Hello,
I have an assignment that I need help completing. Below I have given the directions as well as any information you may need. Thanks and let me know if you have any questions.
In our Omi & Winant reading for this week, they use the Phipp’s case to “illustrate the difficulty of defining race and assigning individuals or groups to racial categories.� Omi & Winant say the following about race:
- racial legacies of the past continue to shape our present
- not a problem for science that can be disavowed as archaic
- not a problem for US society that can be legislated away as had hoped with the civil rights legislation of the 1960s
- Rather, a fundamental means by which US society is institutionally structured and understood
- racial identification is both a choice and not a choice
Ultimately, Omi and Winant argue that race is a matter of skin color and, therefore, a dimension of human representation. So how does this representation take form through racial formation and racial projects? For your assignment, how is the “n� word (for those of us who are not from the US the n-word is a stand-in for “nigger�) an example of the socio-historical process of racial formation and a racial project.
For a bit more context, we can look back at June 2017, when Bill Maher (host of Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO) used the N-word “jokingly” and received a huge backlash from the public. In this clip, Ice Cube and Symone Sanders respond on the show and give us some first-hand feelings and thoughts on the use of this word. (contains strong language) Clip
Please use the following questions to help you think through a response: What was this word created for? How was it inhabited? How was it transformed? How was it destroyed or has it been? How does the word offer a representation/explanation of racial dynamics?