Identification and Institutional Racism

Kenneth Burke writes about the concept of identification at length in his book, A Rhetoric of Motives. He describes the idea in an overwhelming and unclear amount of detail, but it can essentially be boiled down to a couple of big things: (1) It has ties to social status ("[I]dentification ranges from from the politician who, addressing an audience of farmers, says, 'I was a farm boy myself,' through the mysteries of social status..."). (2) It relates to how we group people together. 

While there are certainly more ways to talk about identification, these are two elements that I want to focus on in particular, especially in the ways we see the concept of identification applied in popular media to perpetuate institutional and systemic racism.

Burke writes that "the ways in which members of a group promote social cohesion by acting rhetorically upon themselves and one another" is an accurate way to describe identification. It is different than persuasion, but the two work together: persuasion being the means of transportation and identification as the destination. He mentions this, too, claiming that "[H]e may identify himself with B even when their interests are not joined, if he assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so."

So how does this tie to institutional and systemic racism? In the War on Drugs, and a drastically increasing amount in the 1990s, we saw an overrepresentation of black individuals, particularly black men, on television as criminals. Black men are incarcerated at a higher rate than any other portion of the population. As people see more and more BIPOC referred to as criminals, the picture of what a criminal looks like in their mind starts looking more and more like the BIPOC they see on TV. Their fear levels begin to increase as Bill Clinton wins the presidency and passes crime bill after crime bill, allocating millions to construct new prisons, demanding longer sentences for similar crimes (like the ratio for crack versus powder cocaine sentences--crack sentences used to be 100 times longer than those of powder cocaine. Crack was used more by BIPOC, whereas powder cocaine, which was considered more sophisticated, was used mostly by white people). Hillary Clinton spoke about the concept of a "superpredators" in 1996, describing them as kids with "no conscience, no empathy." As this kind of persuasion via fear-mongering increased, "[M]any black communities began to actually support policies that criminalized their own children," says Deborah Small, an attorney and founder of the organization Break the Chains, in the documentary 13th.

Now, just to be clear, I do not mean to suggest that BIPOC only began to be identified as criminal in the last half century. The criminal justice system, policing, and our court systems have been racist and set up against BIPOC since their inception and roots in slave patrols. What I am arguing is that through prevalent media sources such as TV, radio, newspaper, and more, we saw an increase in the publicity of the criminalization of BIPOC. Malkia Devich-Cyril, a writer and founder of the organization MediaJustice, says that the United States "educated a public, deliberately, over years, over decades, to believe that black men in particular, and black people in general, are criminals... Black people also believe this and are terrified of our own selves."

To tie it back to Burke's concepts, we see Person A (a black individual) become identified with Person B (a criminal), even though they may not have the same interests (committing crimes). Persuasion in the form of media overrepresentation and fear-mongering contributes heavily to the identification of Person A and Person B as one and the same. Burke realizes that "to begin with 'identification' is, by the same token, though roundabout, to confront the implications of division." We can see that as we identify perfectly innocent people as criminals, we are creating division and contributing to institutional and systemic racism. That identification does not go without real, tangible consequences. We see it in the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Elijah McClain, and Breonna Taylor, and far too many other black individuals. We see it in every unjust use of force on BIPOC by the police. We see it plague our courtrooms, where BIPOC are sentenced for far longer sentences than white people convicted of the same crime. We see it even in our laws, like SB1070, which allowed police to stop individuals if they looked like an immigrant. Identification feeds our already racist system, and it has results that tear communities, families, and individuals apart.