PHENOMENOLOGY OF RACIAL OPPRESSION [View all]

[mia]

http://www.academia.edu/7947135/Phenomenology_of_Racial_Oppression

(This article is forthcoming in a special issue of Knowledge Cultures edited by George Yancy)

ABSTRACT:

This paper attempts to further understand the lived experiences of racial oppression by bringing together personal testimonies, resources from phenomenology, and empirical work on stereotype threat. Integrating these three areas provides a psychological, existential, physiological, and embodied understanding of the fundamental harm of racial oppression. My aim is to show that the harm of existing as racially oppressed is not just psychological or physiological. That is, racial oppression is not only harmful with regards to the immediate and lasting effects of the compiled stresses that result from continually being made aware of one’s bodily existence as ‘other’ in a predominantly and normatively white world. In addition, racially oppressed people also often lose a sense of themselves, become alienated from themselves, and come to understand themselves vis-à-vis the oppressor. Combining contextualized analyses of the psychological, existential, physiological, and embodied dimensions of oppression, I argue that existing as racially oppressed in a white supremacist society also changes the ontological structure of one’s being-in-the-world.


“Only when we come to be very clear about how race is lived, in its multiple manifestations, only when we can come to appreciate its often hidden epistemic effects and its power over collective imaginations and public space, can we entertain even the remote possibility of its eventual transformation.” (Alcoff, 2001: 267)


This paper attempts to further understand the lived experiences of racial oppression by bringing together personal testimonies, resources from phenomenology, and empirical work on stereotype threat (ST). Integrating these three areas provides a psychological, existential, physiological, and embodied understanding of the fundamental harm of racial oppression. My aim in this paper is to show that the harm of existing as racially oppressed is not just psychological or physiological. That is, racial oppression is not only harmful with regards to the immediate and lasting effects of the compiled stresses that result from continually being made aware of one’s bodily existence as ‘other’ in a predominantly and normatively white world. In addition, and importantly, racially 3oppressed people also often lose a sense of themselves, become alienated from themselves, and come to understand themselves vis-à-vis the oppressor or oppressive system. Combining contextualized analyses of the psychological, existential, physiological, and embodied dimensions of oppression, I argue that existing as racially oppressed in a white supremacist society also changes the ontological structure of one’s being-in-the-world.

The paper has three sections. I begin by considering various testimonies and descriptions of individuals who reflect upon what it is like to exist as racially oppressed in a normatively white society. These testimonies were chosen to highlight the extent to which the minutiae of everyday existence –shopping, walking down the street, riding in an elevator, getting locked out of one’s car or house, wearing a hoodie, encountering the police, or, as William David Hart has called it, “black male being-in-America” (Hart, 2012: 91) – are infused with constant reminders of one’s existence not only as “other” but as “inferior,” “suspicious,” “dangerous,” and “guilty.” These testimonies illustrate the relentless psychological, and indeed existential toll of existing as racially oppressed. I then move from considering the psychological and existential harms of existing as racially oppressed to considering physiological harms by examining some empirical findings from the ST literature. What these findings show is that the physiological effects of being racially oppressed become embodied. That is, they are not just immediate and ‘skin-deep’ but are penetrating and enduring. With the psychological, existential, physiological, and embodied dimensions in hand, I finally go on to argue that existing as racially oppressed actually changes the ontological structure of one’s being-in-the-world....