving up the rates of chronic disease. Americans consume nearly
4,000 calories per day on average—more than anyone else in the world.15 Yet, they are
malnourished because most of these calories are from processed food, therefore devoid
of nutrition.
3. Poor Coordination of Care
Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the
American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-americanhealth-care-system.aspx, LB)
This issue is tied to the problem of waste. We drop the ball when it comes to managing patient care, especially
if you have a complicated illness requiring multiple providers. As a result, we have poor
access to medical records, duplicate testing, gaps in communication, confidentiality
violations, and rushed and fragmented health care. According to an infographic based on data from
multiple sources, created by Jonathan Govette:16 3 out of 10 lab tests are reordered because the results
can't be found 68 percent of specialists receive no information from the primary care
provider prior to the referral visit; 60 to 70 percent of referrals go unscheduled; and 25
percent of appointments are missed 7,000 people die every year from sloppy physician
handwriting
4. Most Americans Do Not Have a Primary Care Provider
Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the
American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-americanhealth-care-system.aspx, LB)
One of the reasons Americans' health care is so poorly managed is that they are least likely
to have primary care providers. There are 0.5 general physicians per 1,000 people in the
US, but the average among OECD nations is 1.23.17 Americans are also the most likely
to say that their physician doesn't know important information about their medical
history, which has dire implications for quality of care and increases the likelihood of
medical errors. And, speaking of errors...
5. Americans Are the Most Frequent Victims of Medical Errors
Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the
American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-americanhealth-care-system.aspx, LB)
It can be argued that medical errors are leading cause of death in the US—higher than heart
disease, higher than cancer. The latest review shows that about 1,000 people die EVERY DAY from
hospital mistakes alone. This equates to four jumbo jets' worth of passengers every week, but the death toll is largely
ignored. Types of errors include inappropriate medical treatments, hospital-acquired
infections, unnecessary surgeries, adverse drug reactions, operating on the wrong body
part—or even on the wrong patient! One in four hospital patients are harmed by preventable medical mistakes in
this country, and 800,000 people die every year as a result. Of those 800,000, 250,000 die as
a result of medication errors.
6. Fewer Americans Are Receiving Health Care
Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the
American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-americanhealth-care-system.aspx, LB)
Americans do have shorter waits for non-elective surgeries, compared with other developed nations. Only four percent of us wait
more than six months, which is considerably less than the Canadians (14 percent) or Britons (15 percent). However, when
consider how many Americans lack access to any health care at all, the wait-time
you
advantage disappears. Nearly one-third of Americans are uninsured or underinsured.19
Twenty-five percent do not visit a doctor when they're sick, due to the cost. Twenty-three
percent can't fill their prescriptions. This is far worse in America than in any of the other
countries surveyed. In Canada, only five percent skipped care, and in the UK only three percent. As you know, I'm not a fan
of using the standard health care approach in every situation. However, if you become acutely ill or injured, lack
of access to care can be devastating.
7. We Don't Pay Physicians in Proportion to Their Quality of Care
Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the
American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-americanhealth-care-system.aspx, LB)
Most other countries reward physicians for good care with financial incentives. For example,
in the UK, 95 percent of physicians are paid, at least in part, according to the quality of
care they deliver. In Australia, it's 72 percent. The US scores lower than anyone else, at
30 percent.
8. Our Health Care Is Inconvenient
Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the
American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-americanhealth-care-system.aspx, LB)
Americans' access to after-hours services (early in the morning, later in the evening, and on weekends and
holidays) is just mediocre. For access to evening hours, we lag behind Australia, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand. A
full 67 percent of Americans—more than in any other country—say it's difficult to get
care on nights, weekends, or holidays without resorting to the emergency room, where
care is costlier and, if your injury is not life threatening, inefficient and time consuming.
Only 30 percent of Americans report that they can access a doctor on the very day they
need one, as opposed to 41 percent of Britons and 55 percent of Germans.
9. American Physicians Don't Listen to Their Patients
Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the
American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-americanhealth-care-system.aspx, LB)
About 70 percent of Americans are satisfied with their physician's "bedside manner," which is lower than the Canadians,
Australians, and New Zealanders. But we are five percent more satisfied than the Britons, and well above the Germans or Dutch.
However, when you look at specifics, we compare less favorably. Americans
are less happy about how well
their physicians explain things to them, how long they spend with them, or how
smoothly their appointments go, with respect to things like coordinating records and
scheduling.
10. Most Americans Are Dissatisfied with the Current System
Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the
American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June
2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-americanhealth-care-system.aspx, LB)
You've probably heard reports claiming that Britons and Canadians are highly dissatisfied with their health care system, but this
survey proved that Americans have them beat by a substantial margin. Americans
were the least likely of all
seven countries to report relative satisfaction with their health care system. Only 16
percent of Americans report being happy, compared with 26 percent in the UK and 42 percent in the
Netherlands. Thirty-four percent of Americans want a complete overhaul in the health care
system, whereas only 12 percent of Canadians and 15 percent of Britons say the same. So we pay the most for our health care, but
we have the lowest satisfaction ratings—even lower than those who spend more time
"waiting in line." Ezra Klein of the Washington Post makes an excellent point "There is no other area of
American life where we collectively accept such a bad deal. We spend more than any other nation on
our military, but our military is unquestionably the mightiest in the world. We spend the most on our universities, but our
universities are the best on the planet. But
we spend the most on our health care—twice as much as
anyone else—and our health system is mediocre-to-poor, with 47 million of us lacking
the insurance necessary to easily access it."
Poverty
Government makes poverty alleviation ineffective
Chartier 2012 (Gary. "Government Is No Friend of the Poor." : The Freeman :
Foundation for Economic Education. N.p., 4 Jan. 2012. Web. 29 June 2015.
http://fee.org/freeman/detail/government-is-no-friend-of-the-poor, LB)
For instance: Governments don’t treat recipients of the antipoverty aid they disburse
especially well. It’s important to avoid comparing idealized State practice with
imaginary worst-case practice in the government’s absence. If we focus on actual government practice
we find that poor people are not served particularly well by the State, which routinely
intrudes into the lives of recipients of assistance, violating their privacy and seeking to
regulate their behavior. People pay a high price for aid from the State. Government aid
programs come with hidden price tags. And governments increase the number of poor people in part precisely
through some antipoverty programs, which can create perverse incentives both for people to remain poor enough to qualify for
government funds and for bureaucrats to keep people poor in order to retain their own jobs. Governments
raise the
cost of being poor. Building codes and zoning regulations raise the cost of housing and so
make it harder for people to find inexpensive homes. Some people are forced to live
without permanent housing at all, while others must spend much larger fractions of their incomes on housing than
they otherwise would. As for food, that’s also more expensive thanks to agricultural tariffs and import quotas. In the absence
of government policies that make meeting their basic needs unnecessarily expensive,
poor people would have more disposable income and would be more economically
secure. More than that, though, governments actively take money from poor people. Many poor
people pay more in taxes than they get back in services under the State’s rule. These people
would have more resources on net in the absence of the State’s demand for tax money. In addition many people are poor, or poorer,
today because the
State has actively stolen land and other resources from them or their
ancestors or has sanctioned such thefts committed by the wealthy and well-connected.
(Think eminent domain among other methods.) Historically the existence of a peasant class and of a class of
displaced urban workers willing to accept employment on dismal terms is inexplicable
without reference to State violence or State tolerance for or endorsement of violence by
the wealthy and well-connected. The government raises the cost of obtaining key goods and services. The State
does a range of things (notably requiring professional licenses, hospital accreditation, and prescriptions and enforcing
drug and medical device patents, and other restraints on trade) to make particular services such as health
care especially expensive. All these different factors fit together, each one making people’s conditions worse than they’d
otherwise be and making the effects of the other factors more severe. People often start out with less money
because of large-scale past injustices. They have less money now because of government limitations on the kind of
work they can do and where they can do it. Their ability to provide decent lives for themselves and
their families is further limited because the government raises the cost of living, and
government regulation of the economy drives down the overall level of productivity even
further in ways that obviously hurt the poor the most.
Race data doesn’t help with federal public assistance distribution
Timoll 99 (Jason Timoll, “Race and Welfare: The Unspoken Variable” 1999.
http://www2.wlu.edu/documents/shepherd/academics/cap_03L_timoll.pdf) JG
In order to analyze racial discrimination in the∂ distribution of government welfare benefits, one must∂ establish whether or not
such problems exists, whether and∂ how they may be documented, whether the problem is isolated∂ to rogue actors or representative
of a policy trends and∂ what causes the problems that may be found.∂ In analyzing the effects of race on the distribution∂ of public
assistance, my focus is on the inadequacy of∂ current welfare anti-discrimination policies. I will∂ attempt to discern from the
available data, clear and∂ consistent patterns of discriminatory abuse, as∂ distinguished from subjective criticism of patterns of∂
distribution. Further, I will suggest ways in which states∂ and the Federal government can promote more equitable∂ distributions of
welfare benefits and services to all∂ races.∂ II. How Race Discrimination Can Be Identified. ∂ 2∂ Welfare
allocations, in
theory, ought to be needbased.∂ Analyses of need ought to incorporate factors such∂ a family’s size, structure and income
level. Welfare∂ recipients currently enrolled in a state “workfare” program∂ may be considered, under, state and federal laws,∂
distribution of welfare can
often allow for subjective factors to play a role in analyses. This subjectivity may be hard enough to
“employees” and may thus protected by applicable civil rights and labor laws. However,
detect∂ in substantive dollar allocations and even harder within∂ programs that are established to offer educational and∂
employment advice, encouragement and direction. Largely∂ because any disparities may be hard to explain or account∂ for, federal
data collection agencies may not have an∂ urgent vested interest in compiling and analyzing data that∂ would appear to give a clearer
insight into the effects of∂ race upon the distribution of welfare benefits. The results∂ of this data may reveal embarrassing trends
that may be∂ politically difficult to explain and remedy.∂ A
study conducted by Elizabeth Lower-Basch, Office of∂ the Assistant
Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the∂ Department of Health and Human Services, has isolated∂ several areas
in which race disparities may appear. They∂ include the number of families receiving AFDC/TANF (by ∂ 3∂ race),
distribution of AFDC/TANF (by race), and various∂ indicators of success regarding welfare “leavers” (by∂ race). Most of the following
statistics are not self explanatory∂ as to why they are different by race but do∂ point out significant gaps among them. The
proportional changes in poverty rates among the∂ races, as indicated above suggest the possibility
that∂ government programs designed to combat poverty are not∂ having the
same effects across racial lines. Further, this∂ suggestion may be compounded when accounting for the
actual∂ number of people within the racial categories that fall∂ below the poverty line as compared to the rate of change∂ regarding
their welfare status. The chart bellow indicates∂ an overall decrease in families receiving welfare benefits∂ from the period of 1985 to
1999. This trend was given a∂ large surge largely attributable to The Personal∂ Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act∂ (PWRORA) of 1996 signed by President Bill Clinton. From∂ 1996 to 1999 there does appear to be a
widening gap that∂
has remained in place, between the number of black welfare∂ leavers and white welfare
leavers. Like so many of these∂ charts and studies, it is not clear what the underlying ∂ 5∂ problem is. This illustration, however,
clearly∂ demonstrates that the effectiveness of welfare policy has∂ not been realized by racial
groups equally. The number of∂ white recipient families is shown to be declining more∂ rapidly (50.6%) than their Black
counterparts at (39.6%).∂ While there is an 11% reduction difference, it may be∂ indicative of a larger trend.∂
Redistricting
Voting rights
People don’t have a say in voting rn
Alcoff 3 (Linda Alcoff, professor of philosophy at CUNY, “LATINO/AS, ASIAN
AMERICANS, AND THE BLACK-WHITE BINARY”, The Journal of Ethics 7: 5–27,
2003, LB)
If W.E.B. DuBois were alive today, he would probably tell us that the problem of the
twenty-first century will prove to be the lines between communities of color, or the
question of cross ethnic relations.1 In the 2000 United States presidential election, the
voting bloc for candidate Al Gore consisted of a majority in each of the following groups:
every minority ethnic group, white women, and union households. This coalition
actually constitutes a slim majority of the population, and thus its unity is potentially a
powerful force. However, U.S. presidential elections are of course not determined by the
popular vote but by the electoral college, a procedure that not only has the power to overturn the popular vote
nationwide but, even more importantly, the urban vote, which now carries the majority of the population and is increasing. If we
eliminated the electoral college the urban population would therefore determine the
presidency, which would mean real enfranchisement for people of color for the first time
in U.S. history. It is unlikely that the electoral college will be eliminated anytime soon, but even if this were to happen,
political power for people of color would require building coalitions, the difficulty of which has
been brought home by recent city government elections in New York and Los Angeles. This paper is an attempt to make a
contribution toward coalition building by showing that, even
if we try to build coalition around what might
look like our most obvious common concern - reducing racism - the dominant discourse
of racial politics in the U.S. inhibits an understanding of how racism operates vis-a-vis
Latino/as and Asian Americans, and thus proves more of an obstacle to coalition
building than an aid. First and foremost, of course, we must begin to talk more with one another. There are many
important similarities between the history of oppression specifically faced by Latino/as and Asian Americans in the U.S. Histori
cally, both groups were often brought to this country as cheap labor and then denied certain political and civil rights, thus making
them a more vulnerable and exploitable labor force once on U.S. shores (a practice that continues to this day in sweatshops in many
cities on the east and west coasts and on the U.S.-Mexican border, and in the erosion of even basic protections or emergency hospital
services for "illegals").2 And both
groups are often coming from countries of origin that have been
the site of imperialist wars, invasions, and civil wars instigated by the cold war, some of
which involved the U.S.'s own imperialist aggressions such as in the Philippines, Puerto
Rico, El Salvador, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Korea, the
Dominican Republic, and most recently, Colombia.3 In this sense, many of these immigrants had
experience with the U.S. Government, direct or indirect, well before they became refugees or immigrants there. There are also
similarities that Latino/as and Asian Americans share with other people of color after they go there: having to continually face
vicious and demeaning stereotyping along with language, education, health care, housing and employment discrimination, and
being the target of random identity based violence and murder (random only in the sense that any Mexican farm laborer or Asian
American or Arab American or African American or Jewish person would do). the U.S. Government, direct or indirect, well before
they became refugees or immigrants there. There
are also similarities that Latino/as and Asian
Americans share with other people of color after they go there: having to continually
face vicious and demeaning stereotyping along with language, education, health care,
housing and employment discrimination, and being the target of random identity based
violence and murder (random only in the sense that any Mexican farm laborer or Asian
American or Arab American or African American or Jewish person would do). Perhaps
because of their similar genealogy as sources of cheap, easily exploitable labor, there are also some important commonalities
between the ideological justifications and legal methods that have been used to persecute and discriminate against Latino/as and
Asian Americans.4 Both
have been the main victims of "nativist" arguments which advocate
limiting the rights of immigrants or foreign-born Americans, and both have often been
portrayed as ineradicably "foreign" no matter how many gener ations they have lived
here. Yet an account of these nativist-based forms of discrimination and persecution has
not been adequately
Institutional racism disproves – their author
LCEF 14 (Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/Census-Report2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15, LB)
While there was a flurry of reform regarding disenfranchisement of formerly
incarcerated individuals in the years following the 2000 election, the reforms have
stalled and, in some cases, the process has gone into reverse. In 2005, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack
issued an executive order automatically restoring voting rights to all people who were formerly incarcerated for felony convictions.
Six years later, his successor Terry Branstad nullified the reform.82 In March 2011, former Florida Governor Crist’s attempts to
streamline the re-enfranchisement process were ended by his successor, Rick Scott.83 Recently, there
have been efforts
in two states to re-enfranchise a segment of the formerly incarcerated population. In both
Delaware and Virginia, lawmakers have made it easier for nonviolent offenders to regain their voting rights upon completion of their
criminal convictions. While these efforts are noteworthy and progressive, much
more reform is needed to
significantly reduce the numbers of disenfranchised individuals. Today, approximately a dozen
states still have some form of permanent disenfranchisement on the books. Because each state in the United States has established
its own laws with regard to the deprivation of the right to vote after a criminal conviction, what has resulted is a patchwork of laws
throughout the country. (See Figure 1) In brief:

Thirty-five states prohibit voting by persons who are on parole but not incarcerated;
30 deny voting rights to persons on felony probation.
 Eleven states restrict the rights of persons who have completed their sentences in
their entirety; and formerly incarcerated persons in those 11 states make up about 45
percent of the entire disenfranchised population, totaling more than 2.6 million
people.
 Four states deprive all people with a criminal conviction of the right to vote unless
pardoned by the governor, irrespective of the gravity of the crime or if the sentence
has been served.
 In America’s 11 permanent disenfranchisement states, even after the completion of a
probation sentence or completion of a prison sentence followed by parole, an
individual can’t vote without extraordinary intervention from political leaders. In
Mississippi, that intervention involves the legislature passing a bill to personally reenfranchise an individual, while in Florida it involves the governor signing off on
clemency papers.84
The racial aspect of disenfranchisement makes this unjust situation even worse. Since the
late 1990s, as the legacy of mass incarceration collided with permanent disenfranchisement laws,
in some states in the Deep South, upwards of one quarter of Black men are
disenfranchised.85 In 2012, sociologists Christopher Uggen, Sarah Shannon, and Jeff Manza estimated that 5.8 million
felons and ex-felons are currently barred from voting. Nationally, one out of every 13
African-American men are disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than for
non African-American men. In total, nearly 7.7 percent of the African-American population is
disenfranchised compared to 1.8 percent of the non African-American population.86
Topicality
T-Infosharing
We meet – Race data is used for policy decisions – this means it’s exactly
what their ev about “data gathering to stop a certain action” describes
Census Bureau 14 - https://www.census.gov/population/race/about/faq.html, 6/26/15 BRoche
Why does the Census Bureau collect information on race? Information on race is
required for many Federal programs and is critical in making policy decisions,
particularly for civil rights. States use these data to meet legislative redistricting
principles. Race data also are used to promote equal employment opportunities and to
assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks.
T – surveillance
Census = surveillance
AFMC 2015 (Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, “Applications of Research Methods in Surveillance and
Programme Evaluation,” AFMC Primer on Population Health, date is date accessed, May 31, 2015, http://phprimer.afmc.ca/Part2MethodsStudyingHealth/Chapter7ApplicationsOfResearchMethodsInSurveillanceAndProgrammeEvaluation/Surveillance)
Evidence-based planning of any form of health service or preventive programme requires the initial collection of information on the types and
surveillance, which refers to the systematic and
ongoing collection and analysis of population-level health information in order to guide the design of
public health and preventive interventions. There are two main types of surveillance. Long-term, passive monitoring
distribution of health problems in the population. This is the task of
of general health trends and health determinants provides key information on the health status of populations. This has documented the current
Active
epidemic of obesity and changes in trends of certain cancers.
, ongoing, or short-term surveillance searches for emergent diseases or
outbreaks such as SARS or pandemic influenza A (H1N1), and helps society respond early to new threats. In both cases, a health state, disease, or
specific agent is identified as a target for surveillance.
Role of Clinicians in Public Health Surveillance
While public health services take overall responsibility for coordinating health surveillance, individual clinicians have a major role to
play by reporting occurrences of certain contagious diseases that they see. It is primary care physicians who typically see the initial
cases in what may become an epidemic. They may see more people than usual presenting with a particular condition, and patients
might mention other people with the same disease. While the primary care physician may be in a position to begin a preliminary
investigation, she must contact the public health service to initiate prevention and control measures (e.g. contact tracing) as
necessary. The public health authorities assemble such case report data to provide a broad perspective on the extent and severity of a
health threat. As well as completing mandatory notification of disease, physicians also contribute to surveillance systems by
completing death certificates, by entering accurate diagnoses on hospital discharge forms and billing forms.
Types of surveillance
Passive surveillance
The ‘ passive’ in passive
surveillance refers to the role of the agency responsible for it: they
wait for the reports to come to them. Reports may take the form of routinely collected
data, such as hospital discharge summaries, mortality data, or physician billing data. Reports can also be in the form of reports of
notifiable diseases that must, by law, be reported. The health professional providing the report has an active role in this type of
surveillance. However, health professionals do not always realize the importance of the information they provide, so under-reporting
can be a problem.
Notifiable diseases are those considered to be of public health importance. Legislation requires physicians and laboratories to report
them to the local public health agencies once they are suspected or diagnosed. This allows these agencies to track disease occurrence
and identify possible outbreaks early, in order to implement prevention and control measures in a timely manner. In addition, some
provinces have legislation that requires notification of possible outbreaks, even if the disease itself is not notifiable. For example, the
Quebec Public Health Law demands "any physician who suspects the presence of a threat to the health of the population must notify
the appropriate public health director." In this way, public health departments should be notified of potential health threats so they
can investigate and intervene quickly to reduce the risk to the population. Other information on Notifiable disease is available in
Chapter 11.
Hospital and Billing Data
Hospital discharge summaries can provide useful information on patterns of disease and on the therapies being used. However,
because availability of services greatly influences their use, comparisons of these data between places and over time are of limited
value. Similarly, physician billing data can be used, but new methods of physician remuneration and inaccurate and missing
diagnoses limit the usefulness of this data source for surveillance.
Vital Statistics: Births and deaths
Recording births and deaths is mandatory in most countries and provides basic vital statistics. Physicians are responsible for
entering the causes of death on the death notification. The causes are coded according to the International Classification of Diseases
so countries can compare death rates and report on the evolution of diseases. Again, the accuracy of this information depends on the
accuracy with which the original reporting physician recorded the cause of death because they are rarely confirmed by autopsy.
The coding rules of the International Classification of Diseases specify that the reporting physician distinguish between the
underlying cause of death and the precipitating cause(s). The underlying cause is "the disease, injury or pathological condition that
initiates the chain of events leading to death.1" Data compilers follow a protocol which governs the decision about what disease to
record as the main cause of death. For example, a patient with lung cancer who dies of pneumonia is likely to have his death
attributed to lung cancer even if the pneumonia was unrelated to the cancer. Death records are routinely used to compile national
information on trends in diseases such as cancer.
Active surveillance
Active surveillance means that those responsible for it play a more active role in data
gathering. This form of surveillance is more resource intensive and is usually done for specific purposes. For example, the
Canadian Paediatric Society routinely sends letters to every paediatrician asking them to report on cases of rare conditions, such as
acute flaccid paralysis to assess the success of polio vaccination. It also asks for information on cerebral oedema in diabetic
ketoacidosis, which allowed the condition to be characterized and guidelines for the management of diabetic ketoacidosis to be
developed. The Society then reports the data to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Health surveys
Surveys, such as the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) and the national census can also be
viewed as active surveillance. The CCHS was initiated in 2001. Every two years it gathers data on general health and
health habits from a random population sample. In the intervening years, it collects data on specific health topics from a smaller
sample. Surveys can also target particular groups, such as injection drug users or people with a particular diagnosis, to document
changes in patterns of behaviour that may affect disease or transmission. This is termed second-generation surveillance. The WHO
gives the example of regular recording of information on HIV risk behaviours, using this to warn of or explain changes in levels of
infection.
The census
Information on the population denominators that are necessary for interpreting most surveillance
information comes from the census. The first national Canadian decennial census was carried out in 1871. In
keeping with international norms, there has been a census every 10 years since then, always in the years ending in 1. Since1956 there
has been an additional census in the years ending in 6. Both censuses cover the entire population and collect basic demographic
data— about 8 questions. In addition, more detailed information is collected from a random 20% sample of the population, covering
a range of demographic, social and economic topics, but not including health (about 50 questions). In the summer of 2010, the
Conservative government discontinued the mandatory long-form census, replacing it with a voluntary form linked to the National
Household Survey. This move was been widely criticized by a wide range of stakeholders, including French-language groups;
Aboriginal and other ethnic groups; economists, city planners and the public health sector. All these sectors rely on the census to
provide accurate and reliable information on demographics and socioeconomic status for program planning, advocacy and service
delivery. One fear is that a voluntary long-form census will cause minority groups to be under-represented and introduce selection
bias into the results.
We meet – surveillance is disciplining of a population and the census does
that
Mezey, 3 – Professor of Law at Georgetown University (Naomi, “Erasure and
Recognition: The Census, Race and the National Imagination”, 97 Nw. U. L. Rev. 17011768 (2003) Northwestern University Law Review, 2003)//jml
This Article compares the census of the late nineteenth century with that of the late twentieth century in order to investigate the
differences and some consistencies in the uses to which the census has been put and the changes it has helped to engender. I
conclude that the
census is both subject to cultural changes in the discourse of race as well as
an inspiration for such changes, and that it has played at least two simultaneous and contra- dictory roles with
respect to defining communities of identity as well as the body politic. It has been thought of as a
mechanism of surveillance and discipline of groups that were incompatible
with the national self-image; and it has also been used in an aspirational way by
groups seeking recogni- tion of a group identity and inclusion in the national
community. But these seemingly contradictory impulses ofthe census are always entangled as part of the project and power of
enumeration. Identity recognition is also iden- tity production and discipline in the sense
that every act of recognition en- tails other categorical erasures, elisions, and
enforcements. And ironically, even counting for the purposes of erasure requires recognition. Thought of another way, the
census has been a source of simultaneous erasure and rec- ognition in the battle over national and group identity. It is in this
sense that the census is a legal mechanism of cultural production-a constitution- allymandated, legally-significant official statistics of a people that has de- fined and
redefined communities of identity and become both the screen and projector for the
national imagination.
Surveillance is observation to gather information
Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/surveillance) JG
surveillance
[ser-vey-luh ns, -veyl-yuh ns]
noun
Continuous observation of a place, person, group, or ongoing activity in order to gather
information
Census is a form of government surveillance
Privacy International 90 (PrivacyInternational.org investigates government
surveillance, litigates surveillance cases, and conducts research for policy change.
Founded in 1990. https://www.privacyinternational.org/?q=node/5) JG
One of the oldest forms of mass surveillance are national databases. These old administrative surveillance
techniques include censuses registering the subjects of a kingdom, ID documenting individuals and
tattoos marking them, and numbering and categorising humans.∂ The searchable nature of databases
makes any datastore a potential investigative tool and increases the potential of trawling. This is why
national databases are supposed to be regulated carefully under law in democratic societies. Census databases collect
detailed information on individuals in a country but should not be used to identify specific individuals or
populations. Identity schemes should be limited to very specific uses and not allow for discrimination or for abusive use of stop-andidentify powers. The increasing use of biometrics and the
ability to query identity databases for matches
that increase the risk of abuse and re-use of the
and near-matches allows for fishing expeditions
system for other purposes than for which it was designed.
Census taking is used by the FBI to map populations and target
communities who are believed to be a threat
Markon 11 [Jerry, "ACLU says FBI uses racial profiling against Muslims, other
minorities", The Washington Post, 10/20/11, "www.washingtonpost.com/politics/aclusays-fbi-uses-racial-profiling-against-muslims-otherminorities/2011/10/20/gIQAN3Ob1L_story.html] // SKY
The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday accused the FBI of profiling Muslims
and other minorities and targeting them for investigation, allegations that FBI officials quickly
disputed. Unveiling a new project called “Mapping the FBI,’’ the ACLU used internal bureau documents to
portray the FBI as linking criminal behavior to racial and ethnic groups and using U.S.
census data to “map” those communities so they can be investigated. The civil liberties group
posted the documents on the Internet and vowed to further expose what it called unconstitutional FBI tactics. In one
document that was highlighted, a 2009 memo in the FBI’s Detroit field office sought
permission to collect information on Middle East terrorist groups in Michigan, noting
that: “Because Michigan has a large Middle Eastern and Muslim population, it is prime
territory for attempted radicalization and recruitment by these terrorist groups.’’ But the
same memo pointed out that the terrorist groups “use an extreme and violent interpretation of the Muslim faith,’’ appearing to make
a distinction between extremists and other Muslims. And each document was heavily redacted, leaving unclear what agents did with
any information they collected. Taken together, the memos “confirm some of our worst fears” about FBI surveillance, Hina Shamsi,
director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a conference call with reporters. “The
FBI has targeted
American communities for investigation based not on suspicion of wrongdoing but on
the crudest stereotypes.’’ FBI spokesman Michael P. Kortan rejected that interpretation of the documents, which
the bureau turned over to the ACLU in legal proceedings. He said that the FBI opposes discrimination
against minorities but that “certain terrorist and criminal groups target particular ethnic
and geographic communities for victimization and/or recruitment purposes. This reality
must be taken into account when determining if there are threats to the United States.”
Kortan added that mapping is widely used by law enforcement and is essential to
protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. “Just as putting push pins on a map will allow a local police chief
to see clearly where the highest crime areas are, combining data that is lawfully collected into one place allows connections to be
identified that might otherwise go unnoticed,” he said. FBI officials characterized the use of census data as one factor that helps field
offices identify potential threats in their regions, their top priority as the bureau continues its post-Sept. 11, 2001, transformation
into an organization able to detect and dismantle terrorism plots. The debate reflects the FBI’s ongoing challenges in balancing its
fight against terrorism with respect for civil liberties. The bureau’s tactics have long been controversial, and civil liberties groups
have accused agents of overreacting to the Sept. 11 hijackings. FBI officials say they have helped safeguard the nation from another
attack. The documents released Thursday emerged from requests filed last year with the FBI by 34 ACLU affiliates nationwide under
the Freedom of Information Act. The ACLU, which is seeking to uncover evidence of racial profiling, has sued the bureau in three
states, seeking to compel production of more materials. Other documents show FBI
offices collecting census data
and linking it to perceived threats from groups, such as the National Black Panther
Party, Chinese and Russian organized crime, and the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, street
gang. Documents from offices in Alabama, New Jersey and Georgia, for example, cite concerns that MS-13 members are
committing more crimes. Noting that members are typically from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, the memos break down
population data for local people born in those and other Latin American countries. They also cite other material that agents say
justifies investigative activity, but much of it is redacted.
The census is used to gather information on different groups
Ahmad and Hagler 15 (CenterForAmericanProgress.com, Farah Z. Ahmad is a senior
policy analyst for American Progress with a B.A. from Princeton and Jamal Hagler is the
Special Assistant for Progress 2050 and has a B.A. from Harvard. “The Evolution of
Race and Ethnicity Classifications in the Decennial Census”, 2-6-2015,
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2015/02/06/102798/theevolution-of-race-and-ethnicity-classifications-in-the-decennial-census/]) JG
The U.S. decennial census is one of the nation’s most important government programs, offering much more than just the population
count used to determine each state’s representation in Congress. The decennial census
provides essential data,
demographic and otherwise, that inform the allocation of vast government resources. Results often serve
as the basis for federal, state, and local public policies, ranging from funding new infrastructure projects to providing increased job
opportunities for workers. This makes the decennial census particularly important for communities of color, which face significant
gaps compared to their non-Hispanic white counterparts in indicators of economic security and opportunity such as education,
employment, and health.∂ While the data collected from smaller U.S. Census Bureau surveys—such as the Current Population
Survey—are sufficient for some purposes, the decennial census
provides a unique opportunity to compile a
massive amount of information on many different groups. The resulting data set is large enough for
disaggregation—meaning the extrapolation of data by various subgroup characteristics—a process that can provide a much clearer
picture of the landscape for specific groups and their particular needs. This is especially relevant for smaller demographic groups—
for example, national origin groups within the Asian American and Pacific Islander, or AAPI, community such as Cambodian,
Chinese, and Bangladeshi Americans. In the absence of large data sets based on accurate race and ethnicity survey questions, crucial
information would remain unknown and investments in communities who could benefit most would potentially be overlooked
Census data used to target certain races – Japanese internment proves
Minkel 7 [JR Minken is a lab technician and freelance journalist, and has written one
book, Instant Egghead Guide: The Universe. “Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau
Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II” 3-30-07
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/] JG
Despite decades of denials, government records confirm that the U.S. Census Bureau provided the
U.S. Secret Service with names and addresses of Japanese-Americans during World War
II.∂ The Census Bureau surveys the population every decade with detailed questionnaires but is barred by law from revealing data
that could be linked to specific individuals. The Second War Powers Act of 1942 temporarily repealed that protection to assist in the
roundup of Japanese-Americans for imprisonment in internment camps in California and six other states during the war. The
Bureau previously has acknowledged that it provided neighborhood information on Japanese-Americans for that purpose, but it has
maintained that it never provided "microdata," meaning names and specific information about them, to other agencies.∂ A new
study of U.S. Department of Commerce documents now shows that the
Census Bureau complied with an August 4,
1943, request
by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau for the names and locations of all
people of Japanese ancestry in the Washington, D.C., area, according to historian Margo Anderson of
the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and statistician William Seltzer of Fordham University in New York City. The records,
however, do not indicate that the Bureau was asked for or divulged such information for Japanese-Americans in other parts of the
country.∂ Anderson and Seltzer discovered in 2000 that the
Census Bureau released block-by-block data
during WW II that alerted officials to neighborhoods in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah,
Idaho and Arkansas where Japanese-Americans were living. "We had suggestive but not very conclusive evidence
that they had also provided microdata for surveillance," Anderson says.
U.S. census data used to surveil citizens – multiple census disclosures prove
Minkel 7 [JR Minken is a lab technician and freelance journalist, and has written one
book, Instant Egghead Guide: The Universe. “Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau
Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II”, 3-30-2007,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/] JG
The memos from the Bureau bear the initials "JC," which the researchers identified as those of then-director, J.C. Capt. "What it
suggests is that the statistical
information was used at the microlevel for surveillance of civilian
populations," Anderson says. She adds that she and Seltzer are reviewing Secret Service records to try to determine whether
anyone on the list was actually under surveillance, which is still unclear.∂ ∂ "The [new] evidence is convincing," says Kenneth
Prewitt, Census Bureau director from 1998 to 2000 and now a professor of public policy at Columbia University, who issued a public
apology in 2000 for the Bureau's release of neighborhood data during the war. "At the time, available evidence (and Bureau lore)
held that there had been no … release of microdata," he says. "That can no longer be said."∂ ∂ The
newly revealed
documents show that census officials released the information just seven days after it was
requested. Given the red tape for which bureaucracies are famous, "it leads us to believe this was a wellestablished path," Seltzer says, meaning such disclosure may have occurred repeatedly between
March 1942, when legal protection of confidentiality was suspended, and the August 1943 request.∂ ∂ Anderson says that
microdata would have been useful for what officials called the "mopping up" of potential
Japanese-Americans who had eluded internment.∂ ∂ The researchers turned up
references to five subsequent disclosure requests made by law enforcement or
surveillance agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, none of which dealt with Japanese-Americans.∂ ∂
Lawmakers restored the confidentiality of census data in 1947.∂ Officially, Seltzer notes, the Secret Service made the 1943 request
based on concerns of presidential safety stemming from an alleged March 1942 incident during which an American man of Japanese
ancestry, while on a train from Los Angeles to the Manzanar internment camp in Owens Valley, Calif., told another passenger that
they should have the "guts" to kill President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.∂ ∂ The incident occurred 17 months before the Secret Service
request, during which time the man was hospitalized for schizophrenia and was therefore not an imminent threat, Seltzer says.∂ ∂
The disclosure, while legal at the time, was ethically dubious and may have implications for the 2010 census, the researchers write in
a paper presented today at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America held in New York City. The U.S. has
separate agencies for collecting statistical information about what people and businesses do, and for so-called administrative
functions—taxation, regulation and investigation of those activities.∂ ∂ "There has to be a firewall in some sense between those
systems," Anderson says. If a company submits information ostensibly for documenting national economic growth but the data ends
up in the antitrust division, "the next time that census comes they're not going to get that information," she says.∂ ∂ Census data is
routinely used to enforce the National Voting Rights Act and other policies, but not in a form that could be used to identify a
particular person's race, sex, age, address or other information, says former director Prewitt. The legal confidentiality of census
information dates to 1910, and in 1954 it became part of Title 13 of the U.S. Code, which specifies the scope and frequency of
censuses.∂ ∂ "The law is very different today" than it was in 1943, says Christa Jones, chief of the Census Bureau's Office of Analysis
and Executive Support. "Anything that we release to any federal agency or any organization … all of those data are reviewed," she
says, to prevent disclosures of individual information.∂ ∂ The
Census Bureau provided neighborhood data
on Arab-Americans to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2002, but the information
was already publicly available, Jones says. A provision in the controversial Patriot Act—passed after the 9/11 attacks
and derided by critics as an erosion of privacy—gives agencies access to individualized survey data
collected by colleges, including flight training programs.∂ ∂ The Census Bureau has improved its confidentiality practices
considerably in the last six decades, former director Prewitt says. He notes that census data is an increasingly poor source of
surveillance data compared with more detailed information available from credit card companies and even electronic tollbooths.∂ ∂
Nevertheless, he says, "I think the Census Bureau has to bend over backwards to maintain the confidence and the trust of the
public." Public suspicion—well-founded or not—could undermine the collection accurate census data, which is used by sociologists,
economists and public health researchers, he says.∂ ∂ "I'm sad to learn it," he says of the new discovery. "It would be sadder yet to
continue to deny that it happened, if, as now seems clear, it did happen. You cannot learn from and correct past mistakes unless you
know about them."
Das
Ptx
Compromise bad
Compromise legitimizes ‘just’ violence
Ruby-Sachs 09 (Emma, lawyer and writer and studied law at the University of Toronto
and the University of Chicago and currently works as a consultant for Avaaz.org, 1-2209 “A Response to Melissa Etheridge,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emmarubysachs/a-response-to-melissa-eth_b_152976.html, LB)
Obama promised a presidency that reached across the aisle. Many are pointing to the Warren
invitation as evidence of compromise. He wants to be president for all Americans and if
that means upsetting his base, it might well be worth it. I support his message of inclusion. I
acknowledge that giving the invocation at the inauguration is a nominal position without policy implications and could go a long way
towards purchasing political capital in Congress. Still, this
concession legitimizes a kind of hate speech
that torments LGBT people across the U.S. on a daily basis. It says, even though you
irrationally degrade a group of American citizens, you are not excluded from the
conversation. You will, in fact, be rewarded for convincing so many other Americans
that what you believe is correct. You may be instrumental in passing regressive
legislation, but we want you to play an important symbolic role in this presidency
because you are so popular and your particular hatred is so popular. I am willing to agree that
Reverend Warren is a good guy who said some bad things. I, like you, do trust that
communication and cooperation will lead to increased tolerance and progress. I
welcome his conversation with the LGBT community. I can't forgive Obama, though. It was
his choice that legitimized homophobia. It is his continued support for Warren without
the demand that Warren apologize or publicly retract his statements that teaches other
Americans to be okay with the hatred and degradation of LGBT Americans. You have been
fighting for equality for so many years longer than I have. I am indebted to you and your struggle and I share your hopefulness for
the future. But
I fear that this action by the Obama administration has set us back
significantly.
Politics of uncomfortability good – just cause racism isn’t a ‘big stick’
impact doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter
Rooks 14 (Noliwe, Associate Professor in Africana Studies and Feminist, Gender,
Sexuality Studies at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the
University of Iowa, 2014, “Why Can’t We Talk About Race?,” Chronicle Vitae, March 4th,
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/367-why-can-t-we-talk-about-race, LB)
It should go without saying that this is inaccurate, and that there are moral and economic consequences to
this misguided view. “The Business Case for Racial Equity,” a W.K. Kellogg Foundation study released this past October,
found that while racism costs the country $1.9-trillion dollars each year, whites are not on the
receiving end. The report noted that the adjusted earnings of people of color are a whopping 30
percent lower than those of non-Hispanic whites, and it showed how “race, class,
residential segregation, and income levels all work together to hamper access to
opportunity” for people of color. Feeling uncomfortable because race or racism is
mentioned in your presence just doesn’t compare to the economic, psychological, and
spiritual consequences of structured racial inequality. Surely this means that we need to find better, more
productive ways of talking about race, not fewer. Of course, the problem is that many of us—black and white
alike—have been taught that race and racism, like politics and money, are impolite
topics best left unexplored with strangers. By the time we’ve entered the academy, many of us have already
absorbed this truism. We are simply uncomfortable talking about race. Because of that discomfort and
because we haven’t learned the skills necessary to engage in deep discussions on the topic,
we avoid them at all costs. And when we look for excuses to close off those discussions, we allow
misperceptions to spread. When I ask my students how they broached the topic of racism in their high-school
classrooms, many often respond, as my then-seven-year-old once told me, that “Martin Luther King freed the
slaves and since then we have had no more racism.” That’s a myth that is as damaging
and simplistic as it is comforting. It advances the wrongheaded beliefs that structural
inequality and racial bias no longer exist—they do—and that talking about them is an
attack on whites. It isn’t. To quote the always insightful James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can
be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” For reasons of finance, morals,
and ethics, we can no longer afford to let the discomfort of a few keep us from change
for the many.
Counterplans
Process cps
3 definitions –
1. “Resolved” doesn’t require certainty
Webster’s 9 – Merriam Webster 2009
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolved)
# Main Entry: 1re·solve # Pronunciation: \ri-ˈzälv, -ˈzȯlv also -ˈzäv or -ˈzȯv\ # Function: verb # Inflected Form(s): re·solved;
re·solv·ing 1 : to become separated into component parts; also : to become reduced by dissolving or analysis 2 : to form a resolution :
determine 3 : consult,
deliberate
2. Or immediacy
PTE 9 – Online Plain Text English Dictionary 2009
(http://www.onelook.com/?other=web1913&w=Resolve)
Resolve: “To form a purpose; to make a decision; especially, to determine after reflection; as, to resolve on a better
course of life.”
3. should means desirable or recommended, not mandatory
AC 99 (Atlas Collaboration, “Use of Shall, Should, May Can,”
http://rd13doc.cern.ch/Atlas/DaqSoft/sde/inspect/shall.html)
shall
'shall' describes something that is mandatory. If a requirement uses 'shall', then that requirement _will_ be
satisfied without fail. Noncompliance is not allowed. Failure to comply with one single 'shall' is sufficient reason to reject the entire
product. Indeed, it must be rejected under these circumstances. Examples: # "Requirements shall make use of the word 'shall' only
where compliance is mandatory." This is a good example. # "C++ code shall have comments every 5th line." This is a bad
example. Using 'shall' here is too strong.
Process focus fails – causes interpassivity and bad policymaking
Van Oenen 2006 (Gijs, A Machine That Would Go of Itself: Interpassivity and Its
Impact on Politic al Life, Theory & Event, LB)
Metaphor signifies of course that the hierarchical relation between government and citizens is being replaced by one of 'equal
standing' – conjunctive instead of subjunctive, we might say. But it also symbolizes how the 'interest' in politics
itself is
changing. The 'locus' of involvement with politics shifts from the 'product', or social
praxis that it aims to realize, towards the earlier phases of preparation, consultation and
policy-formation. This shift implicit in the growth of 'interactivity' serves the interests of
both parties involved in political life. In the official rhetoric, interactivity strengthens the
involvement of citizens in politics, by committing them not only to the results of the
political process but also to that process itself. In this way they become 'co-producers of
policy', dedicated citizens so to speak. In turn, government is able to 'fine tune' its policies
and in general stay in close contact with its citizens, enabling it to reach its objectives in
a more precise and secure way. More realistically, citizens become interactive because they see
this as a better option to safeguard their (partial) interests than the traditional options
of party membership or voting behavior. They feel that interactivity will let their voice
more forcefully be heard. Or even more straightforwardly, their attitude towards politics in general is one of 'what is in it
for me?' In such a self-centered view, politics appears primarily as an institution that may facilitate
one's own plans and preferences, rather than as a process of collective will formation
furthering socially desirable practices. Government, in turn, sees interactivity as an
effective way of 'polling' views and interests, which are usually better accommodated in
an early stage of policy formation than in later stages, that may involve troublesome
renegotiations, or protracted litigation. But more importantly, the official view or 'ideology'
underwriting interactivity denies that a shift in political interest is taking place. It
suggests that the interest of both citizens and government in what politics 'produces' –
some form of collective good – is enhanced and supplemented by an increased interest
in the process of policy formation. Against this 'win-win' view, I want to suggest that the increase
in involvement in the political process, the sphere of policy formation, goes along with
aloss of involvement in the 'product' of the process. The point here is not merely that people lack sufficient
time or means to be involved in both process and result. Rather it seems that people nowadays feel more
attached to the process than to its eventual product. Being actively involved in the
process has acquired a sense and meaning of its own, that may compete with, or actually
override, the interest in what the process aimed to realize. In other words, what the process
now mainly realizes, its main 'product', is involvement with itself.
Reform census cp
There are many issues to the racial aspect of the census – prevents self
identification and creates a whiteness-bias
Thompson, 10 – PhD candidate (poli sci) at University of Toronto (Debra Elizabeth,
“Seeing Like a Racial State: The Census and the Politics of Race in the United States,
Great Britain and Canada” A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for
the degree Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science, 2010)//jml
*note: OMB = Office of Management and Budget.
While this strategy may have practical merit, Goldstein and Morning (2002) note there are several controversial elements to the
OMB’s approach: first,
it is, in effect, a revival of the one-drop rule, a historical legacy that
necessitates persons with any traceable amount of non- white ancestry be counted – in
both law and society – as non-white. While the rule of hypodescent is now used in order to redress discrimination
rather than enforce segregation, it is “still open to the criticism that it repeats the mistakes of the
past, further institutionalizing the divide between the white and nonwhite populations”
(2002: 120). Secondly, the strategy violates the principle of self-identification: “Now that many
multiracial individuals are finally permitted to ‘mark one or more’ races, many expect to
be treated as such without being put back in a single checkbox” (Goldstein and Morning, 2002: 120).
Thirdly, this strategy may make race-based policies more controversial than they
already are. Further, there is evidence that this application of a modernized one-drop rule
runs counter to how mixed-race people actually identify. Goldstein and Morning (2002) find that
among people of white/American Indian background, the vast majority identify “white” as their single race and among white/Asian
mixes, more than two-thirds identify as white. The one-drop rule, in effect, only properly applies to the African American/white mix,
where the majority identify their single responses 98 as black (but where nearly 40% of mixed-race respondents would choose white
if given the opportunity) (Goldstein and Morning, 2002: 128-129). Finally, there is evidence that mixed-
race
identification in the United States is highly unstable: results from a 2001 survey of census respondents
revealed that 40 percent of those who had marked more than one race on their census forms in 2000 chose a single race in 2001,
and there was a correspondingly large percentage that did the exact opposite (Bennett, 2003). Suffice to say, many of the political
and policy contingencies of the multiracial turn in census politics have yet to play out (Hochschild and Burch, 2007).
Kritiks
Top Level
Framework
Starting with the census is key – it accesses all other fields within
governmentality
Kertzer and Arel, 2 - * PhD, Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science,
Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University **PhD,
Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University
of Ottawa, Canada (David and Dominique, “Census and Identity: The Politics of Race,
Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses,” 2002)//jml
The continuing political and social importance of census categorization Census categorization of populations by
various markers of identity -race, ethnic group, language, religion – has a two-hundredyear history. Today there are few countries which do not have regular population censuses; yet significantly, in those cases
where censuses are not held, it is often the very process of enumerating populations by various markers of collective identity that is
viewed as most threatening and discourages census enumeration. The
census, although only one of many government
informationgathering devices, is arguably the most important and certainly the most
universal. As such, investigating the census/identity matrix offers a privileged vantage
point for examining such fundamental social and political issues as the growth and
evolution of nationalism, ethnic conflict, racism, and transnational identity formation
and organization. But these processes should be seen in the larger context of how individuals come to assert certain
collective identities for themselves, how they come to assign them to others, and the role that state authorities play in these collective
identity processes. This raises a much broader field of inquiry than we have been able to examine in this chapter (or in this book),
relating to a newly emerging field of studies. It
is a field that includes studies that range from the
historical examination of the state's imposition of surnames to the emergence of modern
criminology and state surveillance of populations through passports, fingerprinting, and
the like (Noiriel 1996; Torpey 2000). We have seen, too, that the numbers produced through census or
census-like categorization schemes can have important political consequences. At its most
dramatic, claims to majority status for an “ethnic group” or “nationality” in a particular geographical area can be central to claims for
political power. As the case of the Balkans today makes painfully clear, the matter of influencing counts in various ethnic categories
is not only a matter of getting people to identify themselves in certain ways when the census-taker comes around. It is
also
linked to the use of force to empty territories of people associated with other identities,
and hence justify a claim to political ownership of the land by those sharing the
collective identity deemed to be in the majority. Examination of the relationship between the census and the
formation and evolution of collective identities, as we have seen, involves us in the messy process of politics. We witness the
struggle among a multiplicity of actors over that most basic of powers, the power to
name, to categorize, and thus to create social reality. The nature of the contestation over
such categorization varies in different parts of the world, as it has over time. Yet, as we have
seen, some important parallels can be found when we look at these questions in
comparative perspective. It is part of our effort in this volume to examine these similarities, and these
differences, to see what general principles are operating, and what their implications are for
processes of collective identity formation and for the relationship between states and
their citizens.
The way the census categorizes race has implications on real policy
proposals
Prewitt, 14 - Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University. He served as
director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001 (Kenneth, “What Is Your Race?
The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans”
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10032.html 2014)//jml
It matters if America measures races, and then, of course, how the government decides what
those races are. It matters because law and policy are not about an abstraction
called race but are about races as they are made intelligible and acquire their
numerical size in our statistical sys- tem. When we politically ask why black men are jailed at extraordinarily
high rates, whether undocumented Mexican laborers are taking jobs away from working-class whites, or whether Asians have
become the model minority in America, we start from a count of jailed blacks, the comparative employment patterns of Mexicans
and whites, and Asian educational achievements. When
our political questions are shaped by how many
of which races are doing what, and when policies address- ing those conditions follow,
we should worry about whether the “how many” and the “which races” tell us what we
need to know about what is going on in our polity, economy, and society. We should worry about
whether we should have statistical races at all, and if so, whether we have the right ones. My answer, worked out in chapter 11,
argues for incre- mentally transforming our racial statistics in order to match them with the governing challenges of the twenty-first
century. This
argument, and the tactical advice offered to realize it, makes sense only in the
context of a historical account of statistical races. Chapter 2 starts with basics that frame this American
history. A Ger- man doctor in 1776 divided the human species into five races. Today, nearly two and a half
centuries later, these are the same five races into which the U.S. Census divides the
American population, making Amer- ica the only country in the world firmly wedded to
an eighteenth-century racial taxonomy. Embedded in this science were theories of a racial hier- archy: there were
not just different races but superior and inferior races. American politics and policy held onto this assumption for nearly two
centuries. The next section covers the nineteenth century, showing how assump- tions of racial superiority and inferiority tightly
bound together statisti- cal races, social science, and public policy.
The census helps construct racial discourses, but the census has been
largely ignored in race-based analyses
Nobles, 2 - Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science at MIT (Melissa,
“Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National
Censuses,” “Racial categorization and censuses” 2002)//jml
Race and census-taking occupy, at present, two discrete but related fields of study. Historians,
sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, legal scholars, theorists, and, of late, cultural critics have taken up the study of race. They seek to
Censustaking has
been treated as the domain of demographers and statisticians who examine and study
how census-taking, and hence census data, can be made more accurate. Although never hard and
fast, disciplinary and conceptual boundaries have kept our understandings of race and
censustaking separate, and have thus impoverished our understanding and study of
both. Not surprisingly, the parameters that scholarship has managed to erect bear little resemblance to the very real connections between race and
censuses in political and social life. Race, however ambiguous, seems a permanent feature of politics in
numerous societies. Policymakers, statisticians, scholars, and the general public treat
racial census data as important basic facts, and as raw materials for socioeconomic analyses and for public policies. Given
the evident importance of race and racial statistical data in public life, explaining the dynamic between race
and censuses is both a necessary and illuminating undertaking. This chapter argues that
censuses help to constitute racial discourse. Racial discourse, in turn, helps to
shape and explain public policy outcomes. In this argument, census-taking contributes to the
formation and perpetuation of racial ideas; but it is not the only state process to do so. Likewise, racial discourse is not
the only determinant of political outcomes. Taking into account complex economic and political interests
explain what race is (and is not), and how, if not why, it matters socially, culturally, economically, and politically.
is indispensable to any explanation of racial politics. The point is that racial discourse
has causal weight, and this weight is enhanced by the census. Finally, this argument
demonstrates that census bureaus are neither disinterested registers nor innocent
bystanders. Rather, they are active, if overlooked, participants in racial politics. American and
Brazilian experiences provide the evidence for these claims. At different periods in American history, census-taking has contributed directly to the
formation of racial ideas, and throughout American history, census data have been part of larger political processes and policies, both negative (i.e.
slavery, racial segregation) and positive (civil rights legislation). Brazilian censuses have partly produced and upheld shifting official discourses about
the supposed “whitening” of Brazil's population and the harmonious nature of “race relations. ” These discourses of “whitening” and “racial democracy”
have, in turn, justified the absence of racial, or more precisely, color-conscious policies, either negative or positive. Racial discriminatory policies were
not necessary because Brazilians were a racially-mixed people, headed inexorably towards “whiteness. ” The absence of formal racial segregation and its
legacy made positive policies unnecessary.
Impact framing
Ur arg is based in faulty logic – if they drop this they lose
Webster 2k – Prof CSU Los Angeles, http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2000/06/01/twenty-onearguments-for-abolishing-racial-classification/, 6/26/15 BRoche
A description of self on the basis of the nature of one characteristic of the self leads to an
absurd conclusion. For example: I have white skin. Therefore, I am a White. I have olive
skin. Therefore, I am an Olive. The leap from recognition of having white skin color to
therefore, being white, or a white, is absurd. Someone might insist: I can be "a black
human being," or "a white human being." However, the color qualification of "human being" is nonsensical.
Nothing about "human" can sensibly take such a qualification. Human is an adjective
and cannot have a qualifying relationship with another adjective. In the phrase, rich, black coffee "rich"
describes coffee. Black, rich coffee has the same sense as rich, black coffee. In white human being, "white" describes "being" not
human. I am "a white being." What can that be? The adjectives "white" and "human"
cannot change places. White human being and human white being are not interchangeable. I am a human white being, or a human black being makes no
sense. In sum, one cannot be a "white," or a "black," and a "human being." Logically, "white
people" and "black people" are not human beings. They are nonhuman, all too
nonhuman, and they feed on each other. Hence, in order to "out" whiteness it would be
necessary to out blackness, and vice versa. Nor are whiteness and blackness, presented
as descriptions of human selves, in relationships of privilege and oppression. As
absurdities, neither "blacks" nor "whites" can pass moral judgment on each other.
Perm
Our advocacies aren’t inconsistent – all social demarcations are
constructed out of political necessity
Webster 2k – Prof CSU Los Angeles, http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2000/06/01/twenty-onearguments-for-abolishing-racial-classification/, 6/26/15 BRoche
The classification of persons as races is logically flawed, but the idea of racial differences is
perhaps politically convenient. It may be used as a justification for excluding certain persons from
resources, or subjecting them to otherwise intolerable levels of violence, for example, slavery. Hence, depending on various
political economic contexts and considerations, criteria for racial membership stray from anatomical
characteristics to equally arbitrary social, cultural, geographic, and behavioral attributes. Thus "race relations"
can be any social relations at all. It is this condition that allows social scientists to
incorporate culture and class to develop a growing research field of race-ethnicity-class.
And gender can also be thrown in to concoct a rich gumbo of anti-oppression, diversity,
and multicultural studies.
Perm2stronk+marx
Khan 2014 (nursa, mcgill staff writer Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting, Reviewed by
Nusra Khan, https://blogs.mcgill.ca/hist-399-2014/2014/03/20/everybody-was-kungfu-fighting-reviewed-by-nusra-khan/, LB)
To legitimate this claim, Prashad traces the emergence of a novel European imposed racial ideology, against, what he portrays as, the
natural tendency of human societies to blend together. Before
the arrival of Vasco Da Gama and the
Portuguese in the Indian Ocean world, cultural groups did not view each other in racial
terms. They certainly classified and distinguished amongst each other – particularly in
the realm of the slave trade in Chinese and Arab cultures, where religion was the criteria
of freedom – but only because the advent of colonial powers and the use of slavery as
the main means for mass production did feudal/caste/religious systems evolve into
racial/biological ones. After establishing this, and the institutionalization of race theory within early European academia,
Prashad then situates the modern problem of race discourse. Abandoning it entirely is not productive;
nonetheless, neoliberal democracies conflate any kind of race discourse with racism
(and in polyculturalism is the remedy). This is where the crux of Prashad’s argument emerges: in
embedding the polycultural race theory within the Marxist framework of class struggle.
In contemporary America, discussion of race and culture are ignored because of their
‘irrelevance’ to a supposed free and fair capitalist system. For an example Prashad deconstructs the
image of the model Asian minority, who demand nothing (in terms of affirmative action) and instead ‘work hard’, unlike ‘lazier’
groups who simply do not work hard enough to make enough money and attain a better economic status. Taking the analysis to
various scales, he argues that both on the individual and state level, “Public
institutions that seek to redress
inequality are to be downsized in favor of private institutions committed to the
extraction of profit (46)”. Thus the changing, dynamic vision of cultural identity in polyculturalism is
subsumed within class identity. In fact, Prashad claims that the most illustrative instances of
polyculturalism emerged out of the working class: from the Chinese/Indians coolies
working under colonial state, unable to negotiate their wages while British workers
participate in the Labour movement; on the plains of Jamaica, where Rastafarianism
emerged out of contact with East Indian migrant laborers; or in British Guyana, where
the polycultural festival of Hosay, incorporating elements of Islamic, Hindu and
African-Christian traditions, provided the ideal conditions of a worker’s strike and was
subsequently suppressed by colonial authorities through cultural separation. His notion
of Third World Solidarity is what stands out the most. The preceding four chapters are spent building up
this concept– of polyculturalism representing the unity of the working classes. The last chapter and the conclusion of the book is
simply a cursory history of the interconnectedness of independence movements and moments where such polyculturalism and
radicalism interact, including gems like Malcolm X’s death in the arms of Yuri Kochiyama; connections between Red Guards and
Black Panthers; Ho Chi Minh’s times in ‘Garveyite halls in Harlem’; and the meetings of Nkrumah and Nehru. Marxism and
Communism, and largely, post-colonial solidarity, is the main framework of his “Afro-Asian Connections”. Thus perhaps his
it is not until
the conclusion of the book that Prashad outright states: polycultural solidarity is
not the melancholic hope for unity that sometimes guides the imagination
of the Left, but it is a materialist recognition that people who share similar
experiences create the platform for cultural interaction… solidarity of the
class, across color, grew not from any predisposition toward class unity, but because
Japanese and African Americans had to live side by side, share a similar set of
circumstances, and create a common cultural world[2], an understanding that is much
different than Kelley’s. Perhaps this is the greatest weakness of Prashad’s work, that he does not acknowledge
it as a work of class relations and not simply a ‘history of polyculturalism”.
generous use of the phrase “Third World Solidarity” would be more appropriate in the title of the book. Indeed,
Coalitions key – breaks down hierachies
Kim 1998 (Elaine, faculty of department of ethnic studies, at least youre not black: Asian
americans in us race relations, social justice v25, i3 p3, LB)
At times, issues that unite Asian Americans separate us from other people of color. That the Los
Angeles Black-Korean Alliance folded after the uprisings can be understood in light of
the fact that Korean shop owners needed it much more than people from the African
American community did. Korean American concerns have just not been particularly high on a long list of urgent
priorities for black and brown people working on economic survival or human rights issues. In a society held together
by hierarchical arrangements of power and the privileging of competitive individualism,
it is difficult for groups of color to deal with each other on an equal basis, without falling
into competition, ranking, and scrambling around hierarchies of oppression. This is all despite
the indisputable fact that people of color in the U.S. wear at different moments and often at the same moment the face of both victim
and victimizer. Even among Asian Americans, hierarchies operate. When Asian Americans came to fuller
voice with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, that voice, which has been the loudest ever since, was male, English-speaking,
Chinese or Japanese, and heterosexual. Given this picture, for Asian Americans to work together across nationalities, languages,
generations, genders, and sometimes social classes is in itself almost a miracle.
A few years ago, when the question
arose of whether we were experiencing cultural diversity or racial "balkanization" at
Berkeley, I remember thinking that experiences of cultural diversity were being defined
exclusively from the standpoint of the dominant culture. For many students of color who come from
communities where their group is very much in the minority and who have been overwhelmed with
growing up brown, yellow, red, or black in a culture defined by whiteness, being with
other students of color is experiencing cultural diversity. Moreover, even though all Asians may look
alike to others, it is quite a step for some Korean Americans to make friends with Filipino Americans or for some Vietnamese
Americans to take classes with Bangladeshi American students. Perhaps we
need to redefine what we mean by
"coalition." regarded by some as "inauthentic people of color." But different people of color
experience racism and racialization differently. The income gap between Asian and
white men is nowhere near as large as between Latino or black men and white men -
unless the relationship between schooling and income is taken into account. An Asian
American man must have much more education than a white man with comparable income must. Racism against Asian
Americans takes other unique forms: resentment and fear of a yellow peril takeover by
unassimilable foreigners who excel at copying but cannot originate, or as robotic
automatons and nerdy buffoons with no human or animal feelings. Asian American men have
often pointed to the feminization of Asian Americans, who, whether male or female, gay or straight, are only good for the "bottom"
position. Since their information sources are primarily from the dominant culture, people of color are almost as susceptible to racist
stereotyping as anyone else. Thus, it
should not be surprising that what Cornel West has called
xenophobia is so prevalent among African Americans and that many Asian Americans
stereotype African Americans as unreliable or crime-prone, that many Latinos can
routinely call an Asian of whatever background chino, or that many Korean immigrants
still refer to all Latinos as "Mexican." Some Asian American activists feel that other people
of color do not respect and trust Asians in coalition work and that other people of color
have a difficult time accepting the idea of Asian American leadership. Korean American members
of the Oakland East Bay African Asian Roundtable have conjectured that this may be because they accept the Fu Manchu notion of
Asians as untrustworthy aliens. I recall the National Conference poll, according to which more than four blacks and Latinos in 10
and 27% of whites agreed with the stereotype of Asian Americans as "unscrupulous, crafty, and devious in business" (San Francisco
Chronicle, March 3, 1994).
We should work on coalition building – not because it is easy but because it
is hard
Kim 1998 (Elaine, faculty of department of ethnic studies, at least youre not black:
Asian americans in us race relations, social justice v25, i3 p3, LB)
Coalition work is not easy for anyone. Moreover, coalition is not right for everything we do.
Perhaps it might help for us to view coalition not as a site of comfort and refuge, but as a
site of struggle. The fact is that the ever-increasing visibility of Asian Americans means that
we can no longer be dismissed as honorary whites, honorary blacks, or a wedge between
the two. We need to end "biracial theorizing" and zero-sum thinking. A third space is needed.
Tiger Woods has said, "I don’t consider myself a Great Black Hope. I’m just a golfer who
happens to be black and Asian." Why can’t a person be both black and Asian? Or will we just let Nike decide what
Tiger Woods "is"? It seems clear that these days we are hurtling toward the bifurcation of U.S. society into two major economic
classes - the very rich and the poor. Most
Asian immigrant parents, having struggled so hard to
make a new life in an adopted country, want economic security and social success for
their children at almost any price. The children do not want to fall their parents. In many
ways, it would be a luxury for either parents or children to stop to think about the so-called bigger picture. In commodity capitalism,
both in the U.S. and in Asia, we are strongly discouraged from recalling that the well-being of every American, every Asian, indeed of
everyone on the planet, depends on the well-being of the collectivity. No matter what, in the end there is no real turning away from
other people’s straggles for equality and justice. Yet the
combination of pressures from within the Asian
family and community and from the often competitively cutthroat world outside the
family could poison the atmosphere, making it even more difficult for us to keep our
eyes on the prize of peace and justice built on compassion, which are necessary for
beauty and creativity to come into being. If we don’t watch out, Asian Americans may find ourselves one day
schooled, credentialed, and trapped in the old "buffer zone" or "middleman" position, attempting an ultimately impossible
mediation between those mostly white people who have the power to make the rules and those mostly black and brown people who
are oppressed by them. Whether
as professors, newscasters, attorneys, or middle managers, we
could be positioned to serve as apologists for and explicators, upholders, and
functionaries of the status quo. We are all now facing the enormous challenge of the direct and indirect impact of a
shameful assault on the poor, immigrants, and people of color in this country. How
will Asian Americans face this
challenge? With whom will we join forces and what values will we espouse? In my view,
one of the challenges for Asian Americans in the 21st century will be resisting the
"gatekeeper function" with strong and focused commitment to place first priority, in
whatever arenas we occu
Jew Asian perm
Jew/Asian perm c:
Alcoff 3 (Linda Alcoff, professor of philosophy at CUNY, “LATINO/AS, ASIAN
AMERICANS, AND THE BLACK-WHITE BINARY”, The Journal of Ethics 7: 5–27,
2003, LB)
Thus, the claim that Asian Americans and Latino/as will become white ignores the issue of
color and other differences, takes no notice of the varying symbolic meanings
represented by these groups, and forgets the problem of "assimilability." It returns us to the
problem of misidentification discussed earlier, refusing to recognize the complexity by which people can
be vilified. To give another example of this complexity, Asians and Jews can be grouped together in the
ways that their cultures have been seen as in some respects superior, threatening, and
monolithic. In other words, unlike for African Americans and Latino/as, Asians and Jews are not seen as
having inferior intelligence or primitive cultures, yet they are seen as essentialized
groups with collective goals to take over the world and/or evil intent toward those
outside their groups (the "yellow peril" and "Jewish world conspiracy"). This kind of ideology requires
specific analysis, because it operates differently vis-a-vis, among other issues,
affirmative action concerns in regard to higher education. The most recent issue that has
arisen since September 11,2001, involves the representations of Arab Americans, a
group that is very much racialized. Yet again, their racialization works in specific ways mediated by ideological
claims about their cultures and most notably the religion of Islam.
Engaging state good
Withdrawing from the state fails, but alliances within the state are key
Prashad 2011 (vijay, director of the international studies program at trinity college,
everyone was kung fu fighting: afro-asian connections and the myth of cultural purity,
project muse, LB)
The milieu of the Red Guard, the Brown Berets, and the Black Panthers was one of an
enchanted solidarity against capitalism. Since the economic system was prone to crisis,
Alex Hing of the Guard told Asian students at UCLA in 1970 that Asians must prepare
for its eventuality. Since Asians formed only a small population in the United States, and since "most Asians don't
know the front end from the back end of a gun," an alliance with the oppressed working
class seemed the only avenue for the "survival of Asians."46 If ethnicity was not sufficient
in tactical terms for survival, in strategic terms to bind around ethnicity would make it
hard to be critical of "Uncle Charleys" like Dr. S. I. Hayakawa (president of San Francisco State University) and of the KMT.
Jack Wong of Chinatown said that Hayakawa's obdurate stand against the students of color during the 1968 strike was "just another
instance of a yellow man being used by the whites."47 A critique of the Asian right from within the Asian community facilitated
Panther David Hilliard's comment that "we can run Hayakawa not only off this campus, but we can run him back to imperialistic
Japan. Because the man ain't got no motherfucking power. He's a bootlicker." Not only could Hilliard make this statement thanks to
the opening afforded by the Red Guard's critique of Hayakawa, but also thanks to his own use of Kim Il Sung's call to combat
imperialism and the "ideological degeneration" among the oppressed peoples.48 The
Guard produced a space for
the left to undertake a clear distinction between an antiracist nationalism and one that
protected the right from any criticism on the grounds of national assertion. But, as many
people have said in retrospect, the Guard failed to create a mass base, mainly
perhaps due to the tendency to see itself as an army, but also because of the
tendency amongst the Chinese Americans to withdraw from engagement
with the state (in New York and in San Francisco, the Asian left had to deal with the military formations of the police as
well as those of the Asian bourgeoisie, such as the Flying Dragons and the White Shadows).49
Efforts from the bottom up such as lobbying can effectively alter the state’s
categorization of individuals
Kertzer and Arel, 2 - * PhD, Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science,
Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University **PhD,
Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University
of Ottawa, Canada (David and Dominique, “Census and Identity: The Politics of Race,
Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses,” 2002)//jml
Bottom-up efforts to influence census categories Ever since censuses began, state efforts to pigeonhole each individual into a single category of identity, and then conceive of the whole
population as divisible into these units, have faced resistance. The people so categorized
have struggled both to change the categories and to change their distribution across
them. Indeed, one of the most important of the topics we probe in this book is the evolution of the locus of power over the
construction of identity categories in the census. Who actually decides what categories and what
principles are to be employed in generating these collective identities? Are we correct in thinking
that there has been a major shift from census categories decided from on high to those crafted through a complex and messy process
of political struggle, involving interest groups formed from the people being categorized? The
history of the US census
suggests that such a shift has taken place. Whether this observation holds comparatively cries out for research.
In the case of the Soviet Union, the evolution of the locus of power over the construction of identities can best be seen as a
boomerang cycle. The initial census categories, in the 1920s and 1930s, were shaped to a remarkable extent by national elites and
scholars sympathetic to nationality claims (Hirsch 1997). Subsequent debate over the categories was frozen for many years by Party
fiat. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the democratizing conditions in several post-Soviet states has once again made their first
independent censuses (particularly in Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics) the political battleground that it has proven to be in so many
other countries. Even when the determination of census categories remained in the hands of imperial bureaucrats in Eastern Europe
and in various overseas colonies, a great deal of popular agitation was aroused. Parties and movements acting in the name of ethnic
groups sought to convince putative members of the group to register as such. In Austrian Bohemia, for instance, Czech parties
campaigned to have people of Czech descent claim “Czech” as Umgangsprache, and when the tide began to turn favorably to the
Czech language in certain urban areas, German parties began their own campaign in favor of claiming “German” (Arel, this volume).
Another enlightening case concerns Imperial India, where the British went to great lengths to categorize the colonized along a
variety of markers, revolving around the fundamental category (in their eyes) of caste. By the time of the 1931 census, as Cohn
recounts, the political significance of this process of assigning identities to the Indian population had become so pronounced that
some groups organized to promote certain responses to the census-takers questions. A flyer, entitled “Remember! Census
Operations Have Begun” (see below), distributed just before the census by one such group in Lahore, entreated the local population
to make particular responses (Cohn 1987: 249). This
makes the census far closer, in many ways, to a
political campaign than to a technical exercise in counting. The activists involved in the
agitation generally believe that the identities they are promoting are primordial, and
therefore not a matter of choice. Yet they are concerned that many of their co-ethnics
are not fully aware of their own “true” identity, and so must be reminded of their roots.
Often, however, people targeted by such campaigning are well aware of their roots, but do not share the backward-looking premise
of the nationalist groups. In Belgium, in the post-war period, parents of Flemish mother tongue in Brussels were more interested in
claiming French than Flemish as their language on the census, to the despair of Flemish nationalist groups. The parents were
motivated by their interest in sending their children to French schools, a desire which they knew would be facilitated by the
statistical “finding” of a greater proportion of “French-speakers” in their district (Arel, forthcoming). Statistical realists have decried
this confusion between a plebiscite and a census (Lévy 1960). Yet, since identity is subjective and contingent upon social and
political factors, one wonders whether it would not be more fruitful to view the census -or, at least, the identity questions of a census
– as a type of plebiscite (Labbé 2000). In many Western countries, efforts
to alter the use of ethnic and racial
categorization involve not only lobbying respondents to place themselves in one
category or another, but lobbying the designers of the census to alter the
categories used. Lieberson (1993: 29–30), deliberately overstating the matter, has argued that now “each ethnic
group has the potential ability to control its own enumeration – in the sense of a veto on
how it is defined, classified and described. However, each group has no veto power over other groups. ” He
argues that these ethnic lobbying groups present their case as a matter of basic morality
and, in so far as they are in a position to bring unfavorable publicity to politicians, are a
potent force where such matters are concerned. One of the most significant examples of this process comes
from the United States. In 1970, in response to the urgings of various ethnic lobbying groups, the census bureau
introduced a question asking a sample of respondents if they were of “Hispanic” origin.
Those who answered positively were then asked if they fit into one of five categories (Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or
South American, Other Spanish). This effort led to many criticisms, which were taken up by the US Commission on
Civil Rights in 1974. Their report, provocatively titled “Counting the Forgotten, ” blasted the Census Bureau for a poorly conceived
effort at counting Hispanics. It urged them to include a newly revised question to be asked of every individual on the 1980 census,
which would be “responsive to the needs of the Spanish-speaking background population. ” The
following year, the
Census Bureau formed a special advisory committee on the Spanish origin population,
having a year earlier established such a committee on the “Black Population. ” By 1976, political logic had led inevitably to the
formation of a third advisory committee, this one devoted to the Asian and Pacific Island population (Conk 1987: 177–78).
Controversy has continued to surround the design of these ethnic and racial identity questions. For our purposes, however, what
is most notable is the role of the census in the invention and legitimization of such
categories of collective identity as “Hispanic”. Census politics undoubtedly has a strong
emotional dimension, for it matters a great deal to many people that the groups they identify with are granted official
recognition. As Geertz stated in his classic article (1963), “The peoples of the new states are simultaneously animated by two
powerful, thoroughly interdependent, yet distinct and often actually opposed motives – the desire to be recognized as responsible
agents whose wishes, acts, hopes, and opinions 'matter,' and the desire to build an efficient, dynamic modern state. ” The historical
record has since demonstrated that the desire for such recognition can be as potent among groups in the “old” states as well. Yet
the instrumental dimension of census politics may be just as important since, in the age
of the modern state as a provider of social and economic benefits, group recognition in
the census entails group entitlement to certain rights. Group-differentiated social programs may be
directed to certain cities depending on the proportion of their ethnic population. Cross tabulations, with nationality, language, or
race as one of the variables, can be used to suggest how some groups lag behind others on certain indicators, leading to demands for
further remedial policies by the state.
The struggle for political change through the law allows us to continue the
fight for social justice
Prashad 2011 (vijay, director of the international studies program at trinity college,
everyone was kung fu fighting: afro-asian connections and the myth of cultural purity,
project muse, LB)
There are no massive implications to be drawn from all this, except to say that the polycultural view of the world
exists in the gut instincts of many people such as Q-Unique. Scholars are under some
obligation to raise this instinct to philosophy, to use this instinct to criticize the diversity
model of multiculturalism and replace it with the antiracist one of polyculturalism. Culture
cannot be bounded and people cannot be asked to respect "culture" as if it were a thing without
history and complexity. Social interaction and struggle produce cultural worlds, and
these are in constant, fraught, formation. Our cultures are linked in more ways than we
could catalogue, and it is from these linkages that we hope our politics will be energized.
The Third World may be in distress where the will of the national liberation movements has put the tendency to anti-imperialism in
crisis, and the Third World within the United States where the dynamic of the color-blind and of the desire to make small, individual
gains over social transformation has overrun society. Nevertheless, the
struggle is on, both in places like Kerala
and Vietnam, but also within the United States, as the Black Radical Congress greets the
Asian Left Forum, the Forum of Indian Leftists, and the League of Filipino Students
(among others), and as all of them join together in the dynamic against corporations,
perhaps someday to become an antiimperialist dynamic. History is made in struggle,
and our enchanted memory of the past perhaps helps our fights over social justice today
and makes it possible to move into a fresh tomorrow. To remember Bruce Lee as I do, staring at a poster of
him circa 1974, is not to wane into nostalgia for the past. My Bruce is alive, alongside all the other contemporary icons of
polycultural strife.
The census is an example of Governmentality, an attempt to know the
population to render it more governable
Barnard-Wills, 12 - PhD in Politics of surveillance (David, Surveillance and Identity:
Discourse, Subjectivity and the State, 2012, 51-54, Google Books)
Applicability to Surveillance Governmentality is inherently concerned with surveillance.
predicated upon knowledge and visibility of the population. Surveillance is traceable
to the governmental imperative to `know the population`. Detailed knowledge
of the population is required before appropriate management strategies can be
constructed. The need to consider characteristic forms of visibility and ways of seeing of
particular regimes also fits well with surveillance theory, encompassing both the technological limits of
possibility and organisational structures and drives to surveillance. We are in a strong position to ask what
forms of seeing (including surveillance) are necessary forthe operation of a particular
political regime. Govemmentality supports an awareness ofthe importance of data based forms of surveillance. This
arises from studies on the development of the census. The census is a critical response to
the necessity of knowing the population before appropriate strategies can be applied. In a
real sense. the census creates citizens (David Lyon 2007:30). This perspective reveals the importance of
databases. lists. records. files and the like for creating subjectivities and identities. The methods. practice and history of statistics is
intimately linked with the state. developing out of the need to conduct censuses and analyse the data they produced. This parallels
the way Cartography maps the extent of the territory. and constitutes the nation state as geographically bounded entity (Joyce 2003:
l 5). Governmentality
reveals the political incentives that drive the production ofa
seemingly objective and autonomous scientific method. The governmentality model
breaks down the centralised state model of surveillance. Instead demonstrating the multiplicity of actors
involved in government. This is useful for negotiating the contested role of the state in
surveillance theory. Following govemmentality. it is unsurprising that there are myriad surveillance actors beyond the
state. This fits well with the arguments for the heterogeneity of surveillance emerging from the surveillant assemblage, that ‘rather
than exemplifying Orwell’s totalitarian state-centred Oceana, this assemblage operates across both state and extra-state institutions’
(Haggerty & Ericson 2000:6l0). In addition to a multiplicity of actors, governance
makes uses of a multiplicity
of strategies. Therefore this theoretical perspective can incorporate many surveillance
theories such as social sorting or simple panoptic machines as particular strategies of
governance without having to accept the sociological tendency to believe we reside in an
electronic panopticon, or maximum surveillance society. Neither does govemmentality preclude the
exercise of sovereign or disciplinary strategies within a govemmental framework, rather according to Dean; all three are fundamental to modem fomis of authority (Dean 20l0:30). Instead of seeking an axiomatic
explanation of surveillant power, this triad allows for nuance in detennining which forms of power are in play at a specific
surveillance site. Haggerty has written about the way that surveillance intersects with govemmental problematisations. As
a
general technology that can be used for a wide range of govemmental projects.
surveillance can serve utopian aims in itself, but also facilitate the knowledge production required to properly
understand the scope and nature of social problems. He identifies a `zeitgeist where citizens and ofiicials now assume that greater
surveillance is the preferred response to an array of political problems’ (Haggerty 2009). He
shows how surveillance
is implicated in all the steps of a problematisation. Problems come to our awareness when initial activists
find a way to visualise an issue as a problem. This draws upon evidence and oflicial forms of knowledge to produce a claim to being
an accurate account that is acceptable to (and understandable by) authorities. This privileges certain types of knowledge over others.
In attempting to understand a problem, authorities draw upon various surveillance
systems, often finding in the process that current systems are lacking. and do not
produce sufficient knowledge. This can act as a drive for further surveillance systems.
Surveillance practices themselves can be the form of the response to political problems and even other fonns of response have to be
monitored to ascertain their efficacy. Finally, surveillance itself can be seen as a social problem by other activists (Haggerty 2009).
This shows the fundamental importance of making use of the concept of problematisations in regard to surveillance and identity.
Govemmentality is sensitive to the issues of identity and identification, which
we have already seen are central to surveillance politics. We can see why the common
practice of identifying citizens emerges, driven by the governmental need to have
knowledge of the population. Rose`s ‘securitization of identity’ model emerges from governance. He suggests the
need to ‘identify the specific loci and practices within which conduct has been
problematised in ways which have led to the introduction of new techniques of
identification’ (Rose l999:24l- 2). He notes the emergence, at a number of sites and practices of ‘problems of the
individualisation of the citizen to which securitization of identity can appear as a solution`. These sites are dispersed and
disorganised, and they act as ‘switch points’ which must be passed by an individual, if that individual is to be able to access circuits
and flows of` benefits and services - the benefits of` liberty. Technologies such as ID cards. presented at a border. or when applying
for work, operate as a surveillant cheek on entitlement to access social goods. Linked
to this is the tension in the
analytics of government between the individual and the collective. In terms of` its development.
pastoral power is associated with individualisation whilst the ‘population’ is
collectivising. This has interesting parallels with the way the individual involved in
social sorting is collectivised through their categorisation. but is individualised through
the cross cutting nature of` those categories, and the sheer volume of information tied to that individual.
Dodge and Kitchen have argued for the salience of identification codes in the governance of` society, whilst their account is perhaps
more panoptic than govemmental. they suggest the application and automatic processing of digital identification codes are key to
evolving forms of contemporary govemmentality (Dodge & Kitchin 2004). Scepticism
towards general theories of
‘social control’ is combined with the construction of` subjects as active social agents,
capable of resistance, avoidance or subversion. This allows an analysis ofthe politics ol`surveillance and
practices of resistance. although Haggerty wams that this would require breaking with Rosc`s perspective that there is no such thing
as ‘the governed`(Haggerty 2006:40- l ). He suggests that:
The census exterts a control over the production of racial categories and
forces people to fit within “official government categories”
Kertzer and Arel, 2 - * PhD, Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science,
Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University **PhD,
Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University
of Ottawa, Canada (David and Dominique, “Census and Identity: The Politics of Race,
Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses,” 2002)//jml
As a product of the ideology of colonial and modern states, the project of dividing populations into
separable categories of collective identity in- evitably intersected with the
division of populations into racial categories. The two efforts share a common
logic, a kind of categorical imperative, in which people must be assigned to a category
and to one category alone. The history of racial thinking is a history of cultural categorization, of seizing on certain
physical characteristics and inventing a biological cat- egory for those people who manifest them. In devising “racial”
categories, imperial census-makers used names from the existing repertoire of cultural
and geographical markers, but the categories themselves reflected the perception of the European rulers rather than
that of the natives. Anderson (1991: 165–6) writes that few recognized themselves under the early “racial” labels of “Malay,”
“Javanese,” “Sakai,” “Banjarese,” etc. in the 1911 Indonesian census. In the same vein, Hirschman (1987: 567) argues that the
“Malay,” “Chinese,” and “Indian” categories in the Malaysian census were much broader than socially understood. That
these
categories reflected subjec- tive values is hardly distinctive. Identities being by
definition subjectively determined, their conceptual representation in any census can
only re- flect subjective processes. What distinguished colonial from non-colonial censuses, however, was that the
formulation of categories in the colonies was unilaterally done by the ruling officials, while
European categories of cultural nationality and language were already being negotiated, to some extent, with social groups. Even
more significant was the belief, fundamental to a racist concep- tion of the world, that
racial categories were rank ordered according to aptitude. Imperial races, unlike colonial ones, were fit
to rule, while Census, identity formation, and political power 11 certain colonial races were better equipped to assist the colonial
project than others. Such a conception of group categories was initially foreign to the natives in most areas. In Rwanda and Burundi,
for instance, the Belgian colonial state ruled through the minority Tutsi, in keeping with the widespread colonial practice of indirect
rule. The Belgians legitimized Tutsi dominance by creating a racial distinction making the Tutsi superior Africans, due to an alleged
“Hamitic” origin, while the Hutus were rele- gated to the bottom of the racial scale. What was new was not the naming itself, since
the colonial categories of Tutsi and Hutus overlapped with pre-existing ones, “but rather the colonial policy of indirect rule and the
racist ideology associated with it. It was those factors that crystallized the categories and erected them against each other.” (Uvin,
this volume.) It
is the United States, however, that has the longest continuous history of
placing its entire population into mutually exclusive racial categories based on pseudoscientific theories of race. As Nobles shows in her chap- ter in this volume, the categories and criteria
have evolved over time, with categories once thought natural – such as that of “mulatto” –
eventually being regarded as not only unscientific but morally reprehensible. In societies such as the United States, where the ideology of racial categoriza- tion has had
tremendous social and political consequences, the census is a cauldron of racial
construction. By pigeon-holing people into official governmental
categories, the census gives a legitimacy to the categories and to this mode
of thinking about people. Moreover, in so far as the census is presented as an instrument
of scientific inquiry, racial catego- rization in censuses provides an aura of scientific
legitimacy for the racial project as well.
At: links
At: polyculturalism links
Not OUR polyculturalism
Schwarz 2007 (Anja, and West-Pavlov, Russel, eds. At the Interface/Probing the
Boundaries, Volume 39 : Polyculturalism and Discourse. Amsterdam, NLD: Editions
Rodopi, 2007. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 28 June 2015, LB)
We do not intend to fill ‘polyculturalism’ with any such meanings. Indeed, we wished to
preserve a certain degree of ‘play’ in the term chosen. At the same time however, we did not coin
it with the intention of ‘stepping out of the ring’, in the ingenuous belief that there is
some ‘objective’ site of academic discourse which would not be tainted by the corrosive
influence of ‘power-knowledge’. And, in fact, a simple keyword search in the internet demonstrated this impossibility
in a telling manner. The search revealed that members of a neo-conservative USAmerican
internet forum had indeed been using the term for some time and were debating its
viability as a discursive tool in countering what they perceived to be a left-wing
multiculturalist agenda (in the US, similarly to Germany, multiculturalism has never been sanctioned through
government policy on the federal level, thus making the term more vulnerable to such attacks than in the Australian context).
Conversely, the
term ‘policulturalism’ has been employed by scholars working within the
South African post-Apartheid context to refer to a field of discursive debate in which a
myriad of new histories have been released into the public domain. The demise of pre-1994
censorship has allowed the emergence of many once-repressed forms and genres of histories, all too often reified and commodified
under the neo-liberalism which swiftly followed in the wake of political liberalization. ‘The prefix marks two things: plurality and its
politicization.’ 3 A
‘policultural’ field of disparate discourses would be characterized neither
by the reduction of difference to trademarking in a discursive realm in which heritage
and ethnicity are immediately recuperated by a commodifying market, nor to the
artificial foreclosure or fallacious resolution of dissonance through a rhetoric of legal
settlement evinced, for instance, in the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. ‘Policulturalism’
in this context indexes a stubbornly uncompromising and open-ended engagement between the many ethnic fractions and their
irreducibly specific histories: “A form of cultural dissensus and alterity”, to appropriate Bhabha’s formulation, “where nonconsensual terms of affiliation may be established on the grounds of historical trauma”. 4 It
refers to a debate which
resists the erasure of discursive difference precisely because this is the very factor that
furnishes the grounds for genuine discursive interaction. 5 Precisely this is the manner in
which we have intended in our choice of such a neologism. Our employment of the term
‘polyculturalism’ for this publication, instead of attempting to ascribe to it a specific
meaning, is therefore intended to destabilise any notions of a seemingly ‘given’ meaning.
Rather, our usage aims to re-open a space in which the workings of discourse, both as archive or practice, and as intervention, can be
considered in greater depth. The
inter-cultural perspective shared by all essays in this volume
contributes to this goal: whereas the majority of discourse analytical work addresses the
diversity of speaking positions, as well as the arbitrariness of ascribed meanings, within
a historical framework delimited by national boundaries, the texts collected here
transgress this perspective in working comparatively between Australia and Germany.
While not eschewing the historical dimension championed by Foucault and others, they show that the aspirations of discourse
analytical work can equally be achieved by comparing similar discursive fields in different countries.
Multiculturalism links
They’re very different – polyculturalism focuses on similarities not
differences
Prashad 2011 (Vijay. Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and
the Myth of Cultural Purity. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001, annotation by Kirsten Rokke
(Theories of Media, Winter 2004), LB)
This highly opinionated history highlights the interactions of the Others, specifically
Asian and Black Others. Prashad’s political or theoretical goals in drawing out some
neglected histories is to promote his idea of polyculturalism. He sets polyculturalism in
opposition to what he considers to be the two dominant American attitudes toward race:
color blindness and multiculturalism. He defines the color blind attitude to be the logic
motivating opposition to affirmative action, that people should be evaluated based on
merit irrespective of ethnicity. He argues that this is shortsighted because it doesn’t take into
account the more systematic forces in place which benefit certain groups more than
others. He specifically draws attention to the way that Asian Americans are positioned as the model
minority and used to prove the laziness of others. Multiculturalism is problematic for
him as well because it emphasizes the differences between cultures in a way that reifies
them as separate and static. Institutions that support multiculturalism try to "manage
the problem of diversity rather than how to undermine the structures that engender the
illusion of absolute difference and then the zoological maintenance of culture out of fear
of survival (for primordialists and indegenistas) or out of fear of contamination (for
racist cultural chauvinists)" (63). His project is to present a history of polyculturalism which
reveals the blending of cultural practices and values across ethnic boundaries; this
strategy works to "(uncouple) the notions of origins and authenticity from that of
culture" (65).
The census is multiculturalism – we break that down
Mezey, 3 – Professor of Law at Georgetown University (Naomi, “Erasure and
Recognition: The Census, Race and the National Imagination”, 97 Nw. U. L. Rev. 17011768 (2003) Northwestern University Law Review, 2003)//jml
There exists a very real dilemma of how to best think and speak about race when we do not know what it is, but we know it matters
and wish it did not. One of the failings of the debate over the multiracial category is that, while it touches the heart of this dilemma,
the discourse of the debate has mostly sidestepped this issue and become mired in its own problems of ra- cial essentialism.
Rodriguez's congressional testimony on behalf of La Raza is emblematic. His anxiety that a multiracial category might be used by
those who want to end all race categories led him to repeatedly dismiss the multiracial category as "a heterogeneous identifier that is
not an actual race category."32' The implication is that the race categories designated by the census are real, in that they not only
correspond to something we might call "actual races," but also that those races are homogeneous. Michael Omi has argued
convincingly that the
census classifications, as defined in Directive 15, are both inconsistent and
heterogeneous. As he points out, only one of the categories is specifically defined by reference to
race (black), another category is based on cultural designators (Hispanic), and another
on community affiliation (American Indian).322 Nor are the groups stable or
homogeneous; Omi cites as an example the current pan-ethnic identity of Asian
American that grew out of the alliances forged by numer- ous and distinct Asian ethnic
groups.323 Regardless of whether we think Rodriguez is right, his testimony makes clear that the argument against a
multiracial category on the grounds that it is not a real race risks falling into the trap of
discredited scientific accounts of race and racial essentialism. However, john powell and Michael
Omi, among others,324 have shown how the arguments advanced on behalf of multiracial advocates
also tend to rest on biological theories of race and essentialism. As Omi puts it, "The very
terms 'mixed race' or 'multiracial' imply the existence of 'pure' and distinct races. 325 powell
goes further in suggesting that a multiracial cate- gory ends up undermining its own
claim to distinctiveness because virtually all Americans are of mixed race,
and to the extent multiracial proponents reject that proposition they are forced back
toward the position of biologi- cally recognizable races.326
Cap
Method Defense
Identity is a process of becoming – there is no universal subject which
means that embracing a multiplicity of culture is critical
Prashad 2011 (vijay, director of the international studies program at trinity college,
everyone was kung fu fighting: afro-asian connections and the myth of cultural purity,
project muse, LB)
What are the implications of the world of polycultural kung fu? Color-blind capitalists
wish to make a profit off its appeal, often by the opportunistic combination of ethnic
niche markets (when Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker appear together in the 1998 Rush Hour, or else when Sammo Hung and
Arsenio Hall did time in CBS's Martial Law, or else with the ultracommodified Tae-Bo of Billy Blanks).111 Primordialists
(and "perfectionists") argue that the artistry originates in either Africa or Asia. "It was
Africa and not Asia that first gave martial arts to the world," wrote Kilindi Iyi, "and those same African
roots are deeply embedded in the martial arts of India and China."112 Iyi looks at ancient murals from Beni Hasan, Egypt, to make
his claim, but he could equally make the point that the similarities between capoeira Angola and kung fu can be traced to those
enslaved Africans who created the Brazilian art in the 1500s, nurtured it in the senzalas (slave houses), and developed it into a
symbolic as well as a physical response to the atrocity of a racist slavery. The language of capoeira, indeed, is replete with Bantu
words, and the movements of capoeira resemble the southern Angolan dance of n'golo (zebra dance).113 If Iyi looks to Africa for the
origins of martial arts, others do the same with Asia. Most histories of kung fu tell the story of Bodhidharma, an itinerant Buddhist
monk, who introduced the monks of the Shaolin Temple in China to the martial arts of his homeland, southern India. Bodhidharma
may be the son of the king of Kancheepuram in the region of today's Tamil Nadu (as some Japanese manuscripts claim), and it is
said that he imported the arts of kalarippayattu to China from Kerala, in the southwest of India.114 Bodhidharma's Hseih mai lun
[Treatise on the blood lineages of true dharma] lays out a philosophy of the ch'i, and how it must be kept active to ensure that monks
do not sleep during meditation.115 The
desire to seek origins in what might be complex cultural
diffusion or else independent creation is certainly not of much help. However, we might
say that martial arts traditions such as kung fu developed in a manifold world that
involved, in some complex way, kalarippayattu of Kerala, capoeira Angola of Brazil, and
the various martial arts of Africa. Kung fu is not far from Africa or from the favelas of Brazil.116 Iyi, Wayne
Chandler, and Graham Irwin make the mistake of finding racial links when we are more tempted to avoid that complex soup of
"descent"—whatever that may mean. They argue, for instance, that Buddha, the man whose tradition produces kung fu, was of
African "descent."117 The school of the Kamau Ryu System of Self-Defense claims that Bodhidharma was "black with tightly curled
knots of hair and elongated ear lobes which are traditional African traits."118 The
incessant interest in origins
bespeaks a notion of culture as an inheritance transmitted across time without
mutation, an inheritance that is the property of certain people. There are numerous
reasons to claim origins and to mark oneself as authentic if one belongs to an oppressed
minority. For example, minority groups mobilize the notion of an origin to make resource
claims, to show, for instance, that despite the denigration of the power elite, the
minority can lay claim to civilization. Furthermore, to demarcate themselves from the repressive stereotypes, the
oppressed frequently turn to their "roots" to suggest to their children the worthiness of their lineage, despite racism's cruelty.
These are important social explanations for the way we use both origins and authenticity
(to protect our traditional forms from appropriation by the power elite). As defensive
tactics these make sense, but as a strategy for freedom they are inappropriate. W. E. B.
Du Bois, in a prosaic moment in 1919, wrote of the "blood of yellow and white hordes"
who "diluted the ancient black blood of India, but her eldest Buddha sits back, with
kinky hair."119 Du Bois's gesture toward Buddha was not necessarily a claim to the racial or epidermal lineage of Buddha, but it
was a signal toward some form of solidarity across the Indian Ocean and between Asians and Africans in diaspora. In his 1928
novel Dark Princess, the Indian Kautilya seals her bond with the African American Matthew through a ruby that is "by legend a drop
of Buddha's blood"; in time, their child, "Incarnate Son of the Buddha," will rule over a kingdom fated to overthrow British
rule.120 Matthew,
for Du Bois, was a symbol of anti-imperialist solidarity, and the claim to
Buddha indicated a search for the cultural roots of solidarity without going too deeply
into that mysterious world of biology.
Perm
Can’t deconstruct one without the other
Webster 2k – Prof CSU Los Angeles, http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2000/06/01/twenty-onearguments-for-abolishing-racial-classification/, 6/26/15 BRoche
Because there are many differences among persons, the selection of certain anatomical differences for racial
demarcation implies that these differences are more significant than other differences. This
implication needs to be justified, for there are also anatomical similarities among the persons classified as distinct races. The question arises:
Why aren't persons being grouped according to their similarities? One answer is that an emphasis
on differences is consistent with an ethos of competition that is, in turn, integral to a market
economy and struggles over territory and other resources – the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the Middle East, . . .
A focus on similarities would generate an ethos of cooperation, but such an ethos cannot
emerge from the conviction that resources are indomitably scarce and competitive
markets are the most rational means of distributing these resources.
Racial categories are baseless and were used only to indicate social status
Rumbaut 11 [Ruben Rumbaut is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the
University of California “Pigments of Our Imagination: The Racialization of the
Hispanic-Latino Category”, migrationpolicy.org, 4-27-2011,
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/pigments-our-imagination-racializationhispanic-latino-category] JG
Race is a pigment of our imagination. It is a social status, not a biological one; a product of history,
not of nature; a contextual variable, not a given. The concept of race is a historically contingent, relational,
subjective phenomenon, yet it is typically misbegotten as a natural, fixed trait of phenotypic difference
inherent in human bodies, independent of human will or intention.∂ Racial categories (and the supposed
differences that they connote) are infused with stereotypical moral meaning. What is called "race" today is
chiefly an outcome of intergroup struggles, marking the boundaries, and thus the identities,
of "us" and "them" along with attendant ideas of social worth or stigma. As such, "race" is an
ideological construct that links supposedly innate traits of individuals to their place in
the social order.
Environment k
Perm
Polyculturalism and environmental movements were meant to be together
Alexenberg 2008 (Melvin L. Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the
Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture. Bristol, U.K.: Intellect, 2008.
Print, LB)
In my ten years living in Miami, it became clear to me that polyculturalism and ecological perspective are
related. Both promote multiple views of the whole and of dynamic interrelationships in
growing ecosystems that embrace nature, society, and media. Twenty-two young artists in the senior
class of the NWSA high school worked on an art project, Miami in Ecological Perspective, with me and biologists from the
Everglades National Park (Alexenberg 1994). These Miamians and their parents were born on five continents, in sixteen countries,
and in twelve states. Miami is a lively international city framed by the mangrove swamps of Biscayne Bay and the wide saw grass
river of the Everglades. Its
future is related to how its ethnic communities bring their numerous
viewpoints together in a common enterprise and how it protects and honors its natural
environment, its primary source of revenue. Thousands leave a shivering winter of snow and ice to sun
themselves on the palm-studded beaches, swim in warm blue waters, and marvel at the flight of flocks of great white egrets and the
movements of giant alligators in the Everglade’s waters. Under the guidance of the Everglades biologists, the students waded
through the Everglades, a shallow river 60 miles wide flowing 300 miles from the Kissimmee River to Florida Bay. It was the time of
year that the waters receded leaving fish no choice but to find refuge in waterholes that alligators had dug under the water. When
birds came to eat the fish concentrated in the waterholes, the alligators could choose the birds or fish for their breakfast. The
students documented the dynamic interrelationships of the numerous species of
animals and plants to each other and their environment using observational drawing,
photography, and verbal and statistical notation. These studies became the raw material for artworks. Their
scientific study of ecology was coupled with artistic explorations that expressed ecological perspective in relation to their
environment and their place in it and with social action cleaning up trash thrown in the water by tourists in the national park. The
ecological perspective begins with the view of the whole, an understanding of how the
various parts of nature interact in patterns that tend towards balance and persist over
time. But this perspective cannot treat the earth as something separate from human
civilization; we are part of the whole too, and looking at it ultimately means looking at
ourselves. (Gore 1993) The students studied how artists shape worldview by their perspective inventions. The artists of the
Renaissance, for example, created logical perspective by visually representing three-dimensional space from a single point of view
and time as a cross section of a one-way linear path. Most
people in the industrialized world continue to
see the world through the eyes of these Renaissance artists. Before Renaissance perspective spread
from Italy throughout Europe, artists employed a mythological perspective that arises from an auditory experience of space as twodimensional and of time as cyclical. People
from most pre-industrial cultures continue to experience
space and time from a mythological perspective. Today, artists have an opportunity and
responsibility of once again reshaping humanity’s worldview by inventing an art of
ecological perspective. Whereas the aesthetic perspective oriented us to the making of objects, the ecological perspective
connects art to its integrative role in the larger whole and the web of relationships in which art exists. A new emphasis
falls on community and environment…The ecological perspective does not replace the
aesthetic, but gives a deeper account of what art is doing, reformulating its meaning and
purpose beyond the gallery system, in order to redress the lack of concern, within the
aesthetic model, for issues of context or social responsibility. (Gablick 1991)
Fem
Subjecticvity = gendered +AT: psycho
The conception of subjectivity is always based on a masculine subject –
embracing the multiplicity of identity is necessary to implode that
Alcoff ‘6 (Linda Martín Alcoff, Prof. of Philosophy at CUNY, Visible Identities: Race,
Gender, and the Self, Oxford Scholarship Online, LB)
The problem of conceptualizing ‘‘woman’’ as a form of subjectivity and an associated
category of identity can best be approached through combining three elements: the idea
of experience as a reflective practice, the intuition behind identity politics, and the
concept of positionality. Teresa de Lauretis’s influential book Alice Doesn’t develops an account of experience through an
eclectic weaving together of psychoanalytic and semiotic theories. The underlying motivation for developing
this account is her concern to understand the link between gender, a social construct,
and subjectivity, which involves human agency. The book is really a collection of essays organized around
the difficulty of conceptualizing woman as subject, not the generic human as subject but
a particularly gendered subjectivity. But immediately a problem arises as to the relation
between ‘‘woman’’ as ‘‘fictional construct’’ and ‘‘women’’ as ‘‘real historical beings’’ (1984,
5). The idea of gender raises the specter of ‘‘woman,’’ so how does one correct the gender-neutral errors of
modern notions of subjectivity without getting embroiled in these hegemonic gender
discourses? De Lauretis explains the problem: The feminist efforts have been more often than not
caught in the logical trap set up by [a] paradox. Either they have assumed that ‘‘the
subject,’’ like ‘‘man,’’ is a generic term, and as such can designate equally and at once the
female and male subjects, with the result of erasing sexuality and sexual difference from
subjectivity. Or else they have been obliged to resort to an oppositional notion of ‘‘feminine’’ subject defined by silence,
negativity, a natural sexuality, or a closeness to nature not compromised by patriarchal culture. (161) Here again is spelled
out the dilemma between a poststructuralist genderless subject and a cultural feminist
essentialized subject. As de Lauretis points out, the poststructuralist alternative is constrained in
its conceptualization of the female subject by the very act of distinguishing female from
male subjectivity. The dilemma is that if we degender subjectivity, we are committed to a generic subject, and if we define
the subject in terms of gender, articulating female subjectivity in a space clearly distinct from male subjectivity, then we become
caught up in an oppositional dichotomy controlled by a misogynist discourse. A
gender-bound subjectivity seems
to force us to revert ‘‘women to the body and to sexuality as an immediacy of the
biological, as nature’’ (161). De Lauretis takes a large dose of social construction for granted, especially in its
psychoanalytic variant. If the subject is constructed via discourse, then the feminist project
cannot be simply to reveal ‘‘how to make visible the invisible.’’ Yet de Lauretis does not
give up on the possibility of producing ‘‘the condition of visibility for a different social
subject’’ (8–9). In her view, a nominalist position on subjectivity can be avoided by linking subjectivity to a Peircean notion of
practices and a further theorized notion of experience (11). De Lauretis’s main thesis is that subjectivity, that is, what one
‘‘perceives and comprehends as subjective,’’ is constructed through a continuous process
and ongoing constant renewal based on an interaction with the world, or, in a word,
experience: ‘‘And thus [subjectivity] is produced not by external ideas, values, or
material causes, but by one’s personal, subjective engagement in the practices,
discourses, and institutions that lend significance (value, meaning, and affect) to the events of the
world’’ (159). This is the process through which one’s subjectivity becomes engendered. In reality, subjectivity is neither
overdetermined by biology nor by ‘‘free, rational, intentionality’’ but, rather, by experience, which
she defines (via Lacan, Eco, and Peirce) as ‘‘a complex of habits resulting from the
semiotic interaction of our ‘outer world’ and ‘inner world,’ the continuous engagement
of a self or subject in social reality’’ (182).7 Given this definition, can we ascertain a
‘‘female experience?’’ Can we discern ‘‘that complex of habits, dispositions, associations,
and perceptions, which engenders one as female?’’ (182). In a later work, de Lauretis claims that
identity is constituted through a process in which one’s history ‘‘is interpreted or
reconstructed by each of us within the horizon of meanings and knowledges available in
the culture at given historical moments, a horizon that also includes modes of political
commitment and struggle. ... Consciousness is, therefore, never fixed, never attained once and for all, because
discursive boundaries change with historical conditions’’ (1986, 8). Agency consists in this process of
interpretation, such that identities are not simply ‘‘prefigured ... in an unchangeable
symbolic order,’’ or produced by external structures of meaning, or construed as merely
‘‘fragmented or intermittent,’’ that is, undecidable or always indeterminate. The
individual has agency on this account but is also placed within ‘‘particular discursive
configurations’’ (de Lauretis 1986, 9).
Method turn
Affirm the destruction of what we know to be a woman
Alcoff ‘6 (Linda Martín Alcoff, Prof. of Philosophy at CUNY, Visible Identities: Race,
Gender, and the Self, Oxford Scholarship Online, LB)
Applied to the concept of woman, poststructuralism’s view results in what I shall call nominalism:
the idea that the category ‘‘woman’’ is a fiction without objective basis and that feminist
efforts must be directed toward dismantling this fiction. ‘‘Perhaps ... ‘woman’ is not a
determinable identity. Perhaps woman is not some thing which announces itself from a distance, at a distance from some
other thing. ... Perhaps woman—a non-identity, non-figure, simulacrum—is distance’s very
chasm, the out-distancing of distance, the interval’s cadence, distance itself’’ (Derrida 1978,
49). Derrida’s interest in feminism seems to stem from his belief, expressed above, that woman
may represent a potential rupture in the discourses of hierarchy and the metaphysical
violence of Kantian ontology. Because woman has in a sense been excluded from this discourse, it is possible to hope
that she might provide a real source of resistance. But her resistance will not be at all effective if she
continues to use the mechanism of logocentrism to redefine woman: her resistance will
be effective only if she drifts and dodges all attempts to capture her. Derrida hopes that the
following futuristic picture will come true: ‘‘Out of the depths, endless and unfathomable, she engulfs
and distorts all vestige of essentiality, of identity, of property. And the philosophical
discourse, blinded, founders on these shoals and is hurled down these depths to its ruin’’
(1978, 51). For Derrida, women have always been defined as a subjugated difference within a
binary opposition: man/woman, culture/nature, positive/negative, analytical/intuitive.
To assert an essential gender difference as cultural feminists do is to reinvoke this oppositional structure. The only way to break out
of this structure, and in fact to subvert the structure itself, is to assert total difference, to be that which cannot be pinned down,
compared, defined, and thus subjugated within a dichotomous hierarchy. Paradoxically,
it is to be what is not.
Thus feminists cannot demarcate a definitive category of ‘‘woman’’ without eliminating
all possibility for the defeat of logocentrism and its oppressive power. Foucault similarly rejects
all constructions of oppositional subjects—whether the ‘‘criminal,’’ ‘‘homosexual,’’ or ‘‘proletariat’’—as mirror images that merely
reenforce and sustain the discursive influence of the contrasting term, the term by which they are defined and gain their meaning
(e.g., the ‘‘normal citizen,’’ or ‘‘heterosexual’’). As Biddy Martin points out, ‘‘The
point from which Foucault
deconstructs is off-center, out of line, apparently unaligned. It is not the point of an
imagined absolute otherness, but an ‘alterity’ which understands itself as an internal
exclusion’’ (1982, 11). Following Foucault and Derrida, an effective feminism could only be a wholly negative feminism,
deconstructing everything and refusing to construct anything. This is the position Julia Kristeva adopts, herself an influential
poststructuralist. She says, ‘‘A
woman cannot be; it is something which does not even belong in
the order of being. It follows that a feminist practice can only be negative, at odds with
what already exists so that we may say ‘that’s not it’ and ‘that’s still not it’ ’’ (1981b, 137; my
italics). The problematic character of subjectivity does not mean, then, that there can be no
political struggle, but that the struggle can have only a ‘‘negative function,’’ rejecting
‘‘everything finite, definite, structured, loaded with meaning, in the existing state of
society’’ (166)
Identity
perm
Clinging to identity categories reproduces forms of violence and retrenches
the logic of unity
Madhu, 12 - Faculty Member, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Inter University
Centre for Social Science Research & Extension (P, ‘On Minority Politics’
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2075577 June 4, 2012 pp. 1-6)//jml
The sufficient condition for identity politics is to have or concoct identities. The
necessary condition for minority politics is to have creative-dissenting voices. Identity is neither
necessary nor sufficient condition for minority politics. Identities are invented by grouping people of similar
dissents. Dissents within identities pre-exist their formations. Therefore, identities are maintained by silencing
dissents within by projecting external enemies. Dissents loom large once the enemy is dissolved. For this reason, having an enemy
or victim out there is necessary precondition for identity politics. It is not that feminist
movements all of a sudden discovered that there is a dissent within; it was there even before the identitarian movement. Once formed, to sustain
identity groupings, identitarians have to have enemies outside. Identity politics is the
politics of self vs. other. Minority politics, on the contrary, does not bank upon self-other
dichotomy. However, identity politics share a thin ground with minority politics as both of
them have something to dissent. Identities exist only within assemblages reinforcing their territorializations. The contention of
minority politics is that majoritarian power is built upon shallow grounds of
territorializations though their super structures appear unshakably grounded. Much like the
majoritarian, identitarians attempt to build its own superstructure upon its shallow
territorialities. Identarians focus upon sticking together within identities; minority politics on the other
hand prepares the contenders to take off new lines of flights. Identity politics captivates beings into identity states; minority politics emphasizes on becoming, cracking, breaking
off into a process of continuous variation. Identarians measure their power by their capacity to enter into and make themselves felt within the majority assemblage. Identitarian
Identitarian becoming is a counter-evental
becoming (Madhu, 2012). Contrarily, the matter of becoming-minoritarian is opposed to being majoritarian. Identities are claimed by
reducing multiplicities into unified whole. Multiplicity of minority politics is
irreducible ‘pure multiplicity’ that escapes the abstract opposition between the multiple and the one. The Multiplicity is not the numerical fragment
of a lost unity or totality. It does not either represent a unity to come. They are not multiplicities of elements constituting a
unity. The multiplicity is rhizomatic, libidinal, unconscious, inter-penetrative, molecular and intensive multiplicities. They are composed of particles that do not divide
‘becoming’ is ‘becoming the majority’ which is not a becoming at all (Deleuze 1987: 106).
without changing in nature (othering); while vary, they vary other multiplicities; they constantly dissemble and assemble themselves in course of their communication with
“Pure multiplicity” of minority politics tolerates no
dependencies on the identical nor it allows any positioning of an essence as “what the
thing is” (Deleuze1994: 191). On the contrary, the multiplicity of the identity politics is
arborescent, extensive, divisible, molar, totalizable, hierarchiesed, essentialized and
conscious. Identity politics, unlike minority politics, subscribes to one or other unitary,
molar and totalizing paranoia against the countervailing identities. Nazis’
other multiplicities (Deleuze & Guattari,1987:36.-37).
preoccupation with Aryan identity, Jewish claim of ‘chosen by God’ status, discounting disbelievers as ‘infidels’, claims of caste/race distinctions, nationalist identities and even
Glued to the molar orientation one may seek a long
trajectory of one’s identity vis-à-vis that of others projecting one’s identity claims based
on imagined if not real objects in space and time. Molarists listen to the roar of the sea but care less for the sound of each wave.
The molar perspective limits its holders from acknowledging multiplicities or
recognizing the transformation of the identities. From the molar logic of identity politics, the world is
mechanically divided into the identities they categorize: male vs. female, upper vs. lower castes, black
vs. white etc. In its commitment to the centralized identities, Identity politics is committed to
defend identities. Identity politics tend to individualize, self-identify, essentialize,
gender based divisive identity claims are molar in character.
totalize and generalize. Minor politics on the other hand de-individulize, de-essentialize, de-totalize and opens up one to the micro politics of
everyday life (Foucault 2005: xv, xvi). Identities are individuated entities. The individual, self and identities are products of
power as Foucault point out (Foucault 2005: xv). Power is the force that prevents the truth games from collapsing. As Foucault observes, ‘deindividualizing’ dismantle identities (Foucault 2005: xvi). Identity politics unlike minority politics has models to imitate. Heroes and heroines of identity politics are reified,
idolized and worshipped by the Identity ideologues. Models developed at one site of identity is customized and used in other sites. Unlike the identitarians, ‘A minority has no
model, it’s a becoming, a process’ (Deleuze 1995: 173). Minority politics traverses through unknown terrains. The future is opaque. The process of minority politics is creative
and singular, irreducible and non-totalisable. Identity politics on the other hand has no unknown terrains: the path is known, enemy is identified and even enemy’s conspiracies
are deciphered! The distinction between minority and identity politics is sometimes blurred. For instance, queer politics is also represented as sexual-minority-politics. The
heterosexual occupies the position of majority within the queer discourse not because the heterosexual is more numerous than children, non-whites, homosexuals or women, but
because (s)he forms the qualitative standard against which these others are measured (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 105). Ethnic nationalism, cosmopolitan internationalism,
autonomist demands and other forms of identity politics of race, caste, gender, religious, linguistic kinds occasionally share minoritarian ethos (Guattari 1995: 3). Minority
politics do not share ground with identity politics in taming multiplicities, managing internal dissents, conforming to identitarian norms or being meshed within the identitarian
narcissus. Unlike identity politics minority politics have no self-interest to protect. Also, minority politics, does not require any permanent body of activists or intellectuals
strategizing its agenda. Minority politics is a political expression of persons in diverse life condition challenging all sorts of fascisms, narcissisms, control mechanisms and molar
stereotypes that tend to block free flow of life. Identity politics tend to use identity as the cultural asset. For minority politics, the cultural asset of minorities is not identity, but
Identity politics does not cease to be identitarian by imbibing
majoritarian ways. It has no ethical guard against their conversion into micro-fascism. Deleuze writes, It is not the marginals who create the lines; they install
creativity (Gilroy 2005: 434).
themselves on these lines and make them their property, and this is fine when they have that strange modesty of men [sic] of the line, the prudence of the experimenter, but it is
a disaster when they slip into the black hole from which they no longer utter anything but the micro-fascist speech of their dependency and their giddiness: ‘We are the
avantgarde’, ‘We are the marginals.’ (Deleuze & Parnet 1987: 139) The crux of minoritarian politics lies in recognizing that the majority is an abstract and empty representation
of an ideal identity that is linked to particular systems of power and control. The processes of minoritarian-becoming will always trigger the unbecoming of the majoritarian by
collapsing its legitimizing territorializations and triggering new creations. Deleuze observes, ‘The creation … calls for a future form, for a new earth and people that do not yet
exist’ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 108). The becoming of minority politics is creative liberation the future from the majoritarian corruptions; it is also liberating the present from
the futuristic majoritarian desire. Deleuze warns, that a minority borrows majority ways only at the risk of stifling minority creativity, ‘drying up a spring or stopping a flow’
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 276). Minority politics cease to be minoritarian when majoritarian ways are borrowed. For the identitarians, the ‘other’ is invariably the one frozen
into the identity of the enemy camp. No true dialogue is possible with the others. Altogether differently, from the perspective of minority politics the majoritarian politics as
corrupt and alienated. The majoritarian fascism is corruption misrecognized. Becoming minority is shedding off the historically and situationally acquired corruption.
Majoritarians are not fated for ever to be under the spell of majoritarian territory. Majoritarian corruption does not shut off one from the minoritarian breakaway event. Deleuze
puts it, “A people is always a creative minority, and remains one even when it acquires majority’ (Deleuze 1995: 173). Majority and minority are not mutually exclusive two poles.
A majority breaks away into events of minoritarian politics; similarly, a minority can acquire territories and be absorbed into majoritarian counter-event. Becoming is only
becoming minority. Becoming minority is to spurt into events. “There is no becoming-majoritarian; majority is never becoming. All becoming is minoritarian” (Deleuze
&Guattari 1987: 106). Deleuze prophesizes majoritarian ideology has but to go when the corruption is recognized widely (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 469). ‘Ours is becoming the
age of minorities’ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 469). What distinguishes identity politics from minority politics are the majoritarian tendencies of the former: narcissus, conformity
to identities, static representation of identities, and its tendency to territorialize. Exposing the systems of dominations in the claims of race, caste or gender instead of conceiving
them as dominated vs. dominating identities and deconstructing the purity claims within the discourses of dominance and letting off the identities go minoritizes the identity
politics (Deleuze &Guattari 1987: 379). The contention of minority politics is that the majoritarian power is built upon shallow grounds of territorializations though their super
structures appear unshakably grounded. Minority politics deterritorializes the majoritarian claims. Deterritorialisation ‘strips the half of the majoritarian assemblages. It is the
politics of annihilating the transcendental underpinnings of the majoritarian territorializations. It suspends the majoritarian ‘trajectory’ guiding the history of the marginalized.
It suspends the majoritarian train from laying its rail (Bourdieu 1980: 57). It is taking a line of flight from the given history (Deleuze &Guattari 1987: 254). The dissenting lines
of deterritorializsation of minority politics form assemblages outside the circuits of the existing territorialities. The nomadic waves or flows of deterritorialization go from central
layer to periphery, then form a new centre to the new periphery transforming the epistrata towards increased deterritorialization and destratification (Deleuze & Guattari,
Identity politics, instead holds territories and strata for a sense of epistemic
security and tend to prevent collapse of reified identities. Minority politics is fundamentally a politics of
1987:60).
deterritorialization and destratification. It is the politics on one un-becoming of oneself, challenging the intimate narcissus. Baliber writes, “We are, always narcissistically in
search of images of ourselves, when it is structures that we should be looking for’ (Balibar 2002: 100). It is politics of transcending sense of dominance and fascism. Deleuze
Identity politics,
contrarily, fixes its holders to ideological mold of the prescribed identityself. Identity ideologues take identities as sui-genesis entities. They overlook the virtuality of identities.
Identities are assemblages involuted into what they are processed by historically
emergent territorializations. Identities are assembled, dissembled or ensembled according to the contingent territorializations, deterritorializations
and counter territorializations. Identities vanish or acquire different dimensions with reifying or de-reifying current territorializations. The disposition of
Identity politics is to cling to identities. Clinging to identities blinds them to politics
beyond identities. Identity claims are molar and monadic. From the monadic epistemology they find it difficult to
writes, ‘Non-white: we all have to become that, whether we are white, yellow, or black’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 470).
recognize the monad-cracking multiplicities, diversities and contradictions. For the identity ideologues identity explanation is the ultimate panacea. For them the hurdle for
their progress or wellbeing is unquestionably the intentional agency of others of other identities. There ends their explanation. It was evident in Hitler’s presentation of Jews as
those responsible for the German suffering. The ‘clash of civilization’ of the American neo conservatives is another telling tale of identity ideology. Contrary to that, minority
politics is always anti-fascist, antiessentialist, deterritorializing & counter-narcissus. It problematizes the assemblages and its territorial grip over its elements. It exposes the
micro-politics of territorialization. It distinguishes events from counter-events. Its object is not persons bearing one or other identities. It probes into unacknowledged
conditions and open to unintended consequences while also meticulously map conscious, unconscious, tacit operations of dominance and fascism and exposes them to facilitate
de-territorialziation of the oppressive or fascist assemblages. Minority politics exposes the historical and situational ontology of assemblages towards unwinding them. Minority
politics is a means to a higher form of freedom and revolution. It is revolution in the sense of winding back the majoritarian corruption towards ‘becoming nomad’ i.e.
reconstituting free-flowing-unrestrained-nomadic social relations in smooth space (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 36; 1994: 88). It is a move towards undoing the oppositional
dualism of majority vs. minority, destabilizing all identities. Minority politics is fundamentally ethical in the sense it is a politics that avoids ‘becoming fascist’.
politics on the contrary is not guarded from fascist tendencies.
Identity
Wilderson
Perm
Dialogue between oppressed groups is productive
Kelley 99 (robin, Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA.From 2006 to
2011, he was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern
California (USC), Polycultural Me, http://www.utne.com/politics/the-people-inme.aspx, LB)
Vague notions of "Eastern" religion and philosophy, as well as a variety of Orientalist
assumptions, were far more important to the formation of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam
than anything coming out of Africa. And Rastafarians drew many of their ideas from
South Asians, from vegetarianism to marijuana, which was introduced into Jamaica by Indians. Major
black movements like Garveyism and the African Blood Brotherhood are also the
products of global developments. We won't understand these movements until we see
them as part of a dialogue with Irish nationalists from the Easter Rebellion, Russian and Jewish
émigrés from the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, and Asian socialists like India's M.N. Roy and Japan's Sen Katayama.
Indeed, I'm not sure we can even limit ourselves to Earth. How do we make sense of musicians Sun Ra,
George Clinton, and Lee "Scratch" Perry or, for that matter, the Nation of Islam, when we consider the fact that space travel
and notions of intergalactic exchange constitute a key source of their ideas? So-called
"mixed race" children are not the only ones with a claim to multiple heritages. All of us
are inheritors of European, African, Native American, and Asian pasts, even if we can't
exactly trace our bloodlines to these continents. To some people that's a dangerous concept. Too many
Europeans don't want to acknowledge that Africans helped create so-called Western
civilization, that they are both indebted to and descendants of those they enslaved. They
don't want to see the world as One—a tiny little globe where people and cultures are always on
the move, where nothing stays still no matter how many times we name it. To
acknowledge our polycultural heritage and cultural dynamism is not to give up our black
identity. It does mean expanding our definition of blackness, taking our history more seriously, and looking at the rich diversity
within us with new eyes.
At: ontology
Polyculturalism is an effective method to destabilize categories of whiteness
– the affirmation of difference and individualism is critical
Prashad 2011 (vijay, director of the international studies program at trinity college,
everyone was kung fu fighting: afro-asian connections and the myth of cultural purity,
project muse, LB)
This "racism with a distance" ignores our mulatto history, the long waves of linkage that
tie people together in ways we tend to forget. Can we think of "Indian food" (that
imputed essence of the Indian subcontinent), for example, without the tomato (that fruit first
harvested among the Amerindians)? Are not the Maya, then, part of contemporary "Indian culture"?
Is this desire for cultural discreteness part of the bourgeois nationalist (and bourgeois diasporic)
nostalgia for authenticity?5 In search of our mulatto history, there is no end to the kinds
of strange connections one can find. Of course, these links are only "strange" if we take for
granted the preconceived boundaries between peoples, if we forget that the notion of
Africa andAsia, for instance, is very modern and that people have created cross-fertilized
histories for millennia without concern for modern geography. The linguistic ties across the
Indian Ocean, for example, obviate any attempt to say that Gujarat and Tanzania are
disconnected places: Swahili is the ultimate illustration [End Page 52] of our mulatto history, or what
historian Robin Kelley so nicely called our "polycultural" history.6 Bloodlines, biologists now show us, are not
pure, and those sociobiologists who persist in the search for a biologically determined
idea of race miss the mark by far.7 "So-called ‘mixed-race' children are not the only ones
with a claim to multiple heritages. All of us, and I mean ALL of us," Kelley argues, "are the
inheritors of European, African, Native American, and even Asian pasts, even if we can't
exactly trace our blood lines to all of these continents."8 Embarrassed by biological racialism, many
scholars turn to culture as the determinant for social formations (where communities
constructed on biological terms now find the same boundaries intact, but as cultural
ones). Of course centuries of racism have in reality produced racial communities, so that
"race" is indeed a social fact today. But cultural formations are not as discrete as is often
assumed, a revelation that gives rise to notions such as hybrid, which retains within it
ideas of purity and origins (two things melded together).9 Rejecting the posture of racism with a distance, Kelley
argues that our various nominated cultures "have never been easily identifiable, secure in their
boundaries, or clear to all people who live in or outside our skin. We were multi-ethnic
and polycultural from the get go."10 The theory of the polycultural does not mean that
we reinvent humanism without ethnicity, but that we acknowledge that our notion of
cultural community should not be built inside the high walls of parochialism and
ethnonationalism. The framework of polyculturalism uncouples the notions of origins and
authenticity from that of culture. Culture is a process (that may sometimes be seen as a thing), which
has no identifiable origin, and therefore no cultural actor can, in good faith, claim
proprietary interest in what is claimed to be his or her authentic culture. "All the culture
to be had is culture in the making," notes anthropologist Gerd Baumann. "All cultural differences are acts of
differentiation, and all cultural identities are acts of cultural identification."11 Multiculturalism tends toward a
static view of history, with cultures already forged and with people enjoined to respect
and tolerate each cultural world. Polyculturalism, on the other hand, offers a dynamic
view of history, mainly because it argues for cultural complexity, and it suggests that our
communities of the present are historically formed [End Page 53] and that these
communities move between the dialectic of cultural presence and antiracism, between a
demand for acknowledgment and for an obliteration of hierarchy. Bruce Lee's polycultural world
sets in motion an antiracist ethos that destabilizes the pretense of superiority put in place by white supremacy.
Polyculturalism accepts the existence of differences in cultural practice, but it forbids us
to see culture as static and antiracist critique as impossible.
Blackness is not ontological – Black culture is both fluid and hybrid
Kelley 99 (robin, Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA.From 2006 to
2011, he was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern
California (USC), Polycultural Me, http://www.utne.com/politics/the-people-inme.aspx, LB)
Black people were polycultural from the get-go. Most of our ancestors came to these
shores not as Africans, but as Ibo, Yoruba, Hausa, Kongo, Bambara, Mende, Mandingo,
and so on. Some of our ancestors came as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Irish,
English, Italian. And more than a few of us, in North America as well as in the Caribbean and Latin America, have Asian and
Native American roots. Our lines of biological descent are about as pure as O.J.'s blood sample,
and our cultural lines of descent are about as mixed up as a pot of gumbo. What we
know as "black culture" has always been fluid and hybrid. In Harlem in the late 1960s
and 1970s, Nehru suits were as popular—and as "black"—as dashikis, and martial arts
films placed Bruce Lee among a pantheon of black heroes that included Walt Frazier of
the New York Knicks and Richard Rountree, who played John Shaft in blaxploitation
cinema. How do we understand the zoot suit—or the conk—without the pachuco culture
of Mexican American youth, or low riders in black communities without Chicanos? How
can we discuss black visual artists in the interwar years without reference to the
Mexican muralists, or the radical graphics tradition dating back to the late 19th century,
or the Latin American artists influenced by surrealism?
Blackness is not skin deep – identity is a multiplicity
Webster 2k – Prof CSU Los Angeles, http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2000/06/01/twenty-onearguments-for-abolishing-racial-classification/, 6/26/15 BRoche
Reference to persons as members of a race derives from a practice of categorization according
to certain anatomical attributes. However, so indefinite are these attributes, and so deeply flawed is
this classification that social scientists should not be analyzing or explaining race, race relations, racial experiences,
intelligences, poverty, inequality, and crime. Rather, they should be examining the inconsistencies in racial classification. For example, it could be
noted that the selection of skin color, hair type, and facial form to demarcate races is
inadequate. To form races, these anatomical attributes need to appear in a certain pattern. They do
not. Black skin, curly hair, and thick lips do not identify "black people," for countless
numbers of "black people" have nonblack skin, long hair, and thin lips. Second, there are no
definitive advantages in choosing one anatomical attribute over another . The early racial
classifiers focused on skin color, shape of skull, blood type, length of limbs, hair color and texture, and facial forms. Nevertheless, none of these
attributes, or combinations of them, allows a definitive demarcation of races. Some of the persons
assigned to different phenotypic races, that is, races defined according to anatomical attributes, may be assigned to the
same race, when race is defined according to genetic attributes. Thus different biologists find different numbers of races,
and some disdain the concept altogether.
Refuse the construction of race as legitimate – this creates divides in
communities and only furthers oppression
Webster 2k – Prof CSU Los Angeles, http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2000/06/01/twenty-onearguments-for-abolishing-racial-classification/, 6/26/15 BRoche
Thomas' proposition – If men define a situation as real then it is real in its consequences – suggests that social phenomena
that are subjectively "real," by this token, become an objective reality. This conclusion contains
fallacies of ambiguity and equivocation. First, the concept "real" has perhaps the richest
history of controversy in the writings of ancient, modern, and postmodernist philosophers. In the interest
of clarity, no sociologist should cite Thomas' proposition without specifying the sense in which "real" is being used. Second, a close
examination of the proposition would reveal that it is not clear to what "it" refers. What
is "real" in its consequences- the
defining, or the situation? Nevertheless, even if the logical problems in the proposition are ignored, the relevant followup would be an investigation of the conditions under which men define a situation as "real." Popular allusions to "reality" could be a
result of lay persons being tutored within a realist theory of knowledge. This theory of knowledge, dominant in social sciences,
proposes that words reflect things. Hence, to
be valid, a classification or description needs no
justification other than a claim on reality. However, the ascription of an ontologically
representative status to concepts is roundly challenged by Richard Rorty, in Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature, and a host of critics of realist epistemology. Yet there is no need to embrace a postmodernist
perspective in order to expose a specific effect of the realist claim. The notion that races
are things in the real world, as argued by Philippe Rushton, provides an eternal foundation for "race
relations" and an unending flow of explanations, since such relations unfold in political
economic, cultural, psychological, and social structural contexts. Were "races" not taken
as a "reality," their presence in public consciousness would be recognized as the result of
continuing research on racism, past and present racial experiences, racial conditions,
and race relations. However, let Thomas' proposition to be taken to mean: If social scientists define a
phenomenon in a certain way, that definition has corresponding behavioral
consequences. It would then be obvious that the social scientists who study and advocate policies on
"race relations" are themselves the actors who give "race" social meaning and a "real" status.
They then cite this status to justify the further production of "race relations." This production, as well
as social scientists' collaboration with the Census Bureau's project of racial identification and enumeration, marks these scholars as
perhaps unwitting agents of legislative racialization; it
also indicates the interaction between social
science research and government policies. In pursuit of electoral advantages, political representatives pander to
the racialized divisions that "race relations" research generates and conserves. 2. The claim that race is a social
construct begs the question. In society, every phenomenon is, by definition, a social
construct. Why is it not said that race is an illogical construct? This refusal to notice the
logical status of the race concept indicates that social scientists who endorse the racial
paradigm only honorifically refer to "the social construction of race" in order to justify
investigating the experiences of "black people" and "white people." Thus they
themselves construct races, while claiming, in a positivist fashion, to be merely
observing "the social construction of race." Advocates of social constructionism, to quote Anthony Appiah's
comment on W.E.B. Dubois' vacillations on "race" ". . . lead us back into the now familiar move to substitute for the biological
conception of race a sociohistorical one. And that,
as we have seen, is simply to bury the biological
conception below the surface, not to transcend it." (In My Father's House, p. 41). The claim that
race is a social construct confirms its existence and facilitates the perennial study of
"race relations." This confirmation preempts criticisms of the Census Bureau's request
that citizens identify themselves racially and the Bureau's threat that to not state your
race could lead to your community's loss of economic resources.
Conceptions of identity as fixed interprets identity onto a calculable grid of
subjectivity – reformulations of our notions of identity are necessary
Koerner, 12 - Professor of Comparative Literature at UC-Berkeley (Michelle, 2012,
“Line of Escape: Gilles Deleuze’s Encounter with George Jackson” Genre, Volume 44,
Number 2)//jml
In “The Case of Blackness” Moten (2008b: 187) perceptively remarks, “What is inadequate to blackness is
already given ontologies.” What if we were to think of blackness as a name for an
ontology of becoming? How might such a thinking transform our understanding of the relation of blackness to history
and its specific capacity to “think [its] way out of the exclusionary constructions” of history and the thinking of history (Moten
2008a: 1744)? Existing
ontologies tend to reduce blackness to a historical condition, a “lived
experience,” and in doing so effectively eradicate its unruly character as a transformative force. Deleuze and Guattari, I think,
offer a compelling way to think of this unruliness when they write, “What History grasps of the event is its effectuation in states of
affairs or in lived experience, but the event in its becoming, in its specific consistency, in its self- positing as concept, escapes
History” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 110). To bring this relation between blackness and becoming further into the open — toward an
affirmation of the unexpected insinuation of blackness signaled by the use of Jackson’s line as an “event in its becoming” — a few
more words need be said about Deleuze’s method. The use of Jackson’s writing is just one instance of a procedure that we find
repeated throughout Capitalism and Schizophrenia, where we constantly encounter unexpected injections of quotations, names, and
ideas lifted from other texts, lines that appear all of sudden as though propelled by their own force. One
might say they
are deployed rather than explained or interpreted; as such, they produce textual events
that readers may choose to ignore or pick up and run with. Many names are proposed for this method
— “schizoanalysis, micropolitics, pragmatics, diagrammatism, rhizomatics, cartography” (Deleuze and Parnet [1977] 2006: 94) —
but the
crucial issue is to affirm an experimental practice that opposes itself to the
interpretation of texts, proposing instead that we think of a book as “a little machine” and ask “what it functions with, in
connection with what other things does it or does it not transmit intensities?” (Deleuze and Guattari [1980] 1987: 4).8 Studying how
Soledad Brother functions in Deleuze’s books, connecting Jackson’s line to questions and historical issues that are not always
explicitly addressed in those books, involves one in this action. And further, it opens new lines where the intensities transmitted in
Jackson’s book make a claim on our own practice. This
method can be seen as an effort to disrupt the
hierarchical opposition between theory and practice and to challenge some of the major assumptions of
Western Marxism. In an interview with Antonio Negri in the 1990s, Deleuze (1997: 171) clarifies that he and Guattari have
“remained Marxists” in their concern to analyze the ways capitalism has developed but that their political philosophy makes three
crucial distinctions with respect to more traditional theoretical approaches: first, a thinking of “war machines” as opposed to state
theory; second, a “consideration of minorities rather than classes”; and finally, the study of social “lines of flight” rather than the
interpretation and critique of social contradictions. Each of these distinctions, as we will see, resonates with Jackson’s political
philosophy, but as the passage from Anti-Oedipus demonstrates, the concept of the “line of flight” emerges directly in connection to
Deleuze and Guattari’s encounter with Soledad Brother. The
concept affirms those social constructions that
would neither be determined by preexisting structures nor caught in a dialectical
contradiction. It names a force that is radically autonomous from existing ontologies,
structures, and historical accounts. It is above all for this reason that Deleuze and Guattari insist that society be
thought of not as a “structure” but as a “machine,” because such a concept enables the thinking of the
movements, energies, and intensities (i.e., the lines of flight) that such machines transmit. The
thinking of machines forces us not only to consider the social and historical labor involved in producing society but also the ongoing
potentials of constructing new types of assemblages (agencement). One of the key adversaries of this machinic approach is
“interpretation” and more specifically structuralist interpretations of society in terms of contradictions. According to Deleuze and
Guattari ([1980] 1987: 293), structuralism persisted in the “submission of the line to the point” and as a result produced a theory of
subjectivity, and also an account of language and the unconscious, that could not think in terms of movement and construction.
Defining lines only in relation to finite points (the subject, the signifier) produces a
calculable grid, a structure that then appears as the hidden intelligibility of
the system and of society generally. Louis Althusser’s account of the “ideological State apparatus” as the
determining structure of subjectivity is perhaps the extreme expression of this gridlocked position (an example we will come back to
in a later section). Opposed to this theoretical approach, diagrammatism
(to invoke one of the terms given
for this method) maps vectors that generate an open space and the potentials for giving
consistency to the latter.9 In other words, rather than tracing the hidden structures of an intolerable system, Deleuze
and Guattari’s method aims to map the ways out of it.
AT: Black/White binary
Prioritizing certain forms of oppression over another fails to actualize
political change – the exclusion of certain identity categories locks in
hierarchies of power
Prashad 2011 (vijay, director of the international studies program at trinity college,
everyone was kung fu fighting: afro-asian connections and the myth of cultural purity,
project muse, LB)
In 1971, Lee was touted to play Caine in the television show Kung Fu (then called The Warrior), but the studio rejected
him as "too Chinese," a rejection that sent Lee back to Hong Kong and history. Kung Fu became all that Lee rejected. Set in
the nineteenth century, the show has Caine [End Page 57] (half-Chinese, half-white) take on racism by his own individual,
superhuman initiative; other Asians appear as passive and exotic. The
half-white man, a left Chinese American
periodical argued, is guided by "the feudal landlord philosophies of ancient China," and
even the portrayal of nineteenth-century China "is pictured as a place abstracted from
time and place." The Taiping and Boxer revolts have no room in what is essentially a very conservative view of China and
social change.23 Lee would not have played Caine in this light. "It was hard as hell for Bruce to become an
actor," remembers Jim Kelly, the African American kung fu star of Enter the Dragon. And the reason why was
because he was Chinese. America did not want a Chinese hero, and that's why he left for Hong Kong. He was down and
out. He was hurt financially. He told me that he tried to stick it out, but he couldn't get the work he wanted. So he said, "Hey, I'm
gone." My understanding, from talking to Bruce, was that the Kung Fuseries was written for him, and Bruce wanted to do that. But
the bottom line was that the networks did not want to project a Chinese guy as the main hero. But Bruce explained to me that he
believed that all things happened for a reason. Even though he was very upset about it, he felt that everything would work out. He
wasn't going to be denied. I have so much respect for Bruce, because I understand what he went through just by being black in
America. He was able to find a way to get around all those problems. He stuck in there, and wouldn't give up. He knew my struggle,
and I knew his.24 They knew each other's fights.
From 1968 until the late 1970s, the terrain of left
political struggle in the United States was replete with organizations, and many of the
most energetic ones formed themselves cognizant of the problem of racism. In 1967, Stokely
Carmichael and Charles Hamilton's manifesto Black Power argued that coalitions could only be built if each party within the
compact is empowered ("before a group can enter an open society, it must first close ranks").25 Oppressed
groups
should form their own organizations to hold discussions impossible to hold before the
eyes of all people, and they should forge the strength for mutual respect in
broad coalitions.26 While some activists in the late 1960s took positions such
as that the most oppressed must lead the movement, most of those among
the oppressed created organizations under the banner of the "Third World"
as a prelude to the united front. The Black Panther Party, formed in 1967, led the way, but right on their heels came the Young Lords
Organization (a gang from 1956, rectified by Cha Cha Jimenez in 1967), the Brown Berets (a Chicano formation of 1968), the
American Indian Movement (formed in Minneapolis in 1968), the Red Guard Party (of Chinese Americans in San Francisco, in 1969)
and the I Wor Kuen (from New York's Chinatown in 1969).27 Poor white folk formed the Patriot Party as well as Rising Up Angry
(an offshoot of the Hank Williams chapter of Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] and Join ERAP Project). Bernardine Dohrn,
within SDS in 1968, expressed the view that "the best thing that we can do for ourselves, as well as for the Panthers and the
revolutionary black liberation struggle is to build a fucking white revolutionary movement."28 Against
the liberalism of
support came the revolutionary instinct of self-interest politics, here in the guise of the
Weather Underground. Four women of the SDS sounded the clarion call for an autonomous womens' organization when
they wrote in mid-1967, "We find that women are in a colonial relationship to men and we
recognize ourselves as part of the Third World."29 The logic of self-determination as the
preliminary stage for a united front platform, to some extent, explains the proliferation
of left groups constituted around nationality. But each of these organizations worked closely with others in a
piecemeal coalition. The Young Lords worked in close concert with I Wor Kuen, and in 1971, the central committee member Juan
Gonzalez traveled to San Francisco's Chinatown to meet with Asian revolutionaries and others.30 When Amerindian radicals took
Alcatraz in 1970, a detachment of Japanese American radicals unfurled a huge banner, "Japanese Americans Support Native
Americans," painted signs reading, "This is Indian Property" and "Red Power," as well as brought them food.31 The Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) offered their solidarity with Amerindians, Stokely Carmichael offered the keynote statement at the
Arab Student Convention in 1968, the Black Panthers took up the cause of the forty-one Iranian students set for deportation from
the United States because of anti-shah activities, and the Wei Min made common cause with the liberation urges of the Ethiopian
Students Union of Northern California: a vibrant [End Page 59] world of internationalism through nationality, of particular
universalism.32 These
movements acknowledged the strategic importance of
unity, but they knew that unity could not be forged without space for the
efflorescence of oppressed cultures as well as the development of
leadership within the different "nations." In late 1969, Amy Uyematsu at UCLA
wrote, "Yellow power and black power must be two independently-powerful, joint forces
within the Third World revolution to free all exploited and oppressed people of color."33
"Independently-powerful" and yet "joint forces": the movement allowed these two impulses to grow in a dialectical relationship,
without allowing one to gain priority over the other. When DeAnna Lee asked Bobby Seale in 1970 if he had a message for Asians, he
said that "I
see the Asian people playing a very significant part in solving the problems of
their own community in coalition, unity and alliance with Black people because the
problems are basically the same as they are for Brown, Red and poor White Americans—
the basic problem of poverty and oppression that we are all subjected to."34 The problems are
the same, but the political organizations must work independently, and jointly, to create a united front in practice. The complexity of
segregated neighborhoods meant that the idea of nation could not sustain itself at each turn. Asians along the West Coast of the
United States lived among blacks, so that when
the Black Panther Party was formed, Asians gravitated
to it (in much the same way as Asians of another generation worked within the civil rights ambit). Yuri Kochiyama had already
made contact with Malcolm X, but in the late 1960s, several Asians joined the Panthers, such as Richard Aoki (made immortal by
Bobby Seale as "a Japanese radical cat," who "had guns for a motherfucker"35 ), the Chinese Jamaican filmmaker Lee Lew-Lee, and
Guy Kurose of Seattle.36 Aoki, raised in the Topaz concentration camp and then in West Oakland with Huey P. Newton and Seale,
was a charter member of the Panthers and its field marshall, who went underground into the Asian American Political Alliance at UC
Berkeley. Three decades later, Aoki said, "If
you are a person of color there's no other way for you to
go except to be part of the Black liberation struggle. It doesn't mean submerge your own
political identity or your whatever, but the job that has to be done in front, you got to be
there. And I was there. What can I say."37 The welcome by black radicals was not [End Page 60] always so clear.
Moritsuga "Mo" Nishida was raised in Los Angeles, joined a gang (the Constituents from the westside on Crenshaw), and moved into
the orbit of black radicalism. But he was not welcomed: "We
ain't Black so we get this, especially from nonCalifornia bred Blacks who don't understand the Asian oppression and struggle, so to
them, if you're not Black then you're White. So we getting all kind of bullshit like
that."38 If some Asian men found it hard to make the connections, "some sisters were
really politicized," and they interacted with the Panthers in Oakland.39
The black white binary has been used by whiteness to oppress minorities –
a politics of polyculturalism is critical
Alcoff 3 (Linda Alcoff, professor of philosophy at CUNY, “LATINO/AS, ASIAN
AMERICANS, AND THE BLACK-WHITE BINARY”, The Journal of Ethics 7: 5–27,
2003, LB)
I want to start with a story that exemplifies the close association between Latino/as and Asians in the ideological traditions
embedded in the legal history of the U.S. In
1854 the Supreme Court of the State of California defined
Chinese Americans as Indians, that is, Native Americans. This ruling came about after a white man,
George W. Hall, was convicted of murder based upon the eyewitness testimony of a
Chinese American. Hall's lawyer appealed the conviction by invoking the law that said
"no black or mulatto person, or Indian, shall be allowed to give evidence in favor of, or
against a white man."9 In support of his claim that this law was relevant to Hall's case, the defense lawyer
cited the hypothesis that all Native peoples of the Americas were originally from Asia
and traveled to the Western hemisphere over the Bering Straights. Thus, he argued, the
Chinese American man was actually the racial ancestor of Native Americans, and
because the latter were excluded from testifying in court, this Chinese man should be
excluded also. The Supreme Court of the State of California accepted this argument and
upheld the appeal, freeing Hall, and thus linking the legal status of Asian Americans and
all those with indigenous American ancestry, a category that includes many or most
Latino/as. The story does not end there. The Supreme Court of the State of California was
concerned that as a scientific hypothesis the Bering straight theory might one day be
disproved, which would then destroy the basis for Chinese exclusion in the courts and
allow them to give testimony. In order to avoid this outcome, the Court decided to embellish the
arguments made in appeal. Justice Charles J. Murray interpreted legal precedent to
argue that the terms "black" and "white" are oppositional terms, from which he
concluded that "black" must mean "nonwhite" and "white" must exclude all people of
color. Thus, by the law of binary logic, Chinese Americans, after having become Native
American, then also became black. Of the many questions that one might like to go back and pose to Murray,
perhaps the most obvious is the following: if "black" and "white" are oppositional terms, then, instead
of "black" meaning "nonwhite," does it not just as logically follow that "white" could
mean "nonblack," in which case all people of color except African Americans would be
white? This conclusion is no more or less fallacious or absurd than Murray's conclusion that "black" means "nonwhite," a
conclusion that exceeded even the "one drop rule" in holding that one can be black even if one has no African ancestry at all.
Although this
case began with a strategy to link the Chinese to Amer ican Indians, it ends in
a ruling that prescribes a black/white binary. And it suggests that by use of the black/white binary to
conceptualize all racial identities in the U.S., and by defining whites as those without one drop of "other"
blood, it became possible to separate whites out (in reality, a specific group of whites),
and then protect and maximize white privilege.10 Even though it coalesces the conditions of the various
communities of color into one rubric, suggesting the possibility of solidarity, it also defines them essentially by their relation to
whites, as non-whites. "White"
becomes the pivot point around which all groups are defined.
This allowed the state to make one all-purpose argument against the rights of nonwhites, thus increasing the efficiency with which it could maintain discrimination. Asian
Americans and Latino/as have been tossed back and forth across this black/white binary
for 150 years.11 To continue with the example of Chinese Americans, in 1860 Louisiana, Chinese Americans were classi fied
as white. By 1870 they were classified as Chinese. But in 1900, the children of Chinese and non-Chinese parents were reclassified as
either white or black. Other states had similarly convoluted histories of classifi cation. In
1927 the U.S. Supreme
Court ended this confusion and defined the Chinese as nonwhite, thus more firmly subjecting them
to all the segregationist and Jim Crow legislation then in effect. Similar stories of variable racial classification can be told about
Mexicans in Texas and in New Mexico, Japanese in California, and other groups. Needless to say, the variable classifications tell a
story of strategic reasoning in which argu ments for legal discriminations are deployed against people of color by whatever
opportune classification presents itself in the context. Contrary to what one might imagine, it has not always or even generally been
to the advantage of Asian Americans and Latino/as to be classi fied as white.12 An illustration of this is found in another important
legal case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954, just two weeks before they issued the decision in Brown vs. Board of
Education. The
case of Hernandez vs. Texas involved a Mexican American man convicted of
murder by an all white jury and sentenced to life imprisonment.13 His lawyer appealed
the conviction by arguing that the absence of Mexicans on the jury was discriminatory,
making reference to the famous Scottsboro case in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned (after many years) the conviction of
nine African American men on the grounds of an absence of African Americans from the jury. But in the Hernandez case, the
Supreme Court of the State of Texas ruled that Mexicans were white people of Spanish
descent, and therefore that there was no discrimination in the all-white make-up of the
jury. Forty years later, Hernandez's lawyer, James DeAnda, recounted how he made his argument appealing this ruling: Right
there in the Jackson County Courthouse, where no Hispanic had served on any kind of a
jury in living memory because Mexicans were white and so it was okay to bring them
before all-white juries, they had two men's rooms. One had a nice sign mat just said
MEN on it. The other had a sign on it that said COLORED MEN and below that was a
hand scrawled sign that said HOMBRES AQUI [men here]. In that jury pool, Mexicans
may have been white, but when it came to nature's functions, they were not.14
The K makes whiteness impossible to destroy – try or die for the aff
Alcoff 3 (Linda Alcoff, professor of philosophy at CUNY, “LATINO/AS, ASIAN
AMERICANS, AND THE BLACK-WHITE BINARY”, The Journal of Ethics 7: 5–27,
2003, LB)
Thus, thinking of race in terms only of black and white produces a sense of inevitability to
white domination which is not empirically supportable. I believe this issue of imagery is very significant.
Whites must come to realize that maintaining white dominance for much longer is
simply not a viability, short of fascism, or significantly expanding the fascist treatments
that many communities already experience. By maintaining the black/white binary we
only persist in falsely representing the realities of race in the U.S.; by opening up the
binary to rainbow images and the like we can more accurately and thus helpfully present
the growing and future conditions within which political action and contestations will
occur. This is in everyone's interests. For this reason, the increasingly high profile of Asian Americans,
Native Americans, and Latino/as is all to the good. It may also someday lead away from
the imagery of oppositionality, or mutually exclusive interests, which the very terms
black and white have long conveyed, and move toward an imagery of pluralism (which has
some of its own problems, I realize, but which can more readily recognize the diverse ways in which alliances and differences can
occur). 7) The
next argument that I would make in regard to the black/white binary is that
it mistakenly configures race imagistically as exclusively having to do with color, as if
color alone determines racial identity (which has not been the case even for African Americans), and it
makes it seem as if between African Americans and European Americans all the other
races must be lined up somewhere on this continuum of color since "white" and "black"
clearly represent the polar extremes. There is certainly a racist continuum of color
operating in this and in many countries,
A politics of inclusion is critical – we can never understand oppression
without understanding the complexities of oppression
Alcoff 3 (Linda Alcoff, professor of philosophy at CUNY, “LATINO/AS, ASIAN
AMERICANS, AND THE BLACK-WHITE BINARY”, The Journal of Ethics 7: 5–27,
2003, LB)
One clear lesson to be learned from this legal history is that race is a construction that is variable enough to
be stretched opportunistically as the need arises to maintain and expand discrimination.
The fact that Latino/as and Asians had to be put into either one of two categories - black and
white - has not been of benefit to them. Nonetheless, one might take these legal cases to indicate that
discrimination against African Americans was the paradigm case which U.S. courts stretched when they could to
justify discrimination against other nonwhites, and thus to provide support for the
black/white paradigm of race. The distinguished historian John Hope Franklin argued in this way at the first official
meeting of the Race Relations Commission which was convened by former U.S. President Bill Clinton to advance his initiative for a
national dialogue on race. Franklin maintained that "racism
in the black/white sphere" developed first in
North America when slavery was introduced in the Jamestown colony in 1619 and has
served as a model for the treatment of race in the U.S. Attorney Angela Oh, also serving on the
commission, argued against Franklin on this point, using the example of the uprising of April 29, 1992 in Los Angeles to show that
the specific history and racist treatment of Asian Americans needs to be accounted for in order to understand what occurred during
that event. "I
just want to make sure we go beyond the black-white paradigm. We need to go
beyond that because the world is about much more than that ..." she said.16 Frank Wu, commenting
on this exchange, tries diplomatically to unite both sides, affirming that "African Americans bear the greatest burden of racial
discrimination" and that the Los Angeles uprising needs to be understood in relation both to African American history as well as
Korean American history (and, I would add, Latino/a history, since Latino/as were the largest number of arrested). Wu advocates
the following: Whatever
any of us concludes about race relations, we should start
by including all of us ... Our leaders should speak to all individuals, about
every group, and for the country as a whole. A unified theory of race, race
relations, and racial tensions must have whites, African Americans, and all
the rest, and even within groups must include Arab Americans, Jewish
Americans, white ethnicities, and so forth. Our theory is an inadequate
account otherwise.17 The question Wu does not address directly is whether the
continued acceptance of the black/white paradigm will allow such a comprehensive
account. The reality of race in the U.S. has always been more complicated than black/white. The initial exclusionary laws
concerning testimony in court, as mentioned earlier, grouped "blacks, mulattoes, and Native Americans." The Chinese laborers
brought to the West in the 1800's had specific rulings and ideological justifications used against them, restricting their right not only
to vote or own property but even to marry other Chinese. This latter ruling outlasted slavery and was justified by invoking images of
Asian overpopulation. To avoid reproduction, Chinese women were allowed to come as prostitutes but not as wives, a restriction no
other group faced. The Mexicans defeated in the Mexican-American War were portrayed as cruel and cowardly barbarians, and
although the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ratified in 1848 guaranteed the Mexicans who stayed in the U.S. full rights of citizenship,
like the treaties with Native Americans neither local govern ments nor the federal courts upheld the Mexicans right to vote or
respected the land deeds they held before the Treaty.18 By the time of the Spanish American War of 1898 the image of barbarism
used against Mexicans was consistently attributed to a Latin-Catholic heritage and expanded for use throughout Latin American and
the Caribbean, thus subsequently affecting the immigrant populations coming from these countries as well as justifying U.S. claims
of hegemony in the region.19 The so-called Zoot
Suit riots in Los Angeles in 1943 targeted Mexicans
and their ethnically specific style of dress. The attempts made to geographically sequester and also to forcibly
and totally assimilate Native American groups were not experienced by any other group, and had their own ideological justifi cations
that combined contradictory images of the Great Chain of Being with the romanticized Noble Savage. Native
peoples were
represented as vanquished, disappearing, and thus of no account. The paradigm of an
antiblack racism intertwined with slavery does not help to illuminate these and other
specific experiences of other nonwhite groups, where ideologies often relied on charges
of evil, religious backwardness, horde mentalities, being a disappearing people, and
other projections not used in regard to African Americans. The hegemony of the black/white paradigm
has stymied the development of an adequate account of the diverse racial realities in the U.S., and weakened the general theories of
racism which attempt to be truly inclusive.
This has had a negative effect on our ability to develop
effective solutions to the various forms racism can take, to make common cause against
ethnic and race based forms of oppression and to create lasting coalitions, and has
recently played a significant role in the demise of affirmative action. I will support these
claims further in what follows
The black white binary destroys individual culture – it’s the most
destructive form of whiteness
Alcoff 3 (Linda Alcoff, professor of philosophy at CUNY, “LATINO/AS, ASIAN
AMERICANS, AND THE BLACK-WHITE BINARY”, The Journal of Ethics 7: 5–27,
2003, LB)
The discourse of social justice in regard to issues involving race has been dominated in
the U.S. by what many theorists name the "black/white paradigm," which operates to
govern racial classifications and racial politics in the U.S., most clearly in the
formulation of civil rights law but also in more informal arenas of discussion. Juan Perea
defines this paradigm as the conception that race in America consists, either exclusively or primarily, of only two constituent racial
groups, the Black and White ... In addition, the
paradigm dictates that all other racial identities and
groups in the United States are best understood through the Black/White binary
paradigm.5 He argues that this paradigm operates even in recent anti-racist theory such as that
produced by Andrew Hacker, Cornel West, and Toni Morrison, though it is even clearer in works by liberals such as Nathan Glazer.
Openly espousing this view, Mary Francis Berry, former chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, has stated that the
U.S. is
comprised of "three nations, one Black, one White, and one in which people strive to be
something other than Black to avoid the sting of White Supremacy."6 To understand race
in this way is to assume that racial discrimination operates exclusively through antiblack racism. Others can be affected by racism, on this view, but the dominance of the black/white
paradigm works to interpret all other effects as "collateral damage" ultimately caused by
the same phenomena, in both economic and psychological terms, in which the given
other, whether Latino/a, Asian American, or something else, is placed in the category of
"black" or "close to black." In other words, there is basically one form of racism, and one
continuum of racial identity, along which all groups will be placed. The black/white
paradigm can be understood either descriptively or prescriptively (or both): as making a
descriptive claim about the fundamental nature of racializations and racisms in the U.S.,
or as prescribing how race shall operate and thus enforcing the applicability of the
black/white paradigm.7 Several Latino/a and Asian American theorists, such as Elaine Kim, Gary Okihiro, Elizabeth
Martinez, Juan Perea, Frank Wu, Dana Takagi, and community activists such as Bong Hwan Kim have argued that the black/white
paradigm is not adequate, certainly not sufficient, to explain racial realities in the U.S. They have thus contested its claim to
descriptive adequacy, and argued that the hegemony of the black/white paradigm in racial thinking has had many deleterious effects
for Latino/as and Asian Americans.8 In this paper, I will summarize and discuss what I consider the strongest of these arguments
and then develop two further arguments. It is important to stress that the
black/white paradigm does have
some descriptive reach, as I shall discuss, even though it is inadequate when taken as the
whole story of racism. Asian Americans and Latino/as are been positioned as either
"near black" or "near white," but this is not nearly adequate to understanding their
ideological representation or political treatment in the U.S. One might also argue that, although the
black/white paradigm is not descriptively adequate to the complexity and plurality of racialized identities, it yet operates with
prescriptive force to organize these complexities into its bipolar schema. Critics, however, have contested both the claim of
descriptive adequacy as well as prescriptive efficacy. That is, the
paradigm does not operate with effective
hegemony as a prescriptive force. I believe these arguments will show that continuing to
theorize race in the U.S. as operating exclusively through the black/white paradigm is
actually disadvantageous for all people of color in the U.S., and in many respects for
whites as well (or at least for white union households and the white poor).
The black white binary is disempowering, not productive and destroys the
real possibility of change
Alcoff 3 (Linda Alcoff, professor of philosophy at CUNY, “LATINO/AS, ASIAN
AMERICANS, AND THE BLACK-WHITE BINARY”, The Journal of Ethics 7: 5–27,
2003, LB)
roberto Suro argues that the black/white binary disadvantages Latino/as and other people of
color who are not African Americans by forcing them to adopt the strategies of civil
rights litigation even though it was "not particularly well-suited to Latino/as" who are a
much more diverse group.24 For example, any meaningful redress of economic discrimination
affecting Latino/as and Asian Americans will need to disaggregate these groups, as some
"target of opportunity" programs today in fact do, since the gap between median
incomes in Filipino and Japanese households, or between Puerto Rican and Cuban
households, makes aver aging these incomes useless as an indicator of economic
success. Richard Delgado argues that "If one's paradigm identifies only one group as deserving of
protection, everyone else is likely to suffer." Current civil rights legislation, in Delgado's
view, has provided legal advantages for African Americans, unwittingly perhaps, over
other people of color. I do not take Delgado to be implying that the legislation has effectively benefited the African
American population and been applied forcefully and universally, but that the language of the law, however much
it has yet to be applied, identifies only one group and this is a problem. Just as the protection of
the right of property advantages the propertied, and the protection of free speech increases the influence of those who are articulate
and can afford microphones, TV air time, and so on ... the Equal Protection Clause produces a social good, namely equality, for those
falUng under its coverage - blacks and whites. These it genuinely helps - at least on occasion. But it leaves everyone else
unprotected.25 Put in more general terms, these arguments can be summarized as follows: 1)
The black/white
paradigm has disempowered various racial and ethnic groups from being
able to define their own identity, to mark their difference and specificity beyond
what could be captured on this limited map. Instead of naming and describing our own
identity and social circumstance, we have had descriptions foisted on us from outside.
2) Asian Americans and Latino/as have historically been ignored or
marginalized in the public discourse in the U.S. on race and racism. This is a problem for two
reasons, first, because it is simply unfair to be excluded from what concerns one, and
second, because it "immigrants" refer to more recent arrivals. Thus Asian and Latino/a
families who have lived in the U.S. for multiple generations are no more "immigrant"
than the German and English families here. has considerably weakened the analysis of
race and racism in the mainstream discussions. To explain the social situation of Asian Americans or
Latino/as simply in terms of their de jure and de facto treatment as nonwhites is to describe our condition only on the most shallow
terms. We
must be included in the discussions so that a more adequate account can be
developed. 3) By eliminating specificities within the large "black" or
nonwhite group, the black/white binary has undercut the possibility of
developing appropriate and effective legal and political solutions for the
variable forms that racial oppression can take. A broad movement for civil
rights does not require that we ignore the specific circumstances of
different racial or ethnic identities, nor does it mandate that only the similarities can figure into
the formulation of protective legislation. I will discuss an example of this problem, one that concerns the
application of affirmative action in higher education, at the end of this essay. 4) Another major disadvantage
of eliminating specificities within the large "black" or nonwhite group is
that one cannot then either under stand or address the real conflicts and
differences within this amalgam of peoples. The black/white paradigm proposes
to understand all conflicts between communities of color through anti-black racism,
when the reality is often more complex. 5) For all these reasons, the black/white
paradigm seriously undermines the possibility of achieving coalitions.
Without being a conspiracy theorist, it is obvious that keeping us in conflict with each
other and not in coalition is in the interests of the current power structure. I would add to these
arguments the following two. 6) The black/white binary and the constant invocation of
all race discourses and conflicts as between blacks and whites has produced
an imaginary of race in this country in which a very large white majority
confronts a relatively small black minority, which has the effect of
reenforcing the sense of inevitability to white domination.
We should focus on white supremacy and its effects on a multiplicity of
groups rather than concentrating only on anti-Blackness—the Black-white
binary essentializes Blackness, ignores the shifting alignments of race, and
makes collective resistance impossible
IIJIMA 1997 (Chris K. Iijima, CONTENT: THE ERA OF WE-CONSTRUCTION: RECLAIMING THE
POLITICS OF ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN IDENTITY AND REFLECTIONS ON THE CRITIQUE OF
THE BLACK/WHITE PARADIGM, 29 Colum. Human Rights L. Rev. 47, Fall)
The question of whether racial identity contains implicit political identities has become an even more
important issue given the changing demographics of American society. Confusion about the content
and implications of racial positioning will serve only to reinforce the present racial
status quo. In the United States, a bipolar black/white para-digm of race relations has been
the framework upon which a vocabulary has been erected to deal with race issues. n64
As immigration has changed the demographics of American society over the last thirty years,
and as African Americans have decreased as a percentage of America's population of
color, legal scholars have taken an increasingly critical look at the old black/white
paradigm and found it wanting. n65 In crucial areas--affirmative action, interracial
conflict in the inner city, redistricting--the players are not simply black and white but a
panoply of races and interests. n66 [*69]
Many scholars of color criticize the old paradigm because it cannot adequately account for
the "new" players in the scenario. n67 Critics of the old paradigm note that it cannot even
adequately consider class, gender, or any other identity that intersects with race. In fact,
some say it fails in fundamental ways to address the growing phenomenon of multiracial
identities. n68
Yet the process of deconstructing the old black/white paradigm carries with it new
dangers. Although narrowly constructed, it has had real value for those wishing to raise issues
of white supremacy and the subordination of people of color. The original paradigm, while
constructing and reaffirming white dominance, also permitted a useful coun-ter-focus on the effect and
operation of white supremacy. While progressive scholars and activists agree that the black/white
paradigm must be dismantled to make room for more sophisticated and nuanced models, the focus on
the effects of white supremacist ideology must remain at the core of the analysis.
Academics and legal scholars, as well as popular media, are addressing the issue of whether the traditional
bipolar black/white paradigm of race relations is a coherent framework. n69
American society has never been strictly black and white. Indeed, the "multiracialness"
of America is no new phenomenon. "Black" has, in fact, long been a multiracial, multihued color: n70
Even on its own terms, race has never been a black and white matter. There have always been as
many shades of black and brown as there have been individuals who identified
themselves or were identified by others, by that concept. There have always been Native
Americans, Chicanos, and Asian immigrants. In an earlier era, the various white ethnic
groups were considered to be distinct races. n71
One of the pernicious effects of the old paradigm has been the creation of an incoherent
positioning of racial groups with respect to one another. In Los Angeles, during the uprising
after the Rodney King [*70] verdict, there was much analysis of the conflict between the
Korean Americanand African American communities that emerged in the disturbance. n72 It
is significant to note that in the construction of the conflict, nativist arguments that Koreans were
foreigners and less American positioned African Americans as "white" relative to Asians.
n73 On the other hand, Korean Americans were also placed within the entrepreneurial
American Dream and positioned as white. n74 This kind of positioning becomes
coherent only if the assumptions of the old paradigm and the placement of whiteness
within it are accepted as the operating framework. n75 Moreover, the racialization of
identity within this bipolarity submerges class and gender, while essentializing race. n76
The black/white paradigm has also forced other marginalized groups to distinguish
themselves from black people in order to avoid being treated as poorly: n77
The black white paradigm is an intriguing piece of white supremacy. Although I am black, I
will not defend it be-cause black people certainly didn't set up this paradigm. . . .But this paradigm has
force. Other people of color have tried to argue their differences from black Americans so they won't be
treated like black Americans. Legally, it's a perfectly defensible strategy. [*71]
Unfortunately, in the current political context, it's had some really detrimental effects
particularly as far as doing cross-cultural organizing. n78
Latina/o Identity
Racism =/= color
Alcoff ‘6 (Linda Martín Alcoff, Prof. of Philosophy at CUNY, Visible Identities: Race,
Gender, and the Self, Oxford Scholarship Online, LB)
Racial oppression works on multiple axes, I would argue, with color being the most
dominant and currently the most pernicious. But color is not exhaustive of all the forms
racial oppression can take. The most pejorative terms used against Asian Americans
often have a racial connotation but one without a color component— ‘‘Chinks,’’ ‘‘slanteyes,’’ and, for the Vietnamese, ‘‘gooks.’’ These terms denigrate a whole people, not a particular set of customs or
a specific history, and thus parallel the essentializing move of racist discourse that universalizes
negative value across a group. The two most pejorative terms widely used against Latinos in this country have been
the terms ‘‘spic’’—a word whose genealogy references people who were heard by Anglos as saying ‘‘no spic English’’—and ‘‘wetback.’’
The first invokes the denigration of language, the second denigrates both where people came from and how they got here: from
Mexico across the Rio Grande. Mexican Americans were also called ‘‘greasers,’’ which connoted the condition of their hair, not their
skin color. Thus, these
terms demonstrate the possibility of a racialization and racism that
works by constructing and then denigrating racialized features and characteristics other
than skin color. We might think of these as two independent axes of racialization that
operate through physical features other than color, and through genealogies of cultural
origin. There is, then, the color axis, the physical- characteristics-other-than-color axis, and the cultural-origin axis. The
discrimination against Asian Americans and Latinos has also operated very strongly on
a fourth axis, ‘‘nativism.’’ Nativism is a prejudice against immigrants; thus it is distinct,
though often related to, xenophobia or the rejection of foreigners. Acun˜ a explains that historical
nativism is also distinct from anthropological nativism, which refers to a ‘‘revival of indigenous culture,’’ because historical nativism
refers to the belief of some Anglo-Americans that they are ‘‘the true Americans, excluding even the Indian’’ because they represent in
their cultural heritage the ‘‘idea’’ of ‘‘America’’ (1988, 158).5 On this view, the
problem with Asian Americans and
Latinos is not just that they are seen as foreign; they are seen as ineluctably foreign. Their
cultures of origin are seen as so inferior (morally and politically if not intellectually), they are incapable of and unmotivated toward
assimilation to the superior mainstream white Anglo culture. They
want to keep their languages, demand
instruction in public schools in their primary languages, and they often maintain their
own holidays, cuisines, religions, and living areas (the latter sometimes by choice). Despite the fact
that Mexican Americans have been living within the current U.S. borders for longer than
most Anglo-Americans, they are all too often seen as squatters on U.S. soil, interlopers
who ‘‘belong’’ elsewhere. This ‘‘xenophobia directed within’’ has been especially virulent
at specific times in our history, during and after both world wars, for example, and is
enjoying a resurgence since 9/11 and the war against Iraq.
The census bureau is corrupt and the census centralizes state power
Prewitt, 14 - Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University. He served as
director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001 (Kenneth, “What Is Your Race?
The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans”
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10032.html 2014)//jml
There was a racial classification scheme in america’s first census (1790), as there was in the next twenty-two censuses, which brings us to the present. Though the classification
, the underlying definition of America’s racial
hierarchy never escaped its origins in the eighteenth- century. Even the enormous changing of the racial landscape
was altered in response to the political and intellectual fashions of the day
in the civil rights era failed to challenge a dysfunctional classification, though it did bend it to new purposes. Nor has the demographic upheaval of our pres- ent time led to much
fresh thinking about how to measure America.
It is, finally, time to escape that past. Twenty-first-century statistics should not be governed
They poorly serve the nation, especially how it
by race thinking that is two and a half centuries out of date.
understands and manages the color line and the nativity line—what separates us as
races and what separates us as native born and foreign born. what are Statistical races? On April 1, 2010, the
American population numbered more than 308 million. When the Census Bureau finished with its decade population count it hurried to inform the president and the Congress
how many of those 308 million Americans resided in each of our fifty states. The nation requires this basic fact to reapportion congressional seats and electoral college votes,
allowing America’s representative democracy to work according to its constitutional design (see chapter 2). Immediately after this most basic population fact was announced, the
Census Bureau told us how many of the 308 million Americans belonged to one of these five races: White, African American, Amer- ican Indian, Asian, Native Hawaiian. The
bureau reported that a few million Americans belonged to not just one of these five but to two or more. Simultaneously, the bureau reported how many Americans were
Hispanics—which, the government insists, is not a race at all but an ethnic group. Incidentally, not all Hispanics got that message, be- cause about half of them filled in a census
Hispanics, however, are not a race. Hispanics
are expected to be Hispanics and also to self-identify as one or more of the
five major race groups listed above (this is explained in chapter 6). What perhaps puzzles the reader is why race statistics are so
line allowing Americans to say they belonged to “some other race.”
terri- bly important that they are publicly announced simultaneously with the population figures mandated for reapportionment. You may also be puzzled that the census form
(fig. 1) dedicates so much of its space to the race and Hispanic question but has no space for education, health, employment, or marital status questions. Are such matters less
import- ant than the country’s racial profile? We will examine such puzzles. It is important that we do so because the race and Hispanic questions used in the census have a very
long reach. A version of these questions is used in hundreds of government surveys—federal, state, and local—and in official administrative record keeping that captures traits of
Americans from the moment of birth to their death: vital statistics, military records, and education and health data. Further, because the statistics resulting from a voracious
appetite for information in our modern nation-state are embedded in law, regulations, and policies, there are thousands of private-sector institutions—universities, hospitals,
America has statistical races.
America’s statistical
races are not accidents of history. They have been deliberately constructed and
reconstructed by the govern- ment. They are tools of government, with political
purposes and policy consequences—more so even than the biological races of the nineteenth century or the socially constructed races from
twentieth-century anthro- pology or what are termed identity races in our current times. Whether these biological, socially
constructed, or identity races are “real” is a se- rious matter, but they are of interest in this book only as they
condition what the government defines as our statistical races. What, specifically, are statistical races? Organized
counting of any kind—and certainly a census is organized counting—requires counters
to know what they are counting, which in turn depends on a classifi- cation scheme.
Statistical races are by-products of the categories used in the government’s racial
classification. And what do the actual 2010 census categories produce? Though you cannot easily tell by looking at
the census form, the categories are designed to produce two statistical ethnicities and
five statistical races. The ethnicities are Hispanic and Non Hispanic, though this is not evident
from a question in which the term ethnicity does not appear. The five statistical races are White, Black,
American Indian, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, which we will learn in chapter
corporations, volun- tary organizations—doing business with the government that collect matching race statistics.
What they are, how we got them, how we use them, and whether today we want or need them are questions that shape this book.
2 directly derive from a color-based division of the world’s population by eighteenth-century natural scientists—white, black, red, yellow, and brown. With these basics
the census form then unleashes the combinations that result from the “mark one
or more” instruction. We will see later how these many combinations have not, as yet, been used to make public policy. They became part
of the census to fulfill expressive demands for recognition. Then there is whatever
appears on the “some other” line, though again these counts do not become statistical
races. So, whatever you think might be going on in these census questions, the political and policy intent is to count
the Hispanics separately from everyone else, and to then sort every
American, including Hispanics, into five primary races. When I use the term statistical races, it refers to
established,
these five groups plus the Hispanic ethnicity. If you are now confused, you are on your way to understanding why I’ve written this book. That statistical races are real there is no
doubt. Law courts, legislatures, executive agencies, media, election campaigns, advocacy groups, corporate planners, university admission offices, hospitals, employment
agencies, and others endlessly talk about “how many” African Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, American In- dians, Whites, and Hispanics there are—and how fast their
numbers are growing, how many have jobs, graduate from high school, are in prison, serve in the military, are obese or smoke, own their homes, or marry each other. If the
statistical races are real and important, why does the census form fail to make that clear? In fact, if you take a closer look at the ques- tions you will be even more confused.
You should be perplexed that one census-designated race—White—is simply
a color. Nothing else is said. The next race is a color, Black (and Negro, which is another way to say Black), but also a descent group—that is,
Americans whose ancestors are from the African continent—and in some respects an “ethnicity” as well. Today’s immigrants from Ghana or Ethiopia also go into that cate- gory.
Then color drops out of the picture altogether. A civil status enters. American Indians/Alaska Natives belong to a race by virtue of
tribal membership, which has a clear definition in American law; they can also belong to that race by declaring membership in a principal tribe, which is not a legal status but a
self-identification. Look at the census question again. With Whites, Blacks, and Native Americans now listed, there fol- lows a long list of nationality groups. If we read the
question stem liter- ally, each of these is a race. The Chinese, the Koreans, the Samoans are presented as if they are independent races. We are not, however, sup- posed to
understand the question literally, but to understand that we become part of the Asian race or the Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander race by checking a national origin or writing
one in. Oddly, however, the term Asian only incidentally appears in the question, defining persons from India in a way that doesn’t confuse them with American Indians, and
inviting write-in responses, where the examples listed are again na- tionality groups. With this nationality nomenclature in mind you might look back at the question on
There is no box indicating
Hispanic, but several boxes labeled with nationalities and a write-in space again guided
by nationality examples. In a nation famous for its ethnic diversity, you might now be asking, is the census telling us that there are only two ethnic groups
Hispanic/Latino/Spanish origin (terms used inter- changeably), where you will see that it is similarly constructed.
that matter (Hispanic and non-Hispanic) while ignoring all white European national origin groups (Swedes, Germans, Italians, Irish, Poles, and Russians, among others)? It
We will discuss in detail
the absence of a coherent rationale. As an astute scholar has written, the Census Bureau “has no
choice but to rely on incoherent categories if it hopes to measure race in the
United States” because, he continues, “race arises out of (fundamentally
irrational) social practices.”1 A large part of the story told in the chapters to follow explains how “incoherent categories” result in
incoherent statistical races, which derive not only from social practices but equally from policy goals.
seems so. It’s hard to find the underlying rationale for what appears, and what doesn’t, in these two ethnoracial questions.
The concept of race and the black/white binary excludes Latina/Latino
identity
Perea 97 (Juan Perea is a Professor of Law at the University of Florida College of Law,
“LATINA/0 IDENTITY AND PAN-ETHNICITY: TOWARD LATCRIT SUBJECTIVITIES:
Five Axioms in Search of Equality” 2 Harvard Latino Law Review 231. Fall, 1997.
LexisNexus.)JG
Axiom II. The concepts of "Race" and "Racism" must be amplified to promote Latina/o
equality.∂ Our understanding of race must be amplified so that it encompasses all peoples afflicted by racism. As Joel Kovel
wrote insightfully, "racism antecedes the notion of race, indeed, it generates the races." n9 Our understanding of race
and racism must [*234] be amplified so that the concepts also encompass ethnic
characteristics, which often form the basis for prejudice and racism against Latinos/as,
Asian Americans and Blacks. The concept of ethnicity, in turn, must also be amplified and informed by
an understanding of racism, which all too often is left out of discussions of ethnic groups
and their presumed ability to assimilate. Neither the concept of "race," as currently understood, nor the concept
of "ethnicity," standing alone, will enable us to better understand the racism that affects Blacks, Latinos/as, Asian Americans, Native
Americans and other racialized groups.∂ As we currently understand "race," it is
entirely dominated by a binary
Black/White paradigm in which only two races exist with legitimacy in the United
States: the Black and the White. This binary paradigm has a stranglehold on the consciousness of most people in this
country. It excludes Latino/as from public view and consideration comprehensively and
with regularity. I will give one example: the national reporting of the recent Los Angeles riots and what we
take to be facts about those riots.∂ The media presented the riots as though they were a conflict
between Blacks and Whites, symbolized by the videotaped violence against Reginald Denny, and between Blacks and
Korean-Americans, the latter presented as "good," upwardly striving ethnics. With the possible exception of local California media,
the national media ignored entirely the multiple roles of Latinos/as in these riots:∂ Most of
the early victims of crowd violence were Latino/a;∂ One-third of the dead were Latino/a;∂ Between twenty and forty percent of the
businesses damaged were Latino/a owned;∂ One-half of those arrested were Latino/a. n10∂ ∂ [*235] These statistics all make perfect
sense, because fully half of the population of South Central Los Angeles is Latino/a; the Latino/a community there was bound to
have been deeply involved in the riots.∂ The
lesson I draw from the missing stories of Latino/a
victimization and criminality in the Los Angeles riots is that significant racial events in this
country are perceived and understood only within a binary Black/White paradigm, n11 and
sometimes with little regard for what actually happened.∂ The persistent reproduction of the binary Black/White paradigm occurs as
well across time in some of the leading literature on race in America: from Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma, n12 to the 1968
Kerner Report which concluded that "our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal" n13 to
Andrew Hacker's book Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal. n14 ∂ The
concept of race,
understood as the Black/White binary paradigm, does not promote equality for Latino/a
people because, in part, many races and ancestries constitute Latino/a people, one of whose salient traits is racial mixture. Many
races, in a genetic or biological sense, constitute Latino/a people, since racial mixture with Europeans began after the arrival of the
Spanish in the sixteenth century. This includes blacks, browns, beiges, whites and colors in-between. This high degree of racial
mixture is well illustrated from the beginnings of European colonization of the [*236] current United States by the first census of Los
Angeles, conducted by Spanish authorities in 1781. Only two of the forty-six persons counted, approximately four percent, were
Spaniards; the vast majority were identified as Indians, mestizos, mulattoes, and blacks. n15 Historians and scholars of racial
mixture have noted that "virtually all Latinos are . . . multiracial." n16 Racial
mixture, in a genetic or biological
sense, does not fit a binary Black/White paradigm and disrupts this paradigm.∂ Because
"race" is commonly understood to mean Black or White, arguments by analogy to race have generally not been helpful in recognizing
or redressing claims of discrimination against Latinos/as. The virtual failure of Title VII and jurisprudence under the equal
protection clause to provide any redress for claims of discrimination brought by Latinos/as illustrates the failure of arguments by
analogy. In Hernandez v. New York, n17 the case allowing the peremptory exclusion of bilingual jurors from jury service, the Court
reasoned that "it may well be . . . that proficiency in a particular language, like skin color, should be treated as a surrogate for race
under an equal protection analysis." n18 "It may well be" according to the court, but language is not treated as a proxy for race under
the equal protection clause and it receives no protection by the courts under Title VII. n19
The black/white binary silences Latinos from civil rights discourse
Perea 97 (Juan Perea is a Professor of Law at the University of Florida College of Law,
“LATINA/0 IDENTITY AND PAN-ETHNICITY: TOWARD LATCRIT SUBJECTIVITIES:
Five Axioms in Search of Equality” 2 Harvard Latino Law Review 231. Fall, 1997.
LexisNexus.)JG
[*237] Axiom III. The concept of Civil Rights is so dominated by the Black/White binary
understanding of American racial identity that it is currently of little utility for Latinos.∂
The binary conception of race operates to exclude Latinos/as from important forums for
the discussion of racial issues and justice. Typically, but with exceptions, Latinos/as have no place
at the table to voice our conception of civil rights and wrongs.∂ All the civil rights enactments and
court decisions in this area that most of us would consider to be major, even if of limited effect, attempted to redress harms to
Blacks, and to a lesser extent, women. The Reconstruction Amendments have frequently, and correctly, been understood to have
been enacted to reverse the Dred Scott n20 decision and to protect newly freed slaves from hostile state action. The
pre- and
post- Reconstruction Civil Rights Acts intended Blacks to be the principal beneficiaries.
Brown v. Board of Education n21 abolished separate but equal education and was widely understood as a vindication of Black
equality interests, although Latinos too benefitted from the abolition of segregated education.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed to attempt to establish equal treatment for Blacks in crucial social, educational and
economic institutions. The history of these Civil Rights enactments corresponds, of course, to the history of slavery, Jim Crow laws
and violence directed at African Americans. While
Latinos/as have benefitted from these reforms, the
intended beneficiaries were African Americans.
The black/white binary marginalizes Latinos and excludes them from racial
discourse
Perea 97 (Juan Perea is a Professor of Law at the University of Florida College of Law,
“RACE, ETHNICITY & NATIONHOOD: ARTICLE: The Black/White Binary Paradigm
of Race:
The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought” 1997. 85 Calif. L. Rev. 1213) JG
The Black/White Binary Paradigm of race has become the subject of increasing interest and scrutiny among some scholars of color.
This Article uses Thomas Kuhn's notions of paradigm and the properties of paradigms to explore several leading works on race. The
works the author explores demonstrate the Black/White paradigm of race and some of its properties, among them extensive
paradigm elaboration over the years. Paradigms have limitations, however. Among them is a tendency to truncate history for the
sake of telling a linear story of progress. The author demonstrates how one constitutional
law text truncates
history, by omitting entirely Mexican-American struggles for desegregation, and
presenting a linear story of the Black struggle for civil rights. Omitting important history from the
narrative of civil rights history becomes extraordinarily damaging, since it distorts history and contributes to the
marginalization of non-Black peoples of color. While recognizing the centrality of slavery and White racism
against Blacks at the core of American history and society, this Article seeks to expand our understanding of racism through the use
of legal history. The author contends that mutual and particularized understanding of racism as it affects all people of color has the
potential to enhance our abilities to understand each other and to join together to fight the common evil of racism.∂ ∂ American
society has no social technique for handling partly colored races. We
have a place for the Negro and a place for
the white man:the Mexican is not a Negro, and the white man refuses him an equal
status. n1∂ ∂ [*1214] This Article is about how we are taught to think about race. In particular, I intend to analyze the role of books
and texts on race in structuring our racial discourse. I believe that much writing on racism is structured by a paradigm that is widely
held but rarely recognized for what it is and what it does. This paradigm shapes our understanding of what race and racism mean
and the nature of our discussions about race. It is crucial, therefore, to identify and describe this paradigm and to demonstrate how
it binds and organizes racial discourse, limiting both the scope and the range of legitimate viewpoints in that discourse.∂ In this
Article, I identify and criticize one of the most salient features of past and current discourse about race in the United States, the
Black/White binary paradigm of race. A small but growing number of writers have recognized the paradigm and its limiting effect on
racial discourse. n2 I believe that its dominant and pervasive character has not been well established nor discussed in legal
literature.∂ I intend to demonstrate the existence of a Black/White paradigm and to show its breadth and seemingly pervasive
ordering of racial [*1215] discourse and legitimacy. Further, I intend to show how the
Black/White binary paradigm
operates to exclude Latinos/as n3 from full membership and participation in racial
discourse, and how that exclusion serves to perpetuate not only the paradigm itself but also negative stereotypes of Latinos/as.
Full membership in society for Latinos/as will require a paradigm shift away from the binary paradigm and towards a new and
evolving understanding of race and race relations.∂ This Article illustrates the kind of contribution to critical theory that the
emergent Latino Critical Race Studies (LatCrit) movement may make. This movement is a continuing scholarly effort, undertaken by
Latino/a scholars and other sympathetic scholars, to examine critically existing structures of racial thought and to identify how these
structures perpetuate the subordinated position of Latinos/as in particular. LatCrit studies are, then, an extension and development
of critical race theory (and critical theory generally) that focus on the previously neglected areas of Latino/a identity and history and
the role of racism as it affects Latinos/as.∂ I identify strongly, and self-consciously, as a Latino writer and thinker. It is precisely my
position as a Latino outsider, neither Black nor White,that makes possible the observation and critique presented in this Article. My
critique of the
Black/White binary paradigm of race shows this commonly held binary understanding of race to
be one of the major impediments to learning about and understanding Latinos/as and
their history. As I shall show, the paradigm also creates significant distortions in the way
people learn to view Latinos/as.∂ I begin with a review of the principal scientific theory that describes the nature of
paradigms and the power they exert over the formation of knowledge. I then analyze important, nationally recognized books on race
to reveal the binary paradigm of race and the way it structures race thinking. After reviewing these popular and scholarly books on
race, I analyze a leading casebook on constitutional law. Like other books, textbooks on constitutional law are shaped by the
paradigm and reproduce it. Then, by describing some of the legal struggles Latinos/as have waged, I will demonstrate that
paradigmatic presentations of race and struggles for equality have caused significant omissions with undesirable repercussions.
Thus, I demonstrate the important role that legal history [*1216] can play in both correcting and amplifying the Black/White binary
paradigm of race.
Not identifying Hispanics or Latinos as a race projects Whiteness onto them
Trucious-Haynes 01 (Enid Trucious-Haynes is a professor of law at Brandeis School
of Law of the University of Louisville, and has a J.D. from Stanford Law School, “Why
‘Race Matters: LatCrit Theory and Latina/o Racial identity” 2001. La Raza Law Journal
Vol. 12: 1.) JG
Latinas/os are a force to be reckoned with, and we now require our own room in the "Master's
House."' Yet, we must not forget it is the "Master's House," and we are constrained by the
basic home rule that is White supremacy. Latinas/os are not exempt from the
oppression of White supremacy, yet, as a group or individually, we often are seduced into
thinking we are White' Latinas/os must be vigilant to avoid the seduction of Whiteness. And we, Latinas/os, more
than other groups of color, are vulnerable to the seduction of whiteness. We carry the desire for Whiteness,
inscribed on our souls, from Latin America and transported across the border or from our neighborhoods where our parents and
generations before have lived Latinos/as, more man others, are seduced by Whiteness because
we are not called
Black.' we are not even identified as a race--at least not officially. We are seduced by whiteness because we
do not see that the foundation of the Master's House, the Black-White paradigm, includes the racialization of our language, our
culture, our history. We must see — Tenemos que ver
The black/white binary racializes Latinas/os and reinforces the racial
hierarchy
Trucious-Haynes 01 (Enid Trucious-Haynes is a professor of law at Brandeis School
of Law of the University of Louisville, and has a J.D. from Stanford Law School, “Why
‘Race Matters: LatCrit Theory and Latina/o Racial identity” 2001. La Raza Law Journal
Vol. 12: 1.) JG
Part II examines how Latinas/os have been constructed as an indeterminate racial group by the
hegemony of the Black-White paradigm for racial discourse in the United States, the legal
system through Judicial opinions and legislation, and how Latinas/os have been racialized as Non-White
historically and today. I also address how the indeterminacy of the Latina/o racial identity reinforces
racial hierarchy because of the manipulation of the Latina/o image. Part III explains how the
process of Latina/o racial identification may vary from the process of racial identification assumed by the BlackWhite paradigm in the United States, but may nonetheless reinforce White supremacy. This section also assesses how
LatCrit scholarship reflects the Latina/o indeterminate group racial identity. Part IV identifies the impact of the Latina/o
indeterminate racial status on developing new approaches to antidiscrimination law and the legal remedies available to Latinas/os,
the reinforcement of White supremacy, and the obstacles it creates to coalition building with other communities of color
Neg Section
Collection Good
*Racial data collection good – it’s the only way to challenge broader US
racist policies. They throw the baby out with the bathwater – this card ends
the deb8
Skerry, 2k – PhD from Harvard, former congressional aide and professor of politics
(Peter, Why Census Is Right to Ask for Racial and Ethnic Data April 16, 2000
http://www.brookings.edu/experts/skerryp?view=bio)//jml
Is there a solid reason to ask Americans about their racial and ethnic identities on the
census? Yes. But first we need to be more realistic about what to expect from census
data. Minority advocates and their allies need to recognize that while the minority
undercount is real, its consequences—fiscal as well as electoral—have been grossly
exaggerated. After all, not being counted in the census is regrettable and arguably has some impact on minority legislative
districts, but it hardly deprives minorities of their real source of power: the franchise. On the other hand, Americans
disaffected with race-conscious policies need to understand that it is not the census that
is causing dissension over race in the United States. The census is merely the
messenger. If Americans are upset with affirmative action and similar policies, they should, as they have, attack these
policies, not the census. We have all gotten caught up in the notion that demography is destiny.
But census numbers are just not as important as what policymakers do with them:
whether drawing district lines, constructing funding formulas or setting affirmativeaction goals. As Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) once put it: "How many members of the National Rifle Assn. are there? I don't
know. I don't think my colleagues know. What's important, politically, is not how many there are, but what you do about it. The
extent to which you mobilize enormously outweighs the numbers." Those who think the bureau's multiracial option on the 2000
form is evidence that the entire scheme of counting by race is about to collapse of its own complexity are deceiving themselves. Race
and ethnicity are real, if frequently misunderstood, forces in American life. Whatever the future of the multiracial option, race is not
about to disappear from U.S. politics. Finally, those
most disaffected with the national discourse on
race need to realize that data gathered by the census are their best weapon in
arguing against policies they find objectionable. If, for example, minority
advocates downplay racial progress, census data will help make the case against them. To
be sure, those advocates will also rely on the data to make a case. That's the point. Racial and ethnic data from
the census allow each of us, individually or as members of groups or
organizations, to make self-interested or partisan arguments. This is not
always a pretty sight. But, over time, census data used in this way allow us to assess
racial progress—or lack of it. The alternatives to the collection of racial and
ethnic data by the census are ignorance, malice, paranoia, opportunism and
prejudice, of which there is already an abundance across the political
spectrum.
Racial census is good – produces policies that beneficially aid racial
minorities
Mezey, 3 – Professor of Law at Georgetown University (Naomi, “Erasure and
Recognition: The Census, Race and the National Imagination”, 97 Nw. U. L. Rev. 17011768 (2003) Northwestern University Law Review, 2003)//jml
That the census, guardian of state knowledge and power, would come to play an aspirational role is not obvious. While traditionally
it has been used to monitor, discipline, and symbolically erase minorities, for racial and ethnic minorities in the late twentieth
century, their engagement with the politics of enumeration has been largely voluntary and aspirational. One explanation is that, as
Espiritu notes, resurgences of ethnic identification "are strongest when political systems structure political access along ethnic 26
lines and adopt policies that emphasize ethnic differences."" The United States has always emphasized racial differences in some
form or another; but since
the 1960s racially inclusive statutes more than exclusionary ones
have played the spoiler of our mythically colorblind political system. In an effort to reverse
centuries of racism, Congress adopted important civil rights laws that require accurate counts
of minorities for effective enforce- ment.26' Today, census data on race is used by at least
ten federal agencies, not to mention countless state and local governments, to
determine things like education grants, affirmative action programs,
community reinvestment and development, public health programs,
mortgage lending, low-income housing tax credits, voting rights, employment rights,
legislative redistrict- ing, government contracting, food stamps, and veteran benefits.262
Each year more than $100 billion in federal funds are allocated based on census data.263
To aid in this endeavor, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) promulgated Statistical Directive 15 in 1977, which laid out
four races and two ethnicities to be used in all federal statistics.264 The OMB revised the categories slightly in 1997 by splitting the
Asian and Pacific Islander cate- gory into two categories, so now there are five race categories: American Indian or Alaska Native,
Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawai- ian or Other Pacific Islander, and White.265 The two ethnicity categories remained
the same with a slight variation in name, so that the choices for ethnicity are currently "Hispanic or Latino" and "Not Hispanic or Latino. 266 While OMB insists that these categories do not correspond to mi- nority groups and do not determine eligibility for federal
programs,267 the
fact is that civil rights laws explicitly link census data with political access
for minorities. For example, voting rights enforcement depends on the ra- cial make-up
of Congressional districts as determined by census numbers.26" Likewise, many employment
discrimination claims depend on comparisons between the defendant's workforce and
the racial make-up of the relevant labor pool, as determined by census numbers.269 In
addition, census num- bers on racial minorities determine levels of federal funding for
myriad programs.27 Indeed, the civil rights laws were the catalyst for the articula- tion of the racial categories that we use
today. Not surprisingly, as Espiritu suggests, the motivation for ethnic and racial identification has been
par- ticularly strong as civil rights enforcement has been tied to census num- bers.27'
Needless to say, the modem census classifications of race, like the nineteenth century classifications before them, have influenced
the mean- ings and politics of race. Historian David Hollinger has called Statistical Directive 15 "the single event most responsible
for the lines" that configure our understanding of race, an understanding which he calls the ethno-racial pentagon of African
American, Asian American, Native American, His- panic, and white.272 Other scholars mark Directive 15 as the point when "the use
of racial classification shifted from one of exclusion to one of ex- plicit inclusion of specific groups."2'73 In this context, where
the census is one of the primary vehicles for the distribution of certain group protections
and entitlements based on race, one sees the strategic investment in the poli- tics of
enumeration for many groups in the modem welfare state. The engagement with the
politics of enumeration has been not only strategic, but also deeply
symbolic for some communities of identity. The symbolic consequences of census
inclusion might also be said to derive from the civil rights movement in the sense that it
helped give rise to iden- tity politics and multiculturalism, movements in their own right which
spawned claims for "official" recognition by many groups. These recogni-tion claims were often made on the basis of color, but as
often served as a proxy for culture.274 With the demise of scientific accounts of racial differ- ence, and the ascendancy of social and
political explanations, 275 identity politics became the arena in which communities and individuals alike struggled for cultural
recognition by society at large. As Charles Taylor has made clear, identities are always dialogical, forged through interactions and
relationships with others, and in that sense they rely on recognition by oth- ers (and conversely, can be harmed by misrecognition by
others).276 In this way, identity politics emphasized the need to be affirmed by others and the overriding value of recognition by the
state, itself symbolic of national in- clusion. Thus
the census has been an important mechanism for
symbolic inclusion in the nation, quite apart from the material consequences of being
counted that have inspired the strategic push for inclusion by groups. However, it is important to
note that precisely because identities do not have an independent existence, but rather depend on social and cultural acknowledgment to be called into being, the race categories on the census have always played a dual role: of recognizing identity and
also of confer- ring it. As Sharon Lee has observed, "One
function of official race classifi- cations is to
create a sense of group membership or even community where there had been none
before. '277 Lee points to the way in which the creation of an official category coalesces a group that may not have understood
itself as a group before, or at least was not commonly understood to be a group. For example, "the social construction of a pan-ethnic
racial group called White served to minimize ethnic differences among the numerous European ethnic groups while fostering a
common racial identity. It also hardened the 27 division between White and Others."" More recently, the census classifi- cation of
Asian has had a similar effect of creating, among heterogeneous groups of Asian descent, a common pan-ethnic identity through
which peo- ple have come to see themselves and others.27 This was also true much ear- lier of counting the Chinese as Chinese; it
created a Chinese identity for people who had not necessarily thought of themselves that way before, and it created a Chinese race,
which at least for a time did not include other Asians.28 The National Academy of Sciences report on federal race classi- fication
similarly claims that it was the Census Bureau's use of the then un- common designation of "Hispanic" in the early 1970s that led to
its wide circulation and use as an identity referent.2"' As that report attests, "[t]here
is a symbiotic relationship
between categories for the tabulation of data and the processes of group consciousness
and social recognition, which in turn can be reflected in specific legislation and social
policy.'282
Race question especially important for minority populations
Ahmad and Hagler 15 (CenterForAmericanProgress.com, Farah Z. Ahmad is a senior
policy analyst for American Progress with a B.A. from Princeton and Jamal Hagler is the
Special Assistant for Progress 2050 and has a B.A. from Harvard. “The Evolution of
Race and Ethnicity Classifications in the Decennial Census”, 2-6-2015,
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2015/02/06/102798/theevolution-of-race-and-ethnicity-classifications-in-the-decennial-census/]) JG
The U.S. decennial census is one of the nation’s most important government programs, offering much more than just the population
count used to determine each state’s representation in Congress. The decennial
census provides essential data,
demographic and otherwise, that inform the allocation of vast government resources. Results often
serve as the basis for federal, state, and local public policies, ranging from funding new infrastructure
projects to providing increased job opportunities for workers. This makes the decennial census particularly
important for communities of color, which face significant gaps compared to their nonHispanic white counterparts in indicators of economic security and opportunity such as
education, employment, and health.∂ While the data collected from smaller U.S. Census Bureau surveys—such as
the Current Population Survey—are sufficient for some purposes, the decennial census provides a unique
opportunity to compile a massive amount of information on many different groups. The
resulting data set is large enough for disaggregation—meaning the extrapolation of data by various subgroup characteristics—a
process that can provide a much clearer picture of the landscape for specific groups and their particular needs. This
is
especially relevant for smaller demographic groups—for example, national origin groups within
the Asian American and Pacific Islander, or AAPI, community such as Cambodian, Chinese, and
Bangladeshi Americans. In the absence of large data sets based on accurate race and ethnicity
survey questions, crucial information would remain unknown and investments in
communities who could benefit most would potentially be overlooked.∂ As concepts of race and
ethnicity have evolved and the population has shifted, the methods and language used to record race and ethnicity in the census
have changed as well. Revisions or additions are made each decade, underscoring the complexity of collecting data on identity and
classification. As the United States becomes increasingly diverse, the Census Bureau will continue to face challenges to properly
classifying the nation’s residents and assessing the state of American households. Changes in both survey content and format should
be carefully considered, as they are critical to policy formation and creating an equitable future for all Americans.∂ Over the past two
centuries, the Census Bureau has routinely adjusted its survey questions in an attempt to better capture the demographic
characteristics of the nation’s population. Many of these changes are illuminated in a 2009 article by Karen Humes and Howard
Hogan in the journal Race and Social Problems. In 1960, for example, the Census Bureau replaced the longstanding practice of
census enumerators going to households in person and recording observed characteristics of household residents with a process of
self-reporting in which individuals receive questionnaires and dictate their own answers. Another major change came with the
addition of the Hispanic origin question in 1970, marking the first time the Census Bureau collected data on ethnicity in addition to
data on race. Individuals were given the option to select more than one race for the first time in 2000.
Solvency
Can’t solve – only the office of management and budget has jurisdiction
TLC, 14 – The Leadership Conference is a 501(c)(4) organization that engages in
legislative advocacy (Collecting Race and Ethnicity Data in the Census
http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/census-report-2014/chapter-icollecting-race.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/)//jml
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), not the Census Bureau,
defines the race and ethnicity categories used for federal government purposes. The Census
Bureau may collect and publish more detailed data, as long as it can aggregate the
results to fit the standard categories. By law, the Census Bureau must submit topics to be covered in the next
decennial census to Congress three years before the enumeration (i.e. by April 1, 2017) and the actual questions to be included on the
census form two years before the count (i.e. by April 1, 2018). The
law does not require congressional
approval of the submissions, but as a practical matter, Congress could express its
disapproval informally and urge the bureau to make changes, or it could pass legislation
to require changes in topics or question wording, as happened before the 1990 census.
BW binary Good
Transcending the black/white binary obscures a violent history and makes
their impacts inevitable
Smith, 6 - Phd from UC Santa Cruz (Andrea, Heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of
whaite supremacy- Color of Violence-Incite! The anthology- p. 69-70)//jml
Our organizing can also reflect anti-Black racism. Recently, with the outgrowth of “multiculturalism”
there have been calls to “go beyond the black/white binary” and include other communities of color in
our analysis, as presented in the third scenario. There are a number of flaws with this analysis. First, it
replaces an analysis of white supremacy with a politics of multicultural representation;
if we just included more people, then our practices will be less racist. Not true. This model
does not address the nuanced structure of white supremacy, such as through these distinct logics of slavery, genocide, and
Orientalism. Second, it
obscures the centrality of the slavery logic in the system of white
supremacy, which is based on a black/white binary. The black/white binary is not the only binary
which characterizes white supremacy, but it is still a central one that we cannot “go beyond” in
our racial justice organizing efforts. If we do not look at how the logic of slaveability
inflects our society and our thinking, it will be evident in our work as well. For example, other
communities of color often appropriate the cultural work and organizing strategies of African American civil rights or Black Power
movements without corresponding assumptions that we should also be in solidarity with Black communities. We
assume
that this work is the common “property” of all oppressed groups, and we can
appropriate it without being accountable.
Strategic essentialism is good – it allows us to recognize the fluidity of
identity while also creating strategies to resist racist practices
Gosine, 2 - Professor in the Sociology department at Brock University, St. Catharines,
ON (Kevin, Essentialism Versus Complexity: Conceptions of Racial Identity
Construction in Educational Scholarship, 2002, Google Scholar)//jml
At the same time, I urge academics, activists, educators, human service providers, and
policy makers to recognize the limits of such collective identities and wrestle with the
reality that members of racialized and other communities do not experience and
negotiate communal identities or the larger society in a uniform or consistent fashion,
however much communities may sometimes attempt to foster such an impression.
Instead, the forces of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality combine in unique
ways at different moments for different individuals, resulting in individuals constantly
making different kinds of identifications with aspects of their own communities as well
as the broader society. Put differently, while marginalized people constantly strive for a
coherent sense of community, communal members are continually arguing over what
their community ought to look like and who is to be included/excluded. This negotiation
takes place in the in-between spaces where cultural and ethnoracial boundaries separate
as well as overlap (Bhabha, 1990; Walcott, 1997), resulting in cultural identity being an
inevitably hybrid entity. The fact that identity construction can be viewed as a process
rather than a product should make change more foreseeable and open up many new
political and interventionist possibilities. When essentialist categories are invoked for
political purposes, critics plead that they be invoked strategically, that is, with a clear
and explicit recognition that they are temporary and contingent, not fixed for all time
(Spivak, 1993; see also Sooknanan, 2000). The idea of a strategic essentialism
differs from a defensively situated essentialism in that the former actively
engages rather than suppresses difference and is perennially conscious of the fact that
the appeal to essentialism is always a political and conditional act.

Census Race Data Good
Government racial categories backfire and have a transformative effect—
even if they are arbitrary, collective labeling can create a basis for political
organization
Kertzer and Arel, 2 - PhD, Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science,
Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University **PhD,
Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University
of Ottawa, Canada (David and Dominique, “Census and Identity: The Politics of Race,
Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses,” 2002)//jml
The requirement that each individual be pigeon-holed in a culturally
defined category had major implications for how people came to think of
themselves, implications that would have a tremendous impact on the creation of
politically important interest groups. Bernard Cohn tells how, beginning with the intellectuals of Bengal in the
nineteenth century and then spreading to all of the educated Indians in the twentieth century, people began to objectify their culture.
Not least influential in this process was the need to employ half a million literate Indians to carry out the census of the late
nineteenth century. These census-takers
were taught to think of the people around them as
divisible into clear-cut cultural categories, and taught as well what the crucial
distinguishing marks were to be. What previously had been part of the complex web of relationships, practices, and
beliefs they shared now became something quite different. An identifiable, distinct culture was distinguished, allowing people to
“stand back and look at themselves, their ideas, their symbols and culture and see it as an entity. ” Once
they conceived of
themselves as part of a culture in this objectified sense, they could then, as part of the
political process, select aspects of that culture, and polish and reformulate them in
pursuing their goals (Cohn 1987: 228–29). The case of Soviet Central Asia is also instructive regarding the impact of state
categorizations on the formation of identities. Abramson (this volume) shows how the Soviet system of dividing its population into
mutually exclusive cultural nationalities in the 1920s was appropriated by Uzbek elites. After Soviet officials decreed, in 1924, that
the “Uzbeks” were a “nationality, ” it took four years for local elites to agree on who, among the population, should be classified as
Uzbeks, largely on the basis of dialects. When Moscow established Soviet republics on the basis of nationality, some newly selfdefined Uzbeks ended up on the wrong side of the border. Hirsch (2000: 216) tells the story of Uzbek-identified border villages,
assigned to neighboring Kirgizia, whose inhabitants petitioned Moscow to be included in Uzbekistan. She is struck by how adept the
petitioners were at using the rhetoric of nationality, which until a few years before had been foreign to the region: Did the petitioners
really believe that they were members of a discrete Uzbek nationality? We can never really know. The point is that the petitioners
used the language of nationality in their interactions with the state and in doing so helped make official nationality categories real.
Indeed, perhaps what is most remarkable is that the petitioners did not question the official assumption that “national identity” was
linked to land, water, and other resources. Many of the residents of the new Central Asian republics themselves expressed surprise
about how quickly nationality categories took root after national-territorial delimitation. Even more boldly, Appadurai (1993: 317)
has argued that colonial
census practices themselves “helped to ignite communitarian and
nationalist identities that in fact undermined colonial rule. ” In the same vein, Kateb has shown how the
French colonial state, by denying French nationality (in the sense of citizenship) to Muslims, paradoxically created a national
Algerian Muslim identity from a hodgepodge of local affiliations (1998: 105). Zeman (1994: 31), in his study of the Imperial Austrian
censuses of this period, observes that the effort to record a cultural nationality for each individual “made a direct contribution to the
conflict… between the nationalities. A device designed by the civil servants to make the Monarchy more easily governable in fact
created a large new area of civil strife. ” What the relationship is between the modern project of exercising firmer control over
populations by extending a more thorough statistical gaze over them and the eventual mobilization of these populations against the
imperial/colonial regimes remains a provocative question. Whether
in colonial settings, or in other places
where centralized state power is supreme, state-defined identity categories can have a
substantial impact on people, altering pre-existing lines of identity divisions within the
society. “State officials, ” writes James Scott, “can often make their categories stick and impose
their simplifications. ” The categories used by the state, he argues, “begun as the artificial
inventions of cadastral surveyors, census-takers [etc.]… can end by becoming categories
that organize people's daily experiences precisely because they are embedded in statecreated institutions that structure that experience. ” The classification of ethnicity, and other forms of state-mandated
identity categorization, “acquire their force from the fact that these synoptic data are the points of departure for reality as state
officials apprehend and shape it. ” Where the state is powerful, the “categories used by state agents are not merely means to make
their environment legible; they are an authoritative tune to which most of the population must dance” (1998: 81–83). The
realization that governmental statistics-gathering and census taking have been
influential in creating and manipulating identities has led to a new look in the scholarly
community at government statistical agencies. In a movement that can be traced in part to the influence of
Foucault, some of those social analysts and historians who had previously been least interested in statistics, demography, or
governmental recordkeeping, have recently come to see the production of statistics as of central importance. When preparations for
the 2000 US census got underway, few topics generated more protest and anguish than the requirement that an individual place him
or herself in a single racial category. Revealingly, however, this protest was less politically successful than other, much less visible
protests, because it was not linked to any well-organized political lobbying group. Indeed, the demands that have filled the letters-tothe-editor sections of many newspapers, asking that people not be forced to place themselves in a single, neat racial or ethnic
category, have been met by strong opposition from those who represent ethnic and racial organizations. This is a point of great
interest in understanding the evolution of censuses and the role they have played in constructing collective identities. What
is
curious, yet highly revealing, is that while many individuals who feel violated by these
rules and practices have voiced strong opposition to them, the leaders of organizations
that define themselves in racial terms have strongly backed them. Ironically, given the
history of race relations in the US, the continued use of a fundamentally racist ideology
('one drop of Negro blood makes a Negro') has been most effectively championed by African-American
organizations. Similarly, both the creation of the ethnic group “Hispanic” and its continued use in the census have been
primarily the product of political interest groups who define their membership through such ethnic constructions.
Anthropologists have long been intrigued by the human compulsion to divide the
observed world into categories, and by people's discomfort with those people, animals, or other objects who do not
seem to fit into a single category (Levi-Strauss 1966; Douglas 1966). This human drive lies behind the universal efforts not only of
elites and state officials but also of people of all kinds to divide the social universe into neat categories. In this context, those
preferring the blurring of categories confront not only actors whose interests lie in championing their own categorical identities, but
a more general difficulty of promulgating identities that fail to fall in any simple category at all.
Race data key to public assistance programs
US Census Bureau 13 [Census.gov, “About Race”, 7-8-13,
http://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html] JG
Reasons for collecting information on race∂ Information on race is required for many Federal programs
and is critical in making policy decisions, particularly for civil rights. States use these data to meet
legislative redistricting principles. Race data also are used to promote equal employment
opportunities and to assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks.
Race data good – civil rights, education, health, reapportionment
Dade 12 [Corey Dade “Census Bureau Rethinks The Best Way To Measure Race”
NPR.org, 12-27-2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/12/26/168077473/census-bureaurethinks-the-best-way-to-measure-race] JG
The stakes surrounding population counts are high. Race data collected in the census
are used for many purposes, including enforcement of civil rights laws and monitoring
of racial disparities in education, health and other areas.∂ In addition, the information is
used to redraw state legislative and local school districts, and in the reapportioning of
congressional seats. The strong Latino growth found in the 2010 census guaranteed
additional seats in Congress for eight states.∂ Latino leaders say changing the Hispanic
origin question could create confusion and lead some Latinos not to mark their
ethnicity, shrinking the overall Hispanic numbers.
Politics DA Link
**If there was some possible Politics DA we wrote these could be links
Latino and Hispanic groups like the race question on the census
Dade 12 [Corey Dade “Census Bureau Rethinks The Best Way To Measure Race”
NPR.org, 12-27-2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/12/26/168077473/census-bureaurethinks-the-best-way-to-measure-race] JG
The stakes surrounding population counts are high. Race data collected in the census are used for many
purposes, including enforcement of civil rights laws and monitoring of racial disparities in education, health and other areas.∂ In
addition, the information is used to redraw state legislative and local school districts, and in the reapportioning of congressional
seats. The
strong Latino growth found in the 2010 census guaranteed additional seats in
Congress for eight states.∂ Latino leaders say changing the Hispanic origin question
could create confusion and lead some Latinos not to mark their ethnicity, shrinking the
overall Hispanic numbers.∂ The wording in the 2010 census question, which asked people if they are of Latino origin
and then provided a space to fill in their race, yielded a strong response and a record count of 50 million Latinos. Their growth
moved them ahead of African-Americans as the nation's largest minority group.∂ "We're
the only group in the
country that has our own question? Why give it up?" says Angelo Falcon, director of the
National Institute for Latino Policy. "A lot of Latino researchers like the question the
way it is now because it shows those differences. The way the Census Bureau is thinking
about combining the questions, it might take away that information in terms of how we
fit within the American racial hierarchy."∂ Falcon co-chairs a group of about 30 Latino civil rights and advocacy
groups that recently met with the Census Bureau about the potential changes.∂ For many years, the accuracy of census data on some
minorities has been questioned because many respondents don't report being a member of one of the five official government racial
categories: white, black or African-American, Asian, American Indian/Alaska Native and Pacific Islander.∂ When respondents don't
choose a race, the Census Bureau assigns them one, based on the racial makeup of their neighborhood, among other factors. The
method leads to a less accurate count.∂ Broadly, the nation's demographic shifts underscore the fact that many people, particularly
Latinos and immigrants, don't identify with the American concept of race.∂
Hispanic and Latino groups are key for 2016 election
Metla 15 [Valeriya Metla works in international relations, immigration issues, and
social and criminal justice. She holds two Bachelor Degrees in regional studies and
international criminal justice. “What Part Will Hispanic Voters Play in the 2016
Elections?” Law Street Media.com 5-2-2015,
http://lawstreetmedia.com/issues/politics/part-will-hispanic-voters-play-2016elections/] JG
As the Hispanic population in the United States rapidly grows, so does its influence on
the electorate. As Hispanic voters turn out in greater numbers, both Republicans and Democrats are
trying to appeal to these communities across the country. Even if Democrats tend to be more favored by
Hispanic voters, Republicans still have a chance to change the odds. One thing is clear: the Hispanic vote will
matter a great deal in 2016.∂ THE HISPANIC POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES∂ Hispanics are
the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. In 1990, the Hispanic population amounted to 22
million, or only nine percent of the total population. In 2000, there were 35 million Hispanics, while in 2010 their numbers reached
51 million, or 13 percent of the total population. On average, one
million Hispanic people are added to the
American population yearly. As of 2013, Hispanics in the United States numbered 54 million, or
17 percent of the total population. Recent projections estimate that by 2060 Hispanics will account for 31 percent of
the total popula tion.∂ The largest group of Hispanic people is found in New Mexico (47.3 percent), followed by California with 14.4
million. They are also heavily represented in Texas (10 million) and Florida (4.5 million). In addition, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois,
New Jersey, and New York all have more than one million Hispan
Racial Profiling Good (terrorism DA)
Census taking is used by the FBI to map populations and target
communities who are believed to be a threat
Markon 11 [Jerry, "ACLU says FBI uses racial profiling against Muslims, other
minorities", The Washington Post, 10/20/11, "www.washingtonpost.com/politics/aclusays-fbi-uses-racial-profiling-against-muslims-otherminorities/2011/10/20/gIQAN3Ob1L_story.html] // SKY
The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday accused the FBI of profiling Muslims
and other minorities and targeting them for investigation, allegations that FBI officials quickly
disputed. Unveiling a new project called “Mapping the FBI,’’ the ACLU used internal bureau documents to
portray the FBI as linking criminal behavior to racial and ethnic groups and using U.S.
census data to “map” those communities so they can be investigated. The civil liberties group
posted the documents on the Internet and vowed to further expose what it called unconstitutional FBI tactics. In one
document that was highlighted, a 2009 memo in the FBI’s Detroit field office sought
permission to collect information on Middle East terrorist groups in Michigan, noting
that: “Because Michigan has a large Middle Eastern and Muslim population, it is prime
territory for attempted radicalization and recruitment by these terrorist groups.’’ But the
same memo pointed out that the terrorist groups “use an extreme and violent interpretation of the Muslim faith,’’ appearing to make
a distinction between extremists and other Muslims. And each document was heavily redacted, leaving unclear what agents did with
any information they collected. Taken together, the memos “confirm some of our worst fears” about FBI surveillance, Hina Shamsi,
director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a conference call with reporters. “The
FBI has targeted
American communities for investigation based not on suspicion of wrongdoing but on
the crudest stereotypes.’’ FBI spokesman Michael P. Kortan rejected that interpretation of the documents, which
the bureau turned over to the ACLU in legal proceedings. He said that the FBI opposes discrimination
against minorities but that “certain terrorist and criminal groups target particular ethnic
and geographic communities for victimization and/or recruitment purposes. This reality
must be taken into account when determining if there are threats to the United States.”
Kortan added that mapping is widely used by law enforcement and is essential to
protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. “Just as putting push pins on a map will allow a local police chief
to see clearly where the highest crime areas are, combining data that is lawfully collected into one place allows connections to be
identified that might otherwise go unnoticed,” he said. FBI officials characterized the use of census data as one factor that helps field
offices identify potential threats in their regions, their top priority as the bureau continues its post-Sept. 11, 2001, transformation
into an organization able to detect and dismantle terrorism plots. The debate reflects the FBI’s ongoing challenges in balancing its
fight against terrorism with respect for civil liberties. The bureau’s tactics have long been controversial, and civil liberties groups
have accused agents of overreacting to the Sept. 11 hijackings. FBI officials say they have helped safeguard the nation from another
attack. The documents released Thursday emerged from requests filed last year with the FBI by 34 ACLU affiliates nationwide under
the Freedom of Information Act. The ACLU, which is seeking to uncover evidence of racial profiling, has sued the bureau in three
states, seeking to compel production of more materials. Other documents show FBI
offices collecting census data
and linking it to perceived threats from groups, such as the National Black Panther
Party, Chinese and Russian organized crime, and the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, street
gang. Documents from offices in Alabama, New Jersey and Georgia, for example, cite concerns that MS-13 members are
committing more crimes. Noting that members are typically from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, the memos break down
population data for local people born in those and other Latin American countries. They also cite other material that agents say
justifies investigative activity, but much of it is redacted.
Racial profiling is legal and important for national security purposes Korematsu v. US proves
Tucker 10 [Nathan Tucker is a Davenport attorney and author of We The People: The
Only Cure to Judicial Activism. “Can We Use Racial Profiling to Stop Terrorists?”,
TheIowaRepublican, 5-30-2010,http://theiowarepublican.com/2010/can-we-useracial-profiling-to-stop-terrorists/] JG
However, unlike affirmative action, the Supreme Court has traditionally held that there is only
one valid exception to race-neutral policies—when national security demands it. As the
Court put it in Korematsu v. United States (1944), “[p]ressing public necessity may sometimes
justify the existence of [racial discrimination], racial antagonism never can.”∂ The federal
government had, in the months after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, temporarily excluded
Korematsu and others of Japanese descent from portions of the West Coast out of fear of
espionage and sabotage. The Court ruled that this was constitutional “because we are at
war with the Japanese Empire [and] because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our
West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures.”∂ Today we are at war not with the
Japanese Empire, but with radical Muslims from the Middle East. This war, unfortunately, is not
easily defined, has no obvious battle ground, and has an indefinite duration. Because of the sporadic nature of the war on terror, the
government would not be justified in using the expansive use of race that was upheld in Korematsu.∂
The ongoing
threat to national security posed by terrorists, however, would justify the limited
use of race by law enforcement. A country cannot effectively fight and win a war if
it must pretend that it doesn’t know who its enemy is. If Britain had to pretend that the IRA was not Irish,
or Israel that the PLO was not Arab, many innocent civilians would have perished from the subsequent inability of those
governments to foil terrorist attacks.∂ We
know who our enemy is, and we know most of them are
from the Middle East and must find a way to enter our country, legally or otherwise, to commit terrorist attacks on our
soil. Therefore, border and customs agents must be able to use race as one of several factors (example—race plus mildly suspicious
behavior) when determining possible threats.
**Following card if there was some Terror DA
DA turns case – instances of war and terrorism allow the government to
justify racial profiling for national security
Siggins 02 [Peter Siggins is Chief Deputy Attorney General for the State of California,
“Racial Profiling in an Age of Terrorism, “Racial Profiling in an Age of Terrorism”, 3-1202, http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/ethicalperspectives/profiling.html] JG
Then, in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, by January and February 1942, Attorney General Warren
directed the preparation of maps showing all Japanese-owned lands in California, called upon the state's district attorneys to enforce
said the presence of Japanese in California
provided the opportunity for a repetition of Pearl Harbor. And by March he advocated the exclusion
of all Japanese from within 200 miles of the California coast.∂ Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the interest in
preserving the safety and security of the nation was put in direct conflict with the American
democratic ideal of racial equality. The noble cause of equality in that circumstance yielded to our
concern for security. Subsequent experience shows that exclusion to be one of the great injustices of WWII visited upon
the Alien Land Law against Japanese landowners, and
American residents. Congress has since passed laws ordering reparations from those American residents separated from their
homes, businesses and lands. Although the Supreme Court's holding in Korematsu, that the Government in time of war had justified
racial discrimination in the name of national security is still the law of the land, many lower courts have recognized the injustice
wrought by the Japanese internment and we should not forget it.∂ It
is against this historical backdrop that we
encounter post-9/11 efforts to combat terrorist acts on American soil, and examine the
role that race should play in an effective effort to deter future attacks. But before assessing whether our government's
response to the events of 9/11 betray a pattern of racial profiling, I first want to identify what it is.∂ In 1968, the Supreme Court
decided the landmark case of Terry v. Ohio. Then Chief Justice Warren, joined by seven other members of the Court, held that it is
not a violation of the Fourth Amendment for an officer to detain and search a man's person for a weapon in absence of a search
warrant, so long as the officer acts upon a reasonable belief based upon objective factors that the man is armed and dangerous. The
Court's decision in Terry has been interpreted by lower courts countless times over the years to allow the brief detention and search
of persons by law enforcement officials when officers are acting upon reasonable suspicion that criminality is afoot. The lexicon of
the criminal justice community now refers very casually to such stop and frisk encounters as "Terry" stops, and over the years these
brief detentions have been relied upon by officers with ever increasing frequency to stop and investigate suspicious characters. In
1996 in Whren v. United States, amid growing concern over the use of Terry stops as a prophylactic law enforcement tool, the
Supreme Court reiterated the objective nature of the inquiry into a law officer's basis for a Terry stop. The Court held that an officer's
subjective motivation has no part to play in the Fourth Amendment analysis of justification for a stop and search when the officer
can articulate objective reasons.∂ Out of the Terry line of cases, as fortified by the Court's decision in Whren, law enforcement
agencies all over the country advocated pre-textual stops and encounters with citizens as good proactive policing. The practices are
most often deployed through a casual traffic stop occasioned by a burned out taillight or some other minor vehicle code violation.
But in recent years, at first anecdotally, then more empirically, it has been demonstrated that the Terry procedure has been used
disparately to detain and interrogate black or brown people. In late 1999, the New Jersey state police became the first major law
enforcement agency to admit to the stop and detention of disproportionate numbers of black men. Since then, state legislatures all
over the country have wrestled with legislation aimed at banning racial profiling, and there has been tremendous outcry to study its
effect and occurrence among major law enforcement agencies. For example, the LAPD has been required as part of a consent decree
with the USDOJ to collect data that may reveal patterns of racial profiling by officers in traffic stops. Just this year Governor Davis
vetoed a bill designed to require local police agencies to report statistics on traffic stops in order to detect patterns of racial profiling.
After litigation was field by the ACLU over the veto of this bill, the Governor and Highway Patrol have instituted the program by
executive order. As recently as March 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft condemned racial profiling as "[A]n unconstitutional
deprivation of equal protection under our Constitution."∂ So, racial profiling as the term has been employed in recent public debate,
refers to government activity directed at a suspect or group of suspects because of their race, whether intentional or because of the
disproportionate numbers of contacts based upon other pre-textual reasons. Under Fourth Amendment analysis, objective factors
measure whether law enforcement action is constitutional, and under the Fourteenth Amendment challenges to the practice are
assessed under the customary strict scrutiny test for racial classifications. In the weeks following September 11, federal,
state and local law enforcement officials worked feverishly to investigate those responsible for the most reprehensible crime on
American Soil and to assess our state of vulnerability to further acts of terrorism. As part of those efforts conclusions about the
ethnicity and national origin of the prime suspects was inescapable. This crime was committed by a group of foreign nationals of
middle eastern descent.∂ Immediately law
enforcement officials focused special investigative efforts
upon foreign nationals from middle eastern countries, often in disregard of any other
factors warranting suspicion. In December, federal investigators began voluntary interviews with more than 5,000
young middle eastern men who entered the United States within the last two years from countries that were linked to terrorism.
Federal officials have contacted administrators at more than two hundred colleges and universities to gain information about
students from middle eastern countries. What are their majors? Where do they live? How often do they miss class? They have
followed up these efforts with unannounced visits and interviews with the students. Some local police chiefs who have worked hard
to rebut concerns over racial profiling have resisted cooperation with these federal efforts on the ground that the interviews appear
to violate departmental policy or state and local laws.∂ In California, by September 25, 2001, the governor and attorney general
along with the Highway Patrol and the Office of Emergency Services formed the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center. The
Center is created to analyze and process the thousands of tips and leads of suspicious activity that began pouring into state law
enforcement agencies in the days following September 11th. The effort has been to separate the wheat from the chaff and
disseminate to law enforcement information that truly reflects suspicious activity or reliably warrants concern. In just January and
February of this year, 1,615 subjects were reported to the database. Two Hundred and twenty eight of them had criminal histories
and 330 were the subjects of ongoing investigations. The center services an average of 56 law enforcement agencies per week, and
monitors 40 open anti-terrorist investigations.∂ Significant information continues to be received by the Center every day reporting
the conduct of males of apparent middle east extraction that hardly qualifies for the designation of suspicious or dangerous activity.
The job of responsible law enforcement officials is to cull form the many innocuous reports received by the center, those that
combine ethnic or national origin with a multiple of indicators to reveal persons who may be a concern or possible threat.∂ The U.S.
Congress, in the days following September 11th, passed The USA Patriot Act, an omnibus bill containing numerous reforms to
federal criminal procedure, laws relating to foreign intelligence surveillance, wiretaps and interception of electronic
communications, laws relating to the gathering of documentary evidence, and DNA and immigration laws. In a very general sense,
the Act makes it easier for federal investigative agencies to obtain wiretaps on multiple electronic devices, and procure electronic and
documentary evidence from sources like internet service providers and cable and telephone companies. It also relaxes prohibitions
on the sharing of information obtained in investigations by different federal agencies. While the latitude afforded law enforcement
activities under the act and relaxed standards for information sharing may give rise to concern for the protection of civil liberties, the
provisions most relevant to our discussion today are in the area of immigration and naturalization.∂ Section 412 of the Patriot Act
permits the attorney general of the United States to detain aliens he certifies as threats to national security for up to seven days
without bringing charges. The standard to establish grounds for detention is the familiar reasonable suspicion standard enunciated
by the Supreme Court in Terry. The certification by the attorney general must set forth that he has "reasonable grounds to believe"
the person being detained will commit espionage or sabotage, try to overthrow the government, commit terrorist acts, or otherwise
engage in acts that would endanger national security. At the conclusion of seven days, the detention may continue in the event the
alien is charged with a crime or violation of visa conditions. But if circumstances prohibit the repatriation of a person for an
immigration offense, the detention may continue indefinitely so long as certified by the attorney general every six months. Under the
USA Patriot Act, the prospect exists that a person who is confined for a violation of conditions of entry into the US, but cannot be
deported to his or her country of origin, may be indefinitely confined here without criminal charges ever filed against them.∂
Thurgood Marshall wrote that, "History
teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of
urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure." Recent surveys indicate that
66% of whites and 71% of African-Americans support the ethnic profiling of people who look to be of middle-eastern descent. But we
also know that hate motivated violence against middle eastern people and members of California's sikh community, often mistakenly
thought to be Arabs, spiked in the weeks after the September 11th attack. There are currently 150 open federal hate crime
investigations for incidents following the September 11th attack.∂ The mission of responsible law enforcement officials in combating
domestic terrorism is to take what they know to be true about the ethnic identity of the September 11th assailants, and combine it
with other factors developed through investigation and analysis to focus investigative efforts and avoid casting a net too wide. Have
the subjects passed bad checks? Do they multiple forms of identification with different names? Do they live in groups with no visible
means of support? Does a subject use credit cards with different names on them? Ethnicity alone is not enough. If ethnic profiling of
middle eastern men is enough to warrant disparate treatment, we accept that all or most middle eastern men have a proclivity for
terrorism, just as during World War II all resident Japanese had a proclivity for espionage.∂ The Israeli airline El Al has a policy of
singling out young Arabs for extensive search procedures, but is quick to point out that, in spite of ongoing war in the middle east, it
has not had a hijacking in over thirty years. Perhaps
there is a need to adjust our expectations in a time of
national emergency. Con. Richard Gephardt has said of post-September 11th America that, "We're in a new world where
we have to rebalance freedom and security." And Sen. Trent Lott said that, "When you're in this type of conflict, when
you're at war, civil liberties are treated differently." The real question for us is how differently and whether
differently for all or only a select few.∂ I agree with the sentiments of Walter Dellinger, former Acting Solicitor General during the
Clinton Administration, "I am more willing to entertain restrictions that affect all of us like identity cards and more intrusive X-ray
procedures at airports - and am somewhat more skeptical of restrictions that affect only some of us, like those that focus on
immigrants or single out people by nationality." It will be impossible to physically protect every location that could be the subject of
a terrorist attack. Protection is going to have to be accomplished through infiltration and surveillance, so all of us have to get used to
new levels of government intrusion.
State Focus Bad
The demand for solutions in a legal framework forces us to take the law as
our client and perpetuate current social and economic injustices
HARRIS 1994 (Angela, Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, California Law
Review, July)
This awareness of the role of universities and professional academics in keeping a
particular set of political and economic relations in place is one effect of postmodernist
disenchantment, and it brings us back to the critique of normativity. As Gerald Wetlaufer has noted, the pressure of legal
normativity - the demand that legal academics propose solutions that can be implemented
within the existing legal system - impels legal scholars to take the law as their client. 189 A
disenchanted jurisprudence of reconstruction would not conclude that providing legal answers to legal questions is therefore futile
or "counterrevolutionary"; but as Spivak suggests, it would put on the agenda the need to keep in mind the larger political and
economic context of law professing as race-crits continue their theory-building. One consequence might be a reconsideration of the
"race for theory" itself. If
the price for admission to the academy (say, the admission by Richard Posner that
CRT really does have an idea or two to offer, after all) 190 is a hyperabstract theorizing that makes a public
debate about race and racism impossible, race-crits may want to hold assimilation into
the [*780] bureaucracy of the university at arm's length. Here CRT's engagement in the politics
of difference may help keep it suspended in creative balance. A jurisprudence of reconstruction cannot
afford to become enchanted with either "theory" or "practice"; its work instead is to refuse that dichotomy.
Case
1NC – Link Turn
Their understanding of the census is outdated – race data is key to maintain
civil rights enforcement and all aspects of racial equality
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
Since the first decennial enumeration in 1790—conducted in accordance with Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, of the U.S. Constitution, or the “census clause”—the
census has collected data on the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population. For more than 150 years,
civic leaders used that information to advance discriminatory policies and maintain positions of privilege and power for the
majority White population, even in the face of constitutional amendments abolishing slavery, establishing equal protection under the law, and guaranteeing voting rights for all
census data also became a powerful tool for overcoming
the nation’s legacy of slavery, racism, and discrimination. School desegregation plans in
the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, for example, relied on census race and ethnicity data
to establish new school zone boundaries that would facilitate integrated learning
environments. Census data objectively illuminated unequal opportunity and access to
affordable housing, jobs, and institutions of higher learning, a portrait of inequality in America that
helped spur passage of seminal civil rights protections. Today, the collection of accurate,
comprehensive race and ethnicity data in the census is central to implementing,
monitoring, and evaluating a vast range of civil rights laws and policies, from fair
political representation and voting reforms, to equal opportunity and access across all
economic and social sectors of society, including housing, education, health care, and
the job market. The data provide evidence of disparate impact of governmental and
private sector policies and practices, and assist civic and business leaders in devising
solutions that promote equality of opportunity and address the needs of a diverse
population. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines the race and ethnicity categories that federal agencies must use to collect data. The U.S.
Americans, regardless of race, ethnicity, and national origin. But
Census Bureau may—and does—collect and publish more detailed data, as long as it can aggregate the results to fit the official categories. In the description of its current
classification protocols, OMB notes that it developed standards for race and ethnicity data collection in the late 1970s, largely because of new government responsibilities to
enforce civil rights laws.1
2NC – Link Turn
Framing issue: Their args are just philosophers complaining about the
government knowing things, which is inevitable – we’re the only one’s
reading evidence about the material changes that occur as a result of race
data collection
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
Accurate data on the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population are required
to ensure equality of access and opportunity in virtually every social and economic
sector, allowing advocates to evaluate progress and outcomes and to monitor program
administration and enforcement. To that end, the census and related American Community Survey (ACS) are the most
comprehensive sources of detailed information about the nation’s social, economic, and
housing characteristics and conditions, comparable over time and consistent across
geographies, from the national level to the community and neighborhood levels. Areas of
focus for civil rights advocates and policymakers include voting rights, employment,
education, housing and lending, health care, criminal justice, and economic security,
among other issues. Measuring racial and ethnic discrimination, whether intentional or
shown to have a discriminatory impact, is necessary to illuminate and address barriers
to equal opportunity and social justice through the advancement of laws, policies, and
practices that promote fair and equal treatment of all Americans.
Here are tons of specific ways race data stops oppression
1. Voting rights
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
Stripped down to its primary purpose—set forth in Article I, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution (the census clause)—the decennial census provides
the basis for implementing our nation’s democratic system of governance, through the
apportionment of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives based on a count of the population.
The Fourteenth Amendment (which, in part, revised the census clause to remove the reference
to counting slaves as three-fifths of a person for apportionment purposes) later provided
the basis for equal representation—one person-one vote—at all levels of government.
The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the federal and state governments from abridging
or denying a citizen’s right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.”
2. Redistricting
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
The first set of data released after each decennial census is the total population of each state, along with the resulting apportionment of seats in the U.S. House of
the Census Bureau sends to each State a set of
detailed population counts and selected characteristics for that state, commonly known as the
redistricting or P.L. 94-171 file (named after the public law requiring the data).19 The redistricting file includes population
data on race, Hispanic origin, and voting age (age 18 and older), as well as the occupancy status of
housing units, down to the census block level. States use those data to draft redistricting
plans for congressional and state legislative seats; local governments also use the data to
Representatives.18 Next, by April 1 of the year following a census year,
allocate representation on county and city councils, school boards, and other governing
bodies. While the broader five race categories and one ethnicity category are useful for demonstrating the cohesiveness of districts, the detailed,
subgroup race and ethnicity data are essential for establishing “communities of interest”
in redistricting plans. Race and ethnicity data have been a useful tool in examining the
consequences of prison gerrymandering and in spurring states to enact remedies that
counter the disproportionate results of this practice on communities of color. Prison
gerrymandering occurs when states and localities draw representational districts that
incorporate a significant percentage of people who are incarcerated and cannot vote, a
circumstance stemming from the Census Bureau’s policy of counting all people at their
“usual place of residence” on Census Day (April 1 of a decennial census year). For example, prisons in rural areas of a
state often house disproportionate numbers of inmates from far-away urban
communities, resulting in some districts with far fewer eligible voters and undermining
the principle of one-person, one-vote embodied in the U.S. Constitution. Prisons are
disproportionately populated by people of color, depriving the communities where
inmates lived prior to incarceration of their fair share of political Chapter II: The Essential Role of Race and
Ethnicity Statistics in the Quest for Civil Rights 10 representation, while boosting the clout of voters in prisonhost communities, which are less likely to be racially and ethnically diverse and to have
political interests in common with incarcerated individuals.20 In recent years,
advocates have successfully campaigned for laws to end the practice of prison
gerrymandering in New York and Maryland, while California and Delaware have passed
similar statutes that will take effect after the 2020 census.
3. Empirics
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
Section 2 (42 U.S.C. §1973), a permanent provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), prohibits discrimination on the
basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group, in voting practices and
procedures, including redistricting, election systems, and voter registration procedures (such as requiring certain forms of identification in order to register). The
provision gives Black, Hispanic, Asian American, American Indian, and other minority voters an avenue to challenge discriminatory practices that deny or abridge the right to
vote, even in jurisdictions not covered by Section 5 of the VRA (see below). The attorney general or private plaintiffs can challenge discriminatory laws or practices in federal
Section 2 bars not only intentional discrimination, but also
practices with a racially discriminatory result, making paramount the collection of
accurate and historically comparable data on race and ethnicity. Race and ethnicity data
are especially important in Section 2 cases involving vote dilution. Under Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30,
plaintiffs in Section 2 cases alleging vote dilution in a redistricting plan must
demonstrate three threshold conditions: (1) it is possible to create a geographically
compact “majority minority” district; (2) the minority group is politically cohesive; and
(3) historically, the White majority has voted as a bloc against minority or minoritysupported candidates, resulting in racially polarized voting patterns. Plaintiffs who have met the threshold
district courts, with plaintiffs bearing the burden of proof.
requirements also must show that the challenged plan improperly dilutes the minority group’s voting power, based on the “totality of circumstances.” After considering the
history of litigation under the original Section 2, Congress amended the statute in 1982 to give plaintiffs an avenue for establishing a violation of the section if the evidence
showed, through a lens of “the totality of circumstances in the local electoral process,” that the challenged redistricting plan or electoral practice denied a racial or language
minority group an equal opportunity to participate in the political process. Factors that courts can consider in evaluating alleged violations of Section 2 include a history of
voting-related discrimination, racially polarized voting, and the extent to which a jurisdiction’s voting practices and procedures tend to increase opportunities for racial or
Another factor Congress cited in adopting the 1982 amendments was
the extent to which discrimination in education, employment, and health care
disproportionately affects minority groups and hinders their ability to participate
effectively in the political process—data that are available primarily from the Census
language minority discrimination.
Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), the modern version of the census long form.21 The
1982 amendments also extended Section 2 protections to voters who require assistance in the voting process due to limited English language ability. Sections 4(e) and 4(f) of the
Voting Rights Act, enacted as part of the 1975 reauthorization and which protect the right to register and to participate meaningfully in the electoral process of people with
limited English language abilities, defines “language minority groups” as persons who are American Indian, Asian American, Alaska Native, or of Hispanic origin. These
provisions of Section 4 work in tandem with Section 203 of the VRA, which requires certain jurisdictions to provide all election materials and information, such as the location of
polling places, in a language other than English, if the director of the Census Bureau determines that there are more than 10,000 voting-age citizens of the same language group
in an area whose limited English proficiency would hinder their full participation in the political process. The determinations are made using data on language ability from ACS,
Accurate subgroup data, particularly for Asian American national origins, are
especially important in light of the statutory threshold. Section 2 protections from discrimination in the electoral process
as well as race and ethnicity data from the census and ACS.
have taken on new importance in the wake of Shelby County v. Holder, 22 a case that challenged the criteria in Section 4(b) for determining the jurisdictions that would be
covered by the pre-clearance requirements of Section 5. Section 5 (42 U.S.C. §1973c), together with the formula established in Section 4, targets states and counties with a
history of discriminatory electoral practices or low minority voting registration rates. The provision requires “covered” jurisdictions23 to obtain approval—known as “preclearance”—from the U.S. Department of Justice or the District Court of the District of Columbia before implementing changes to voting laws. In the wake of the Supreme Court
decision on June 25, 2013, civil rights litigators and the Justice Department are examining alternate pathways to challenge a rash of post-Shelby County state voter identification
Legislation introduced in the
113th Congress that seeks to restore and update the voting rights protections 11
embodied in Section 5 likely would require census race and ethnicity data to implement
several provisions.25 The Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 establishes criteria for
determining which jurisdictions would be subject to heightened scrutiny in the adoption
of changes to voting practices and procedures, based, in part, on population data by
race, Hispanic origin, and voting age.
4. Equal employment
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 196426, as amended, prohibits discrimination on the basis of several
personal characteristics, including race, color, and national origin, in the workplace. The Act protects employees or groups of
employees against not only intentional discrimination , but against workplace policies not required by
business necessity that have a discriminatory effect, or disparate impact, on groups of
employees of a certain race, color, or ethnicity.27 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces the
laws that make it harder for many people of color and low-income individuals to participate in the electoral process.24
provisions of Title VII.28 The agency investigates claims of both individual and systemic employment discrimination, including complaints against state and local governments.
Under Title VII, the Justice Department also may file a civil action in federal district court against a person or group of persons it believes is engaged in a “pattern or practice of
Race and ethnicity data collected in the ACS and
cross-tabulated with data on gender, occupation, and income are especially helpful in
evaluating equal pay, wage gaps, and paycheck fairness. Similarly, Executive Order 11246,29 as amended, prohibits
resistance” related to the Act’s equal employment rights protections.
federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, and other personal characteristics, in their recruitment, hiring, training, and other
employment practices, and requires federal contractors to take affirmative action to provide equal opportunities in all aspects of their employment activities. The U.S.
Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) oversees and enforces the requirements of this longstanding federal policy. American Indian
and Alaska Native, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, Black, and Hispanic individuals are considered minorities for purposes of the Executive Order.
Two notable cases involving affirmative action in public contracting, City of Richmond v. Croson30 and Adarand Constructors v. Pena, 31 highlight
the importance of census race and ethnicity data in crafting programs to promote equal
opportunity in employment and contracting. In both cases, and in broad terms, the
Supreme Court found that constitutionally permissible affirmative action programs
must be narrowly tailored to address specific patterns and trends of discrimination and
held to a standard of “strict scrutiny” by courts.32 Federal agencies responsible for
monitoring discrimination in the workplace and enforcing equal employment
opportunity laws rely on race and ethnicity data from the census and the ACS. After each
census, the Census Bureau prepares the EEO Tabulation file, which includes data on
sex, race, and Hispanic origin, cross-tabulated by educational attainment, occupation
and industry, age, earnings, unemployment status, and citizenship.33 The EEOC, Department of Justice,
OFCCP, and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sponsor this decennial data set, which is the primary benchmark for comparing the relevant characteristics of an
organization’s internal workforce with the broader labor market, for specific geographies, occupations, and job categories. In addition, under Executive Order 13583,34 OPM
and the EEOC are tasked with spearheading a governmentwide initiative to promote diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce. The initiative’s goals include identifying
ways to improve workforce diversity through appropriate recruitment and hiring activities.
Census data serve as both a benchmark for
measuring diversity and a guide for targeting employment outreach and human
resources development efforts. Related to efforts to ensure equal employment opportunities are programs to help small minority-owned
businesses compete in the marketplace. The Section 8(a) Business Development Program,35 overseen by the Small Business Administration (SBA) and applicable to all federal
agencies, is a statutorily authorized pathway for small businesses owned and controlled by individuals from socially and economically disadvantaged population groups to earn
federal government contracts. The law, which presumes that certain groups are likely to be disadvantaged, specifically refers to African Americans, Hispanic Americans, AsianPacific Islander and Subcontinent Asian Americans, and American Indians.36 Other small business owners may apply for certification by showing, through a “preponderance of
evidence,” that they are disadvantaged based on race, ethnicity, and other factors. The SBA must certify that a small business is qualified for the program; certified entities are
then eligible for competitive and sole-source federal contract awards set aside for Section 8(a) participants.
5. Educational equity
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
Education is fundamental to every aspect of social and economic opportunity
Race and ethnicity data have a well-known place in the historic civil rights struggle to
ensure equal opportunity in the nation’s education system. As local governments took
steps to comply with the basic tenets of Brown v. Topeka, Kansas, Board of Education,
37 analysis of a school district’s demographic composition 12 became a key tool in
implementing desegregation plans Sixty years after Brown, with segregation still
widespread in America’s public schools, those data continue to play a vital role in efforts
to ensure access to a quality education for all students
virtually
and advancement in
America.
.
.38 Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars recipients of federal financial assistance from
discriminating on the basis of race, color, and national origin.39 The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), in conjunction with the Department of Justice, enforces Title VI in the education arena. Agencies and institutions subject to Title VI
nondiscrimination requirements include state and local education agencies and systems, colleges and universities, proprietary institutions, and libraries and museums. Programs and activities receiving federal education funds may not discriminate in areas such as
Examples of discriminatory policies that the OCR
monitors include assignment of minority students to classes designed for students with
mental disabilities; maintenance of separate facilities for students based on their race,
ethnicity, or national origin, by some state higher education systems; and
discriminatory discipline policies that subject minority students to harsher penalties for
school infractions.
admissions, recruitment, financial aid, classroom assignment and grading, discipline, and employment.
Title VI provided a platform for the former U.S. Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to challenge racially segregated higher education systems, although it took a private lawsuit against
HEW to spur meaningful enforcement of Title VI antidiscrimination protections.40 The Department of Education most recently confirmed its support for racially and ethnically diverse student bodies at institutions of higher education in the case of Fisher v.
Race and
ethnicity data are essential tools in the development and implementation of successful,
lawful affirmative action programs in higher education; stakeholders also rely on the
data to ensure meaningful enforcement of Title VI protections
University of Texas at Austin, 41 in which the Supreme Court upheld the established legal principle that colleges and universities have a compelling interest in pursuing diversity through their admissions policies.
. Title VI also provides the context for Executive Order 13166,42 Improving
Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency. The order requires federal agencies to identify the need for services among individuals with limited Engli sh proficiency and to develop programs that ensure meaningful access to agency services for all
Census race and ethnicity data, along with ACS data on “language spoken at
home,” help agencies and advocates for immigrant communities identify areas where
the need for services is likely
tle VII programs rely on race data to evaluate federally
assisted programs, explore effective approaches to meet education needs in culturally
and linguistically appropriate ways, and analyze data on the education status of these
populations. Census data inform a wide range of policies and programs under Titles III
and V of the Higher Education Act, as amended, which are designed to enhance higher
education opportunities for historically disadvantaged population groups. Race data are
required for the formula that promotes equal opportunity in higher education for Black
Americans through the Black College and University Act. The data support the
accreditation process for Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) and the work of the
White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education, which seeks to
improve educational opportunities for students attending TCUs
who need them.
. Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended,43 focuses on the unique education needs, including early childhood intervention, of American
Indians, Native Hawaiians, and Alaska Natives. Administered by the Department of Education, Ti
44
.45 The Higher Education Act also authorizes assistance to improve and
enhance the capacities of Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions. Eligible projects include academic instruction in disciplines in which these populations are underrepresented.46 Similarly, the Act includes several programs that
Race and ethnicity data from the
decennial census have been an essential tool for promoting education equity between
support the efforts of Hispanic-serving institutions to improve access to and the quality of post-secondary educational opportunities for Hispanic Americans.47
high- and low-wealth communities and for language minorities
. For example, in a series of rulings in New Jersey over the past 35 years,
known collectively as the Abbott decisions,48 the state supreme court broke ground in requiring parity in funding for schools in wealthy and poor communities, as well as supplemental programs to address the significant disadvantages that schools in distressed
urban areas face. The court continues to exercise jurisdiction over enforcement of more than 20 Abbott decrees as education equity advocates strive to address disparate outcomes for children of color in poor communities. The Aspira consent decree,49 in place since
1974, established the right of Puerto Rican and Latino students in New York City with limited English language skills to bilingual instruction. Advocates continue to rely on census data to monitor the outcomes of programs designed in accordance with the agreement.
new guidance from the OCR offers educators detailed information to identify and
address inequities in the distribution of school resources, includ- 13 ing academic and
extracurricular programs, effective teaching, technology, and safe school facilities
On the federal level,
.50 The guidance
highlights legal obligations under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to provide students with equal access to educational resources without regard to race, color, or national origin.
6. Fair Housing
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
Where a person or family lives directly affects their access to jobs, good schools, health
care, and many other opportunities. Cross-tabulation of race and ethnicity data with
other demographic and housing characteristics, such as type of housing, family
structure, educational attainment, and veteran status, helps policymakers understand
the full implications of housing discrimination for achieving equal opportunity in all
sectors of society. Fair housing laws aim to prevent housing discrimination and to advance diverse, inclusive communities. Census race and
ethnicity data are vital tools in establishing that a housing-related policy or practice has
a disparate, adverse impact on a group of people, preventing them from fully exercising
their right to choose the community in which they will live. The Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of
1968, as amended51) prohibits discrimination in housing-related transactions, including the sale, rental, and financing of homes, based on race, color, national origin, and other
personal and household characteristics.52 The Act addresses both intentional discrimination and facially neutral policies that limit housing opportunities for members of
protected groups. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) also is charged with furthering the goal of fair housing in federal housing and urban development
Census race and ethnicity data
provide a benchmark for investigations and audit studies, which public enforcement
agencies, researchers, and fair housing advocates use to identify instances of “redlining”
and other prohibited, discriminatory practices that deny access to housing based on
factors other than a prospective buyer’s or renter’s ability to afford the home. Using
census data as a guide, research and investigations have uncovered discriminatory
mortgage foreclosure practices, denial of credit and a general lack of financial services,
and predatory lending practices in predominantly minority communities.54 HUD’s Office of Native
programs under Executive Order 12892,53 which also established the President’s Fair Housing Council.
American Programs seeks to increase access to safe, affordable housing for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian families, and to improve living conditions and
Funds under the Indian Housing Block Grant Program are
allocated, in part, based on population, income, and housing condition data from the
Census Bureau.55
7. Health Care access
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
Researchers use race and ethnicity data to explore disparities in medical conditions and
health care outcomes and in access to quality health care. Before passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
economic opportunities for Tribes and tribal members.
Act in 2010,56 50 million Americans lacked health insurance, which reduces opportunities to seek appropriate and timely medical care. Socioeconomic factors, such as one’s
level of education, household income, where one lives, and language and cultural barriers, also affect health outcomes and have consistently contributed to health disparities,
research shows. The Office of Minority Health, Department of Health and Human Services, is charged with improving health and health care outcomes for racial and ethnic
minorities through programs that seek to eliminate health disparities.57 The office assesses the impact of social, economic, environmental, and other factors, as well as the
Extensive research, which would not be
possible without detailed and comparable race and ethnicity data, shows that African
Americans, Hispanics, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, and
Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have poorer health outcomes compared to nonHispanic Whites. These outcomes include higher rates of illness and death from medical conditions such as specific cancers, HIV/AIDS, heart disease, stroke,
obesity, and diabetes, as well as higher incidence of health concerns, such as substance abuse. The collection of Hispanic origin data,
impact of programs and policies, on access to quality health care and on health outcomes.
starting with the 1970 census, has allowed researchers to identify and study health
disparities between Hispanic subgroups, between Hispanics and non-Hispanics, and
between recent immigrants and Hispanics who are second-plus generation Americans. For
example, studies show that newer immigrants tend to be healthier, overall, than second and third generation Latinos, due in part to the latter group incorporating less healthy
behaviors attributable to the general population. Further research to dissect and understand these outcomes will require detailed race and ethnicity data that are comparable
over time. The National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities is tasked with leading scientific research efforts to improve the health of racial and ethnic minorities
Public and private research into health care practices, access to health
care, the quality of health care available to people of different socioeconomic
backgrounds, the incidence of medical conditions, and other health-related issues 14
allows policymakers, program administrators, and stakeholders to identify, prioritize
and address disparities and to implement strategies aimed at achieving health equity
among all population groups. Detailed, accurate data on ethnic subgroups within the
broader federal race categories are especially important to understanding different
health experiences for Americans of specific national origins
8. Criminal Justice
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
Census data are central to understanding disparities in the criminal justice system,
helping policymakers, law enforcement agencies, community leaders, and advocates
devise remedies aimed at restoring equitable treatment and fostering constructive
outcomes. While criminal justice laws in the United States are neutral on their face, both
enforcement and outcomes of many laws are substantially biased against certain race
and ethnicity groups. The data make possible research that consistently shows higher
rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration, and tougher sentencing, including
disproportionate imposition of the death penalty, for Black Americans and Hispanics.
Disparate criminal justice outcomes—such as longer prison sentences imposed on
people of color, compared to Whites, for the same crimes—have a host of collateral
consequences for individuals and their families, adversely affecting access to jobs,
education, and housing, as well as participation in the electoral process. Research based
on census data has spurred policymakers to address racial and ethnic disparities in the
criminal justice system, such as the Department of Justice’s initiative, “Smart on
Crime,” unveiled in 2013. Legislative actions to reform the penal system include the Second Chance Act of 2008;58 the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010,59
and to eliminate health disparities.
addressing disparities in sentencing for cocaine use that resulted in racially biased sentencing; and the Smarter Sentencing Act of 201360. Civil rights advocates continue to
press state legislatures for abolishment of the death penalty, an area of sentencing especially fraught with racial bias, especially against Black Americans, research shows.
Efforts to identify and challenge racial profiling by police, private security firms, and
government agencies—such as during traffic and street stops and airport screenings—
rely on census data to establish patterns of disproportionate targeting and investigation
of people based on race and ethnicity. The data support efforts to combat racial profiling
through broad initiatives, such as litigation, anti-profiling legislation, law enforcement
training programs, and public education campaigns.
9. Poverty reduction efforts
LCEF 14 – Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/CensusReport-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15 BRoche
The struggle for civil rights and the fight against poverty have been closely aligned for many decades. Analysis of census and other Census
Bureau survey data shows consistent and significant disparities between many racial
and ethnic minorities and non-Hispanic Whites, in key indicators of economic well-
being, including household and family income and wealth, earnings, incidence of
poverty, health insurance coverage, and employment status.61 These findings help shape
projects, such as the Half in Ten campaign, to address the persistence of poverty and to
promote public policies that support economic opportunity and income security for all
Americans.62 Racial and ethnic differentials in economic well-being manifest themselves in many aspects of life. Affordable, dependable transportation is not
readily available in all communities, affecting people’s access to jobs, good schools, and quality health care. Census data show racial and
ethnic disparities in Internet access and computer usage, factors that can influence
educational and employment opportunities. Accurate, detailed data on race, ethnicity,
and national origin are especially important for understanding differential indicators
and outcomes among population subgroups. For example, analyses of Census Bureau
data have shown that some Asian American communities face greater challenges in
finding affordable housing, have higher incidences of poverty and unemployment and
lower educational attainment, and encounter greater language barriers, than other
subgroups within this broad race category
Extra stuff
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random
tag
Bondy 2015 (jennifer, assistant professor in the School of Education in the College of
Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, hybrid citizenship: Latina youth and the politics of
belonging, project muse, LB)
Many suppositions in educational research on immigration are premised on
methodological nationalism or the tendency to accept a nation-state’s forms and
borders, and binaries such as origin/destination and immigrant/citizen, as given (Khagram
& Levitt, 2008). For many youth, however, their identities and experiences extend beyond the
boundaries of a nation, and are forged in the overlapping intersections of origin and destination countries. Despite
surveillance practices, essentialized notions of immigrant, and exclusionary conceptions
of U.S. citizenship, Latina youth in this study articulated more expanded notions of
belonging through performing cultural practices, and polycultural and hybrid
citizenships (DeJaeghere & McCleary, 2010; Maira, 2009; Ríos-Rojas, 2011). Cultural citizenship scholars have described how
Latina/o communities self-make their citizenship identities through enacting public and social performance to voice their concerns
about belonging. These scholars also describe how such performances
signify translocal citizenship
practices that are shaped by understandings of membership in an imagined community
(Flores & Benmayor, 1997). Anastasia Diana explained what it meant to be Latina/o at school: “if you’re Colombian, they know you
came from Colombia because you represent it so well … represent it to a T. If you are Puerto Rican, you wear Puerto Rican chains,
Puerto Rican flags, Puerto Rican backpacks.” School parades for homecoming are another space where adolescent Latinas perform
their citizenship identities and voice concerns about belonging. Laura described one such parade: Impressive … the kids that were
dressed up because it was really unique cultures … There were cultures that represented most of the kids in the stands … the girl that
was half-Colombian, she had little banners that said “Colombia” … you would pass by the stands and you would hear people yell,
“Yeah Colombia!” “Yeah Venezuela!” … it’s good that they’re expressing that they’re proud that they’re from there … It’s not like
they’re hiding it … how some people had to do. Citizenship
was constructed through cultural practices
such as wearing jewelry, flags, and backpacks, and by chanting and waving signs to exert
claims over school space to perform Colombian, Puerto Rican, and Venezuelan identities. Performing these
identities entailed negotiating relationships with other students, including other Latina/o students. Rather than forming an
identification with the school and conforming to assimilative practices, Anastasia Diana and Laura described how Latina youth selfmake citizenship identities, resisting discourses that construct them as immigrants who should “hide” where they are from.
Publicly making these statements, asserting their voices, and claiming spaces are
attempts to self-make a citizenship identity as members of community and through
camaraderie (Flores & Benmayor, 1997). Other youth challenged assimilationist models of
citizenship by expressing an identity that straddled multiple nation-states. Carolina had
this to say about the possibility of being both Colombian and American: I wasn’t born
here, but I’m very Colombian. I do not want to leave my culture … [I] see how beautiful it is, the
people, the languages, our nature [trees, fruits, and mountains] … I love Colombia, but I would never go live there … here in the U.S.,
this is where I live. This is my life. I’m as very much American as I am Colombian … They [parents] would not go back to live in
Colombia. The culture and who we are, it’s beautiful but this is where we are. Carolina expresses how her belonging in Colombia is
shaped by cultural boundaries, such as food, nature, languages, and people. She later explained that her family moved to the U.S. for
economic opportunities, and that she preferred to stay in the U.S. for educational opportunities. On the one hand, Carolina
embodies the cultural dimensions of a citizenship identity in Colombia; on the other hand, she embraces the functionalaspects, such
as economic and educational opportunities, of a citizenship identity in the U.S. (Abu El-Haj, 2009; Bondy, 2014). Many Latina youth
had visions and ways of understanding the world, themselves, and others that exceeded nation-state borders. According
to
Lucia: What does being an American mean to other people? … they were born here …
feel patriotic for their country, their nation … [other] cultures are not that much
welcome … in present day, there are so many people moving not just to America but
everywhere … I think you have to keep ties where you were born, but also accept new
cultures wherever you are because it’s just part of the world we’re living in today. Lucia was
also one of the girls who articulated she could be both Venezuelan and American: I was born in Venezuela. I lived there for the first 7
years of my life … I definitely feel Venezuelan … But, I lived here for more than half of my life … I think it would almost be unfair to
not consider myself part American. Yon (2000) explains that in global times, identity is no longer fixed and rooted in traditional
categories of nation; rather, it is a constructed and open-ended process that takes various routes and opens up spaces for belonging.
Lucia is describing how identity and belonging are simultaneously rooted in a specific location and able to expand beyond it. By
Lucia enacts a polycultural
citizenship that allows for less essentialist notions of identity and belonging rooted
solely in one’s nation of birth (Maira, 2009; Yon, 2000).
[bondy continues]
suggesting that identities are already hybridized, and that there are no pure cultures,
For Latina youth in this study, experiences with citizenship and belonging did not fit neatly into narrow conceptions of citizenship as
assimilation to a national identity. Instead, affiliations
across multiple contexts, cultural practices, and
polycultural citizenships shaped their identities and sense of belonging (Flores & Benmayor,
1997; Maria, 2009). Although U.S. citizenship is typically framed as voting, civic literacy, participation in the nation-state, and
national allegiance (Abowitz & Harnish, 2006), many adolescent Latinas used emergent political vocabulary to critique such
understandings and enacted alternative ways of belonging. Because cultural citizenship attends to both the everyday embedded
processes whereby youth are made into citizens of the nation-state and the practices youth engage to create spaces of belonging, it is
a useful analytic for rethinking citizenship. Latina youths’ lived curricula of citizenship suggest that formal citizenship education
curriculum produces impoverished meanings about what citizenship is and can be. Many participants
were critical of
stereotypical images that unjustly located them and their communities as criminal,
invaders, and hypersexual. To counter these images, they adopted a prove-them-wrong
perspective (Yosso, 2002) by working hard, succeeding in school (Chang, 2011), and distancing themselves from the sexually
excessive chonga figure (Hernandez, 2008). The implied correlation between working hard, being academically successful, and
sexually respectable leaves intact the coupling of academic failure with laziness and questionable moral character. Such a correlation
can prove dangerous for Latina youth for whom academic success is more elusive, as well as risk suggesting that Latina youth who
exhibit non-normative sexuality should feel embarrassed or ashamed. Interpretations from this study suggest that notions of
citizenship and belonging must move beyond assimilation to a national identity toward a transnational understanding. For
many Latina youth in this study, their citizenship identities were made in transnational
spaces that were linked with macrolevel discourses on immigration and microlevel
practices of exclusion. Political and cultural projects on immigration allow for opportunities to create citizenship
identities that are simultaneously marked by polyculturalism and surveillance practices. This raises questions about
hybridity as a liberatory, utopian project when it does not include examining the nationstate’s assimilationist strategies (DeJaeghere & McCleary, 2010; Lukose, 2007; Ríos-Rojas, 2011). In the context of
transnationalism, it is important to better understand how broader, societal discourses that
define and limit the necessary qualities of citizenship are enacted in the children of
immigrants’ daily lived experiences.
Predictably, 5 french dudes invented racial classification about 400 years
ago
Webster 2k – Prof CSU Los Angeles, http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2000/06/01/twenty-onearguments-for-abolishing-racial-classification/, 6/26/15 BRoche
Races derive from particular kinds of classification practices. Anatomical differences are produced by nature, but specific human
practices construct races. Innumerable "natural differences" permeate the human species. Certain eighteenth and nineteenth century
thinkers, among others, Francois Bernier (1620-1688), Carl von Linneaus (1707-1778), Johann Blumenbach (1752-1840),
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), and Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882), selected some of these differences to
construct races and a racial theory of history and social development. These may be called the
founding fathers of racial classification and racial theory; they initiated the signifying of black skin and
white skin by "inventing" white and black people. Contemporary race relations writings,
including antiracist texts, are extensions of this racial theory.
Nothing is real – the aff is a refusal of race as a social construct
Webster 2k – Prof CSU Los Angeles, http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2000/06/01/twenty-onearguments-for-abolishing-racial-classification/, 6/26/15 BRoche
Thomas' proposition – If men define a situation as real then it is real in its consequences
– suggests that social phenomena that are subjectively "real," by this token, become an
objective reality. This conclusion contains fallacies of ambiguity and equivocation. First,
the concept "real" has perhaps the richest history of controversy in the writings of
ancient, modern, and postmodernist philosophers. In the interest of clarity, no
sociologist should cite Thomas' proposition without specifying the sense in which "real"
is being used. Second, a close examination of the proposition would reveal that it is not
clear to what "it" refers. What is "real" in its consequences- the defining, or the
situation? Nevertheless, even if the logical problems in the proposition are ignored, the
relevant follow-up would be an investigation of the conditions under which men define a
situation as "real." Popular allusions to "reality" could be a result of lay persons being
tutored within a realist theory of knowledge. This theory of knowledge, dominant in
social sciences, proposes that words reflect things. Hence, to be valid, a classification or
description needs no justification other than a claim on reality. However, the ascription
of an ontologically representative status to concepts is roundly challenged by Richard
Rorty, in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, and a host of critics of realist
epistemology. Yet there is no need to embrace a postmodernist perspective in order to
expose a specific effect of the realist claim. The notion that races are things in the real
world, as argued by Philippe Rushton, provides an eternal foundation for "race
relations" and an unending flow of explanations, since such relations unfold in political
economic, cultural, psychological, and social structural contexts. Were "races" not taken
as a "reality," their presence in public consciousness would be recognized as the result of
continuing research on racism, past and present racial experiences, racial conditions,
and race relations. However, let Thomas' proposition to be taken to mean: If social
scientists define a phenomenon in a certain way, that definition has corresponding
behavioral consequences. It would then be obvious that the social scientists who study
and advocate policies on "race relations" are themselves the actors who give "race" social
meaning and a "real" status. They then cite this status to justify the further production
of "race relations." This production, as well as social scientists' collaboration with the
Census Bureau's project of racial identification and enumeration, marks these scholars
as perhaps unwitting agents of legislative racialization; it also indicates the interaction
between social science research and government policies. In pursuit of electoral
advantages, political representatives pander to the racialized divisions that "race
relations" research generates and conserves. 2. The claim that race is a social construct
begs the question. In society, every phenomenon is, by definition, a social construct.
Why is it not said that race is an illogical construct? This refusal to notice the logical
status of the race concept indicates that social scientists who endorse the racial
paradigm only honorifically refer to "the social construction of race" in order to justify
investigating the experiences of "black people" and "white people." Thus they
themselves construct races, while claiming, in a positivist fashion, to be merely
observing "the social construction of race." Advocates of social constructionism, to quote
Anthony Appiah's comment on W.E.B. Dubois' vacillations on "race" ". . . lead us back
into the now familiar move to substitute for the biological conception of race a
sociohistorical one. And that, as we have seen, is simply to bury the biological
conception below the surface, not to transcend it." (In My Father's House, p. 41). The
claim that race is a social construct confirms its existence and facilitates the perennial
study of "race relations." This confirmation preempts criticisms of the Census Bureau's
request that citizens identify themselves racially and the Bureau's threat that to not state
your race could lead to your community's loss of economic resources.
Ur arg is based in faulty logic – if they drop this they lose
Webster 2k – Prof CSU Los Angeles, http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2000/06/01/twenty-onearguments-for-abolishing-racial-classification/, 6/26/15 BRoche
A description of self on the basis of the nature of one characteristic of the self leads to an
absurd conclusion. For example: I have white skin. Therefore, I am a White. I have olive
skin. Therefore, I am an Olive. The leap from recognition of having white skin color to
therefore, being white, or a white, is absurd. Someone might insist: I can be "a black
human being," or "a white human being." However, the color qualification of "human being" is nonsensical.
Nothing about "human" can sensibly take such a qualification. Human is an adjective
and cannot have a qualifying relationship with another adjective. In the phrase, rich, black coffee "rich"
describes coffee. Black, rich coffee has the same sense as rich, black coffee. In white human being, "white" describes "being" not
human. I am "a white being." What can that be? The adjectives "white" and "human"
cannot change places. White human being and human white being are not interchangeable. I am a human white being, or a human black being makes no
sense. In sum, one cannot be a "white," or a "black," and a "human being." Logically, "white
people" and "black people" are not human beings. They are nonhuman, all too
nonhuman, and they feed on each other. Hence, in order to "out" whiteness it would be
necessary to out blackness, and vice versa. Nor are whiteness and blackness, presented
as descriptions of human selves, in relationships of privilege and oppression. As
absurdities, neither "blacks" nor "whites" can pass moral judgment on each other.
No link
Reilly 13 – Writer for the Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/17/obama-nsasurveillance_n_3455771.html, 6/26/15 BRoche
President Barack Obama further defended the National Security Agency's collection of phone and other
electronic records to PBS' Charlie Rose, calling the program "transparent." In a pretaped interview set to air Monday evening,
Obama gave a forceful defense of the program, saying that the NSA had not unlawfully
targeted Americans. "What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target
your emails … and have not," Obama said, according to a transcript provided by PBS. Rose pressed Obama on the point, according to the transcript: Rose: So I hear you saying, I
have no problem with what NSA has been doing. Obama: Well, let me — let me finish, because I don’t. So, what happens is that the FBI — if, in fact, it now wants to get content;
if, in fact, it wants to start tapping that phone — it’s got to go to the FISA court with probable cause and ask for a warrant. Rose: But has FISA court turned down any request?
Obama: The — because — the — first of all, Charlie, the number of requests are surprisingly small… number one. Number two, folks don’t go with a query unless they’ve got a
Obama: It is transparent. That’s why we set up the FISA court. Later in the
interview, Obama said the program had "disrupted" terrorist plots in the United States as
well as overseas. The president pointed specifically to the prosecution of Najibullah Zazi ,
who was arrested in 2009 as part of a plan to bomb the New York City subway system. "Now, we might
pretty good suspicion. Rose: Should this be transparent in some way?
have caught him some other way. We might have disrupted it because a New York cop saw he was suspicious," Obama said. "Maybe he turned out to be incompetent and the
at the margins we are increasing our chances of preventing a catastrophe
like that through these programs." While Zazi's name has come up frequently in defense of the NSA, the Associated Press and others have
bomb didn’t go off. But
thrown cold water on the talking point, stating that the email the NSA says led to the plot's disruption could have been intercepted without the PRISM program. Obama struck a
The programs are secret in
the sense that they are classified. They are not secret, in that every member of Congress
has been briefed," he said. "These are programs that have been authored by large bipartisan
majorities repeatedly since 2006." White House chief of staff Denis McDonough also stood by the program on Sunday during an appearance on
CBS' "Face the Nation," insisting that Obama "does not" have privacy concerns related to the NSA's phone
records collection. "The president is not saying, 'Trust me,'" he said. "The president is
saying, 'I want every member of Congress, on whose authority we are running this
program, to be briefed on it, to come to the administration with questions and to also be
accountable for it.'"
A control of racial populations was a product of the census
Thompson, 10 – PhD candidate (poli sci) at University of Toronto (Debra Elizabeth,
“Seeing Like a Racial State: The Census and the Politics of Race in the United States,
Great Britain and Canada” A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for
the degree Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science, 2010)//jml
The political development of racial categories in the US census reveals both a historic
obsession with miscegenation and racial mixture and a contemporary difficulty
conceptualizing how mixed-race people fit into American racial taxonomies, both of which
similar tone during a June 7 speech in San Jose, Calif., saying that Congress has been briefed on the programs' details. "
signify the changing nature and role of the census throughout American history. The census of the 19th and early to mid-20th
centuries was embedded in state-driven racial projects intent on making the population legible in accordance with dominant (statesupported) norms and practices. Making
populations “legible” in the American context has worked
to solidify racial discourse and the imposition of a racialized social order; in other words,
counting by race in order to dominate and control racial populations, including the
management of the boundaries of whiteness. The instability of census categories,
particularly in the period between 1850 and 1920, is marked by numerous state strategies and practices
of race-making, reflecting dominant ideational and political discourses of the day. The
classification schema crystallized after 1930; it is no coincidence that Jim Crow segregation, miscegenation regimes and the rule of
hypodescent 99 became solidified around the same time. The
census and other related social, political and
legal forces coalesced in support of the principles and ethos of the racial state. In the
contemporary era, the nature and role of the census changed as a direct result of civil rights legislation. What was once an
instrument of regulation and control now possessed a new emancipatory power to combat, rather than reinforce, racial
discrimination and disadvantage. Census data and racial statistics found a powerful new purpose by the mid-1960s and it took very
little time for those both inside and outside the state to recognize the importance of being counted and seize opportunities to push
for the alteration or maintenance of the status quo. Unlike Britain’s policy makers, who recognized that mixed-race people posed a
problem for their classificatory schemes in the late 1960s, discussions of multiraciality did not figure prominently into the
discussions of Directive 15 in the late 1970s in part because of the legacy of Jim Crow and anti- miscegenation laws, which acted to
reinforce social and political perceptions about discrete racial boundaries and intra-racial homogeneity. Why, then, did the United
States decide to change its standards of racial classification in the late 20th century? The secondary literature identifies and (at
times) triangulates three critical factors: social mobilization, demography and civil rights legislation. Each has been demonstrably
important to the evolution of American census categorizations since 1970, though none alone or in tandem can claim to have
actually “driven” census policy. Though
civil rights legislation gave the census a new purpose and
role in American politics as it did in both Canada and Great Britain, unlike these latter cases the American
census has consistently asked a question on race. Rather than shaping the decision to
ask a question on race, which is a foregone conclusion, it seems that institutional consistency with
civil rights legislation plays an important role in the determination of which racial
categorizations should be counted. As demonstrated above, a good deal of the discussion in the congressional
committee concerned 100 the extent to which mixed-race people could claim they were victims of discrimination because of their
multiracial identities. However, evidence
that points to a group’s circumstances of racial
disadvantage may be a necessary but insufficient cause. For example, in spite of persuasive data that
people of Arab or Middle Eastern descent faced discrimination even in the pre-9/11 context, the OMB recommended against adding
a separate Arab/Middle Eastern ethnic category because of conceptual issues surrounding whether this category would be based on
geographic, religious or linguistic determinants, the limited space on federal forms and the lack of federal requirements for
information on this population group (OMB, 1997a: 36940). Furthermore, many argued that the evidence demonstrating that
mixed-race people were discriminated against by virtue of their multiraciality – as opposed to their ancestral linkages with
historically disadvantaged groups – was far from concrete. Race
is indeed a set of practices, as these
circumstances speak to the ways in which signifiers such as “Arab” and “mixed-race” did
and did not align with the schematic state’s conception of what race and racial
disadvantage meant in the American context. Most of the secondary literature on the political development of
American census categories posits a combination of demography and social mobilization as key drivers. These explanations make
intuitive sense, particularly after controversy emerged over the significant undercounts of racial minority populations in the 1970
census (Choldin, 1994). Minority groups mobilized and the Census Bureau became an “embattled organization,” (Robbin, 2000b:
444) subject to and greatly criticized through congressional oversight. From the 1970s onwards, minority groups have lobbied for
additions or changes to the American racial classification system. For example, the lobby efforts to include a means of enumerating
America’s Hispanic population began while the census form was being printed in 1968 and lasted until the newly formed and
institutionalized Census Advisory Committee on the Spanish Origin Population was 101 successful in getting a specific question on
Hispanic identity on the 1980 census (Choldin, 1986).
Boycotting?
Solvency Advocate
LP 97 – United States Libertarian Party, http://abcdunlimited.com/liberty/forge/race.html, 6/26/15
BRoche
The Libertarian Party has launched a national campaign to abolish the government's
system of racial classifications, and is urging Americans to refuse to disclose their race
on census forms in the year 2000. "For 20 long years, the U.S. government has
demeaned every American by pigeonholing us according to the color of our skin," said
the party's national chairman, Steve Dasbach. "In three years, when the census takers
ask about our race, we hope Americans will stand up and say: No more. Tell these fill-inthe-blank bureaucrats that your race is none of the government's business." The party
launched the campaign this week when the federal government, after a three-year study,
decided not to abolish its five official racial classifications. Instead, government
bureaucrats said multiracial Americans should check several boxes, such as black and
white, on the 2000 census form. The goals of the Libertarian Party's "Say No to Racial
Classifications" campaign are to build public awareness of how politicians exploit racial
classifications to further divide the nation along racial grounds, and to eliminate them
from all government forms, said Dasbach. "We're telling Americans: Stop and think
before you check that box," Dasbach said. "If millions of Americans withheld their racial
data from the government, the politicians' framework for American Apartheid would
crash to the ground." To spread the word, the party is enlisting the support of a network
of activists and registered voters across the country and is mounting a nationwide media
blitz. The government's current five "official" racial categories, created by the Office of
Management and Budget in 1977, are white, black, American Indian/Eskimo,
Asian/Pacific Islander, and Hispanic. Federal agencies use the classifications to bestow
benefits such as jobs, low-interest loans, and college scholarships. "Sadly, the
government of a nation dedicated to liberty and equality under the law is using arbitrary
racial characteristics as a wedge to pry Americans further apart," Dasbach said. Even the
courts are getting into the act, and have become America's latest racial battleground,
Dasbach noted. In March, for example, an Egyptian immigrant implored a federal court
to change his government-mandated racial classification from white to black. The man,
Mostafa Hefny of Detroit, insists that he is black because his ancestors come from the
ancient black kingdom of Nubia, which is now part of Egypt and Sudan. But the
government insists that he is white. In an attempt to get himself reclassified as black,
Hefny explained to the court that his skin is darker than General Colin Powell's, who is
officially classified as black. "Why is the government so obsessed with the color of
Hefny's skin?" Dasbach asked. "Because politicians are desperately fighting to preserve
racial categories so they can preserve their power to hand out favors." Dasbach
encouraged American politicians to learn from other nations with more progressive
racial policies -- such as South Africa. "A decade ago, the U.S. government imposed
trade sanctions to pressure the South African government to repeal its system of racial
classification called Apartheid," he said. "Wouldn't it be ironic if South Africa, which has
since repudiated government-sponsored racial discrimination, now imposed sanctions
against the United States for the same reason?" Fortunately, if the Libertarian Party's
campaign is successful, American politicians won't have to rely on a foreign government
to teach them racial tolerance, Dasbach said. "Every single American can strike a blow
for a colorblind society by saying 'no' to the census takers and 'no' to racial
classifications," Dasbach said. "We're all Americans -- what else does the government
need to know?"
Empirical solvency/political change – Germany
Van Efferink 5/1 – Geopolitical Analyst,
http://www.exploringgeopolitics.org/interview_hannah_matthew_germany_census_boycott_police_tactics_oppression_biopolitic
s_of_populations_nazi_aggression_rote_armee_fraktion_raf/,
6/26/15 BRoche
The specific trigger was a paragraph in the law passed for the 1983 census that set out
extremely loose guidelines for the sharing of personal data from census returns between
different state agencies. Activist groups involved in peace, nuclear and environmental
issues at the time picked up on this in part because they were already facing quite
intrusive and intimidating state surveillance in the public and organisational spaces
through which they conducted their campaigns. However, concern about the
indiscriminate sharing of census data facilitated by the new electronic technologies
spread well beyond the activist core quite quickly in the Spring of 1983. Many
mainstream citizens and organisations began to declare their intent to support the
proposed boycott, and national media began to explore the issue of the census’s impact
on data protection in some depth. Before the groundswell of boycott support could be
put to the test, however, the Constitutional Court surprised everyone by temporarily
halting the census in response to a lawsuit by two Hamburg attorneys, acknowledging
that the larger constitutional implications of electronic information technology had not
yet been adequately studied. Eight months later, in December of 1983, the Court ruled
that parts of the census law were in fact unconstitutional, and that the government had
to return to the drawing board. This ruling not only became a watershed for data
protection law throughout Europe but also set the stage for a more protracted and bitter
boycott movement in 1987, when the government was again ready to count the people.
This time the count did go through, but the struggle became a stage for working through
a wide range of unresolved tensions in West German politics, and for clarifying some
key political dynamics peculiar to the then-nascent ‘information age’ (see below).
Ways to boycott
Van Efferink 5/1 – Geopolitical Analyst,
http://www.exploringgeopolitics.org/interview_hannah_matthew_germany_census_boycott_police_tactics_oppression_biopolitic
s_of_populations_nazi_aggression_rote_armee_fraktion_raf/,
6/26/15 BRoche
In 1983 there was no real consensus about how to carry out the boycott. Different
boycott initiatives recommended everything from ‘accidental’ coffee spills on the census
forms to political agitation in apartment buildings, to the so-called ‘hard boycott’. The
hard boycott involved clipping all identifying information off the forms and turning
them in blank to ‘alternative collections points’, that is, local pubs, bookshops and cafes
of the alternative ‘scene’. These collection points would then count the blank forms and
return them to statistical offices in ‘recycling actions’. A much better organised version
of the hard boycott was adopted by most boycott initiatives in 1987, leading to the
publication of running national totals of blank forms in a ‘boycott barometer’ during the
enumeration. In both 1983 and 1987, another important strategy was to focus on the
recruitment of enumerators. The hundreds of thousands of enumerators the state
needed to carry out the census were often seconded from state agencies, with volunteers
making up the balance. But boycott initiatives urged those pressed to become
enumerators to find grounds for refusal, to act as ‘Trojan enumerators’, knocking at
doors not to collect information but to inform residents about the boycott, or indeed to
sign up, go through the trainings and then quit just before the count, thereby crippling
the census. In 1987, enough enumerators were eventually found to carry out the count,
but the rules had to be bent in some boycott hot-spots such as Hamburg and West
Berlin. More broadly, demonstrations, public meetings, media editorials, petitions, in
short, the whole panoply of protest methods, were brought into play. The left-wing
national daily ‘Die Tageszeitung’ was particularly active in coordinating both the 1983
and the 1987 movements. There were even some isolated incidents of violence, including
the bombing of a survey office. A few enumerators were beaten and robbed of their
census materials, leading to predictable but unsuccessful attempts by state officials to
paint all boycotters as potentially violent. In general, the Green Party, which had just
attained seats in the Bundestag during the 1983 boycott movement, was a much more
prominent player in 1987, when it could bring significant experience and resources to
bear in helping the boycott initiatives coordinate their activities. Accordingly, the Greens
were bitterly villified by state officials and census supporters.
Race boycotts good
Ramsey 14 – Reporter for a Black News service, http://newsone.com/2964648/some-boycotts-areeffective-but-not-for-the-reason-you-think/, 6/26/15 BRoche
In 1955, Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white person led to the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, a massive boycott by black citizens of the Montgomery public
bus system. The effort was organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. and was wildly
successful. For months, people walked, cycled and carpooled in the city. Black taxi
drivers even lowered their fares in support of the boycott. In all, the Montgomery Bus
Boycott lasted a little over a year and, ultimately, led to a United States Supreme Court
decision that declared segregated buses to be unconstitutional. Boycotting was also
employed in the 198os and early 90s to combat apartheid in South Africa. For years,
many nations and organizations refused to have any financial dealings with South Africa
while the country’s apartheid policies were in place. More recently, in 2001, Toyota was
forced to cancel an ad campaign that featured a black person with a tooth inlaid with the
Toyota insignia. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition charged the company with
reinforcing negative stereotypes and threatened a boycott. Toyota not only cancelled the
ads but responded further by extending its relationships with minority-owned
businesses.