Agency, structure, and power: An inquiry into racism and resistance for education

Studies in Philosophy and Education

Volumn 19, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 329-348

  Baez, Benjamin ^a  

^a GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 52849091860     PISSN: 00393746     EISSN: 1573191X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1005241732091     Document Type: Article

References (136)

1. For discussions of the agency/structure debate see: Gary A. Fine, "The Sad Demise, Mysterious Disappearance, and Glorious Triumph of Symbolic Interactionism," Annual Review of Sociology 19 (1993): 61-87, 69-70;
2. Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 3-16.
3. I do not intend here to argue against the importance of the philosophical debates concerning agency, determinism, causation, free will, and so forth. I suggest only that in regard to the conceptualization of racism, the agency and structure distinction and the research it supports obscures the nature of the power that underlies racially-discriminatory practices.
4. Oxford English Dictionary. Available at http://sage.libs.uga/ssp/cgi-bin/oed-idx.pl.
5. John W. Murphy and Jung Min Choi, Postmodernism, Unraveling Racism, and Democratic Institutions (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 85-87.
6. For excellent collections of essays on race and racism, see: Henry Louis Gates, ed., "Race," Writing, and Difference (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985);
7. David Theo Goldberg, ed., Anatomy of Racism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1990);
8. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek, eds., Race (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994);
9. "A Special Issue: Race, Racism, and American Education: Perspectives of Asian Americans, Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans," Harvard Educational Review 58(3) (1988);
10. John H. Stanfield II, éd., A History of Race Relations Research: First Generation Recollections (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1993).
11. Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice & Poststructuralist Theory, 2nd edn. (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1987), 34.
12. Marc Pruyn, Discourse Wars in Gotham-West: A Latino Immigrant Urban Tale of Resistance and Agency (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 45-416.
13. Weedon, Feminist Practice & Poststructuralist Theory, 105.
14. Alan Freeman, "Legitimizing Racial Discrimination Through Antidiscrimination Law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine," in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, eds. Kimberlé Crenshaw et al. (New York: The New Press, 1995), 29-415, 29-30.
15. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction Volume I, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 11.
16. Michael Banton, Race Relations (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1967).
17. Race Relations Ibid., 7-8.
18. Race Relations Ibid., 8 (quoting others).
19. Race Relations Ibid, (emphasis in original).
20. Albert Memmi, "Racism and Oppression," in Dominated Man: Notes Toward a Portrait (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 185.
21. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Racisms," in Anatomy of Racism, ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 3-17.
22. Anatomy of Racism Ibid., 5.
23. Anatomy of Racism Ibid., 5-6.
24. I use the term 'human sciences' in this paper to refer to those discourses which purport to explain human behavior (e.g., anthropology, biology, medicine, political science, psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology, etc.).
25. Robert Blauner, Racial Oppression in America (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1972), 8;
26. see also Etienne Balibar, "Racism As Universalism" in Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies On Politics And Philosophy Before And After Marx,
27. trans. J. Swenson (New York: Routledge, 1994), 191-204, 199.
28. Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race, Volume I: Racial Oppression and Social Control (London: Verso, 1994), 1.
29. Janet Helms, ed., Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research, and Practice (New York, Greenwood Press, 1990), 49.
30. Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research, and Practice Ibid.
31. Helms also identified "cultural racism," which entails "the societal beliefs and customs that promote the assumption that products of White culture [e.g., language, traditions, appearance, etc.] are superior to those of non-White cultures" (49). Because this kind of racism connotes racist practices that do not presuppose individual action, I characterize it as institutional racism.
32. Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), 5.
33. Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 7.
34. See Randall Collins, Four Sociological Traditions, 193.
35. The term "symbolic interactionism" was coined by Herbert Blumer in 1937 to describe the philosophy of George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, William James, and Charles Horton Cooley, and the sociological work being conducted at the University of Chicago in the first half of the 20th Century by Robert Park, W. I. Thomas, and Everett Hughes [Symbolic Interactionism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969).
36. Symbolic interactionism has three basic premises: (1) human activity is based on the meanings individuals have for objects ("objects," Blumer explained, are anything that can be indicated or referred); (2) meanings are developed, handled, and modified through an on-going, interpretive process within the individual (i.e., the individual sees himself or herself as a "self" (i.e., an object) and indicates and interprets meanings for other objects by interacting with that self); and (3) meanings are derived, and arise out of, social interaction (i.e., human life, societies, and institutions can be seen as individuals, with common meanings and definitions, interacting with each other) [Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism, 2].
37. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), 138.
38. Barbara B. Eal, "Symbolic Interaction Theories," American Behavioral Scientist 38(3) (1995): 421-4144,423.
39. American Behavioral Scientist Ibid., 427.
40. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd edn. (New York: Routledge, 1994), 71.
41. Racial Formation in the United States: from the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd Edn. Ibid, (emphasis in original).
42. Bell Hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 119.
43. William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions, 2nd edn. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 22-23.
44. Kevin Brown, "Turning a Blind Eye: Racial Oppression and the Unintended Consequences of White 'Non-Racism'." Sociological Review 33(4) (1985): 670-690.
45. Kimberlé Crenshaw, "Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Eegitimation in Antidiscrimination Eaw," in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, eds. Kimberlé Crenshaw et al. (New York: The New Press, 1995), 103-122, 112-114.
46. James J. Scheurich and Michelle D. Young, "Coloring Epistemologies: Are Our Research Epistemologies Racially Biased?" Educational Researcher 25(4) (1997), 4-16, 4-5.
47. Educational Researcher Ibid., 5.
48. Educational Researcher Ibid.
49. Scheurich and Young identified three other types of racism: (a) societal, which is similar to institutional racism but exists on a broader, society-wide scale; (b) civilizational racism involves broad civilizational assumptions that construct, subconsciously, our world; and, more central to their argument about research, (c) epistemological racism, which means that "our current range of research epistemologies - positivism to postmodernisms/poststructuralisms - arise out of the social history and culture of the dominant race [i.e., Whites], that these epistemologies logically reflect and reinforce that social history and that racial group ... and that this has negative results for people of color in general and scholars of color in particular" (8). While I do not seek to argue for or against any of these definitions, I contend that they reflect essentially an institutional understanding of racism.
50. Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac, Almanac Issue (August 29, 1997).
51. Maria de la Euz Reyes and John J. Halcon, "Racism in Academia: The Old Wolf Revisited," Harvard Educational Review 58(3) (1988): 299-314, 301.
52. Harvard Educational Review Ibid.
53. Harvard Educational Review Ibid., 302-309.
54. Michael A. Olivas, "Eatino Faculty at the Border: Increasing Numbers Key to More Hispanic Access," Change, May/June (1988): 6-9, 6.
55. Nellie McKay, "Black Woman Professor - White University," Women's Studies International Forum 6(2) (1983): 143-147.
56. Marcia E. Sutherland, "Black Faculty in White Academia: The Fit is an Uneasy One," The Western Journal of Black Studies 14(1) (1990): 17-23, 18.
57. Don T. Nakanishi, "Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education: Faculty and Administrative Representation and Tenure," New Directions for Teaching and Learning 53 (1993): 51-59, 53-54.
58. Wayne J. Stein, "The Survival of American Indian Faculty," in Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Higher Education, eds. Caroline Turner et al. (Needham Heights, MA: Simon and Schuster Custom Publishing, 1996), 390-397, 392.
59. Reyes and Halcon, "Racism in Academia," 311.
60. McKay, "Black Woman Professor," 146;
61. Nakanishi, "Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education," 58.
62. Sutherland, "Black Faculty in White Academia," 22.
63. McKay, "Black Woman Professor," 147;
64. Nakanishi, "Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education," 58;
65. Olivas, "Eatino Faculty at the Border," 8;
66. Stein, "The Survival of American Indian Faculty," 394-395.
67. Talmadge Anderson, "Black Encounter of Racism and Elitism in White Academe: A Critique of the System," Journal of Black Studies 18(3) (1988): 259-272, 262.
68. Robert Staples, "Racial Ideology and Intellectual Racism: Blacks in Academia," The Black Scholar, March/April (1984): 2-17, 3.
69. William H. Exum et al., "Making it at the Top: Women and Minority Faculty in the Academic Eabor Maiket," American Behavioral Scientist 27(3) (1984): 301-324, 302.
70. Staples, "Racial Ideology and Intellectual Racism," 15-16.
71. Anderson, "Black Encounter of Racism and Elitism in White Academe," 271.
72. Exum, "Making it at the Top," 321-322.
73. See Staples, "Racial Ideology and Intellectual Racism," 15-16.
74. William Banks, "Afro-American Scholars in the University: Roles and Conflicts," American Behavioral Scientist 27(3) (1984): 325-338, 327.
75. See Staples, "Racial Ideology and Intellectual Racism," 2; Einda Carty, "Black Women in Academia: A Statement From the Periphery," in Unsettling Relations: The University as a Site of Feminist Struggles, eds. Himani Bannerji et al. (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 13-44, 23-29.
76. A poststructural understanding of the agency/structure dichotomy might contest the very notion of agency, arguing that the 'individual' is constituted in discourses elaborated in given historical and political contexts [see Chris Weedon, Feminist Practices & Poststructuralist Theory, 88-103). Poststructuralist philosophy, thus, questions the liberal-humanist view of 'free will' and the 'rational consciousness' necessitated by this view. This argument is important but beyond the scope of this paper.
77. Gary A. Fine, "Agency, Structure, and Comparative Contexts: Toward a Synthetic Interactionism," Symbolic Interaction 15(1) (1992): 87-107, 89.
78. Derk Pereboom, Free Will (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1997), vii.
79. Immanual Kant, "from the Critique of Reason," in Free Will, ed. Pereboom, 86-100, 86-87.
80. Weedon, Feminist Practices & Poststructuralist Theory, 5.
81. John Eocke, "Second Treatise of Government," in Princeton Readings in Political Thought: Essential Texts Since Plato, eds. Mitchell Cohen and Nicole Fermon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 243-279, 243-244.
82. Arthur Brittan and Mary Maynard, Sexism, Racism, and Oppression (Oxford UK: Basil Blackwell Publishers, Etd., 1984), 212.
83. An agentic understanding of racial oppression is predominant in the literature. For example, see Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well;
84. Eal, "Symbolic Interaction Theories";
85. Memmi, "Racism and Oppression";
86. Reyes and Halcon, "Racism in Academia";
87. Steele, The Content of Our Character,
88. Sutherland, "Black Faculty in White Academia."
89. Anthony Giddens, "Post-Modernity or Radicalized Modernity?" in Social Theory: The Multicultural & Classic Readings, ed. Charles Lemert (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 531-538, 531-532.
90. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Class Struggles," in Social Theory: The Multicultural & Classic Readings, ed. Charles Lemert (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 43-418, 43.
91. Ibid., 44-45.
92. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 229-251.
93. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. and eds. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971).
94. Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)," in Lenin and Philosophy, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971).
95. For example, see Alien, The Invention of the White Race;
96. Anderson, "Black Encounter of Racism and Elitism in White Academe";
97. Crenshaw, "Race, Reform, and Retrenchment";
98. Brown, "Turning a Blind Eye";
99. Scheurich and Young, "Coloring Epistemologies";
100. Staples, "Racial Ideology and Intellectual Racism."
101. Max Weber, "The Bureaucratic Machine," in Social Theory: The Multicultural & Classic Readings, ed. Charles Lemert (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 114-120, 114.
102. Social Theory: The Multicultural & Classic Readings Ibid., 119.
103. Max Weber, "What is Politics?" in Social Theory: The Multicultural & Classic Readings, ed. Charles Lemert (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 120-122, 122.
104. Weber's theories appear to influence many studies of racism. For example, see Exum et al., "Making It At the Top";
105. Freeman, "Legitimizing Racial Discrimination Through Antidiscrimination Law";
106. Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race.
107. Blauner, Racial oppression in America, 9-10.
108. Ibid., 23-28.
109. Although Blauner first argued against the over-reliance on prejudice, his views of racism changed somewhat. His latest understanding of racism emphasizes both institutional and individual forms of racism, arguing that Whites tend to view racism in individualistic terms and people of color in institutional terms [see " 'But Things Are Much Worse for the Negro People': Race and Radicalism in My Life and Work," in A History of Race Relations Research: First Generation Recollections, ed. John H. Stanfield II (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1993), 1-36, 30].
110. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books, 1966), 52.
111. Anthony Giddens, Sociology (New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1987), 11.
112. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 195-228.
113. Blauner, Racial Oppression in America, 23-28.
114. Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 52.
115. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), 1920. As previously discussed, Berger and Luckmann and Giddens also theorized that social structures involve the continuous repetition of individual action.
116. Michel Foucault, "Body/Power," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. and trans. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 55-62, 60.
117. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 200-201.
118. Discipline and Punish Ibid.
119. Foucault, "Two Lectures," in Power/knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 19721977, trans. and éd. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 105.
120. See, for example, the persuasive essays on the courts' reluctance to enforce the legal and moral imperatives of antidiscrimination law in: Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism;
121. Robert Cover, "The Origins of Judicial Activism in the Protection of Minorities," in ed. Martha Minow et al., Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1992);
122. Crenshaw et al., Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Shaped the Movement',
123. Delgado, Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge',
124. A. Leon Higginbotham, Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and the Presumptions of the American Legal Process (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press);
125. Gary Orfield and Susan Eaton, eds., Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: The New Press, 1996).
126. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 83.
127. Balibar, "Racism as Universalism," 197.
128. Racism As Universalism Ibid, 200.
129. poucault, "Strategies of Power," in The Truth About Truth: De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World, ed. Walter T. Anderson (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), 40-415, 44.
130. The Truth about Truth: De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World Ibid., 44.
131. Roger Sanjek, "The Enduring Inequities of Race," in Race, eds. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 1-17, 5.
132. Foucault, "Two Lectures," 108.
133. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 95.
134. poucault, "Two Lectures," 81.
135. Brittan Maynard, Sexism, Racism, and Oppression, 34.
136. Butler, Excitable Speech, 19.