Shareen Razack: A Critical Analysis

In this paper, I engage with the five seminar questions of the third seminar session. The first question regards the various instances of systemic racism and sexism in Sarah Carter’s article. The second question relates to the argument made by Shareen Razack about the spatiotemporal element of segregation in early Canadian settler society. The third question concerns Indigenous women’s resistance to sexism and racism. The fourth pertains to the experiences of individuals living in the downtown east side of Vancouver and the manner by which structural barriers limit individuals agency. Finally, I apply my understanding of intersectionality and singular identity to the five questions, in a general form.
What historical examples of systemic …show more content…
The problem is that justice systems tends to abstract people’s conditions or judge them ahistorically. Yet, Razack argues that history determines the conditions under which present events occur. There is a geographical element to her murder because it must be understood in a colonial settler context, which created the spatial poverty conditions for the possibility of this type of murder. Moreover, Razack argues that the actions of the two white males are sexist as they are understood as being actions of affirmations of their patriarchal superiority. Note, that the two men left their respectable settler communities and chose to enact violence in a gendered and racialized space. Although many feminists or critical thinkers would disagree with my position, I understand prostitution as the commodification of the human body for profit. And thus, the unequal exchange of ones body for profit, begs the question, what historical processes led to this woman selling herself in order to access resources endogenous to their …show more content…
The very being of Indigenous women is an act of revolution. There are a plethora of examples of Indigenous women’s resistance to sexism and racism. The Simpson and Hunt piece are very new and as such use modern social media to resist the colonial state. The #IAmNotNext is indicative of Indigenous resistance as it rejects the narratives of victimhood, dependency, and most importantly, it rejects the notion that Indigenous women are not self-determining agent. Moreover, the articles show something very special about the method used to decolonize. They are not using the masters tool. One of the modes of colonization is trying to remove the personal from the academic or forcing objectivity and impersonal accounts. I think there is an element of power in conditioning the victims of oppression to remove their oppression from academic accounts. I think the reason for this is because personal accounts as shared by Hunt and Simpson which include subjective critiques are very dangerous to the