Red Book Chapter 5 Identity, Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality

Gender is a cultures assumption about the differences or how they differentiate men and
women.

Explains why transgenders may identify as male or female because they might not fit into
the square box their culture will put them into.

Identity is how we make sense of ourselves. How we see ourselves as.

Identity can change depending on your life experiences. Identity is rather fluid.
We construct our identities through experiences, emotions, connections, rejections, etc.
Identities can vary across scales. At local scale, we may be a member of our school.
Regionally, I might be a Nigerian. Nationally, I can be seen as still Nigerian, a college
student, or even American, etc.

Identifying against

To identify against first we identify the other, and then ourselves as to how we are
different.
Can be how one constructs an identity.

Race is a constructed identity.

Biologically all people are part of the same race. The various races we put ourselves into
are not biologically based.
Race as an identity developed when Europeans explored and colonized places.
This is also produced racism, where differences in socio-economic classes fueled
superiority over other races.
What society calls race is merely a combination of physical attributes in a population.
Melanin protects skin from the sun, so it makes the skin dark. It theorizes why African
people have dark skin.
No biological basis for dividing the human species into groups based on skin color exists.
For example, black can be considered differently in race around the world. Like in Brazil
members of the lower class are black, while the upper class are white.

Racism in the US

Focuses on diving population to white and non-white.

Frequently change the definition of who is white depending on the politics and
economics at the time.

Residential Segregation

Two or more groups living separately from one another. ( For example, Whites living in a
particular town while Asians may live on outskirts, or the next town over, etc.)
Real estate agents will consciously or unconsciously direct people to their own
neighborhood.

Invasion and succession is when new immigrants move to a city occupied by old immigrants
and invade and succeed.

For example, Puerto Ricans invaded the immigrant Jewish neighborhood of East
Harlem and took over the neighborhood. Now the neighborhood is dominantly Puerto
Rican.
New Immigrants create businesses to serve their new community and reflect their culture
most of the time.

Ethnicity is an identity that people are closely in culture or related.

Someones race might be Asian, but their Ethnicity might be Korean.

Ethnos means people or nation.

Space is social relations that are stretched out.

Place are particular results of those social relations as they have come together over time.
Gendered are places designed for women or men.
Queer theory ?
Dowry deaths are when in India the bride fails to meet the grooms family (maybe even the
grooms) requirements for the marriage so they kill her.
Barrioization- or the segregation and marginalization of
Mexican American communities by capital and the state