Racism uses value hierarchies framed as natural to control and exploit

Evidence

In this chapter, we will explore how racism is also a result of this same complex system, unique and complex to be sure, but also a matter of using a value hierarchy as if it were natural and inevitable to control, exploit, and meet specific interests. We trace some of the ways race as a category gets created historically, the particular discursive practices that legitimated it, and how it functions in our day-to-day interactions and institutions like schools to maintain powerful systems of control and exploitation. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1100

Categorization

• DEFINE: States the chapter’s thesis: race is a historically created category legitimated by discourse, not a natural fact.
• XREF: connects to: Value hierarchies become second-nature through historically embedded discourse — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1099; Understanding material disparities requires tracing historical inferiorizing discourses — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1240; Human marginalization and ecological exploitation share one root of value-hierarchized thought — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 126 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Racism operates through routine practices that reproduce hierarchical structures #expands (0.82)
• Modern racism is framed as individual deviance rather than systemic structure #complicates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1817
• Racism functions to secure a dominant group’s hegemony over subordinate groups. #expands (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 635
• Structural racism operates beyond individual intentions and prejudice #expands (0.80) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 42
• Liberalism is organically embedded in the racialized nature-value hierarchy #corroborates (0.75)
• Racism operates through biological and cultural registers that reinforce each other #expands (0.75)
• Racism is socially learned and reproduced through discourse rather than innate #qualifies (0.72)