Racism, Whiteness, and Racial Privileges as Categories Contested During the Conjuncture of the 2021 National Strike in Colombia

https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n45.11

Verónica Cortés
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana de México

Abstract:

This article explores multiple dimensions of racism, whiteness, and racial privilege as categories contested during the conjuncture of the national strike in 2021 in Colombia. In doing this, the article problematizes racism as an analytical category, since it turns out insufficient to address the experiences of racial privilege, as advantages that bring about inequality. Thus, it proposes to address whiteness as shaping social formations. This is done by drawing from a (re)reading of the clashes between the Indigenous minga and the residents of Ciudad Jardín, and the State’s racialized abuses in Siloé, which are two neighborhoods in the city of Cali, Colombia. This intends to visibilize how whiteness and racial privileges make up some sort of structural non-inequalities for some subjects at the expense of others.

Keywords: whiteness, white, social class, racial privileges, racism, Siloé, Ciudad Jardín, Cali (Colombia).