[reposting] Where does race come from and where is it taking us?

In order to really understand the idea of “race” as a literary construct would require that we understand first the historical context of its conception and the different usages that it has obtained throughout history. Henry Louis Gates Jr. attempts to break down the differences of the term and the various usages of the idea as well. He says that "western writers in French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and English have tried to mystify these rhetorical figures of race, to make them natural, absolute, essential. In doing so, they have inscribed these differences as fixed and finite categories which they merely report or draw upon for authority" (Gates 6). He goes on to explain a bit about how the creation and usage and perpetuation of this idea of "race" only really serve to alienate people from one another. This huge dichotomy is especially drawn between people of less fortune as seen in historical and contemporary examples. Gates explains that "takes little reflection, however, to recognize that these pseudoscientific categories are themselves figures. Who has seen a black or red person, a white, yellow, or brown? These terms are arbitrary constructs, not reports of reality” (Gates 6).

[reposting] Race Manifested in Society

In Sue Hum’s essay, Between the Eyes: The Racialized Gaze as Design, she opens her essay with a quote form Gunther Kress that not only provides a smooth entry into her theory of Design, but nicely summarizes it as well. Kress said that individuals “shape their interests through the design of messages with the resources available to them in specific situations (191).” In other words, people’s interests are unconsciously generated from images and messages that are created with available resources and their invisible dominant perceptual practices. However, Hum argues that a person’s dominant perceptual practices, as well as their cultural perceptual practices, may “influence and even limit the rhetorical purposes of images seeking to initiate social transformation (193).” Thus, why she advocates that the English studies needs “a theory of Design that better acknowledges the dominant perceptual habits that function to both constrain acts of choice-making and restrict the repertoire of available resources (192).”

[reposting] racialized gaze as reality

All three of these theorists have ideas that are grounded similarly yet take off in different directions. Cooper and Gates’s arguments seem to run most parallel out of the three. Cooper shows some strong-toned rhetoric at the beginning of her work, where you can almost see her anger bleed into her thesis. Gates, too, goes on a long-winded (but insightful and very necessary) elaboration on how racism is a “fiction” (4) and a “dangerous trope” (5). She spends several pages roasting racism to the point where any conceivable marginalization of anyone sounds not only under-evolved but completely dumb. Cooper would greatly add onto Gates’s argument in the way that Cooper claims that black people have not truly had a chance to contribute to humanity because they’ve been oppressed (383). Hum makes an interesting point as she elaborates on her term of racialized gaze as design. Racialized gaze is a perceptual habit, meaning a habitual way of looking at something. Racialized gaze as Design argues that design has been influenced because of these perceptual habits. She claims that racialized gaze as design makes it harder for artists to express what they mean to (193) because the audience’s perceptual habit keeps them from fully empathizing with the artist. My issue with this claim is that if the audience is so affected by racialized gaze, then the artist should too be heavily affected by it. Further elaborating on these ideas, the only African American influence we currently have is one that has been shaped by racialized gaze, regardless of whether or not this gaze is held by the audience or the artist. 

How Racialized Gaze Shapes Our Perception

It is often said that “race is a social construct” and Hum and Gates both support this argument by showing how throughout history the voices of black authors have been altered. In “Between the Eyes: The Racialized Gaze as Design,” Hum draws attention to the fact that individuals make strategic choices in the design of their rhetoric based on a culture’s dominant perceptual practices. She writes that “when we speak of "the white race" or "the black race," "the Jewish race" or "the Aryan race," we speak in biological misnomers and, more generally, in metaphors.” (Hum 4) We, as individuals, rely on our racialized gaze as an available resource of design. Sometimes we use these resources subconsciously without even realizing it.

Most simply, Race and Design intersect at the corner of creation and perception. Hum crafted an article to discuss the ethical considerations we must make as content creators with regards to race.  Hum writes that designers must, “attend to  how  perceptual  habits,  such  as  the  racialized  gaze,  are  interwoven  with  their production of persuasive ensembles.” (Hum 192) More simply, as creators, we have a moral obligation to keep a very watchful eye on the perception of our audience. Some might argue that this suggests the power of the audience, as this indicates their ability to guide and direct the creativity of the content producer.

Inadvertent Alienation

Throughout history, there has been racial prejudice within literature. These depictions, in text and image, influenced thought and belief in Western culture continually. The alienation of different races severely affected how each culture was perceived within history.

 Each illustration, description, reference and stereotype shown to the public created or maintained a racial format, per say, for others to follow. Sometimes furthering these ideas were not even meant to be prejudice. Gates described how literature has altered the term "race" into something more than just appearance between  people. He claimed that "the relation between "racial character" and these sort 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" (5). This suggested belief that their differences are completely naturally made, and not the work of years and years or stereotypes made by others furthers racism and the ignorance to itself in literature.

The Harmful Implications of Racialized Gaze

When addressing the existence of race in literature, we encompass what seems to be an extremely large portion of American literature. This is largely due to the existence of a racialized gaze amongst both the audience and the author of a text. No matter the intent of a writer or a piece of literature, the inclusion of race brings forth implicit assumptions about that race from the audience. Sue Hum addresses this process as “racialized gaze as design”, as these messages about race are created through the simple inclusion of other races. In other words, “no one approaches images with an innocent eye” (Hum 193).

Chicken vs The Egg/Design vs The Image

Both Hum and Gates reflect notions of postcolonial literary criticism in their respective essays. While Gates is heavily critical of antiquated ideas surrounding the colonial literature and how it pertains to the broad concept of race, Hum holds the indoctrinating process of Design to task due to its ability to self-perpetuate negative stereotypes, specifically in regards to race. Both of these theorists subscribe to postcolonialism as both their theories advocate for a certain change in the discourse. Hum argues that, if assessed properly, Design can “promote a socially tolerant and racially inclusive future” (Hum 208). Gates even reflects Hum’s notion of Design when he states that “the languages we employ to define [our] supposed differences not only reinforce each other but tend to create and maintain each other” (Gates 15). This is ostensibly an alternative articulation of Hum’s theory that “perceptual habits,” a term also used by Gates in his essay, “increase choice making processes” and establish somewhat of a cultural hegemony (Hum 193). Since both these theorists reflect several of the same themes, as well as place a lot of authority on perception and how it influences aspects of Design and development, I wish to bring them into conversation with one another in order to come to a conclusion as to whether the images we see influence, or design as Hum would put it, the way we interact and perceive the world or if the way we view the world based off of Design influences how we interpret images.

The "Dominant" Design: Why We Must Dismantle Universality

Critical Race Theory in the 21st century has many intersections and distinct voices that contribute to a nuanced conversation. Importantly, there is no single "dominant" leader who speaks for every experience. Thus, for congruence with this nuanced conversation, it seems most logical to highlight unique view points such as Sue Hum’s Between the Eyes: The Racialized Gaze as Design and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s Writing “Race” and the Difference it Makes. From there one may synthesize how Hum and Gates as individuals together can offer very valuable experiences and knowledge sets to expand rhetorical theory and ideas of (re)presentation.

Race Writes History

Or at least, in this case, how modern society views the historical context that surround certain significant events in the past. Whether it was purposeful or not, history was written with a racial bias; this is especially relevant here in America, where we have a long past of shameful racial prejudices throughout the development of our nation. Ever since the Colonial days when white Western-Europeans came to already-inhabited America and claimed this land their own, it has become evident that these white European's fancied themselves as the dominant race. One of the most prime examples is the continued celebration of Christopher Columbus day; it is a holiday celebrating the exploratory spirit and the navigator, who while looking for a direct route to Asia from Europe, "discovered" the American continent. This is a very biased way of learning about the events that transpired; it is often vaguely described how there were already a native people in this land, and there had been for thousands of years. But the day that a white man accidentally landed upon its shores, it was "discovered", which has a positive connotation associated with it. It is common for educational systems in America to teach about the historical time period this way, but fail to see the events that transpired in the Native American context. Christopher Columbus and his men took advantage of the welcoming Natives, ravaged them of their resources, stripped them of their lands, and essentially began the genocide of the Native American population. So why only teach about one viewpoint? Because the white race, which has established itself as the dominant one within the racially constructed hegemonic American society, has been responsible for the "white-washing" of recorded history.