October 8, 2016 - 13:02
This paper relates, contextualizes, and explains three terms used in Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education by Zeus Leonardo: hermeneutics of empathy, hermeneutics of suspicion, and racial realism. The terms are purposely separated to tell different racial and educational stories. These terms can be used as a form of empowerment and offer new truths. These terms, by providing a new vision of the racial predicament, can offer intellectual projects a means to question societal norms.
The first term is the “hermeneutics of empathy” which is a critical part of any criticism whose intention is to shed light on what is concealed behind an interpretation as well as shining it in front for a way forward (Leonardo 2). The hermeneutics of empathy refers to how being-one-with-one-another and one’s capacity to know him/hur/themselves is hindered by the various possibilities of being which the humyn being hold/s. Zeus Leonardo in Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education explains that the hermeneutics of empathy is meant to provide the preconception for understanding the other: “…[A] hermeneutics of empathy is an appraisal of a perspective’s ability to transcend current limitations in racial understanding… [A] hermeneutics of empathy unfolds the project in front of it.” (Leonardo 2). The hermeneutics of empathy asks to what degree an intellectual concept expands people’s knowledge and awareness. Through a racial understanding of the hermeneutics of empathy, intellectual projects can be used to question societal norms by providing a new vision of the racial predicament. Leonardo explains that embracing the hermeneutics of empathy forces people to disentangle conventional ways of being-with-one-another from authentic being-with-one-another as other beings.
The hermeneutics of empathy, as seen through poetry slams, makes possible a new truth. The activity of Poetry Slam has given artists across the world, whose voices might not be otherwise acknowledged, the opportunity to speak their unique truths. Poetry slammers are given the space to relate experiences in which fate and/ or prejudice made the them feel fragmented. Simultaneously, slammers earn self-affirmation by virtue of delivering messengers of import while also expanding and feeding off of the empathy and consciousness of their audiences and fellow slammers. Spoken word artists expand the horizons of understanding of those who listen to them. Empathy toward slammers necessitates an appreciation of the poets’ struggles.
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Zeus Leonardo in Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education uses the hermeneutics of suspicion to unfold what is hidden through a representation (Leonardo 117). The hermeneutics of suspicion is a project of deciphering the distortions contained within a thought experiment. This modern style of explanation and understanding evades obvious or overt meanings in order to draw out less obvious and less flattering truths. Zeus Leonardo in Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education explains what he means by a “hermeneutics of suspicion”: “A hermeneutics of suspicion is a project of negation insofar as it represents interpreting the distortions contained within a though experiment. However, the ultimate goal is not simply mastery but emancipation from falsehoods” (Leonardo 1). Leonardo explains that the hermeneutics of suspicion serves to unmask false or distorted interpretations of society or text. Through the hermeneutics of suspicion, one approaches a text as a veiled or mystified set of representations, whose true meaning, or subtext, needs to be decoded by the knowing reader. The hermeneutics of suspicion calls on people to be skeptical of their conscious understandings and experiences, whether they concern ordinary psychological introspections about one’s desires, or the moral categories political leaders and others apply to themselves and the social world they inhabit.
The hermeneutics of suspicion is relevant to religion as it can be falsified when used to satisfy projections of particular people’s needs or interests, or to appease those who are taken advantage of, or to allow the weak willed to feel self-righteous. Furthermore, the hermeneutics of suspicion can help explain conventional understandings of humyn sinfulness. The hermeneutics of suspicion functions by observing that the reasons that inform the self-understanding of religious agents may be rationalizations that serves to cover up baser intentions. The explanations that seem to support religious behavior may hide a misrepresentation or falsification of religion. Indeed, the suspicion that the consequences of sin are behind what on the surface appear to be reasons for heretical beliefs may be located in a variety of religious traditions. Reason itself becomes an object of suspicion in Calvinism. The recognition of the hermeneutics of suspicion is also suggested in the following surah of the Qur’an:
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
أَرَأَيْتَ الَّذِي يُكَذِّبُ بِالدِّينِ {1}
1. Did you seen him who denies the Retribution?
فَذَٰلِكَ الَّذِي يَدُعُّ الْيَتِيمَ {2}
2. that is the one who drives away the orphan,
وَلَا يَحُضُّ عَلَىٰ طَعَامِ الْمِسْكِينِ {3}
3. and does not urge the feeding of the needy,
فَوَيْلٌ لِلْمُصَلِّينَ {4}
4. so, woe to those who pray,
الَّذِينَ هُمْ عَنْ صَلَاتِهِمْ سَاهُونَ {5}
5. -those who are heedless of their prayers,
الَّذِينَ هُمْ يُرَاءُونَ {6}
6. those who show off
وَيَمْنَعُونَ الْمَاعُونَ {7}
7. but deny aid (@iw_featured 1) .
This is a clear example of a seemingly religious phenomenon, prayer, that conceals a non-religious motive, showing off. The criterion that shows that the prayer is not genuine is the denial of aid.
Applying an Islamic hermeneutics cannot take the path of suspicion, recovery, or reflection as a common guideline for all cases, if these are taken to indicate suspicion in regard to apparent intentions, retrieval of the original meaning offered in a text or experience, or a theoretical neutrality with regard to these cases. Rather, good judgment needs to be applied to each case, bearing in mind that it may be necessary to posit numerous levels of meaning in order to achieve the best religious evaluation of the object of inquiry.
When one makes sense of conscious life naturalistically, in terms of its actual causes, one plays a part in the analysis of the contents of consciousness; that is the essence of a hermeneutics of suspicion. The hermeneutics of suspicion does not only describe the recent history of criticism; it redescribes it, providing a new approach to the state of the field. Though the term was coined several years ago by Paul Ricoeur, the phrase has acquired a new salience for literary and cultural critics (Leonardo 1). The presence of the term, “hermeneutics of suspicion” marks a shift away from the broad theoretical or political questions associated with theory to a new consideration of the particulars of the method: how and why people read.
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Another noteworthy term in Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education by Zeus Leonardo is “racial realism.” Leonardo explains racial realism as an essential, perpetual, and unbreakable aspect of US society: “Racial realism is a perspective that attempts to apprehend actual race relations, while avoiding the negativity of ideology critique and the positivity of utopian thinking. In colloquial terms, it is what it is” (18). Derrick Bell’s racial realism, while not trying to discourage action toward equality, is a framework that is meant to enable race theorists and activists to challenge pervasive oppression by removing distorted ideals in favor of practical actions. Bell maintains that because racial equality is not within the realms of possibility, there is a necessity to narrow the sphere of realisms to racial realism to support legal and social efforts. Adopting this ideology recognizes the need for a mechanism to make life bearable in a society where blacks are a permanent, subordinate class. In spite of the fact that Bell introduced racial realism as a Black project, this logic can be applied to all groups in the U.S. that are subordinate to Whites since the reality for all People of Color is that they were, and are constrained by White supremacy.
Racial realism attributes the continuity and durability of racial inequality to institutional privileges. White people hold onto their privilege whether or not they are aware of them. Racial Realism maintains that racial differences are not naturally, but socially constructed. Racial distinctions are “real” not because whites are biologically or culturally superior, but because dominant social forces perpetually confirm and uphold racial differences and have established institutions that reflect and entrench the doctrine of white supremacy. Racial Realism is an approach that foregrounds an understanding of how the world actually operates, as opposed to fetishizing some romanticized understanding that bears little resemblance to the lives and encounters of oppressed people.
Derrick Bell asserts that people must see racial progress as cyclical, sometimes regressing in disastrous ways, and at other times, gradually making forward strides (Leonardo 12). Bell sees Racial Realism as the most useful and practical lens and praxis to do anti-racist work. Derrick Bell’s reminder of the significance of Racial Realism seems a warning for today given the brutal killings of Jordan Davis, Michael Brown, and Trayvon Martin, among others, the treatment of Rachel Jeantel’s court testimony, the national demonstrations that have animated young activists, the military-state brutality against protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, the discursive somersaults that law enforcement and state institutions regularly maneuver to defend racial profiling, and the obvious and continual reminder that to be black in the United States is to be the target of a ruthless racial violence (Kynard 4). In the wake of national protests after grand juries failed to indict White police officers who murdered unarmed African Americans Michael Brown and Eric Garner, racial realism’s admonishment of placing confidence in the criminal justice system is more pertinent than at any other point in history (Depouw and Matias 246). As for numerous parents, these cases and too many others are horrifying reminders of the personal violence of White Supremacy and of the necessity for collective as opposed to individual action against institutional racism.
Parents of murdered African American youth have led demonstrations and protests against unpunished police brutality and violence toward youth of color. These parents, in the wake of unspeakable suffering and trauma, recognize that theirs is not a private suffering, but a part of an ongoing shared experience chained to White supremacy and institutional racism. These parents have devoted themselves to the work of procuring justice for their children, not only individually, but through a collective transformation of the establishments and authorities that allowed and authorized their murders. Their commitment is evidence of a critical race parenting rooted in racial realism, even in the midst of a loss no parent should have to contemplate.
As a philosophical perspective, racial realism points the necessity of a continuing and a deep-seated dissatisfaction with both the false progress given under the liberalist integration fantasy, and the realities of anti-Black racism, Black impoverishment, and Blacks’ vulnerability to white interests. Teaching resilience and resistance in a racial realism context demands continuous reflection, learning, relationships, and responsibility on the part of critical race parents and their communities. Black parents have and can continue to offer counterstories as a way to explain and demystify how critical race parenting is affected by intersectional identities and contexts, as well as the painful awareness of the need for vigilance within a society that is profoundly invested in institutional racism and other shapes and manifestations of oppression (Depouw and Matias 247). Black people continue to affirm and maintain their struggle for humynity under a racist state and its institutions, while working to avoid uncritical investment that rely on idealistic “changes of heart” or interpersonal colorblindness as the key to ending institutional racism and White supremacy.
Racial realism as an ideology can be used to deconstruct structural racism by exposing color-blind racism, Whiteness as property, Othering, and justifying invisibility. The aim of what Bell calls “racial realism” would be to challenge the notion of racial “equality,” and instead focus on the “real” situation that this will probably never truly exist for people of color. Bell calls on people to direct their energy to accurately understand and respond to their subordinate status. Racial realists recognize that racism will never end, but must instead be seen for what it is so that challenging it becomes its own form of empowerment. People cannot eliminate racism, but they have they can unveil it and contest it.
Works Cited
DePouw, Christin, and Cheryl Matias. "Educational Studies." Critical Race Parenting: Understanding Scholarship/Activism in Parenting Our Children: : Vol 52, No 3. Educational Studies, 12 May 2016. Web. 06 Oct. 2016. <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131946.2016.1169182>.
@iw_featured. "Explanation of Soorah Al-Maaoon." Islamweb. Islam Web, 18 Apr. 2011. Web. 05 Oct. 2016. <http://www.islamweb.net/en/article/135430/>.
Kynard, Carmen. "Teaching While Black (2015) - Education, Liberation & Black Radical Traditions." Education Liberation Black Radical Traditions. WordPress, 2015. Web. 06 Oct. 2016. <http://carmenkynard.org/research/teaching-while-black/>.
Leonardo, Zeus. Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education. New York: Teachers College, Columbia U, 2013. Print.