The Profession of the Color Blind

Sociocultural Anthropology and Racism in the 21st Century

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2461995
AutoresEugenia Shankles (College of New Jersey, autor de correspondencia)
Año1998
Volumen100
Número3
Páginas669-679
Fecha de publicación1998-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.669
OpenAlexW2148029388
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas32
Referencias citadas30

In this essay, I suggest that American sociocultural anthropology has been a "color blind" profession for nearly a half century and that, as a discipline, we need to restore and refine our color perceptions in order to fight the supposedly fixed opposition in American society between "black" and "white" and deal with the racist consequences of this folk opposition. In the first section, 'How Anthropology Became 'Color Blind,'" I delineate the circumstances under which anthropology became the "color blind" profession. In the second section, "Teaching Color Blindness," I discuss the tendency, in teaching sociocultural anthropology, to ignore racism and its effects. In the final section, "Restoring Color Vision," I take up the questions of what the profession needs to do next to cope with racism and its consequences, emphasizing especially the issue of group identities, how they are formulated, inculcated, and overcome, and proposing a Foucauldian model-following Foucault's lead in analyzing relations of biopower and race-for formulating new ways of responding to and resisting the inevitable recastings of racist ideas

Aesthetics · Applied anthropology · Art · Blindness · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociocultural anthropology · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Race, Genetics, and Society