Media Violence
Writing Assignment
Writing AssignmentTitle: Assignment #1 – Media Violence
Introduction: This assignments enables the student to understand the strain theory.
This assignment fulfills/supports
- Module Outcome: You will be able to explore how recent events have affected how we experience race.
- Course Outcome: You will be able to describe and study historical forces and events that have influenced the intersection of race and ethnicity in the United States.
- General Education Competency
You will be able to communicate effectively using the American Standard English in professional and academic environments.
You will be able to use critical thinking to analyze problems and make logical decisions.
You will be able to demonstrate computer literacy.
Assignment #1 – Media Violence
Given today’s media presentation of examples of racial violence, one might believe this is a new trend. How might the increase of available videos and photos of racial violence distort the current understandings of the history of racial violence in America? How has increased access to technology influenced ways we consume information about racial violence? How does the increased availability of coverage of racial violence influence the modern social construction of race?Develop an essay addressing all of the above questions.
Acceptable Length: 2-3 pagesFormatting Requirements:
- Put your name, course and section number, and assignment title at the top of the document.
- Use one-inch margins.
- Use a 12-point Times New Roman font.
- Use double line spacing in the document.
- Use MLA_Citation_Style
Instructor Resource
Coates, The Matrix of Race
SAGE Publishing, 2018
Lecture Notes
Chapter 2: The Shaping of a Nation: The Social Construction of Difference
Learning Objectives
2-1 Explore how recent events have affected how we experience race
2-2 Describe the Americas before Columbus
2-3 Examine the patterns of Spanish, French, and British Colonialism in the Americas
2-4 Evaluate the intersections of race, identities, institutions, and resistance
I. Changing Demographics
A. The United States, as a nation of immigrants, has historically been defined by racial and ethnic diversity
1. Close to 60 million immigrants have arrived in the United States over the past 50 years
B. The U.S. population is projected to grow from 422 to 258 million in the next 40 years
1. The Baby Boomers will become slightly older
2. People 65 or older will increase to 20% of our population
3. Total births will reach its highest level at 4.3 million
a. Much of this will be due to recent immigrants, who average higher fertility rates than the general population
C. These demographic changes will have a significant impact on most of our institutions
1. This includes an immediate impact upon colleges and universities
a. For the first time, in 2014, the number of Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans combined exceeded the number of whites in public grade school classrooms (Williams 2014)
II. The Influence of a Changing World
A. Our country continues to experience a turbulent period following the 9/11 terrorist attacks
1. This event altered the experiences of everyone in this country and the world
2. During this period we have witnessed several wars – many rooted in notions of “the other”
B. During the last few decades, ethnic violence has erupted into genocide
1. This is defined as the large-scale systematic destruction of a people or nation
2. Racial violence is violence that pits one racial group against another
a. This occurs around the world in places like India, France, and London
b. Riots and civil unrest stemming from race have disrupted U.S. cities
1. We have witnessed the public reaction to violence between the police and people of color
2. This reveals anxieties and frustrations about race in the United States
C. Not all change has been violent
1. We have witnessed several firsts for women and persons of color
a. For example, the election of Barack Obama
b. Further, Latinos are quickly emerging as a population that is altering what it means to be American
III. Revising the Experience of Work, Gender, and Race
A. Women make up over 4% of Fortune 500 firms’ CEOs
1. Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks account for slightly more than 1% (Zarya 2016)
B. Women of all social groups have lost ground over the last few years due to the triple glass ceiling: A three-pronged work place discrimination based on race, gender, and class (Gutierrez, Melendez, and Noyola 2007)
1. Wage disparities impact all women, but are greatest among Hispanic and Latina, African American, American Indian, and Native Hawaiian and other native women
a) The highest gender gap is between White-non Hispanic women and men
b) While education does improve earnings of all women, racial and gendered differences remain
IV. Sources of Change and Diversity
A. Many of our realities are still structured by race
1. For example, white students are only slightly less likely than previous generations to attend nearly all white primary and secondary schools
2. Minority students are more likely to attend nearly all minority schools (Childress 2014)
3. As middle class women and women of color have reversed the achievement gap for college completion and graduate school admissions; among lower class women and men of color, these gaps have become even more entrenched
V. The Impact of Social Media and Technology
A. About half of all Americans now use social networks (Leggatt 2011)
1. Research shows that even online, our experiences are structured by race, class, and gender
a. Facebook friendships among college students were self-segregated by gender, race, class, and hometown (Lewis et al 2011)
B. Rather than challenging the status quo, the online world ultimately reproduces it
VI. Indigenous People: The Americas Before Columbus
A. As a nation, we rely upon certain stories to bind us together
1. The founding of our country is one of these stories
a. According to this story, Christopher Columbus is portrayed as a scientific genius who discovered the Americas
1. Recent historical revisions have challenged this story suggesting his discovery was more of an invasion
B. Prior to Columbus, the Americas were inhabited by Native Americans
1. Over half of the state names in the United States are representative of its original settlers
2. Many Native American communities were urban, with populations reaching the tens of thousands
VII. A Rich History
A. Hundreds of years before Columbus, North America was home to millions of people
1. Their histories are reflected in the many names that they gave this land
2. They lived in teepees and huts, as well as cities and villages
3. The original Americans were highly developed
a. They were not “savages” as often depicted
VIII. Discovery and Encounters: The Shaping of Our Storied Past
A. European colonization of the Americans began in the 10th–11th century when Viking sailors explored what is currently Canada
1. More extensive European colonization began in 1492 when Spanish ships captained by Columbus landed on the northern tip of Cuba
2. This so-called New World centered upon transplanting, cloning, or grafting European institutions in the Americas
B. Colonialism is a set of hierarchical relationships where groups are defined culturally, ethnically, and/or racially
1. These relationships serve to guarantee the political, social, and economic interests of the dominant group (Barrera 1976: 3)
C. Religious ideology was used to justify wars of aggression, exploitation, enslavement, and colonization
D. The colonies that developed within the Americas are best classified as settler colonies
1. These are distinguished by control of political, economic, social, and cultural mechanisms by creating a colonial elite
a. The European elite that migrated to the settler colonies in the Americas were intent on settlement, creation of a self-sustaining independent political/economic system, and domination of both geography and indigenous populations
IX. Constructing a Racial Ideology
A. The Spanish encountered a significantly different people with specific cultural, political, and gender systems
B. Native American gender systems varied across tribal groups
1. Gender relations within the Taino tribes were both egalitarian and nonexclusive
a. Women were able to own property and served as leaders
C. By 1570, the Spanish colonies were utilizing two racial distinctions
1. Spanish born or descended – those born in both Spain and the colonies, to include both mixed heritage and those considered pure bloods
2. Native born or descended – all Native Americans who were considered vassals of the king
a. Each had different rights and privileges
D. The church, notably the Spanish Inquisition and Franciscan order, used purity certifications to impose barriers on which Spaniards could immigrate to the Americas
1. They would use the same purity levels to label both Africans and Native Americans as “New Christians” and mark both as “impure” (Martinez 2004: 483)
a. Any offspring of interracial unions would be less valued
b. Blacks, Native Americans, and others could be redeemed and baptized, yet still could not mix with “pure bloods”
1. Grounded in vague notions of purity and biological differences, this would later become the basis for the racial caste system
E. The racial caste system is a permanent hierarchy based on race that developed in Spanish America (Martinez 2008)
1. These laws reveal the centrality of gender relations to the construction of culture and race
2. In order to distinguish one culture from another, borders must be maintained
a. These borders are inscribed onto women’s bodies and then policed by regulating sexual relationships
1. The bodies and wombs of white women were considered sacred as they were the only source of future generations of whites
2. European men maintained for themselves access to all women’s bodies
3. Racial caste systems would be linked to the social and economic hierarchies in Latin America countries in what scholars refer to as pigmentocracies: governments or social structures that grant political power based upon a hierarchies of those of certain skin tone, regardless of race or social status (Telles et al 2014)
X. The Slave System
A. Columbus was the first to employ slavery in the colonies
1. Two days after he “discovered” America, Columbus wrote in his journal that with fifty men he could force the “entire population to be taken to Castile or held captive”
a. On his second voyage in December of 1494, Columbus captured 1,500 Tainos on the island of Hispaniola and selected 550 of “the best males and females” to be presented to Spanish Queen Isabella and sold in the slave markets of Seville, Spain (Beal 2008:60)
2. Ultimately, labor shortages, fueled by continual warfare, disease, and sheer overwork, decimated the supply of Native Americans
a. Under the licensing system established by King Ferdinand in 1513, an estimated 75,000–90,000 African slaves were sent to Spanish America by 1600
1. This figure would more than triple by the end of the 17th century
XI. French Colonialism (1534)
A. New France, the first site colonized by France in North America, was created by the 1534 expedition headed by Jacques Carter
1. His explorations allowed France to claim land that would later become Canada
a. The French sought gold along the St. Lawrence River, but settled for fishing and fur trading instead
1. It was here in 1608 that Quebec was established as the first French colony (Allen 1997: 6)
B. Among merchants, the French colonial expansion into the Americas was a business venture, often putting profits ahead of colonial development
1. Officially, the primary goals of these ventures were the Christianization of the natives, but it was not until the first successful settlements that this royal rhetoric was given consideration
a. The thrust of the efforts, inspired by the fur trade, provided the motivation to integrate the indigenous population into the French colonial policy, governors, and foreign missionaries were determined to save the “savages” (Belmessous 2005)
XII. Labor Crisis and Slavery
A. The French, like the Spanish, discovered that Native American salves could not provide sufficient labor
1. In 1689, King Louis XIV gave royal approval for the trade and use of African slaves
2. Close to 4,000 Africans were forcefully brought to the colony (Hall 1992)
a. As this history demonstrates, Africans did not become slaves because they were black; many other cultural groups had also been forced into slavery (Pitts 2012)
B. France produced a different set of laws governing slaves and blacks
1. In the Colonial Ordinance of 1685, also known as the Black Codes, legislated life, death, purchase, marriage, religion, and treatment of slaves by their masters
a. It required all salves to be baptized and educated in the Catholic faith and prohibited masters forcing slaves to work on Sundays and religious holidays
b. It required masters to provide salves food, shelter, and clothing
c. It held that slaves could not own property or have legal recourse
d. It established when they could marry, where they could be buried, what punishments could be meted out to them, and under what conditions they could be freed (Buchanan 2011)
2. The Code prohibited whites, as well as free blacks, from having sexual relationships with slaves
a. Any children that might have been born of such unions were to become wards of the state and held in slavery
b. The only loophole applied to any existing sexual relationships between free black men and black women slaves
1. Under this, any children would be considered legitimate and free
XIII. Left Handed Marriages and Placage
A. Within these frontier situations, social relations were more fluid and social hierarchy less established than they would become with the entrenchment of plantation agriculture
1. In these situations, a norm developed whereby men formed alliances with Creole women in left-handed marriages
a. These marriages were temporary and often resulted in children who served as interpreters (Shippen 2004: 358)
1. While these marriages were equivalent to common-law marriages, the women were not legally recognized as wives but were referred to as Placage among free people of color
B. Placage flourished as a social arrangement
1. They were celebrated as part of New Orleans’ high society during what became known as the city’s quadroon balls
a. Quadroon literally means one-fourth black by descent
b. The balls provided a carnival atmosphere where elite white males would make a selection from a collection of light-skinned free women of color
1. The selected women were accorded a household, often with servants, where her status was slightly less than a white and more than a concubine
XIV. British Colonialism (1587)
A. The Plymouth Company’s Mayflower would reach the New World in 1620, establishing the next set of English colonies in a place they declared to be Plymouth in Massachusetts
1. They shared the European rationalization for imperial expansion by declaring the indigenous peoples barbaric – and saving these pagans via Christian civilization was the goal
XV. Building a Tradition of Slavery
A. The first group of non-Natives to wear chains in New England were poor whites from Ireland
1. They began arriving in New England in the early 1600s
a. English slave masters looked upon the Irish as lazy and fit to be enslaved
b. Upwards of 50,000 Irish people, mostly women and children, were deported to the Americas
c. Harsh treatment led frequently to collaborate rebellions between Irish and Blacks (Bernhard 1999: 89–91)
B. In all likelihood, the first blacks entered Jamestown in 1619 as indentured servants, but by 1661 they were legislated servants for life
1. In the next year, a revised statue would link slavery o maternity by declaring all children would be free or slave according to the status of their mother (Virginia Slave Laws 1660)
a. This was a departure from previous British laws which traced the status of children to their fathers
C. The lucrative commerce in Native American slaves commenced among the English with the founding of Carolina in 1670 and lasted through 1717
1. What emerged was a distinct racial hierarchy where male European landowners dominated both Native and African slaves (Gallay 2002)
a. Thus, on the backs of African slaves, paid for by Native American slaves, a racial hierarchy was constructed
XVI. Slave Rebellions: Voices of Resistance
A. Slave rebellions represented a continual and persistent source of both strain and stress for the white planter class
1. The first significant slave rebellions against the English occurred in Gloucester county, Virginia in 1663
a. This conspiracy, which included both White indentured servants and slaves, aimed to overthrow the White masters
b. The plot was exposed by an informant, which led to the execution of several of the plotters and a series of laws whereby slave masters began to emphasize ineradicable distinctions between the two groups
B. Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 was the most significant challenge to the class structure (Breen 1973)
1. The elite response served to create new identities of color and race to usurp divisions of class and status
a. In this revolt consisting of black, Irish, Scotts, and English bond servants – they pitted against small planter elite
2. Bacon, a member of displaced white labor, found himself and his group literally between a rock and a hard place
a. The real issue was that the increasing use of Africans as bonded labor forced a large group of white labor out of their positions
1. While the planter class was gaining land grants with each new allotment of workers, no such provisions were being made for those displaced by increasing cheaper forms of labor
3. Crop failures in 1676 provided the fuel for the violence that followed
a. The revolt became a mass rebellion of bond-laborers who aimed to level the government and entire class structure
b. Over six thousand European Americans and two thousand African Americans took up arms and fought against a tiny-Anglo-American slave-owning planter class
1. They marched to take over the garrisons and military arsenal at West Point
2. They forced the military governor to flee and shut down all tobacco production for the next 14 months
4. The rebellion threatened the heart of the British colonial system by challenging the power and worst fears of the Anglo-American slave owning and planter elite
a. They responded by solidifying slavery into a racial caste system
XVII. Borderlands and Frontiers
A. Most of the land in the Americas was formally under the control of various Native American Federations
1. Europeans defined these lands as frontiers or borderlands
a. This designation fails to appreciate the reality of these spaces (Haan 1973)
b. Under the illusion of protecting the interests of weaker state, the Native Americans and their lands were placed into “protectorate” relationships were the strong European nations took on the responsibility of protectors
1. These “protected” spaces became known as frontiers
B. These contested spaces between Spanish, French, and English colonies provided
1. The illusion of Native American national sovereignty
2. An outlet for excess and displaced colonial labor and capital accumulation
3. A space where the European could wage imperialistic wars against each other
a. These wars encouraged or manipulated Native American tribal differences and can be viewed as proxy wars
C. The Turner thesis has become the dominant narrative or stock story of the United States
1. His basic thesis, developed in 1893, was that the American identity, which included democratic governance, rugged individualism, innovative thinking, and egalitarian viewpoints, was forged in its American frontier experience
a. According to Turner, the American frontier provided not only the encouragement but the spaces to unleash the progressive spirit of freedom envisioned by various European revolutionary systems (i.e., the French and English Revolutions)
2. It took 70 years before the non-dominant counter-narratives were again heard
a. These voices told a different story
1. They rejected the idea of a frontier and all its presumptions
2. Rather than a blank slate of free land that was just waiting to be settled, the frontier was made up of sovereign lands controlled by other nations and protected by treaties
b. In this counter narrative, we learn of deceit and corruption, broken treaties, and forgotten promises
1. This is the story of the frontier
D. The rhetorical and political designations of the spaces between European frontiers or borderlands is central to understanding what and how these areas and their peoples were viewed
XVIII. Investigating Institutions and their Narratives
A. As we examined the three original colonial roots associated with our founding, we also saw how several of the earliest institutions (family, community, military, legal, and political) were created within this matrix of race
1. Race influences other major identities such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class by way of an examination of our dominant social institutions
B. Just like the institution of gender and race have prominent, legitimized, and powerful narratives that determine identities and interactions, so too do the central institutions of social life have these orienting stories and myths
1. For example, a dominant narrative of the institution of education is that schools are great equalizers – that education can equalize life opportunities and chances, regardless of social and economic station
a. Similarly, the dominant narrative of American sports is that it provides a level playing field where only one’s talent is the only factor that merits attention
XIX. Examining Intersecting Identities
A. It is important to gain a picture of the contemporary realities for individuals within the matrix as related to each institution
1. Each chapter in this text will provide the most recent data on how, for example, Black women experience the family, how Whites compare to Latinos within the housing sector, or the disparities between gays and lesbians within the educational institutions of the United States
a. This will give you a glimpse into the ways in which institutional life is experienced differently depending on your place in the matrix
1. For example, when we consider sports we identify a history of blacks, Hispanics, and women who have overcome both racial and gender stereotypes to (in some cases) dominate the sports that they were once excluded from
XX. Appraising Difference, Resistance, and Transformation
A. While multiple people may occupy the same position within the matrix, they still may experience it differently
1. Experiences and how people perceive events are made up of a complex array of histories, geographies, family, school, friends, and other social influences that will impact how they are viewed and remembered
2. People and groups are not monoliths, but varied and highly complex wholes that do not equal the sum of their parts
B. While institutions seem to prefer consistency and predictability in order to continue doing their work, individuals and communities do not always follow suit
1. Both institutions and the people within them, can, and often do, present the new, inconsistent, and chaotic
C. We will also look at key examples of social movements and collective expressions of agency aimed toward changing the way that the institutions are experienced within the matrix of experience
D. Institutions exert a considerable amount of power within society
1. Most of our daily activities are not only governed by these institutions, but it would be difficult to identify any regular activities or societal functions that are not involved in some way or another with institutions
a. This is equally true for groups that we identify with such as race, class, or gender
b. Institutions not only regulate, they also differentially reward racial groups
1. In this way, institutions become the vehicles by which racial structures and processes are reproduced and the sites through which marginalized groups can transform the system
E. Given this critical walkthrough of each central institution, we will briefly discuss the possible futures that each institution could take, given what we now know