Racism, Patriarchalism and Classism, Political Intersections

Proceedings of The 4th World Conference on Research in Social Sciences

Year: 2022

DOI:

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Racism, Patriarchalism and Classism, Political Intersections

Cristina Gomes

 

ABSTRACT: 

Colonialism, eugenics, structural racism, patriarchalism, and social class inequalities have been constructed and reproduced in interplay through power relationships and legitimated by the State in institutions, religion, politics, communication media, family, and so on. In this article, Foucault’s concepts of biopower and normalization are adopted to analyze the persistence of racism, associated with post-structural feminism to understand the perception of gender’s roles. The objective is to analyze to what extent and how discriminatory arguments are interlocked and mutually reinforced today in multiple forms. The methodology included a two-step survey, representative of the population of the city of Rio de Janeiro, with a questionnaire that combines sociodemographic characteristics and statements that refer to discriminatory attitudes and practices. Results show correlated experiences of discrimination and politics, explicit racism, feelings of fear, threat, violence, and the criminalization of Black people, the rejection of interracial intimacy and reproduction, the criminalization and structural violence against Black people, and the rejection of any kind of protection by the State. Explicit racism is intersected with the patriarchal attitudes, such as women should assume their biological domestic role as wives and that female behavior would cause their own rape, the rejection of LGBTQ marriage, discrimination against the youth, and the rejection of providing sexual education at schools. Social class discrimination is expressed by the rejection of street dwellers, highly correlated with xenophobia. Poor groups are likely to live in overcrowded housing and less urbanized neighborhoods, with a low quality of life, and race, gender and class discrimination are correlated further to far-right political identification and activism and the rejection of public policies, actions, and laws to guarantee the rights and protection of these groups, and with the preference for a government that controls rather than listens to citizens. Key words: intersectionality, racism, gender, social class, homophobia, political identification, social policies.

keywords: intersectionality, racism, gender, social class, homophobia, political identification, social policies.