Race Is a Significant Factor in Identification of Individuals and Groups

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Race similar to gender and other demographic factors is a significant vehicle for the identification. The acceptation and/or toleration of specific races within society have been through and continue to go through an evolutionary process. The idea of a post-racial society revolves around the ideology that the success point has been reached between “us and them”. Equality between races has become legislative law within the Charter of Human Rights and Freedom, which means the battle is over. This fantasy mentality is due the naturalized process of racism and racial discrimination (Hall, 272). Naturalized racism is especially dominant in aspects of pop culture including television, and movies. Racism has been commodified and depicted as an act of celebration, which adds to the invisibility. Pop culture has an influential role in constructing and producing the celebratory and commodified ideology of racism.
Stuart Hall claims that to understand the ideology of race it is important to understand ideologies themselves. Individuals do not create ideologies; they are a social formations and conditions that are constructed by an articulation of many different elements (Hall, 272). Ideologies are able to construct values, ideas and beliefs within society because they are unconscious and naturalized (Hall, 272). Ideologies help us “make meaning” of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. Racism as Hall claims is “one of the most profoundly ‘naturalised’ existing ideology” (Hall 272). Pop culture and mass media are two influential channels that produce this ideology. Hall has broken down the racism ideology within pop culture and the media into two categories: overt and inferential. Overt racism refers “to those many occasion...

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...s, television and advertisements. Although society still struggles with racism and racial discrimination, Looks points out that there is a desire to move beyond whiteness, and encourage engagement that will interrupt the status quo (Looks, 37). Race discrimination has come a long way but as Hall mentions there is still underlying traces. Race is a significant factor in identification of individuals and groups, and will continue to be apart of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.

Works Cited

Downey, Allan. (March 24, 2014). HI299E: History of Sports and Society. Lecture.
Hall, Stuart. (1981). “Racist Ideologies and the Media” in The Media Reader, ed. George Bridges & Rosalind Brunt, 271 – 282. London: Lawrence & Whishart.

Looks, Bell. (1992). “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” in Race & Representation, 21 – 37. Cambridge: South End Press.

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