Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

At this late date, most of us realize that “race,” understood as a matter of genetic differentiation, is a fiction, with little scientific currency – the genetic differences between any two races are minuscule compared to the genetic differences one might find within racial groups. Yet “race” remains a fact of our lives, one of the most powerful signifiers in Western culture. As a concept it has a long history in Western thought, having served to distinguish people on the basis of family, community, nation, language, gender, color and other physical features, even profession (e.g., the race of farriers) at least since the fifteenth century. It was not until the nineteenth century, however, with the coming of pseudoscientific theories of heredity and mutation, that race became essentialized and took on many of its modern significations. Only then could we attribute to black persons a “natural” affinity for the performative or aesthetic sensibility, or envision Caucasians as “master organizers” of civilization, charged with bringing order where “chaos reigned” (Tuveson 1968: vii). William Faulkner, born in 1897 in Mississippi, grew up in a nation deeply rooted in ideologies of racial difference. The color line was sharply drawn – drawn more sharply in fact than it had ever been before. Prior to 1863, slavery itself had contained and segregated most of the black population in the US ... log in or subscribe to read full text