SOC 633 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Internalized Racism, Plastic Surgery, Racialization
23 Oct 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Physiological characteristics: skin colour, hair texture, size and shape of eyes and nose, genitalia, lips, ears, feet. Social processes cause these characteristics to either represent superiority or inferiority. Categorizing makes society feel comfortable since they know how to treat them and classify them. Ethnic signifiers symbolizing superiority or inferiority. Deeply embedded in every aspect of society. You cant help but absorb some of the systemic, embedded racism in society. Want to associate ourselves with superiority, we respond to this racism by trying to change our race: plastic surgery (i. e jews getting nose jobs, straightening hair, dying hair lighter. This concept was solidified by the 1940s. By 1945, white racial identity went with normative concepts of sexuality: embedded in the idea of the procreative, nuclear, heterosexual family. Whiteness or heterose(cid:454)ualit(cid:455) doesn"t need to (cid:271)e spoken a(cid:271)out, it just has to la(cid:271)el others as inferior.
