Paul Gilroy - blog tasks

Go to our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive and open Factsheet 170: Gilroy – Ethnicity and Postcolonial Theory. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or you can access it online here using your Greenford Google login.

Read the Factsheet and complete the following questions/tasks:

1) How does Gilroy suggest racial identities are constructed?

 Gilroy would argue that race makes the identity of oppressors and the oppressed seem fixed and uniform; that racial categories are caused by human interactions and as such those categories are subject to change. 

2) What does Gilroy suggest regarding the causes and history of racism?

 there is scope to evaluate the equality of representations and identities created in the media.

3) What is ethnic absolutism and why is Gilroy opposed to it?

Ethnic absolutism is a line of thinking which sees humans are part of different ethnic compartments, with race as the basis of human differentiation. Gilroy is opposed to ethnic absolutism as it is counter to his argument that racism causes race.

4) How does Gilroy view diasporic identity?

Diasporas are considered to comprise of members of ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious groups who live in countries to which their ancestors migrated. Identities of individuals within a diaspora are formed over time, as a result of the historical, social and cultural relationships within the group and other groups.

5) What did Gilroy suggest was the dominant representation of black Britons in the 1980s (when the Voice newspaper was first launched)

Gilroy was challenging us to consider black culture and Britain – that ‘non-European traditional elements, mediated by Afro-America and the Caribbean, have contributed to new & distinct black culture amidst... Welsh, Irish, Scots and English.’ Gilroy argues that we need to take British slavery into account & consider the influence on history, culture and identity. However, in acknowledging the British slave trade as an essential component to British culture caused political issues in the 1980s

6) Gilroy argues diaspora challenges national ideologies. What are some of the negative effects of this?

 However, diasporic identities can also become trapped within a national ideology; diasporic cultural ideologies and practices exist within a national ideology based upon its social, economic and cultural integrations and as such there is a cultural difference with the diasporic identities.

7) Complete the first activity on page 3: How might diasporic communities use the media to stay connected to their cultural identity? E.g. digital media - offer specific examples.

Minority media can become symbols of empowerment, they can inform and communicate symbols of community and they can potentially mediate a group's participation in the public sphere of the country where they live in

8) Why does Gilroy suggest slavery is important in diasporic identity?

The modern world was built upon a normalised view of slavery, particularly plantation slavery. Slavery was only rejected when it was revealed as incompatible with enlightened rationality and capitalist production. Gilroy argues that the figure of the black slave of ‘the Negro’ provided enlightened thinkers and philosophers an insight into concepts of property rights, consciousness and art.

9) How might representations in the media reinforce the idea of ‘double consciousness’ for black people in the UK or US?

there is a ‘two-ness’ within the identity of the black American which is African diaspora which he argues is simultaneously outside and inside the modern world. Black people are outside modernity as they have been deigned freedom and full citizenship; it was ‘proved’ by supposedly rational race scientists that black people were less evolutionally developed than Europeans unreconciled.

10) Finally, complete the second activity on page 3: Watch the trailer for Hidden Figures and discuss how the film attempts to challenge ‘double consciousness’ and the stereotypical representation of black American women.

The reality of racism and about the black american women.