1. Geographies of Identity: Race, Ethnicity, Sexuality & Gender
Chapter 6

2. Ideology of racism and its evolution
Defining Race
Common ancestor?
Linnaeus
Physical typology
Social construction
Ideology of racism and its evolution
What is racism?
1676 Bacon’s Rebellion—institutionalization: segregation & slavery
European Enlightenment
Naturalizing difference, inequality and whiteness

3. The Great Chain of Being: a way to understand the world, through the lens of race.
A “god-given” hierarchy
Difference linked to intellectual ability and inferiority, thus inequality
Standard of whiteness
The White Man’s Burden

4. “The Reconstruction Policy of Congress, as illustrated in California.”
Political smear from 1867, against
George C. Gorham’s gubernatorial
bid in California.

5. Atlantic Ocean became a highway as a result of the slave trade, 16th-19th Centuries.
Brazil & the Caribbean leading destinations for African slaves.
Racist ideology reinforced on the landscape: slavery and highly segregated colonial towns.
Racist ideology necessary to create a labor force in the colonies.

6. Geographies of Race and Racism: How Does Race Make Place?
Institutional Racism—policies, practices, laws that disadvantage groups because of their cultural differences
Cultural differences become racialized.
Chinatown & South Africa: the spatial expression of institutionalized racism

7. San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1890s, photograph by Arnold Genthe
Chinese arrive in late 1800s.
Ideas of racial difference reinforced through appearance.
Strong negative association with place (Chinatown) as a place of vice.
These associations influence municipal laws and policies.
San Francisco, CA
Vancouver, BC
San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1890s, photograph by Arnold Genthe

10. Race and Racism on the
landscape of South Africa
*Evolution of Apartheid
Dutch Boers, Afrikaners
1652
British 1700
South Asians mid-1800s
1910 independence
Loose system of racial identity
1948, Afrikaner Nationalist Party
Baaskap

11. Apartheid’s goal: to produce a society segregated on a racial and territorial basis.
Segregation will protect the racial purity of the white South Africans.
Allow for separate cultural and economic development of each racial group.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

12. Apartheid’s Scales: Grand (national), Petty (individual) and Township (neighborhood)
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14. Soweto Uprising, June 16, 1976
Soweto, former Black Township of
Johannesburg, South Africa

15. First democratic elections in South Africa are held in 1994,
three years after the repeal of Apartheid laws.
Nelson Mandela was elected president.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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17. What is Ethnicity? Territory and identity. Shared cultural practices.
Choice, flexible, contingent.
Mutually reinforcing. Engaging in the behavioral components of ethnicity reinforces the identification.

18. Evo Morales, first indigenous president in Latin America. Elected
President of Bolivia in 2006.

19. or that making a selection is impractical or not suitable.
This map shows the ancestral “roots” of the U.S. population based on census data. Note
how widespread German ancestry is. Identification of an “American” ancestry may stem
from the fact that a person’s forebears have been in the country for several generations,
or that making a selection is impractical or not suitable.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

20. U.S. census form questions on race.
The U.S. Census form is sent to all
households every 10 years. Note that Hispanic origin is represented as something other than race.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

21. count and percentage of those who selected just one racial category.
U.S. population composition from two perspectives. The pie chart on the left shows
Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin for the population. The pie chart on the right shows the
count and percentage of those who selected just one racial category.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

22. Leading minority group, by county
Leading minority group, by county. White, non-Hispanic is the majority population group.
Excluding that data enables us to map and see the distribution of minority groups.
California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Texas, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico are majority-minority, meaning that more than half of the population is minority.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

23. Ethnic Interaction: Assimilation Pluralism Heterolocalism
Some 40,000 Vietnamese live in and around Washington D.C., but at the level of the
Census tract nowhere do they make up more than 18% of the population. By contrast, they accounted for less than 1% of the population in most census tracts.

24. Ethnic Settlements: Ethnic Islands Ethnic Neighborhoods Ethnoburbs
Location quotients
The Hopi and Navajo Reservations (population approximately 7000 and 174,000 respectively) are ethnic islands and enclaves in the US. When mapped, we can see that they also form enclaves of each other.

26. Ethnic Conflict
Darfur, Sudan
Ethnic Cleansing

27. Environmental Justice: San Francisco Bay Area
Population by race/ethnicity and proximity to a toxic release facility. Notice how the composition of population groups changes with increasing distance from the toxic release facility.

28. Households within one mile of a toxic release facility by income, race/ethnicity.