Introduction: Race to the Surface
Race. It’s a taboo word. Mention it in a classroom setting, and opinions start fluctuating along a continuum of race-based views and beliefs such as “All Lives Matter” or “Black Lives Matter” as if these two are in opposition to one another. Yet, one wonders, how can they be in opposition to one another when recent instances of numerous murders by police have been inflicted upon innocent, unarmed black men in the U.S, demonstrating that all lives do not matter because black lives do not seem to matter? While the above example highlights a very recent moment in which this book has been published, race has been a topic of great controversy and heartache. W.E.B. Du Bois, recently credited with being the first African-American sociologist, had a tacit understanding of this complicated term as he devoted much of his scholarship to the phenomenon of race in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a time when race was a very prominently seen phenomenon in our country. We are now over a century removed from Jim Crow racial segregation laws in which Du Bois was writing and theorizing about race and the “Negro Problem”, and, here we are, still trying to make the case for why we still need to talk about race. Du Bois suggests that race is, “a group of contradictory forces, facts, and tendencies” and not an actual noun.
As Dubois points out in much of his work, due the solidification of race as a marker of inferiority and social position in colonial societies, the words race and racial have often been approached haphazardly or simplistically with little to no historical context, especially by hate groups such as the Aryan Nation whose members identify themselves as racial purists. As a result of decontextualized and simplistic conversations about race, great schisms in communicative and interpretive practices occur and dialogue shuts down. The schisms, I argue, necessitate the continuation of taboo-laden race discussions.
Diversity in populations where difficult conversations might take place does not remove the taboo—race is a challenging topic for people everywhere. I teach at the second most diverse campus of the University of California: UC Merced, which is a Hispanic-Serving Institution, with a student population that is more than 45 % “Hispanic” or Latinx. Nevertheless, students have not always shown an interest in the topic of race. Having taught in less diverse environments, such as UC San Diego, I’m quite aware of how student demographics can affect pedagogy. In the case of UCSD, however, the student demographics correlated with the desire to engage in the topic of race: white students were more reluctant to engage in the topic whereas students of color who were non-Asians discussed it eagerly.
Given these experiences, I’ve learned that regardless of student demographics encountered over the past 15 years of teaching first-year composition, does not automatically correlte with whether or not students welcome the opportunity to engage in the topic of race—no matter where their hometown is, how they look, sound, or write. This is true regardless of whether the discussions are grounded in sociological approaches to the study of race, such as those forwarded by W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington; or linguistic theories, such as sociolinguistics, who make connections between language and race; or even in textual analysis of “objective historical texts” such as Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species.
In short, “race” is difficult to discuss, as it entails difficult and numerous political nuances and many unlearned, unknown, and silenced histories. If the many nuances of race are not approached from an equally complex attitude, the implications on future race relations will evolve in a more segregationist manner based on simplistic, colonial, and decontextualized considerations of current race relations.
Race as the “Still” Absent Presence in Composition Studies: A Critical Historical Treatment of Race
On the particular question of race, the field of composition and rhetoric also has struggled. For example, in 1968 an issue of College Composition and Communication acknowledged Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination and that act’s significance, and it noted the field’s failure to address the question of race. The CCC editor at the time, William F. Irmscher, hoped to “open channels of communication we do not now have” (105). But Ernece B. Kelly was less optimistic, noting “the awful resistance of white participants [at the 1968 CCCC Convention] to the challenges to recognize their biases and to work to defeat them” (107). Almost 60 years later, we can see how right she was to be wary.
Those who are and have been devoted to keeping questions of race alive in the field have shown that while there might have been honest attempts—now and then—to deal with the term race, in the long run, composition and rhetoric has effectively replaced this important term with less-threatening euphemisms such as diversity and underrepresentation. On a similar note, the language of race and racism is regulated by mainstream publications in Composition Studies. That regulation organizes learning in educational settings like the writing classroom, while shaping how Composition Studies practitioners discuss race in scholarly and pedagogical settings, both of which have profound impacts on everyday social interactions outside of educational settings. One compelling critique of this problem was offered by Jennifer Clary-Lemon in her CCC article, “The Racialization of Composition Studies: Scholarly Rhetoric of Race since 1990.” Examining the language of College Composition and Communication and College English since 1990, she discovered that the majority of race-related work published in these journals rarely uses the words “race or racism.” Instead, their authors utilize vague metaphors such “diversity, inclusion, and social justice” when alluding to racialized phenomena (W6). This metonymic slide has caused potentially productive discussions about race to lose their precision. In short, the field has not addressed racism in all of its complexities. We still need to talk about race, as it is still the “absent presence” (Prendergast 36).
In an attempt to open up a critical dialogue abour race, this chapter offers a noncomprehensive but critical and historical treatment of race. It does so while problematizing three of its definitions from a decolonial perspective. Through this lens, this chapter attempts to delink the term race from its historical ties to Western hierarchies. Attempting to provide a contested, decolonial consideration of race and connect its colonial roots to the twenty-first century dilemma of the great racial divide, I demonstrate one possible thread as a discursive act of what Walter Mignolo calls “epistemic disobedience.” I attempt to delink race from its religious, scientific, and discursive points of origin. Through considering each point, this chapter shows how the first two points are limited and continue to divide people in a manner that privileges groups of people who produce, disseminate, and legitimize such discourses. The third point, however, offers possibilities to disrupt these limitations.
Given all the points of origin explored here, the chapter suggests a more well-rounded view of race that can lead to peaceful, humane, and productive discussions about both race and racism in decolonial, pedagogical, and personal spaces. Decolonial theory posits that no single vantage point gives one group or culture the capacity to claim biological, religious, or social superiority over another group or culture. Instead, decoloniality operates from a respect for various historical trajectories while acknowledging that racial identity, and therefore racism, produces real, material, but malleable, consequences. The chapter concludes with a consideration of Critical Race Theory as one possible decolonial pedagogical practice that tries to delink legal discourse, in particular, from claims of race neutrality.
Religion
From the beginning, racism has been a problem—the problem—in the United States. We have seen the cruelest behaviors exhibited toward others because of their skin color. If we were to ask why, we might be at a loss. Nonetheless, those of us who study the origins, uses, and effects of language know that language itself plays a major role in division and classification and, thus, the treatment of subjects, including human beings. Language produces real, material consequences that go beyond human instinct and that can even determine human instinct. To hate, for example, might be a human instinct, but that does not mean it is necessarily instinctual to hate a particular group because of physical differences. If language produces material consequences in the shaping of reality, then racism can be understood as a linguistically taught behavior. Still the question remains: Where does racism come from and why do we identify races of people? This section begins with a look back to the sixteenth century.
In “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom,” Mignolo indicates the partial fictions that accompany any legitimized, academic explanation for the rise of science and modernity—and, ultimately, of racism: “Once upon a time scholars assumed that the knowing subject in the disciplines is transparent, disincorporated from the known and untouched by the geo-political configuration of the world in which people are racially ranked and regions are racially configured” (2). Here, Mignolo makes a connection—although one of disconnection—between modernity and race. Following Mignolo, this chapter posits that once upon a time, the world order was changing due to expansion, conquests, annihilation, and colonial pursuits. These events, which seemed natural, unproblematic, and even justifiable, were rhetorically framed as objective, benevolent behaviors.
As we know, however, such events were unwelcome impositions on the cultures, lands, and religions of what are now called the Americas. A clash of cultures took place—and continues to take place—between the colonized and colonizers. For example, in Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind, Miguel León-Portilla provides evidence that during the Spanish Conquest, verbal exchanges between tlamatinime (indigenous spiritual leaders) and Spanish missionaries reflected unwelcome intrusions and the silencing of indigenous knowledge. These exchanges point to the beginning of racism against brown and, soon after, black people during the sixteenth century in what would eventually be called Latin America.
In those verbal, poetic exchanges, the tlamatinime exhibited an awareness of being rhetorically manipulated in order to benefit from European colonial projects that exploited and destroyed indigenous land and culture. The indigenous were regarded as barbarians, and their religion, worldview, and authority were ignored. Mignolo notes that the idea of the “barbarian” was “taken from the Greek language and historical experience” and came to serve sixteenth-century capitalist interests when “Christianity … affirmed its complicity with capitalism” (“Delinking” 471).
Referring to the Apologética Historia Sumaria, written by Dominican Friar Bartolomae de las Casas, Mignolo mentions the types of barbarians classified by las Casas, all of whom reflected “babarie negative” (negative barbarianism). Mignolo argues that the barbarian trope was becoming part of the Western narrative of modernity, reemerging “as Western Christians in Latin and vernacular Western languages began to construct a narrative of themselves.” In contrast to these Christians, he writes, “‘barbarians’ were those who lacked something in the area of … alphabetic writing because they lived in a state of nature” (“Delinking” 471).
As European colonies spread across the globe, their inhabitants viewed Christianity as the only true and right religion while simultaneously negating indigenous religion by discrediting its precepts. Portillo’s critical analysis of European–indigenous exchanges identifies the connection between las Casas’s understanding of barbarism and indigenous religion when he “identified oppositional barbarians as enemies of Christianity, those who envied it and wanted to destroy it” (“Delinking” 471). The oppositional barbarians las Casas was referring to were brown.
With these colonial processes underway, European colonizers saw nature as something to be used for material gain. As such, nature was integral to the early stages of capitalist development and global exchange. Cultures without alphabetic writing systems were considered incapable of understanding the vast potential of their natural resources. (Here, we start to get a glimpse of the racial differences in intelligence levels that became more popular during the eighteenth century.) Alphabetic languages were the hallmarks of more civilized and more advanced people who possessed and used them to manipulate nature.
Along with the view that barbarians were inferior and in need of “development” came the idea that their religions were less developed, more pagan, and even evil, especially if they practiced blood sacrifice and polytheism. However, in The Colloquies by Bernardino de Sahagún, it is evident that the tlamatinime publicly defended the Nahuatl religion and understood that the idea of polytheism was a Western concept imposed on them with little regard for their own theology, which refers to a belief in one god. It also is apparent that the indigenous held a clear and rational basis for their way of life. Consider this translated excerpt (León-Portilla 64):
This excerpt challenges the concept of inherent inferiority based on Christian justifications, which dismiss indigenous logic and cultural practices—often to appropriate them later for capitalist ventures, as Mignolo and others have pointed out (“Delinking” 462).You saidthat we know notthe Lord of the Close Vicinity,to Whom the heavens and the earth belongYou saidThat our gods are not true gods.that you speak;because of them we are disturbedbecause of them we are troubledFor our ancestorsbefore us, who lived upon the earth,were unaccustomed to speak thus.From them have we inheritedour pattern of lifewhich in truth did they hold . . .We knowon Whom life is dependent;on Whom the perpetuation of the race depends.
Furthermore, the silencing of the indigenous, Aztec tlamatinime becomes apparent as they were aware of their demise and that their god, proclaimed to be false, was being taken from them. As the excerpt also demonstrates, the Aztec tlamatinime knew of the inherent connection between the survival of their religious beliefs and the continuation of their race. Note, however, that the idea of race is tied to their religious practices, not their skin color. As a gesture toward “race” continuation then, the tlamatinime continued to defend their beliefs although they knew that their race was being destroyed due to their “wrong” religion—their race.
This historical account challenges current conceptions of race and shows how the geopolitical and colonial matrix of power operated to attach the word race to color through the debasement of indigenous religion. At this time, only one religion (race) counted: Christianity (Europeans). One’s religion was considered to be one’s race until “race” became associated with the “wrong” race attached to one’s color (brown). From this point on, color ...