Race ?

In order to adequately respond to the week's subject, I feel I must begin with the age-old question. Race. What is it? As Andrea Roulaine defined in her post, race "refers to the categorization of humans into populations of groups on the basis of various sets of heritable charactersitics." I would like to add a cultural aspect to this: race, as we understand the word to work in application, must also include cultural conventions and traits specific to the group under consideration--a skin color AND a practice.

I'm sure by now we all understand the intrinsic worthlessness of trying to define gender. In that same vein, it stands to reason that all aspects of "racial identity" are equally insubstantial on a personal level. If Derrida is to be believed, then social and cultural identity is a thing continuously defined, a thing that is yet to be defined. Therefore, it can have no true definition.

So then, can race be made of skin color?

Let us consider Adrian Piper's Cornered. Piper speaks authoritatively in front of a group of empty chairs (of course, viewers were invited to sit). Through the pre-recorded video, she calmly speaks the to the triangle on the issue of "blackness" as they simultaneously back her into a corner. Still, Piper's message does not resonate with me as it does with her (while I can empathize, I will never fully understand the experience of another person outside myself )-- her words open to an unending cycle of contradiction and indefinition. I agree that many people have African blood in them. Does this make them black, even if they choose to acknowledge it? Can racial identity be that simple to organize? Piper herself states that "if someone can look and sound like [her] and still be black, then no one is safely, unquestionably, white" (Piper 184). If this is true, then the opposite must also be true--no one can be safely, unquestionably black. And if this seemingly Caucasian woman can tell us she is 100% African American, then what can her skin color possibly have to do with it? With this, Piper uncovers not only the arbitrary nature of the vilified "other", she proves that the concept of "other"--and thus her fringe position, her superficial (read: cosmetic) racial identity--does not exist at all, despite the fact that she is still forced to occupy it.

Since skin color cannot possibly be THE deciding factor, can the definition of race be supported by culture?

Iona Rozeal Brown, Untitled (Female), 2003. Sragow Gallery.

Iona Rozeal Brown is an African American artist who works with the idea of cultural appropriation. Most notable is her work exploring the cultural combinations devised between American and Japanese societies, the use of hip-hop as identity being the definitive aspect of her work. She sees the Japanese appropriation of hip-hop culture as "superficial gloss" while she herself borrows artistic styles of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e prints, juxtaposing their "concepts of manners and attitudes" with her own (Williams 827). Brown thus uses her incomplete understanding--incomplete in the sense that she is a cultural outsider--of Japanese art to convey their own misunderstanding of African American culture. The subjects of the paintings "are a sum of all of these parts that are believed to define blackness/coolness" (Williams 829).While she acknowledges that appropriation can be used with positive results if both cultures understand what informs their own identities (Williams 831), Brown points out that appropriating a culture is not what it means to be black.

If these two contributing factors alone cannot identify race, race must be, as Charles A. Wright writes (tee hee), relegated to a question of transgredience--the instantaneous moment of recognition that the person before me is outside of myself (Wright 200), and therefore an oppositional other. Yet anything can exist as this oppositional other (a culture, a government, a collegue, a sibling), so marking a single race special in that manner is again, arbitrary: the practice is without merit.

Yet no one would argue that it didn't exist. Is it then a mix of both skin and culture that identifies a race? At what mix of either can identification occur? Or can we now even define it, especially if that definition changes with each attempt to define, with each shift of our perception and understanding? If it cannot be defined, then how can it be defended? And, most importantly, how then could it possibly be attacked?

I understand that this response takes an overly simplistic view of race and racial identity. I submit that the complexity of the issue and my own understanding of it severely limits a fully critical response. I also do not want to give the impression that I feel there is no such thing as difference or that race cannot necessarily be celebrated. I merely wish to demonstrate that the tools a minority artist uses to uncover the arbitrary and unjust institution of racism can destroy the seat of power (aka the coveted position of "White Male American")in the dualistic relationship, and by erasing one half of the dualism, by definition, the other must also cease to exist.

Piper, Adrian, "Cornered: A Video installation project (1992)", Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. pp 187-203.

Williams, Lyneise, "Black on Both Sides: A Conversation with Iona Rozeal Brown", Project Muse, 2006. pp 827-833.

Wright, Jr., Charles A., "The Mythology of Difference: Vulgar Identity Politics at the Whitney Biennial", Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. pp 187-203.