ANTH_100_LECTURE_14_PART_1_SPRING_2023_

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ANTH 100 - LECTURE #14, PART 1 (SPRING, 2023).mp4 Speaker 1 [00:00:03] Let me just get something adjusted here. There we go. But I think what we'll do is we'll get right into this. And then again, this will fall along the same approach that we follow, the same approach that we've been taking for the past little, little while here. Interestingly, head gets cut off when I watch these. They're hopefully the top of my head isn't cut off. But let's let's start this lecture. But. 1000. So we're going to be looking at inequality based on social stratification and human rights issues. Later, we're going to be wading into the race concept as well, which is always a very difficult topic to to broach and to really get into, particularly from someone from my social location. But, you know, I will be doing my best and coming at it from an anthropological perspective, but that will be more so on Wednesday. And we'll get into a little bit at the tail end of the lecture today, we're going to consider what naturalizing discourses are to start. And we're going to be looking at how anthropologists approach. And conduct research on human rights issues globally. And then we're going to turn our computers off. And yeah, if you could just turn off your computer after you're done with that, that'd be great. I don't even know what that's for. I never watched the office. I think that's probably from the office anyways. Naturalizing discourses. What are these? Well, how can I say they are? Produced by processes and enabled by processes of hedging and hegemony. I could even speak today and ideology. As discourses or as ideas put into circulation in society. They involve representing identities that are understood to be fixed and immovable. And so we're giving some examples here cast class, race, ethnicity and or nationality. And so each one of these socially constructed containers, as it were, of identity, are understood to share attributes or those who are understood to share these identities, share attributes that are understood to be fixed biologically, but also fixed historically and socially and therefore unchanging. And as such, they're not understood really to be constructions socially, culturally or historically. So in some instances, when the textbook talks a little bit about this book sharing the same. Oh, my goodness. I was going to sneeze and then a yawn came out. Oh, I think we're all catching up here. Living in the same territory is understood, are sharing the same territorial boundaries, is understood as having the same ancestors, having the same skin color, perhaps sharing the same blood or genes. And we all know that this isn't true. I mean, you know, since the dawn of humanity, there have been shifts in change in various levels and scales of diffusion. So the sharing of ideas, but also interchanging of people. So if there's one thing that humanity has is universal, it's movement and fluidity of movement, not sitting still. And so it renders a lot of these ideas moot. However, they still get perpetuated and they still endure and they still last as sort of just so stories or stories that seek to justify and legitimize certain power differentials in society. So, you know, I really like this. Let me minimize my video box there. I really like this this painting here. And it's done by a Chinese national named Shang Xiaogang, and it's called Bathtub. And, you know, the really great thing about art is in a lot of cases, it's up to the viewer to impute meanings as to what they she or he sees. And so this really is about containing things. And I think what this Yahoo gang wanted to sort of convey here is, you know, you know, it's sort of a critique or comment on nationality, I think, race as well. But the way I saw it at first was this container of ideology and ideology is a naturalizing discourse and as a container to keep things contained or trapped and to limit that movement of thought. And I think it really says a lot, and it's quite interesting in that sense. But what we have to understand is despite the great lengths at which politicians or corporate powers or whomever go to to try and bamboozle us ideologically, that these are natural and fixed categories that are immovable and have been with us since the dawn of humanity. We all have to realize that these are cultural and social constructions that are historically, socially and culturally relative that change from context to context and also across time. And they're not biological and neither are they natural, right? So it takes a critical gaze and some critical thinking to realize, oh, okay, wait

a second here. So of course. Anthropologists have become very suspicious of naturalizing discourses, whether they be rooted in some sort of racial ideology or social socioeconomic ideology. And the textbook loves to do this, but we're critical of these things and suspicious of these types of discourses for three reasons. One, they obviously completely sidestep and ignore any kind of evidence. Oh, I don't. I keep thinking I'm going to sneeze and I have these really powerful allergies sneezes. Gee. Oh, sorry, everyone. There we go. So they ignore the sheer relativity of social organization and arrangement, you know, relative socially, but also historically, and try to aggressively convince and persuade through rhetorical means that this is how it is. The poor, let's say, are poor because they're lazy and they don't want to work hard. So that's how it is. Ignore everything else. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep it moving. Right. So that's one to. Are these naturalizing discourses and the ideologies and hegemony that really prop them up, ignore social arrangements and other social contexts in other places. And so there's a really limited focus which renders things quite can render them anyways quite ethnocentric and blocks out any other. Differences in living in social arrangement, in organization, and focuses on the context of hand. And the other thing is. They seem Another reason why anthropologists are wary or leery of such tendencies is there are various tactics ideologically that whether it be politicians or, like I said, corporate power is use to to convince people that things are the way they are in that they're unmovable or unchangeable. Know the caste system in India. You're born into it. Don't bother fighting it. That's just how it is. You know, upward mobility is not a possibility. Well, it is now. But, you know, rewinding decades ago in time, it's not a possibility. And this is done through all kinds of tactics and strategies. Right. So. The last point here is that, you know, these these naturalizing discourses. Seemed to sort of. Not look at social inequalities. Or don't consider them and their dynamics in their origins through ideological sleight of hand. So what I mean by that is, you know, you've got inequalities that seem fixed, although they're not. So the powers that be are going to try and use ideological sleight of hand or various forms of rhetorical means to convince you that don't don't don't bother looking at this. You know, again, using a often sort of used example here in in the West and particularly in North America. Right. Poor people are poor because of their failure to bootstrap or to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. And as such, they can suffer, right, because they're lazy and, you know, various kinds of social Darwinian. Examples or explanations are drawn on to sort of justify why the rich are rich and ideas of structural violence and social suffering, race, inequality, gender exclusion. These are all not drawn on. It's just yeah, don't don't bother with that stuff. Let's just look at how things really are. So this is why we need to be cautious and suspicious of ideological sleight of hand that direct attention away from the real social causes of inequalities. Yeah. So, you know, like any sleight of hand trick, you're trying to follow a ball here. You know, where did it go? I have no idea. Ideology has rearranged it in a rearrange the cups and made it so that you can't find it. So, social categories. A lot of this thinking or these types of discourses, naturalized discourses or naturalizing discourses, are based on social categories. And you'll find that a lot of marginalization, disenfranchisement, inequality in nation states is rooted in multiple social categories working together and their arrangements into hierarchies. And so examples are social categories. And this is just, you know, another one of these more sociologically, sociologically oriented terms. We see we've heard about them. We see them all over the place, right? Class, caste, race, ethnicity. And again, these categories are cultural constructions. They didn't exist as separate containers in history. And yes, they have. But if you look at different socio cultural contexts historically, you know, if you look at in the Canadian Arctic, you know, Inuit peoples first nations throughout, you know, various parts of Canada, Native Americans through parts of the sort of the U.S., we have these concepts that didn't really apply or they did, but in different senses. And so. It gets quite difficult, you know, in sort of contemporary ideological context to to see how these can be natural when they're when

they're not. Again, there is a degree, high degree of cultural and historical relativity here. So classes to start. Are these again these socio economically constructed containers that various groups have developed and constructed to keep people separate or to understand why people are separate, They're more sort of like analytical descriptive categories, but it's all based on relative access to wealth. What's interesting is historically classes in Europe were approached more like the caste system where they were closed and those who were trapped within them as containers were not seen to enjoy any fluidity of movement, particularly in terms of upward mobility. You know, if we think of the medieval feudal system, we can see how this would lock individuals into these enduring categories, which would not only define them, but, you know, as we've been talking about, it would keep them trapped and block them or preclude them from any kind of mobility being sort of changing their lot in life. And it was the French Revolution, along with the Industrial Revolution as well. In the 18th century that really precipitated or brought about a pretty tremendous or marked shift in what these closed sort of containers were, how they were approached and understood. And so what it did or what these two social sort of movements and processes ended up doing was that, yes, it created a shift in who the ruling class was, and it did provide for some fluidity of movement, but it kept the hierarchy as it was. And so there were still haves and have nots, and there sort of justification or raison d'etre justification for existence was a little bit different, but the hierarchies were still there. And we have two artistic representations of the French Revolution, and we have here the old ruling class was displaced by a new ruling class. But again, those hierarchical dynamics were still kept in place. So yes, you did have feudal aristocrats, you know, there was a monarchy and they were displaced and replaced by bourgeois capitalists. But the fact of the matter was that that hierarchy was still there and it still pushed down oppressively on the have nots, and it still afforded the haves with quite a lot of power and and freedom in that respect. And, you know, along with these developments, you know, many years later came some individuals who critiqued this new system, you know, brought on by the industrial revolution of capitalism. And one of the major proponents of critique or criticized us was Karl Marx and his partner, Friedrich Engels, who came, ironically, from a very, very wealthy background. But one of the targets of Marx and Engels was this idea of class. And Marx understood class as key differences in relations to the means of production. Right. And the means of production. This was the set or the suite of knowledge or knowledge is, you know, the. Tools. The what I'm trying to say here, the organization, the places of production, and who had access to access to them. And so the proletariat being the working class. Did not have access of ownership to these places or to this knowledge base or to the tools. But the Bush was a Bush while Bush was he did in that difference. There was a difference Marx understood as a difference based on inherent in enduring conflict. Right. So Marks understood that class consciousness or this awareness of where one was in this hierarchy and what one's lot in life was, how it was prescribed, how it was contained was to arise when people could become aware of common interests in common struggles. And once people could do that, they could develop a sense of solidarity and come together. And that would be the basis that coming together without which would be the basis for a potential revolution or what Marx thought in an ideal sense. And that revolutionary spirit wrought from solidarity would bring about a shift. Right. And for Marx, ideally this would lead to a reorganization and redefining the relations to the means of production where the proletariat could overthrow the bourgeoisie and people could own everything in common, which is a really nice idea. But humans are humans and can be very, very. Interesting and complicated sometimes. And so, you know, we get this idea of of solidarity, which is, you know, a very, very nice idea. And I know, of course, it does exist does exist at the local level. We're in sort of pockets. But unfortunately, the way late modern neoliberal capitalism works is that I think it's pretty much revolution proof in that everyone is so, so focused on making ends meet for themselves that. Any kind of

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solidarity beyond, you know, an immediate recognition of like, oh, this would be so nice to change things. I mean, it could not I don't think anyways, in my perspective happen en masse where you have these classes coming together, setting some differences aside, saying like, let's, you know, gas prices are ridiculous, food prices are ridiculous. You know. No, I think there are too many complexities. I think in the gear work of all gear works of capitalism to almost allow people to do that. And, you know, there have been various efforts made through the Occupy movement and etc., etc.. And it's it's this machine sort of keeps going. Right. Even the pandemic altered the pace or the gate of capitalism. But it didn't you know, it didn't bring it to its knees, which I think some people thought it might, but it definitely did not. So sometimes even biological aspects that being diseases can't can't slow this juggernaut of neoliberal late modern capitalism down. So we get a textbook sort of jumping from these broad based definitions of Marxist understanding of what solidarity is, that being this recognition of class and class consciousness and the sharing of, you know, attributes in similarities, in terms of struggles to bring it reed into this definition of client hedge and then providing in the graphic example of compadres company drawers go oh, can't make it really can't be today. And so this is where you have solidarity of peasants in a Latin American context that need the help of. Those who are in positions of power land owners, owners of factories or businesses where you have poorer people who have children and might need to avail themselves of the services or the support of people who are in higher positions of power. And so when the relationships align themselves and it becomes a possibility, people can, you know, those who are poor or peasants can look to those of of higher class to become the godparents of poor children. And when this when there's an agreement here in this happens, it can actually work well both ways. So for those who are poor, you know, if they're in need of some access to services or even money, you know, they're higher class. Godparents of their children can be there theoretically to provide those services or those resources. And sometimes when it comes to political mobilization in terms of voting, those who occupy higher positions on that class sort of hierarchy can mobilize or marshal the resources socially of those in the lower classes and say, hey, well, you know, I've done this for you know, you can vote for who I want you to vote for, and things will work out this way, right? So it's, you know, an institution that really does tether individuals who occupy upper and lower levels in this hierarchy together, you know, patron client relationship. And it benefits them both. But the solidarity of peasants can sort of be undermined by this and that. And that's what the textbook was sort of aiming at, is when there is these immediate dependencies based on individuals and families where people need support in terms of resources or services, regardless of how tightly knit one class can seem in terms of their struggles, they're going to break from that and be like, Well, I've got some immediate concerns here, so I'm going to go and try and get some some help with that. And so that's my client. It can really undermine this sense of solidarity. In North America, you know, this sort of continent, not necessarily Mexico, but definitely Canada. And the U.S. was understood to be a great, classless society, unlike the U.K., which was riven by sharp class boundaries. Classes here primarily are understood to be defined in terms of income level. You know, the middle class being a huge group with quite a ridiculous range there, which almost, you know, takes in everybody. And so in some ways, it almost renders this idea of class moot unless, you know, you're part of the 1%. Right. But anyways, classes are understood to be based on this idea of income level. They're supposed to be permeable and susceptible to the fluidity of movement. Or, you know, people can move between classes. And of course, lastly, it allows, you know, the North American dream can afford equal opportunity and upward class mobility if the conditions are right, and in some cases it can be. But there are key aspects and we don't you know that the mildly frustrating thing about a class like this is we have to speak in terms of generalities or generalizations. In Anthro 202, I've got a whole lecture on structural violence and social

suffering, and we really get into the dynamics of this and we don't have time for that in this class. But what we can sort of ease into now is this idea of things that can block access to equal opportunity or block upward class mobility can block this idea. I think it's really a theory sometimes only that classes open in impermeable here in North America anyways. So. Upward mobility in the fluidity thereof or the ease of movement is always restricted. Rate in gender and race are two major aspects that will block people from shifting in having access or the ability to make their lives better. The textbook refers to this idea of this color bar, right? And if you think of it literally almost as like a physical bar, that depending on where you're from, your ethnicity, your skin color, you know, everything else that's based on these things, education as well. That again, you know, access there thereto is based on skin color, ethnicity. This has. Really limiting the limiting effects on certain individuals. And the textbook explains that the largest group who is affected by this idea of the color bars are those who are of indigenous ancestry. And that's not I mean, yes, that's true, but there are many, many others who are affected by this color bar almost in binary sort of style thinking. It says while in the USA, the color bar mostly impacts people of African ancestry. Absolutely. But there are others as well. You know, recent immigrants, those who don't have a full command sometimes of English, Mexican immigrants, Native Americans. Right. So in both contexts. You know, it's not really true that in Canada, the color bar has limiting effects on individuals of indigenous ancestry. Yes, absolutely. But there are more individuals, too. But what's telling, though, as almost like a social litmus test and I guess this is why the textbook has sort of split these two is if you look at the majority of those individuals in it who have been the product of the penal system. And you look at prisons in jails in Canada, for the most part, individuals occupying these places are of indigenous ancestry. And in the US, by contrast, those individuals in jails, whether they be for profit, private prisons, jails or municipal prisons, are more federal or state. The people occupying them for the most part, are of African ancestry. And that's. It's a crying shame. And we get into this a lot in some of my other courses, which I would call it my course that used to be taught in ESP HHS, which is addiction and poverty, which is now being offered as part of the Arts First initiative. I think it's part of 140. So we really get into the dynamics of this and look at ethnographic examples. But the color bar is real and it blocks any ability to to move anywhere in, you know, in social life, not just the class system. Um. The authors of the textbook. And many would agree that, you know, prototype of of caste stratification is the system in India that bears some similarities with the medieval feudal system in medieval Europe. But anthropologists, you know, through many ethnographic studies, have applied this term caste to try and describe ethnographic other societies based on one of the two following features. One is and dogma. So that means marrying within one's group only. So these occupational groupings whose members are literally locked down by other groups. So you can see by the the little schema here, the sort of picture that they're sort of oppressed in some ways by, you know, using these naturalizing discourses to lock people into place by saying, well, you know, our group, let's say on the higher end of the social hierarchy, we only marry within ourselves. And it's just written, you know, through an in history and in culture and in our very bodies through genetics, that we need to stay within ourselves. And, you know, other groups do the same thing, but you stick with yourselves and marry amongst yourselves. And so the other, you know, idea here, the other feature is that you've got an indigenous ruling elite who set themselves above those they rule. And so this is very sort of typical of any caste system. And again, endogenous means, those who married in exile is those who marry out of their groups. So these are sort of inward marrying groups who are pretty much self or have historically been self-contained units. And so you can see that naturalizing discourses, ideological dynamics, hegemony as well, all sort of funnel into these rigid hierarchical stratification. And the very idea of a caste really is a container to lock people in and it blocks them off from movement. If things, you know, as per a textbook and I used to talk

about this intro to things are changing quite a lot and there are, you know, government policies and initiatives in India that provide spaces for those occupying the lower rungs of Indian society to attend university. You know, so they are able to get higher paying jobs, but there's still a lot of historically rooted conflict based on caste. And so these are enduring, enduring ideas that aren't easily changed. But that's the work of culture here in the work of social construction and the very power and potency that renders the seemingly quite real. And I said, as I said, enduring and immovable to some people. But so just as an example of the caste system in India, we do have a hierarchy here based on this sort of idealized social body at the top or the head. We have Brahmins, so priests and teachers of those of the educated elite. We have shot Trias. And I again, you know, I'm I'm this is not my area of expertise, but they're one sort of rank lower. And whether that's more conceptual or theoretical, you know, I think there are going to be differences in real life. But these are the warriors and rulers. And then you have the vicious. And again, I don't know, it's rather silly sometimes for me to pronounce words of a language I really have zero fluency in and don't speak. But again, moving down this this conceptual hierarchy, we have farmers, we have traders and merchants, shuras, who are the laborers so represented in this, you know, idealized sort of body politic by the feet. So the lower end and, you know, at the very bottom you have street sweepers or Dalits, street sweepers, latrine cleaners. So you can see two and. These are all sort of groupings of violence, right? Which again, is this sort of idea that there are these four broad or five subgroups which all have their qualities, which I think some scholars and maybe maybe everyday individuals would say are more theoretical. But what you can see here and say here as well is that each one of these is associated with, you know, distance in terms of pollution. So symbolic, literal, figurative, figurative. And so those that are further away from any source of pollution are understood to be sort of cleaner and to occupy these higher rungs. And the further down you get sorry, the closer you get to sources of pollution and having to work with and around air pollution. And you have that symbolic ranking as well and all of the moral categories that come with it. You know, which is extremely unfortunate for those locked into these places and given no freedom of movement. So, you know, in contrast to these this idea of Ana. You know, which is a more theoretical sort of ranking you have. And again, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this correctly, but this idea of a yachties or yachties in India and these are sort of more understood, as I understand it, as local rankings or groupings of people based on everyday jobs and everyday interactions. And these are local cased divisions in, as I said, these all adhere or follow these rules of purity and pollution defined not only by their occupations, but also by the foods that these respective parties have available for them to eat. And in this all, this is ranked according to income level, you know, and so those who occupy the sort of higher rungs are seen to eat more vegetarian based diets. You know, they will eat meat, cleaner meats like chicken or fish. Those on the lower rung eat meats that are understood to be more symbolically dirty or polluted like pork or beef, you know, produced by ungulates with hooves. And that that, you know, eat from the ground and scavenge likely pigs, you know. And so if a pig is eating whatever as an omnivore and then slaughtered and used as food, it's seen as symbolically linked to what that animal aids as sort of being like a dirtier meat. And so again, those who have access to only this owing to availability and price are therefore understood to to again be lower on that rung in some more symbolically polluted. Of course, you have rules that prescribe who might marry whom. And again, this is all according to dynamics and rules and dogma. So groups are really supposed to supposed to marry across or between. And so you have you know, what I find really interesting is you've got these theoretical divisions, but on the ground in terms of everyday life, are people really seeing these divisions as sharply as they are? Let's say when we read a textbook or if we're reading some sort of other material and it seems like no people who do occupy similar ranks don't usually observe these distinctions. And when you get into faster paced, more modern

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urban contexts, they become more theoretical rather than lived in more practical. And you know what we see and I made mention of this just a little while ago, and I used to when I first started teaching answer two or two is there are in the contemporary literature, we see that this caste system is sort of, you know, breaking up a little bit in certain contexts, in particularly urban contexts, where, you know, there are efforts being made by the government or some governments, I should say, to allow those from lower ranking castes to avail themselves of other opportunities. So there is sort of, you know, this idea of upward mobility. Now, as to the reality of that, because I don't do ethnographic research in this area, it's a bit of a shame that there's not enough time or space to add to the reading list. To read more contemporary ethnographic examples, I can see that there's a one. Let me just get here. Ethnographic example from our textbook. Above. Go polar and or go pop her. But the ethnographic example is from 1962. And or you know, you've got this the after profile of who was it? It was Alan Beale's right. And I've never heard of Alan Beals before in my life. But what's nice is we get a little bit of a contrast here. With another who is a Serie Dicky, Probably an American who did ethnographic research in India in 2016 is probably a few years before that. So we get a bit of a contrast there. But what we do know, regardless of this is that there are higher ranking yachties who are marshaling their own social resources to block advancement of those occupying the lower rungs. And it's because of these very potent symbolic associations that might appear real and might seem that those who are occupying the lower rungs are literally a different kind of person. You know, there's they come from different blood. Their genetics might be different and therefore understood to, you know, be valued differently and put on this hierarchy of boundaries. Right. So. This is where, you know, this idea of value being imputed to biology gets very, very tricky, whether it be in the Indian caste context or caste context or when we're talking about race in general and. For all intents and purposes here, I'll just do a few more slides and then we'll leave the rest of this for Wednesday. I really get into this and its origins from the European Enlightenment onwards into oh two, but we'll talk about it here a little bit. But of course, this idea of race was developed by lighter skinned Europeans who eventually came to oppress many groups who had darker skin shades. So over the centuries, they came to oppress and exploit people who had darker skin color and. And so now, you know, moving up through the centuries. We live in the 19th century and you have pretty stable. You know, this idea of this colonial rule that had been established globally. You know, according to this racial hierarchy and ranking and the values associated with it. And so what race did from these early European idiots was it ranked. You know, this sort of genotypic expression, which is phenotype in terms of physical skin color. But that was also tied to this idea of intelligence. And this is where ethnocentrism and there's a whole host of other terms that we don't have time to get into that I do push even further into, too. But this is where it gets dastardly and actually quite scary in terms of the doors that were opened, in terms of sanctioning things like genocide and ethnicity and in the North American context, but also the Norwegian and Australian context in New Zealand as well, this idea of industrial schools and residential schools. Right. And so this idea of race being this umbrella concept for not only skin color, but also intelligence was used as this concept or to justify. Through these naturalizing discourses, diversity and the ranking of that diversity according to this moral scale of worth and of value. But then with that ability and so again, by the 19th century, the Europeans thought that they had this stable sort of social system based on colonialism and colonization, where whether it be more particularly the French and the British, but the Dutch as well, you know, thought that they could pin individuals down in these other socio cultural contexts. But luckily, that did not last very long. You know, relatively speaking. And people were able to push back a little bit and at least get the ball rolling for independence. And we've seen quite a few success stories in terms of pushing back against these old colonial or I guess, imperial powers. In terms of race itself. And I know Alexis had spent a great deal talking about this. So this is a little bit of a

refresher. But anthropologists see individuals the world over as in particular in terms of that phenotypic expression of skin tone is following along along a gradient. Right? There's a gradient. There are no sharp biological discontinuities to say those of this skin color, we can rank them here, those of that skin color, we can rank them there. That's really idealistic and it's false. It's it's. It's just a fallacy in naturalistic fallacy, I guess you can call it that. These divisions, these sharp divisions don't exist. So. Therefore, this idea of race that all anthropologists would say is itself a cultural construction. It doesn't exist and it's ultimately a social category. And we talked about this a little bit before. In the bureaucratic construct that's based on this idea that people can share phenotypic features, skin color that they supposedly share. Right. It serves sometimes more of a bureaucratic purpose. Right? So, you know, okay, if there are hiring initiatives, you know, who is this job going to be for or if there's an investigation criminally, you know, what kind of person was the perpetrator? Right. It serves a bureaucratic purpose, You know, an administrative purpose. But in everyday life, these sharp divisions between black and white and what have you don't actually exist. They they fall along a gradient in the continuum. And what's really interesting and I you know, I did I don't have time to do it here, but in the course that I used to teach in HHS, which was the social determinants of health, we had a whole lecture on this concept of race and health. And I had a guest speaker, which was a former student, a woman of color, a former student of mine who did her undergraduate thesis with me based on racism at the university. Very interesting. So she gave a guest talk and then I talked about this. But this moron who was a psychology professor at Western named Philip J. Rushton, who? He's dead now. He's all dead now. But who really tried to. Conduct some spurious research into a race in intelligence and perpetuate these old 19th century ideas based on mistaken naturalizing discourses. And some of this stuff is just so stupid and so out there and we talk a little or I did talk a little bit about it. The students really found that lecture interesting and there was a huge last time I taught it, or the second last time I thought I had 200 students and there was a huge class discussion. It was really very interesting and fruitful for everyone. And of course I can't use that lecture for this class. But anyways. But we do talk about racism and that being the systematic and systemic oppression of one or more socially defined races by another, which is based on this purported or so-called justifying justification based on. In analogized inherent biological advantage or superiority of the rulers. And the supposed, by contrast, biological inferiority of those that the rulers oppress. Right. And this is 100% bullshit. It's we all know this. Of course it's mistaken. There's no differences in intelligence, you know, between anyone. That intelligence, if you ask me, is firmly rooted in opportunity, which is conditioned by racism, which is conditioned by class, conditioned by opportunity, conditioned by economics and availability and access to resources. Right. Philip J. Rushton I think trying to come up with some silly ranking between whites, blacks and Asians, and it's just it's so dumb. It's stupid. But the other thing we have to be really, really wary of and leery of. Is the fact that intelligence is not from an anthropological perspective, it's not really measurable. That's a psychological construct, which itself is a cultural construction. And all intelligence tests or IQ tests are and were developed by white North American psychologists of a particular socioeconomic class who use as their ideal standard. Students of a particular ethnicity, that being white, middle class college students. There's a gold standard there. Right? And so I've never taken intelligence tests or IQ tests seriously at all. I'm an anthropologist. You know, you can't take something that's the product of a cultural construction in one specific context and say, oh, let's let's measure, you know, do some IQ tests of indigenous individuals or people who occupy different geopolitical contexts or live in different geopolitical contexts. It doesn't it doesn't work. It's there's no how can I say it's not culturally safe, it is not culturally competent, etc.. And so, again, it's sort of a silly idea. Again, it's a cultural construction. Par excellence, whiteness. The textbook touches on this. You know, this is this idea that all people who share white skin color share something in

common. And that's a construction in and of itself. Because it's it's not monolithic and because whites in a lot of contexts occupy a majority position. I guess the only commonality there is maybe a shade of of like it's only been like this is where it gets ridiculous. Everyone rape. It's only been white. Like, it's like a pinky beige. But anyways, you know. Attributes that are supposedly shared by whites vary over time, over place, and are contained in bounded by class. And absolutely, you know, there are some commonalities. So, you know, we have read in the textbook that it's usually white men who have occupied historically and even now these positions of higher status and a lot of them have whiteness as a commonality. And we can see here that usually this has been a horrible reality. White men have occupied higher status in terms of money and in power than white women. And there's still a power differential. You know, I still don't understand I don't understand why there's a pay gap between anyone, you know, regardless of ethnicity, color or gender. But there is.

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