Week 13

This week’s readings delve much deeper into the earlier discussions and comparisons between Latinos and Asians. However, rather than viewing both populations as simply racialized in a black-white binary, Ong and De Genova discuss the implications of transnational culture and capital in Flexible Citizenship and Working the Boundaries respectively.

Ong places the transnational Hong Kong elite into a greater picture of globalization, neoliberalism, and within a context of Chinese and colonial history. Ong establishes the rich entrepreneurs, attempting to maintain “symbolic capital” where they lack social power, and the role of the economically powerful family unit as a means of “subvert[ing] reigning notions of the national self and the other in transnational arenas” (112). The former enter the United States with symbolic capital, which “reproduces the established social order and conceals relations of domination” (89), and are still forces to “contend with the historical construction of Asian others as political and culturally subordinate subjects” (101). The latter, Ong argues, are “othering Chineseness” by discrediting popular notions of power regimes through their “flexible, mobile relations across political borders” and their ultimate ties to capital rather than any particular nation (116).

On the other hand, De Genova argues that Chicago represents a continuation of Latin America within the United States, where Mexican migrant workers work low-wage jobs and are constantly discriminated and perpetually seen as “the other”. The Mexican workers are racialized and “reracialized” in the perpetuation of racial stereotypes.

Although the two populations are at very distant positions within economic and social spheres, Ong and De Genova emphasize both populations’ place in a symbolic limbo between nation states, where citizenship and national boundaries are blurred and flexible. Both authors see the immigrant populations as “agents actively shaping their self-identity in a cross-cultural context” (Ong 88) and see location as central to maintenance and creation of those identities. It is necessary to also see the immigration and perpetuation or subversion of the transnational identities of Mexican and Chinese populations within a neoliberal and market-based frame of reference because both are so distinctly shaped by their economic positions, and their subsequent otherness.

Week 12

Golden Gulag, by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, addresses the rapid growth of the prison industrial complex in California. By addressing the “relationship between urban and rural political and economic restructuring” (17), Gilmore traces the connection between poverty, unemployment, and the unfortunate links between the urban poor and the prison system. Rather than addressing the core issues leading to incarceration, drug use, or domestic instability, the prison system takes advantage of disenfranchised populations in order to accumulate growth and wealth. In looking at the greater picture of the prison population, it is not difficult to see how it has become a clearly racialized and stigmatized group.

Despite the drastic drop in crime rates in California (among many other states), the prison building economy has continued and thrives. The appeal and draw of building prisons, seen as well in the film Prisontown USA, initially stems from a loss in an agriculture-based economy and thus a greater need for employment opportunities. Among those appeals are promises to maintain and support local business and to jumpstart the necessary economy, both of which are fleeting and unstable. In order to sustain the highly expensive perpetuation of the prison system, Gilmore emphasizes the legal means used to increase the number of prisoners, despite the lowered crime rates, such as the 1988 Step Act or the three-strike rule.

Although the prison industrial complex seems far too daunting of a task to fight against, Gilmore underscores the economic with the political, specifically with the grass-roots organization, Mothers Reclaiming Our Children (ROC). The mobilization of women, primarily poor women of color, creates a unification of a highly affected group for their own personal gain. Despite dissimilar experiences, ROC serves as integrating action, similar to the cross-racial solidarities we have already discussed at length.

Ultimately, Golden Gulag and Prisontown USA are both prime examples of what can be seen everyday, in the streets or blaringly obvious in the mainstream news media. The racialized and subjugated bodies of the prisoners, and of even the prison guards, is a testament to the economic and political bases of those populations.

Week 11

In order to fully understand the political, social, and racial implications of the Japanese Internment camps or the military camp at Guantánamo Bay, it is first necessary to make sense of the political nature of camps in general. Agamben defines a camp as a “permanent spatial arrangement that remains constantly outside the normal state of law.” They are areas where national paternalism over racialized bodies both undermines and attempts to eliminate culture, political rights, and legitimate legal statuses. The notions of internment and camps cannot, as Agamben argues, be seen “as a historical fact and an anomaly that belongs nonetheless in the past, but rather in some sense as the hidden matrix and nomos of the political space in which we still live.” The camps at Guantánamo Bay exemplify the “ambiguous space[s]” that Agamben describes, in that they occupy a space within an “indefinite legal borderland between the domestic and foreign” (Kaplan 833, 847) and are clear representations of the continued subordination of peoples that delineates United States history. Although the Japanese and Japanese American experience differs greatly from that of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, both are nonetheless narratives of racial and political subjection. And despite the fifty years that span between the two, they both present a conflation of American political power and racialized imperialism.

The space that the camp embodies and the bodies that it affects are illustrative of the “military and political might and economic and culture power” that the United States exerts and “intimately shapes the contours of U.S. national identity” (Kaplan 833). Thus, through the normalizing forces created within the camps and the “alien” bodies that are therefore produced, the United States is creating identity based on negation. Just as whiteness is defined as the negation of blackness, citizenship is defined by the negation of those people who reside in spaces of political indeterminacy, where they belong to yet are not a part of the body politic. And because camps, internment, and national identity are based so highly on the physical bodies and people being subjugated, “the camp is…the most absolute biopolitical space…a space in which power confronts nothing other than pure biological life without any mediation” (Agamben 401). Whether through “conflicts over the cultural content of citizenship” or through the creation of “less than human [subjects] and [therefore] less deserving of human, international, or constitutional rights,” camps and internment are a powerful means for subordination and removal of any power. (Ngai 201/Kaplan 853).

Week 10

I have found in my previous discussions of race, Native Americans are often discounted. They are completely erased from the picture and their struggles, and more importantly, their genocide is rarely discussed. This creates a problematic discourse considering the magnitude of the marginalization of the Native American population. This is why the readings for this week are especially important in dismissing the notion of the black-white binary and reintroducing the plight of Native Americans into race discourse.

The blatant racism and apartheid created by the government, as evidenced in The Birth of the Reservation and Rape of The Land, were conscious decisions to either wipe out or completely assimilate the population into white capitalist society. Whether through deliberate modes of subjection or through hazardous environmental conditions imposed on the Native Americans, the actions employed by the state had the intended deleterious effect, almost completely abolishing the Native American population.

One thing in the Biolsi reading particularly struck me: the association of “good” qualities of the Native American with whiteness, where if a Native American displayed intelligence or prudence with money, they were considered “in every aspect a white man, other than his Indian blood” (39). This association of “goodness” with whiteness perpetuates the notion of white supremacy and maintains the highly racialized social order that has become so normalized.

Another particularly important aspect of the readings was the “colonial/patriarchal mind that seeks to control the sexuality of women and indigenous peoples also seeks to control nature” (Smith, 55). By creating a link between sexual repression of Native Americans and racial oppression, Smith emphasizes the intersectionality of sexuality and race and other modes of oppression.

Why have these practices, simply because they primarily affected Native Americans, been completely removed from any critical discussion about racist governmental policies and essentially erased from history?

Week 9

Garbage has become a political, economic, social, and cultural problem affecting a large portion of urban populations. According to Sze, “garbage as a culturally and politically loaded symbol represent[s] larger trends of social or municipal neglect” (53). Julie Sze’s book, Noxious New York, focuses on community activism against environmental and health hazards that disproportionately affect poor, minority neighborhoods in New York. The creation of toxic waste disposal centers, in four distinct locations throughout the five boroughs, has primarily been sited in locations known for their overwhelming proportion of people of color and is clear indicator of a racialized municipal garbage system. Although the state of garbage in New York City specifically, but also nationwide, is a daunting task to address, Sze emphasizes the power and agency held by community action, where bottom up activism can have a legitimate role in dismantling state institutions that maintain disregard for the health of entire communities and perpetuate a cycle of poverty.

Sze argues that “oppressive physical surroundings perpetuate and reinforce their residents’ oppression” (84). Thus, by continuing to disregard poor or minority communities as filthy and therefore legitimate sites for toxic health hazards, the neoliberal city is able to expand the ever- greater disparity between the rich and poor in New York. The manifestations of garbage treatment in New York city can be seen with the increasing rates of asthma among African American and Latino populations, specifically among children, and the higher rate of disease throughout the populations affected. Asthma, in particular, has become a “politicized illness” and a representation of a “racialized and gendered disease” that has primarily been fought by women (mothers) and poor communities of color (94, 95).

In the face of privatization and deregulation, community groups and coalitions emerged as a valid force to affect decisions that affect the health and well being of their own communities. Thus, “environmental justice provided a crucial political and discursive framework for communities of color to negotiate redevelopment, urban change, and competition over resources broadly defined” (6). And in two cases, the Brooklyn Navy Yard incinerator and the Sunset sludge treatment plant, disparate communities were able to form cross-racial coalitions, disregarding past tensions for the betterment of the entire community. These cases “represent the generally unrealized potential of multiracial and multiethnic community organizing on environmental justice and community health issues” (85). Thus, despite the historical lack of political power of communities of color and poor neighborhoods, community activism against environmental hazards has proven to elicit much more agency and governmental sway than would be expected.

Week 8

Arlene Davila’s work on the gentrification of East Harlem in Barrio Dreams presents a new perspective on gentrification that I have not yet encountered. The majority of work concerning gentrification that I have read focuses on Black neighborhoods, ignoring the diversity and marginalization of Latino populations throughout New York and other major metropolitan areas. Providing further evidence of the black-white binary that pervades popular racial understandings, the clear lack of literature on this topic poses a problematic stance. By addressing “El Barrio,” Davila offers a variant perspective on gentrification, one that places culture within the context of a neoliberal city at the crux. The contradictions with economics and with the memory and aspirations of “El Barrio” explain the complex political space the neighborhood inhabits.

The creation of culture as a commodity presents a complex dynamic between the residents of East Harlem and the policies enacted to further gentrification. Davila argues that residents attempts to maintain and perpetuate the preeminent Puerto Rican and Latino culture within the neighborhood plays into the commodification of that same culture into a tourist attraction and an area of outside investment. At the same time, Davila presents the contradiction within neoliberalism that purport color-blind policies while using ethnicity and culture as methods for advancing economic policies. This presents a paradox, where retainment of culture both perpetuates and is antithetical to gentrification and neoliberal policies. Any ventures to rid “El Barrio” of the negative connotations of poverty or crime, in turn, lead to a greater interest in development catering to middle and upper-middle class residents, which displaces many of the poor and working class that were essential in creating the thriving culture of East Harlem.

The ultimate goal would then to produce gentrification without displacement, attempts to maintain the very culture of the neighborhood without making way for an economic constituency that would eliminate the state of the neighborhood now. As long as neoliberal policies use the culture of the neighborhood as a means for greater economic returns and as a way to alter the neighborhood dynamics, the core of East Harlem will continue to be threatened.

Week 7

I found this week’s readings to be particularly poignant, especially when relating to discussions I’ve been having in my other classes. I find that cross-race solidarity is essential in understanding the underlying system of racism and oppression as it manifests itself through various oppressed groups.

Grace Hong’s analysis of “A Fire in Fontana”, by Hisaye Yamamoto, relates racial discrimination, on both a personal and state level, to the idea of property ownership. Historically, people of color have been deprived of property on the basis of their color, whereas, reiterating what Harris has written, whiteness has been the basis of property and privilege therein. While the racial inequities have been evidenced is different ways for blacks and Japanese, internment and denial of citizenship for Japanese and the obvious ramifications of Slavery and Jim Crow Laws for African Americans, both have dealt with violent repercussions on the basis of their identities.

All of this hints to the ideas of intersectionality and the deconstruction of a hierarchy of oppression. Intersectionality is the idea that various modes of oppression, not solely race but also class, gender, sexuality, etc., do not act independently; rather, they are all interrelated and create a system of oppression reflecting the intersection of multiple forms of oppression. By looking at forms of discrimination in this way, we are able to undermine the notion of a hierarchy of oppression, where one group’s oppression trumps others. This set of beliefs directly plays into the political ideology of the oppressor, pitting one disenfranchised group with another rather than fighting directly for equal rights or against those who are creating these inequalities. It is not enough to simply understand one’s own oppressions, but instead, to place those within a greater context of all of those who are oppressed.

Rather than looking bleakly at the future of race relations in the United States, Hong ends positively, suggesting that “A Fire in Fontana” can be read as the “basis of an oppositional political project through its creation of an alternative collective memory, its imagining of a space where the cross-race solidarity that did not happen in the past could be forged in the future” (308).