Forms of Violence

We are looking at forms of violence outside of what is usually represented in the media (direct violence). We've discussed symbolic violence, structural violence, and violence as a state of tension (Fanon), described in the previous post below. In this post are some events that others have blogged about that expose these other forms of violence. Identify how these forms of violence play out within the events on the following links (5 points per link for students, but anybody is welcome to post!):


Blackademic writes:
"last week, on the campus of texas a&m university, a couple of students posted a video on a public web forum, depicting the act of a “slave” (a white student in blackface), being whipped by a “master” (another white student in blackface)."




BrownFemi discusses the incident of an Iranian-American UCLA student that was shot with a taser gun by UCLA’S UCPD November 14th 2006. He believed he was targeted because of his middle eastern appearance.



BrownFemi also discusses paramilitary action against the indigenous people of Oaxaca, Mexico who are struggling to resist the exploitation of their land and labor.



Maia makes the connection between capitalism and its limitations on the right of young motherhood for young mothers (and other mothers) who want to choose to give birth but are faced with a society that demonizes this act and devalues motherhood.



Tiffany of BlackFeminism highlights Kenji Yoshino's thesis on the new civil rights movement, by discussing the effects of assimilation or "covering." He makes a link between the limitation of an individual's freedom of cultural expression and denial of civil rights, such as Claire Anderson in Atlanta who was fired from teaching because she decided to switch to wearing her natural hair.

Racism and Violence

Photo by Pablo Serrano




Racism

Power + Prejudice (racial) = Racism
• One person cannot be racist by themselves, racism occurs along with institutional or structural backing or support



Structural Violence

Johan Galtung originally framed the term structural violence to refer to any constraint on human potential due to economic and political structures (1969). Unequal access to resources, to political power, to education, to health care, or to legal standing, are forms of structural violence.

• Almost always invisible
• Normalized by stable institutions and regular experience
• Occurs whenever people are disadvantaged by political, legal, economic or cultural traditions
• Because they are longstanding, structural inequities usually seem ordinary; the way things are and always have been
• Often requires police states to suppress resentments and social unrest
• Includes cultural genocide

(Winter and Leighton, Introduction to Structural Violence, 1999)



Symbolic Violence
• Dominant group’s imposition or use of symbols or meanings to maintain power
• Meanings behind symbols are experienced as “legitimate” or “human nature” through controlling the educational mechanisms that produce and reproduce these symbols

Symbolic violence manifests through “the subtle exercise of symbolic power waged by a ruling class in order to ‘impose a definition of the social world that is consistent with its interests’” (Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture 1977).

Examples of symbolic violence may include:
• Relentless stereotyping
• The media’s exclusionary standards of beauty
• educational system’s insensitivities to the needs of multicultural communities
• Words and body language
• Show of force in marginalized communities by people in power

Many whites in all sectors of society acquiesce or participate in acts of symbolic violence even though they disapprove of physical violence (Feagin and Vera, White Racism: The Basics, 1995).

Frantz Fanon's Violence as a State of Tension

"The colonized man will first manifest this aggressiveness which has been deposited in his bones against his own people... When the native is confronted with the colonial order of things, he finds he is in a state of permanent tension. The settler's world is a hostile world, which spurns the native, but at the same time it is a world of which he is envious. We have seen that the native never ceases to dream of putting himself in the place of the settler..." (52). - Wretched of the Earth

Quotes on dehumanization in the media

A few quotes that came from our conversations, based on student lead presentations, on the role of dehumanization, racism, and stereotypes in the media:


Daniela: "The media focuses attention on what people of color are doing bad and focus away from what white people are doing bad."
Jasmine: "The media helps white people get away with stuff."