Paul Gilroy - blog tasks

 Go to our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive and open Factsheet 170: Gilroy – Ethnicity and Postcolonial Theory. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or you can access it online here using your Greenford Google login.

Read the Factsheet and complete the following questions/tasks:

1) How does Gilroy suggest racial identities are constructed?

His work encompasses postcolonial studies, and a consideration of cultural and race identities. Gilroy has published work on a range of subjects, including literature, art, social theory and music. He has consistently argued that racial identities are historically constructed – formed by colonialization,

2) What does Gilroy suggest regarding the causes and history of racism?

Racial identities are caused by historical conflicts that have brought different groups into opposition. That is not to say that there were no human differences before historical conflict between different groups; different human groups existed but their differences were not defined by ‘race’ lines.

3) What is ethnic absolutism and why is Gilroy opposed to it?

Compromising your ethnic group would, for an ethnic absolutist, be against natural order and risk the future existence of that ethnic group. Gilroy identifies with a position that is opposite to ethnic absolutist compartments.

4) How does Gilroy view diasporic identity?

The classic diaspora considers the originating place for those displaced as the original source of unity and permanence for the diasporic identity. The means that the country a group have been forced to leave will always be the place that defines the cultural or ethnic identity for those individuals. Furthermore, despite the geographical dispersion, people will still feel connected to their origins via history and ancestry.

5) What did Gilroy suggest was the dominant representation of black Britons in the 1980s (when the Voice newspaper was first launched)?

At the time, the dominant representation of black Britons was as “external and estranged from the imagined community that is the nation.” As such, to accept the role of slavery into the cultural identities of Britain would be to challenge the negative stereotype of black Britons at the time, and reverse the “external and estranged” relationship with the nation.

6) Gilroy argues diaspora challenges national ideologies. What are some of the negative effects of this?

However, diasporic identities can also become trapped within a national ideology; diasporic cultural ideologies and practices exist within a national ideology based upon its social, economic and cultural integrations and as such there is a cultural difference with the diasporic identities.

7) Complete the first activity on page 3: How might diasporic communities use the media to stay connected to their cultural identity? E.g. digital media - offer specific examples.

You can connect with people through culture simply by using music. You can even follow people who associate with your culture and relates to it also you can tag the person on your post. 

8) Why does Gilroy suggest slavery is important in diasporic identity?

Gilroy insisted that black culture was interwoven into the wider society and cultural identities. In seeing the African diaspora in a wider context, Gilroy was challenging us to consider black culture and Britain – that ‘non-European traditional elements, mediated by Afro-America and the Caribbean, have contributed to new & distinct black culture amidst... Welsh, Irish, Scots and English.’

9) How might representations in the media reinforce the idea of ‘double consciousness’ for black people in the UK or US?

Gilroy extends this concept of double consciousness to the whole African diaspora which he argues is simultaneously outside and inside the modern world. Black people are outside modernity as they have been deigned freedom and full citizenship; it was ‘proved’ by supposedly rational race scientists that black people were less evolutionally developed than Europeans.

10) Finally, complete the second activity on page 3: Watch the trailer for Hidden Figures and discuss how the film attempts to challenge ‘double consciousness’ and the stereotypical representation of black American women.#

It shows black American women working for a stereotypical white male industry it shows how the women are treated because of their skin colour. However you can argue that it. has been subverted as one of the characters are represented as a strong intelligent intelligent women