Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same, There's a pink one and a green one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. And the people in the houses All went to the university Where they were put in boxes And they came out all the same And there's doctors and lawyers And business executives And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. And they all play on the golf course And drink their martinis dry And they all have pretty children And the children go to school, And the children go to summer camp And then to the university Where they are put in boxes And they come out all the same. And the boys go into business And marry and raise a family In boxes made of ticky tacky And they all look just the same, There's a pink one and a green one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. They took our jobs!
My research has focused on the role of metaphor in racism. More specifically, this study attempts to add clarity and form conclusions regarded the way metaphor is used in the English language in a racist manner. My question at issue is as follows: how does language demonstrate racial attitudes in the American English metaphor? In order to answer this question, I had to answer several sub-questions: what kinds of metaphor are used? How do these metaphors work, or; what is racist about this metaphor? The issue of metaphor in facilitating racist meaning is relevant to me for several reasons. First, racism plays a continuing, often ignored, and definitive role in American culture. Secondly, I was interested in learning more about this role of metaphor in order to confront prevailing racist attitudes. That is, I wanted to know how to change the way metaphor is used. The issue of color-blindness exemplifies the importance of such a study by demonstrating inherent, inherited, and hidden meaning in metaphor. I will argue that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s marks a shift away from post-colonial, Jim Crow style racism into what Richard Delgado calls new Critical Race Theory. Generally speaking, NCR theorists argue that racism is being masked behind a new politically correct “color-blindness.” This theory posits that explicit racism has been replaced with container and other ontological metaphor. Racism has sort of burrowed itself in the complexities of our language, and often times it is used unbeknownst to the speaker. That is, racism is prevalent in language, explicit or not. My research began with Victor Villanueva’s Blind: Talking about the New Racism. This essay describes a study that compared the propensity of White college students to identify as not racist, while using “new racial” terms related to economics and politics such as: entitlement, handout, welfare, lazy, etc. Villanueva’s other contribution demonstrates how the container metaphor is used to describe ethnicity and race. This article highlights the dualistic nature of these container metaphors, and demonstrates the contradictory nature of metaphor that helps to create a set of circumstances, while denying any responsibility in determining these conditions. If I were to discuss low employment rates among African American males, the CULTURE-AS-CONTAINER metaphor works off of the assumption that any problem within a culture, must come from within that culture. More specifically, African American men have trouble finding a job because of a flaw in the value system of African American culture: being lazy and having an entitled attitude, often because of the feeling that they are owed something because of past oppression. Container metaphors are also used to describe “states.” If the United States is a container, then the substance of that container is its population. Anti-immigrant attitudes suggest that the flow of Mexican-immigrants into the United States is a symptom of a flawed American culture. For example, a neo-conservative view on immigration may blame Mexican culture within the United States, more liberal or pro-immigration viewpoints, as well as different branches of government. The Mexicans, Liberals, and Feds are the problem, one might say. Mexicans, Liberals, and Feds are both containers and substances. Lakoff and Johnson describe these as CONTAINER OBJECT and CONTAINER SUBSTANCE – like being inside a bathtub, full of water. Consider the plight of Native Americans. These groups were essentialized. Native American is a linguistic container for many different groups and individuals. This metaphor can be seen to stem from Lakoff and Johnson’s Land Areas when considering the relocation of Native Americans onto reservations. Building a wall along the southern border of the United States is a similar example of creating a container. Think also of the Japanese internment camps, the urban ghettos, the third-world cities within our metropolitan areas. Understanding the way these metaphors work, and how they are rooted in our culture and language, is paramount in confronting the issue of race inequality in the United States. The solution isn’t being color-blind; it is being color-conscious. Recognizing is the first step to reconciliation. Annotated Bibliography
Bonilla - Silva, E., and T. A. Forman. ""I Am Not a Racist But...": Mapping White College Students' Racial Ideology in the USA." Discourse & Society 11.1 (2000): 50-85. Print. This article is presented as a comparison between White college students’ racial attitudes in surveys and interviews. The authors comment, “We argue that surveys on racial attitudes have systematically underestimated the extent of prejudice in the White population” (3). The authors suggest that racism has taken on a new kind of “color blind” racism. The authors argue that White students use racetalk to avoid appearing racist. Racetalk consists of words and phrases that have been substituted for more explicitly racist terms. The author states, “this article examines White racial attitudes from both a different conceptual perspective and with a different methodology” (5). The article argues that many of the White students surveyed did not identify themselves as racist in survey, but used coded terms in interview. These terms are economic in nature: handout, entitlement, etc. This article is effective in many ways. First, it identifies many relevant issues associated with other articles I looked at. Second, it focuses on the term “color blind” as a prevailing issue. It is important to note that this article begins by situating the discussion within 1960’s civil rights era racial attitudes. That is, the civil rights movement is identified as a turning point in how White American’s perceive race. The research by Bonilla-Silva and Forman is extensive. The authors note the thoroughness of the researchers, as well as the limitations of the study. The small sample size between 500-600 students is a drawback, although the findings were similar at all four universities in question. The research was intentionally focused on students with higher socio-economic status to reveal what they believe is a systematic underestimation of prejudice. Delgado, Richard. "Mindset and Metaphor." Harvard Law Review 103.8 (1990): 1872-877. Print. Delgado’s essay is a response to the criticism of Randall Kennedy’s Racial Critiques of Legal Academia. This essay explores what Delgado describes as competing theories: The new Critical Race Theorists and those relying on old colonial theory. Kennedy’s essay is critical of liberal arguments for the inclusion of scholars of color into advanced law programs. Delgado asserts that Kennedy is trying to demonstrate that the exclusion of scholars of color may be deserved. That is, scholars of color aren’t getting into law schools because they don’t deserve to be there. Delgado takes issue with what he sees as contradictory argumentative techniques employed by Kennedy. Noting Kennedy’s use of metaphor, Delgado comments, “the choice of metaphors and other word pictures can give a glimpse into how the writer reasons” (1875). The specific metaphor in question is Kennedy’s minority pool. This article is limited in several ways. First, it doesn’t go into too much detail. Second, it is a response to another essay that is beyond the scope of this assignment. With that being said, the article provides excellent insight into the container metaphor employed by Kennedy, and the limitations associated with this container. If I had more time (and this was a research paper) I would put more effort into Kennedy’s article to see if I could get more specifics about the metaphor employed. Aside from Johnson’s work, this may be the most critical piece of information. Holmes, David G. "Affirmative Reaction: Kennedy, Nixon, King, and the Evolution of Color-Blind Rhetoric." Rhetoric Review 26.1 (2007): 25-41. Print. According to the author, “This essay blends critical race theory and Bonilla-Silva’s sociological theory of color-blind racism to interrogate color blind rhetoric” (3). This article, like most of the others that I found, accurately situates these racial issues within 1960’s era politics. More specifically, the author takes a close look at the speeches and political debates of Kennedy, Nixon, and King in order to form a more complete and better understanding of how racism has evolved from explicit Jim Crow rhetoric, to disguised and hidden, color blind rhetoric. The author identifies the “duplicitous nature of political discourse” as it applies to issues of race. The author posits freedom and equality as race-neutral, while demonstrating how this neutrality is betrayed in political discourse by creating a sort of color blindness. This article makes a similarly strong argument to the others I have seen. The author works through several landmark cases such as Plessy versus Ferguson and Brown versus the Board of Education, while also examining the role of affirmative action legislation. This article is perhaps the most effective in helping me to flesh out some of the primary metaphors: equality is color blind, fairness is equal opportunity, color blindness is sophisticated, etc. While much of this article is useful, other sections are beyond the scope of my presentation. That is, while politics is a part of my argument, it is not necessarily the target of my presentation. Separate but equal is important, but only insofar as I can flesh out the metaphor “separate is equal.” Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003. Print. Lakoff and Johnson directly confront the role metaphor plays within our culture, as well as how that role may differ from culture to culture. In chapters 5-8, Johnson and Lakoff examine culturally specific metaphors. Johnson and Lakoff comment, "We are not claiming that all cultural values coherent with a metaphorical system actually exist...those that do exist and are deeply entrenched are consistent with the metaphorical system" (23). Johnson and Lakoff explore three distinct categories of metaphor: Ontological metaphor (entity and substance, container metaphors, the visual field, events, actions, activities, and states), Personification metaphor, and metonymy. Ontological metaphor contains the most subcategories. According to Johnson and Lakoff, these subcategories are important in "understanding our experiences in terms of objects and substances" (25). Ontological metaphor deals directly with the physical. This category examines the way we use metaphor to explain physical phenonema: establishing boundaries, defining territory, "[conceptualizing] our visual field," and making sense of events (31). Personification metaphors "are those where the physical object is further specified as being a person" (33). While metonymy sets itself apart from personification by applying non-human characteristics to a person. This information is useful when applied to metaphors such as MINORITY POOL. Focusing on the section regarding container metaphor, Johnson and Lakoff provide valuable insight into the way we conceptualize objects as having an in-out orientation. Johnson and Lakoff argue that we view objects as containers because we view ourselves as containers. Container metaphors, as Dr. Musgrove noted, are useful in demonstrating the evolution racism post 1960’s civil rights. I should have started here, but instead I worked through my secondary sources before returning to the primary. Villanueva, Victor. "Blind: Talking about the New Racism." The Writing Center Journal 26.1 (2006): 3-19. Print. This article is a survey of student-teacher and student-tutor interactions. The author begins the article by commenting on the role the teacher/tutor should play in helping students understand the context of the subject material, as well as the material itself. To be clear, this article is about how educators should encourage students to see the bigger picture when it comes to issues of race. The author works through Kenneth Burke’s master tropes, as well as Lakoff and Johnson’s work on how meaning is made and understood. Villanueva comments, “We are affected…by the language we receive and use, by trope…Political correctness is a matter of epistemology and ideology” (4). Burke’s tropes are headlined by metaphor. Metaphor allows for “the new rhetoric of racism” that works through “a cultural pathology tied to a history.” Metonymy reduces groups to individualism, and identity becomes alienated, limited. The term “color blind” is again an important focal point. Villanueva applies Burke’s tropes to this term in order to argue that America has eliminated the racial and ethnic components of our diverse society. From here we can see a “tropic shift in the topos of racism.” Racism no longer functions under the rhetoric of biological determinism. Villanueva’s essay works well with Bonila-Silva and Forman because it highlights the shift in racism after the civil rights movement, and because it applies Burke’s tropes to the term “color blind.” The author makes a strong argument, although the structure of the work is disorganized and assumptive at times. This article is best suited as a supplement to the others. For a scholarly article, the tone was somewhat defiant. The author closes with a call to arms: “you teach writing, but you also have the context with which to teach the art of conversation.” In language and metaphor can the material reality of racism be found, and the author ensures that the next move is that of the educator. Villanueva, Victor. "On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism." College Composition and Communication 50.4 (1999): 645-61. Print. Villanueva’s second contribution identifies racism as having “the greatest depth of trouble” and notes that racism “cuts deep across most other bigotries, is imbricated with most other bigotries, and also stands alone, has the greatest number of layers” (648). The author focuses the discussion of bigotry on race, and more specifically, on the oppression of Black and Hispanic working classes. The author identifies references to race and ethnicity as problematic because we don’t know what we are dealing with. Typically race is used to describe what we are biologically from how we’re treated or regarded. Villanueva describes the effects of American culture on ethnic groups. Ethnic groups become interest groups in that they are associated with places and cultures, not necessarily the individual. Inequality in our society gives rise to the “bootstrap mentality,” which has been previously described as “rugged individualism.” Problems within a culture are seen as a problem from a culture. Villanueva gives the example of low education rates for Latino’s, and the assumption that this rate comes from a flaw in culture. Villanueva’s essay provides valuable insight into the way racism works within a given society. His work is useful in fleshing out the metaphor that allows the racism to be conceptualized. His work also touches on essentialism and human truth. Villanueva’s tone is agitated and non-apologetic, although at times his essay gives way to digression. I have heard from various professors that certain forms of oppression take a back seat to others. Some argue that racism is over looked, while others argue that issues of gender and sex are over looked. I think what we will see is that oppression takes many forms, although the core metaphor is typically the same. Blog 35
Ch. 11 The Meaning of the Body Music and the Flow of Meaning Johnson opens this section by looking into the MUSIC AS LANGUAGE metaphor. This metaphor cannot adequately deal with "the full range of ways that music is vitally meaningful to most people" (236). That isn't to say that this metaphor isn't useful at all, it simply is too narrow to add to the discussion of how music lends to meaning making. With that being said, Johnson is not necessarily concerned with reconciling this MUSIC AS LANGUAGE metaphor so much as he wants to explore the ways in which music is meaningful. Johnson comments, "music is meaningful because it can present the flow of human experience, feeling, and thinking in concrete, embodied forms" (236). Johnson works through Roger Sessions' essay. Sessions ties music to the body by expressing how "time becomes real to us primarily through movement" (237). Johnson then moves to and through how music and the body are closely related. Johnson states, "The feeling is presented - enacted - in the felt experience of the listener" (239). That is, music isn't simply heard - a physical act in itself - it is felt. The sound of music and its movements - both literal and spacial - is rooted in our primitive use of sound as human beings. This feeling is built on mental images. These images represent "patterns of neural activation that result from the ongoing interaction of organism and environment" (243). Johnson presents many examples of the embodiment of music. This chapter relies on the work of Session, Larson and others. As well as the music of the Beatles. Most of these examples focus on the movement within music. This music, as mentioned above, is both literal and metaphoric, such as the movement in pitch from C to B (244). Johnson also addresses tonal motion. Tonal motion deals with two models of time: front and back orientation and the MOVING OBSERVER metaphor. In these examples Johnson deals directly with with how music relates to human movement through time and space. Johnson then works through the empirical evidence for embodied musical meaning. This section demonstrates how music and all other forms of art exhibit meaning that extends far beyond language. Question: Music doesn't simply convey meaning, it is meaning. With that being said, can language reconcile what is unknown about the relationship between music and meaning. That is, can we ever express lingusitically the meaning that is expressed through music? Short answer: no. If meaning is meaning in itself, then language can only attempt to describe this meaning through its linguistic constraints. Blog 36
Ch. 12 The Meaning of the Body In the closing section of the text, Johnson explores the larger picture of the meaning of the body. Johnson comments, "The central theme of this book is that philosophy becomes relevant to human life only be reconnecting with, and grounding itself in, bodily dimensions of human meaning and value" (263). As Johnson previously stated, philosophy as a discipline is concerned with the quest for human meaning/understanding. Johnson argues that philosophy is incapable of finding the answers (to whatever question) because it is simply impossible for philosophy as a field of study to clearly define the relationship between humans and meaning/understanding. If meaning is truly embodied, then a disicipline such as philosophy that fails to recognize the embodiment (or at least limits the tools used to find this embodied meaning) is incapable of forming a more complete and better understanding of meaning. Johnson describes the solution for the human condition: "The necessary remedy for our current problematic state must be a non-dualistic, embodied view of meaning, concepts, mind, thought, language, and values" (264). Johnson treats the emergence of embodied meaning as being related directly to Dewey's pragmatism, phenomenology of the embodied mind, cognitive sciences, and others. Johnson then works through a new definition of "the body." Working through Dewey's connection between language and meaning, Johnson comments, "Dewey notes the profound irony that language...is both our great vehicle for the growth of meaning, inquiry, and knowledge, and simultaneously the source of our all-too-frequent failure to capture the depth and richness of our experience, thereby limiting our ability to understand and reconstruct our experience" (267). Johnson then surveys the problems associated with our 'contemporary Anglo-American philosophy" (272). According to Johnson, this is "the problem of the objectivist theory of meaning" (272). Johnson then works to define the term "body." Johnson notes that he uses Dewey's term body-mind to avoid dualism and treatment of the body as thing. The problem with thinking of the body as a thing is that it limits "almost exclusively to the biological body" (277). Johnson concludes the text with a survey of the implications and conclusions of his study on the meaning of the body, philosophy, and more importantly: truth. Johnson asserts that no single truth exists, although many human truths do. Question: Does Johnson's work reconcile the search for truth? If no objective truth exists, what are we searching for? If we cannot answer a question such as "Does God exist?" then why do we continue to look? Johnson's text answers many questions, but recognizes the need for more research. As people, I think we will continue to look until everything has been explored. |
Chris HindsWhy don't we keep it casual - not too academicky. ArchivesCategories
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