“Birds of a feather flock together”
When looking at the performance of race it is hard to distinguish the overall/mass performance of a particular race without groups and while doing my observation there was no lack of groups. Sitting in the Market Place at American University, an area where students eat, converse, and study for there upcoming finals, groups of students come together; friends, study group, and large groups of Greek Lettered Organizations. The most distinguishable factor between the groups was that they were all situated in different ethnic and racial groups. The Latino young adults, who spoke in primarily Spanish, sat in the back right of the area in there own specific group, every once and a while leaving to go talk to other people not Latino. The White young adults, who seemed to be largely participants of Greek Lettered Organizations which could show that this area is common area for these groups because there where so many of them, sat sporadically throughout the Market Place typing away on there computers and playing music or online poker. In the center of the tabled area was a group of Japanese students, speaking Japanese, but seemed to be totally cut off from the rest of those who were in the area.
This makes a very interesting view of how we perform our race, which is by grouping or clustering with those of the same race. “Birds of a feather flock together”. Although there is no set rule that says that white people and white people, black people and black people, latinos with latinos, but for some reason it happens.
What?
This blog is part of a larger project of our anthropology class. While others pay particular attention to public communication, sex and sexuality, and body language, our focus here is the performance of race. We look at the many ways in which people or things become of an ethnic background. This can include how a person references, whether through physical attributes, speech patterns, or surroundings, another ethnicity. It can include the ways in which a person makes their own ethnicity apparent (or render them invisible). Even within one ethnic diaspora, we meticulously capture the events in which they separate themselves through even narrower ethnic classifications. Every entry displays a reenactment of a racialized characteristic in the context of American life -- and a profound sense of the meaning of culture.
Why?
We participate in the mass observation movement because we believe that it has much to contribute to the field of anthropology. We capture the "thick description" described by Geertz without the consequences of our participation. In each moment, we are able to catch power structures, cultural flows, functions, structures, an individual's or community's relationship to its environment, human agency, symbols and symbolic meaning, the difference differences make, and/or how history is played out in one simple incident.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
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