Does Hegemony Even Exist? Does Race?

We all know that society is extremely stereotypical. We also know that society is categorized into what is "dominant" and what is "inferior" based off of what is perceived by society as "reality". This week, my task was to discussion lead the word "hegemony" for lecture in tomorrow's class. As I read and reread through Gates' text about race, I obviously traced it in terms of hegemony. What I found was that yes, although hegemony is defined as what is dominant, I found that what classifies something as dominant, really has no true, solid meaning and therefore, should not exist. A white man is no better or worse than a black man, and a woman is no better or worse than a woman. Hegemony, in my opinion, does not really exist, because to each race, gender ethnicity, whatever it may be, they have their own classification of what is "hegemonic" and therefore, there really cannot be any sort of "top hegemony" unless it is God, but even then, God doesn't exist to atheists, so even then, there is no hegemonic category. 

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Race is a difficult term to define. Yes, in a literal sense, race is your skin color, your culture, your background, etc. But on a deeper level, race is hard to define, because the color of your skin does not necessarily dictate and define how you think, feel and see the world. Hippolyte- Adolphe-Taine claimed in Gates' text that race was a "thing" and was a "criteria" for how literature should be read. He claimed, "race was the source of all structures of feelings and thoughts" (Gates, 3). In other words, race wasn't just a persons' skin color, but rather a determinant of how they were supposed to think, feel, see, perceive and interpret things in the world and the world itself. These structures are stereotypical, making race a stereotypical classifier, because, for example, not all black people love rap music and in fact some white people do. All race is, is a huge stereotypical way of categorizing people into different segments based off of how they look. 

Hegemony is what is considered dominant. Building on my race argument, if race is just a stereotypical determinant of people and their thoughts, wouldn't hegemony be a stereotypical categorization of what is dominant based off of what these races think, feel and perceive? In other words, choosing an ideal, “dominant” would not only be extremely bias and arbitrary, but it would be stereotypical and what is seen as dominant to one race could not be to the other. Because of these underdeveloped definitions of race and hegemony, it makes literature hard to read, interpret and respect for some people. Edward Said, in his essay “An Ideology of Difference” states, “because society is obsessed with structure, relations and concepts under ‘Saussurian hegemony’, society has ignored and suspended “reality” and rather has created abstract categories of “otherness” which depend on fictitious differences to be effective” (Gates, 15). What this means, is that society has created its own definition of “reality” based off of categories classifying anyone who isn’t the ideal, hegemonic of their race as an “other”.  For instance, in the white race, the hegemonic classification would be a white, handsome man, who works and has money, owns land, has a family with a wife and 2.5 children, etc. Sometimes in movies, this hegemonic man is defined as the athlete with money who lands the hot girl and is hot. The nerds, the blacks, the Asians, etc. are all inferior to this white man because in Western society, that white man is hegemonic. But to African Americans, there hegemony is a totally different construct and the white male would be the “other”, however as members of society and how society is constructed, they classify themselves as the “other” and see the white man as hegemonic unless they are just in their own society, literature, movies etc.

            I guess the point I am trying to prove, is that race and hegemony are nothing more than stereotypes created by society that influence who is dominant and who is the “other”, and these classifications are nothing more than just perceptions created by Western Society and their need to stay hegemonic in literature and society. To tie this back to Burke's terministic screens, I think race is a terministic screen, because I think terministic screens have a stereotypical layer to them, and stereotypes are tied to races and perceptions of races.