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May 14th, 2009 - 12:32 pm
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I don't actually subscribe to that definition of racism, really. I see why people use it but I'm not sure, as a definition, it really helps any more than it hinders. Partly because it leaves us lacking in vocabulary with which to address race-based hatred between equals, which - while not the same kind of problem as the racism that includes oppression - is still a problem, and partly because it makes it too easy for racists and quasi-racists to dismiss the discussion.
Let's say we're trying to persuade person P of an anti-racist argument. (For ease of pronoun, P will be male.) If we define racism as "power + prejudice" (which is what I usually see it listed as) or as "power + privilege", then there's a very high risk of a problem. If P does himself feel that he is not possessed of power - P is poor, P is unemployed, P feels that life has treated him harshly and is bitter and miserable. P has been subject to Republican "Southern Strategy" wedge tactics, or P just grew up in a racist society and has internalised a lot of that... P is not going to be convinced that P's actions are racist, and the argument gets derailed by arguments about class and Appalachian oppression.
And the argument gets sketchy for any kind of relevance if you're, say, calling someone racist for perpetuating inaccurate stereotypes about Haitian vodoun (which is a whole huge Thing I have a bee in my bonnet about, but anyway), then if that person lives in Iowa then how do you make a persuasive argument that they have any specific power relative to Haitians?
So to me, racism is about prejudice based on race or ethnicity (since they're not quite the same thing). There are different degrees of racism, with different degrees of hurtfulness, and there are different ways to handle racism once you identify it in yourself. My parents both grew up in South Africa (though my mother spent some time in Scotland as well). South Africa, of course, is renowned for its institutional racism. My parents grew up with that, and of course, it affected them.
However, they knew it, and moved to another country so their children wouldn't grow up in South Africa too, and worked *very* hard throughout my childhood to keep us from internalising racism the way they had. Obviously they weren't able to do it perfectly, but they raised me to think about it, to recognise it, to try and unpack the assumptions as comprehensively as I could - and to think, too, about the likely automatic responses from racists (conscious or un-) to what I do say and think. Hence, I'm reluctant to use arguments or theoretical constructs that I can see being easily dismissed.
(My mother's reaction the first time I told her I was dating a non-white person was kind of hilarious. She looked sort of shocked, and I could see the realisations cross her face: that her immediate reaction was negative, that this was racist, that this was not who she chooses to be, followed by a slightly strained congratulations, after which she faked being okay with it until she actually was.)
Given that those hatreds do still have significant effects and do still sometimes result in wars--Kosovo, for example--I rather think it's up to the Europeans to decide whether they can live with them.
But Kosovo was *not* the ethnic hatreds of roughly-equals who have been going to war with each other for the last thousand years and are now in formal alliance with extensively interwoven national interests. That was a product of decades of violent ethnic repression and intra-national ethnic tensions - a very different kind of thing indeed.
Also, bar the very large question mark over whether Britain is part of Europe, Europe is part of my identity - it's where my ancestors come from and where my family, with the exception of my parents and sister, live. (It's also where I specialise, as a historian, and historians can get notoriously proprietary about Their Areas.) Whether war between European states is a matter of jokes or violence is really quite important to me. And if the choice is between those two - and right now, it very much seems to be - then I'll happily state that anyone who would rather have yet another Anglo-French war than yet another stereotype joke is wrong.
And the thing is, the jokes have been getting less vicious over the years. Compare the ones in Mock the Week to one Rowan Atkinson did (to great hilarity from the audience) years ago, in which he cites a list of road death tolls in European countries, and follows with: "Alarming as [these statistics] are... they are just not enough. There are over sixty million degos in Spain! Four thousand just doesn't register!"
The rest of the piece involves more ethnic slurs, and an exhortation to try and make sure as many Europeans die on the roads as possible if audience members should go to the Continent on holiday or encounter tourists on British roads.
These days, that just wouldn't be acceptable.
Progress. |
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