Week 2

The political, and thus inherently racial, implications of space and landscape are inextricably linked to the role of race in society. Omi and Winant emphasize that the history of the United States has consistently been “characterized by racial despotism, denial of political rights, and policies of minority extirpation.” Thus, those in power, primarily whites, are able to continually control the spatial disparities in neighborhoods throughout the United States. The “repressive apparatus” controlled by the state is typified by the discrimination and racial structure of the housing market and neighborhoods that Lipsitz, Schein, and Rojas expound upon. Although Omi and Winant explain the ability of racially disadvantaged populations affecting political notions of race through political action and prominent social movements. This, however, is counteracted by the reality and nature of politically institutionalized racial discrimination that continues to be prevalent today. The racialized normative landscapes of Lexington, Kentucky’s Cheapside and Thoroughbred Park are clear evidence of such. Lipsitz suggests that the “racial projects of American society have always been spatial projects as well”. Race and space are therefore fundamentally connected.

The fact that Omi and Winant stress the idea of race as a crux to realized identities, and what Schein reinforces as “to be part of a landscape, to drive our identity from it is an essential precondition of our being-in-the-world,” implies that racial identities are rooted in the spaces that we take up, in the neighborhoods and houses in which we live. Then, because deprived populations occupy obviously deleterious and underprivileged spaces, the basis of their racial identity is innately less stable than that of those who occupy unmistakably privileged spaces. This is further elucidated by the popular notion of the “purity” of white spaces in direct opposition to “dirty” spaces inhabited by blacks or people of color.

Would it then be possible for the United States to move beyond such a racialized notion of space and place when the very basis of its creation has been the exploitation and discrimination of “non-normative” populations? Will such populations ever maintain any status of power or level of exclusiveness that is primarily associated with white communities?