Multivalent Oppression K - Northwestern 2015

Multivalent Oppression K NDI 2015
NEG
1NC Shell
Aff focus on Blackness as explanatory of overarching
oppression renders it impossible to challenge multivalent
forms of racism & discrimination, increasing suffering
Alcoff 6 (Linda Alcoff a philosopher at the City University of New York who
specializes in epistemology, feminism, race theory and existentialism.
Visible identities Race Gender And the Self 2006 Oxford Press)
Native peoples were represented as vanquished, disappearing, and thus of no account. Thus,
the paradigm of
an antiblack racism intertwined with slavery does not help to illuminate
specific forms and experiences of oppression, where ideologies often relied
on charges of innate evil, religious backwardness, horde mentalities, the
inevitability of extinction, and other projections not used in regard to African
Americans. I will argue that the hegemony of the black/white paradigm has
stymied the development of an adequate account of the diverse racial
realities in the United States and weakened the general accounts of racism
that attempt to be truly inclusive. This has had a negative effect on our ability to develop
effective solutions to the various forms that racism can take, to make
common cause against ethnic- and race-based forms of oppression and to
create lasting coalitions, and has recently played a significant role in the
demise of affirmative action. I will support these claims further in what follows. Criticisms Critics of the
black/white paradigm have argued that, although all communities of color have shared the
experience of political and economic disenfranchisement in the United States,
there are significant differences between the causes and the forms of this
disenfranchisement. Bong Hwan Kim, a Korean American community leader who has worked both as the
director of the Korean Community Center of East Bay in Oakland and as director of the Korean Youth and Community
Center in Los Angeles, blames the black/white binary for disabling relationships among people of color and even for
creating the conditions leading to the Los Angeles civil disaster of April 1992, in which 2300 small Korean-owned
businesses were destroyed by mostly Latino and African American looters. Kim cites the xenophobia marshaled by
African American leader Danny Bakewell before the looting occurred, and argues that the Korean American community
had been and continues to be systematically rendered incapable of responding to such rhetoric because they are not
recognized in the media as a player in racial politics.2 Elaine Kim explains: It is difficult to describe how disempowered
and frustrated many Korean Americans felt during and after the sa-i-ku pok-dong (the April 29 riots). Korean Latinos,
Asian Americans, and the Black-White Binary 253 Americans across the country shared the anguish and despair of the
Los Angeles tongpo (community), which everyone seemed to have abandonedthe police and fire departments, black
and white political leaders, the Asian and Pacific American advocates who tried to dissociate themselves from us because
our tragedy disputed their narrow and risk-free focus on white violence against Asians. ... [T]he Korean Americans at the
center of the storm were mostly voiceless and all but invisible (except when stereotyped as hysterically inarticulate, and
Similar to the Mexican Americans in

Texas, the Korean Americans have been denied the legal or socially recognized
category of being a politicized group at the same time that they are made
subject to group-based scapegoating. Moreover, as this event demonstrates, the
black/white paradigm of race is incapable of theoretically or politically
addressing racism among communities of color, or addressing racism, in
other words, that is not all about white people. A response to this line of
reasoning might be that it is white supremacy which is at the root of the
conflictual relations among communities of color and responsible for their acceptance of stereotypes
mostly female, ruined shopkeepers.) (Kim 1994, 7172)
manufactured by a white dominant power structure. Thus, on this reading, what occurred in Los Angeles can be
reductively explained as the result of white supremacy. Although I often find explanatory arguments that focus on
political economy compelling, it is simplistic to imagine cultural conflicts as the mere epiphenomena of economic forces
To blame only white supremacy for what occurred in Los Angeles

deny power and agency to any groups but the dominant, which is
increasingly untrue. However, one could hold a monocausal account of the
genealogy of racism and still acknowledge that racism has multiple targets
and a variety of forms. Supporting the arguments of both Elaine Kim and Bong Hwan Kim, Juan Perea
argues that because of the wide acceptance of the black/white paradigm ,
other racialized groups like Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native
Americans are often marginalized or ignored altogether (1998, 361). He points out that
with no life or grounding of their own.
would
the concerns of Asian Americans and Latinos cannot be addressed through immigration legislation because not all are
immigrants. This is one reason to reject the claim of some ethnic theorists that these groups will follow the path of
European immigrants in gradual assimilation and economic success (the other reason to reject this claim is their
racialization or status as nonwhites).3 Roberto Suro argues that the black/white binary forces Latinos and other people
of color who are not African Americans to adopt the strategies of civil rights litigation even though these are not
particularly well-suited to Latinos because Latinos are a much more diverse group (1999, 87). For example, any
meaningful redress of economic discrimination affecting Latinos and Asian Americans will need to disaggregate these
groups, as some target of opportunity programs today in fact do, since the gap between median incomes in Filipino
and Japanese households, or between Puerto Rican and Cuban households, makes averaging these incomes useless as
Delgado argues that if ones paradigm identifies

only one group as deserving of protection, everyone else is likely to suffer
an indicator of economic success. Richard
(Delgado 1998, 370). Current civil rights legislation, 254 Latino/a Particularity in Delgados view, has provided legal
advantages for African Americans, unwittingly perhaps, over other people of color. I dont take Delgado to be implying
that the legislation has necessarily been very effective in benefiting the African American population, but that the
language of the law, however much it has yet to be applied, is based on the experience of only one group.
Vote negative to endorse a politics of multivalent

recognition, it is the only access to truly transformative
politics
Snyder 12 (Greta Fowler, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Politics,
University of Virginia, Multivalent Recognition: Between Fixity and Fluidity in
Identity Politics, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 74, No. 1, January, jstor)
Others might be concerned that widening the meaning of a collective identity
its terms of membershipdilutes the solidarity group members feel with one
another and thereby undermines a groups ability to respond effectively to
injustice. Tommie Shelby (2005) has convincingly argued, however, that the solidarity that animates a
collective politics can be fostered through a common (though multifaceted) experience of oppression just
this is the way that Alexander envisions the ties

that bind black people and allow her to say my people she suggests that stories
as through a strong collective identity. Indeed,
of violence and subsequent responsive group knowledge and strategy compel us even as we hold onto the
Challenging the
assertion that people categorized as black are identical does not prevent
such people from sharing a common identification (Brubaker and Cooper 2000). Of
understanding of profound differences between African Americans (2004, 17677).
course, serious political work must be done to convince heterogeneous group members that they share a
Then again, serious political work must also be done to

convince heterogeneous group members that they share a substantive
collective identity. Those engaged in a politics of multivalent recognition are
more aware of and willing to acknowledge the insight of intersectionality
scholarsthat the organized identity groups in which we find ourselves are in fact coalitions, or at
least potential coalitions waiting to be formed (Crenshaw 1991, 1299)than are those engaged in
a politics of monovalent recognition.8 Critics of identity politics warn that the politics of
similar plight (Cohen 1999).
difference undermines cross-identity coalitions by emphasizing difference (Brown 1995; Gitlin 1996; Wolin
a politics of multivalent recognition is actually poised to unburden

groups of excessive ascribed or constructed distinctiveness (Fraser and Honneth
1993). Yet
2003, 47) like the universalist politics of recognition from which I distinguished it earlier. Highlighting the
diversity within identities brings points of similarity across identities to light. Put otherwise, as the symbolic
boundaries of identities are widenedas more and different people are accepted as really black
While a multivalent
politics of recognition centers on a single collective identity, it necessarily has
implications across identities. When black feminist men demand recognition,
for instance, this demand has implications for the categories of black, male
and female. Moreover, inasmuch as identity categories are interrelatedthink, for example, of the
identities once seen as distinct from one another are now seen as overlapping.
dependence of whiteness on blacknessa multivalent politics of recognition as engaged in by one identity
Participation by one identity group in the politics of

recognition may be catalyzed by the participation of another identity group:
witness the mens movement springing from the successes of feminism. But
cooperation between identity groups in a politics of multivalent recognition
can be secured by agreement that more capacious notions of identity can
benefit members of all identity groupsincluding the privileged within
identity groups and members of privileged identity groups. Coalition work is
the only hope for radical transformation in an identity field inasmuch as
resistance on one front in isolation rarely represents a significant departure
from or challenge to the dominant modes of being or production (Iton 2008, 103).
group will affect another.
By drawing attention to similarities across identities, intersectionality, the interrelatedness of group
a politics of
multivalent recognition can foster the kind of cross-identity coalitions that are
necessary to incite radical changes within an identity field .9 Moreover, actors
engaged in a politics of multivalent recognition are predisposed to coalition
work by the understanding that any form of politicsbe it intra-identity or
cross-identityrequires working across difference. By complicating identities
in a way that encourages cross-identity coalitions, an affirmative politics of
recognition can have transformative effects (Fraser and Honneth 2003).
identities, and the benefits that redound from more capacious notions of identities,
Links
Link - Blackness as Monovalent Identity

Their discussion of blackness is monovalent- monolithic
interpretation of black identity
Despite contentious differences in their vision and projection of black
identity,3 there was one striking similarity in the way Panther leaders and
Karenga along with BAM artists presented black people: black people were
presented as fundamentally alike. In the [initial] fight for representation and
recognition, says Cornel West, images re-presented monolithic and
homogeneous Black communities These Black responsesassumed that
all Black people were really alike (1993, 1617). Demands for recognition by
the Panthers and by the US Organization and those they influenced
encouraged the perception that black identity is more fixedmore
homogenous, more staticthan it can possibly be (Markell 2003; Phillips
2007). The privileging of a particular monolithic interpretation of black
identity had problematic effects in terms of both intra and intergroup
relations. Black people that did not accept USs philosophy were rejected as
Negroes: the only thing Negroes produce, Karenga proclaimed derisively,
are problems and babies (Ogbar 2005, 94). While progressive in relation to
white racism, the Black Panther Partys focus on the redemption of black
manhood had repressive effects on black women and gay men (White 1990).
The broader extragroup effects of the recognition politics of the US
Organization and the Panthers were ambivalent at best and
counterproductive at worst. Drawing from a vision of Africa that was
significantly shaped by (racist) Western readings of Africa (Brown 2003; White
1990), Karenga reinscribed the romanticist mythology created by European
ideologies that associated civilization/reason with whiteness and
nature/emotion with blacknessthereby giving credence to the oldest of
racist stereotypes (Mercer 1994, 113). In their vehement rejection of black
identities represented by Moynihan, McCone, the southern civil rights protest
model, the Nation of Islam and US, the Panthers encouraged myopic and
simplistic notions of ghetto authenticity (Ogbar 2005, 122), promoted the
pervasive equation of black with urban poor (Ongiri 2009, 19) and
opened the door for the association of black men with hypermasculine
aggression (Morgan 2006). Both groups sought to reverse stereotypes in the
dominant discourse used to oppress blacks. But as Stuart Hall has
admonished, to reverse the stereotype is not necessarily to overturn or
subvert it (1997, 272). Since the symbolic system remains intactwhite is to
civilization as black is to nature; white is to reason as black is to emotion
meaning continued to be framed by it (2009, 274). By emphasizing
differences between groups and homogeneity within them, a politics of
recognition tends to call up its own stereotypes (Phillips 2007, 31). Given
the monolithic nature of the identity being projected by these groupsblack
identity as homogenous, static, and wholly different from white identityI

categorize the kind of politics of recognition engaged in by the Panthers,
Karenga and figures associated with BAM as a politics of monovalent
recognition. While US had some success in revaluing essential blackness and
the Panthers had some success in revaluing authentic blackness, both
reinforced problematic stereotypes and a hierarchically organized symbolic
system. Looking to other cultural political realities and possibilities
overlooked by political theorists, however, we find demands for recognition
animated by a different goal than public affirmation of a homogenous, static,
and utterly differentiated conception of a collective identity.
Link Authentic Blackness

Blackness ideals are monovalent-enables identity as
mutually exclusive
Thanks to the politics of monovalent recognition, positive representations of
black identity are much more common today than they were prior to the
Black Power movement. Yet as Elizabeth Alexander laments, visions of
blackness are calcified: embraceable black people tend to be athletes,
comedians, musicians and mystics or gurus (Guerrero 1995; Hughey 2009;
Page 1997) while the gangster, the pimp, the hustler, and the welfare queen
still dominate the cultural imaginary (Entman and Rojecki 2001; Tucker 2007).
Indeed, in a 2009 review of the state of race relations, Lawrence Bobo and
Camille Charles report that between half and three-quarters of whites in the
United States still express some degree of negative stereotyping of blacks
(2009, 246). This regime of representation has been produced and
reproduced by both racist ideology and the monovalent recognition
movements that sought to challenge this ideology. The 2008 Presidential
election provides a compelling example of the way in which calcified visions
of group identity are implicated in both the reproduction of the
marginalization of black Americans and repressive intragroup dynamics.
Consider the questions that dogged Barack Obama during his primaryis he
black enough/too black? One prominent commentator opined that these
questions, asked by both blacks and whites, were borne of the belief that 50
Cent, not Barack Obama, represents the real black America (Coates 2007).
Indeed, the notion that real blackness resides exclusively in the ghetto
among the poorest and most disenfranchised of the African American
populationthe notion endorsed by the Black Pantherscontinues to be
pervasive in post-Black Powerculture (Ongiri 2009, 19). This association
undermines the ability/willingness of both black and white people to see
those who identify as black but do not fit these cultural constructions (i.e.,
Obama) as really black. Moreover, these questions suggest that
blackness is incompatible with traits exemplified by Obamaincluding, as
comments by Joe Biden in January 2007 implied, his articulateness and
intelligence (Coates 2007). Presenting a collective identity like black as
homogenous, static, and bounded as monovalent recognition movements do
enables that identity to be understood as one part of a symbolic system in
which identities are mutually exclusive. And in such a system, as Jacques
Derrida, Stuart Hall, and others have forcefully argued, the traits associated
with one group will always be privileged. Highlighting the multiplicity of black
identity and unmooring blackness from a specific and limited set of
characteristics challenges white dominance without promoting intragroup
repression or exclusion. that all black people are the same. Moving
beyond the symbolic confines set by the hegemonic group or
negating the negation involves highlighting the difference that

exists within identity categories through demands for recognition.
Link - Slavery
Their monolithic depiction of Blackness ignores material
evidence of multivalent responses to the condition of
slavery
Matthew 11 (Christopher N. Matthews, Hofstra University , African
Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter, 3-1-2011, The Archaeology of Race and
African American, http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=2009&context=adan)
The chapter reproduced here is my favorite since it exemplifies how I worked
to weave together cultural, historical, and political economic factors to
produce an archaeological interpretation that highlights both agency and
critique. My argument is that capitalism is based on a particular worldview
that supports the agency of actors engaged in society as individuals; thus
individual agency is a key to participation and to the reproduction of the
capitalist system. However, individual agency comes at a price. While many
pay this price in labor, debt, and sacrifice, others, usually those most
marginal to the mainstream and thus least able to afford the costs of
participation, developed alternatives that I consider as critiques. These
critiques pointed out the shortcomings and flaws of the system capitalism
created, but as 1 show in the book, most of these critiques failed to generaa
te substantial change as they were adopted by people too heavily invested in
that system to see beyond it. My chapter on African Diaspora communities
tells a different story by showing how the material culture of African
Americans exhibits astute and critical readings of racism and the foundations
of capitalism that helped to dehumanize them as slaves and, thus,
commodities. Being so marginalized, in other words, African Americans felt
and saw what capitalism most expects from its participants and thus were in
a unique position to develop a critical standpoint against it. I also emphasize
the importance of considering multivalency in the interpretation of African
Diaspora materials. The fact that objects can produce and sustain multiple
meanings allowed African Americans to develop autonomous though partly
hidden cultural systems informed but not controlled by the white capitalists
who surrounded them. Similarly, I highlight the value of considering
assemblages so that we are able to consider how artifacts were ordered and
related in particular ways that allow us to see the African American cultural
critique of capitalism. Finally, I emphasize the social value of religious
expression. As religion is based in a community of believers I describe how
the material expressions of ritual action and religious belief, from marking
colonoware bowls to experiencing conversion in African American
Christianity, informs us about how communities critical of racism and
capitalism were reproduced through time. Ultimately, I argue that an
archaeology of capitalism provides vital insights into the origins and
meanings of African American culture from which America as a whole still has
so much to learn.
Link - Black/White Binary

The aff only describes one facet of race but claims that it
is a universal approach this renders anyone outside of
Black/White invisible
Perea 97 [Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law, Juan,
RACE, ETHNICITY & NATIONHOOD: ARTICLE: The Black/White Binary Paradigm
of Race: The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought, California Law
Review, October, 1997, 85 Calif. L. Rev. 1213, p. 1254]
most of this
scholarship claims universality of treatment while actually
describing only part of its subject, the relationship between Blacks
and Whites. Race in the United States means more than just Black
and White. It also refers to Latino/a, Asian, Native American, and
other racialized groups. Accordingly, books titled "Race in America" or "White
Racism" that only discuss Blackness and Whiteness claim a universality
of scope that they do not deliver. These books offer a paradigmatic
rendering of their subject that excludes important portions of civil
rights history. Authors of such books need to be aware that they
promulgate a binary paradigm of race that operates to silence and
render invisible Latinos/as, Asian Americans and Native Americans.
Accordingly, they reproduce a serious harm.
My objection to the state of most current scholarship on race is simply that
Link White/NonWhite
Collapsing of multiple identities into non white erases
difference
Bowman 1 (Kristi, prof of law @MSU, JD from Duke, Duke Law Journal The
New Face of School Desegregation, http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?
50+Duke+L.+J.+1751)
White privilege is reinforced when racial and ethnic groups are
conceptualized not as White, African American, Latino, Asian American,
Native American, etc., but instead as White or Non-White. Acknowledgement of
differences among groups disappears in a White-Non-White paradigm,
because instead of allowing racial or ethnic groups to identify themselves by
what they are,238 all Non- [*pg 1787] White groups are explicitly identified by
what they are not, and only by reference to whiteness. Although aspects of a specific
Non-White group might be easier to identify than "White culture," this occurs because White culture is
The culture of a specific Non-White group appears distinctive

because it deviates from the norm. Professor Martha Mahoney notes that a term such as
mainstream culture.
"racially identifiable" in the context of housing and urban development generally refers "to locations that
racially identifiable
means racially identifiably Non-White. The White-Non-White paradigm reinforces the power
dynamic of the acted and the acted upon, of presence and absence, of the defining and the defined. The
power that Whites receive from their unearned privilege in the White-NonWhite duality "is, in fact, permission to escape [the debate of race] or to
dominate."240 When federal courts reinforce this dynamic in the name of school
desegregation, they perpetuate the normalized, mainstream practices and institutions
that reinforce racial inequality. It is often these practices and institutions that are most
are racially identifiably black."239 The same is true in the context of education:
damaging in terms of perpetuating oppression because they are not usually questioned. They are
Whites are
normalized, and all Non-Whites are collapsed into the category of "other." Like
conceptualized as just normal.241 In contemporary school desegregation jurisprudence,
African Americans, Latinos have been the victims of state-sanctioned educational segregation;242 but if
courts gave attention to the present differences between African Americans and Latinos, courts' remedial
orders would likely be structured differently. As will be discussed below, the recognition of Latinos and
African Americans as distinct groups that continue to suffer different harms is easily within reach.
Link Rejection of State

Rejection of sovereignty is another link there are groups
that strive for inclusion within the state. Their criticism of
the state erases their identity.
Perea 10 (Juan, Cone, Wagner, Nugent, Johnson, Hazouri & Roth Professor
of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law, An Essay On The Iconic
Status Of The Civil Rights Movement And Its Unintended Consequences,
Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, Vol. 18:1, Fall, p. 57,
http://scs.student.virginia.edu/vjspl/18.2/Perea.pdf]
There are important reasons to recognize the Chicano, AmericanIndian, and Native Hawaiian struggles for civil rights. With respect to the
Chicano and American-Indian struggles, it is important to counter the belief, demonstrably untrue, that
groups other than African Americans are latecomers to civil rights struggle. To the extent that the
legitimacy of civil rights claims rests on a history of struggleand the African-American Civil Rights
the legitimacy of Latino and

American-Indian claims for civil rights depends on acknowledgement
and recognition of their histories of struggle.54 It is also important to recognize
that the substantive content of civil rights for groups other than
African Americans may be different than the civil rights demanded by African
Americans. To illustrate, the African-American struggle has focused on
equality and full inclusion in American society. Equality and inclusion are remedies for
centuries of servitude and forced exclusion. American-Indian and Native Hawaiian
struggles for civil rights, on the other hand, focus on the attainment
and enhancement of sovereignty. Greater sovereignty for American Indians
and Native Hawaiians is the remedy for the denial of sovereign status
Movement suggests that this is true to a large extentthen
historically characteristic of relations between the federal and state governments and Indian nations. Civil
rights in the form of enhanced sovereignty for indigenous peoples, although different than the civil rights
sought by African Americans, remain civil rights. Civil rights are, in important part, remedies for particular
As advocates for civil and human

rights generally, we do not want to fail to recognize a struggle for
civil rights merely because it differs from the African-American
struggle.
forms of oppression experienced by some peoples.
Link White supremacy

Obsession with White Supremacy is bad white racists
have mastered that game. The result of their project is to
reinscribe whites as the principal point of reference.
West 93 (Cornell, Race Matters, p. 98-99]
The project of black separatism -- to which Malcolm X was beholden for most of his life after his first psychic conversion to
the Nation of Islam -- suffered from deep intellectual and organizational problems. Unlike Malcolm X's notion of psychic
conversion, Elijah Muhammad's idea of religious conversion was predicated on an obsession with white supremacy. The
basic aim of black Muslim theology -- with its distinct black supremacist account of the origins of white people -- was to
preoccupation with white supremacy still allowed

white people to serve as the principal point of reference. That which
fundamentally motivates one still dictates the terms of what one
thinks and does -- so the motivation of a black supremacist doctrine
reveals how obsessed one is with white supremacy. This is
understandable in a white racist society -- but it is crippling for a despised people
struggling for freedom, in that one's eyes should be on the prize, not
on the perpetuator of one's oppression. In short, Elijah Muhammad's project remained
counter white supremacy. Yet this
captive to the supremacy game -- a game mastered by the white racists he opposed and imitated with his black
supremacy doctrine.
Link Opacity/Fugitivity
Fugitivity is a monovalent recognitionSnyder 12 (Greta Fowler, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Politics,
Like Patricia Williams, I want to maintain that there is a distinction between
good visibility and bad visibility. Bad visibility, as Williams argues,
involves hypervisibility, objectification, making a spectacle, stereotyping.
Good visibility, on the other hand, involves a recognition of individuality that
includes blacks as a social presence (Williams 1991, 121). While a politics of
monovalent recognition encourages visibility, the kind of visibility it
encourages often ends up falling on the negative side of Williams spectrum.
On the other hand, I believe that a politics of multivalent recognition can
make black Americans visible in ways that better their lives.
Alternative
Alt = Endorse Multivalent Blackness

Our alternative should be to endorse multivalent
blackness- more nuanced visions of black identity
Poet and cultural critic Elizabeth Alexander champions an alternative in her
2004 book of essays entitled The Black Interior.4 Alexander is explicit about
the importance of presenceof recognitionto African American life and
politics (2004, 8). Yet her critique of narrow descriptors of blackness and
her concern with the straightjacketed constraints of racial ideologies
imposed from the mythic within (Alexander 2004, 204) communicates a
wariness of the politics of monovalent recognition. Writing to black cultural
producers, Alexander seeks to reorient black cultural politics. Alexander
opens with the following concern: Visions of black identityboth selfrepresentations and representations of black identity in the mainstream
have become calcified (2004, ix). Drawing the connections between
calcification, oppression of the group and repression of the individual,
Alexander argues that cultivating and accessing that metaphysical space
the black interiorfrom which complex and nuanced visions of black
identity spring is of the utmost importance. While the black interior harbors
racialized visions of identitythe interior of which Alexander speaks is
specifically blackshe Alexander insists that a social identity like black need
not be seen as a constraint (2004, 5). In the black interior, black artists have
found black selves that go far, far beyond the limited expectations and
definitions of what black is, isnt or should be (5). Only such black selves can
combat not just devaluation, but calcification. Integral to achieving a more
capacious notion of black identity is the proliferation of different identities
signified as black. Monolithic versions of blackness frequently contradict one
another (Alexander 2004, 6); this was certainly true of blackness as
represented by the Panthers and US. These groups did not allow the different
visions to peacefully coexist, but Alexander advocates for a world in which
different conceptions of blackness are enabled to coexist side-by-side in
contradiction. In this world, people insist on the importance of black as a
social identity while embracing the multiplicity of blackness. As the visions of
black identity enabled to sit side-by-side proliferate, Alexander envisions
being black going so far as to be emptied of meaning and reclaimed as
possibility (2004, 8). An abundance of contradicting meanings renders
blackness more malleable. In the absence of a determinate definition of real
blackness, black people are freed of expectations about what black is, isnt,
and should be, and empowered to realize selves that go beyond stereotype
and romance (203).
Impacts
No Solvency for racism

aff can never solve white racism
Perea 10 [Cone, Wagner, Nugent, Johnson, Hazouri & Roth Professor of
Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law, Juan, AN ESSAY ON THE
ICONIC STATUS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND ITS UNINTENDED
CONSEQUENCES, Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, Vol. 18:1, Fall, p.
57-58, http://scs.student.virginia.edu/vjspl/18.2/Perea.pdf]
recognizing a fuller scope of civil rights struggles is important
in helping us understand the full measure of unremedied past
injustice. If we take no account of denials of civil rights to Mexican
Americans, American Indians, and Native Hawaiians, among other
groups, then we underestimate dramatically the scope of white
racism. Every struggle against racism and oppression deserves
recognition. The iconic status of the African-American Civil Rights Movement is a testament to the
Lastly,
power of righteous struggle. While it certainly deserves its hallowed place in our history and our hearts, we
If we
care about justice, we should always be attuned to struggles for
greater justice, whether or not they resemble the African-American struggle for civil rights. As
inspiring as the African-American struggle has been, we may find
additional inspiration, and more possibilities for justice, if we cast
our gaze beyond the African-American Civil Rights Movement, gazing further back, further
should be careful that its long shadow not obscure the importance of other righteous struggles.
forward, and to the side.
They calcify negative racial classifications

Leong 10 (Nancy, Assistant Professor, William and Mary School of Law,
JUDICIAL ERASURE OF MIXED-RACE DISCRIMINATION, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
LAW REVIEW, Vol. 59, 59 Am. U. L. Rev. 469, p. 551]
Multiracial individuals have long vexed courts and commentators because they challenge and
confound existing racial categories. Despite the recognition that
multiracial individuals have received in some contexts, the reliance of
antidiscrimination jurisprudence on categories has generally excluded plaintiffs
identified as multiracial. This absence obscures animus directed at
multiracial individuals. Moreover, the dominance of racial categories
calcifies existing racial classifications and the stereotypes
associated with them, preventing society from moving beyond these
arbitrary categories.
Focus on the black-white binary excludes analysis of

racism that affects other oppressed populations.
Perea 97 (juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida, "The
Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race: The "Normal Science" of American
Racial Thought," Oct. 5, JSTOR]
Paradigms of race shape our understanding of race and our definition of racial
problems. The most pervasive and powerful paradigm of race in the United
States is the Black/White binary paradigm. I define this paradigm as the conception that
race in America consists, either exclusively or primarily, of only two constituent racial groups, the Black
scholars of race reproduce this paradigm when they write and

act as though only the Black and the White races matter for purposes of discussing
race and social policy with regard to race. The mere recognition that "other people of
color" exist, without careful attention to their voices, their histories, and
their real presence, is merely a reassertion of the Black/White paradigm. If
one conceives of race and racism as primarily of concern only to Blacks and
Whites, and understands "other people of color" only through some unclear
anal- ogy to the "real" races, this just restates the binary paradigm with a slight
and the White. Many
concession to demographics. My assertion is that our shared understanding of race and racism is
this Black/White binary paradigm.27 This paradigm defines, but

also limits, the set of problems that may be recognized in racial discourse .
essentially limited to
Kuhn's notion of "normal science," which further articulates the paradigm and seeks to solve the problems
perceivable because of the paradigm, also applies to "normal research" on race. Given the Black/White
paradigm, we would expect to find that much research on race is concerned with understanding the
dynamics of the Black and White races and attempting to solve the problems between Blacks and Whites.
the
paradigm dictates that all other racial identities and groups in the United
States are best understood through the Black/White binary paradigm. Only a few
Within the paradigm, the relevant material facts are facts about Blacks and Whites. In addition,
writers even recognize that they use a Black/White paradigm as the frame of reference through which to
Most writers simply assume the importance and

correctness of the paradigm, and leave the reader grasping for whatever
significance descriptions of the Black/White relationship have for other people
of color. As I shall discuss, because the Black/White binary paradigm is so widely
accepted, other racialized groups like Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native
Americans are often marginalized or ignored altogether . As Kuhn writes, "those
that will not fit the box are often not seen at all ."29
understand racial relations.28
Alcoff 6
Linda Alcoff a philosopher at the City University of New York who specializes
in epistemology, feminism, race theory and existentialism. Visible identities
Race Gender And the Self 2006 Oxford Press
What I would argue here is that the black/white binary is operating in this case to obscure the real
problems. Conservatives argued that Asian Americans are nonwhite so that their case can be used to
But this would follow only

if the category nonwhite is undifferentiated in terms of how racism
operates. Others wanted to argue that Asian Americans are being treated
here as white, and thus have no interest in an antiracist coalition. It is
certainly true that it is a white power structure that privileges such things as
test scores. But Asian Americans were still not actually being treated as
whites. Takagi points out that the claims of overrepresentation conveniently
ignored the large disparity between Asian American admission rates and
white admission rates (the percentage of admissions in relation to the pool of applicants), a
dismantle affirmative action for all: if they can get in, we all can get in.
disparity that cannot be accounted for by SAT scores or grades. That is, holding scores and grades
constant, white individuals were more likely to be admitted than Asian Americans, even if in real numbers
on some campuses Asian American acceptances outnumbered whites. (To give one example of this, the
Asian American Student Association at Brown University discovered that between 1979 and 1987 there
was a 750 percent increase in Asian applications, even while there was a steadily declining admission rate
from 44 percent in 1979 to 14 percent in 1987) (1992, 28). So there has been a covert quota system
operating against Asian American applicants in many university systems, which is covered over by their
high numbers of admission and is no doubt motivated by the same fears of yellow 262 Latino/a
Particularity peril that were used to justify discrimination in the 1800s. Asian Americans are not seen as
white despite the fact that they have so-called white attributes because they are seen as unassimilable;
The
concern about overrepresentation targeted Asian Americans exclusively; the
only people similarly targeted in the past were Jews, and these cases are
clearly attributable to anti-Semitism. This concern certainly has not been raised in regard to
they are suspected of retaining loyalty to Asian countries and thus of being a threat to the nation.
the poor, who are underrepresented, or to the children of alumni or to athletes, both of whom are
overrepresented. Takagi traces the empirical studies, public discourse, and policy changes prompted by
this concern over overrepresentation to the argument that affirmative action should ignore race and
address only class, even though the claim that racism can be addressed in this way can be easily
empirically disproved given the disparity of SAT scores within classes across racial difference.6 What this
case demonstrates is not that all nonwhites should be grouped together in all cases of attempts to redress
social inequities, but precisely the opposite: they should not be lumped together. The problems of
discrimination that Asian Americans face in higher education in the United States have had to do with
overt policies that apply quotas based on specific forms of racism directed against them. The
problem
of discrimination that African Americans and Latinos have faced in higher
education has to do with the use of SAT scores and the quality of their public
education, which is vastly unequal to that received by whites. Racism is the
culprit in each case, but the means and ideology vary, and thus the effective
redress will have to vary. Takagi recounts that some Asian American activists
who wanted to end the unfair quotas on their admission rates called for a
meritocracy of admissions based on SAT scores and grades. But this would block only one form
of racism, leaving others not only intact but ideologically reenforced. Meritocracy is still an illusion highly
disadvantageous to African Americans and Latinos.
Thus, strategies that seek to eliminate

discrimination, including argumentative strategies used to defend affirmative
action, must either be made specific to certain historically disadvantaged
groups or, if they are general, must consider their possible effects on other
groups. Only a rich knowledge of the specific and variable forms of racism in
the United States will make such considerations possible.
Erases Arab Americans

Black/White conceptions erase Arab Americans
Chen, et al., Department of Educational Psychology, University of Texas,
2006
[Grace, Exploring Asian American Racial Identity, Cultural Diversity and
Ethnic Minority Psychology, Vol. 12, No. 3, p. 461]
The history of race relations in the U.S. reveals that racial minorities
have been subjected to widespread oppression based on the color of
their skin (Omi & Winant, 1994; Takaki, 1993). Unfortunately, a by-product of the
Black/White binary model of race relations is that non-Black
racialized groups (e.g., Latinas/os, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, and
Native Americans) have been largely understudied in psychological
research on race and racial identity. A starting point of our study is that for Asian
Americans, in particular, a clear distinction must be made between the constructs of racial identity and
ethnic/cultural identity, even as we recognize the overlap and interplay between the two (Helms &
Richardson, 1997).
Makes it impossible to challenge Muslim Terrorist

representations
Gotanda 11 [professor of law at Western State University College of Law.
Coeditor of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement,
he has written on racial theory, constitutional colorblindness, and Asian
American jurisprudence, 2011 [Neil, The Racialization of Islam in American
Law, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
637, September, p. 184]
After 9/11, the Muslim terrorist trope altered the American understanding of Islam. This article argues
the Muslim terrorist in our popular culture should not be seen as

new but within an established tradition of racializing Asian
Americans. The article employs three dimensions of racialization:
raced body, racial category, and ascribed subordination. The raced
body is the brown body of immigrants and descendants of
immigrants from North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and
Southern Asia. Muslim as a racial category has acquired meaning
beyond religion and now also describes a racial category: those
whose ancestry traces to countries where Islam is significant. Linked
to that category are the stereotypes of terrorist, spy, or
saboteurunderstandings within the tradition of characterizing
Asian Americans as permanent, unassimilable foreigners. Inscribing
the linked racial category and ascribed subordination of permanent
foreignness upon the brown raced body is the racialization of
Muslims into Muslim terrorists.
that
Erases Latinos/as
Their characterizations of race that categorize everything
as part of a
Black/White paradigm this excludes Latinas from
analysis, which reproduces racism
Perea 97 [Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law, Juan,
Review, October, 1997, 85 Calif. L. Rev. 1213, p. 1214-1216]
[*1214] This Article is about how we are taught to think about race. In particular, I intend to analyze the
role of books and texts on race in structuring our racial discourse. I believe that much writing on racism is
structured by a paradigm that is widely held but rarely recognized for what it is and what it does. This
paradigm shapes our understanding of what race and racism mean and the nature of our discussions
about race. It is crucial, therefore, to identify and describe this paradigm and to
demonstrate how it binds and organizes racial discourse, limiting both the scope and the range of
legitimate viewpoints in that discourse. In this Article, I identify and criticize one of the most salient
features of past and current discourse about race in the United States,
the Black/White binary
paradigm of race. A small but growing number of writers have recognized the paradigm and its
limiting effect on racial discourse. n2 I believe that its dominant and pervasive character has not been well
established nor discussed in legal literature. I intend to demonstrate the existence of a Black/White
paradigm and to show its breadth and seemingly pervasive ordering of racial [*1215] discourse and
the Black/White binary paradigm operates

to exclude Latinos/as n3 from full membership and participation in
racial discourse, and how that exclusion serves to perpetuate not only
the paradigm itself but also negative stereotypes of Latinos/as . Full
membership in society for Latinos/as will require a paradigm shift
away from the binary paradigm and towards a new and evolving
understanding of race and race relations. This Article illustrates the kind of
contribution to critical theory that the emergent Latino Critical Race Studies (LatCrit) movement may
make. This movement is a continuing scholarly effort , undertaken by Latino/a
scholars and other sympathetic scholars, to examine critically existing structures of
racial thought and to identify how these structures perpetuate the
subordinated position of Latinos/as in particular. LatCrit studies are, then, an
legitimacy. Further, I intend to show how
extension and development of critical race theory (and critical theory generally) that focus on the
previously neglected areas of Latino/a identity and history and the role of racism as it affects Latinos/as. I
identify strongly, and self-consciously, as a Latino writer and thinker. It is precisely my position as a Latino
outsider, neither Black nor White, that makes possible the observation and critique presented in this
My critique of the Black/White binary paradigm of race shows

this commonly held binary understanding of race to be one of the
major impediments to learning about and understanding Latinos/as
and their history. As I shall show, the paradigm also creates significant
distortions in the way people learn to view Latinos/as. I begin with a review
Article.
of the principal scientific theory that describes the nature of paradigms and the power they exert over the
formation of knowledge. I then analyze important, nationally recognized books on race to reveal the binary
paradigm of race and the way it structures race thinking. After reviewing these popular and scholarly
books on race, I analyze a leading casebook on constitutional law. Like other books, textbooks on
constitutional law are shaped by the paradigm and reproduce it. Then, by describing some of the legal
paradigmatic presentations of
race and struggles for equality have caused significant omissions
struggles Latinos/as have waged, I will demonstrate that
with undesirable repercussions. Thus, I demonstrate the important role that legal history
[*1216] can play in both correcting and amplifying the Black/White binary paradigm of race.
Answers To
AT: Perm
Starting points matter all of our link evidence prove they
foreclose multivalent analysis of oppressions, means the
perm cant solve
Perm is severance - Their 1ac made exclusive/prioritizing
claims about Blackness like (examples)
_______________________________________
The method of the aff doesnt take into account for
violence between communities - marginalization and
disavowal of agency are DAs to the perm
Alcoff 2 Linda Martn, , Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the
CUNY Graduate Center, Latino/as, Asian-Americans and the Black-White
Binary, http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25115747?
uid=3739256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102494840991
although all communities of color have
shared the experience of political and economic disenfranchisement in the U.S.,
there are significant differences between the causes and the forms of
this disenfranchisement. Bong Hwan Kim, a Korean American community leader who has
worked both as the Director of the Korean Community Center of East Bay in
Oakland, CA, and as Director of the Korean Youth and Community Center in Los Angeles, blames
the black/white binary for disabling relationships among people of color
and even for creating the conditions leading to the Los Angeles civil disaster of
April 1992, in which 2,300 small Korean owned busi nesses were destroyed by
mostly Latino/a and African American looters. Kim cites the xenophobia
marshaled by African American leader Danny Bakewell before the looting
occurred, and argues that the Korean American community had been and continues to
be systematically rendered incapable of responding to such rhetoric
because they are not recognized in the media as a player in racial politics.20
Critics of the black/white paradigm have argued that,
Elaine Kim explains: It is difficult to describe how disempowered and frustrated many Korean Americans
Korean Americans across the

country shared the anguish and despair of the Los Angeles tongp'o (community),
which everyone seemed to have abandoned - the police and fire
departments, black and white political leaders, the Asian and Pacific
American advocates who tried to dissociate themselves from us because our
tragedy disputed their narrow and risk-free focus on white violence
against Asians ... the Korean Americans at the center of the storm were mostly voiceless and all
felt during and after the sa-i-ku p'ok-dong (the April 29 "riots").
but invisible (except when stereotyped as hysterically inarticulate, and mostly female, ruined
Mexicans in Texas, the Koreans have been denied the

legal or socially recognized category of being a politicized group at the
same time that they are made subject to group based scapegoating.
Moreover, as this event demonstrates, the black/white paradigm of race is incapable of
shopkeepers .. .).21 Similar to the
theoretically or politically addressing racism among communities of color,

or racism, in other words, which is not all about white people. A response to this line of
reasoning might be that it is white supremacy which is at the root of the conflictual relations among
communities of color, and responsible for their acceptance of stereotypes manufactured by a white
dominant power structure. Thus, on this reading, what occurred in Los Angeles can be reductively analyzed
as caused by white supremacy. Although I do find explanatory arguments that focus on political economy
it is far too simplistic, as I think Karl Marx himself knew, to imagine

cultural conflict as the mere epiphenomenon of economic forces with no life
or grounding of their own. To blame only white supremacy for what occurred in Los
Angeles would also deny power and agency to any groups but the dominant,
which is increasingly untrue. We must all accept our rightful share of the blame, whatever
often compelling,
that turns out to be in particular instances, and resist explanations that would a priori reduce that blame to
zero for communities of color. Supporting the arguments of both Elaine Kim and Bong Hwan Kim, Juan
because of the wide acceptance of the black/white paradigm,

"other racialized groups like Latino/as, Asian Americans, and Native
Americans are often marginalized or ignored altogether."22 He points out that
the concerns of Asian Americans and Latino/as cannot be addressed through
immigration legislation because all are not immigrants, which is one of the reasons to
Perea argues that
reject the claim of some ethnic theorists that these groups will follow the path of European immigrants in
gradual assimilation and economic success (the other reason to reject this claim is their racialization).23
Turn Permutation footnotes other oppressions, repeats

inclusions/exclusions
Perea 97 (Juan , Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law,
Race, Ethnicity & Nationhood: Article: The Black/White Binary Paradigm of
Race: The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought, California Law
Paradigmatic descriptions and study of White racism against Blacks,
with only cursory mention of "other people of color," marginalizes all
people of color by grouping them, without particularity, as somehow
analogous to Blacks. "Other people of color" are deemed to exist only as unexplained analogies
to Blacks. Thus, scholars encourage uncritical readers to continue to
assume the paradigmatic importance of the Black/White relationship
and to ignore the experiences of other Americans who also are
subject to racism in profound ways. Critical readers are left with
many important questions: Beyond the most superficial
understanding of aversion to non-White skin color, in what ways is
White racism against Blacks explanatory of or analogous to White
racism against Latinos/as, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and
others? Given the unique historical legacy of slavery, what does a deep understanding of White-Black
racism contribute to understanding rac-isms against other "Others?" Why are "other people
of color" consistently relegated to parenthetical status and nearnonexistence in treatises purporting to cover their fields
comprehensively? It is time to ask hard questions of our leading writers on race. It is also
time to demand better answers to these questions about inclusion,
exclusion, and racial presence, than perfunctory references to "other
people of color." In the midst of profound demographic changes, it is
time to question whether the Black/White binary paradigm of race
fits our highly variegated current and future population. Our "normal
science" of writing on race, at odds with both history and
demographic reality, needs reworking.
AT: No Link were not politics of recognition

Aff is form of politics of recognition- demanding
recognition of white or the state
I will end by highlighting some additional contributions this article makes to the political theoretical
literature on recognition. Too often, the encounter between dominant and marginalized groups has been
rendered in overly simplistic ways: marginalized groups demand recognition from privileged groups;
offer a broader
conception of where and how the politics of recognition occurs. We are right
to be skeptical of the argument that the Black Panthers were really
demanding recognition of whites or of the state: the Panthers were primarily
directing their message to black people and young, urban black men in
particular. Yet the Panthers did seek to change the white authority structure
and the (intentional) publicization of the Panthers symbolic mediations of
black identity (Ongiri 2009) made it a force in the struggle over what blackness meant to the
marginalized groups demand recognition from the state. In this article, I
American public. Instead of a unidirectional struggle for recognition, this examination of cultural politics
demands for recognition are part of a multidirectional struggle for

influence over the dominant cultural order, a struggle that occurs in multiple
mediums and multiple sites, at multiple levels and between multiple parties .
shows that
While the cultural studies literature enhances political theory by encouraging political theorists to widen
their vision of the politics of recognition thereby altering calculations about the possibilities and pitfalls of
this politics, I also believe that greater interaction between the two disciplines can benefit cultural studies.
Integrating the insights of cultural studies into the political theoretical framework of recognition enables us
to specify the links between representation and power/resistance in a way that those engaged in the
discipline of cultural studies often fail to do (see Alvarez et al. 1997, 6). In this article ,
I have
developed and offered a normative argument for a standard of political
cultural productionmultivalent recognitionthat is more nuanced than
positive imagery (Alexander 2004) and less problematic than representational correctness
(Shiappa 2008). Despite the United States commitment to formal equality, racial
identity continues to matter. Being identified as black means one is
significantly more likely to face demeaning and constraining stereotypes,
suspicion, distrust, poverty, illness, discrimination, and violence. The
hegemony of colorblindness has effectively reconstituted white power by
undercutting political claims made by marginalized groups even as the
cultural representations that underwrite racial inequality continue to circulate
(Bonilla-Silva 2009; Snyder 2011). In this context , a politics of multivalent recognition has
an important role to play: challenging white dominance without incurring the
significant costs of internal repression and exclusion.
AT: Coalitions Bad, Erase Blackness

Their ev on coalitions doesnt account for multivalent
analysis that functions not to erase or subsume
difference, but to highlight diversity within identities
while maintaining ability to foreground Blackness
Critics of identity politics warn that the politics of difference undermines
cross-identity coalitions by emphasizing difference (Brown 1995; Gitlin 1996;
Wolin 1993). Yet a politics of multivalent recognition is actually poised to
unburden groups of excessive ascribed or constructed distinctiveness
(Fraser and Honneth 2003, 47) like the universalist politics of recognition from
which I distinguished it earlier. Highlighting the diversity within identities
brings points of similarity across identities to light. Put otherwise, as the
symbolic boundaries of identities are widenedas more and different people
are accepted as really blackidentities once seen as distinct from one
another are now seen as overlapping. While a multivalent politics of
recognition centers on a single collective identity, it necessarily has
implications across identities. When black feminist men demand recognition,
for instance, this demand has implications for the categories of black, male
and female. Moreover, inasmuch as identity categories are interrelated
think, for example, of the dependence of whiteness on blacknessa
multivalent politics of recognition as engaged in by one identity group will
affect another. Participation by one identity group in the politics of
recognition may be catalyzed by the participation of another identity group:
witness the mens movement springing from the successes of feminism. But
cooperation between identity groups in a politics of multivalent recognition
can be secured by agreement that more capacious notions of identity can
benefit members of all identity groupsincluding the privileged within
identity groups and members of privileged identity groups.
AT: Alt Denies Blackness

Our alt is not some vague universalization or emptying of
identity, but rather opens spaces for particular
differences within and among Blackness
Identity claims are integral to this negation of the negation. Yet these
demands are neither for recognition of a universal identity (i.e., human,
citizen) nor for recognition of a political identity that cuts across identity
groups (i.e., the left). Unlike these forms of recognition politicswherein
actors deemphasize the identity that marks them as particularthose who
seek multivalent recognition explicitly identify themselves as particular (i.e.,
as black). In other words, for those engaged in multivalent recognition, it
is not the existence of [identity] categories that is the problem, but rather the
meaning and particular values attached to them (Crenshaw 1991, 1297; also
see Hancock 2007). Contesting the meaning and values attached to an
identity category requires working with, within, and through a particular
identity: it requires offering racialized but not delimited visions of identity.5
While black people engaged in a politics of multivalent recognition demand
recognition as black, they demand recognition as not only black. They
simultaneously demand recognition for other salient aspects of their identity
demanding recognition as black and. This and can draw attention to the
membership of black individuals other categorical identity groups (black and
woman, black and gay, black and poor, etc.)6 But it also strategically links
blackness with traits, values, abilities, talents, and predilections with which
the collective identity has not previously been predominantly associated. In a
politics of multivalent recognition, black feminist lower-class men, black gay
Jews, and rural black working-class single mothers demand recognition of
their embodiments of and claim to blackness, and in turn strategically deessentialize blackness. They demand to be recognized as black despite the
fact that they contradict stereotypes of/about blackness. If a politics of
monovalent recognition aims for fixity and thus transparency (Markell 2003)
in identity, then a politics of multivalent recognition is about unfixing an
identity.7
Real visions of blackness come from multivalent viewsnot only demanding one category but define themselves
Some might say that such a politics dilutes black identity. But those who
would do well to remember that although strong visions of real blackness
do have significant effects, they do not have an anchor in a metaphysical
reality. The politics of recognition cannot achieve a mimetic correspondence

with the real in either its monovalent or in its multivalent incarnations, for,
as Cornel West notes, no one has unmediated access to the real Black
community (1993, 18). Seeking to broaden public perception of an identity
is not to betray it, but to recognize the diversity that was always already
inherent in it. Alexander has pointed to the diversity that bubbles under the
surface of anthologies that aim to present the black arts and politics of a time
as unified. And as Madhavi Sunder (2001) argues, this diversity is increasingly
breaking the surface: individuals engaged in cultural dissent are
demanding not only membership within a particular category, but the right to
define it on their own terms.
AT: Alt = Vacating Identity

Alt is not deconstruction of identity
The unfixing that a politics of multivalent recognition aims to accomplish,
however, should be distinguished from the deconstruction that some antiidentity theorists hope to achieve. Unlike an anti-identity politics such as that
recommended by Monique Wittig (1985), the ultimate purpose of a politics of
multivalent recognition is not to do away with those collective identities that
have been subject to oppression. Whereas Wittig envisions a world without
identity (more specifically, gender) distinctions, those who engage in a
politics of multivalent recognition aim for a world in which identity categories
are more capacious. Highlighting the multivalence of the identity category
its multiple meanings, the diversity withinstretches its symbolic
boundaries. Disparate individuals demands for recognition of their claim to
blackness prompt group members and members of other identity groups to
broaden their understanding of black identity. In doing so, they complicate
the distinctions drawn between black and white, distinctions that help
reproduce inequality. A politics of multivalent recognition operates on the
assumption that we need not do away with identity categories to break down
hierarchical symbolic distinctions and transform identity relations. Unfixing is
distinct from deconstruction that goes all the way down. In fact, there are
good reasons for sustaining particular identities as actors engaged in a
politics of multivalent recognition seek to do. Certainly, the concept of race
and racial identity has justified the unjust treatment of black Americans. Yet
while implicated in oppression, categorical distinctions like black and
white have a critical role to play in addressing oppression, enabling
individuals to talk about racial injustice and to develop a sense of we
(Crenshaw 1991, 1297). Second, even those who do not understand racial
distinctions as natural may view them as inextricable (Young 1990). A politics
of multivalent recognition is premised on the assumption that identities are
resignifiable, but not infinitely reconstructable. Finally and perhaps most
importantly, these identities are not simply sites of oppression but sources of
pride and meaning (Bickford 1997; Kompridis 2007, 286). Monovalent
movements insist that black Americans are talented cultural creators;
multivalent movements reinforce this point, while suggesting that multiple
and disparate black identities spring from the cultures created by black
Americans. In light of the inherent and strategic importance of black identity,
not to mention its indelibility, those engaged in a politics of multivalent
recognition are not only concerned with demonstrating the contingency of
identity as are those engaged in a strategy like parodic subversion (Butler
1999). A politics of multivalent recognition is equally concerned with the
revaluation of an identity category as a whole. Elizabeth Alexander, for
example, refrains from presenting certain poems in certain spaces due to her
sense that the poems would reinforce problematic stereotypes. Those

engaged in a politics of multivalent recognition seek to change blackness
valence by changing its connotative field of reference. To delegitimize a
symbolic system that marginalizes black people, they must bring greater
visibility to specific ways of realizing black identity.
The idea of multivalent thinking forces us to challenge

assumptions of identity
As I hope this argument demonstrates, even those actors who agree that
demands for recognition are simply a means to the end of equality can
deploy these demands in different ways, with different effects: even if
essentialism is deployed strategically, it invites a monovalent reading of
identity and the problems associated with it. The distinction between
multivalent and monovalent recognition offers a more nuanced picture of
what Iris Young calls the politics of positional difference (2007), thereby
enabling political theorists and actors to specify and attend to the range of
problems facing those who engage in the politics of recognition. Additionally,
the idea of a politics of multivalent recognition forces us to rethink our
assumptions about recognition politics and identity politics. While presenting
the politics of recognition as a kind of identity politics, I have resisted Nancy
Frasers conclusion that identity politics reifies identities. The concept of
multivalent recognition not only distinguishes the politics of recognition from
the politics of authenticity and the politics of essentialism, it presents
recognition as a means to address their problematic consequences. On the
other hand, I present multivalent recognition as distinct from deconstructive
anti-identity approaches. In its multivalent form, the politics of recognition
has the potential to transform identity relations while maintaining identities.
AT Black white Binary Good/Necessary

Binary structure is wrong Look through a lens of
multivalent oppression
Westmoreland 13
Peter Westmoreland Doctrine Race political and social professor at the university of Miami Area of
specialization in Continental Early Modern Rousseau Racism in a Black White Binary: On the Reaction to
Trayvon Martins Death
Can this outcome be right? Does racism require a binary structure? Let us
consider three proposals. First, we may make choices to reject the binary (as
Perea and Alcoff do). We can attack it in at least two ways philosophically.
First, we can recognize that Foucaults argument is subject to rebuttal. One
approach would question whether the texts he examines are representative
of the dominant race paradigm of the time. In the philosophical discourse on
the formation of the race concept, for example, we have influential thinkers
such as Kant, Hegel, and de Gobineau who reject binary thinking. Rousseau,
on whom Foucault relies, models the people as sovereign-subjects in an
explicit attempt to subvert binaries in the states structure. We could perhaps
write a counter-history of the relationship between race and the state that
eschews the binary; possibly it shows up but does not have the influence
Foucault suggests. Another version of the first proposal would emphasize the
black-white binarys arbitrariness and contingency. Once we diagnose the
paradigm, distinguishing races outside its terms according to their own voices
and concerns can mitigate the binarys force. Similarly, I would note that the
binary structure is a contingent feature of our race discourses history, even
on Foucaults scheme, and we can move against binary race thinking through
practical advancement of the concerns of races outside the terms of the
binary. This response assumes that the binary, while powerful, is not
incontrovertible and can be separated from the us versus them war
structure. Let us now pursue a second proposal: we accept the binary
structure of racism. We have seen there are positions, evidence, and
arguments indicating that race discourse has a binary paradigm and that this
has been the case since the origins of modern racism. If race discourse is
binary and we act to destroy the binary, then, we may not be opening the
door to identifying new forms of racism. Instead, we destroy the historical
meaning of race altogether with the result that all oppression is detached
from racialization (for better or worse). Conversely, we may rigidly
circumscribe the boundaries of racism to one binary structure or another,
which allows us to think some oppression outside of racialization. Either way,
we may then move beyond thinking oppression predominately in racial terms.
We may ask whether some forms of oppression, although taken as forms of
racism, may be better addressed through nonracial discourses. (I have
already indicated that nativism may not fit the concepts of racial
oppression.)19 Now, though, we may uncover a new conceptual tension. The
first proposal lets race remain a hegemonic concern (as it is for Perea and
Alcoff), which means that forms of oppression that do not suit the race model
of discourse may be covered over. The second proposal protects nonracial

oppressions from racialization, but it deemphasizes race discourse and the
binary so that actually racist oppression may be overlooked. I do not believe
there is a resolution to this tension. However, I also do not believe that we
need one. Thus, a third proposal: What we need to do is recognize that
there is a tension. Rather than empowering the reduction of forms of
oppression to racisms or rejecting the binary or tightly limiting its
scope, we realize that there are many forms of oppression. Some will
suit racial analyses completely or partly; others will not. We must actively
reflect on sites and instances of oppression to determine which modes of
oppression are in operation and provide the best resources we can manage.
We have many possible modes of analysis for the Trayvon Martin case: antiblack racism, racism between minorities, cultural insensitivity, Stand Your
Ground laws, the culture of fear, the culture of policing, the voicelessness of
children, and so on. All of these topics and others deserve our consideration if
we are truly to generate justice for Trayvon Martin and other victims. Some
concerns may merit racialization and others may not. Reflection on such
diverse concerns is not easy or failsafe, but at the least it means that we may
take advantage of all available resources to identify effectively victims,
modes of oppression, and options for relief. The third proposal is a significant
advance beyond previous positions. If pursued rigorously it has the potential
to delimit what counts as racial and nonracial oppression so that we may
recognize and pursue proper responses. The racism pluralists move to
expand the concept of racism does not give nonracial oppressions focused
consideration, which leaves open the problem of giving race hegemonic
status; that is, pluralist analyses raise the fear that all forms of oppression
may be coded as racial. At least, the third proposal requires us to consider
strategically where race begins and ends so that we do not overlook or crush
into the discourse of race nonracial oppression. What proposal three does, in
effect, is open the air for the voices of victims to speak and be heard with
more clarity, which I believe is the intent of racism pluralists. What proposal
three does not do is concretely demarcate racial and nonracial forms of
oppression, which is both a strength and a weakness. Salient details will vary
case to case. Firm determinations may not be possible in many cases, but
recognizing that difficulty is itself something that the third proposal helps to
enable by calling our attention to the multivalent nature of oppression. As
thinkers have recognized that race discourse in the United States is
pluralistic, the black-white binary paradigm has become both untenable and
common. By taking the binary seriously, the structure of race and racism will
fundamentally change. What comes is uncertain, and may not be for the
better, but if we are sensitive to both racial and nonracial considerations we
have a chance to attend to once hidden modes of victimization. We owe this
to all victims, including Trayvon Martin.20
Black/white binary fails- 4 reasons

Nakagawa 13
Scot nakagawa, 9-4-2013,Nakagawa is a Lifelong political activist, community

organizer, organization builder."Race Beyond Black and White: Four Reasons
to Move Beyond the Racial Binary,"
With that in mind, here are four reasons to move beyond the black-white
racial binary: 1. Ignorance of our multi-racial history is the enemy of civil
rights. Heres an example. In the 1990s, the evangelical right rose to power in
part through exploiting widespread homophobia. But, while they appeared to
be narrowly targeting LGBT people, they were using those attacks on LGBT
rights to simultaneously talk about civil rights more generally. They did so by
contrasting LGBT people with blacks who they said have a legitimate claim
to civil rights because, they argued, blacks were able to pass a litmus test of
suffering and morality without which civil rights cannot be conferred.
Therefore, civil rights are special rights. The success of that argument relied
upon the widespread belief among what we nowadays refer to as lowinformation voters, that civil rights are black rights, not American rights that
have historically been withheld from black people. Right wingers exploited
this confusion and doubled down on it, inciting anti-black racism by claiming
these (black) rights were being taken too far by a civil rights lobby LGBT
people wanted a piece of because it had captured control of Congress. 2. We
are all profiled differently by race, but all of the different ways in which we
are profiled serve the same racial hierarchy. For instance, in the 1960s, just
as the civil rights movement was cresting and black urban uprisings were
dominating the news cycle, news stories appeared profiling Asian Americans
as a model minority. That profile, which privileged Asians as a super-minority
that was out-whiting the whites, claimed that Asians in the U.S. had
managed to climb to success not through protest nor by way of riots, but
through hard work and quiet cooperation with the powers that be. This story
of Asian success begged the question, if Asian Americans can do it, why cant
black people? The media provided the answer: blacks arent succeeding
because theyre a problem minority. Ever since, the model minority myth
has been used as a lever of racial injustice on the fulcrum of anti-black
racism. 3. Race is central to the struggle over citizenship in America. The
contest over voting rights, for instance, is a fight about citizenship rights, who
has them, and who gets to decide in the matter just as much as is the
question of the right to citizenship of new immigrants, including those
without documents. At the center of these fights is a struggle over
nationality, power, and control that revolves around race. We will never
resolve these questions until we are able to grapple broadly with the issue of
race and citizenship as regards all people of color. Until then, we are all just
fighting different battles in the same war, but without the common cause
necessary to build a winning coalition. 4. In order to achieve racial equity, we
need to complicate our understanding of race. The black-white racial binary is
as much a part of the fiction of race in America as dubious science about
brain size and intelligence. The truth may not, by itself, set us free, but it
might at least get us headed in that direction. As we head toward a majorityminority future, wed do well to acknowledge the complexity of the story of
race in America. Just ignoring it might be good for ratings, but it wont make
it go away.
AT: Binary is Correct

7 reasons wrong with the white/black binary
Alcoff 6
Just as the protection of the right of property advantages the propertied, and the protection of free
speech increases the influence of those who are articulate and can afford microphones, TV air time, and
so on ... the Equal Protection Clause produces a social good, namely equality, for those falling under its
coverageblacks and whites. These it genuinely helpsat least on occasion. But it leaves everyone else
unprotected (1998, 37071). Put in more general terms, these arguments can be summarized as follows:
1) The black/white paradigm has disempowered various racial and ethnic

groups from being able to define their own identity, to mark their difference
and specificity beyond what could be captured on this limited map . Instead of
naming and describing our own identity and social circumstance, we have had descriptions foisted on us
2) Asian Americans and Latinos (among others) have historically been

ignored or marginalized in the public discourse in the United States on race
and racism. This is a problem for two reasons, first, because it is simply unfair to be excluded from
what concerns one, and second, because it has considerably weakened the analysis of
race and racism in the mainstream discussions. To explain the social
situation of Asian Americans or Latinos simply in terms of their de jure and
de facto treatment as nonwhites is to describe our condition only on the
most shallow terms. We must be included in the discussions so that a more
adequate account can be developed. 3) By eliminating specificities within
the large black or nonwhite group, the black/white binary has undercut the
possibility of developing appropriate and effective legal and political
solutions for the variable forms that racial oppression can take. A broad
united movement for civil rights does not require that we ignore the specific
circumstances of different racial or ethnic identities, nor does it mandate that
only the similarities can figure into the formulation of protective legislation. I
will discuss an example of this problem, one that concerns the application of
affirmative action in higher education, at the end of this chapter. 4)
Eliminating specificities within the large black or nonwhite group also
makes it difficult to understand or address the real conflicts and differences
within this amalgam of peoples. The black/white paradigm proposes to
understand all conflicts between communities of color through antiblack
racism and white supremacy, when the reality is more complex. 5) For all
these reasons, the black/white paradigm seriously undermines the possibility
of achieving coalitions. It is obvious that keeping us in conflict with each
other and not in coalition is in the interests of the current power structure. I
would add to these arguments the following two. 6) The black/white binary
and the constant invocation of all race discourses and conflicts as between
blacks and whites has produced an imaginary of race in this country in which
a very large white majority confronts a relatively small black Latinos, Asian
Americans, and the Black-White Binary 255 minority. This imagery has the
effect of reenforcing the sense of inevitability to white domination. This is not
from outside.
the reality of racial percentages in almost any major urban center in the country today. Nonwhites
outnumber whites in New York, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, and come very close in San
Francisco, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. There is thus a real potential for a major shift in political power,
but there are two main challenges before this shift can take place. The first is the ability of nonwhites to
unite and to also make common cause with progressive antiracist whites. The second is the Electoral
College. The original intent of the Electoral College was to protect small states and also to create a buffer
between the hoi polloi and the government, but the current effect of the Electoral College, given these
changed demographics, has the added advantage of disenfranchising the occupants of cities generally
and people of color specifically from influencing national electoral outcomes. The fact is that if the popular
vote determined elections, the cities would have the determining numbers of votes, since this is where
the majority of U.S. citizens now live and where the trend of movement is toward. The numbers and
concentrations of people of color in the United States means that we are quickly moving past the politics
of recognition, in which people of color must clamor for recognition from the all-powerful majority, and
reaching the politics of power negotiation, in which we can negotiate from a position of power rather than
having to rely exclusively on moral appeals .
The white majority will not maintain its near

hegemonic political control as new configurations of alliances develop.4
Moreover, the white majority is far from monolithic, splintering most notably
along gender and class lines: the gender gap has widened in electoral
politics along with the gap between union and nonunion households, with
droves of white women and white union members voting the same as the
majority of people of color. Thus, thinking of race only in terms of black and
white produces a sense of inevitability to white domination and thus a sense
of fatalism, even though the facts call for the opposite. I believe this issue of
imagery is very significant: it affects peoples choices, voting (or nonvoting) practices, and the
level of energy they are willing to devote to political activism. By opening up the binary imagery to
rainbow images and the like, as Jesse Jackson did with great effect in his presidential campaign, we can
more accurately and thus helpfully present the growing and future conditions within which political action
The next
argument that I would make in regard to the black/white binary is that it
mistakenly configures race imagistically as exclusively having to do with
color, as if color alone determines racial identity and is the sole object of
racism. Equating race with color makes it seem as if all the races other than
black and white must be lined up between them since they clearly represent
the polar extremes. There is certainly a racist continuum of color operating in
this and in many countries, but my point is that this continuum is not the
only axis by which racism operates. Some have taken the horrific hierarchy
of adoption preferences in the United States, that runs basically from white
to Asian to Latino to black, as representative 256 Latino/a Particularity of a
continuum of color. Related to this idea is the claim that Asian Americans and
Latinos are closer to white and will eventually become white. Let me address
and contestations will occur. This is in everyones interests (or at least, the majoritys). 7)
this latter idea first. The claim that Asian Americans and Latinos will become white is first of all premised
on the assumption that we have two choices of racialized identities: white and black. The assumption
presupposed is then that if a group is not economically and politically located at or near the bottom of the
society, which the black/white paradigm associates exclusively with blackness, then such a group is
assumed to have achieved whiteness. But class does not perfectly map onto race: the poor come in all
colors. Moreover, there is significant racial and class variety within each of these large amalgamated
groups with highly variant median incomes.
Binary is wrong-doesnt account for any other races other

than black and white
Alcoff 6
Wanting to avoid this outcome, however unlikely it Latinos, Asian Americans,

and the Black-White Binary 249 might be, the court decided to embellish on
the arguments made in appeal. Justice Charles J. Murray interpreted legal
precedent to argue that the terms black and white are oppositional
terms, from which he concluded that black must mean nonwhite and white
must exclude all people of color. Thus, by the law of binary logic, Chinese
Americans, after having become Native American, then also became black.
Of the many questions that one might like to go back and pose to Charles
Murray, perhaps the most obvious is the following: if black and white are
oppositional terms, then, instead of black meaning nonwhite, doesnt it just
as logically follow that white could mean nonblack, in which case all people
of color except African Americans would be white? This conclusion is no
more or less fallacious or absurd than Murrays conclusion that black means
nonwhite. That such an idea was, apparently, beyond the imagination of the
court at that time begins to reveal the strategy at work here. Defining whites
as only those without one drop of other blood has been a tool to maintain
a clear and distinct border around white identity. On the other hand, the
borders of other identitiestheir distinctiveness from each otherare not
important for the law to define and maintain. The controlling term here is
not race but whiteness. To be black is to be nonwhite, but this equation is
not reversible if one is using the usual meaning of black today, since for
Murray black includes virtually every Asian American, Latino, Native
American, and mixed race person as well as all those of African origin.
Although this case began with a strategy to link the Chinese to American
Indians, it ends in a ruling that prescribes a black/white binary. The ruling
essentially allowed the state to make one all-purpose argument against the
civil and political rights of nonwhites, thus increasing the efficiency with
which it could maintain discrimination. Asian Americans and Latinos have
been tossed back and forth across this black/white binary for 150 years (see
Haney Lopez 1996; Lee 1993; G. Martinez 1998; Okihiro 1994; Omi and
Winant 1986; C. Rodrguez, 2000). To continue with the example of Chinese
Americans, in 1860 Chinese Americans were classified as white in Louisiana.
By 1870 they were classified as Chinese. But in 1900, the children of
Chinese and non-Chinese parents were reclassified as either white or black.
Other states had similarly convoluted histories of classification. In 1927 the
U.S. Supreme Court ended this confusion and defined the Chinese as
nonwhite, thus more firmly subjecting them to all the segregationist and Jim
Crow legislation then in effect. Similar stories of variable racial classification
can be told about Mexicans in Texas and in New Mexico, Japanese in
California, and other groups. Needless to say, the variable classifications tell
a story of strategic reasoning in which arguments for legal discriminations
are deployed against people of color by whatever opportune classification
presents itself in the context. Contrary to what one might imagine, it has not
always or even generally been to the advantage of Asian Americans and
Latinos to be legally classified as white. An illustration of this is found in
another important legal case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954,
just two weeks before they issued the decision in Brown vs. Board of
Education. The case of Hernandez v. Texas involved a Mexican American
man convicted of murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to life
imprisonment (G. Martinez 1998; Suro 1999). His lawyer appealed the
conviction by arguing that 250 Latino/a Particularity the absence of
Mexican Americans on the jury was discriminatory, making reference to the
famous Scottsboro case in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned (after
many years) the conviction of nine African American men on the grounds of
an absence of African Americans from the jury. But in the Hernandez case,
the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Mexicans were white people of Spanish
descent, and therefore that there was no discrimination in the all-white
makeup of the jury. Forty years later, Hernandezs lawyer, James DeAnda,
recounted how he made his argument appealing this ruling: Right there in
the Jackson County Courthouse, where no Hispanic had served on any kind
of a jury in living memory because Mexicans were white and so it was okay
to bring them before all-white juries, they had two mens rooms. One had a
nice sign that just said MEN on it. The other had a sign on it that said
COLORED MEN and below that was a hand-scrawled sign that said
HOMBRES AQUI [men here]. In that jury pool, Mexicans may have been
white, but when it came to natures functions, they were not. (Suro 1999,
85) In fact, in Texas not only were Mexicans subject to Jim Crow in public
facilities from restaurants to bathrooms, they were also excluded from
business and community groups, and children of Mexican descent were
required to attend a segregated school for the first four grades, whether
they spoke fluent English or not. Thus, when they were classified as
nonwhite, Latinos were overtly denied certain civil rights; when they were
classified as white, the de facto denial of their civil rights could not be
appealed. Although the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Texas courts
decision in the Hernandez case, its final decision indicated a perplexity
regarding Mexican American identity. The court did not want to classify
Mexicans as black, and it didnt want to alter the legal classification of
Mexicans as white; since these were the only racial terms the justices
thought were available, they ended up explaining the discrimination
Mexicans faced as based on other differences, left undefined. Thus, oddly,
the court upheld that there was racial discrimination against Mexicans, but it
denied that Mexicans constituted a race (Haney Lopez 1998, 18283). One
clear lesson to be learned from this legal history is that race is a
construction that is variable enough to be stretched
opportunistically as the need arises in order to maintain and
expand discrimination. Racism, in other words, molds racial categories to
fit its design. And the legal history also shows that white supremacy has
moved Latinos and Asian Americans around the classification schema for its
own benefit. Nonetheless, one might take these legal cases to indicate that
discrimination against African Americans was the paradigm case that U.S.
courts stretched when they could to justify discrimination against other
nonwhites, and thus to provide support for the black/white paradigm of
race. Modeling Arguments The distinguished historian John Hope Franklin
made such an argument at the first official meeting of the Race Relations
Commission, which was convened by former U.S. President Bill Clinton to
advance his initiative for a national dialogue on race. Latinos, Asian
Americans, and the Black-White Binary 251 Franklin maintained that racism
in the black/white sphere developed first in North America when slavery
was introduced in the Jamestown colony in 1619 and has served as a model
for the treatment of race in the United States. Attorney Angela Oh, also
serving on the commission, argued against Franklin on this point, using the
example of the uprising of April 29, 1992, in Los Angeles to show that the
specific history and racist treatment of Asian Americans needs to be
accounted for in order to understand the complex varieties of racism that
sparked that event. I just want to make sure we go beyond the black-white
paradigm ... because the world is about much more than that, she said (see
Wu 2002, 3235). Frank Wu, commenting on this exchange, tries
diplomatically to unite both Oh and Franklins points. He affirms that
African Americans bear the greatest burden of racial discrimination but
adds that the Los Angeles uprising needs to be understood in relation both
to African American history as well as Korean American history (and, I would
add, Latino history, since Latinos were the largest number of persons
arrested). Wu advocates the following commonsense approach: Whatever
any of us concludes about race relations, we should start by including all of
us. ... Our leaders should speak to all individuals, about every group, and for
the country as a whole. A unified theory of race, race relations, and racial
tensions must have whites, African Americans, and all the rest, and even
within groups must include Arab Americans, Jewish Americans, white
ethnicities, and so forth. Our theory is an inadequate account otherwise. (Wu
2002, 36) The question Wu does not address directly is whether the
continued acceptance of the black/white paradigm, what Oh is contesting
and Franklin is defending, will allow such a comprehensive account. To say
that racism has been modeled on slavery might or might not entail a black/
white binary, depending on how much is presumed in the concept of
modeling. But the reality of race and racism in the North American
continent has been more complicated than black/white since the initial
conquest of native peoples by European Americans. Slavery was itself an
idea put forward by Columbus when he suggested that the indigenous
population could be enslaved in order to bring profits to the Spanish crown
because the amount of gold and silver here was initially found wanting. The
concept of race itself was inspired in large measure without a doubt by the
discovery of native peoples and the subsequent debates among learned
Europeans about their nature, their humanity, and their rights. Later on,
emerging legal practice developed typologies of rights based on typologies
of peoples, such as the exclusionary laws concerning testimony in court, as
mentioned earlier, which grouped blacks, mulattoes, and Native
Americans. The Chinese laborers brought to the West in the 1800s were
subjected to very specific rulings restricting their rights not only to vote or
own property but even to marry other Chinese. This latter ruling outlasted
slavery and was justified by invoking images of Asian overpopulation,
another quite specific racist ideology. To control their reproduction, Chinese
women were allowed to come as prostitutes but not as wives, a restriction
no other group faced. The Mexicans defeated in the Mexican-American War
were portrayed as cruel and cowardly barbarians, and although the Treaty of
Guadalupe-Hidalgo ratified in 1848 guaranteed for the Mexicans who stayed
in the United States full rights of 252 Latino/a Particularity citizenship, like
the treaties with Native Americans neither local governments nor the federal
courts upheld the Mexicans right to vote or respected the land deeds they
held before the treaty (see Acun a 1988; Shorris 1992). By the time of the
Spanish-American War of 1898 the image of barbarism used against Mexicans
was consistently attributed to a Latin Catholic heritage and expanded for
use throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, thus subsequently
affecting the immigrant populations coming from these areas as well as
justifying U.S. claims of hegemony in the region (Mignolo 2000). The socalled Zoot Suit riots in Los Angeles in 1943 targeted Mexican Americans
and their ethnically specific style of dress. The attempts made to
geographically sequester and also to forcibly assimilate Native American
groups were not experienced by any other group, and had their own
ideological justifications that combined contradictory images of the Great
Chain of Being with the romanticized Noble Savage.
AT: Black/White IS Origin

Even if their history lesson is correct, white supremacy is
not a zero sum game, their focus makes tackling other
aspects of racism impossible
Perea 97 (Juan, Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law,
One could object to my conclusions on the grounds that White racism
against Blacks has operated for a much longer time than racism
against Latinos/as or Asians, and therefore the former problem
needs to be studied and remedied first. English enslavement of Blacks can be traced
to the early 1600s, well before the nationhood of the United States. n207 Encounters between Anglo and
Mexican people did not begin on a large scale until the 1830s, as Whites moved west into Texas and other
parts of the Southwest that, at the time, were parts of Mexico. n208 To a large extent, the Black/White
binary paradigm of race has developed precisely because of the historical priority in time of White racism
The question is
whether the earlier deployment of White racism against Blacks in
the United States justifies the binary approach in race scholarship
and thinking today. I cannot see scholarly efforts to understand and
remedy White racism in all its forms as a "zero-sum game," in which
efforts to understand other forms of White racism somehow take
away from efforts to understand and remedy White racism against
Blacks. My goal is not to take away anything from the study of White racism against Blacks.
Rather, it is to identify some limitations of this study and to add to these studies the
study of White racism against other racialized American groups. Stated simply, we must
study and understand White racism in all its forms . Indeed, here lie some of
against Blacks and because of the nature of the exploitation that slavery caused.
the possibilities for coalition and for solving some of the problems that resist solution under our current
scholarship. n209
AT: Panthers not Monovalent

Panthers are monovalent-Panthers reduced to a single
dominant essence
Critics may say that the vision of the Panthers, US, and BAM I offered above is
reductive. In response, I want to revisit the Panthers. While Panther leaders
are in part responsible for promulgating the monovalent identity widely
associated with them, I agree that this characterization does not do justice to
a dynamic organization. The popularity of this characterization points to
structural obstacles to the politics of multivalent recognition. In contrast to
the groups image as hypersexualized, hypermasculine aggressive
revolutionaries, women constituted a significant portion of the Panthers
membership. Sacrifices by women like Ericka Huggins and Angela Davis
prompted a transformation in the gender politics of the Panthers (Matthews
1998, 282); a womanElaine Brownultimately headed the Panthers. The
sexual politics of the Panthers also evolved over time. In August 1970, Huey
P. Newton preached solidarity with the Gay Liberation Movement, saying the
term faggotshould be deleted from our vocabulary, and especially we
should not attach names normally designed for homosexuals to men who are
enemies of the people. (Newton 1970). Nor was the agenda of the Party
static. Although originally styled as a paramilitary organizationthe Black
Panther Party for Self-Defenseover time the group became increasingly
concentrated on its survival programs. Survival programs included free
breakfast for children, free health clinics, transport to visit relatives in prison,
political education programs, and more. Unlike paramilitary operations, the
types of activities involved in the survival programs have traditionally been
coded as feminine. Few if any would agree that the Black Panther Party
achieved a feminist or queer ideal. Even when the official rhetoric of the party
cut across the image of black identity initially projected by leaders, the
diversity within black identity continued to be glossed overin his 1970
speech concerning the women and gay liberation movements, for instance,
Newton presented woman, gay and black as separate rather than overlapping
identities. Yet at the same time, the Party was certainly more complicated
and presented a more complicated image of black identitythan was widely
projected. In a content analysis of 163 articles about the Panthers found in
major national magazines and newspapers over an 11- year time span,
Edward Morgan found that the the Panthers are reduced to a single,
dominant essence (2006, 331). The mainstream mediaincluding some 300
journalist cooperating with COINTELPRO efforts (Morgan 2006, 32930)
broadcast images of brash, gun-toting, profanity-spewing blacks (Ogbar
2004, 67). By freezing the Black Panthers at their origin, the mainstream
media were deeply complicit in promoting the monovalent conception of
identity initially projected by the Panthers. The media itself is not monolithic
and certainly alternative stories about the Panthers were told through outlets
like The Black Panther (the Partys community news service). Despite this, it
remains the case that those engaged in the politics of multivalent recognition
are likely to face significant challenges not only in establishing support for
and in strategizing how to promote a multivalent view of identity, but also in
the dissemination process. That the mainstream media would present a
predominantly monovalent view of black identity rather than a multivalent
one should not be surprising. Many media formats privilege the simple and
the sensational over the complex and challenging. Moreover, gatekeepers
and decision makers in the culture industry are often members of the
hegemonic racial (gender, sexual) identity group with vested interests in
maintaining their power. The example of the Black Panthers is a potent
reminder that the success of a politics of multivalent recognition depends not
only on political actors intentions, but also on media outlets. In other words,
while cultural, this politics is not without its structural prerequisites.
AT: Snyder Only about Race

Snyder talks about recognition and feminist recognition
not only about race
To conclude, I want to clarify several aspects of my argument and offer some
final thoughts about how it contributes to the literature on recognition and
identity politics. First, though I have focused on one identity group in
elaborating the distinction between monovalent and multivalent recognition
politics, I believe it to be useful in the interpretation and assessment of the
cultural identity politics of other groups. Shane Phelan (1989), for instance,
offers a detailed description and trenchant critique of a monovalent lesbian
feminist recognition politics, for instance. On the other hand, the early gay
pride movement exemplifies the politics of multivalent recognition in its
commitment to unity through diversity (Armstrong 2002, 26).
AFF Answers
Perm
Do Both: mono- and multivalent shift over time
Though the gay pride movement was committed to unity through diversity
in theory, however, it was homogenous (overwhelmingly white, male, middleclass, etc.) in practice (Armstrong 2002, 136). While the Black Panthers
initially projected a monovalent view of black identity, both the theory and
the practice of the organization transformed over time -- yet these changes
were not reflected in predominant representations of the Panthers. These
points highlight the following considerations in the categorization and
assessment of recognition politics. First, both political ideology and political
practice are important in determining whether an example of recognition
politics is monovalent or multivalent; both should be considered. Second,
attention should be paid both to the nature of the demands for recognition as
well as the way in which these demands are interpolated by the culture
industry. Finally, recognition movements are not static: the nature of
demands for recognition made by a group may change over time, moving
nearer to or farther from the multivalent or monovalent pole.
Alt fails
Alternative fails 2 reasons- civil rights and inside outsider
binary
Brooks and Widner 12
Roy L. Brooks and Kirsten Widner,Brooks is a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal,
clerked for the Honorable Clifford Scott Green of the U.S. District Court in
Philadelphia, and practiced corporate law with Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York
City. He joined the USD School of Law faculty in 1979. Widner is a Post fellow in law
worked as a director of policy and advocacy at Emory law and got a degree in law
form University of San Diego In Defense of the Black/White Binary: Reclaiming a
Tradition of Civil Rights Scholarship, 12 Berkeley J. Afr.-Am. L. & Pol'y 107 (2010).
Available at: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/bjalp/vol12/iss1
Furthermore, by arguing that black scholars should abandon the black/white

binary (i.e., not focus on white-on-black racial problems), critical theorists,
most of whom are non-black, 3 are unintentionally disrespecting a venerable
tradition of black scholarship.14 African American scholars as diverse as (at
times) Derrick Bell, the "father" of Critical Race Theory,' 5 Michael Eric Dyson
and Cornel West, civil rights liberals,' 6 Glenn Loury, a civil rights moderateconservative, 17 and John Hope Franklin, perhaps the greatest African
American scholar of the last half of the twentieth century18 (whose public
disagreement with an Asian scholar over the black/white paradigm was highly
publicized), 19 not only write within this tradition but also have helped to
shape it. Equally essential to this scholarly tradition are the enduring works of
the late Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, the nation's first scholarly African
American judge and the seminal writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, the nation's first
(and still greatest) civil rights scholar. 2 ' This tradition of African American
scholarship laid the foundation for the NAACP's successful litigation strategy
against school segregation. 22 In addition to civil rights scholarship, criticism
of the black/white binary extends to civil rights law. Delgado and Stefancic
explore the following scenario: Imagine, for example, that Juan Dominguez, a
Puerto Rican worker, is told by his boss, 'You're a lazy Puerto Rican just like
the rest. You'll never get ahead as long as I'm supervisor.' Juan sues for
discrimination under a civil rights-era statute designed with blacks in mind.
He wins because he can show that an African American worker, treated in a
similar fashion, would be entitled to redress. But suppose that Juan's
coworkers and supervisor make fun of him because of his accent, religion, or
place of birth. An African American subjected to these forms of discrimination
would not be able to recover, and so Juan would go without recourse.23 Thus,
the critique of the black/white binary proceeds on two levels-civil rights
scholarship and civil rights law. This article considers both critiques. We
consider the critique based on civil rights law in Part II. There, we contend
that the critics of the binary have misread the extant law. As one of the
authors has noted in a previous work, "Courts generally recognize that
discrimination on the basis of a foreign trait, such as accent, is actionable
under Title VII as discrimination on the basis of national origin.' 24 The point
is, our most important civil rights laws apply to all racial groups, including
whites, without any precondition that non-black racial groups analogize their
situation to that of blacks. The Reconstruction Amendments to the
Constitution-the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments 25-which
provide the foundation for modem civil rights law,26 the 1964 Civil Rights
Act,27 and modem-day case law 28 all reach far beyond the black/white
binary. To the extent that asymmetrical civil rights statutes have been
enacted in the decades after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, these laws have been
responsive to non-blacks, including the disabled,29 women,30 and older
workers. 3' Civil rights law recognizes multiple binaries rather than a single
binary. We turn in Part III to the theoretical arguments regarding the
black/white binary. Here, we argue that African-American scholars have not
suggested that non-black racial groups should be accorded second-class civil
rights status. Rather, African-American scholars of any stature embrace the
multiple-binary approach reflected in civil rights law. The fact that black
scholars focus on white-on-black racial problems in their scholarship is
natural given their experiences as black Americans and the tradition of black
scholarship. Yet, critical theorists have attacked this tradition of black
scholarship on anti-binary grounds. We address the three most compelling
anti-binary criticisms offered by critical theorists: (1) the binary ignores the
histories of other racial groups, thereby distorting our understanding of civil
rights history; 32 (2) it ignores interest convergence and thus threatens
natural alliances among outsiders, especially people of color; 33 and, related
to the latter criticism, (3) it is predicated upon a false notion of "black
uniqueness."3 4 In considering each of these criticisms, we argue that the
black/white binary-which, again, is most properly understood to mean the
focus on white-on-black racial problems makes very good sense to African
Americans based on their racial reality. Those who would reject the binary,
and would have black scholars do likewise; have simply ignored this fact of
life. Why can 't binaries co-exist in civil rights scholarship as they do in civil
rights law? We conclude with two arguments in Part IV. First, contrary to what
they claim, critics of the black/white binary are, in reality, not arguing for the
dissolution of all binaries, but, instead, are arguing for a particular binary.
They seek to replace the black/white binary in civil rights scholarship with an
insider/outsider binary. The latter not only reflects a monolithic view of racial
identity, 5 it also subordinates African Americans by trivializing the black
ethos and presuming to tell African-American scholars what to write about.
Second, criticism of the black/white binary is, at bottom, a claim regarding
racial priority. While some critics of the black/white binary may have hoped
that the priority issue could be avoided by simply moving beyond the
black/white binary, 36 that simply has not been the case. Among outsider
groups, competing claims and conflicts have not and will not disappear. 37
Hence, the questions become: Does it make moral, historical, political, or
sociological sense to give priority to African Americans in the realm of civil
rights when their interests clash with the interests of other civil rights groups?
Have the descendants of slaves earned the right to claim priority because
they have suffered the longest and still remain at "the very bottom of the
well," to borrow a metaphor from critical theory? Former President Bill
Clinton, a liberal, and James Q. Wilson, a conservative scholar, answer these

questions in the affirmative. Clinton states, "If we can address the problems
between black and white Americans, then we will be better equipped to deal
with discrimination in other areas." 38 Similarly, Wilson writes in the
aftermath of Katrina that: "The main domestic concern of policy-engaged
intellectuals, liberal and conservative, ought to be to think hard about how to
change these social weaknesses. Lower-class blacks are numerous and fill our
prisons, and among all blacks the level of financial assets is lower than it is
for whites. any blacks have made rapid progress, but we are not certain how."
39 While saving until another day the construction of a formula that might
facilitate the ranking of civil rights claims in particular situations, we do argue
here that any such formula should not necessarily favor African Americans
because of the simple fact that they are not at the very bottom of the well
across the board. However, such a formula should take into account the
relative severity and duration of each group's deprivation of rights or equality
in various situations.
The idea that African Americans should incorporate other racial histories in
their scholarship so as not to ignore those histories is thinly supported. Asian
and Latino/a scholars, for example, do not need African-American scholars to
validate their work, which is exceptionally good. 2 Similarly, although
incorporating other racial histories into African-American scholarship may
enrich one's perspective on racism, this exercise is typically not a prerequisite
for understanding civil rights or the black ethos-nor is it necessary for
addressing black issues. To illustrate the point, we refer to Mendez v.
Westminister School District of Orange County.10 3 This case is often cited by
LatCrits to illustrate the indispensability of Latino/a history in understanding
the history of school desegregation that culminated in Brown .104 In Mendez,
the court overturned a school segregation statute applicable to MexicanAmerican students, a decision that predated Brown I by a few years. While
interesting, the case is neither necessary nor sufficient in explaining Brown I
or in understanding the NAACP's legal strategy. Mendez was a Ninth Circuit
opinion, so its precedential value is low compared to that of the Supreme
Court cases traditionally regarded as the predecessors of Brown 1.105 Nor
was Mendez as significant as the scholarship that informed the NAACP briefs.
0 6 Furthermore, even these Supreme Court cases and scholarly works have
little probative valu in explaining why the Court decided Brown I the way it
did.'0 7 Indeed, contemporary scholarship on Brown I that omits the
geopolitical and other extra-legal factors that underpin the opinion is
insufficiently theorized. 08 Authors who write about their own racial
experiences are not necessarily signaling ignorance about other racial
experiences. These writers are merely taking advantage of their unique
position to get the story out more accurately and with greater insight. In fact,
Professor Delgado himself rather enthusiastically embraced this position in
his influential article, "The Imperial Scholar:" [I]t is possible to compile an a
priori list of reasons why we might look with concern on a situation in which
the scholarship about group A [outsiders] is written by members of group B
[insiders]. First, members of group B may be ineffective advocates of the
rights and interests of persons in group A. They may lack information; more
important, perhaps, they may lack passion, or that passion may be
misdirected. B's scholarship may tend to be sentimental, diffusing passion in
useless directions, or wasting time on unproductive breast-beating. Second,
while the B's might advocate effectively, they might advocate the wrong
things. Their agenda may differ from that of the A's, they may pull their
punches with respect to remedies, especially where remedying A's situation
entails uncomfortable consequences for B. Despite the best of intentions, B's
may have stereotypes embedded deep in their psyches that distort their
thinking, causing them to balance interests in ways inimical to A's. Finally,
domination by members of group B may paralyze members of group A,
causing the A's to forget how to flex their legal muscles for themselves.'
AT other race oppressions

Prefer white black binary biggest problem and has
happened for the longest
Critical theorists reject the black/white binary inlargepartbecause they reject

the notion that African Americans have always been and continue to be the
most racially subordinated group in America.144ProfessorDelgado,forexample,argues
thatallracialminoritiesmustavoid"the[s]iren[slongof[u]niqueness.'AccordingtoDelgado,the
seductiveideaofuniquenesscan"predisposeaminoritygrouptobelievethatitisuniquelyvictimizedand
entitledtospecialconsiderationfrominiquitouswhites.'46However,thisargumentrunscontraryto
history,asdocumentedbyalargebodyofresearch.Althoughrarelystatedinpublic,47 there is
substantial empirical evidence strongly suggesting that African Americans are

unique and, hence, warrant separate (butnotnecessarilydominant)attention.148We
shall focus on a few pieces of this evidence: slavery and Jim Crow; the
subordination of African Americans versus Native Americans; lynching; and
what can be termed, "the lost American dream ." Tobeginwith,AfricanAmericansare
theonlygrouptoarriveinthiscountrynoton,butunderPlymouthRock.AfricanAmericanshave
encounteredandcontinuetoencounteruniquedisadvantagesthatstemfromtheverywaytheywere
broughtintoAmericansociety.149Unlike most immigrants who came to the United
States voluntarily, blacks were imported in huge numbers as slaves. Although
slavery had existed for thousands of years, the Atlantic slave trade was not
slavery as usual: Slavery in the Americas introduced the troubling element of
race into the master/slave relationship.Forthefirsttimeinhistory,darkskinbecamethe
socialmarkerofchattelslavery.And,asameansofjustifyingthisnewfaceablackfacegiventoan
ancientpractice, the slavers and their supporters created a race-specific ideology
of condemnation.150 This new form of slavery was so much a part of colonial
America that the founders addressed it in multiple provisions of the U.S.

Constitution.'51Thus, the subjugation of African Americans was written into
the fabric of our nation from the very beginning-a situation that no other
group has faced. Although slavery officially ended with the Civil War and the
adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, the systematic economic exploitation
of African Americans continued well into the twentieth century. AsDouglas
BlackmonchroniclesinhisPulitzerPrizewinningbook,"SlaverybyAnotherName,"southernstatesused
anelaboratesystemoflaws"specificallyenactedtointimidateblacks."Theyalsousedavarietyofother
slavelikepracticessuchasopportunisticarrests,shamtrials,convictleasing,andcoercive"contracts"to
continuesupplyingwhitefarmsandindustrywiththecheapblacklaboronwhichtheyrelied.152 In
spite of this, critical theorists often dismiss African American uniqueness by
noting that other racial minorities have experienced many of the injustices
blacks have faced.Forexample,ProfessorPereaasserts:MexicanAmericanswerealsosegregated
inseparatebutunequalschools,werekeptoutofpublicparksbylaw,wererefusedserviceinrestaurants,
wereprohibitedfromattending'White'churchesonSundays,andweredeniedburialin'White'cemeteries,
amongalloftheotherhorrorsoftheseparatebutequalscheme.153Whileitistruethatallracial
minorities,particularlyLatinos/as,havebeenvictimsofwhiteoppression,theseracializedexperiencesare
nonethelessquitedifferentfromwhatAfricanAmericanshaveexperienced.54Inourview,thedifferences
betweenAfricanAmericansandotherracialminoritiesaresogreatastooutweighthesimilarities.Asone
oftheauthorssaidonapreviousoccasion:[BilackswerethemaintargetofslaveryandJimCrow.Noother
Americangroupinhabitedthepeculiarinstitution.NootherAmerican group sustained more
casualties or lengthier suffering from slavery and Jim Crow... [T]his gives
blacks a connection to slavery and Jim Crowboth familial and psychologicalthat no other racial minority has.Thereisacollective memory here that only
blacks have....[U]nlike Asians and Latinos, blacks did not volunteer for this
tour of duty. Blacks were kidnapped from their homeland and brought to this
country by brutal force, the likes of which we have not seen before or since in
American history. Inshort,althoughblacks,Asians,Latinos,NativeAmericans,Indians,andother
peopleofcolorarevictimsofwhatJoeFeagincalls'systemicracism'(orthe"whitecreated"paradigmof
racialsubordination),theydonotexperienceandhencedonotreacttoracialsubordinationinexactlythe
sameway....White-on-black oppression is just different from other whiteoppression syndromes, whether racial or gender. PatriciaRodriguezhasobserved,
'White means mostly privilege and black means overcoming obstacles, a

history of civil rights. As a Latina, I can't try to claim one of these.'" 55 Black
Americans carry the weight of the atrocities-slavery and Jim Crow ....156
A2: Delgado
Focus on blackness the problem is growing and
decreasing for other races- other races have seen
increases in education and success
Roy L. Brooks and Kirsten Widner, Brooks is a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal,
Professor Richard Delgado argues that binary thinking can harm the group
whose interest it places at the center. It can, for example, pit one
disadvantaged group against another to the detriment of both. This
opposition can impair a group's ability to forge useful coalitions and to leam
from other groups' successes and failures.,I I What minority groups should do
instead, Delgado argues, is set up a secondary market in which they
negotiate selectively with each other. This market would take the form of
exchanging support for issues important to various groups, creating win-win
solutions whenever possible. Thus, a non-binary framework allows for racial
minorities to approach whites in full force."12 Although Professor Delgado's
arguments are not without merit, they are based on an unproven assumption
that identities among racial minorities are sufficiently monolithic so as to
make interracial alliances natural. "The idea would be," Professor Delgado
asserts, "for minority groups to assess their own preferences and make
tradeoffs that will, optimistically, bring gains for all concerned."' 1 3 However,
as Professor Carbado points out, "Non-Black people of color have not always
been interested in identifying themselves with the Black or marginalized side
of the Black/White paradigm. In fact, there are moments in American history
when certain Asian Americans and Latinas/os have attempted to achieve
equality by asserting that they are not Black or like Blacks, and/or that they
are White." 14 There are costs as well as advantages associated with
occupying both ends of the polarity-the black (or subordinated) end as well as
the white (or privileged) end-and non-black racial groups have often been
able to avoid the costs and exploit the advantages.' 15 Self-interest is a
powerful motivating force. Thus, it may be, as Professor Delgado maintains,
that all binaries, including the black/white binary, are narrow nationalisms
calculated to cutting the most favorable possible deal with whites'6-a
possibility that African Americans can ill-afford to ignore. Therefore it is
important to explore this possibility more closely to get a sense of how risky it
would be for African Americans to abandon the black/white binary-which
spawned the scholarly tradition and political strategy that together have
been responsible for destroying Jim Crow and forging a racial consciousness
from which all racial groups have benefitted." 7 When one looks closely at the
natural-alliance theory-more accurately, the presumed-alliance theory-one

comes to the unhappy conclusion that the theory founders on the shoals of
racial reality. In a world of limited resources, achieving progress on one
group's agenda can come at the expense of another group's agenda. 1 1 8
The game is, indeed, often zero-sum. The racial dynamic between blacks and
Latinos/as, the latter of whom have been the most persistent critics of the
black/white binary,' 19 well illustrates this point. Let us begin with education.
Blacks and Latinos/as both hope to see dramatic improvements in the quality
of schools their children attend. For blacks, this means increasing educational
funds to their schools and providing curricular services that address issues of
racial pride, self-esteem, and the other unique needs of African-American
students, especially those of young black males. 20 Likewise, for Latinos/as,
improving the quality of education for their children means focusing on the
special needs of Latino/as children, including bilingual education and
expanded coverage of Latin-American history, which is often tied to
immigration concerns.' 21 With the nationwide crisis in public school funding,
the pool of state and federal funds as well as other resources available to
meet these goals is extremely limited. Consequently, funds possibility more
closely to get a sense of how risky it would be for African Americans to
abandon the black/white binary-which spawned the scholarly tradition and
political strategy that together have been responsible for destroying Jim Crow
and forging a racial consciousness from which all racial groups have
benefitted." 7 When one looks closely at the natural-alliance theory-more
accurately, the presumed-alliance theory-one comes to the unhappy
conclusion that the theory founders on the shoals of racial reality. In a world
of limited resources, achieving progress on one group's agenda can come at
the expense of another group's agenda. 1 1 8 The game is, indeed, often
zero-sum. The racial dynamic between blacks and Latinos/as, the latter of
whom have been the most persistent critics of the black/white binary,' 19
well illustrates this point. Let us begin with education. Blacks and Latinos/as
both hope to see dramatic improvements in the quality of schools their
children attend. For blacks, this means increasing educational funds to their
schools and providing curricular services that address issues of racial pride,
self-esteem, and the other unique needs of African-American students,
especially those of young black males. 20 Likewise, for Latinos/as, improving
the quality of education for their children means focusing on the special
needs of Latino/as children, including bilingual education and expanded
coverage of Latin-American history, which is often tied to immigration
concerns.' 21 With the nationwide crisis in public school funding, the pool of
state and federal funds as well as other resources available to meet these
goals is extremely limited. Consequently, funds Angeles have almost entirely
replaced the unionized African-American workforce with a non-unionized
immigrant workforce.' 6 Even when unionization is not an issue, the results
are the same. As Jack Miles observes: If the Latinos were not around to be
[gardeners, busboys, chambermaids, nannies, janitors, construction
workers], nonblack employers would be forced to hire blacks-but they'd
rather not. They trust Latinos. They fear or disdain blacks. The result is
unofficial but widespread preferential hiring of Latinos-the largest affirmative

action program in the nation, and one paid for, in effect, by blacks. 127
Because of the employment implications of undocumented immigration, the
NAACP, as well as the AFL-CIO, supported the employer sanctions provision
under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. As one NAACP
official said, the sanctions were a way "to keep undocumented aliens from
taking the food from black children."1' 28 African Americans "were
competing more directly with Latinos than with any other ethnic group."' 2 9
In addition there have been various political struggles between African
Americans and Latinos/as in Los Angeles. A case in point is the 2001
mayoral race in which blacks voted for a white candidate instead of the
Latino candidate whom they believed to be more interested in strengthening
Latino/a political and economic power than in improving the plight of blacks.
For similar reasons, the NAACP objected to the inclusion of Latinos/as in the
1975 Voting Rights Extension.' 30 A black columnist positioned the matter in
a broader context: "Though we pride ourselves on our leadership role in civil
rights, paradoxically, we guard the success jealously. 'We're the ones who
marched in the streets and got our heads busted. Where were they? But now
they want to get in on the benefits."" 13 ' Similar differences exist
between African Americans and other racial minorities. For example, some
Asians have sought to exploit the privilege pole of the black/white binary at
the expense of African Americans. As Professor Frank Wu observes, "Racial
groups are conceived of as white, black, honorary whites, or constructive
blacks."' 32 He also reminds us that some Asians have benefited from their
"honorary whiteness" and, in so doing, may have "perpetuat[ed] the
problem of race."' Professor Wu's use of the terms "honorary whiteness" and
"constructive blacks" underscores both the constructedness of race and the
poles of privilege and subordination in the black/white binary within which
Asians have operated. The latter racial dynamic forms the basis for the
uneasy relationship that has developed between the African-American and
the Asian-American civil rights agendas since the end of the 1960s. Janine
Young Kim aptly describes this situation: Asian Americans have stood on
unstable ground between 'black' and 'white,' falling under the honorary white
category in anti-affirmative action arguments, but considered constructive
blacks for the purposes of school segregation or antimiscegenation laws. To
say that Asian Americans have been perceived as honorary whites or
constructive blacks is, however, slightly misleading in that it tends to convey
a notion of race specificity. It is important to keep in mind that although the
status of honorary white does affect identity, recognition, and appellation, its
more insidious function is cooptation. For example, within the economy of
affirmative action policy, 'whiteness' encompasses victimization through
'reverse racism' and race-based disadvantage in certain educational or
occupational opportunities. Insofar as a conservative like Newt Gingrich treats
Asian Americans as honorary whites, he refers to common experience under
affirmative action, not racial similarity. 34 African Americans do not have this
kind of racial flexibility. Phenotype and experience prevent African Americans
from benefitting as much as other racial minorities from the pole of privilege.
African Americans constitute the social marker for disadvantage, stuck at the
pole of subordination. Indeed, African Americans have watched as other racial
and ethnic groups with whom they have aligned in the past 135 have
leapfrogged past them in resources and power, often distancing themselves
from African Americans (what Professor Carbado calls "interracial distancing"'
36) once they obtained a certain level of success. There is palpable concern
among African Americans that Latinos/as, with their increasing numbers and
desire for acceptance, are poised to repeat this process. Like Asians in the
context of affirmative action,' 37 Latinos/as might find interracial distancing
to be within their self-interest. To ask African Americans to put aside this
racial history and risk being a stepping-stone for yet another racial group's
advancement may be overly optimistic. This is not to say that African
Americans and other racial groups have never successfully collaborated or
can never form mutually beneficial coalitions. As Professor Perea correctly
points out, Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 38 a school
desegregation case, provides an example of interest convergence. 39
Likewise, Mendez v. Westminister School District of Orange County,140 a
Mexican-American school desegregation discussed earlier,' 4 ' shows that
African Americans can support Latino/a interests when those interests
converge with African-American interests. 142 But the crucial question is
what happens when the interests clash rather converge? As Latinos/as
continue to gain political strength and as both Latinos/as and Asians continue
to become more integrated into the mainstream culture (becoming more
"white" 43), will they find it more advantageous to forge coalitions with
whites, whose experiences and interests they now share, than with African
Americans, whose experiences and interests have become contraposed?
Offense
Calls to move beyond black/white binary replicate antiBlackness
Deilovsky and Kitossa 13 (Katerina Deliovsky, Department of
Sociology. Brock University, Ontario and Tamari, Beyond Black and White:
When Going Beyond May Take Us Out of Bounds, Journal of Black Studies 44;
158, http://jbs.sagepub.eom/content/44/2/158)
critiques of the so-called Black/White binary paradigm appear
persuasivebut only if one accepts a priori that race scholarship is dominated
by this paradigm and that it functions to restrict how race is understood, theorized, and addressed. What is
At first impression,
more, many claimants of this position contend that African and European American scholars who employ the so-called
There
are problems, however, with proposing a multiracial coalition based on a
critique of the so-called Black/White binary paradigm. One such problem is identified by Jared Sexton
(2010), who argues that this call is premised on the belief "of an 'endemic* blackwhite model of racial thought" (p. 90). For Sexton, this notion is "something of a social
fictionone might say a misreadingthat depends upon a reduction of the
sophistication of the paradigm in question" (Sexton, 2010, p. 90). If Sexton is correct, and we
believe he is, then the call to move beyond is fundamentally flawed because it is
built on an inadequate understanding of power relations that structure what
is, in fact, a black/white Manicheanism. A Manicheanism is a moral and symbolic
framework that constructs the world as polarized by forces of good and evil,
represented in the oppositions between lightness and darkness and between
black and white (see Bastide, 1967; Fanon, 1967; Hoch, 1979; Stone, 1981). Contrary to moving beyond
advocates' claim of a Black/White binary paradigm, the black/white Manicheanism is an incorporative racial
matrix in the psychosocial world of European culture that gives meaning to a
broad range of identities. Furthermore, this misreading and reduction rests on the
presupposition that this call is warranted and that one can move beyond what
is posited as a simple binary. This assumption and call to action needs to be
interrogated and deconstructed not only because the former is erroneous but
also because the latter implicitly reproduces anti-blackness as a
presupposition for multiracial coalition building. We argue in this essay that a deconstruction
Black/White binary paradigm obscure the histories and claims making of Asian, Native, and Latina/o Americans.
of the move beyond discourse reveals that knowledge about racism, but more specifically, anti-black racism, is not
by misreading and misnaming

a real historical and contemporary experience as a paradigm, the discourse
creates the false dilemma of needing to move beyond . Second, the discourse
sets up blackness (interestingly enough, not whiteness), and by extension, those
people socially defined as "black," as an impediment to the laudable goals of
a multiracial coalition and complex understanding of race relations in North America. In this way, moving
beyond, in terms of praxis (action, epistemology, and politics), is a discourse based on
"bad faith" (Gordon, 1994) toward African-descended peoples. As noted by Gordon (1994),
bad faith is denial of the humanity of the black body a nd the consistent imputation of a
substantively advanced and, in fact, creates two distinct problems. First,
negative value to it as a means of defining the (non-black) self.
Turn Excludes Black from the coalition of the alt

Deilovsky and Kitossa 13 (Katerina Deliovsky, Department of
Sociology. Brock University, Ontario and Tamari, Beyond Black and White:
When Going Beyond May Take Us Out of Bounds, Journal of Black Studies 44;
158, http://jbs.sagepub.eom/content/44/2/158)
In closing, moving beyond advocates argue that alternatives to the Black/ White binary paradigm are needed to account for changing
experiences of race and racism (Martinez, 1993; Omi & Winant, 1994). Uncritical acceptance of the Black/White binary paradigm situates the
in the laudable
quest for multiracial alliances, the call to move beyond has been uncritically
accepted as a necessary tactic in the antiracist struggle . Sexton (2008) warns
against the "unexamined desire for new analyses and the often anxious drive
for political alliance" (p. 252). Moreover, he calls into "question the motive force of a
nominally critical intervention on the 'black-white paradigm' " (Sexton, 2008, p. 252). If
an integral part of this move beyond postulates that blackness is an
epistemic obstacle to effective antiracism politics, does this not imply that
multiracial alliances are "a social formation for which the exclusion of the
category of racial blackness is a sine qua non" (Sexton, 2010, p. 89)? And to exclude
racial blackness means, ultimately, to excise those defined as black from this
coalition. In other words, the black body may be counted for more than three fifths of a person for the antiracist cause, but African
call to move beyond as questionable and problematic and all the more urgently in need of challenge. Perhaps,
people's history and narratives must be checked at the door. Not only does this (implied) excision do a gross disservice to those victimized by
this Manicheanism; it erases their history and obscures how other non-African people of color are affected by it as well as contribute to it.
This situates moving beyond as a faulty and politically harmful epistemological framework for African-descended peopl e, and what is more, it is an act of bad faith.1
Without question, there is a need for a complex reading and analysis of racial oppression; however, the refusal to grant
primacy to this "visible epis-temology of black skin" suggests there is more to
this call than an academic pursuit. Put another way, it is one thing to argue that we need a complex understanding
of the multiracial makeup of North America; it is quite another to frame the black/white Manicheanism as the reason for this lack of scholarly
work. To reiterate, pointing the finger at the black/white Manicheanism creates, in general, two fundamental errors. One, it creates a false
problem by confusing and misnaming a real historical and contemporary experience and, as such, grossly simplifies its complexity. Michael
Steinberg (2001) argues. Putting the wrong name on a problem is worse than having no name at all. In the latter instance, one is at least open
to filling the conceptual void. In the first instance, however, words lead us down a blind alley. They divert us from the facets of the problem
that should command our attention and . . . lead to remedies that are ineffectual or worse, (p. 2) As we see it, in our case, the "worse" leads us
It sets up blackness (interestingly enough, not

whiteness), and by extension those people socially defined as black, as an
impediment to the laudable goals of a multiracial coalition and complex
understanding of race relations in the United States. It is disconcerting how the articulation of moving beyond implicitly (and
to the second fundamental problem:
sometimes explicitly) situates blackness as an obstacle or, as Sexton (2008) argues, "[standing] in the way of future progress, silencing the
expression of much needed voices on the political and intellectual scene" (p. 252). It appears that "the force of anti-blackness consistently
It goes without
saying the challenge is not to move beyond but to theorize the black/white
Manicheanism through a critical inquiry that captures its complexity. This complexity must bear in
troubles the myriad efforts at mediation and amelioration among the nonwhite" (Sexton, 2008, p. 253).
mind how thoroughly saturated is the sociosymbolic structure of racial difference with the determinants of the black/white Manicheanism.9
The black/white Manicheanism "has and continues to situate every subject in U.S. culture within the panoptic vision of racial meanings"
(Weigman, 1995, p. 40). These racial meanings were and are often configured in relation to and against black (and white) racial designations.
Thus, rather than calling to move beyond, it would be more conceptually creative and politically advantageous to work toward analyzing the
black/white Manicheanism in a way that makes clear the relationship between this Manicheanism and other racially marginalized groups. Thus,
to develop an epistemologically deep understanding of race, racialization,

and racism in the North America, the significance of anti-blackness must be
apprehended, not as a superior form of oppression but as a form that gives
shape and context to the oppression of other racially marginalized groups , while
creating a qualitatively distinct oppression for African-descended peoples. As Jared Sexton (2008) cogently argues, anti-blackness is
longstanding and ongoing but also . . . unlike other forms of racial oppression in qualitative waysdifferences of kind, rather than degree, a
structural singularity rather than an empirical anomaly. But all of this is not...to participate in the ranked determination of suffering. It is,
instead, to properly locate the political dynamics and to outline the ethical stakes at hand. (p. 245)

Multivalent Oppression K - Northwestern 2015

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Multivalent Oppression K - Northwestern 2015

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Multivalent Oppression K NDI 2015

Similar to the Mexican Americans in

To blame only white supremacy for what occurred in Los Angeles

Delgado argues that if ones paradigm identifies

Vote negative to endorse a politics of multivalent

this is the way that Alexander envisions the ties

Then again, serious political work must also be done to

a politics of multivalent recognition is actually poised to unburden

dependence of whiteness on blacknessa multivalent politics of recognition as engaged in by one identity

Participation by one identity group in the politics of

By drawing attention to similarities across identities, intersectionality, the interrelatedness of group

Link - Blackness as Monovalent Identity

identity as homogenous, static, and wholly different from white identityI

Link Authentic Blackness

negating the negation involves highlighting the difference that

Link - Black/White Binary

The culture of a specific Non-White group appears distinctive

Link Rejection of State

the legitimacy of Latino and

As advocates for civil and human

Link White supremacy

preoccupation with white supremacy still allowed

Alt = Endorse Multivalent Blackness

No Solvency for racism

forward, and to the side.

They calcify negative racial classifications

Focus on the black-white binary excludes analysis of

scholars of race reproduce this paradigm when they write and

this Black/White binary paradigm.27 This paradigm defines, but

Most writers simply assume the importance and

But this would follow only

Thus, strategies that seek to eliminate

Erases Arab Americans

Makes it impossible to challenge Muslim Terrorist

the Muslim terrorist in our popular culture should not be seen as

the Black/White binary

the Black/White binary paradigm operates

My critique of the Black/White binary paradigm of race shows

Korean Americans across the

Mexicans in Texas, the Koreans have been denied the

theoretically or politically addressing racism among communities of color,

it is far too simplistic, as I think Karl Marx himself knew, to imagine

because of the wide acceptance of the black/white paradigm,

Turn Permutation footnotes other oppressions, repeats

AT: No Link were not politics of recognition

demands for recognition are part of a multidirectional struggle for

AT: Coalitions Bad, Erase Blackness

AT: Alt Denies Blackness

reality. The politics of recognition cannot achieve a mimetic correspondence

AT: Alt = Vacating Identity

sense that the poems would reinforce problematic stereotypes. Those

The idea of multivalent thinking forces us to challenge

AT Black white Binary Good/Necessary

of discourse may be covered over. The second proposal protects nonracial

Black/white binary fails- 4 reasons

Scot nakagawa, 9-4-2013,Nakagawa is a Lifelong political activist, community

AT: Binary is Correct

1) The black/white paradigm has disempowered various racial and ethnic

2) Asian Americans and Latinos (among others) have historically been

The white majority will not maintain its near

Binary is wrong-doesnt account for any other races other

Wanting to avoid this outcome, however unlikely it Latinos, Asian Americans,

AT: Black/White IS Origin

AT: Panthers not Monovalent