Racecraft & Sexuality

This quarter of Humanities Core has been very interesting to me so far because the concept of empire being controlled by factors like race and sex has been obvious, but knowing the finite details behind the tragic events that slaves and women had to endure puts empire in a different light. Each lecture has brought new ideas and knowledge to my attention that adds on more to the definition of empire. My favorite parts to learn about have been the concept of racecraft and how Native Americans viewed sexuality compared to Europeans.

Racecraft has been an intriguing topic for me because I had never thought about race not truly existing. In Professor Block’s second lecture, she talked about how there is no biological form of race, instead there is racecraft which is “the widely repeated practices that turn racism into race.” Her explanations of how race came into form just showed me that Europeans had complete control over how people view Africans and Native Americans. It just makes me think about how race is perceived now. I think that Europeans ruined “race” as a whole. They created standards that should not have been created and forced ideas on everyone that made race into a hierarchy, instead of making race about the differences of culture.

The other topic that I was interested in was how Native Americans viewed sexuality because they saw sexuality in way that was natural, as in something that people did not have to hide or keep private. Contrasted by how Europeans practiced modesty for their religion, Native Americans culture treated sexuality as a natural part of a human’s process that was not frowned upon to bring up. Also the fact that Europeans valued virginity so much and how they implemented that in society’s expectations of women showed me its role in controlling empire. The European’s obsession with virginity was interesting in the fact that they also liked to refer to untouched land as a virgin and that they would take this land’s virginity by settling on it. I believe the European’s loved being the “first” to do something and showing that it gave them power.

Sources:

Block, Sharon. "Trans-Atlantic Slavery" 5 April 2017, University of California,

Irvine, CA.