Racial Identity through the Works of Jenny Tannoch-Blandand Stuart Hall - Essay Example

Sociology Identity Essay Studies on Whiteness have taken considerable attention of researchers in the past decade and emphasis has been laid on understanding specifically on white racial and ethnic identity. Even though white ethnic identity has been debated long before the last one decade, the term white racial identity has attracted great attention in the recent past. Most often considered as a default racial category, it is generally taken as something that shoulders on a privilege of being an identity that has been formed on account of oppression inflicted on nonwhite groups over the centuries. In other words scholars have draped Whiteness within a synonymy of a privilege and at the same time attributed it to being a complex and a non-monolithic entity. Scholars argue that in order for the Whiteness to benefit from research centering on its privileged tag, the focus has to be shifted to a rather closer introspective of Whiteness through empirical studies with respect to its social psychology, movements, and ethnic identity. Overall the development of white identity as it being a racial identity deserves to be studied methodologically through ethnic identity models to synthesize a broader picture of the same. The phenomenon is to be analyzed through almost every sphere of the environment that it, directly or indirectly, affects. For instance, one aspect of Whiteness as being a racial identity is generally overlooked in the workplaces. Possibly irrefutably and based on day-to-day workplace practices adjectives such as performance, success, professionalism and a number of similar concepts are takes as predominantly descending from white mores and values. One reason why white males still are considered to be candidates for better paychecks and perks despite global criticism of overt racism. Even though this overt racism is considered as illegal, the number of leadership roles, it has been observed, generally go and disproportionately so to white males. Ironically, it later turns out that it white males again who dictate terms or even make decisions pertaining to diversity. Clearly, a body of theory and theories based on practice are needed to examine white as being a racial identity. This paper attempts to understand whether or not white is a racial identity through the work of two different authors who, the paper will see, how they portray Whiteness; do they differ or concur with each other’s observation and do they agree white is a racial identity or not. The two authors being taken up for this analysis are Jenny Tannoch-Bland in Identifying White Race Privilge, and Stuart Hall in New Ethnicites. Jenny Tannoch-Bland The author attributes Whiteness to a racial privilege that the race has inherited through the acts committed in the past, mostly suppressive in nature inflicted on the Indigenous people. These acts, she writes so blandly included acts of genocide, poisoning, torture, internment, enslavement, dispossession, torture, massacres and murder. Terming white race as unearned, denied, systemic, invisible and undesirable; she is of the opinion that the fact of being white confers dominance. Jenny Tannoch-Bland makes a number of very important points. She attempts to draw a correlation between racism and race hatred and says that racism is more complex than race hatred. By racism, she says, people generally mean racial oppression, which one race inflict on another. When racism takes oppressive overtures the focus shifts to the oppressed. Quoting Australia as an example she says the focus is one the Indigenous people when racism is talked about. Put whichever way, the trend impacts anyone but white Australians who see this causing an Aboriginal disadvantage. Despairingly on the other hand when white advantage is discussed it is not found important to discuss that thing or link it up with racism. Consequently, the white race advantage is not being seen through the prism of racism and whites think that their lives are not affected by racism, even though they do and seemingly have no objections from benefitting by it. But, the fact is, that through this unearned, inexperienced race privilege the whites are continuously affected by the same. What, however, goes unnoticed is that the whites are not conscious of it. Even though the whites are not conscious about it they still keep on harvesting benefits from it. While Indigenous people have a reason to believe that these benefits are on account of racism, whites on the other hand, tend to believe that they have gained these benefits from birth and are normally "wed" to the them on account of their birth in a white domain. As part of a painstaking research work the author lists 47 conditions of daily experience which can, actually, be seen 47 advantages of conferred naturally on the white race on account of their color. She is clearly aware of one thing and that is for Indigenous people one or many of these condition are still a privilege to have. Jenny Tannoch-Bland say since the Whiteness is invisible to white Australians, they do not find it necessary to give any thought to one aspect of this invisibility – that is how it impacts Indigenous people. What could be grasped from here discourse on Whiteness is that she finds interrogating it like venturing into a discomfort zone in the sense that interrogating Whiteness allows white Australians to observe that they have a lot to unlearn and learn with regard to the debate. The effort to do this is not as easy as it might sound since it means going back in history, accepting some hard facts and introspecting how Whites in this land have and do correlate with its First Peoples. Time and again she refers to this a privilege which, of course, does confer power but not any moral strength. Terming this as race privilege she is of the opinion that it over-empowers Whites and in reality gives them permission to control on the basis of the race. It confers sort of a license to one group to be an oppressor and other a haplessness to be the oppressed. She remarks that the privilege associated with the White race gives a license to the Whites to be oblivious, ignorant, destructive, arrogant, paternalistic, insensitive, and patronizing and they can exercise that license the way they want it to be used. The enlightened souls, however, may even refrain from exercising it, but as a matter of fact it still remains with them. From her, word of caution though! She warns that this unearned privilege is actually damaging the Whites. The race is being led to believe that it is better than any other when the reality might be otherwise, and this euphoria invades the minds of the Whites right from the childhood. As the children go, it goes unnoticed how it stunts development, degrades and distorts their humanity. This has enormous social consequences and impacts one spiritually, morally, emotionally, and intellectually. However, there can be one strange aspect to whatever Jenny Tannoch-Bland says on the topic, and that is she is not explicit whether, in her opinion, is being White a racial identity. By attributing it to a privilege that has been very much a part of the system, she actually evades whether – despite its origin – can White be said a racial identity. Towards the end of the paper, and in a masked manner, she remarks that it is collective responsibility on part of Whites to realize that racism is fundamentally ingrained to the Australian society. Racism is embedded in our history, our institutions, our policies, our way of life, our psyches. It is our white race privilege to one another that we can begin to unpack and unlearn racism. The question is does the author imply what we all mean – that White is a racial identity, through her veiled remarks; or she, by attributing it to age-old history, she actually implies that it is history that is to be blamed even if Whites are racial in nature. Stuart Hall The other paper, Stuart Hall’s New Ethnicities, on the other hand doesn’t specifically deal with White as a racial identity but dissects the theme with respect to politics of color and centers the debate on black cultural politics and the shift it has seen in the recent times. While the Jenny Tannoch-Bland paper is speaking largely in context of Australia Stuart Hall’s paper is mostly British-centric. A very terse remark that can be deduced from his paper is that if Britons think that they are multicultural in nature then they might actually be misleading themselves. The shift he opines can be seen in two different phases – one that was and is no more and another that iss and is going on. These two phases even though woven by a common thread, converge and at the same time overlap at the same conjuncture, which is historical in nature. The first moment was at a time when the 'black' was coined as a term which have had connotations of marginalization and racism in Britain and came into being for organizing a category meant for resistance in a new era of politics overburdened by communities and groups which hailed from different traditions, histories and identities. What came to be commonly known as the “Black Experience” seen as a unifying force among a particular community became hegemonic over other communities and ethnic identities that didn’t share their cultural beliefs and practices with them. The result that was was like a twist in the tale; the blacks began to be seen as “invisible and unspoken other” and pitched against the cultural and aesthetic discourses of the predominantly Whites group. What followed and what Stuart Hall terms it was “politics of representation.” The blacks began to be seen as merely the objects rather than subjects in almost all spheres of life – particularly in fine arts like music, cinema and even literary works. This began to shift the paradigm and dominant streams of existence began to be transformed on the basis of cultural politics. This worked at two levels with, as if, a predetermined objective. One pertained to the rights to representation by black artists or workers who belong to this cultural segment; and two, contestation of the marginality, which highlighted the black images in a fetishied nature and their stereotypical quality surprisingly by positioning 'positive' black imagery as a counter-position. This was, as Hall names it, 'relations of representation'. To support his view on the ‘shift’ that has taken place, Hall refers to films like Passion of Remembrance, Territories, My Beautiful Laundrene, Rosie Get Laid, and Sammy. An important observation that he makes is that it would not be possible to represent the question of black subject unless a reference is made to dimensions as gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality. In a remarkable observation, Hall tries to say that when it comes to defining racism ‘one’ is the reflection of the ‘other’. He says it I not a question of only ‘black-skin’ but also of “Black-Skin”, “White-Masks”. In other words he implies that just as a feminity acts as a double for masculinity, white can be seen as a double for black. At the same time, Hall is of the opinion that everyone is ethnic in nature and thus everything cannot be seen with the purview of racism or multiculturalism. The human race is ethnically and being so is highly important for the subjective sense of who we are but, he cautions, that doesn’t at all mean what will be doomed to survive is just ethnicity the way Englishness was which marginalized, forgot, displaced and disposed other ethnicities. The aspect has to be understood in the right earnest as part of the politics of understanding diversity and difference. Discerning Views Both authors want to define the idea of whiteness. Jenny Tannoch-Bland has based her work on superficial day-to-day experiences and occurrences and she says everything how whiteness transmits racial behavior but falls short of directly crediting it with being a racial identity. Each line that she writes is encapsulated within a statement on how white has gained the notoriety of being racial but refrains from saying it herself whether or not it is racial. Stuart Hall’s paper, on the other hand, looks at the political factors of the transition and goes beyond the topic of discussing only Whites as being racial. Supporting his arguments with substantial research, he is relatively explicit in saying that whatever the reasons White can be said as being racial. References Belinda McKay (ed.) (1999) Unmasking Whiteness: Race Relations and Reconciliation, Queensland Studies Centre. Jenny Tannoch-Bland. (1998). Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action. Bringing Australia Together: the structure and experience of racism in Australia. Identifying white race privilege, pp.33-38 Morley. David and Chen. Kuan-Hsing. (1996) Stuart Hall :critical dialogues in cultural studies. I London : Routledge. Ch. 21. Hall. Stuart. "New ethnicities". pp. 441-449. Stuart Hall, 'Racism and reaction', in Five Views on Multi-Racial Britain, Commission for Racial Equality, 1978. White Racial and Ethnic Identity in the United States Annual Review of Sociology Vol. 31: 245-261 Read More