Beyond Racial Divides

Ethnicities in Social Work Practice

Lena Dominelli, Walter Lorenz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780754614371
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351955577
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Written by leading authorities in the field, this challenging book addresses complex issues of ethnicity and racial discrimination in ways that encourage further debate and analysis. Its main theme is that social work has been and remains, deeply implicated in racist policies and practices that have been locality specific, but that racism is also recognizable across borders as a phenomenon that appears everywhere. At the same time, the book focuses on innovative theories and practice which seek to promote an emancipatory social work which sets itself the goal of eradicating social injustice - particularly that applying to race. The contributors come from a wide range of countries and describe their experiences in tackling racism in social work at the levels of both theory and practice. This provides an impressive range of perspectives which cover models of social work created by people who have had to live with racism and find ways of overcoming it as well as those who have struggled to become able to express their own ethnicity without oppressing others. The concluding message of the book is a positive one - people can create a world that goes beyond racial divides by accepting, validating and celebrating diversity while at the same time recognizing that people share many commonalities with others which can be used to establish egalitarian relationships, realize social justice and communicate effectively with each other.

Part I:
Exploring Theoretical Frameworks for Social Work

1 Emerging Ethnicities as a Theoretical Framework for Social Work

JANIS FOOK

Introduction

The concept of ethnicity is highly controversial in both popular and academic circles, yet is relatively underdeveloped in academic literature. This is unfortunate in a time when increased mobility and globalisation are forcing questions of ethnic identity into international and community arenas. In the last century, wars of global scale and national disputes that have attracted international involvement have resulted in mass migrations and re-workings of national and cultural boundaries. In this context, traditional ways of viewing ethnicity are either troublesome or inadequate. What are new ways of conceptualising ethnicity that are relevant to our practice, in the context of the international changes we witness daily? Because I examine vexed questions, and because I am trying to chart new ways of understanding, I have chosen to take a non-traditional path in discussing the idea of ethnicity. I have developed this chapter on reflective lines. The reflective approach is particularly useful in making connections between personal lives and structural conditions, between concrete experience and more generalised theorising. It is beneficial because it deliberately eschews traditional academic splits between the individual person and social structure, between practice and theory, and allows a more holistic appreciation of situations. In this way a reflective approach provides a way of understanding and developing practice that is more contextually relevant (Fook, 1996, 1999).

Ethnic identities and the idea of ethnicity are highly uncertain in the current context of global changes. The reflective approach may prove effective in trying to connect our more abstract time-honoured explanations with everyday changing experiences. I have therefore chosen to illustrate concepts of ethnicity with reference to my own personal experience as someone with a mixed and uncertain ethnic identity. For me, many of the current complexities about ethnicity are mirrored in the microcosm of my own life. By drawing out the broader questions from my personal experience, I hope to illustrate, and argue effectively for, more complex and dynamic notions of ethnicity.

Who am I? In answer to this question, I have been called a 'banana'. (I do not expect you to understand this term unless you are one, too.) This term has a special significance for Australian-born Chinese, or perhaps American-born Chinese. It means I am yellow on the outside but white on the inside. I look Chinese, but have been raised as a white Australian. One of my first memories of my awareness of this occurred when I was in my early teens. I was window-shopping one day and was shocked to see a Chinese-looking person reflected in the glass. It took me a few seconds to realise it was me.

I had not really thought of myself as Chinese until this time. Obviously I had looked in the mirror before – I can only think I must have seen a fair-haired fair-skinned person. It was only when I saw myself, in a public place, in an objectified way, as I imagined that other people who saw me anonymously and disconnected from my personal identity might see me, that I realised I was not a white Australian.

Unless you think I am particularly unaware, or strangely at pains to deny my Chinese heritage, let me explain the context and circumstances of my growing up. I was raised in the 1950s in rural Australia, when it was a time of unquestioned assimilation. I was born into the third generation of my family to be born in Australia. My family, of Cantonese origin from near Shanghai, had migrated to Australia late in the last century. I was raised to think of myself as Australian. We wanted to fit in. We did not want to cause trouble. My parents understood some Cantonese, but spoke only English, so consequently they could teach me only English, which is the only language I can speak. All my friends were White Australians, and all the people we mixed with on a daily basis were White Australians, except for the so-called 'New Australians', our term for post-World War II European migrants. It was a time when there were no allowable uncertainties about ethnicity. You either fit in, or you did not. In Australia of the 1950s, one simply did not recognise a Chinese ethnicity.

For me, the idea of 'bananahood' encapsulates many of the driving questions about the way we understand ethnicity in the contemporary world. It bespeaks the possibilities of ethnic identification and acculturation which are not automatically tied with racial appearance. It bespeaks an allowance for a much wider range of differences. It potentially questions the idea of fixed ethnicities based on static categories of race, religion, language, lineage, shared histories and customs.

My quest for my own ethnic identity has thus become one of conceptualising ethnicity in a way that incorporates the changing complexities of a world in which short- and long-term migration, global residence and affiliations, mixed lineage and political competition shape the way we are seen and present ourselves.

In pursuing this quest, let me return briefly to the concept of 'banana-hood'. When I first heard the term, it held a certain appeal for me. It did recognise my sort of 'white' self-image, at the same time not denying my physical appearance. It did seem to label my ethnic identity quite well. It did not force me into oppositional thinking (Sands and Nuccio, 1992: 492), to choose between either a Chinese or a white Australian identity. However, on reflection, I also noted the context in which I acquired the identity of 'banana'. I was called this by a relatively recently migrated Chinese psychiatrist, a member of an Asian research group I had joined. He had called me this good-naturedly, but his label clearly served to 'other' and distance me from those of his kind. He was saying that he was really Chinese. I was not. I felt a bit of a fraud, as if I had somehow been caught out at claiming to be Chinese, but was really Australian. The contextual meaning of the use of the 'banana' categorisation cast me into more uncertainty about my ethnic identity.

I felt that although raised to see myself as no different from Anglo-Australians, I knew I could never be the same as them, partly because of my physical appearance. I recognised, in a matter of fact way, that socially I would always be seen and related to as 'non-Anglo'. Not that this bothered me, but I wondered whether the difference was only skin deep. Perhaps it was not enough to see myself as a 'banana'. I felt that there must be some vestige of Chinese heritage, some quaint customs or family values that were Chinese, even if not named as such. I became keen to identify these, hoping I could put a more definite label on myself, and answer the question 'who are you?' in a more personally, socially and intellectually credible way.

This tension between personally perceived identity and social ascription became the basis of my earliest attempts to understand the complex nature of ethnicity from an academic standpoint. To what extent is ethnicity determined by inherited features, and to what extent is it constructed through social definition and conditions?

Bentley (1987) argues that these questions began to be debated in the 1950s and 1960s by anthropologists such as Leach (1954) and Barth (1969). The ascendant position became that of a recognition of the importance of subjective processes – which do not necessarily bear a relationship to the observations of observers – in the identification of ethnicity (Bentley, 1987: 25–26). Ethnicity, then, in this view, is a product of self and other definition, but it is necessary to focus primarily on how ethnic group identities are formed, and how people use these identities (Marger and Obermiller, 1983: 230) in gaining a full understanding of ethnicity.

How then, was my own ethnic identity formed? I began a type of professional search for the ethnic group to which I belonged. I spent time attending various groups with whom I thought I might share a common heritage or experiences. They were all groups formed to lobby, profile or gain support for some aspect of Asian life in Australia. I took up with a group of Asian social science academics for a short time. I enjoyed their company, but this was the group that quickly picked me as a 'banana'. Whilst I felt accepted, I did not feel fully at home. I attended a couple of functions of the Chinese Association in my local state, only to find that they were much too politically right-wing for me, and that my politics was more important to me than I had thought. I became a member of a management committee of a Chinese community welfare group, only to find that it felt like much of the group's purpose was to bolster the ego and community standing of the male businessman-president. I supported a group of Asian social workers for a good while, but was unsettled by the fact that it seemed culturally inappropriate to talk about, or be angry about, the racism we had experienced in professional circles. Maybe I was just simply realising that my ethnic identity could not be 'found' in groups whose identity was particularly Chinese. I learnt, however, that whilst I desired to find a group who shared, as closely as possible, my history and social characteristics, there were also groups who for their own reason wished to claim me, whether or not I shared their objective cultural characteristics or experience.

In a sense this realisation is mirrored in the debate between primordial and instrumentalist views of ethnicity. More recent theorising around ethnicity now recognises that dominant, primordial conceptions of ethnicity, defined by static and essentialist features of race, culture, language and history are now becoming outdated (Bentley, 1987; McCoy, 1992; Gross, 1996). Alternatively, an instrumentalist view characterises ethnic groups as interest groups, occurring because of the need to pursue collective advantage (Bentley, 1987: 25). Ethnicity in this sense is functional, and ethnic groups can be seen as voluntary organisations (Gross, 1996) formed to allow the group to better press its claims in a competitive political environment.

In my own case, I found that although I did not feel enough shared identity with the groups I had associated with, we all gained some form of enrichment from our mutual association. They could claim the prestige of my membership, and I could claim the privilege of difference, or marginal status. There is certainly an instrumental aspect to my ethnicity, as used by me and perceived by others. I am often the only person (in a roomful of white Australians) who can acknowledge, and critically examine, the issue of racism within non-white communities towards white Australians. I recall vividly, when discussing racism in a postgraduate class, how I introduced some 'insider' knowledge about Chinese stereotypes of white Australians as 'lazy' and 'rude', only to be met with silence and dismay. It is politically acceptable for me to tackle the hard, difficult and complex issues, because I am not seen as coming from a mainstream privileged position. From the perspective of mainstream Anglo-Australians, I, apparently, cannot racially discriminate, since I come from a group that normally has it done to them! Because I come from a marginal group, I can be 'othered' but cannot 'other'.

My own difference also gives me a privileged voice to speak up for other marginal people, and often other marginal people derive comfort from my presence. Italian-Australian clients love me as a social worker. Other Asian-Australians are happy to be in the room with me. They believe that if this is a situation in which I am accepted, they will be too. They do not expect me to discriminate against them, and I am privileged by their trust. We do not even need to speak about our 'Asian-ness' – our racial appearance gives us a common bond.

Yet whilst I enjoy the privilege, this is not enough to give me an ethnic identity. The instrumental view of ethnicity might in part explain the formation of ethnic groups and some aspects of ethnic identification, but still does not plumb, for me, other complexities about my own ethnicity that I experience. For instance, I am engaged in an ongoing process of discovering and constructing my ethnic affiliations. Recently, I watched a TV documentary made by a third generation Australian-born Chinese woman, exactly...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: EXPLORING THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR SOCIAL WORK
• PART II: COMMUNITY-ORIENTED MODELS OF PRACTICE
• PART III: MAINSTREAMING SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE WITH DIVERSE CLIENT GROUPS
• PART IV: RECLAIMING HERITAGES THROUGH SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE
• FINAL OBSERVATIONS
• Index