"In order to effect your revolution, you will not need a revolutionary
mindset, a revolutionary script, or a revolutionary tongue.
You will need a revolutionary . . . patience."
- Lucius Turner Outlaw, Jr.

Discourses of Domination

If you're Black in the United States, you have undoubtedly had an experience where someone says something like "do you play basketball?" or "can I touch your hair?" These are questions that, on their own, are perfectly harmless. In fact, they are so harmless that it can often be very difficult to explain why they are so offensive. My story has always been that these questions are part of a larger discourse of invidious racial distinctions. "Do you play basketball," for a Black person, is part of the conversation we too often feel we are forced to have with the world around us, namely "are all Black people the same? Are you all ferociously agile brutes with baggy jeans and the latest DMX cassette in your car?" Even if the individual answer is "yes," that I am forced to participate in such a conversation assumes a uniformity of Blackness that is offensive. However, it is often the case that neither the questioner, nor the questioned fully understands their motives or their reactions. It is this type of "hidden discourse" that I think guides much of political life. Constructing a methodology that allows us to study such discourses empirically is, therefore, an important focus of my research.