The Body in the Global Context
[Note: This is a chapter from a manuscript in progress. Dr. Sorrells has been kind enough to share it with our class. However, the pictures that she is talking about at the beginning and end of the chapter are not uploaded in this version of the chapter... so use your imagination.] Intercultural communication is an embodied experience. Much of our knowledge and understanding as well as many of our misconceptions, stereotypes and prejudices about other cultures are exchanged through our physical bodies—in face-to-face interactions or through media images. Similarities and differences in language use, communication styles, and nonverbal communication such as the use of space, gestures, eye contact, and clothes are all conveyed and performed through our bodies. Categories used historically and today to distinguish “us” from “them” and to establish hierarchies of difference are often based on how our bodies are similar to or appear to be similar to or are different from others. Take a look at the photos at the beginning of the chapter. What comes to mind as you look at each picture? Did you consciously or unconsciously place each person into categories based on race, gender or nationality? Why are these categories so important in our everyday lives and communication? What assumptions, relations of power, and histories of intercultural interaction underlie our processes of categorization?
From a very early age, we are taught implicitly and explicitly how to read, interpret, and assign meanings to our own and others’ bodies based on our culturally informed codes. Skin color, hair styles, facial features and expressions, as well as gestures and clothes all convey meanings within complex cultural systems of signification, shaping our thoughts, actions and experiences. Our communication with others is inevitably mediated through our bodies. “Reading” and making sense of the body politics—in other words, how power is written and performed symbolically on and through the body--requires that we understand how socially constructed categories such as race, gender and culture have been encoded on our bodies historically, how these signification systems are linked to power, and how these categories are re-coded in the context of global power structures (Butler, 1993; Foucault, 1978; Winant, 2001).
In this chapter, we start with our bodies as sites where categories of social difference are constructed. We begin by looking at how “difference” in terms of gender and race is marked on the body and explain the concept of social construction and the semiotic approach to understanding difference. We examine the history of race as a social construct, noting how racial hierarchies were “invented” and imposed on the body in the colonial context and how these racial codes persist and have changed in the global context. We introduce hip hop culture as a site where old racial regimes are contested and where alternative spaces for intercultural communication emerge in the context of globalization. Throughout, we point to the ways our everyday performances of verbal and nonverbal communication construct, reinforce and sometimes challenge categories of difference.
Hip Hop Culture
Yo! Whaz’ Up? What does hip hop culture have to do with intercultural communication? What do you think? Well, for one thing, hip hop culture is global. You can find hip hop culture around the world—from Japan to Israel, South Africa to Germany, from Chile to Iran, Honduras, Australia, Pakistan, Senegal, and of course, from the urban to suburban and rural settings of the U.S. It’s a global phenomenon driven not only by corporate interests, commodification and capitalism but by unique values, norms, behaviors and beliefs. Hip hop culture also has a complex language, nonverbal codes, and a history born of struggle, creative resistance, and contestation (Chang, 2005; Kitwana, 2003).
For those of you who are suspicious about calling hip hop a “culture,” think it’s only a type of music, assume it’s a passing “fade” or “phase” of youth culture, or perhaps, are so thoroughly disgusted by the violence, misogyny and homophobia of some of the leading spokespeople and lyricists of hip hop, just hang on. The intercultural space of hip hop culture is, indeed, sometimes messy, sometimes oppressive and exploitative and sometimes violent, just like the broader global culture, nations, cities, neighborhoods and residents we all live in. A key entry point into intercultural praxis is the ability to suspend judgment, be curious, and learn from what is different from our own culture, a standpoint or cultural viewpoint that challenges our position, life experience or point of view. For some of you, this will be relatively easy because you already experience yourself as part of hip hop culture and identify with it; for others, you may be curious and have some exposure to artists or various aspects of the culture; and yet, for others, it will be tremendously difficult to go beyond the stereotypes that you have formed and the assumptions and judgments you hold about hip hop culture. These positions regarding hip hop culture are not so different from attitudes people hold about national, racial, ethnic, and religious cultures. For now, engage in intercultural praxis. Stay open to thinking about the past, present and future in ways that may challenge your assumed or received knowledge. We’re going to “break it down” here—the social constructs of gender and race--and get back to hip hop a little bit later.
Marking Difference: Gender
Among other things, physical differences in human bodies are used to construct two mutually exclusive gender categories: women and men. A conversation with parents or grandparents, a quick review of films from fifty years ago or engagement with different cultural groups informs us that what it means to be a woman or a man has changed throughout history and is different across cultural, racial, religious and class groups. Sociologists Judith Lorber and Susan Farrell (1991) note that biological differences are not what distinguish the categories of feminine and masculine. Rather, gender differences are constructed and imposed on our bodies. Differences between masculinity and femininity are symbolically embodied, performed and communicated within our specific cultural contexts through the way we walk, through our gestures, speech, touch and eye contact patterns, the way we use physical space and the gendered activities we participate in, through our hairstyles, clothing, the use of make-up or not, as well as through colors, smells, and adornments (Butler, 1990; Stewart, Cooper & Stewart, 2003; Wood, 2005).
Within and across cultures, meanings are constructed and assigned to these categories of difference—man/women, masculine/feminine—often as polar opposites or dichotomies of strong/weak, rational/emotional, and significant/insignificant. While the meanings have been “normalized” and “naturalized” historically, they have also been challenged, contested and changed over time. The notion of what it means to be a woman has changed and is challenged today in societies around the world as a result of women’s and feminist social movements. In addition, the “reading” and “marking” of two gender categories based on physical differences is contested by third gender people, or people who live across, between or outside of the socially constructed two-gender system of categorization. Misconception and stereotypes about transgender or gender-crossing people abound today including a common mistaken belief that transgender people have appeared recently on the human stage and only in modern or postmodern societies. Quite to the contrary, gender-crossing people have existed historically and exist today in societies around the world, such as hijras in India and Pakistan, fa'afafine in Samoa and two-spirits in indigenous North American cultures to mention only a few.
“Normalized” meanings that
construct the two-gender system and the differences between men and women
reflect and embody relationships of power. Consider how the verbal and nonverbal communication of men and
women—language use, who is speaking and who is silent, body positions,
gestures, degrees of activity, etc.--in pop culture forms such as hip hop music
videos, video games and T.V. soap operas construct gender “difference.” These gendered performance, where women
generally embody subordinated power positions and men embody dominance, also
structure and impact intercultural communication dynamics in the global context
as assumptions about feminine passivity, submissiveness and subservience allow
for and “normalize” the global exploitation of women in the workplace, sex
trade and “marriage” markets. A Chinese
woman on a Visiting Professor program was stopped when walking across a
Communication scholar Julia Wood (2005) notes that while biological differences between men and women exist, there are far more similarities between the two groups than there are differences. Why, then, do cultures around the world persist in marking and performing gender difference and constructing rigid divisions between the categories of men and women? Why are third gender people so demonized and erased? What social, political and economic purposes are served by constructing and performing differences between men and women and reinforcing a two-gender system? Lorber and Farrell (1991) state “The reason for gender categories and the constant construction and reconstruction of differences between them is that gender is an integral part of any social group’s structure of domination and subordination and division of labor in the family and the economy” (p. 2). In societies where gender inequity exists (almost everywhere), women and their social, economic, and political roles are inevitably devalued. Who benefits from the gendered construction and performance of unequal power relations? How does the rigid construction of differences between men and women exclude and erase third gender? The intercultural encounter between the Chinese scholar and the White American student mentioned above, leads us to ask: how are the social categories of gender, sexuality and race connected?
Marking Difference: Race
Our bodies and the physical
characteristics of our bodies such as skin color, facial features, hair and
body type have been used and are used today to separate people into categories
that are customarily referred to as race or racial groups. Yet, the majority of scientists and social
scientists today agree that race is a social construct (Cohen, 1998; Montagu,
1997). Evolutionary biologist Joseph L.
Graves (2005) states, “The traditional concept of race as a biological concept
is a myth,” (p. xxv). In other words,
the categorization of people into groups based on physical characteristics has
no biological basis; the association of physical, mental, emotional or
attitudinal qualities with these socially constructed groups also has no
biological basis. Rather, science has
been used to normalize, naturalize and validate a system that was historically
and socially constructed and that was and still is linked closely to power in
today’s global context. If you’re
thinking this is crazy and you know race exists because you can see it, you’re
not alone. Most college students in the
There is no question that human differences are visible and physically embodied. Human beings differ in a wide variety of ways including height, weight, eye color, and a preference for using the right or left-hand, to mention only a few. Imagine if we grouped people into categories based on these physical differences and attributed innate characteristics to members of these groups? Tall people are smarter than short people. Brown eyed people are more industrious than green eyed people. Right-handers are better at sports than left-handers. It sounds absurd, right? Well, the concept of race as it operates today would sound equally absurd to us if it were not for the systematic construction of race and the reinforcement of racial hierarchies through laws, science, medicine, economics, education, literature, and forms of media for the past five hundred years. While physical differences of all sorts do, of course, exist, it is the grouping or categorization of people based on these characteristics and the creation of racial hierarchies through the attribution of value-laden qualities (industrious, smart, athletic, lazy, violent, etc.) that is socially constructed within an historical, political and economic context and which results in and promotes social inequity historically and today in the context of globalization.
Marking Difference: Social constructs
What do we mean by socially
constructed? A social
construction or a social
construct is an idea or phenemnon that has been “created,” “invented” or “constructed” by people in a
particular society or culture. Social
constructs exist only because people agree to act like and think like they
exist and agree to follow certain conventions and rules associated with the
construct (Berger & Luckman, 1966; Searle, 1995). For example, languages are social constructs. Languages are developed by the people who use
them and carry meaning because the people who use them agree to the meanings
and agree also to follow certain rules of the language. Money is another fairly easy example to
understand. Think of a note or coin of
any national currency—a yen, a peso, a deutschmark (which has been replaced by
the euro), a dollar, a pound or yuan—the value and meaning of the currency is
not in the note itself but rather is constructed by people through their
conventional social usage within an economic system that places value on the
note as currency. Peter L. Berger and
Thomas Luckmann (1966) introduced their sociological theory of knowledge in the
book, The Social Construction of Reality,
first published in 1966. The core idea
and central focus of their theory is that human beings participate in the
creation of our own realities. Our
knowledge about ourselves, the world, and everyday reality is created through
our on-going, dynamic social interactions. In other words, knowledge about the world does not exist “out there” in
the external world waiting to be found or discovered. Rather, knowledge about ourselves and the
world around us is created or constructed through our social interaction with
others.
Semiotic Approach to Difference
In the late 1800s, Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure introduced an approach to understanding how things—objects, words, ideas and actions—come to mean what they do. Saussure contributed the groundwork for the field of study called semiotics, or the study of the use of signs in cultures, which provides a useful way to understand how meaning is socially constructed. Signs— a stop light, clothes, or more complicated social phenomenon such as race--are composed of a signifier and signified. The body, things, actions or words are understood as signifiers and what they represent as the signified. Saussure noted several key features about signs. First, the relationship between the signifier and signified is arbitrary. In a stop light, for example, the fact that the red light means “stop” and the green light means “go” is arbitrary, right? These meanings have been assigned, fixed and normalized by convention and use. Signs do not have permanent or essential meanings. Second, signs belong to systems and their meaning comes from their relationship to other signs within the system. The red and green lights are part of a traffic control system and their meaning—go or stop-- is derived from their relationship to each other. Third, the meaning of signs is created through the marking of difference. What signifies or has meaning is the DIFFERENCE between green and red (Saussure, 1960). Cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall (1997) summarizes, “Meaning does not inhere in things, in the world. It is constructed, produced. It is a result of a signifying practice—a practice that produces meaning, that makes thing mean” (p. 24).
Therefore, in order to understand social constructs like race, we have to examine how difference is marked and how meaning is associated with differences within the racial signification system. To do this, we need to examine the historical construction of race as a sign; study how different meanings have been associated with racial categories over time and place; and explore how preferred meanings regarding race have been constructed, negotiated, contested and changed. It is also imperative to look at how the preferred meanings of social constructs are linked to power; how groups who benefit from a preferred meaning and hegemony work hard to maintain these meanings; and how people and groups who are negatively impacted may work even harder to resist, challenge, and change the social construction of our realities (Barthes, 1972; Foucault, 1975; Hall, 1997). One of the implications of analyzing signs and making apparent the social construction of reality is that if our perceived reality is created through social interaction, we, as human beings are powerful agents who can alter and change our worlds. Let’s take a look at how the social construction of race and how it has become a sign with tremendous impact on people’s lives over the past five hundred years.
The Social Construction of Race: From Colonization to Globalization
Race has been fundamental in global
politics and culture for half a millennium. It continues to signify and structure social life not only
experientially and locally, but national and globally. Race is present everywhere: it is evident in
the distribution of resources and power, and in the desires and fears of individuals
from
As with all social constructs, what “race” means and what it signifies has changed during different historic periods and across geographic areas of the world. Certainly, groups of people throughout human existence have distinguished themselves from others based on a wide range of differences including linguistic, regional, religious, and in some cases, physical differences. Precursors also exist for the idea of a hierarch of human beings that places one group in a position of superiority in relation to others as articulated by Plato’s concept of the natural scale. Yet, the systematic categorization of people into a relatively small number of groups or “races” based on physical qualities and the ascription of qualities—intelligence, character, physical, as well as emotional and spiritual capacities—was not developed until the colonial era of the last five hundred years (Todorov, 1984; Winant, 2001). How is it that into the 21st century a system of racial/cultural hierarchy still exists that assumes the natural or cultural superiority of people who are light-skinned or “white” and the inferiority or lack of cultural development of people with darker skin? How is it that some nonverbal practices—a firm hand-shake, wearing a shirt and tie, and direct eye contact, for example—have come to signify “professionalism” and “the right way to do business” in the global workplace? As you read the following sections, consider how systems of meaning regarding race and racial superiority that are rooted in colonization persist in the global era.
Inventing Race and Constructing the “Other”
Conquest, colonization and the rise of capitalism were the terrain upon which race, racial identities, and racial hierarchies were forged. As Europeans expanded their reach around the globe in the 15th-19th centuries, intercultural contact on a scale previously unknown occurred. In these “encounters,” “difference” and most especially differences as they were marked or represented through the body were “constructed” as significant and were infused with meaning through a hierarchical racial system that justified and promoted domination and exploitation. Undoubtedly, the physical bodies, as well as the cultural, linguistic and nonverbal practices of people were different, for example, when the indigenous peoples of the Americas came in contact with the Portuguese, Spanish, and British, and when Africans and Asians first came in contact with the Dutch, French, and Germans. However, the meanings that were given over time to these differences—in other words, what, how and why these physical differences, as well as communication practices, came to signify what they did—are what we want to understand as we deconstruct race and racial hierarchies.
Just as the notion of “race”
differs from place to place today—for example, a student is considered white in
Yes, the people primarily
responsible for narrating the story, developing the discourse and constructing
the text about race—the colonizers, people of European descent-- placed
themselves at the top of the racial hierarchy and relegated the “other,” those
designated as nonwhite to lower and inferior positions in the hierarchy. The marking of difference establishes lines
of inclusion within the group through the exclusion of others. Sociologist Howard Winant notes (2001):
‘Othering’ came not from national, but from supranational distinctions, nascent regional distinctions between Europe and the rest of the world, between ‘us’ broadly conceived, and the non-Christian, ‘uncivilized,’ and soon enough non-white ‘others,’ whose subordination and subjugation was justified on numerous grounds—religious and philosophical as much as political and economic. (p. 22)
With variations across continents,
these socially constructed racial systems were based in and advanced a system
of white supremacy. White supremacy is an
historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and
oppression of continents, nations, and people of color by people and nations of
European descent for the purpose of establishing and maintaining wealth,
privilege and power (
Las Casas, a Catholic priest from
Note that the social construction of race was and is not only a question of “difference” but the relationship between signs of difference in a system of power. The hierarchical relationship between the signs—bodies that were and are constructed as white or red, white or black, civilized or uncivilized, Western or Other for example— is where meaning is produced. Marking the body by “race” in the colonial era not only served to demarcate group membership—who was in the dominant group and who was “Other,” it also constructed a stratified labor system that justified and normalized the exploitation of laborers, which was integral to the development of capitalism during the colonial era (Macedo & Gounari, 2006; Winant, 2001). Racial differences came to mark and signify labor relations of owner/slave. Slavery--the selling and purchase of Black bodies as commodities--was the first global business on a grand scale, the proto-type of multinational capitalism (Walvin, 1986).
The Power of Texts
By the end of the 1700s, Blumenbach, a German anatomist, physician and anthropologist extended Linnaeus’ system of categorizing all living things by formulating a hierarchy of difference, predicated on the socially constructed idea of superior and inferior races. Based on his analysis of human skulls, Blumenbach (1775, 1992) divided the human species into five races as follows: the Caucasians or white race (people of European descent) were placed at the top of the hierarchy; in the middle were the Malay or the brown race (people of Malaysian descent) and the Americans or the red race (people of the Americas); at the bottom of the hierarchy were the Mongolian or yellow race (people of Asian descent) and the Ethiopian or black race (people of African descent). The color-coded schema Blumenbach worked out reflected the white supremacist ideologies of his time and was instrumental in legitimizing, codifying and promoting a system of domination. His “scientific” explanation resonated with popularly constructed beliefs and practices that justified and normalized inequitable social, political, and economic systems.
As European colonial explorers,
priests, chroniclers, scientists, and anthropologists scrutinized, studied,
labeled, named and categorized the “Other,” they created elaborate texts
attesting to the inferiority of non-white groups while implicitly and
explicitly inscribing their own White, European superiority (Winant,
2001). The process that constructed the
“Other” through religious, “scientific,” scholarly and popular texts, as well
as through art, law, and philosophy, also created or constructed the colonizers
(Said, 1978). As authors in control of
the production of written texts in the colonial world, European colonizers and
their descendants narrated, consolidated and legitimized their versions of
history, knowledge and “truth.” During
the colonial era and well into the 20th century in many parts of the
world, access to writing, reading, printing, publishing and distributing texts
or narratives was curtailed or severely limited for the majority of people who
were not White. Considering who has
control over the production of texts, whose version of history is authorized
and preferred and what perspectives, experiences and stories are left out,
draws attention to the power of texts in constructing, maintaining and
legitimizing systems of inequity and domination. Control over and access to the production of
“official” written texts structured, enforced and reinforced inequitable
relations of power; and yet, people from cultures and societies who were
colonized did pass along their own histories and creates versions of their
stories in oral and written forms.
While the Las Casas debate ended
with the determination that the indigenous people of the
Re-signifying Race in the Context of
Globalization
Clearly, the social construction of race, racist ideology and white supremacy has had a devastating and demoralizing impact on non-white people around the globe through genocide, exploitation, and socio-cultural destruction. Yet, powerful collective identities and social movements for liberation and justice emerged in the late 19th century and continue until today to resist the systematic dehumanization, exploitation and subordination of people of color through economic, political and social means. The anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles of the peoples of Latin American since the 19th century, the anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia that culminated in independence from colonial rule in the middle part of the 20th century, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s in the U.S. and the long-awaited dismantling of the Apartheid system in South Africa in 1994 challenged the myth of race and the global ideology of white supremacy. Struggle and resistance to oppressive conditions forged collective race-based and nation-based identities for mobilization and empowerment. Anti-colonial, national independence and civil rights movements were monumental collective actions where colonized, oppressed and disenfranchised people demanded the right of democratic participation, self-governance and self-determination around the globe. These movements, coalescing in the post-WWII era, forced a major rupture in the world racial order (Winant, 2001). Race has been re-signified in the context of globalization in complex, shifting and contradictory ways.
As we enter the 21st century, the notion of race as a biological concept has been scientifically
debunked; yet, race as it was constructed in the colonial era and marked on the
body has real consequences for people around the globe everyday. No biological
or genetic difference exists between so-called “races” that determines
intelligence, sexual appetite, reproduction or athletic abilities. Yet, these common myths about race persist
with weighty consequences (
From Race to Culture: Constructing a Raceless, Color-Blind Society
David Theo Goldberg (2006) delineates two dominant ideologies that inform our understanding of race today. He argues that racial naturalism or the claim that White people of European descent are “naturally” or biologically superior to non-White people lingers today. However, in the post-WW II era, this ideology was challenged as a pre-modern relic from an earlier period and gave way in many parts of the world to racial historicism. Racial historicism, as a dominant ideology, shifts the focus from biological deficiencies to cultural ones, claiming the lack of “cultural development” or “progress” in non-White peoples and nations. In the world-wide pursuit of modernization, progress and development, the rationale of racial historicism goes something like this: Through education, the less advanced, less modern and backward cultures are capable of developing civilizing behaviors, democratic values and self-determination, which will, over time, allow them to be absorbed into society. Racial historicism insisted upon and constructs a “racelessness” and “color-blind” society. How frequently we hear people say: “I’m not racist. I don’t see color. I’m color-blind.” Racial historicism, where “race” is re-coded as “culture,” challenges the old racial signification system and at least on the surface, appears to go beyond race, leading to claims of “the end of racism.” But let’s take a closer look. Read the italicized sentence again. What are the underlying assumptions behind this statement? Who is the invisible narrator? Whose cultural (racial) standards are used to determine and judge this hierarchy of development? We know that the construction of “race” structured, justified and normalized stratified and exploitative economic, social and political conditions during the colonial era. What does the construction of “racelessness” and a “color-blind” society do today?
The claims of a raceless and
color-blind society erase or neutralize the centuries of historical injustice,
exploitation and asymmetrical relations of power during the colonial era that
have produced current conditions of
race-based inequity. Authors of the book The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the
U.S. Racial Wealth Divide, write in 2006: “For every dollar owned by the
average white family in the
A location of structural advantage
means that the systems in place within society—political, economic and social
systems that take on concrete forms in education, laws, law enforcement,
medicine, employment and many others—benefit or advantage people who are
White. Of course, not all White people
have equal advantage or privilege. Whiteness is mediated by class, gender and sexuality among other things. Yet, the point is that the systems that are
in place within
The third dimension of whiteness outlined by Frankenberg is a set of core symbols, norms and labels. Given the location of structural advantage of Whites and White culture, many of these core values, behaviors and symbols are hard to identify simply because they are seen and accepted as the norm, just the way things are. A strong adherence to individualism, an emphasis on doing and accomplishing tasks and an orientation to thinking and to time that is linear are just a few of the core values associated with White American culture. These values are often seen by those who share and practice them as universal human values, as the “right way” or the “best way” and are used subtly as standards to measure other cultures. In this way, White American cultural norms are invisibly elevated to universal human norms and standards to which all should strive and by which all are judged. A position of structural advantages enables the dominant group, Whites in the U.S., to label, generalize and make claims about others while remaining unnamed, individually unique, and outside of generalization and categorization. Delineating the concept of whiteness is one step towards describing and disrupting a system that creates and sustains inequity. The three dimensions of whiteness—a location of structural advantage, a standpoint and a set of core symbols and labels—interlock to invisibilize, mask and normalize the maintenance and promotion of White American hegemony. The ways in which whiteness and White hegemony functions in the global context are discussed in depth in later chapters. It is critical to note that whiteness is not only nor is it inevitably attached to white bodies. In a supposedly “raceless” society whiteness is an ideological perspective or position to which people who are not White can and do ascribe. Whiteness is also an ideological perspective that people who are White can confront and attempt to change.
From Race to Class: Rearticulating Race in the Neoliberal Context
We often hear comments like this:
“Race doesn’t matter anymore. All that
matters is money.” In societies like the
Intersectionality
Yet, class does not provide complete protection against racism, sexism and other forms of exclusion even in or perhaps, especially in a supposedly raceless society. Socio-economic class assists, limits and denies access to everything from basic human needs of food, water, safety and housing to health care, education, property ownership to the ability to accumulate luxury items and wealth. But class alone does not determine access. Socio-economic class intersects with race, as well as with gender, sexuality and culture to create complex forms and degrees of exclusion and inclusion. Intersectionality, introduced by feminist theorists (Moraga, Anzaldúa, & Bambara, 1984; Collins, 1990), is an approach to understanding how socially constructed categories of difference—race, gender, class, and sexuality-- operate in relationship to each other. These markers of difference do not function separately or independently in society but rather interrelate and intersect with each other magnifying and complicating positions of disadvantage and privilege.
In the context of globalization, re-signifying “race” as “culture” allows for the invention of a raceless and color-blind that masks how race, as it is written on the body, persists as a marker for social, economic and political stratification. It also invisibilizes whiteness as the universal standard and norm. Rearticulating “race” as “class” in the neoliberal global context hides the way that race and gender intersect with class and how the intersectionality of these social categories continues to structure the lives, material conditions and access to opportunities of people around the world today. In an article entitled “Of Race and Risk,” Patricia J. Williams (2004) recounts her experience of buying a house. After talking with a mortgage broker on the phone, she was quoted a mortgage interest rate. When she received the forms, she saw that the racial category of White was marked and that the broker must have assumed apparently based on her use of Received Standard English that she was White. When she changed it to Black and returned the form, suddenly the bank wanted more money, more points and a higher interest rate. In her negotiations to contest this, the justification used by the bank was that she represented a financial “risk.” Patricia Williams was made aware through this process that she, as a Black woman, IS the “risk” not in terms of her financial ability to follow through with the loan (that had not changed when she shifted from White to Black). Rather, she is the risk as her home ownership as a Black woman in the neighborhood diminishes the value of the property owned by White residents. Historically, when a Black person or family moves in, Whites flee and take funding and social resources with them. Race, in an ideologically constructed “raceless” society, is rearticulated as “financial risk,” masking through economic language a system that perpetuates racism and hiding a system that sustains whiteness.
Intercultural interactions in the context of globalization are deeply embedded in the legacy of colonization, intersecting systems of oppression and inequitable relations of power. Yet, struggles against racism and white supremacy also continue. While mass media representations draw attention to and exacerbate the violent, criminal and destructive aspects of hip hop culture, many people around the world experience hip hop culture as offering possibilities for disrupting the hegemonic racial order and providing spaces for new forms of coalition building across racial lines. We turn now to the contested cultural space of hip hop culture.
Hip Hop Culture: Alternative Performances
of Difference
Meet Darren Dickerson, who identifies as Black; Sun Yu Young, who is Korean-American; Jani (Janithri) Gunaesekera, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Sri Lanka; Izzy (Israel) Pereź, whose mother is Mexican-American and father is Puerto Rican-American; and Venoosheh Khaksar, who identifies as Iranian-American. These folks were presented at the beginning of the chapter. Each one of them acknowledges that the gender and racial codes marked, performed and constructed on and through their bodies impact their lives everyday. Each also identifies as being part of hip hop culture and experiences hip hop culture as an alternative to the existing racial order. Let’s see what they had to say when asked: What does hip hop culture mean to you?
Darren Dickerson: I was born into hip hop culture. I am hip hop culture. Hip hop culture is speaking out and expressing what’s real. The values of hip hop culture? Honesty, Truth, Respect, Courage and Credibility. Hip hop culture comes out of a history of struggle; a history of having been denied and forgotten. It’s fundamentally about the struggle—the struggle against powerful forces that have marginalized all sorts of people. But at the end of the day, it’s about keeping it real.
Sun Yu Young: Hip
hop to me isn't just a genre of music. It truly is an entire culture in
every sense of the word, with its own individual language, music, fashion, and
most important, history. I don't just "listen" to hip hop,
I feel like I really live it. I also don't consider myself just a casual
listener; I'm pretty good about knowing about and enjoying an artist's or
producer's entire body of work, not just the songs that are released on the radio.
Sometimes I think that my life is like one huge soundtrack - hip hop culture
has truly influenced every aspect of my life. I don't think I would be the same
person I am today without it. It’s helped me understand different
viewpoints and cultures other than my own, and its helped me come together with
people of different cultures, solely based on the fact that we both are a part
of hip hop culture. So answering the question "what hip hop means to
me," I guess can be summed up in a word: Life.
Jani Gunaesekera: Since I am Sri Lankan, it is very hard for me to identify with a
certain group. I want to say I can relate to the American side of me but
sometimes I feel it is limited. Then when I try to relate to my Sri Lankan
side, I feel there is a big gap. When I was introduced to hip hop, I felt there
was finally something that doesn’t see me as a race or ethnicity. I felt like
it took me in and gave me an identity that I could deal with… being different
and not having a certain group to be part of was hard.
Izzy Pereź: Hip-Hop culture is so many things, like all cultures it’s pretty hard to define. Hip-Hop brings people together—some who normally wouldn’t get along can share a common interest. It connects people from all over the global. Because it’s different everyplace, you can learn about different experiences from others—it’s a collaboration and expression from all over the world. But then there’s the whole masculine side of Hip-Hop with the “Beefs” and rivalries. The whole point is to emasculate the other person, character assassination,“dis” and embarrass the other person. A lot of this is about setting the record straight about false accusations. It’s also pretty homophobic. But, what so many people can relate to is that it’s about constant struggle, the ability to rise up and overcome. It creates solidarity between people and groups who can relate—the poor, immigrants, and other struggling people.
Venoosheh (Sheh)
Khaksar: As an Iranian, it wasn’t easy being different—growing up in a
small town in
As you can see from these statements, clearly hip hop culture offers an alternative to the old racial signification system. The folks here don’t seem to buy into the myth of a raceless society. They see and experience race as it is written on the body everyday. Yet, in the context of a racialized society, they experience hip hop as a cultural space where, as Darren says, people can speak out and “struggle against powerful forces that have marginalized all sorts of people.” Darren and Sheh see hip hop as the voice of the people—people who have been forgotten, disenfranchised and oppressed by interlocking systems of exclusion based on race, class and gender. Izzy notes that hip hop culture is fundamentally about “the ability to rise and overcome” the challenges and obstacles that people face. Hip hop culture is a site where meanings about race, class, gender, sexuality, love, hate, violence, history, the government, family and many other things are challenged, negotiated and transformed. Hip hop tells the stories of resistance and resilience—stories of how people live their lives and how they challenge and survive powerful forces that work to silence their voices and diminish their lives. In 1989, Public Enemy’s Chuck D said, “Rap is the Black CNN” offering an alternative interpretation of current events as well as history. Jay Woodson (2006) from Z-Net notes that “hip-hop articulated something so universal and revelatory that white kids wanted (to listen) in. Some even began to question the skin privilege into which they had been born.”
Sun finds that hip hop culture is a
place where racial hierarchies breaks down and connection and coalition across
socially constructed lines of race are not only possible but provide a source
of learning and pleasure, as well as political and economic empowerment. Hip hop culture offers hope for
coalition-building across historically divided and stratified groups. In rural
As young people worldwide gravitate to hip-hop and adapt it to their local needs, responding to the crises of our time, they are becoming equipped with a culture that corporate and political elites can’t control. It’s a youth-centered culture that is self-motivating and only requires its participants to have a mouth, the ability to listen and frustration with business as usual. This cultural movement is currently making way for hip-hop’s emerging political movement. Given the way the culture is being absorbed by young people around the globe, these movements may be the catalysts necessary to jump-start an international human rights movement in this generation, a movement with the potential to parallel if not surpass yesterday’s civil rights successes. (pp. 10-11)
The goal here is not to uncritically valorize hip hop culture. As Izzy notes, hip hop culture is troubled by a hypermasculinity that often denigrates, objectifies and violates women, sexual minorities and men. Hip hop culture often idealizes and glamorizes violence, drugs and rampant consumerism. Aspects of the culture play off of and reinforce centuries-old racial stereotypes, promoting deeply ingrained patterns of domination and subordination. In these ways, hip hop culture reflects, normalizes and advances the racist, patriarchal, homophobic and capitalist ideologies of our larger society. Tricia Rose (1994) states that hip hop “brings together a tangle of some of the most complex, social, cultural, and political issues in contemporary American society” (p. 2). So, the point here is not to gloss over the difficult, ugly, controversial or contested nature of hip hop culture. After all, at the core, hip hop culture is about keeping it real. Intercultural communication in the context of globalization situates us in the midst of complex and messy tensions. We need to learn how to hold contradictions and address the muddled, chaotic and difficult challenges that arise in the nexus of oppositional realities. For example, we need to see how hip hop culture is both a site of inclusion across racial and cultural groups and a site where exclusion based on gender and sexuality occur. Hip hop is both a space of empowerment and a space where oppressive and exploitative conditions are enacted and performed. Taking a “both/and” approach guards against essentializing, stereotyping and closure and allows us to step into rather than away from the complex, confusing and untidy terrain of intercultural communication today.
Summary
Our goal in this chapter was to introduce the process and practice of “reading” body politics in the age of globalization. We began with the assumption that intercultural communication is an embodied experience. Since our engagement with others is through our bodies, we looked at how differences are marked on the body—how our bodies are signs—in the socially constructed systems of race, gender and class that impact global and local intercultural interactions. We provided an overview of the historical construction of race to show how social constructs are linked to power—social, political and economic power. Since social constructs are invented, used and institutionalized by people, they can and have changed over time; and yet, we note how the preferred meanings of deeply engrained signification systems that benefit those in power are difficult to disrupt and change. The social construction of race and racial hierarchies—linked historically to colonization, capitalism, and national/regional identities—have been re-signified in the global context. In a supposedly raceless society, race is rearticulated as culture and class, yet in these barely masked forms, race as it intersects with class, gender and culture continues to impact the lives of people around the globe today. As we take on the project of analyzing our intercultural encounters and understanding the global context of intercultural relations, the semiotic approach and the concept of intersectionality are useful tools for critical analysis. Voices and visions born out of hip hop culture suggest that alternatives spaces exist that resist and transform the old, colonial regime of racial naturalism and the more recently constructed racial regime of a raceless society. Yet, hip hop culture also points to the complex and contradictory nature of intercultural communication today where sites that resist and contest hierarchies of difference can also reinscribe and reproduce racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia.
Key Terms
Third gender Constructing the “Other” Transgender Power of Texts Social construct/Social construction White Supremacy Semiotics Power of Texts Sign/signifier/signified Whiteness Social construction of gender Intersectionality Social construction of race Racial Hierarchy Hierarch of difference Both/And Approach
In the colonial Spanish system of racial classification, a crillo was Spanish (White) person born in colonial Latin America; a mestizo was a person born of a White and Indian or indigenous parent; a castizo was a person with one mestizo and one crillo parent; mulatto was a person born from a White and a Black parent; morisco comes from the Spanish word for the Moors and referred in Latin America to a person born from mulatto and White parents ; coyote was person born from mestizo and Indian parents; lobo or wolf was person who had a Black and an Indian parent.
In the South African, Whites were considered people of European descent primarily Dutch and British; Coloureds were people of mixed races across European, African, and Asian groups; Asians also referred to as Indians because of the large population from India; however, Asians also included people originally from Sri Lanka, Indonesia and other parts of Asia, and Blacks were people of African descent.
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