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Barry GilheanyRacism, or racial prejudice, is, like all social phenomena, never static. 

It mutates across history and cultures and develops new paradigms in its othering processes. It shape shifts across time and space to suit prevailing norms around what is socially acceptable to say and not to say. It is utterly taboo in polite society and in media circles to utter the “N” word or “P” word (witness the outcry when a BBC reporter in Bristol said exactly the former epithet on air when reporting on a racially aggravated crime.) It is no longer acceptable to level the deicide charge against Jews as a collective for the death of Jesus Christ or to justify the Shoah/Holocaust (although Holocaust denial or relativization have not gone away). 

However, core demonologies still exist in relation to people of African or Afro-American origin, Jews and indeed any minority or ‘other’ cultural group. These are very often expressed benignly and by those who are loudest in their disavowal of racism or its manifestation by the ‘usual suspects’ of violent extremists or bigots. It can take the form of apparently innocent colour-blindness such as the Question (“Where are you from?) often directed to people of colour born in the UK and other Western countries or casual conversations about the quality of life in “urban” (i.e. predominantly) black neighbourhoods. 

As the history and remergence of left antisemitism shows; progressive political discourse can easily lapse into the reproduction of damaging racial stereotypes such old tropes about the global influence of Jewish cabals and the Jewish lobby thinly disguised by new tropes around the “Zionist” and “Israel” lobbies. In the wake of the setting up of the confidence-and-supply arrangement between the minority Tory government led by Theresa May and the DUP after the June 2017 UK General Election; the reaction of the liberal-left press towards the latter and their depiction of marching Orangemen had a Simian quality reminiscent of the caricature of Irish people as priest-ridden peasants by the Punch magazine in the 19th century.

It is the aim of this article to show how colour-blindness aids the reproduction of structural/institutional racism in the Anglo-American world. I want to show the function of protestations such as “I don’t see colour; I see people” and “I marched in the sixties” in blindsiding acknowledgment of persistent racism and racist structures and the work needed to overcome them.

New Racism

New racism is a term coined by film professor Martin Barker to encapsulate the adaptation and evolution of racism over time so that modern norms, policies, and practices lead to similar racial outcomes as those in the past, while not appearing to be explicitly (Diangelo, 2019). According to sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, though virtually no one claims to be racist any more, racism still exists. It is an era of racism without racists. It’s an era of colour-blind racism, of racism ‘with a smiling face.'[1] For Afua Hirsch, the progress that has been made is, to some extent, part of the problem. Compared to what black people in Britain experienced up until only two decades ago, being roughed up by the police regularly for no reason, being called ‘n___r’ and chased down the street by armed Teddy boys, it’s ‘racism lite’ (Hirsch, 2018).

The problem for Hirsch, and many other black writers, activists and everyday people, is, there is still race and there is still racism (Hirsch: p.25). Racism can still exist, because like other oppressive systems it is highly adaptive. They can withstand and adjust to challenges and still maintain inequality. Colour-blind racism emerges out of racism’s ability to adapt to cultural changes. According to this ideology, if we pretend not to notice race, then there can be no racism.  

The crucible for this type of neo-racism in the US was the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (a landmark civil rights and US labour law that outlaws discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin). For after this seminal piece of legislation, it became less acceptable for white people to admit to holding race prejudices. In particular whites seized upon Martin Luther King’s famous call in his Washington address in 1963 for him to be judged “on the content of my character, not the colour of my skin” as a simple solution to the problems of racial disharmony. Pretend not to see race and racism will simply fade away. Colour blindness was now promoted as the remedy for racism; white people insisted that they didn’t see race or, if they did, it had no meaning for them (Diangelo: p.41)

However, for Eddo-Lodge, colour-blindness is a childish, stunted analysis of racism. Its point of entry and exit is at ‘discriminating against a person because of the colour of their skin is bad’ without any investigation of the ways in which structural power manifests in these exchanges. (Eddo-Lodge, 2018). For the really pernicious aspect of colour-blindness is its use against the cause of the movement for social change which has been co-opted by it; how this definition of racism is so often used to silence people of colour when attempting to articulate their experiences of racism by the accusation of bias on their part of racism against white people. (Eddo-Lodge: p.83). Herein lies the deepest challenge to the tackling of (largely unconscious) racial bias – the defensiveness that is generated by any suggestion of racial bias. This defensiveness is classic white fragility as it protects our racial bias while simultaneously affirming our identities as open-minded (Diangelo: p.42).

Aversive Racism

Closely related to colour-blind racism is aversive racism; a manifestation of racism often exhibited by well-meaning “educated” and “progressive” people whose frequent exhortations of their racially unbiased persona (e.g. I have lots of black friends; “all people are the same, they bleed the same colour of blood underneath; I judge people by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin”) cloaks a subtle but insidious form of race prejudice (Diangelo: p.43).

Diangelo itemises the components of this benign, self-effacing but nevertheless coded racism as follows:

  • Rationalisjng racial segregation as unfortunate but necessary to access “good schools”
  • Rationalising or explaining away virtually all-white workplaces because potential job applicants of colour simply do not apply
  • Avoiding direct racial language and using racially coded or euphemistic language such as urban, underprivileged, diverse, sketchy, and good neighbourhoods
  • Denying how few cross-racial relationships white people really have by proclaiming and lauding how diverse communities and workplaces are.
  • Attributing inequality between whites and people of colour to causes other than racism (Diangelo: pp.42-43).
Diangelo illustrates how aversive racism functions by recalling a conversation she had with a white friend which centred around a white couple that this friend who had moved to New Orleans and had bought a house for a mere $25,000. When this friend immediately added that “of course” the couple had to buy a gun and that “Joan” was, afraid to leave the house Diangelo immediately cops on that they had bought the property in a black neighbourhood, an assumption confirmed when she gets a positive answer when she puts that question. On explaining that she asks this question because she is writing a book about how whites talk about race when not talking about race; her interlocutor switches the narrative by a plaintive assertion that “I wouldn’t want you to live there [In New Orleans] it’s too far away from me!” (Diangelo: pp.44-45).

The unspoken racism in this “bonding” conversation between four white people is reflected by two powerful signifiers – the need to buy a gun and a white woman’s fear for her safety. White people will perceive danger by the mere presence of black people. The afore-mentioned exchange serves as an example of what Toni Morrison terms race talk. Race talk captures the “explicit insertion into everyday life of racial signs and symbols that have no meaning other than positioning African-Americans into the lowest level of the racial hierarchy.”[2] Diangelo draws upon another racially coded conversation with white people, this time when going for an academic position, to show the pernicious operation and consequences of casual race talk. Throughout the three-day interview process, she was advised by other white people not to buy a home in two certain districts (Springfield and Holyoke) should she take up the post for unspecified reasons. Surprise, surprise after looking up the demographic profiles of these areas, she found out that approximately 50 per cent of their populations were black or brown people. She also recalls her teacher-education students expressing fear about being placed in “dangerous” neighbourhoods while describing their hometowns as “sheltered”. (Diangelo: pp.46-47). No consideration of safe, “sheltered” spaces for Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, George Floyd and so many other African-American homicide victims whether in gated white communities or at the hands of law enforcement officers.

White Solidarity

The “bonding” conversation just discussed forms an integral part of white solidarity or white racial bonding. For Diangelo white solidarity is “the unspoken agreement among whites to protect white advantage and not cause another white person to feel racial discomfort by confronting them when they say or do something racially problematic” (Diangelo: p.57). In the words of educational researcher Christine Sleecher, racial bonding occurs when, on interaction with each other, whites affirm “a common stance on race-related issues, legitimating particular interpretations of groups of colour, and drawing conspiratorial we-they boundaries”[3] White solidarity demands both silence about anything that reveals white advantage/privilege and an unspoken concord to maintain racial unity in the protection of white supremacy. To break white solidarity is to break rank. (Diangelo: pp.57-58).

White solidarity manifests itself at the awkward silence that falls upon a family dinner on a telling of a racially charged joke by a family member which is not challenged in order not to spoil the occasion. Or where something similar is told in the pub or at a party where nobody raises any objection for fear of being accused of being too politically correct and being told to lighten up. Or a similar refusal to call out racism at the workplace in order to remain a “team player” and for career advancement. Into the mix comes romanticisation of the “Good Old Days” of plentiful jobs in heavy industry (with whites always in the ascendancy), traditional family values and community tranquility which masked the Jim Crow laws of mandatory segregation, lynchings, attempted genocides of Native American peoples, bans on voting, sterilisation practices aimed at blacks and other “indigent” peoples i.e. the whole panoply of white Euromerican supremacy which went completely unchallenged. 

To merely question the internalised sense of superiority and entitlement that is the legacy of the “Good Old Days” triggers the “white fragility” which Donald Trump in his “Make America Great Again” so effectively harnessed in 2016 by diverting blame away from the actually existing white elite (rather than the amorphous Washington “swamp” of politicos and lobbyists) towards various peoples of colour – immigrants, Chinese, undocumented workers- for the conditions of the white working class (Diangelo: pp.59-61). Trump’s invocation of the “carnage” of the inner cities in his inaugural speech as President was another barely concealed racial dog-whistle and act of hankering back to the “Good Old Days” where African-Americans, women and other minority groups were meant to know their place.

The approach of writers like Diangelo to the problems of “unconscious racism” and “white fragility” is open to criticism for its arguably excessive concentration on the roles of language and discursive concepts that are de rigeur in the academic worlds of critical theory and postmodernism. Articulation of identity politics makes prolific use of these devices leading to accusations of the emergence of a “cancel culture’ of “woke” intolerance. Such methodologies must be underpinned by solid empirical evidence of structural racism which authors like Eddo-Lodge and Hirsch do in abundance. Future articles will focus thereby on structural racism.

Bibliography



Diangelo, Robin (2019) White Fragility. Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. London: Penguin.

Eddo-Lodge, Reni (2018) Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. London: Bloomsbury.

Hirsch, Afua (2018) BRIT (ish). On Race, Identity and Belonging. London: Vintage.

[1] Eduardo Bonila-Silva (2013), Racism Without Racists: Colour-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, 4th ed. Rowman & Littlefield).

[2] Toni Morrison, “On the Backs of Blacks,” Time, 2nd December 1993.

[3] Christine E. Sleeter (1996), Multicultural Education as Social Activism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press: p.149

Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter. 

Black Identity Politics II ➖ The Amoebic Qualities Of Racism: How Racism Adapts

Add caption
Barry GilheanyRacism, or racial prejudice, is, like all social phenomena, never static. 

It mutates across history and cultures and develops new paradigms in its othering processes. It shape shifts across time and space to suit prevailing norms around what is socially acceptable to say and not to say. It is utterly taboo in polite society and in media circles to utter the “N” word or “P” word (witness the outcry when a BBC reporter in Bristol said exactly the former epithet on air when reporting on a racially aggravated crime.) It is no longer acceptable to level the deicide charge against Jews as a collective for the death of Jesus Christ or to justify the Shoah/Holocaust (although Holocaust denial or relativization have not gone away). 

However, core demonologies still exist in relation to people of African or Afro-American origin, Jews and indeed any minority or ‘other’ cultural group. These are very often expressed benignly and by those who are loudest in their disavowal of racism or its manifestation by the ‘usual suspects’ of violent extremists or bigots. It can take the form of apparently innocent colour-blindness such as the Question (“Where are you from?) often directed to people of colour born in the UK and other Western countries or casual conversations about the quality of life in “urban” (i.e. predominantly) black neighbourhoods. 

As the history and remergence of left antisemitism shows; progressive political discourse can easily lapse into the reproduction of damaging racial stereotypes such old tropes about the global influence of Jewish cabals and the Jewish lobby thinly disguised by new tropes around the “Zionist” and “Israel” lobbies. In the wake of the setting up of the confidence-and-supply arrangement between the minority Tory government led by Theresa May and the DUP after the June 2017 UK General Election; the reaction of the liberal-left press towards the latter and their depiction of marching Orangemen had a Simian quality reminiscent of the caricature of Irish people as priest-ridden peasants by the Punch magazine in the 19th century.

It is the aim of this article to show how colour-blindness aids the reproduction of structural/institutional racism in the Anglo-American world. I want to show the function of protestations such as “I don’t see colour; I see people” and “I marched in the sixties” in blindsiding acknowledgment of persistent racism and racist structures and the work needed to overcome them.

New Racism

New racism is a term coined by film professor Martin Barker to encapsulate the adaptation and evolution of racism over time so that modern norms, policies, and practices lead to similar racial outcomes as those in the past, while not appearing to be explicitly (Diangelo, 2019). According to sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, though virtually no one claims to be racist any more, racism still exists. It is an era of racism without racists. It’s an era of colour-blind racism, of racism ‘with a smiling face.'[1] For Afua Hirsch, the progress that has been made is, to some extent, part of the problem. Compared to what black people in Britain experienced up until only two decades ago, being roughed up by the police regularly for no reason, being called ‘n___r’ and chased down the street by armed Teddy boys, it’s ‘racism lite’ (Hirsch, 2018).

The problem for Hirsch, and many other black writers, activists and everyday people, is, there is still race and there is still racism (Hirsch: p.25). Racism can still exist, because like other oppressive systems it is highly adaptive. They can withstand and adjust to challenges and still maintain inequality. Colour-blind racism emerges out of racism’s ability to adapt to cultural changes. According to this ideology, if we pretend not to notice race, then there can be no racism.  

The crucible for this type of neo-racism in the US was the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (a landmark civil rights and US labour law that outlaws discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin). For after this seminal piece of legislation, it became less acceptable for white people to admit to holding race prejudices. In particular whites seized upon Martin Luther King’s famous call in his Washington address in 1963 for him to be judged “on the content of my character, not the colour of my skin” as a simple solution to the problems of racial disharmony. Pretend not to see race and racism will simply fade away. Colour blindness was now promoted as the remedy for racism; white people insisted that they didn’t see race or, if they did, it had no meaning for them (Diangelo: p.41)

However, for Eddo-Lodge, colour-blindness is a childish, stunted analysis of racism. Its point of entry and exit is at ‘discriminating against a person because of the colour of their skin is bad’ without any investigation of the ways in which structural power manifests in these exchanges. (Eddo-Lodge, 2018). For the really pernicious aspect of colour-blindness is its use against the cause of the movement for social change which has been co-opted by it; how this definition of racism is so often used to silence people of colour when attempting to articulate their experiences of racism by the accusation of bias on their part of racism against white people. (Eddo-Lodge: p.83). Herein lies the deepest challenge to the tackling of (largely unconscious) racial bias – the defensiveness that is generated by any suggestion of racial bias. This defensiveness is classic white fragility as it protects our racial bias while simultaneously affirming our identities as open-minded (Diangelo: p.42).

Aversive Racism

Closely related to colour-blind racism is aversive racism; a manifestation of racism often exhibited by well-meaning “educated” and “progressive” people whose frequent exhortations of their racially unbiased persona (e.g. I have lots of black friends; “all people are the same, they bleed the same colour of blood underneath; I judge people by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin”) cloaks a subtle but insidious form of race prejudice (Diangelo: p.43).

Diangelo itemises the components of this benign, self-effacing but nevertheless coded racism as follows:

  • Rationalisjng racial segregation as unfortunate but necessary to access “good schools”
  • Rationalising or explaining away virtually all-white workplaces because potential job applicants of colour simply do not apply
  • Avoiding direct racial language and using racially coded or euphemistic language such as urban, underprivileged, diverse, sketchy, and good neighbourhoods
  • Denying how few cross-racial relationships white people really have by proclaiming and lauding how diverse communities and workplaces are.
  • Attributing inequality between whites and people of colour to causes other than racism (Diangelo: pp.42-43).
Diangelo illustrates how aversive racism functions by recalling a conversation she had with a white friend which centred around a white couple that this friend who had moved to New Orleans and had bought a house for a mere $25,000. When this friend immediately added that “of course” the couple had to buy a gun and that “Joan” was, afraid to leave the house Diangelo immediately cops on that they had bought the property in a black neighbourhood, an assumption confirmed when she gets a positive answer when she puts that question. On explaining that she asks this question because she is writing a book about how whites talk about race when not talking about race; her interlocutor switches the narrative by a plaintive assertion that “I wouldn’t want you to live there [In New Orleans] it’s too far away from me!” (Diangelo: pp.44-45).

The unspoken racism in this “bonding” conversation between four white people is reflected by two powerful signifiers – the need to buy a gun and a white woman’s fear for her safety. White people will perceive danger by the mere presence of black people. The afore-mentioned exchange serves as an example of what Toni Morrison terms race talk. Race talk captures the “explicit insertion into everyday life of racial signs and symbols that have no meaning other than positioning African-Americans into the lowest level of the racial hierarchy.”[2] Diangelo draws upon another racially coded conversation with white people, this time when going for an academic position, to show the pernicious operation and consequences of casual race talk. Throughout the three-day interview process, she was advised by other white people not to buy a home in two certain districts (Springfield and Holyoke) should she take up the post for unspecified reasons. Surprise, surprise after looking up the demographic profiles of these areas, she found out that approximately 50 per cent of their populations were black or brown people. She also recalls her teacher-education students expressing fear about being placed in “dangerous” neighbourhoods while describing their hometowns as “sheltered”. (Diangelo: pp.46-47). No consideration of safe, “sheltered” spaces for Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, George Floyd and so many other African-American homicide victims whether in gated white communities or at the hands of law enforcement officers.

White Solidarity

The “bonding” conversation just discussed forms an integral part of white solidarity or white racial bonding. For Diangelo white solidarity is “the unspoken agreement among whites to protect white advantage and not cause another white person to feel racial discomfort by confronting them when they say or do something racially problematic” (Diangelo: p.57). In the words of educational researcher Christine Sleecher, racial bonding occurs when, on interaction with each other, whites affirm “a common stance on race-related issues, legitimating particular interpretations of groups of colour, and drawing conspiratorial we-they boundaries”[3] White solidarity demands both silence about anything that reveals white advantage/privilege and an unspoken concord to maintain racial unity in the protection of white supremacy. To break white solidarity is to break rank. (Diangelo: pp.57-58).

White solidarity manifests itself at the awkward silence that falls upon a family dinner on a telling of a racially charged joke by a family member which is not challenged in order not to spoil the occasion. Or where something similar is told in the pub or at a party where nobody raises any objection for fear of being accused of being too politically correct and being told to lighten up. Or a similar refusal to call out racism at the workplace in order to remain a “team player” and for career advancement. Into the mix comes romanticisation of the “Good Old Days” of plentiful jobs in heavy industry (with whites always in the ascendancy), traditional family values and community tranquility which masked the Jim Crow laws of mandatory segregation, lynchings, attempted genocides of Native American peoples, bans on voting, sterilisation practices aimed at blacks and other “indigent” peoples i.e. the whole panoply of white Euromerican supremacy which went completely unchallenged. 

To merely question the internalised sense of superiority and entitlement that is the legacy of the “Good Old Days” triggers the “white fragility” which Donald Trump in his “Make America Great Again” so effectively harnessed in 2016 by diverting blame away from the actually existing white elite (rather than the amorphous Washington “swamp” of politicos and lobbyists) towards various peoples of colour – immigrants, Chinese, undocumented workers- for the conditions of the white working class (Diangelo: pp.59-61). Trump’s invocation of the “carnage” of the inner cities in his inaugural speech as President was another barely concealed racial dog-whistle and act of hankering back to the “Good Old Days” where African-Americans, women and other minority groups were meant to know their place.

The approach of writers like Diangelo to the problems of “unconscious racism” and “white fragility” is open to criticism for its arguably excessive concentration on the roles of language and discursive concepts that are de rigeur in the academic worlds of critical theory and postmodernism. Articulation of identity politics makes prolific use of these devices leading to accusations of the emergence of a “cancel culture’ of “woke” intolerance. Such methodologies must be underpinned by solid empirical evidence of structural racism which authors like Eddo-Lodge and Hirsch do in abundance. Future articles will focus thereby on structural racism.

Bibliography



Diangelo, Robin (2019) White Fragility. Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. London: Penguin.

Eddo-Lodge, Reni (2018) Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. London: Bloomsbury.

Hirsch, Afua (2018) BRIT (ish). On Race, Identity and Belonging. London: Vintage.

[1] Eduardo Bonila-Silva (2013), Racism Without Racists: Colour-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, 4th ed. Rowman & Littlefield).

[2] Toni Morrison, “On the Backs of Blacks,” Time, 2nd December 1993.

[3] Christine E. Sleeter (1996), Multicultural Education as Social Activism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press: p.149

Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter. 

5 comments:

  1. Barry,

    good to see this piece emerge after our discussion around 'White Fragility.' DiAngelo's ultimate assertion, to me, was that the only way to call yourself an anti-racist was to admit that you're actually a racist. Such post-modern shite is the reason the left is in such a mess in 2020.

    "Why I'm No Longer..." was the first book of that ilk that I read. ALthough she introduced me to events like the Bristol Bus Strike and had legitimate criticisms of modern feminism, I lost the rag with her when she tried to downplay a butcher selling less then stellar meat to white customers as not an act of racism as the shopkeeper had "no power."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Post modernism is useful only as a critique and not as a prescription. This sounds so much like metaphysical wank

      Delete
  2. Essentially, it has the ability to recast racism to whatever you want it to be, whether it's someone using racist terms or someone shoving you out of the way to get on a crowded bus.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. you are a racist because I call you one.

      Much like the way "Fascist" is thrown around. An obvious question to ask when fascist or racist is used is how are those being accused are actually fascist or racist, rather than assume that they are. Those who seek the power to define in such a matter should explain their reasoning otherwise anybody can be silenced by the mere act of labelling.

      Delete
  3. Anthony and Christopher

    Thanks fror your helpful comments.

    To try and make sense of modern debates; it may be useful to distinguish at the interpersonal level bdetween overt and conscious race and hate and unonscious forms of racism and at the ,macro-level bdetween interpersonal, institutional anmd structuraL racism.

    An understanding of specific historic backgrops to racism is important as well; bne it slavery and Jim Crow in the USA or empire in the cases of Bfritian and France.

    ReplyDelete