chloeandtheurbandilemma - Tumblr blog

[chloeandtheurbandilemma]

Blog Post #3 (extension)

The Beyond the Schoolhouse Report discusses the educational disparities between black youth and their white peers in Los Angeles County school systems. While lower test scores and graduation rates highlight this issue, they do not paint the whole picture of the hardships black youth in California face. Compounding issues such as adverse childhood experiences, homelessness, and parent incarceration affect minority youth at disproportionate rates, yet these same children are not considered for targeted support in schools. Little support has gone to improve out-of-school factors for these kids that make it increasingly difficult for them to perform well in their already underfunded schools.

A key concept from this reading is an accumulation of disadvantage. The maps and tables make clear the disparities in not only educational outcomes but in various measures of health and quality of life. The numbers of students with low scores on the Human Development Index, high exposure to pollutants, those without homes and in foster care, and those with parents facing legal trouble or incarceration face numerous compounding issues that make them less likely to succeed in public-school systems that are not designed to help them.

In class, we discussed how the most significant factors in determining academic success were parent income and education. This could be an accumulation of disadvantage before a child is even born, and before they go on to a racially segregated school with improper funding. This same child is more likely to face food insecurity and environmental hazards in their homes and neighborhoods, while peers in white school districts play in well-maintained parks with clean air.

We’ve also discussed the idea of environmental racism which is touched upon in this reading when addressing the differences in public spaces between white and minority districts within LA county. When some kids walk on a sidewalk in front of a park to get to school and others cross busy intersections and breathe polluted air, it’s clear that the classrooms are not the only place requiring assistance.

In Comeback as Resettlement: Detroit, Anti- Blackness, and Settler Colonialism, Quizar discusses the connections between gentrification in one of the blackest cities in America and persistent settler colonialist ideas that benefit from using race to justify encroachment and cooptation of black spaces. Urban pioneers generally perceive African Americans with a lens of hyper-visibility in order to justify exploitation, but as work is retracted from Black Detroiters through automation and cheaper work from immigrants and foreign labor, it benefits white developers to instead perceive blacks as invisible and their spaces uninhabited. Similar to settler colonialists’ view of Native Americans, the intentional racial positioning of Black Detroiters allowed an influx of white gentrifiers to act as heroes saving “abandoned” areas.

A key concept from this reading is Black Invisibility. This pattern of undermining the existence of historically black communities in media and discourse is an intentional shift from previously imposed hyper-visibility of race and perpetuates anti-blackness through erasure and disenfranchisement of basic life necessities like water and shelter.

Though the previous reading was focused on California, the same educational issues face children of color across the nation, and the difficulties Black Detroiters face to meet basic needs are a clear example of accumulations of disadvantage that again make it almost impossible to perform well in school without intervention at a community-wide scale. Disparities will persist in schools until communities of color are aided as a whole to integrate classrooms and address outside oppressive factors that inevitably leach into learning outcomes.

We’ve often discussed the persistence of settler colonialist ideology in class, but the gentrification situation in Detroit is one of the clearest instances I see these beliefs at play. Whether colonial settlers or urban gentrifiers, the perception of black communities is molded to fit the needs of white development without consideration of the needs and history of the spaces being destroyed.

I see this in my own neighborhood in Santa Barbara. I live on the West Side, a historically Latinx area, where new apartment complexes are cropping up constantly and driving up the cost of living for current residents. I’m not separate from this problem, as I live in an apartment complex with mostly white student residents, but even I am being priced out of my space and will not be able to return next year due to rent increases. I watch as locally run Mexican restaurants are replaced by trendier and more expensive businesses and can literally see the culture and character of the area melt away. While there is a need for more student and affordable housing, there should be initiatives taken to preserve the area for those who really contributed to community-building and have lived here for decades, instead of selling to the highest white bidder.

[chloeandtheurbandilemma]

Blog Post #1 (revised)

Direct, Structural, and Cultural Violence (HarvardX, 2017)

This video outlined the significance of Johan Galtung’s idea of a convergence of three different types of violence: direct, structural, and cultural. He argues that a myriad of factors merge in particular historical periods to facilitate conditions for the promotion of violence, and that understanding these interrelated forces is critical for the pursuit of peace.

One key concept from this video is the explanation of cultural violence allowing prominent beliefs to get so ingrained into a culture that they become natural or acceptable. In other words, the direct and structural violences that persist in a given society uncritically go on to become social norms and act in a culturally violent way.

I think this relates to the idea we discussed in lecture of the 4 I’s of Oppression. The convergence of internal, interpersonal, institutional, and ideological oppressive forces, much like Galtung’s triad of  violence, convene to form mutually reinforcing problematic systems that may become commonplace in society and create a feedback loop that is difficult to escape. These oppressions may be expressed in different ways, like racist ideology affecting how police perceive people of color and abusing their privilege in a violent manner. Similar oppressions are visible institutionally in the prison industrial complex with the bail bond and sentencing systems, along with systemic lack of public services (school funding, infrastructure, etc.) in minority communities.

Cultural violence allows racist ideology to persist in our society across generations without a critical analysis. We discussed Critical Race Theory in class and its goal of increasing freedom. When looking at the one-sided and White-favoring perspective portrayed in textbooks across the country, it’s clear that our education system lacks this sort of critical lens when discussing American history. The retelling of his false narrative perpetuates cultural violence against people of color and fails numerous generations on addressing past, present, and future harm.

Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation (Glenn, 2015)

This article explains how settler colonialism is an ongoing structure rather than a past historical event or period of time, and how understanding the settler colonialism framework aids in comprehending the history and current conditions of race and gender in America. Settlers arrived with the intentions of seizing land and establishing private property rights over land and resources, and pursued this through the elimination of Native Americans through various forms of violence. Racial hierarchy and inequality are built into American social structure and have benefitted whites, especially white men, from the birth of our nation to the present day.

A key concept from this article is the idea of settler ideology, which entails an inherent contradiction between the nation’s stated values of freedom, equality, and progress and the lived reality for so many Americans that consists of inequalities, lack of freedom, and denial of mobility because of racialization. Settler ideology also promoted the racist ideas that justified the elimination of Native Americans.

We discussed in class how many Native Americans still live with harmful ideologies that facilitate discrimination. Many treaties signed with tribes have been infringed upon and reservation quality of life is often dismal due to systemic injustices that limit Native prosperity. This is directly related to the way colonialists justified their seizure of land and removal of Indigenous groups, and these beliefs have bled into current policies and outcomes.

Another aspect we touched on in lecture is that white settler colonial society was designed in the interests of colonial lineage, which can still be seen today when looking at the leadership, both politically and economically, in America. While congress is more diverse than it’s ever been, it’s still overwhelmingly run by white men, enshrining the idea that these perspectives are more valuable than those of women and people of color. In many of America’s most powerful companies, minority representation in leadership also remains stagnant.

Settler ideology is tied to cultural violence because it includes harmful beliefs about African Americans and Native Americans that remain prominent today and motivate culturally violent actions from the personal to institutional levels. Native Americans being killed and the rape of Native and enslaved women are forms of direct violence, while slave laws were an imposition of structural violence. Without recognizing and challenging the ideology that has created the nation we live in today, these racial notions will persist in insidious ways.

As a white person, I benefit from privileges that have trickled down from settler colonialism and the settler ideology that remains intact today. I believe it is my responsibility to learn about and challenge these harmful ideas and understand how they affect me and my peers of color in different ways. By doing this, we can start to unravel and question the persisting racial notions that perpetuate cultural violence in our society.  

[chloeandtheurbandilemma]

Blog Post #2

Within the prologue of “Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990″, Marable outlines the movements within American history that drastically changed political, social, and economic conditions and continue to shape the lives of Black Americans today. The first of these shifts occurred when legal slavery was ended and the second changed the legal system of segregation, however, both of these movements left the beneficiaries systemically disadvantaged. Understanding the history of both legal and nonlegal political disenfranchisement of people of color is crucial to unpacking present racial patterns, systemic inequities, and future possibilities.  

A key concept from this reading is the role of the federal government as a “reluctant ally” during both of these periods of change, overseeing the discourse between blacks and their progressive white supporters and the white Southern democrats. This is counterintuitive to the incorrect yet popular idea taught in many schools, including my own elementary school, that President Lincoln was a supporter of racial equality and waged the war to free enslaved people.

I feel as though the federal government is acting similarly now as a reluctant ally in the climate movement. Though there is widespread support and acknowledgement of the causes and potential solutions to environmental degradation, our elected administration has yet to pass a bill that could bring about both meeting emissions reduction targets and creating careers and opportunities for an equitable and sustainable workforce.

In the first chapter of “America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies”, authors Benshoff and Griffin introduce concepts of film and filmmaking and how they influence how people understand and experience real life situations. Ideology can be spread through media and become a dominant belief of a culture through example and education, while repressive state apparatuses maintain social control with violence. They go on to explain the process of encoding and decoding texts, using the film “The Lion King” as an example of decoding a text with an oppositional reading. Though various readings of one text may vary greatly and are valid in their reception, the idea that media is merely entertainment affirms the assumption that the disproportionate storytelling of white, straight men is neutral and natural.

A key concept from this text is the idea of “white patriarchal capitalism” as a dominant ideology, both in film and in American society. This entails the assumption that the most important voices, stories, and perspectives are those from this distinct category, and it permeates into the way many Americans think about themselves as well as who and what they uphold as valuable and true.

This dominant ideology leads to a disproportionate storytelling of the heterosexual white male experience, which can offer insight into why public schools would be more likely to teach students about Lincoln as a leader for racial equality (when that was not, in reality, his goal in the Civil war), rather than one of the minority activists that made more significant and deliberate strides in the fight for equality.

We talked in class during week 4 about the naturalization of inequity that can occur within society and take ideas to norms or even laws. The naturalization of American history as taught through the lens of many public school systems makes clear the nation’s unwillingness to fully recognize it’s past. We must educate with a critical and honest lens not only to understand history but to explain current disparities and  to avoid similar downfalls as we progress. We also were asked in week 1 to discuss the purpose of school and talked about the education system not being a place of neutrality. This becomes clearer and clearer to me as I unlearn things I was taught in my primary education. The notion of a heroic Lincoln freeing the slaves was not the only thing I was taught that I am now second guessing.

In my minimal environmental education in primary school, I was taught to ‘save the planet’ through actions such as recycling and not letting the water run while brushing my teeth. Even the school systems were teaching us that we as children were responsible for fighting for a planet we just inherited, while the same ‘reluctant ally’ discussed earlier, the federal government, failed to take meaningful action on the real culprits of climate change. Those who contribute the most to climate change are the same ones who benefit the most from the white patriarchal capitalist ideology, because their perspective has been deemed valuable and their interests are prioritized.

[chloeandtheurbandilemma]

Blog Post #1:

Source 1: Direct, Structural, and Cultural Violence (video) (HarvardX, 2017)

This video outlined the details and significance of Norwegian theorist Johan Galtung’s idea of a convergence of three different types of violence: direct, structural, and cultural. He argues that a myriad of factors merge in particular historical periods to facilitate conditions for the promotion of violence, and that understanding these interrelated forces is critical for the pursuit of peace.

One critical concept from this video was the explanation of cultural violence and how it works to show how prominent beliefs can get so ingrained into a culture that they become natural or acceptable. In other words, the direct and structural violences that persist in a given society uncritically go on to become prominent social norms and act in a culturally violent way. Cultural violence allows racist ideology to persist in our society across generations without a critical lens, sort of the opposite of what we’ve discussed in class when unpacking Critical Race Theory.

I think this relates to the idea we discussed in lecture of the 4 I’s of Oppression. The convergence of internal, interpersonal, institutional, and ideological oppressive forces, much like Galtung’s triad of  violence, convene to form mutually reinforcing problematic systems that may become commonplace in society and create a feedback loop that is difficult to escape.

It’s clear to see this in black spaces in the United States when lower income and minority individuals are more likely to be incarcerated, and the bail bond system relies upon liquid cash that many who are targeted by police do not have immediately available. This is reinforced by the fact that access to education and healthcare are limited in these same areas, making upward mobility even more difficult and facilitating a cycle of incarceration.

My stepmother works in an elementary school in Oxnard where the school is limited by barriers such as different language speakers, scarcity in funding, and high student-to-teacher ratios. Most of the public schools in the Oxnard school district have very high percentages of students that receive free or reduced lunch, which was a compounding factor of difficulty during the pandemic, as many families relied heavily on the free meals each day.

Also during the covid shutdown, many parents in the Oxnard school district faced difficulty with childcare and online education as they are agricultural workers whose hours were not cut drastically when students’ were. This can be tied to so many intersectional and institutional aspects of our country, such as discriminatory immigration policy that facilitates unsafe and unethical working conditions for immigrants working in factories or on farms or lack of proper welfare programs that could have provided a safety net for times of emergency such as a global pandemic.

Source 2: Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation (Glenn, 2015)

This article seeks to explain how settler colonialism is an ongoing structure rather than a past historical event or period of time, and how understanding the settler colonialism framework aids in comprehending the history and current conditions of race and gender in America. Settlers arrived with the intentions of seizing land and establishing private property rights over land and resources, and pursued this through the elimination of Native Americans through various forms of violence.. Racial hierarchy and inequality are built into American social structure and have benefitted whites, especially white men, from the birth of our nation to the present day.

A key concept from this article is the idea of settler ideology, which entails an inherent contradiction between the nation’s stated values of freedom, equality, and progress and the lived reality for so many Americans that consists of inequalities, lack of freedom, and denial of mobility because of racialization. Settler ideology also promoted the racist ideas that justified their elimination of Native Americans. We discussed in class how Native Americans and people of color still live with harmful ideologies that facilitate discrimination.

Native Americans and enslaved African Americans experienced many forms of violence, including those from Galtung’s violence triad. Native Americans being killed and the rape of Native and enslaved women are forms of direct violence, while slave laws were an imposition of structural violence. Prominent harmful beliefs were embedded in our culture for generations, creating a continued system of cultural violence.

An important aspect we touched on in lecture is that white settler colonial society was designed in the interests of colonial lineage, and even if I don’t see the tangible benefits of my privilege as a white person, communities of color can easily recognize the oppressions they experience in their day to day lives due to the persistence of racialization and the settler colonial framework that continues to successfully operate in our society.