OK so I'm just going to be a nerd for a (non-racial)minute and talk about Marxist theory. For all of you guys who don't spend their time going through other people's textbooks (ahem,terrence) / don't love Marxist theory, Hegemony is an idea formulated by Gramsci, an Italian marxist.
Hegemony also describes what Sian is talking about in her Obama rant about race and class. Anyhow, I see the parallels. Because Marxism is a class-based theory that describes the cycle of exploitation that occurs under capitalism, Hegemony is best described as a cultural ideology that surreptitiously ties the needs and desires of the bourgeosie to the needs and desires of the working class so that both classes become devoted to maintaining the status quo, even though it's only the bourgeosie that benefits. By creating such an interdependency within a capitalist system, the workers unknowingly "buy into" their own exploitation by perpetuating the system that abuses them. This is an ideology that is aimed at maintaining the status quo and that also sadly pits workers against eachother in the spirit of competition, and that also supports a mentality in which dissenters are socially pressured by their peers to stick to the norm - the same "norm" that exploits everyone. And so it becomes a cycle.
So I'm tying this into the whole race/class thing because I find that the race dichotomy in the U.S. where white = rich/powerful and black=poor/exploited is a mode of hegemony because it is an ideology that people have willingly adopted and in so doing have exacerbated the social problems of the country and thus the social problems that result from an increasing distance between upper/middle and lower classes AND from the lack of distance between race and class. And of course, because of the ideology, the class issues are confused as race issues, thereby distracting the most disadvantaged people in the whole system by mixing a cultural identity with a class identity and thus reinforceing the inferiority of that identity within society as a whole. And, of course, this also encourages a mentality that seeks to preserve a status quo that generally sees a popular, successful and smart "black" politician as a freak of nature and an anomaly. I think the same ideology is to blame for the massive number of black kids who are dropping out of school because they are convinced that they cannot succeed. When this damaging kind of normality is supported because it is confused with a cultural/racial identity, it's hegemony in practice. So what many people see as racial domination is in fact class domination that uses the concept of race as hegemony in order to maintain a capitalist cycle of exploitation that recruits a "worker" population in its own social and economic impoverishment.
Umm so this is just my nerdy 2 cents and I think you all should read about Gransci and his theories about Hegemony because it explains how it's possible for capitalism to be a culture and a political system even though also an economic system....
Hegemony also describes what Sian is talking about in her Obama rant about race and class. Anyhow, I see the parallels. Because Marxism is a class-based theory that describes the cycle of exploitation that occurs under capitalism, Hegemony is best described as a cultural ideology that surreptitiously ties the needs and desires of the bourgeosie to the needs and desires of the working class so that both classes become devoted to maintaining the status quo, even though it's only the bourgeosie that benefits. By creating such an interdependency within a capitalist system, the workers unknowingly "buy into" their own exploitation by perpetuating the system that abuses them. This is an ideology that is aimed at maintaining the status quo and that also sadly pits workers against eachother in the spirit of competition, and that also supports a mentality in which dissenters are socially pressured by their peers to stick to the norm - the same "norm" that exploits everyone. And so it becomes a cycle.
So I'm tying this into the whole race/class thing because I find that the race dichotomy in the U.S. where white = rich/powerful and black=poor/exploited is a mode of hegemony because it is an ideology that people have willingly adopted and in so doing have exacerbated the social problems of the country and thus the social problems that result from an increasing distance between upper/middle and lower classes AND from the lack of distance between race and class. And of course, because of the ideology, the class issues are confused as race issues, thereby distracting the most disadvantaged people in the whole system by mixing a cultural identity with a class identity and thus reinforceing the inferiority of that identity within society as a whole. And, of course, this also encourages a mentality that seeks to preserve a status quo that generally sees a popular, successful and smart "black" politician as a freak of nature and an anomaly. I think the same ideology is to blame for the massive number of black kids who are dropping out of school because they are convinced that they cannot succeed. When this damaging kind of normality is supported because it is confused with a cultural/racial identity, it's hegemony in practice. So what many people see as racial domination is in fact class domination that uses the concept of race as hegemony in order to maintain a capitalist cycle of exploitation that recruits a "worker" population in its own social and economic impoverishment.
Umm so this is just my nerdy 2 cents and I think you all should read about Gransci and his theories about Hegemony because it explains how it's possible for capitalism to be a culture and a political system even though also an economic system....
btw the picture at the top is Gramsci. I also wanted to note that the only times I learned about Gramsci in depth was 1) while at mcgill in a Cultural Studies course, and 2) while reading through Terrence's coursepacks while in Montreal.
2 comments:
i was gonna write a whole post about this, but i think its related to racism as hegemony. this is the story:
i met a girl today, shes mixed, her dads from norway and her moms from (shit...im so ignorant...) somewhere in Africa. the point is, i was talking to her about places to go out etc. and after i made sure she didn't have bad taste in music, she said we should go to this party festival thing. So i came home and told my friend (who's a black jamaican) that this girl had suggested that we go to this party thing. She was skeptical about the quality of this party (we've had kind of bad luck finding places with good music), and she asked what the girl was. I said she was mixed. So my friend's like yeah, thats what I thought, I'm not going. And I asked why. And she said if the girl was mixed she was basically white and therefore had bad taste in music.
I was actually too shocked/offended to say anything, but the reason this is relevant is I associate that kind of prejudicial thinking with this idea of hegemony. The thing is, it normally pisses me off when non-white people say racist things because I think they should know better, but is that an unfair assumption? I think at some point I would have said that if a black person says something racist its becaused of this hegemony thing and that theyve internalized a racist ideology, but maybe that's just making excuses for their ignorance and taking away their agency/responsibility for spewing ignorant shit.
Yes!! See, we're totally onto something.
And I also agree with the last thing you said, and I think that the moment that we stop holding black/white/brown people accountable for their own hegemonic behaviour is the moment that we ourselves become complicit in the perpetuation of racist hegemony.
And the thing is, there's only one way to stop the whole hegemonic-racial-thinking thing is to challenge people who perpetuate it, make them think about the consequences of their behaviour, and see what they are being a part of and rise above it. People need to take responsibility, period.
I don't think it's an unfair assumption to say that people should know better, because they should. No one is entirely powerless, ever, and hegemony only makes people powerless to a certain extent. Unfortunately, it also encourages the internalization of a mentality to the point where people are defensive about it. It's often easier to defend yourself and criticize others than to challenge yourself by admitting that you're wrong.
Go figure, but basically, I don't think non-white people who are ignorant are to "blame" for what they say, since it's not that simple, but they should be held accountable and encouraged to think about whether their words and actions serve their own purposes or work against them and society as a whole.
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