Letter from Celia to Holt and Higginbotham

Dear Ms. Higginbotham and Mr. Holt,

You say that race is a social construction, but I want to know what this means for my life. A white man purchased me when I was only 14 years old. He raped me multiple times, and both of my children were his. Once they were born, he bought them the same way he bought me. He owned every part of me, and destroyed every part of me as well. But he couldn’t destroy my strong will, my desire for vengeance – when he wouldn’t leave me alone, I killed him. I don’t deny I did it, but it was self-defense – I was defending my body, my children, and my soul. But I was found guilty of murder in the first degree. The law saw me as a slave – not a person, not a woman, but dark-skinned property incapable of defending myself. I was hanged later that year.

So if race is indeed a social construction, if it is indeed created and sustained by members of society and their shared agreement and acceptance of such a construction, how am I supposed to understand this? A white man purchased me and took advantage of me as a young, ostensibly defenseless, black woman. And white, male lawyers practicing law written by white men refused to empathize with my not uncommon situation. How am I supposed to comprehend that this racialized cruelty is in no way natural, that instead it was fabricated in order to construct an identity for me that is based on a severe lack of agency? Moreover, how am I supposed to accept the notion that I am somehow an accomplice in this brutality? As it is, I cannot understand nor tolerate what happened to me when a white man bought my childhood. But somehow the idea that the discrepancy in power between blacks and whites was biologically justified makes more sense than your intellectual babble about race being some sort of cultural creation.

Thoughtfully,

Celia

Questions:

1) The social construction of race (as well as gender, etc.) is generally accepted at least among intellectuals and those interested in the theoretical notion of race. However, what does the social construction of race mean to people who are living the real, harsh consequences of racism in American society? There seems to be a massive disconnect between theory and practice here that needs to be addressed. I’d be interested to read more about Thomas Holt’s claim that “…the discourse of ‘social constructedness’ has an air of unreality about it that may limit its influence” (51). Moreover, 2) how can “social constructedness” be made more practical and beneficial to those oppressed in the U.S.?