A Classification on Race Lines - Case Study Example

Critique the Concept of Racialisation Racial formation or racialisation has developed more recently from the original concepts of race and racism in Anthropology and Sociology. The idea of distinguishing human groups by ‘race’ was very much in vogue in the 19th century but has since been ‘discredited since the human species (homo sapiens) could not be genetically thus compartmentalized’ (Jayasinghe, 2008). There is no scientific basis for a classification on race lines. In spite of visible differences broadly identified as Negroid, Mongoloid or Caucasoid, there have never been any biological barriers to their intermingling. Mixed-race metropolitan populations throughout the world today attest to worldwide ‘miscegenation’. However, it cannot be denied that ‘racism’ exists. The term ‘racism’ was first used in the context of the racial superiority claims by the Nazis resulting in the Holocaust. Ruth Benedict (1942), the renowned anthropologist, believed in the reality of the concept of race, although she decried racism. ‘Racism involves social boundary demarcation and a hierarchical ordering of human beings according to phenotypical difference, creating an “us” and a “them”. Racism also involves the conflation of physical difference with cultural difference, and with certain cultural characteristics’ (Dawney, 2008). The effect is the marginalisation of certain members in society – forming an out group. Notwithstanding the paucity of scientific evidence, racism is also defined as ‘An ideology which signifies some real or alleged biological characteristic as a criterion of other group membership and which also attributes that group with other, negatively evaluated characteristics’ (Miles, 1993). Racism is often conflated with ethnocentrism. ‘While race is seen as defining the identity of a person with innate and unalterable characteristics, ethnic identity is acquired and learned through a shared culture of language, customs and belief systems, and often a shared geography’ (Jayasinghe, 2008). However, Barker (1981) had labelled the ‘conflation of racism and nationalism’ as the “new racism”, which according to him, ‘emerged in right-wing political discourse replacing the biological racism of the colonial period’. This is linked to ideas of ‘the protection of national homogeneity with fear of contamination’ (Dawney, 2008). This “new racism’ is exemplified in the ‘Capacity to link discourses of patriotism, nationalism, xenophobia, Englishness, ... militarism and gender difference into a complex situation (giving) “race” its contemporary meaning’ (Gilroy,1986). Silverstein (2005) defines race exhaustively and objectively as ‘a cultural category of difference that is contextually constructed as essential and natural – as residing within the very body of the individual- and is thus generally tied, in scientific theory and popular understanding, to a set of somatic, physiognomic, and even genetic character traits’. Although the biological basis for distinctions of race is discredited through the development of genetic science, the social construction of race remains an ever-present, powerful factor. The term racialisation is used to describe the processes through which racism is evidenced in society. Citing the example of how ‘the racial category of “black” evolved’ in the United States, Omi and Winant (1986/1989) refer to ‘an ideology of exploitation based on racial logic and the establishment of a “color line” through ‘indentured servitude’ and ‘slavery’. This served to define the ‘European settlers as well ... a new term of self-identification appeared – “white”’ (op. cit.). A more inclusive and consensus view of racialisation is ‘the notion of racialisation as a representational process – a means of categorisation and delineation of group boundaries’ (Dawney, 2008). Referring to immigrant populations, Silverstein (2005) argues ‘that the racialisation of immigrants leads to the construction of a “savage slot”, creating a hierarchy of cultural superiority’. Again, his definition of racialisation is thorough and exhaustive. Racialization correspondingly refers to the processes through which any diacritic of social personhood- including class, ethnicity, generation, kinship/affinity and positions within fields of power – comes to be essentialized, naturalized, and/or biologized; ... Racialization thus indexes the historical transformation of fluid categories into fixed species of otherness (Silverstein, 2005). It is clear from the above that ‘race’, ‘racism’ and ‘racialisation’ though viewed from differing perspectives, point to useful sociological constructs applicable in varied contexts in the contemporary world. Omi and Winant (1986/1989) continue to argue that racialisation is an ‘ideological process’, meaning that it is not based on a factual or ostensible reality. They give the example of 19th century ‘challenges’ to ‘the category of “white” in the USA where the Anglo-Saxons were not keen to extend the term to include ‘Southern Europeans, the Irish, and the Jews’. With the abolition of slavery, the working class that emerged from among the recent immigrants from all corners of Europe organised themselves on racial lines labelling themselves “white”. ‘The Irish on the West Coast, for example, engaged in vicious anti-Chinese race-baiting and committed many pogrom-type assaults on Chinese in the course of consolidating the trade union movement in California’ (op. cit.). Omi and Winant go on to counter arguments that delineate race as a mere epiphenomenon, emerging from more fundamental issues of ‘socio-political identity’, likely to disappear with future economic and political ‘progress’. They see race ‘as a fundamental organizing principle of social relationships’. As they see it, at the micro-level, identities are forged in a racial context while at the macro-level it is the belongingness in a collectivity of social structures which takes a racial form. These two levels are ‘continuous and reciprocal’. They point out that at the individual level ‘from patterns of speech or tastes in food or music’ to ‘the economic, ... familial or citizenship’ roles, the two levels interact to create ‘racial meanings’ (op. cit.). The above authors do not encourage the limitation of the concept of race to skin colour, social stratification, discrimination, prejudice, cultural domination or any such previously identified racial dimension, but argue its presence ‘to some degree in every identity. They return to the argument that race is not ‘an essence ... something fixed, concrete and objective’ though they warn against the opposite: ‘to see it as a mere illusion, which an ideal social order would eliminate’ (op. cit.). They conclude that race is ‘an unstable and “decentred” complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle’ (op. cit.). Even so, racialisation or racial formation appears to be so pervasive and necessary for day to day life that the authors call it ‘racial common sense’. Whether we like or not, we make assumptions about individual characteristics, behaviours and predilections about people from physical appearance and group membership. These assumptions guide our interactions with such groups. Examples of individual racism through everyday behaviour often unrecognised as such are: avoiding contact with persons who are visibly different; ignoring, not allowing space, and often belittling them; jokes that target the out group; insults and abuse directed at them, which can boil over into open hostility and violence. Marginalisation often occurs when the racially distinct group are a numerical minority in society. They also have an expected role to fulfil, and when such racial expectations are disrupted, there is visible unease. Barack Obama, as a representative of a group with a long history of marginalisation and discrimination in American society could not have been expected to become President of the United States, but he did, that the repercussions of such a momentous achievement is yet to sink into the collective consciousness of the society at large. That this alone has not stopped racial stereotyping is attested by a much publicised incident where a black Harvard professor was arrested on suspicion when he broke into his own home, by a white policeman, not long after Obama’s election to the highest office in the land. This essay ends by briefly summarising two instances where an investigation into 1) racialisation of central and east European migrants in Herefordshire, UK, and 2) a mentoring program that attempts to ‘unpack racialisation’ of indigenous Australian students in higher education, are treated as useful and practical measures employing the racialisation construct. The expansion of the European Union recently has resulted in movements of people seeking employment from historically impoverished states to more affluent ones in the Union. In the UK the inward migration has been to rural and semi-rural areas from Eastern European countries and some of the broken off states of the old Soviet Union. Much of this emigration has been for seasonal work in fruit farms often abbreviated with the phrase ‘strawberry pickers’, although the inclusive term is soft-fruit production. Some of these migrants come with a temporary work permit under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Scheme (SAWS), while others remain to work on local factories. Most SAWS workers came from Russia and the Ukraine first and later from Romania and Bulgaria. Leila Dawney (2008) in a Working Paper written for the Sussex Centre for Migration Research examined the attitudes of the rural indigenous population in Herefordshire to the ‘strangers’ in their midst. She looks at the processes of ‘everyday constructions of identity, difference and belonging’ as they become ‘crystallised at boundaries of ethnicity or nation at the point of contact with the Other’. ... It is this process of boundary demarcation and othering between migrants and British-born residents’ which form the basis of her paper. She details ‘how discourses of racialisation, of cultural diversity, of class, of labour, of rurality – are brought into play in the active construction and performance of identity’ (op. cit.). She finds ‘boundary demarcation through exclusionary practices’. She used focus group discussions to elicit ‘small acts of exclusion’ which she labels ‘contemporary forms of racism’. The local population regard the immigrants as ‘hard working’, and in Dawney’s words ‘flexible and responsive to the needs of capital’. She refers to her previous work where she argued (Dawney 2003) ‘that the English countryside exists as a dominant signifier in the popular imaginary for a specific and excluding form of nationalism through its representation as a space of purity in opposition to the city’. Although not a ‘visible ethnic minority’ the east European immigrants are distinctive by their dress, ‘perceived as being particularly unfashionable’. This, according to Dawney is an expression of ‘cultural superiority’, a ‘hierarchical ordering’ that is symptomatic of racialisation. She concludes: The diverse experiences of migrants in Herefordshire are conflated in the construction of a generic “Eastern European” migrant; at once a boost to the economy and a threat, at times noble, at times exploited, but always and fundamentally different from a perceived and equally homogenised “us”. Where the demarcation of difference takes an affective character we can see sympathy, hostility, disapproval and admiration. Perhaps most interestingly too, the constructed figure of the migrant is used by long-term residents as a means of demarcating group boundaries within their own ethnic group - particularly along lines of class. The figure of the migrant, then, becomes a foil – a distorted mirror on which to project and reflect long-term residents’ images of themselves and each other (Downey, 2008). The Australian Aborigines have been historically kept apart from the white colonial settlers and treated with scant respect. They have now begun to slowly emerge and to integrate themselves into mainstream social, economic, and political life. For far too long, lack of access to education and the resulting lack of employment prevented this. The existing power structures have maintained the status quo, until a few Aborigines who broke the ranks and educated themselves have begun to address the lacunae. This essay briefly reports on one such initiative among people of ‘Kaurna land’. It is called the ‘Inspire Mentor Program’. The extract is from a chapter entitled ‘Bringing Indigenous Sovereignities into Community Partnerships: Unpacking Racialisation to Re-engage Indigenous Australian Students in Education.’ The authors are Catherine Koerner, Simone Tur and Christopher Wilson. Found on the Web, unfortunately no reference is available. These authors assert that programs like the one they developed ‘can help to address and disrupt the sequence of disadvantage by addressing the role of “racialisation” in the process’. They define racialisation as the ‘social construction of “race” which is used to oppressive effect through social organisation, for example: individual and group consciousness; social formations including government structures; and sites of power such as educational institutions; as well as culture and ideology reinforced through such structures and behaviours’(Koerner, Tur, Wilson, undated). They assert that ‘throughout Australian history indigenous people have been excluded and marginalised from all levels of education including schooling, universities’ etc. The aim of the Mentor Program is to break down the concealed pervasiveness of ‘White norms to white people’ that ignores the reality of the Aboriginal experience. Conclusion: The essay has defined and made explicit the constructs of ‘race’, ‘racism’ and ‘racialisation’ as reflected in anthropological and sociological discourse. Two examples of how the concept of racialisation has been applied in the literature to good effect are briefly outlined. References: Barker, M. (1981) The New Racism, London, Junction Books. Benedict, R. (1942, 1983) Race and Racism, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Dawney, L. (2003)’ Belonging and Exclusion: Nationalism, Racism and the English Countryside’, MA dissertation: University of Exeter. D awney, L. (2008) ‘Racialisation of central and east European migrants in Herefordshire’; Working Paper No. 53, University of Sussex, Sussex Centre for Migration Research. Gilroy, P. (1986) There Aint no Black in the Union Jack, London, Hutchinson. Jayasinghe, M. (2008) A Miscellany, Essays, stories, poems and a play, Denver, CO; Outskirts Press Inc. Koerner, C., Tur, S., & Wilson, C. (undated) ‘Chapter Ten: Bringing Indigenous Sovereignities into community Partnerships: Unpacking Racialisation to Re-engage Indigenous Australian Students in Education’, (Internet source). Miles, R. (1993) Racism after “Race Relations”, London, Junction Books. Omi, M. & Winant, H. (1986/1989) Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s, New York, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Silverstein, P.A. (2005) ‘Immigrant Racialization and the New Savage Slot: Race, Migration, and Immigration in the New Europe’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 34 (363-384). Read More