Word: essentialist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ethnic studies departments or ensure themselves a permanent affirmative-action check-off box of graduate school application, ethnic activists who demand such special treatment from institutions should take heed of Guinier's warnings about entrenching racial divisions and categorizations. Measures like racial gerrymandering, Guinier warns, "may be rigidly essentialist, presumptuously isolating, or politically divisive." Race-based affirmative action and separate ethnic studies departments (Asian American, Latino, etc.) share the same essentialist, presumptuous and divisive potential...
...exhibition--curated by Bruce Ferguson, Lia Gangitano, and Matthew Teitelbaum--mounts a formidable attack against essentialist arguments for the make female distinctions, and opens up artistic inquiry into broader considerations on social constructions. "Dress Codes" brilliantly harnesses many of the recent developments in feminism, gay and lesbian studies, cultural studies and gender studies into a cohesive body of work. Unlike many recent exhibitions or contemporary art, this one clearly illuminates the interconnectedness within the diversity of critical thought...
Choi misses the point when he equates ethnicity with race, "as a primary analytical category." Such an essentialist approach precludes an inter-ethnic discourse and stifles any contribution by ethnic minorities to mainstream American culture. Multicultural studies tries to move away from a criterion of "race" to one of "ethnicity" in order to pursue a more profound understanding of cultural experience...