I know this is a side point, but yes I also have come to some uses of psychoanalytic theory with a good amount of trepidation. My feeling is that the ideas can be a bit mobile, and taken from their strict Freudean roots and the problems Freud brings. But nonetheless there is some kind of prescriptive feeling in any use of pscyhoanalytic theory, and that makes me nervous (or neurotic?!) as well.

And re: intentionality. Thank you for articulating this really clearly, it’s helpful for me, as well as pointing to the possibility of theorizing a “dual structural” approach. I just found out there’s a symposium at the U of Oregon next month commemorating the 25th anniversary of Omi & Winant’s book. The line-up looks pretty stellar.

this last point leads me to an understanding that must gain currency in contemporary America if we are to move beyond ourselves as a “nation of cowards” (AG Eric Holder, Feb. 18, ’09): racism is not about intentions. in fact, the most virulent forms of racism occur invisibly, as an inert structural force. this inert structural force embodies both cultural symbolisms of whole peoples (e.g., blacks as monkeys (see Joseph Grave’s The Emperor’s New Clothing) or blacks eat watermelons or Jews are rats (see Maus)) and the context of lived realities (e.g., racial residential segregation, racial differences in the quality of educational opportunities, racial profiling).

yes, some racism is rooted in intention, but if we narrow the definition of racism as such we miss out on the transinstitutional and multidimensional nature and consequences of race and racial hierarchy. DuBois in The Philadelphia Negro and Omi and Winant in Racial Formation in the United States are two bodies of work that use this dual structural approach (cultural symbolisms and lived experiences); although, the blame for the articulation of the approach presented here, if proven to be navel grazing, florid, and/or garbage, should be put on me.

I like fblogging as a neologism.

I think that both the Post cartoon and the watermelon email respond to the threat Obama’s presidency poses to the dominant racial order. I think they both do so by putting Obama/African Americans back in their “proper” racially-subordinated place. I think both do this regardless of whatever else they might do.

(It was a battle over whether our not our identity-group conference social should be organized around the gay marriage supreme court decision in California. You can imagine what side I was on. There do now exist on the internet some rather wonderful photos of me drunkenly getting the first slice of the social’s celebratory wedding cake. Those were the days…)