Excerpt: Racial Construction of the Subject

This is an excerpt from a scholarly paper I did for senior level Critical Theory. It's some of my best work, twenty pages long, and was written in one day. Some call it procrastination, I call it challenging a deadline and winning. 

     If, as a society, we are heavily influenced by the ideology of the dominant social class, and we can say, as a society, the dominant social class is wealthy, Caucasian males, how can we explain the existence of different cultures within one society? More specifically, what makes expectations for acceptable behavior within the Black community different from that of the White community? Why do the majority of individuals of different races live by different customs, expectations, and beliefs? The fact is that different races are interpellated differently. The drives and desires checked within the superego or symbolic of a White American are not the same as those within a Black American. From birth, many Black Americans are taught that certain behaviors are for “white people,” and to behave in such a way often leads to alienation or ostracism, especially among young adults still forming their identities.  The examples abound, and though I am in no way trying to generalize that all of these behaviors are either exclusive to the race with which they are usually associated or that they are performed by all members of said race, it is true that much the stereotypical behavior associated with one ethnic group are widely considered unacceptable for another. Take, for example, the instance of an American individual speaking Standard English. In one culture, this may be encouraged, as it implies a mastery of the English language and displays intellect and professionalism. However, within another culture, speaking this way may be frowned upon, as it implies that the speaker is trying to be someone they are not and is talking like a “white person” in order to appear uppity or to impress the members of the dominant ruling class. Another example is the difference in the standards of beauty between the two races. Looking at common opinions, one will more often see an emphasis on the beauty of voluptuous curves within the Black community, while within the White community, thinness is more often equated with beauty, leading to the greater prevalence of eating disorders within the White community—disorders commonly regarded as “white girl problems,” though by no means exclusive to white women. If it is true that we live our lives based upon the ideology of the ruling class, and it is also true that individuals of different races tend to live by different sets of ideology, we can then assume that our ruling classes are different. It is almost as though we can split our society into a number of different hegemonies, specific to different races—if there is only one, then how can we live under such different sets of ideology? What a member of one race is ostracized for, a member of another is praised. One must assume, with that knowledge, that there is not one dominant ideology over all of Western society; there are instead several smaller ones dictating which behavior is acceptable for different races.
           In Stuart Hall’s essay “Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance”, Hall    addresses the dominance of one race over the other and the effect which it has on society.

“Some are exclusively concerned with forms of political domination or disadvantage, based on the exploitation of racial distinctions. In the vast majority of these studies, race is treated as a social category. Biological conceptions of race have greatly receded in importance, though they have by no means wholly disappeared. The principal stress in this second tendency is on race or ethnicity as specifically social or cultural features of the social formations under discussion.” (Hall, 2)

Hall recognizes that race is no longer just seen as a biological or genetic different and goes far beyond the different pigmentations of members of one society. There are now inherent social differences, and race makes a huge difference in relations within a society. If we can recognize that race is far more than skin deep, we must then examine where those social differences lie. If interpellation is the coercion of subjects by representations in the media and popular culture, and different races receive greater exposure to media relating more closely to their race, it is a fair assumption that different races are coerced in different ways. Similarly, in his essay The Social Construction of Race, Ian F. Haney Lopez addresses race as a social construction rather than a biological one. Lopez writes:

“Race must be viewed as a social construction. That is, human interaction rather than natural differentiation must be seen as the source and continued basis for racial categorization. The process by which racial meanings arise has been labeled racial formation. In this formulation, race is not a determinant or a residue of some other social phenomenon, but rather stands on its own as an amalgamation of competing societal forces.” (Rivkin, 969)

            A strong example of this difference in interpellation is that of the rap or hip-hop culture. Among the Black community, it is by far the most popular form of music and entertainment as a whole, and, thusly, provides the greatest influence on the members of the community. Young Black Americans are bombarded with images of misogyny, overly extravagant wealth, little stress on the importance of education, and the encouragement of a life of crime. Thus, this becomes the ideal lifestyle. Though there are, of course, more positive role models for young people in the Black community, for every one notable Black figure encouraging a college education, there are 10 more, even more popular, in and out of prison and referring to women as “bitches and hoes.” Along with the negative images pervasive in the rap culture are an increasing number of Black men in school and a decreasing number in college. It is simply impossible to ignore the correlation between the two. In his essay Hegemony, Hedonism, and Hip-Hop: An Examination of the Portrayal of Race and Sexuality in Music Videos, J.S. Turner addresses this negative influence and relates it to some notable statistics that explain this correlation.

“Looking specifically at studies that dealt with effects of sexualized music videos performed by Black artists, Wingood and colleagues (2003) gathered 12 months of longitudinal survey data from 522 adolescent, single, African-American females and examined whether exposure to rap music videos correlated with risky health behaviors. They found that greater exposure to rap videos was independently associated with an array of negative health outcomes; adolescents who had greater exposure to rap videos were 2.5 times more likely to have been arrested; 2 times more likely to have multiple sexual partners; and over 1.5 times more likely to have acquired a new venereal disease or use drugs and alcohol. This study supports Emerson’s (2002) claim that popular mediated hip-hop culture impacts the ways young African Americans understand their social surroundings.” (Turner, 4)

 These statistics make clear the fact the images which “coerce” Black Americans into behaving a certain way are extremely different to those outside of the Black community and, in many ways, tend to contribute to negative aspects of the community. Moreover, they explain in part why, historically, the success rate of White Americans in terms of education, affluence, and et cetera are typically higher than that of Black Americans.