Correlation does not Equal Causation; Writing Race into Humanity

The term "race" forces a division within humanity similar to Burkes metaphorical associations of experience.  Instead of categorizing experiences into frames of meaning, language is used to categorize people into perceived biological and ideological casings, each is like the last and all are alike within their “compartment”. These casings that Gates refers to in terms of race share strong similarities to Burkes terministic screens, which he describes as means for “directing attention into some channels rather than others” (Burke 45).  These channels can be considered similarly to the mental avenues Burke described in previous works- they direct attention in a direction based on previous processing of similar information.  Burke explains his concept of terministic screens as “I have particularly in mind some photographs I once saw. They were different photographs of the same object, the difference being that they were made with different color filters. Here something so “factual as a photograph revealed notable distinctions in texture, even in form, depending upon which color filter was used for the documentary description of the event being recorded” (Burke 45). We can consider race as one of these filters- it imposes no intrinsic change on the photograph itself, it is still the same image and same materiality, yet it has a new implication because of the emotions evoked by the filter.

            Gates writes about race as a dangerous trope masquerading as a detached categorical term, “Race, in these usages, pretends to be an objective term of classification, when if is in fact a dangerous trope” (Gates 5). Race then is an abstraction- physicality associated with mental pathways to predetermined schemas of behavior. These schemas function as the terministic screens through which we understand race, the problem Gates seems to be pointing to is the instinctive association of these tropes with the physicality of race. “The sense of difference defined in popular usages of the term “race” has both described and inscribed differences of language, belief system, artistic tradition…The relation between racial character and these sorts of characteristics has been inscribed through tropes of race, lending the sanction of God, biology, or the natural order to even presumably unbiased descriptions of cultural tendencies and differences” (Gates 5).  The crux of this argument is language- language is the reason this arbitrary assignment of racial characteristic is even able to exist. The use of congruent lingual archetypes lends itself to oversimplification and capricious association based on a common denominator (race) that is not correlated with all of the perceived racial characteristics that are assigned to it.

            The term “race” creates, rather than describes the cultural phenomenon that is perceived in terms of color and ethnicity. Burke says, “not only does the nature of our terms affect the nature of our observation, in the sense that the terms direct the attention to one field rather than to another. Also many of the observations are but implications of the particular terminology in terms of which the observations are made” (Burke 46). It is possible to conclude from this statement of opinion that language can bring certain phenomena in to being. The way something is termed has an intense effect on the way it is perceived and the repetition of these often erroneous perceptions creates a veritable reality that may horrible skewed or even completely fictional. In a sense race is an invention of the eye that associated certain types of physicality with specific traits. This optical invention gave way to action and active classifications, which lead to racial stratification and thus created real racial distinctions- where it is likely none, would have emerged biologically.

            The creation of the term creates a rift instead of fostering understanding by offering a means to describe the construct known as “race”. This systematic and very likely unsound method of classification comes from a deep carnal need to divide and classify. “Each of us shares with all other members of our kind the fatal fact that, however the situation came to be, all members of our species conceive reality somewhat roundabout, through various media of symbolism.  Any such medium will be, as you prefer, either a way of dividing us from the immediate” (Burke 52). In considering race in these terms it begins to become clear that race is not an oppressive facet of the human condition- it is a construct of it. The condition Burke explains in the above passage is not one of mans struggle against the oppression of race, but rather the writhing against the need to create it. “In the unwritten cosmic constitution that lies behind all man-made constitutions, it is decreed by the nature of things that each man is “necessarily free” to be his own tyrant, inexorably imposing upon himself the peculiar combination of insights associated with his peculiar combination of experiences” (Burke 52). Understanding language in this way allows for a more critical cognition of language, which in turn fosters a deeper understanding of the so-termed human condition. Race is a product, not a cause of this pathological need to label and discern that seems to be encrypted in the human mind.

~Mikaela McShane