Red, Black, White, and Blue: Lives, Deaths, Privileges, and How They Matter
- Sebastian Braun (Iowa State University)
Abstract
Classifications of “race” and ethnicity have consequences - none more so than consequences over life and death. While it is not a new development that ethnic classifications influence the ways in which we are likely to live and die, a renewed spotlight on the privileges of holding powers over life and death has been shone by the Black Lives Matter movement - almost instantly challenged by Blue Lives Matter. Such politically constructed antitheses - as if “Black” and “Blue” were oppositional, not overlapping categories - raise the renewed and continuing need to unpack ethnicity and “race” as political categories that bestow privilege and power and raise some lives over others. This need is only underlined by similar current events, such as responses to protests, the general discourse of the 2016 election, and the rise of White power nationalism, as well as the general ignorance of “Red” issues. This presentation will try to start unpacking some of the essentializations that lead to general uses of ethnicity as a political category, the differential powers and privileges that follow this discourse, and how while all lives matter, ethnicity matters greatly in a racialized society when it comes to end lives.