Race as a trope

In Gates’ article “Writing ‘Race’ and the Difference It Makes” he focuses on race as being a trope and as a result, helps “with the shaping of an economic order in which cultures of color have been dominated in several important senses by [other] cultures and their traditions” (Gates 6). In order to better understand what he meant by this, I referenced Jimmie Killingsworth’s article “Appeal Through Tropes” from earlier in the semester. As you probably remember, Kilingsworth classifies this piece in several sections that explain the use of and result of tropes. The one most applicable to Gates’ argument is the theory of Association/Metonymy: it points out that, “the tendency of metonymy to objectify and depersonalize people can thus prove all too effective in negative appeals to gender and race” (128). Therefore, metonymy can be seen as an example of how people view material objects as more important and meaningful than the person using them, for oftentimes, people are stereotyped and judged based on the objects associated with their respective race or gender. However, this cannot be completely applied to Gates’ work as he notes how “Race is the ultimate trope of difference because it is so very arbitrary in its application” as in comparison to gender, where biology can be used to account for physical differences and the like (Gates 5). Because of this, race has become one of the primary tactics when attempting to explain variations cultural norms, social behavior, religious beliefs, language and linguistic characteristics as well as other categories. As Killingsworth says, “Tropes help us to classify and study other functions of speech;” however, in this context, using race as a trope seems to only provide a poor excuse for explaining certain characteristics by simple association because it has been done so often before.