What's this all about?
The poem on the previous page was inspired by the words of four wonderful individuals who shall remain anonymous. The statements were provided in response to a series of case study questions, which included:
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What do you identify as?
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How has this identification evolved over time?
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What are the main factors that have affected the development of your identity?
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In what ways do you perceive your physical body as connected to your socially constructed racial/ethnic identity?
The Race and Place Project: Claremont is an art piece that explores how people make sense of their racial identity as their bodies move around the Claremont Colleges and are a part of different physical spaces. Through this project, I aimed to especially address the role of normative Whiteness in the development of people’s personal identities at the Claremont Colleges. As demonstrated by the photo collection, individuals and communities destabilize normatively White institutions of higher education by finding empowerment and agency in spaces that actively challenge the status quo.
The key questions that influenced my project include:
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How is macro-level racial formation mirrored in the micro-level experiences of people of color?
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What role does whiteness occupy at the Claremont Colleges?
Additionally, I provided bell hooks’ “Choosing the Margin As a Space of Radical Openness” at the beginning because I believe it is a necessary and relevant preface to the content of this project.
where do we go from here?
This project covers a depth and breadth of reflection on race in Claremont, demonstrating how the personal is political and the micro-level experiences of students at the Claremont Colleges point to macro-level societal issues. While this project might elicit more questions than answers, I hope you are able to at least consider the broader implications for positive institutional change at the Claremont Colleges and beyond.
Further Reading
Hooks, Bell. 1994. “Embracing Change: Teaching in a Multicultural World.” Pp. 35-44 in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.
Lee, Stacey. 2005. Up Against Whiteness: Race, School, and Immigrant Youth. New York: Teachers College.
Lowe, Lisa. 1996. “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Asian American Differences.” Pp. 60-83 in Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Ochoa, Gilda and Daniela Pineda. 2008. “Deconstructing Power, Privilege, and Silence in the Classroom.” Radical History Review (102):45-62.
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. “Racial Formation.” Pp. 53-76 in Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge.
Pitts, Victoria. 2003. “Subversive Bodies, Invented Selves: Theorizing Body Politics.” Pp. 23-48 in In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Poon, Oiyan. 2011. “Asian Americans, ‘Critical Mass,’ and Campus Racial Climate: A CRT Case Study.” In Asian American Education—Identities, Racial Issues, and Languages. Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing, Inc.