The social imaginary of systemic racism versus the human spirit: "Back of the bus" social practices and the aesthetics of everyday resistance

Canadian research on systemic racism, by focussing predominantly on structural inequality through quantitative research, has not made the connection between such structural inequality and its consequences, expressed in the constant degradation and devaluation of racial minorities in their everyday lives. This work examines everyday practices to explore the consequences of the pain and suffering of systemic racism and to gauge how, within social relations, it is socially reproduced and/or resisted.

Within the framework of Critical Theory, the concepts of ideology and reification are explored and then connected to issues of "recognition" to examine racial social formations as they exist within capitalism. The discussion of how systemic racism is socially reproduced and/or resisted is linked to larger theoretical debates about the interconnections between structure and agency and between language and social relations. Such links demonstrate how research in the area of Race Relations is significant for the lives of racial minorities and for all people. The fragmentation within society and within the discipline of sociology results in theoretical debates that are usually not connected explicitly with each other. To elucidate the complex processes of systemic racism and to address this fragmentation, an overall framework is provided. To enable the reader to "read" race with an integrated perspective the thesis focuses on power relations; on the social imaginary and one of its expressions, possessive individualism; and on social resistance.

Fifteen Toronto high school students, from diverse backgrounds were interviewed intensely in three settings: with their families, with their peers, and then alone. Ideas and material conditions can be seen at work in the students' language about their social relations. The significance of dialogical social relations is drawn out to illustrate implications for questions of identity, social relations and the construction of knowledge.

Parallels are drawn between chronic illness and systemic racism to demonstrate how both radically transform people's lives. The pain and suffering due to systemic racism is analyzed in terms of its embodied consequences for the students' relations to themselves and to others, and for their creation of personal and cultural meanings.

Ideology and reification are central concepts in analyzing how students both collude with and resist systemic racism in their daily lives. The work focuses on three kinds of ideological formations and resistances to them.

When "back of the bus" social practices are experienced, the students sometimes resist. These resistances are interpreted as everyday aesthetic forms that need further exploration to help us understand and transform key aspects of ourselves, that is, the way we think, relate and act. Such specific analyses are critical areas for future research as the very quality of life of all people is at stake. By imagining new visions that radically re-create ourselves, we can initiate social change by resisting "the social imaginary of systemic racism."