The (Ideological) Dupes

I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a statement racist. Is it the statement that is racist, the individual making the statement or the individual decoding that sentence? From a theoretical perspective, each of these three possibilities is tied to a particular understanding of the world:

• a statement is racist --> words carry the meaning, people are simple filters through which these words circulate. Who carries the responsibility for being a racist here?
• the individual making the statement is racist --> the words we use reflect who we are on the inside. The 'racist' is a clear-cut identity inside us that is expressed through these words. In such cases, the individual carries the responsibility of being racist.
• the individual decoding/ interpreting the sentence is racist --> in this case, the individual interprets everything said through a racist lens. Everything makes sense to h/ir only through the racist perspective s/he espouses. Again, the locus of responsibility is within the individual.

Of course, there are always other options than these three. In fact, the mere fact that I only list three options here betrays a worldview: an understanding of communication as a message that moves from the source to the audience.

During these past few days, I was reminded of how complex the questions of 'what counts as racism' and 'where is racism located' are. Part of me, the politically engaged part, cannot escape the feeling that some of these experiences were clearly tokens of racism. But pinpointing exactly what made them so and how were they racist became increasingly difficult. I know that for some, things are easy to interpret: if it smacks of racism, then it is racism. But I'm a theorist, and nothing is simple for me.

I was reading a long and heated thread on Feministe. The topic - parenting - elicits everyone's opinion. Parents and nonparents alike, we all believe there's an objective 'proper way' to raise kids and integrate them in the pre-existing social setting. During this chaotic online conversation, someone qualified their statement as being true regardless of race, gender or ethnicity. In itself, this may be a reasonable statement: "I believe kids can misbehave, regardless of their or their parents' race, gender or ethnicity". As a performance, this kind of statement seeks to counter any accusation of racism, sexism or nationalism. The speaker seeks to reassure the audience that the statement is not uttered through the racial, gender or ethnic lens.

But the audience rejects this assurance. In fact, the audience is quick to point out that the statement itself is racist. Is anyone so deluded to think that normative statements about behavior can be uttered in a space devoid of race, class, ethnicity or gender? No, the mere fact that such a sentence is uttered only reinforces the audience's belief that it is actually racist, classist, sexist etc. No one who has been subjected to racism or to class-based discrimination would ever believe that such a sentence can be 'neutral' (if I may even use this qualifier) . It is uttered from a particular racial, ethnic, gender, class perspective - meaning, the person who utters it is probably white, middle-class.

By extension, all members of the audience who read that utterance and find it non-racist, non-sexist, etc. are themselves racist, sexist, classist etc. because they fail to recognize that the possibility of uttering such a statement is only opened for their class/ race/ ethnicity/ gender.


The other case is of a quite different nature, but it ends up pretty much in the same place. I see this person on a quite regular basis, without being friends or even acquaintances. We live in the same neighborhood and in time, we started saying "hello" to each other. One day, I saw a person that looked just like her, but yet a bit different. My friend confirmed the similarity. We didn't know if it's her or not; being confused, we focused on identifying her instead of being polite and missed the chance of greeting her - whether she was our neighbor or not.

The next time we ran into our neighbor, we told her the story and offered a variant to "save face": maybe it was her sister or a relative? No, she said. It's probably the fact that "all Asians look the same" she said, and then added: "But even my brother was convinced he ran into me once, and it wasn't me". She had offered us another "save face" variant, but one that didn't sit well with us because of its implications: we were white, and as the stereotype goes, "all Asians look the same" to white people. We protested the implied racial framing in a quite clumsy manner. But were we reading too much into it? Could it be that we were actually hearing what she said from a racial perspective? Could it be that the source of our confusion was a racialized vision in the first place? Did she mean it in a racist way or was she simply trying to be nice by offering a possible explanation? Would she have offered the same explanation if we were not white?

* * *

I do not sit well with the idea that we are always first and foremost making a statement from a racial, gender, ethnic, class position. While that's partly true and needs to be recognized and interrogated, it is not the whole truth. If we can think only "as whites", "as women", "as Americans", then we find ourselves in an impossible world, born into these pre-established categories and unable to truly understand each other. These being said, it is only a few of us that have the privilege (or maybe the burden?) of affording to question these things.

When Racism Interpellates...

Althusser's discussion of ideology is notoriously complicated. He sees ideology as an on-going practice in which we all participate. By 'practice', I think he means our lifestyles, our behaviors, our perceptions of things.

The complicated part comes with his argument of 'interpellation'. Fiske (1991) describes this argument through a parallel: you're on the street, and someone says "Hey, you!". You may turn around - cause you understand what was said. Or you may refuse to turn around, cause you understand but nobody talks to you like that. In either case, you understand the interpellation and you react to it (There's the third scenario, when the words and the speech act mean absoultey nothing to you). In the first case (you turn around), you become complicit. In the second case, you resist. Fiske says this is how ideological interpellation works.

The other day, I've heard the story of an aquaintance from Europe who went to visit her daughter in a Nordic country. Upon her return, she said she was deeply disappointed with the Nordic country: she saw so many drunk women on the streets. She was also unhappy with all the drug-addicts roaming freely on the streets. And, last, but not least, she was upset with the presence of all 'those Somalis' on the streets of the Nordic city, as it looked like the entire Somalia has been moved there.

Yes, I know that racist interpellation too... (Shame one me!) I admit to being interpellated by racism in that way - and responding to it. I went to buy a phone card, and the guy in the booth asked me "Where are you from?" (Well, I was speaking English in a Nordic country). I responded unwillingly (always these questions annoy me), and, without thinking twice, I asked "Well, were are you from?" Now, might look innocent to you, but the guy in the booth was of the different skin color, and at that time, I noticed those things. I noticed them as part of the 'order' or 'muddle' (to use Bateson's famous metalogue "Why do things get in a muddle?") - in other words, my vision was racist, so I assumed a priori a black guy cannot be a nordic.

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized the stupidity of my question, but by then it was too late. The guy was kind enough to smile and respond naturally: "Well, I'm from here". And that was the end of it. But the incident stayed with me. I realized the racism behind my vision: I saw black. And black and Nordic do not match. It is often said that white racism is inconspicuous, because you never think of places or people as being white, and in that case, I think it was true. It never occured to me that I'd question someone's 'belonging' (now, I have problems with belonging as a concept...) based on skin color - but I did it, and I did it through a routine and unconscious vision framing what I saw in the world.

So, I cannot be too tough on the lady who was bothered by the Somalis on the streets of the Nordic city. What bothered her, I asked myself? The same interpellation of racism "Hey, you, there's black in the white place. Black is different. Is not 'from here'. It 'muddles' things". It muddled her expectation of a Nordic city as a white city.

Now, here comes the irony - or the paradox. The lady in question has been married to a black guy. Her daughter, whom she was visiting, is herself black. So, I wonder, how can racism still interpellate the mother in this way, when her own daughter has mostly likely been objectified by racism in the same way?

References: Fiske, J. (1991) Introduction to Communication Studies. 2nd edition, London & NY: Routledge
Photo Credits: Brad Florescu

Race and Biology

The last issue (vol.5 issue 38) of Social Studies of Science deals with the complex and disturbing question of race, genetics and disease. I've only went through the introduction to this issue, as I've been ambivalent on this topic and I found others shared my ambivalence. I do understand that, on a macro scale, populations are shaped by their environment: we've seen this from the time white colonists brought the flu to North-American indigenous populations. We can still say today that African Americans, on the whole (and whatever that means), are more affected by certain conditions and diseases. There's also the possibility of tracing down where your genome 'comes from' spatially - like Whoopi Goldberg did.

I'm trying to say that there are certain benefits from thinking of race in terms of genetics. But I'm a scholar (and from the vantage point of not being directly affected by any of those alleged benefits) and I feel deeply disturbed by the whole context of this linkage: genetics is intrinsically linked to racism. Let me put it differently: genetics, searching for the biological proof of races, was developed for - and cannot be easily divorced from - racist purposes. You might say we no longer believe in the hierarchy of races and that our purposes driving our genetics research have nothing to do with eugenics, with creating the 'pure' breed. Maybe. The point is we might no longer believe in the hierarchy of races, but when we believe in - and look for - the biological proof of racial difference, we classify people into races in a way that cannot be contested (not to mention that this way of looking at things already frames the reality that we subsequently investigate). We start from saying each race has particular health problems - and mind you, what the hell does it mean a 'race' in the first place, how does it homogenize us etc. From different races-different health, we come to different diets, different education, different medication... and before you know it, we have DIFFERENCE written all over the place. Now, I'm not sure this is different from racism...

Photo credits: MASH DNArt

Racializing crime

I wanted to write about stay-at-home moms and patriarchal systems, but A very Public Sociologist posted an interesting anecdote about racializing crime. I have heard the story of particular ethnic or racial groups being seen as the criminal elements in particular areas over and over again.

The one I know most about is that of Roma in Eastern Europe, which are often being portrayed by the media as organized crime outside and above the law. As a child, I was often told to stay away from Roma, because they are thieves. My grandparents in the countryside hated Roma because poultry disappeared when they were around - and the causality was quite clear to them. And I vividly recall the day when one guy - whom I instantly identified as Roma - inappropriately touched my girlfriend on the street. I hit him with an umbrella, yelling and shouting after him, calling him racialized names that I won't repeat today. I hated 'them' too. I was afraid of 'them'.

Since then, I've heard the stories over and over again. "You don't know what they do to us", the refrain went, "they abuse us, they steal from us, they swear at us, they attack us". Without having a clue about race and racism at that time, these were powerful mechanisms of making sense of the world around me. Of drawing the lines of trust and the boundaries of the community to which I allegedly belonged. It took me a long process of learning and gradual understanding to be able - and most importantly, to be willing - to remove the racial lens I used in interpreting the world around me. While it is true that race relations do shape events and interactions, those are not determined by race. These being said, I can see what a powerful meaning-making mechanism racism is - and I can also see why, when you are a victim, no amount of critical thinking would deal away with your feelings of loss and trauma.

As I learned more and more about the history of Roma people in Eastern Europe, as I came to think about how we stereotype and how we draw the boundaries of 'our group', I came to understand things differently. But it took me years to realize that I was seeing people first and foremost through their race/ ethnicity, without ever questioning that. It was as if race/ ethnicity defined them. And I knew nothing of their circumstances, I completely disregarded them. I assumed everyone had the same opportunities as I did; and that there's only one right set of values - mine, of course. Not that circumstances or different values might justify criminality, but criminality always signals something else: an inescapable circle of poverty and oppression; a corrupt rule-of-law system; a weak civil society, etc.

White, whiteness

There's this thing called the 'white-people's view'. Well, it's not really a thing, it's more like a perspective one has on the people and things around him/her. In a nutshell, the idea is that white people have never been collectively a subject of racism or institutionalized discrimination, and that they look at the world from a privileged position.

Regardless of individual cases (like your John Doe around the corner), white people as a collectivity are in a position of power: they do not need to deal with the complex and intricate consequences of racism. If you want to read more, try this brief intro to whiteness studies written by Gregory Jay.

The idea of this post is slightly different. It's about my own dilemma with racism and the white perspective. I do not think of myself as white, but at times, I'm forced into it. According to whiteness studies, this is precisely what being white means: not to think of yourself in terms of race, or skin color, to think the world is skin-color-blind in a way. So, I fit the bill pretty well.

On the other hand, as someone interested in how we construct difference - in this case, visible difference based on skin color, facial features and this difficult yet suspicious category called race - I find it hard to accept that one HAS TO fit into a racial model, either empowered or disempowered. I guess one of my problems is that whiteness is, in itself, not a monolith. And as soon as one takes a micro perspective, and looks at the people in this category, lines of power and discrimination (yet not racial, I have to admit) become visible.

The other problem that really bothers me is a sense of historicism in this. Not to say that racial problems do not exist, or that history doesn't matter, I have a feeling that we are forced to bear a cross that is not ours - or let me be blunt, a cross that is not mine. I didn't think too much about race, yes. But I do think about it now. I think of racial discrimination and racialization of power lines in society. Yet, I have a hard time thinking of people as first and foremost defined by their race; so I have a hard time with the application of race to individuals. Maybe I do not make sense: I think people are racist. I think this has to do with a social setting (from education to media, from power relations to institutional configurations), not with an inner racial essence that defines people.

The other day, I attended a workshop on Canadian Native community research practices. And when the presenter said that no white person can do research into a Native community, because only a Native person can truly understand a Native culture, I had a hard time not jumping off my seat. I found it hilarious that the presenter started the presentation by outlining the values which characterize research done from the perspective of indigenous culture: respect, caring and sharing. But why does respect only works within the community and not outside it? Yes, I know about the racialized history of Canadian Natives in a white-Canada. But no, I do not agree that only Natives can and should do research in Native communities, because I do not believe one is born white, or Native, or black or pink for that matter, but one becomes so in one's upbringing. Here, now I said what has bugged me over the weeekend...

Difference comes through your senses

I recently listened to an interesting CBC podcast featuring David Abram, an anthropologist and philosopher, author of the 1997 book The Spell of the Sensuous. Abram argues that we live in a society which has 'shaped' us (some conditioning work, but also a lot of self-internalization and also resistance) to see the world through an abstraction, science, at the expenses of our direct senses.

I found myself thinking about how we become trained to see difference and the role of science in this. Cynthia Eller made the point that the general social consensus is that science should not be used to prove the existence of race, because society as a whole has decided that this is racist in itself and much of a dead-end precisely because of the politics of race (even if individuals themselves might still be caught into this, see for instance the latest discussion around James Watson's claims).

Yet, Eller says, this is not the case of gender: people still use science to prove that gender exists - and surprisingly it seems like it succeeds in doing so. The problem for Eller - and for Abram too - is that science is an abstraction, and a self-circular one. It is not outside the social realm - and if you are embarking on the road of proving the existence of social categories with scientific means, chances are you'll construct the method and the results in accordance to your goals.

Science makes us see the world as a mechanic device and prompts us to distrust our senses. For Abram, science is only a pair of lenses we choose to wear to see the world. And in so doing, we forget to see the world's complexity and creativity, its power to self-create itself and its interconnectedness. We think we are the only holders of truth, the only ones speaking and the only ones with agency. I wonder how we would construct difference in people if we would live in a world of the sensuous, rather than the scientific. Not that I think a sensuous world would be necessarily a more just one; but I'm just wondering.

Photo credits: woodleywonderworks

Banal, Inconspicuous Racism...

What is it you see in this picture? Pick your choice:
A). A bunch of Chinese
B). A bunch of Asians
C). A bunch of people

If you answered A or B, you have a problem. A banal, inconspicuous problem. You see race before people. You take race to be something that defines people. Which, in a banal and inconspicuous manner, does make you a racist.

The other day, I was reading this blog post about dealing with racist stereotypes and prejudices within your own social network. Should one react to them? Should you confront your friends and acquaintances? Should you just avoid the discussion and pretend you didn't get the racism? I even left a comment on the blog, feeling like one who has been there and found the balance...

Well, I was wrong (and I hate to admit it). There is no balance. I've forgotten how difficult it is to live in a world where people judge other people based on their skin color or shape of the eyes. And how difficult it might be to react, out of many reasons (age, social status, social ties and so on). I simply left the room as soon as I could with that bitter feeling that change is next to impossible, to say the least.

The discussion started innocently, as most racist discussions do, with a story about a trip by bus.

Oh, there are so many Chinese taking the bus... Yes, many indeed, but if you think this is many, then go to Vancouver... There are almost only Chinese there... So many you (the White voice, my note) feel like a minority there... Yes, they are everywhere... And they go everywhere... They'll soon be everywhere...

I confess I didn't react. The people involved in the conversation are intellectuals, with a rich cultural experience, who traveled the world and back. The people involved in this conversation know exactly how I would react, or where I stand on this type of inconspicuously disguised racism. I know I should have reacted.

The same people are however enraged when they themselves are placed into groups and homogenized. They take offence when they are stereotyped and labeled and when they experience the status of being a minority (hard status for a white person!). Yet the logic doesn't seem to be the same when encountering other people. People are almost always perceived through what is taken to be the sign of difference: the skin, the physical traits, the ethnicity, the nationality.

I remember a girl once saying "I will never date a Russian". Why, I asked naively. "Because he would be Russian", came the self-explanatory answer. In his 1995 book entitled Banal Nationalism, Michael Billig discusses the concept arguing that we recreate daily and in a banal manner the ideas that the world is naturally divided into nations defined by particular ethno-cultural-psychological traits and that individuals are primarily defined by their belonging to their nation. The argument is pliable to racism as well. Yes, some of us might live in places proclaiming themselves to be multicultural and tolerant, but it is the daily recreation of racism, nationalism, homophobia and intolerance that needs to be seen, investigated and addressed.

Photo Credits: ernoldino

Stats on everyday racism in Canada

According to some recent surveys (read CBC full story), 1 in 6 Canadian adults have been subjected to racism, while 1 in 10 didn't want people from a different race as next-door neighbors. I am not a supporter of surveys, but I do realize that the power of numbers can sometimes be thought-provoking. While the numbers came from different surveys, and we do not know much about their methodology, I do see them as - at least on an anecdotal level - being supported by my everyday life environment.

While Canada is officially pursuing a policy of multiculturalism, the unofficial truth is that race or accent do raise barriers among people (and I am not referring here to the impossibility of communicating in another language, but to those barriers we construct when we decide that a person with an accent or from another race cannot possibly understand or adhere to the 'Canadian' lifestyle). I have heard on so many occasions people arguing that it is 'hard to work with Chinese' or that 'living in a building where there are Africans is unsafe'. I have heard immigrant students complaining that they do not understand their professors because of their accent. And I have heard people congratulating others for having 'such a good accent in English'.

While racism may be rejected officially, there is a long way from having a policy of multiculturalism and bragging about it, and actually having multicultural communities, where people do not relate to each other through their race or accent, but rather relate to each other as human beings first and foremost. From my own experience, I have found that having friends who share similar values and preferences has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, language, accent.

Race as difference

I took the test on race from Race- The Power of Illusion. Among the things I didn't know:

• the fruit fly (and not humans) has the highest genetic variation;
• we don't know what causes the different skin colors; and
• if everyone would be wiped out, except people in Asia, there will still be 94% of human genetic variation.

Among the things that I did know where:

• race doesn't predict who you are, what you like, or what disease you will inherit;
  
• most likely your ancestors are connected to Nefertiti, Julius Caesar and Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, all of them together, given the intermixing that took place throughout the years.
  

Where does this leave race? I'd say it leaves it as a very convenient way of establishing false hierarchies among human beings.

Mixed Race Me

I have come to learn that a work of art creates more room for change than an academic paper. But I'm no artist. So I rely on other people's creativity. Check Mixed Race Me, a digital story created by a Yunnie Tsao Snyder, whom I do not know, and I probably never will, except from this little, yet powerful creation.

When are we one pure race, one pure nation? When does difference kick in, and how much difference do we need til we start seeing it as racial or ethnic difference? How white your skin til you are 'White'? What comes out of a Chinese mother and a French father, with an Anglo-Saxon ancestry? What is the child of Hungarian parents, but born and raised in Canada? What is this child if she is born and raised in Somalia? How do we ascribe these lables and based on what? And the questions never stop...

Difference is in your dreadlocks?

I'm looking for interesting websites, and I run across this blog on race. It's not updated, but I still browse it, to see what people have been talking about. This one totally gets me:

White. People. Should. Not Wear. Dreads.

...It is not an expression of the unity of all mankind.
It is not getting back to the most natural state of things.
It is not any of these things, because you make them look dirty. You take it as an excuse not to bathe, as if there is no water in Africa, or Jamaica. You take it as an excuse to appropriate a culture you probably know next to nothing about, so you can look liberal, socially conscious, politically aware. You don't look liberal. You look stupid...

The post got 46 comments (while most of the others got some 7-10 comments). People reacted in various ways. But what puzzles me is how a particular way of understanding difference in relation to ethnicity/ race permeates this post. To each race, its hairstyle. When we see difference, we see it in racial terms. We see it in national terms. It is this juxtaposition of difference and race within the context of racism that I find simultaneously repugnant and dangerous. It may be the case that race has no meaning nowdays except in relation to racism, which - we need to be reminded - has not always been the case in human history.