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Indybay Feature

Syllabus for a class on the Structures of Racialization

by Steve Martinot (martinot4 [at] gmail.com)
A class is being offered at the Omni on the structures of racialization in the US. This is a syllabus for that class. It is offered to provide a sense of some topics which urgently suround that issue and phenomenon.
Preliminary Syllabus for Structures of Racialization class

1- The nature of Generalization
Where does it come from? What is its structure? Is it purely linguistic?
Racism, Trump, intelligibility and fallacy, all hinge on this concept of generalization. Is it a concept, or something else? How does it get naturalized, normalized?
What is the relation between category and situation? Between generalization and responsibility?
How does one historicize generalization?

2- The Structure of Racialization
The history of the "invention" of race, whiteness, and white supremacy in the Virginia colony. It emerged from the problem of plantation labor, but also wealth. Thus, much more than a divide and conquer strategy. It was the invention of a system of cultural identity.
What is a cultural identity? What is white racialized identity?
Is enslaved labor a form of prison labor? Prisons and social imprisonment. Ghettos.
The three periods of US racial history; do they present a pattern? A common structure?

3- The racialization of class relations in the US, as a result of the operation of the structures of racialization.
The slave patrols, white solidarity vs. labor solidarity, the peculiarities of US labor history
Is there a class relation between white and black workers? What is “Black unionism”?
DuBois vs. BT Washington

4- The police and the structures of racialization
The slave patrols, policing as an element of ward politics, the structure of policing today, the antithesis of law enforcement and racial profiling, the war on drugs, the prison industry, the New Jim Crow (it is more than the war on drugs).

5- The strange relation between the structures of racialization and the corporate structure
The influence of the corporate structure on the invention of race. The parallels between corporate power and African-American disempowerment, racism as a form of corporate bureaucratic mentality,

6- Political ramifications
If "race" is a verb, and not a noun (the verb would be “to racialize”), what kinds of politics and social movements does that open up for us?
Colorblindness. Is it blindness, or does it still see one color? Which one?

The class meets on Mondays at the Omni in Oakland, 7 pm.
4799 Shattuck Ave.

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