Introduction
As described by the Ancient Greek epic poet, Peisander, Heraclesâ 1 twelve labours included the battle with the Lernaean Hydra whose many heads regenerated each time they were cut off. This fable resonates with me in many ways not least in the way that it reflects the fight for social justice ; as soon as you win one battle for justice another battle for the same justice springs up around the corner albeit appearing in a different guise (head).
Whether it is the disproportionate numbers of black youths that are stopped and searched 2 in the UK or the disproportionate number of black men being killed by the police 3 in the United States or the shameful silence on the surprising number of black female fatalities 4 at the hands of US law enforcement, one of the biggest challenges in resisting social inequality is actually defining what it is that we are resisting. If we are faced with the symptoms of inequality, which can result in the uneven application of the law that can leave young black men and women fatally vulnerable, we really have to examine what it is that we are trying to resist. When we peer into the looking glass, we are greeted by dim and barely recognisable shadows that pretend to simulate our reflection. 5 Here, I mean Power and the way it tries to convince us that âwe the peopleâ have legitimised it and it reflects/represents us. Power that wields invisible control and privileges those who can best serve its cause. This is a real challenge for activists of all causes but for those who labour to challenge the injustices caused by race and gender (and other modes of oppression, of course!), the challenge becomes truly Heraclean (Herculean).
What Is Whiteness?
So, what is this Power that requires such a Herculean effort to overcome? Without further ado, it is whiteness . Whiteness as a concept goes beyond (but starts with) racism, whereas Stokely Carmichael said, âIf a white man wants to lynch me, thatâs his problem. If heâs got the power to lynch me, thatâs my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; itâs a question of powerâ. 6 This question of power is about a system that confers privilege on whom it chooses to recognise. With such privilege, which could be regarded as resulting from the benefits of Bourdieuâs âhabitus â, 7 the system can arbitrarily make up the rules as it goes along in order to maintain the status quo of privilege (its survival) at any costs. However, whiteness , as âPowerâ becomes trickier to pin down when it shrugs off its racial origins and morphs into market relations where the market itself becomes a socio-economic expression of whiteness . Kamaljeet Gill, whilst exploring James Baldwinâs film I Am Not Your Negro , insightfully writes:
Whiteness is not a description of a race, it is rather a position in a power-relationship, which builds itself in opposition to all the people who are produced as not-white, and in particular those who are Black. 8
I see Gillâs âposition in a power-relationshipâ in terms of market relations where the now market actors (who were once social actors) are forced to strategically position themselves in relation to whiteness , in other words, their âmarket freedoms â gained by their knowledge of the market . For me, the market is a particularly significant arena to explore because we are currently living in an age of neoliberalism where ever-deregulated and global markets have been given the near-universal power to profoundly affect the workings of all of our (inter/national) institutions and their services. Looking at this chameleon-like transformation of whiteness into a market derivative of what is now known as âmarket freedoms â or âindividuality â is crucial for understanding its power and its pathological structures. 9 In Chapter 3, I will expand on this by reconciling my previous writings about the market power of âpopular (urban) culture â and its hidden influence on the ethea of our institutions. I will also explore how the pathological structures of the market (via its âeconomies of racismâ 10 ) underpin and legitimise the unspoken racial contract 11 of hierarchical societal ordering. In this chapter, however, I will introduce whiteness through its âfirst-levelâ manifestation of systemic racism.
So, having a system that is built on what is a near-invisible framework of whiteness , invisible in the sense that it becomes a default, universal (borrowing from Bourdieu again 12 ), a priori starting point for everyone, is very hard to fight because this âinvisibilityâ lends it chameleon-like qualities of many-headed Lernaean transformation.
The Windrush Debacle
A very clear example of this battle for âLernaeanâ social justice can be seen with the Windrush crisis. 13 Windrush migrants 14 who came over from the Caribbean to the UK between 1948 and 1971 at the invitation of the British government and as British nationals (especially in 1948) were given the status of âindefinite leave to remainâ. 15 The crisis was caused when seventy years later during the 70th Anniversary of Windrush no less, these now elderly migrants (and their now not so elderly accompanying children) were threatened with deportation (and many had actually been deported since 2015). 16 With an untrumpeted update of the 1999 Immigration Act, the clause referring to the status of âindefinite leave to remainâ was removed in its 2014 successor. 17 This seemingly innocuous update was crucial because now only those with âsettledâ status were recognised. Although the 1971 Immigration Act, to which both the 1999 and 2014 Acts point, defines âsettledâ as including âindefinite leave to remainâ, the term is overwhelmingly linked to âpatrialâ status that automatically grants the âright of abodeâ in the UK. In the 1971 Act, patrial status is interpreted as having pre-existing and close family connections to the UK through which citizenship can be claimed. It is important to note that the 1971 Act also maintained âindefinite leave to remainâ as a separate definition to patrial to acknowledge that many black Commonwealth citizens would not have had âpatrialâ status (post 1971). 18
With this change in the law driven by the governmentâs creation of a âhostile environmentâ, 19 designed to make staying in the UK as difficult as possible for illegal immigrants, the Windrushers found that they suddenly had no legal entitlement to stay in the UK. Their very Britishness was questioned and in many cases denied.
The Function of Whiteness
Here, we see whiteness as a function of hierarchical social ordering where not only do we witness its arbitrary powers (of âhabitus â) to change the terms of engagement (such as immigration law) 20 but in this instance, we can witness its power in the sphere of socie...