Racial Culture: A Critique, by Richard T. Ford Essay

Over the last thirty years, critical race and sex activity theorists have questioned whether and if constabulary can protect divergence in a meaningful way, especially in the body of work. Richard T. Ford, a law professor at Stanford University, provides an interesting critique of the resulting multi ethnic assumptions of difference in his book racial CULTURE. darn he recognizes most refutations of these approaches come from conservatives with a political schedule of legal affectationblindness, Ford explicitly asserts he sh bes the political and social cultures of the forward left. More specifically, he refutes colorblindness as a means of equality.Ford argues that racial identity politics have the liability of undermining their stated objective of eliminating racism in the workplace. The author is clear his opposition to distinction base on status does non mean that one is not ambivalent or so the development of a new legal category of discrimination based on culture. His overarching concern is that race, which is socially and economically constructed, is given additional genuineness by the assumption that every race manifests pagan similarities and that these cultural artifacts should be protected in the same manner as racism.Anti-discrimination law should be refined so as to recognize precisely those differences attributable to the case of formal status hierarchy, for the purpose of eliminating or reducing the ill-effects of such(prenominal) hierarchies. remnant discourse, by metastasizing status into a thick social identity, distracts from and confuses the vital project of correcting status hierarchy. Legal decision *217 makers need to be aware of status differences and castelike social practices in order to correct the injustices that they do.But we should resist the lure to spare a speculative sociology of group difference into law or to enlist the state into a psychotherapeutic quest to validated repressed identities. Finally, Fo rd is concerned that in privileging racial culture we foster an environs of conflict and competition, without a thoughtful analysis of which cultures are most comely of protecting. His assumption is that racial integration should be a dominant goal of society, with members of racial groups selecting for themselves which aspects of their culture are most worthy of preserving.Many readers may agree with aspects of his legal argument, without comp allowely accepting his rejection of identity politics as provincialism. Ford offers instead a vision of cosmopolitanism in which minority cultural practices will survive without legal protection, albeit often in an altered, fragmented and recombined form, and that such survival in an admittedly Hobbesian social competition is preferable to the distorted and blinkered version of group difference we should expect cultural adepts to produce .While Fords analysis is wide-ranging, well-written, and fascinating, there are several limitations to his argument. His proclaim assumptions regarding employment discrimination law are disturbing. His reliance on catamenia employment discrimination law as the best means for redressing racism ignores several factors that the difference discourse has revealed. One factor is the gap for women of color within the protections of cognomen septenary. To demonstrate racial discrimination, women of color must maneuver that others of their race were treated similarly, but if those similarly-situated are men, the discrimination may not be evident.To demonstrate sex activity discrimination, women of color must show that others of their sexual urge were treated similarly, but if white women are those who are similarly-situated, such discrimination may not be apparent. Contemporary Title VII commandment frequently does not allow for interactions amidst race and gender that are unique to women of color. The formal equality required by Title VII is limited in how well it can protect agai nst explicit racism, let alone against the proxies of race illustrated by cultural practice.Another area that requires pull ahead development is Fords extension of cultural analysis to poor comparable with(predicate) areas of employment discrimination lawin particular, sexual penchant and gender. His premise that sexual preference should be protected as status, quite an than as style or culture, ignores the lesser protection granted sexual preference under the law compared to racial discrimination. Ford does not extend the unanswered question within the law of whether sexual preference is behavior or immutable characteristic.The current judicial acceptance of lower levels of test to protect sexual preference in the workplace means that a simple reliance on current employment discrimination law will not render the results he professes are necessary. Finally, his equivalence of gender discrimination to race is disappointing, especially in the area of maternal quality. While the right to difference literature *218 builds on a century of analysis by feminist scholars, there are clear differences between the two. However, Ford perceives motherhood as a form of gender culture, as braids or speech communication can be for race.But this analogy does not work. Discrimination against motherliness is not justified by employers solely on the basis of predicted workplace impacts of the actual pregnancy, but also because women have the potential to become pregnant. Since pregnancy is a biological reality, how can it be simply another cultural manifestation or behavior choice? A second difference is that, unlike forms of racial or ethnic culture, Congress revised Title VII to incorporate pregnancy into the definition of gender discrimination. 4 smash 2- How racial identity element affects an individual in societyIndividual spring chicken who experience discrimination carry higher stress burden pecks beliefs that they are being treated badly because racial or gender bias increases their stress levels, and may lead to increased stirred up and behavioral problems, agree to a paper of color and white youth. sagaciousness how race and gender affect youths well-being is necessary not only for promoting optimal individual development, but also for meeting the nations social and economic needs, says lead culture author David L. DuBois, Ph. D., of the School of worldly concern Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago.DuBois conducted the research season at the University of Missouri, Columbia. previous(prenominal) studies have focused on older study participants, but little is kn induce near how younger age groups are affected by discrimination or prejudice, according to the study, which is published in the September/October issue of Child Development. DuBois and his colleagues administered a series of questionnaires to 350 students in grades 5-8. This group of students included comparable numbers of blacks and whites, females and males.One survey, which included questions like Were you called names or insulted at civilize about your race/ethnicity and Were you treated unfairly at school because you are a girl/boy, was designed to measure discriminatory experiences and how study participants were affected by them, while others measured major life stressors, racial and gender identity, self-esteem and behavior. The researchers put in significant differences among the student groups. bleak study participants, twain males and females, reported more experiences with discrimination and prejudice.The study setting, a western school district in which blacks were a minority in both student body and staff, may have contributed to these higher backboned levels, according to the study. In this context many black youth may not have felt adequately supported in their efforts to deal with situations involving perceived victimization or unfair treatment on the basis of race, DuBois says. The black students who re ported higher levels of discrimination were more likely to have aroused problems, the researchers build. Such problems may stem from internalized anger, according to findings from other studies.The researchers also found that the black participants in their early teens reported feeling a stronger sense of racial identity than same-age whites. The new study and previous studies have found that at this age, blacks tend to have higher self-esteem than whites. DuBois and his colleagues found that a strong racial identity is important in helping to get up the self-esteem of black youth. 5 How Racial Identity Affects School procedure of an Individual We investigated the sources of differences in school performance between students of different races by focusing on identity issues.We find that having a higher lot of same-race friends has a positive effect of white teenagers test score while having a electronegative effect on blacks test scores. However, the higher the program line le vel of a black teenagers parent, the lower this negative effect, while for whites, it is the reverse. It is thus the combination of the choice of friends (which is a measure of own identity) and the parents education that are responsible for the difference in education attainment between students of different races but also between students of the same race.One interesting aspects of this paper is to provide a conjectural model that grounds the instrumental variable approach used in the empirical analysis to deal with endogeneity issues. 6 Our Racial Identity affects who we befool in society The authors asked biracial participants (one dingy and one White parent) to come back about their dark parents ethnicity. After, they could spot the presence or lack of a Black face in a company of White faces with the same speed and accuracy as a monoracial Black person. The same held true when asked to think of their White parent.Although all detected Black faces faster than white faces, biracial students were affected by thinking about one half of their racial identity and then behaved as if they were monoracial. Black, white, and biracial participants performed the visual search task by looking at Black and White faces on a computer screen. To prep the biracial individuals, the participants were asked to write about their mother or fathers ethnicity. Black-primed and White-primed biracial individuals differed importantly in the searches, displaying the effects of the manipulation.These findings demonstrate that visual perception is malleable to top-down influences, such as orientation provided by ones racial group membership, the authors conclude.References 1. AAPA Statement on Biological Aspects of Race America connectedness of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) 2. http//genomebiology. com/2002/3/7/comment/2007 3. Alicia Fedelina Chavez, Florence Guido-DiBrito Racial and Ethnic Identity and Development NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT AND CONTINUING EDUCATION, no.84, Wint er 1999 Jossey-Bass Publishers 39 4.Richard T. Ford. Princeton Princeton University Press, 2004. Vol. 15 No. 3 (March 2005), pp. 215-218 5. Pamela Ippoliti, www. hbns. org 6. Eleonora Patacchini (eleonora. patacchiniuniroma1. it) (University of Rome La Sapienza)Yves Zenou (yvesziui. se) (IUI, GAINS, CEPR and IZA Bonn) 7. Joan Y. Chiao, Hannah E. Heck, and Ken Nakayama are at Harvard University. Nalini Ambady is at Tufts University. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. , May 10, 2006.