Chaco part I

Chaco is analyzing texts that she thinks help to illuminate the ways in which poor people of color are criminalized, how public opinion on such matters is shaped, and how the American ideal of divinely endowed inalienable rights does not, in fact, prevent the U.S. from alienating such rights from particular classes of persons. She draws a great deal on news media reports, but also Congressional and court transcripts, books, and police bulletins. She uses case studies from the past three decades to illustrate her points, which focus to a large extent on treatment of immigrant people of color and on gangs.

One of the concepts she relies on is “symbolic colonization”: how the media perpetuate a characterization of race and ethnic differences that serves a hegemonic devaluation of ethnic others. In the concept of hegemony (from Gramsci), public order is maintained non-forcibly by a subtle process in which members of the community come to adopt the belief systems that serve those in power, even sometimes to their own detriment. This is most often implemented through the institutions of learning and through public media. Thus, media portrayals of gang life, immigrant populations (I kept thinking of Gran Torino), and terrorists enable the government to maintain public support for policies that deny such groups their supposedly inalienable rights.

I particularly appreciated her introduction of Bell’s concept of “racial realism” – the idea that what is most important is not whether or not one wins, but whether one stands up for oneself. Standing up for oneself, even just to be knocked down, is a claiming of dignity. More importantly, failure to stand up for oneself is an indignity that continues to make its effects felt throughout life. For someone deciding how best to expend one’s energy to address race-based inequalities, it is important to be reminded that doing the best one can, with integrity, is a win in its own right, but I also would add that to do so inspires others, gives people hope, and can lead to real advances by unforeseeable routes.

I have some questions about some parts of her argument. For example, on page 15 she is discussing the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the argument over the use of the word “refugee”. While I understand how referring to African-American victims of Katrina as "refugees" was alienating and distancing, I don't understand how it criminalized them. I also don't understand how calling a person a refugee “forecloses sympathy” –  aren't people sympathetic to refugees?

On page 50, she is discussing the case in which a group of middle-class young men attacked Mexican immigrants, and the suggestion by some that it would be useful to have the assailants spend time working with and learning about the group that they attacked. She says, “learning from migrant workers in order to learn about them implies that knowing is humanizing, but in actuality, it is objectifying.” She uses Ahmed’s explanation about strangers, but it is not clear why she thinks spending time with someone who begins as a stranger cannot lead to an new understanding of that person as “some-body”. And if knowing is objectifying, then is there anything that is humanizing?