Class 2: Race, Class, & Fullilove September 3, 2009

First, recapping last week CI: the study or practice regarding the continuity of local, historical communities meeting the transformation of information technologies Libraries by reinventing themselves (I&R, job centers, OPACs) invented community networks (made of silicon- plus-carbon) From social informatics comes three key ideas: network society, hacker ethic, and digital divide …the LOCAL community is the central focus here

GSLIS 590CO and GSLIS 590COL: Let’s locate our communities

Small group & big group discussions Race: three huddles Class: let’s consider the newest ideas Fullilove: student-led discussion

Talk amongst yourselves (1) Define the word race. How many are there? How do you know? So what?

Two kinds of arguments for race: Phenotype and genotype Phenotype –What the bones say Remains indicate we are all Africans –What we think we see Skin is only skin-deep (same as hair, eyes, etc) and not associated with any other traits (intelligence, strength, diseases) The Mismeasure of Man (Gould): no differences in brain size Genotype –At least 85% of human genetic variation is within group –While we are 99.9% the same, there is no single trait that every X person has

Migration, thus homogeneity 100 years, 5 generations, 32 ancestors… 1000 years, 50 generations, ancestors Do you know who yours were?

See the handout from PBS’s Race: the Power of an Illusion

Talk amongst yourselves (2) Define the word race. How do you know? Why does it matter?

The US Census has tried hard with race… 1850 “Under heading 5, entitled Color, insert, in all cases, when a slave is Black the letter B; when he or she is mulatto, insert M. The color of all slaves should be noted.” 1870 “Be particularly careful in reporting the class Mulatto. The word is here generic and includes quadroons, octoroons, and all persons having any perceptible trace of African blood.” 1890 “Be particularly careful to distinguish between blacks, mulattos, quadroons, and octoroons.”

“Race” in …and What does this indicate?

The dominant western intellectual tradition, racist to the core with a few notable exceptions “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.”

Tuskegee Institute recorded lynchings from Ida B. Wells, newspaperwoman and anti-lynching campaigner

The one drop rule: “One drop of Black blood makes you Black” “As the European war scene became more violent and the need for blood plasma intensified, Drew, as the leading authority in the field, was selected as the full-time medical director of the Blood for Britain project. He supervised the successful collection of 14,500 pints of vital plasma for the British. In February 1941, Drew was appointed director of the first American Red Cross Blood Bank, in charge of blood for use by the U.S. Army and Navy. During this time, Drew agitated the authorities to stop excluding the blood of African-Americans from plasma-supply networks, and in 1942, he resigned his official posts after the armed forces ruled that the blood of African-Americans would be accepted but would have to be stored separately from that of whites.” Charles Drew In , Susie Guillory Phipps unsuccessfully sued the Louisiana Bureau of Vital Records to change her racial classification from black to white.

“Race,” the social construction of a lie. How do they pull this off in plain view? 1.The dominant ideology – the “big” lie 2.Laws – the backing of government 3.The census – social science 4.Language – public opinion 5.Culture – cultural values and morality

Talk amongst yourselves (3) “Most of the benefits [of white privilege] can be obtained without ever doing anything personally. For whites, they are getting the spoils of a racist system, even if they are not personally racist.”—john a. powell What does this mean? What can we/our profession do about it?

Class: Community informatics research is teaching us about this Jack Linchuan Qiu, Working Class Information Society (2009)

Class 2: Race, Class, & Fullilove September 3, 2009

Class 2: “Race,” Class, & History September 3, 2009