Impact of Mass Culture on Those Who Do Not Belong - Essay Example

Impact of Mass Culture on Those Who Do Not Belong It is no easy to take a politically effective and informed stand in a complicated issue such as racism. Even the task of understanding the current meaning of racism, as it exists in the post civil rights era, is not an easy mater. To begin exploring the meaning of racism today, one must understand what race is. Even after winning recognition after the World War II, race is a politically contested and socially constructed concept (Omi and Winant 77). Constant regulation is necessary to maintain race as a system, and this can be clearly associated to the influx of Europeans to the U.S. that caused disorder to the white racial identity. Racially homogenous areas became present yet did not explain all the compromise that caused the development of pan-European whiteness in the country to be accepted by white Americans. It also did not explain how these European groups acknowledged these spaces as crucial to their sense of belongingness in the country (Winant 8). In association to the above statements, racial formation views race as a debated subject of the creation of meanings and social signification level. It is not merely a field of debate and resistance at the social structure level. The former talks of the methods of representing and ethnically figuring the concept of race. It is about the manner in which race becomes a significant illustration of individual or group experiences, social issues, and identity. The latter discusses concerns such as the racial extent of laws, political systems, institutional measures, and social distribution and stratification. Omi and Winant theorizes that racial formation is an unending course wherein historically positioned developments intermingle: in the overlap, accommodation, debate, and collision of these developments, social institutions and structures, and human awareness and bodies are structured and represented (81). One may argue that in any historical development, racial formation and meaning cannot be separated. To give meaning to race, and then signify, understand, or even embody it is to both openly and unreservedly trace it in terms of social organization. This association between structure and culture gives racial developments their harmony and coherence, and serves as the foundation of the process of racial formation. Therefore, once it is believed that racial diversity is a matter of what one determines for oneself, or that race is a false relic beyond the state’s observation, or that the U.S. is a natural white man’s territory, what follows it are fitting social and economic programs and political orientation (Winant 45-47). In this view, Yezierska’s written works could be considered as the embodiment of racial formation and modernism. It can be seen as the writer’s ambivalent meeting with Hollywood’s market values and film mores. It can also be seen as a sample of emerging immigrant feminism. The book “Bread Givers” by Yezierska provides a good reading in researching the events of compromise between the native and immigrant whites in the 1920s. The names of places in this book are fictional, but the story itself was largely inspired by the life of the white, particularly Jewish, immigrants in New York. This novel provides a good narrative of the vast experiences and beliefs of the immigrants who served as the novel’s inspiration. In this novel, Sara Smolinsky, is the female main character that shows independence by making voicing out existential opinions and exercising free will. This was even before the emergence of the European whiteness phenomenon. On a personal note, this novel challenges the usual vast benchmark of what is normally associated with ghetto rustic. However, one could also see that this text of consolidated immigrant life during that era takes one to a journey to the ghetto setting while sticking to the intimate geographical and regional borders of the imagined milieu. The constant move of Sara within urban space is the novel’s core characteristic. If one is familiar with Doreen Massey’s concept that socio-politics is linked to the mobility of states, institutions, and subjects, one can see Sara Smolinsy as the ideal immigrant whose ever-shifting location connotes the natural course and yearning that brought about the spread of race. The novel narrates Sara’s struggling journey from immigrant youth to white American womanhood. This journey is filled with the American culture of commodity, which consists of two opposing aspects. One aspect is how commodities such as cosmetics or fashion could be visually deceiving, as they camouflage the physical characteristics of individuals, particularly the immigrants. Another aspect is that these same commodities aid the immigrants in disguising their inherent physical traits, making it easier for them to merge with the American mainstream. This is a complex relationship between the immigrants and the commodity culture, with the prior being vulnerable to the latter. This makes the Smolinskys both the deceivers and the deceived, making them realize in the process that racial identity is another commodity that can be acquired through tactical and logical methods. Racial identity, in this novel, is therefore not anymore an absolute situation decided on by an individual’s blood and skin. Additionally, in the novel, Sara is not able to find products that would transform her skin color to an acceptable whiteness. She then sees that space is a significant element in racial adaptation. In her private reflections, Sara is able to acquire knowledge in acquiring a sense of belonging in the society to which she now belongs. Through this, she is able to achieve her goal of white identity by acting like a typical white American. And although this could have easily denied of her by anti-Semitism, Sara’s success in this area confirms the point to which space and race have become significant elements of white identity. This also, in a way, denotes the instilled American immigrant’s racial phobias, skin color notwithstanding. The novel demonstrates how the American ethos of mass culture presented immigrants with programs deemed suitable for the current racial structure during that time. Those who wanted to immediately feel at home must adapt to this white phenomenon, forcing Sara to dwell in her private space upon failing to acquire these “whiteness programs.” This could be linked to Omi and Winant’s theory on racial diversity, wherein the current social view on race determines society’s social and economic programs (Winant 45). This makes immigrants view mass culture as a force that connects them to their new home. Despite these commodities offering immigrants a means of gaining social belonging in the U.S., the intensity, frequency, and eagerness of these immigrants to engage themselves in this mass culture open doors for misrecognition of the usefulness and value of the products they buy, and failure to distinguish the essence and moral fiber of the individuals they encounter on a daily basis. The novel offers a narrative about the complex encounter with mass culture that immigrants deal with in order to gain social acceptance in a foreign land. Today, aims to challenge racism are made difficult by the absence of a clear understanding of its meaning. Though it is now common to hear someone saying that skin color does not matter, his implies that color-consciousness is equivalent to racism (Winant 63). This is a product of the civil rights period, which idea is apparent in the Bread Givers. Works Cited Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print. Winant, Howard. Racial Conditions: Politics, Theory, Comparisons. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 2002. Print. Yezierska, Anzia, and Alice Kessler-Harris. Bread Givers. New York: Persea, 1975. Print. Read More