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Social Construction of Race and Reality
Herman Melville's Benito Cereno is a story of race relations and a narrative of racial formation. The theories and definitions set out by Michael Omi and Howard Winant in their article "Racial Formation in the United States" can easily be applied to Melville's novel. First, Benito Cereno details a slave revolt aboard a Spanish merchant ship off the coast of South America. The historical, political, economical, and social settings of Benito Cereno are at the root of the problems that Omi and Winant delineate. Indeed, the authors note on page 61 "It was only when European explorers reached the Western Hemisphere...that the distinctions and categorizations fundamental to a racialized social structure, and to a discourse of race, began to appear." In "discovering" new faces and races, the European explorers were suddenly faced with a paradigm threat. On the one hand, cultural and religious ideals dictated that the indigenous people of the Americas and Africa were to be treated as "children of God." On the other hand, a "ferocious division of society erupted," (Omi and Winant 62). This division is clearly exemplified on board the San Dominick.
Captain Delano ascribes neither to the ethnicity paradigm nor to neoconservatism, but rather he is an early producer of the biological view on race. An American on board a Spanish slave-holding ship, he immediately perceives the blacks on board as chattel....
Captain Delano, when he first espies the ship, imagines the "cargo" initially as members of a "white washed monastery," and then as "throngs of dark cowls." This profound shift in attention from stark white to stark black exhibits Delano's tendency to create and categorize people according to political and social constructs. These constructs were formed by the colonial American society in which Delano lived. Racial formation in colonial America rapidly progressed during this era, and Captain Delano is a perfect representative and embodiment of it.
Benito Cereno is an ideal tale to analyze in terms of theories of racial formation because it identifies concepts of race applied to both black and Spanish people by the white captain. The brilliance in the story lies in the irony that underlies the mutiny and Delano's response to its buildup. Delano's concept of race is so deeply ingrained in his psyche that he fails to break free from its construct. Because politics and social norms in colonial America accepted, condoned, and encouraged -- through law -- this racism, Captain Delano exemplifies what Omi and Winant call a "racial dictatorship" This culturally and politically enforced racial dictatorship is what causes Delano's profound ignorance. The captain simply cannot conceive of Benito Cereno, Babo, or any of the…
race? Racial Formation Racial Formation as part of everyday life experience The Evolution of Modern Racial Awareness Introduction to the racist reactions Social Construction Theory Development of the Social Construction Framework Propositions related to the social construction of target groups Racial Rearticulating of political issues The Far Right Neo-Conservatism This report basically centers on a fundamental issue in society that the human race faces which is that of race. The judgment of a person on the basis of their skin
Contact With a Sentient Extraterrestrial Alien Species I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. -- U.S. President Ronald, Speech to the United Nations General Assembly, 42nd General Assembly, September 21, 1987 As the epigraph above indicates, even national leaders recognize the potential for first contact with a sentient extraterrestrial alien species and its implications for humankind. In
The social construction of the environment is a concept that refers to the ways in which societies and cultures perceive, understand, and interact with the natural world around them. It suggests that our understanding of what represents the natural environment is not a simple reflection of the physical world but rather a product of societal norms, values, beliefs, and practices. In this essay, we explore the various dimensions of environmental
Social Construction of Race and Gender The purpose of this article is to explore the methods by which Social Construction of Race and Gender are reproduced in the 21st century. In the past, commonplace social practices of discrimination such as segregation in schools, restrictive covenants and redlining in housing, "whites only" drinking fountains, blacks on the back of the bus, and the KKK left no question about the role of racism
Social Construction of Difference Allan Johnson's article discusses how various forms of difference in American society are socially constructed. He begins his argument by referring to a comment made by American novelist James Baldwin who once suggested that there in reality were no blacks or whites, but only the perceptions of blackness and whiteness. Johnson and Baldwin do not reject the physiological differences people may have, but Johnson's powerful argument suggests that
Dimensions of Social Inequality Race, Class, Sex, Marriage, Gender: Social Scholars' Dimensions of Social Equity and Inequality Race, Class, Sex, Marriage, Gender: Social Scholars' Dimensions of Social Equity and Inequality Race, Gender, Sex, Marriage, and Class Race, Gender, Sex, Marriage, and Class are themes that are socially and historically constructed by the society and operate on an individual and social level. Academics and social scholars emphasize these dimensions are interdependent, and define social boundaries.