BINARY OPOSITION OF BLACK AND WHITE: THE POWER OF LANGUAGE IN SHAPING IDEAS ABOUT RACISM

Abstract

Discourse is a complete language unit in grammatical hierarchy that can be performed in a composition like novel, book, encyclopedia and so on. Nowadays, discourse is often used as the medium of power to legitimate something or action. The meaning of thing in a discourse is potentially determined by soemoene who has the power. In many aspects of life, a discourse never neutral or objective in revealing a phenomena. In this case, commonly a discourse is purposely designed and conditioned by dominan institution. Through the language in a discourse, some bad characters or images can be attributed to someone such as subversive, fundamentalist, terrorist, and so on. Such phenomena also can be found in the terminology of black and white in the discourse about racism. For example, in Oxford English Dictionary the word “black” before 16 century was associated with something bad, negative, and stupid. Black is a kind of color that describe the condition of terrible soul, the symbol of devil, or something dangerous, such as black magic. Black is identical as the opposition of white. In oposite, white always has connotation with good things, such as purity, God, excellence, etc. Binary oposition of white and black is continously produced in the discourse about racism. Black people (negroid) are assumed inferior toward white (caucasoid). At the same time, language also contribute positive image toward people who have the authority (white supremacy). In that case, language is not only a grammatical system, but it leads to the conflict of interest. This paper is a result of library research toward a discourse about racism in the novels of Jacqueline Woodson. The research was conducted by using postcolonialism and deconstruction approach. This reserach is aimed at revealing: (1) how are the image about black and white constructed in the novels of Jacqueline Woodson. (2) What are the binary oposition, decentering and fixing points in that novels. The conclusion of this research shows that language is still powerfull in shaping ideas about racism, especially in keeping the issues of black and white as binary oposition. 

Key words: power, discourse, binary oposition, racism