Arbitrary Nomenclature & Invented Disparity

             In his "Writing 'Race' and the Difference it Makes," Henry Gates claims that race must be in constant discourse with current events if it is to have any explanatory power. This racialized gaze seems to reflect a popular worldview apparent in my generation. Gates says that, "It was Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine who made the implicit explicit by postulating 'race, moment, and milieu' as positivistic criteria through which any work could be read and which, by definition, any work reflected" (3). Questioning whether or not art, rhetoric, or any other popular statements are patently offensive to a particular group seems to be a distinct worldview popular amongst my generation as well as the generation in their later 20's and even 30's.




Questioning the origin of widely publicized material is of course, a quality of post-modernism in general. However, I would argue that in recent years questioning the offensive quality or racism inherent in any popular media has been a lens from which to analyze the world. I would almost argue that searching for racism/offensive properties and then critiquing them seems to be the Marxist movement of my generation. Several big events have sparked the popularity of this worldview for me and for many others. Some examples of individuals who have brought this to light include popular rap artists who remind us of the everlasting prevalence of racism such as Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, and Jay-Z. Street artists such as Banksy and Shepard Fairey have also made popular statements about the dynamics of race and class struggles.

Additionally, the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and many other black individuals by white police officers has sparked protests and debates about lingering evidence of racist America. The murder of Muslim Americans has also sparked talks about racism and led to social media movements with the hashtags #blacklivesmatter and #muslimlivesmatter. Lately there has been a hypercritical lens from which we view the world. For instance, a recent photoshoot involving Kylie Jenner has received a lot of negative attention. Although Kylie seems to look "alien-like" in the photoshoot with silver makeup on, many have argued that she has been guilty of appropriating black culture with her fake large lips and bronzed skin. Appropriating a culture means picking and choosing qualities of that culture you appreciate and adopting it while members of that actual culture are critiqued for the same qualities such as having large lips. Viewing the world through a hypercritical lens does not only apply strictly to racism, it encompasses the feminist and gay rights movement along with many other equality movements.

According to Gates, "Race is the ultimate trope of difference because it is so very arbitrary in its application. We carelessly use language in such a way as to will this sense of natural difference into our formulations. To do so is to engage in a pernicious act of language, one which exacerbates the complex problem of cultural or ethnic difference rather than to assuage or redress it" (5). The qualities by which we compare one race to another are completely arbitrary and wholly irrelevant. Color of skin, texture of hair, culture, religion, class, and intelligence are all categories that can not fairly be judged in a hierarchical manner without considering the specifics. Whites when judging other races blindly value the characteristics of their race without considering any value in the different qualities of other races. This reflects a famous quote by Albert Einstein who said, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

This quote directly relates to the white men judging blacks by their ability to "reason." This ability to reason, by the way, is only valued when it is found in writing. So the ability of African Americans to maintain incredible cultural stories that lasted through generations of oral culture is not valued by white men. Blacks were only to be respected if they could prove their reasoning through a network of published work. However, learning to read and write was illegal for black slaves. And as evidenced by Wheatley in Gate's essay, even when African Americans did publish an incredible body of work, they were disrespected and had to "prove" they actually authored the text. Opinions on blacks were never founded in any factual evidence and meanwhile blanket statements were made about an entire race. Hume is quoted by Gates in his essay as saying, "There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white" (10).

The fact that such harsh and ignorant statements are commonly held as truth in our society is the very reason that Cooper argues for a more prominent black voice in literature in her "Voice From the South." Cooper says of her people that there are, "Many gifts the giftie may gie us, far better than seeing ourselves as others see us" (383). These words echo Gates' sentiment in his "Writing 'Race' and the Difference it Makes" when he argues that African Americans must portray their own culture without blurring it through European standards (15). Both authors argue for more literature to help humanize their race, create their identity, and depict their rich history.



Examples:

This video is a humorous representation of how almost anything can be viewed as "offensive" yet everyone is racist in some way

http://blarceny.tumblr.com/post/67483125463/key-and-peele-offensive-boss-this-is

Kylie Jenner controversial makeup

http://www.tvguide.com/news/kylie-jenner-blackface-instagram/