Racial Perception Throughout History

Although Hum and Gates elaborate on different focal points in their argument, “Between the Eyes: The Racialized Gaze as Design” and “Writing Race and the Difference it Makes” both make strong accusations that racial perception ultimately influences our interpretation of art and literature throughout history. Hum begins this argument by elaborating on the complexities of racial perspective and breaking down racialized gaze as Design. “No one approaches images with an innocent eye. Designers’ perceptual habits, such as the racialized gaze, influence their choice-making processes, including choosing, sequencing, and combining resources.” (Hum 2) Hum is essentially arguing that one’s racial perspective may be shaped by historical changes in representation. The projections of those representations are what constitutes racialized gaze as Design. Hum views racialized gaze not only as a perceptual habit, but also as a dominant cultural habit for perceiving race-related visual phenomena.

Similar to Hum’s interpretation of racialized gaze, Gates argues that literature was interpreted according to the period in which and the people by whom it was written. Gates’ theory stems from the ideology that race is biologically meaningless so our own racial perception is ultimately what makes it oppressive. Gates infers that we insist on distinguishing between different races in an almost scientific manner. In the context of this distinction, we attribute different characteristics to different races. “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) Essentially, Gates argues that these differences have been ingrained in language so that they seem inherent and scientific.

Excerpts from Cooper’s “A Voice From The South” culminate both Gates and Hum’s theories on racial perspective. In specific, Cooper elaborates on the adversity faced by African Americans and argues that the only accurate perception of race comes from “the brush of the colored man himself.” (Cooper 382) Furthermore, Cooper believes that society’s perception of African Americans (specifically black women) is the only true measure of collective racial progress: “The impulse of humanity toward social progress is like the movement in the currents of a great water system, from myriad sources and under myriad circumstances and conditions, beating onward, ever onward toward its eternity, the Ocean.” (Cooper 339) Hum and Gates’ philosophies stem from this central concept that Cooper articulates. Society’s pre-concieved notions and historical perception of race ultimately determine how we interpret art and literature.



Hum, Sue. “‘Between the Eyes’: Racialized Gaze as Design.” College English 77.3 (2015): 191-2.

Gates, Henry Louis. “Writing ‘Race’ and the Difference It Makes.” Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 1-20.

Cooper, Anna Julia. “Excerpts from A Voice From the South” (1892). Wielding the Pen: Writings on Authorship by American Women of the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Anne E. Boyd. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U P, 2009. 379-384.