Anti-Racism

Alastair Bonnett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134695904
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

This introductory text provides students for the first time with an historical and international analysis of the development of anti-racism. Drawing on sources from around the world, the author explains the roots and describes the practice of anti-racism in Western and non-Western societies from Britain and the United States to Malaysia and Peru. Topics covered include: * the historical roots of anti-racism * race issues within organisations * the practice of anti-racism * the politics of backlash. This lively, concise book will be an indispensable resource for all students interested in issues of race, ethnicity and in contemporary society more generally.

1
ROOTS OF RESISTANCE

The antecedents and ambivalences of anti-racism

INTRODUCTION

Where does anti-racism come from? This question is not of merely historical interest. Constructions of the past play an important role in all forms of anti-racism, both as a site of legitimation and by providing examples of what racism is and where it leads. History is constantly deployed by anti-racists. But it is equally true that many of the tensions within contemporary anti-racism were also apparent within the traditions it seeks to claim. More specifically, the tensions between relativist and universalist visions of equality can be seen to weave their way through the history of both the Enlightenment, Western identified, ‘anti-racist heritage’ and non-Western and/or anti-Western identified traditions of anti-colonialismand anti-imperialism. As this implies, this chapter shows that racism and anti-racism are often intermingled, even inseparable, tendencies. Such a portrait of moral complexity contrasts with more sentimental accounts, in which the story of anti-racism is staged as a melodrama, the characters presented as heroes and villains: pure anti-racists versus pure racists, good against evil. Such an approach has its place. But this book is not one of them. This is not an account of super-humans,of anti-racist martyrs and saints, of people capable of extracting themselves from the norms of their day. The narrative developed here is far more politically messy; peopled, as it is, by individuals struggling within and against their social context.

The first problem that any history of anti-racism must confront is a basic one. The term ‘anti-racism’ is a twentieth-centurycreation. Indeed, it did not appear in regular usage until the 1960s (and even then it was largely confined to English- and French-speaking countries). Its development during this decade accompanied a number of other new forms of emancipatory discourse, such as anti-sexism and gay rights. The apparent novelty of anti-racism partly explains why it has rarely been situated within a broader historical and sociological context. However, although the term is new, much of its symbolic power relies on its ability to draw on ideas, such as human equality and cultural relativism, of considerable age. The linguistic history of the term should, perhaps, also be extended back, as far as the 1930s, the period when The Oxford English Dictionary(1989) cites the first usage of both ‘racism’ (1932) and ‘racist’ (1936) (the use of ‘racialism’ is found earlier, in 1902). All these categories were first employed as terms of criticism. As this suggests, the concept of racism was conceived by those who opposed it, by anti -racists. Strictly speaking, any attempt to portray anti -racism before this time, before the concept of racism existed, is anachronistic.

It is precisely this sense of anachronism that makes a book like Herbert Aptheker’s (1993) Anti-racism in U.S. History: The First Two Hundred Years appear to be suffering from what historians call ‘presentism’. In other words, it tries to explain the past through the ideas and categories of the present. A chronology of centuries of anti-racist activity, a chronology in which a discrete and stable thing, ‘racism’, is attacked in various ways, by various people, year after year, will, inevitably, be misleading. Historical enquiries in this area are necessarily limited to locating influences and tendencies that have fed into the formation of twentieth- and twenty-first century anti-racism and/or may be judged, as far as possible, in their own terms, to have resisted ideologies of racial domination.

A note about my use of the word ‘Western’ may be useful before proceeding. My practice in this book is not to frame terms in scare quotes simply because they are problematic (if I followed that course, these pages would soon darken with swarms of inverted commas). However, wherever possible, I have sought to provoke suspicion about claims for the existence of homogeneous and distinct Western and non- Western spheres of ideological creation. Whichever way they are written, the use of these labels has the unfortunate consequence of both guiding attention away from the mutually constitutive nature of emancipatory activity in different parts of the world, and of setting up the ‘non-West’ as merely the negation, the ‘non’, of the ‘West’. It is indicative of the complexity of the debate, of the difficulty of finding any unproblematic position from which to speak, that although my account will attempt to expose and undermine these categories, they remain necessary, if only because they continue to animate and structure so much contemporary anti-racism.

RELATIVISM, UNIVERSALISM AND THE IDEA OF PREJUDICE IN WESTERN THOUGHT

The relationship of anti-racism to traditions of egalitarianism and tolerance within Western thought is a controversial, politically charged, issue. On the one hand, we find these traditions regularly employed to legitimise the notion that there exists a benign, emancipatory, dynamic within Western modernity. Within Western societies this assertion (which is sometimes accompanied by the stronger claim that the first anti-racists were thinkers from the European Enlightenment) has been evoked to popularise anti-racism and to encourage European heritage peoples to feel that it is not a foreign or threatening idea. Yet, on the other hand, there is something immediately suspect about claiming anti-racism ‘for the West’. In an unsettling mutation of European colonialism, the notions of liberation, emancipation, and resistance become gifts of ‘civilisation’, to be thankfully received by more ‘primitive’ cultures; peoples, races, who have failed to produce their own Montaigne or Marx. As we shall see, the strain between these interpretations is unlikely to be resolved, for both egalitarianism and discrimination, anti-racism and racism, are woven together within the West’s visions of equality and tolerance.

The most subtle identification of this double history may be found within the work of the French sociologist Pierre-André Taguieff. In Les Fins de l’antiracisme (1995) and La Force du préjugé (1988) Taguieff traces the contradictions of anti-racism within French thought, constantly emphasising the way it has been simultaneously an exclusive and inclusive tradition, both racist and anti-racist. However, despite possessing a depth unequalled in the English-language literature, Taguieffs studies rarely raise their sights above France and, occasionally, the USA. Anti-racism is portrayed by Taguieff as a problematic of the West, a product of Western thinkers, Western actions. The inadequacy of any attempt to trace a discrete Western tradition of anti-racism finds historical support within recent studies that have shown that many of the Western intellectuals Taguieff associates with the critique of racial prejudice sought sanction for their ideas in Eastern thought. Thus, for example, in Oriental Enlightenment Clarke (1997) traces how, from the eighteenth century, European studies of consciousness and spirituality, as well as technical inventions and bureaucratic procedures, were legitimised by reference to Chinese and Indian influence and sagacity. The nature of this influence is beyond the scope of the present book, but is a useful reminder that the categories Western and non-Western denote processes of identity formation rather than objective and discrete social realms.

Within the geographical area that, from the eighteenth century, became known as ‘Europe’ two discourses emerged that have often been aligned to the assertion of equality, namely, relativism and universalism. The debate between these positions is far from over. Indeed, many studies of contemporary anti-racism structuretheir subject matter into universalist and relativist approaches. These, Taguieff (1995, p. 357) writes, are the ‘two great orientations of anti-racism’. Indeed, Wieviorka (1997, p. 147) refers to ‘the opposition between the contradictory universalist and the differentialist {i.e. relativist} orientations of anti-racist action’ as ‘structural problems which constantly undermine anti-racist action’. I shall introduce each of these tendencies in turn, elaborating on the connections between, and contradictions within, them.

Relativism

Relativism refers to the belief that truths are situationally dependent. In the context of debate on racial equality it refers, more specifically, to the idea that cultural and/or physical differences between races should be recognised and respected; that different does not mean unequal. Relativism has a long history. Its assertion has often been associated with the attempt to interpret ‘other peoples’ by an imperial power. Relativism usually performs this function, and is defined in relation to, the chauvinistic or supremacist traditions also generated within colonial societies. As this implies, relativism is rarely the only, or indeed the dominant, mode of cross-cultural interpretation at work within the context of expansionism. Thus, for example, it was both within and against the norms of Roman imperial discourse for the philosopher Lucius Seneca (4BC– AD65) to instruct that

Among his own people the colour of the Ethiopian is not notable, and amongst the Germans red hair gathered into a knot is not unseemly for a man. You are to count nothing odd or disgraceful for an individual which is a general characteristic of his nation.

(quoted by Snowden, 1983, pp. 86–87)

The modern tradition of relativism is often traced back to the European Renaissance, more specifically to the writings of Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592). Montaigne used the European encounter with the New World to challenge the notion that French manners and customs were superior. Reviewing a variety of social practices from around the world, he noted, in his essay ‘On habit’, that the ‘laws of conscience which we say are born of Nature, are born of custom’ (1993, p. 130). In the same composition Montaigne wrote that

A man who wished to loose himself from the violent foregone conclusions of custom will find many things accepted as being indubitably settled which have nothing to support them but the hoary whiskers and wrinkles of attendant usage; let him tear off that mask, bring matters back to truth and reason, and he will feel his judgement turned upside-down, yet restored by this to a much surer state.

(ibid., p. 132)

Montaigne may be said to have sought to expose the workings of what today we call racial or cultural ‘bias’. His own position —as someone who claimed the capability of rising above such limitations—is that of the cosmopolitan, an individual of broader horizons than the blinkered masses and conservative elite. Montaigne’s best-known engagement with social prejudice came in his essay concerning Brazilian coastal peoples, ‘On the cannibals’. His account was entirely drawn from secondary sources. Montaigne was not so much interested in providing a factual depiction of another culture, or the reality of cannibalism, as in asserting that even the most seemingly bizarre and exotic of social practices can be explained, rationalised and justified, if understood within their social context.

I find (from what has been told to me) that there is nothing savage or barbarous about those peoples, but that every man calls barbarous anything he is not accustomed to; it is indeed the case that we have no other criterion of truth or right-reason than the example and form of the opinions and customs of our own country. There we always find the perfect religion, the perfect polity, the most developed and perfect way of doing anything!

(ibid., p. 132)

In the same essay Montaigne goes on to offer a contrast between the uncorrupted condition of New World peoples and the decadence of French society. It is at this juncture that we encounter an intriguing characteristic of the relativist tradition. For at its most socially critical moments it often draws on, or asserts, the existence of supposedly universal principles of conduct and action. Thus, for example, when most celebratory of his ‘cannibals’, and most critical of French society, Montaigne relies on a construct of Nature, of the natural, as a universal ‘good thing’. The French, he claims, are no longer at one with Nature, they are alienated from Nature, but

‘savages’ are only wild in the sense that we call fruits wild when they are produced by Nature in the ordinary course: whereas it is fruit which we have artificially perverted and misled from the common order which we ought to call savage.

(ibid., p. 231)

Montaigne was aware that his affirmations of otherness were essentially reactions to French society and had very little to do with the realities of other peoples: ‘I do not speak the minds of others’, he wrote, ‘except to speak my own mind better’ (cited by Todorov, 1993, p. 41). In this respect Montaigne’s work exemplifies a wider trend: the growth and popularity of cultural relativism among intellectual circles in Europe from the late seventeenth century were dependent upon its utility as a method of critiquing European society.

One of the most influential ways European relativists articulated their position was by writing fictional narratives of non-European travellers’ perceptions of Europe. These accounts were used as forms of political satire on the conservatism and arrogance of European institutions. The most famous example of this type of literature is Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1973, first published 1721). Montesquieu’s work consists of a series of letters, seemingly composed by two Persian travellers, called Usbek and Rica. The letters discuss national differences within Europe, constantly expressing surprise and interest in the exotic and peculiar nature of European customs. The contemporary critic Tzvetan Todorov asserts that Montesquieu ‘incorporates the most successful effort within the French tradition to conceptualise the diversity of peoples and the unity of the human race at one and the same time’ (1993, p. 353). It is certainly true that Montesquieu sought to expose prejudice which he defined, in The Spirit of the Laws, as ‘what makes one unaware of oneself’ (1989, p. xliv) and assert the importance of cultural defamiliarisation. The attempt to demonstrate the particularity and, indeed, the oddness, of French and European culture, which lies at the heart of the Persian Letters, is a classic statement of this latter technique. It is a project that adopts the figure of the stranger, the foreigner, as a uniquely valuable and attentive individual, someone who is not blinded by prejudice. ‘You who, being a foreigner’, a ‘candid’ French acquaintance suggests to Rica, ‘want to know about things, and know them as they are’ (ibid., p. 239).

From defamiliarisation sprout the fruits of relativism, namely tolerance and self-knowledge. The first is exemplified by Usbek’s remarks on religion: ‘since in every religion there are precepts which are useful to society, it is well they should be obeyed with enthusiasm, and what is more likely to encourage this enthusiasm than a multiplicity of religions?’ (ibid., p. 165).

Self-knowledge, the other product of defamiliarisation, necessarily entails understanding the socially located limits of one’s own knowledge and the refusal of suprematicism. Rica writes to his friend:

It seems to me, Usbek, that all our judgements are made with reference covertly to ourselves. I do not find it surprising that the negroes paint the devil sparkling white, and their gods black as coal… It has been well said that if triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.

(ibid., p. 124)

The dislocative power of Montesquieu’s account encouraged similar attempts to write from the perspective of outsiders in European society. Other examples include Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World: or Letters from a Chinese Philosopher Residing in London to His Friend in the East(1934, first published 1762) and Marat’s Polish Letters(1971; written in the 1770s, first published 1905) which follows the fortunes of a Polish traveller to the ‘civilised countries’ of Western Europe (see Wolff, 1994, for discussion). The primitivist conceit of the latter text is equally apparent in Voltaire’s L’Ingénu(1964, first published 1756) which critiqued French society from the point of view of a Breton boy brought up by the Huron Indians. On returning to France, ‘The Child of Nature’, as Voltaire calls him, manages to overturn and expose the intolerance of French elite society. Even a wise hermit he encounters in prison has to admit, ‘I shall never obtain the natural commonsense of this half-savage boy! I fear I have been hard at work strengthening prejudices, whereas he listens only to nature’ (ibid., p. 150).

However, although such works appear benign affirmations of cultural tolerance, relativism does not have an unambiguous relationship to the quest for human equality. It is instructive to observe that in The Spirit of the Laws(1989; first published 1748) Montesquieu comfortably combined his relativism with a series of highly negative stereotypes of Indians, Africans and other non-European peoples. As this implies, respecting difference can easily turn into asserting hierarchy. The conservative potential within relativism was noted by Rousseau, who drew particular attention to the inability of such work to move beyond the political agendas of Europe. In his Discourse on Inequality(1984, first published 1755), Rousseau writes:

In the two or three centuries since the inhabitants of Europe have been flooding into other parts of the world, endlessly publishing new collections of voyages and travel, I am persuaded that we have come to know no other men except Europeans; moreover it appears from the ridiculous prejudices, which have not died out even among men of letters, that every author produces under the pompous name of the study of man nothing much more than the study of men of his own country.

(1984, p. 159)

Rousseau casts doubt not on the idea of relativism itself, but on Europeans’ employment of it to sustain their own sense of cu...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 ROOTS OF RESISTANCE
• 2 CLAIMING EQUALITY
• 3 PRACTISING ANTI-RACISM
• 4 ANTI-RACIST DILEMMAS
• 5 ANTI-ANTI-RACISM?
• 6 CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY