“Racism is a delirium that results, first, from the fact that the Black Man is the one (or the thing) that one sees when one sees nothing when one understands nothing, and above all, when one wishes to understand nothing.”
“Blackness” and “Race”
Introduction
According to Mbembe (2017), blackness and race have served multiple purposes in the imaginaries of European societies. These two aspects have given rise to a delirium which is fostered by the modernity. The black reason, according to Ellison, (2016), entails a collection of voices, forms of knowledge, discourses, pronouncements, and commentary whose object is people or things of African origin. It is thus argued that the aspects of race and racism are not linked to the geographical origins but color, which all starts in mind. This particular state of mind is an attempt to hoist a reason out of the impurities and contamination of subjectivity as well as the relativity on to the transcendental plane that possesses both universality and objectivity. This essay explores the way of thinking of human beings and how such thoughts construct the aspect of racism based on color or race. The findings of this research help in understanding the more general ways through which human beings treat others not as subjects but as instances of categories.
The following statement elaborates on the state of mind that associates “blackness” to “race.”
“Racism is a delirium that results, first, from the fact that the Black Man is the one (or the thing) that one sees when one sees nothing when one understands nothing, and above all, when one wishes to understand nothing” Mbembe, (2017)
The above assertion by Mbembe (2017) contributes to the understanding of the meaning of black and race in the imaginaries of the European societies that often results from the logic of self-contemplation, autofiction, and enclosure. The concepts of blackness and slavery within the European context have a direct link to the black slave trafficking and mining in Africa. Also, they have persisted in man-currency, which is the product of exchange in capitalism. In his statement, he expounds on the racialization concept by demonstrating that race has been present even within the previous centuries, which defined the countless catastrophes. Descartes and Haldane, (1960), claims that race was the primary cause of untold devastations and incalculable carnages and crimes. There is, therefore, no valid reason to explain racism but only through the injustices exhibited through historical developments. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
The impacts of race and racism in Europe can be well demonstrated throughout history. Mbembe (2017) defines the racialization process like the attachment of sets of traits perceived to be inherent within the members of a particular group because of their physical characteristics. This categorization is not only limited to skin pigmentation but also to a wide range of attributes such as language, religious practices, and clothing, among others. The black slaves were exposed to systematic risks during the first capitalism, and this form of discrimination provides the basis for prevailing dynamics of subordination and racism. It is for this reason that the relationship between black and race is demonstrated within the framework of economic clipping, and thus the “black man” subject cannot be separated from capitalist exploitation. It can, therefore, be argued that the reason behind the development of racism is to legitimize capitalism via exploitation and oppression because racial assumptions needed capitalism to survive.
According to Pierre, (2012), both race and blackness have been crucial elements in the imaginaries of European societies, and they have often occupied the central position in the modern discourse and knowledge about man. These thoughts have a direct impact on humanity and humanism. García-Peña (2015), arguments about blackness and race help us to challenge the tenets of modernity, especially those that associated with the shift towards a more capitalistic economy, growth in the universality of the western European thought and the increase in social stratification. The delirium of racialization is the account of hoe construction of race and racism with regards to skin color and the consequences of this particular perception. In his text critique of Black Reason, Mbembe, (2017), argues that the discourse of blackness originates from the western reasoning, which spans beyond the right or legitimacy and hence delirious jurisdiction.
The aspect of racism and race has significantly impacted the organization of the modern world (Richmond and Valtonen, 1994). Despite modernity having a huge impact on the present world, the integral role of race and racism has been left to dominate the construction of modernity. Viewing racism from the delirious perspective is crucial in this case because it provides a better approach towards examining the modernity aspect because it tends to exclude subjects and establish both new and old victims which Etherington, (2016) refers to as “the wretched of the earth.” In addition to this, it is right to argue that race is not just the return of the metaphysical error but rather the constitutive figure within the European modernity. The aspect of blackness lacks proper justification and validity and only encourages racialization (Jones and Jones, 2010). This issue can only be solved by correcting the ignorance I knowledge as well as other issues that are yet to be differentiated philosophically.
Process of racialization
The racialization process is particularly evident within the conscription that is referred to as black with the global capitalist system (Marable, 2015). In particular, the trans-Atlantic enslavement was among the world-historical phenomenon through which color, humanity, labor, and culture were conflated as the pointers to inferiority. This activity also codifies the institutional and legal form of racialization. During this period, African captives were particularly referred to as the “Blacks,” and even blackness was equated to the free labor. Mbembe (2017), claims that no group can enslave another for an extended period without coming out with the superiority notion. The trans-Atlantic slave trade gave rise to the fundamental association between racialization and capitalism, which persists and gets reproduced in every cycle of accumulation. During the period of enslavement, the Europeans rationalized the harsh conditions, conscription pf labor, and involuntary servitude via discourses of racial inferiority. As a result of these, the relationship was established between blackness and whiteness that later became naturalized and with temporal and spatial significance and thus the delirium.
The modernization and development theories further explain the relationship that exists between racialization and capitalism. The dichotomy of developed and undeveloped persisted with the constitution of black places, people, and spaces as inferior, backward, and inferior (Peet and Hartwick, 2015). This particular bifurcation was a representation of the increasing capitalism exploitation with the core purpose of integrating the economies of the core and the periphery. The theories also perpetrate racialization because they argue that countries within the periphery need to exhibit similar rates of development as the first world countries because these developed nations are used as the subset upon which progress and civilization are gauged. Also, development was centered around the notion of who was backward and who was modern and thus creating the belief that the modern needs to intervene in the economic, political, and social lives of those termed “backward.” In this regard, the blacks were racialized and considered socially, politically, and economically backward.
Mbembe (2017) expounds on how first-world countries perceive race. It reveals that the concept of race is sketched differently by capitalists. It is not present as a physical, genetic, or anthropological fact but rather an ideological projection, a phantasmagoric construction, or a useful fiction that is meant to shift the attention from the conflicts judged to be more real. Also, these ideologies are meant to draw the attention from the struggle existing among classes and genders. I believe the issue of blackness and race is a form of bias against the black countries, especially from Africa as a way of justifying power of the western world, which were regarded as the core regions of the earth and the origin of reason, truth of humanity, and universal life. The “rights of the people,” for instance, were invented in the first world regions because they were considered more civilized than other regions. Asa a result of these developments, it is these regions alone that codified various customs that were accepted by various individuals, including the rules of engagement, diplomatic rituals, polite behavior, and public morality, and the practices of religion, government, and business.
Understanding categorizing human beings
The process of racism is a clear demonstration of why human beings perceive others as instances of categories rather than as human subjects. Pithouse (2017) demonstrates that a black person is often placed within the delirium because it is entirely driven by race. Rather than viewing them as equal, they are reduced into the aspects of appearance, color, and skin through branding them the particular status of fiction-based biology with on their skin and color. In particular, Europeans and Americans have categorized both race and blackness together. Persistent for a longer period as the foundational category has been the primary cause of the catastrophe and the key source of the psychic devastation as well as the innumerable massacres and crimes.
In the quest to establish reason for blackness, Lakoff, (2008), points out that the nature of thinking of an organism and how it functions within any given environment is a primary concern in the study of reason. The two views consider categorization as the fundamental way that creates sense out of the experience. On the traditional view, categories are characterized using the features that are shared by the members of the group. The black people are categorizing literally without imaginative mechanisms that enter into the type of categories. Also, they are classified independently of the bodily nature of individuals that perform the categorization. Therefore, the association between blackness and racism can be linked to bodily experiences as well as how human beings utilize imaginative mechanisms as the primary aspects to the way categories are constructed to create experience. This view is explained by the classical theory, which posits that categories are defined based on the common properties exhibited by the members. Such a kind of assumption renders it difficult to question whether the classical view of categorization is correct. It is, however, assumed to be correct because it is constructed into classical logic and, therefore, can explain the process of racialization more appropriately. This particular notion is, therefore, significant in explaining the capitalists’ view of black people as instances of categories based on their skin color and race.
The aspect of category better demonstrates Mbembe’s notion of racialization as delirium. This view is central to the construction of blackness because most symbols, such as mental representations and words, do not necessarily designate individualism or particular things in the world. Most of the concepts and words define a category in different ways (Itzigsohn and Brown, 2015). Some of these are categories of beings or things within the physical world, while others are comprising categories of abstract things and activities. Racism is thus a delirium that emanates from the abstractive consideration and categorization of human beings based on their color. There is no concrete reason for the aspect of blackness, which has developed as a result of the history that has preoccupied euro-Americans and the inferiority they have attached to the black community.
The concept of black reason
Black reasons, according to García-Peña, (2015), denotes how philosophical knowledge comprehends blackness as being synonymous with ontic destitution regardless of whether it exhibits subjugation or not. Part of this particular aspect is the seizures of individuals of African descent. The political and historical race only became possible as a result of this perception of Africans becoming truth and knowledge. From the moral-politico-ideological point of view to the forms of domination and power across the world, the aspect of blackness emerged. According to Itzigsohn and Brown, (2015), the metaphysical, psychological, and historical fantasies contributed to the development of race that turned out to be the narcissistic incertitude as well as the crisis in the European identity discourse. The delirium of racism becomes even more evident in Europe’s black imaginary.
Race as an institutional fact
Unlike brute facts, institutional facts exist in the society that possesses certain rules, norms, and conventions. Institutional facts can only occur within the human institution and within systems that of constitutive rules. The perception that the world has of a black person is an image that was carefully formulated by colonial Europe, and thus the racism towards black people can be well explained. According to Winther, Millstein, and Nielsen, 2015), the image of Africans within the colonized world deems them inferior, and these notions were painted in the minds of African as well as other people across the world. The core purpose of such views is to spread the concept of inferiority and the discourse of fear to the communities.
The idea of associating blackness to the quintessential representations of evil is not a brute fact but rather a socially constructed myth. As a consequence of the interaction between European colonizers and the black man, the European constructed the back image and tagged it with inferiority that was later fed to the rest of the world. I, therefore, believe that any attempt made by a native person to explain the black identity in response to the European gives rise to the establishment of an image that is strategically branded by the Europeans. The fact of blackness is a floating signifier and unfixable social construction that is essential only in its application for deconstruction.
Racialization does a social construct that occurs in space, and time and race are an outcome of this process (Itzigsohn and Brown, 2015). The race is, therefore, an outcome of one’s thinking. With regard to skin color, racialization entails the process of associating the skin color to a particular meaning, bringing to function the elements of black and white. Black is therefore used not as a description of one’s skin color but rather as a racial identity. The production of this institutional fact cannot be understood without linking to embodiment. Mbembe (2017), claims that if racialization constitutes multiple processes, then these particular mechanisms entail the consideration of these bodies as a racialization site in themselves. I, therefore, contend that the aspect of blackness and racism is a state of mind that did not exist during the pre-colonial era but emerged through constructionism.
Searle (1995) proposes that the social constructivist ontology of the race should be embraced. Social constructivists posit that races are both ontologically real and natural. According to the social constructivist, races exist as a social construct, and it is, therefore, a fact regarding the world that is composed of social practices such as categorization that is often prevalent among Euro-Americans. According to Hacking (1997), social constructivist account for racialization can meet three constraints simultaneously.
Institutional account of the race
Application of the account of the social institutions offers the social construction of race that exhibits the three constraints. From this perspective, social institutions exist via the application of a constitutive rule, which states that X counts as y within the context of C. Application of constitutive rue establishes the status functions” on aspects that naturally lack such function. Searle, (1995), utilizes the example of some bits of paper that are perceived as money within the US context. This particular piece is referred to as dollars, and they are accepted as legal currency in the US. This particular analogy is applicable to other countries, including European countries. Translating this analogy to race helps in understanding why some individuals are categorized as black or white in these contexts. This particular analogy is a clear demonstration that race is an institutional fact.
Significance of the institutional account of race
Consideration of race as an institutional fact helps us understand the aspect of blackness and the causal power, which is racism. Searle (1995) claims that social institutions exhibit genuine social power, and the fact that some people are considered to belong to a certain category puts them within the complex of social effects that ultimately pose real-world consequences. The fact that some groups are perceived as “black” is a clear indication that there will be myriad causal effects on those designated and on others that fall within the category. Race, as an institutional fact, can travel. This account of race reveals that race can move n two distinct patterns. Some groups of individuals may not only focus on race within the social category but in some aspects that are frequently regarded as the constitutive of it. This means that some human beings can be compared based x term in a particular culture with or without being concerned whether they count as y in different contexts or cultures. Some groups of people may have interests in some things such as the genetic markers, skin color, and genealogy, or other elements that are often employed in designating individuals of a certain race. These features can be social or biological. The existence of race as a social institution is, therefore, dependent on the beliefs that people have towards it.
From the above account of racism, I propose that one of the most effective ways to reject race is by rejecting it as a legitimate category. The absence of racism would also mean the absence of blackness. The challenge for this approach is that there is a price to pay for rejecting this concept. It would block the delivery of racially-based remedies to different harms that are associated with racism. The widely rejected notion that race is a natural kind prompts for a different ontology of race if the racial concepts are used (Searle, 1995). We need to acknowledge the notion that race is based on a social constructivist ontology that holds that races are ontologically real and are non-natural. The existence of race is, therefore, a social fact, including the practices of categorization that are often engaged in.
Viewing a black person as a thing is a clear indication that humanity has been stolen by racism and the categorization of people. These dynamic prompts a need to restore humanity by dealing with the institutional fact of racism. This journey should commence by first challenging the notion of modernity, which is characterized by the shift towards more capitalistic economies, universalization of Western European thought, and increased social stratification. According to Hacking, (1997), the interest needs to shift to how construction and the impacts of racism can be accounted for by focusing more on the future tense of race and how it can exhibit positive transformation from the past and the present. The modern organization of the world is much more organized on the basis of the race despite the developments attained as a result of modernity, and we should acknowledge the fact that race and racism have hard an unavoidable integral role in the development of modernity. Construction of race accounts for the manner in which subjects coexist and kinds of mechanisms aimed at combating race and racism to reassure more manful lives Hacking, (1997).
The black aspect was a result of the technological and social machines that are directly associated with the emergence of capitalism and globalization. It is important to acknowledge that the black element was invented as a symbol for brutalization, degradation, and exclusion. It is therefore thought that capitalism is only made possible via exclusion, and it has prevailed throughout history via the race discourse. Despite the cruelty and depredation that emanates from modernization and globalization, the issue of radicalization can be dealt with by embracing the notion that every human subject possesses something which is fundamentally intangible and indomitable that no domination can root it out or mask it fully. This strategy will significantly root our imagination and racism from the present society in order to abort the struggles exhibited in progressing to the world beyond. In addition, the analysis of both ethical and political views of racism would aid in the elimination of ideological differences.
Racism is a form of exclusionary thinking and prompting a need to ignore such forms of thinking in order to evade the issue of categorization and human beings. Also, it will restore the dignity to humanity, which has subjected to abstraction and objectification processes rather than subjects. This particular strategy is supported by Winther, Millstein, and Nielsen, (2015), who claims that mental decolonization’s needed to overcome the previous mistakes and to settle the feeling of inferiority, superiority, and settle resentments and ideological imaginations that fosters racism.
Against delirium of race
Despite the strong association between the term black and race, I believe there is a need to engage in more enlightening conversations regarding the inability of Africans to escape the aspect of blackness. The black society has been somewhat transformed with a wider range of professionals, including doctors and lawyers. As stated by Kaplan and Winther (2014). The Irishman can hide in Irishness, and the Jew in Jewishness and yet Africans are unable to hide in blackness. Acceptance of this notion would enable the colonized people across the world to view themselves outside the colonization realm. Besides, modern historians and sociologists need to rewrite the stories of the black communities and frame them within the modern context so that they can be easily accessed, read, and understood by the people. Most of the sociologists target white audiences and thus missing out on the intended audiences.
Kaplan and Winther, (2014), argues that blackness, in some contexts, despite the common stigmatized status, can be a more valuable cultural resource accumulated by people and transformed into both economic and social rewards. The element of race is socially constructed and entails a set of meanings that some individuals attach to objects and bodies. Therefore blackness is such a complex cultural representation that is manipulated by people, and in specific contexts, a positive value can be assigned to it. García-Peña (2015) claims that contexts tend to influence the kind of interactions that occurs and, in turn, how people construct, use, benefit, and value from the symbols of blackness. This particular approach can be an effective antidote to the delirium of racism.
Conclusion
Following the above analysis of the blackness and racialization, it is demonstrated that race is a socially constructed notion which does not endorse its population acceptance as a phenomenon that occurs naturally. The institutional account pf race reveals the process that translates into the structure of the “race” concept. Using social constructivism illuminates the institutionalized duality process of race. Hence, the strategy to deal with this ideology should consider the binary form of the radicalized social interaction patterns as well as their structuration and routinization in euro-Americans on societies as a natural order of things. However, the critiques of black reason have problematized blackness and thus overlooking both political and social significance of blackness in the white/black dichotomy, which characterizes the way modern societies perceive race. However, concur with the process of radicalization highlighted in this essay that the capitalists manifestly benefited in the past and are still benefiting today from the resources acquired by the utilization of free labor for centuries and hence the low cost of production. It is through the production system and labor that resulted in early slavery that ensured an efficient method of production and capital investment. The low cost of labor permitted the establishment of wealth from capital investment as well as ownership of human beings who were categorized as property. The consequences of modernization and development continue to be felt by in the current years due to the domination of the “black” and “race” norms.
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