Razack's discussion of the Pamela George trial, racialized spaces and bodies made me think about how identites are embodied, and in particular, how race is constructed. Race is overall disregarded, Razack points out, in terms of George being aboriginal and her murderers being white because they are claimed to be "equally raced" (126). And yet race comes up throughout the trial to develop a case that George's risky "lifestyle" through the spaces she inhabited and the work she participated in resulted in the violence she endured, and ultimately, caused her tragic death. Razack says that any woman, regardless of her race, loses her "status" as white when she engages in prostitution (129). "Whiteness" is therefore equated with spaces that are "safe" and inhabited by bodies that are perceived to be "responsible" sexual subjects. It is an identity that be can be gained and taken away. White bodies inhabit a space that exists within the constraints of justice, where violence is more easily recognized for what it, separate from the body it inflicts. It is a criminal act rather than a inherent, naturalized category of identity. Aboriginality, as the colonized Other, serves to embody this violence and becomes equated with it (122). It becomes societally expected and accepted- engrained in our identity categories and norms. It becomes reflected in law- the violatable aboriginal body is often understood to exist beyond judicial jurisdiction. Who is accountable for the violence done to these bodies if the law does not protect them and enforce justice? Razack draws attention to the way colonization has structured our value systems and how we continue to be embedded in "relations of domination" (129). Razack calls for individual social context and collective colonial history to be addressed in the courtroom in hopes of breaking down these raced/gendered/classed aspects of subjectivity, but I wonder if this can be achieved without deconstructing how these create and perpetuate the actual spaces they exist in.
I think it’s really interesting that you bring up whiteness as “an identity that be can be gained and taken away”. I do not think whiteness is commonly seen as an identity that can be turned on and off. I think racialized privilege holds whiteness as an ‘either you have it or you don’t’ identity, but it is interesting to consider whiteness as defined by safety and place holding. Perhaps this safety is what defines whiteness as an ‘either you have it or you don’t’ identity? I am thinking that perhaps safety operates that way, you are either safe or you’re not. I would very much like to explore further racialized bodies and the ways in which those identities can be transient.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about how the court system is designed to be fair and unbiased but still somehow allow this to occur along clearly racialized lines. George’s risky “lifestyle” is an embodiment of the neoliberal shift from the neoliberal shift of burden from the system to the individual. While racialized spaces never ceased to exist, the dismantling of overt racism over the past decades has simply been a rebranding towards the more sinister guise of neoliberal thought. When the law was being applied to George there was no thought to the systemic and colonized histories that led her to that point, they simply punished her for a “lifestyle” she had little choice in undertaking. Worse yet, these structures reinforce the panoptic keepers of racialized identity even in those who overcome systemic racism with “hard work.”
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