Race, Jazz, and Digital Humanities
But how have we developed these boundaries, and why do we continually allow them to carry overbearing weight in our characterizations? Omi and Winant (1986) posit that this “racialization” has been an ongoing, constantly evolving process that has stemmed “from the struggles of competing political projects and ideas seeking to articulate similar elements differently.” We have constructed the notion of race from “institutional and structural features” in our society that have generated its definition as a “social, cultural, and political category,” (1986) yet it is often culture that falls by the wayside as a result of this. For instance, various African cultures are improperly labelled as “black,” leaving their cultural differences oft-ignored in favor of these primitive designations. Our inability to recognize our own social racialization has fed our ignorance for others’ ways of life and the inherent differences that undoubtedly exist within these groupings, and this issue’s presence is no less felt in the jazz realm or in that of digital humanities. Etta Jones discussed issues of race in an interview with Monk Rowe: