Researching Racism

A Guidebook for Academics and Professional Investigators

Muzammil Quraishi, Rob Philburn, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781847875341, 9781847875334
• eBook ISBN: 9781473917828
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

"A welcome and overdue contribution to the field. Identifying a need for an empirical guide to complement the abundant theoretical literature, this book combines a variety of practical avenues of advice with analytical sophistication, without losing any of the subject matter's complexities. The contextual chapters are well judged and informative, while readers will surely find the careful selection and very clear presentation of the case studies particularly useful in thinking through the projects from start to completion."
- Steve Garner, Open University

This book offers a one stop guide to the meaning of racism, key studies in the field, core methodologies and an agenda for research for the future. Discussing the salient aspects of race and racism in contemporary society alongside methodological and practical considerations of qualitative research in the field, Researching Racism is not only an original textbook but also a crucial guide for anyone beginning their own research on racism.

Based on Muzammil Quraishi and Rob Philburn's extensive background as researchers, supervisors and teachers, this book:

• offers a clear and accessible account of an interdisciplinary and complex topic
• incorporates historical, legislative and international dimensions of race and racism
• outlines and illustrates a range of qualitative research methods
• provides case studies and engaging examples
• includes a tool kit for researchers of racism.  

This is an indispensable guide for students wanting to research race and racism across the social sciences.

1 The History of Race

Keywords:

history, Antiquity, Enlightenment, Social Darwinism, eugenics, ‘science of race’

The phenomenon of racism occupies a controversial and powerful position in contemporary societies; it has become embedded in discussions of inequality, oppression and discrimination. The purpose of this chapter is to elucidate the historical concept of ‘race’ upon which modern racism is founded.

The questions raised are:

• How are such historical events related to our contemporary understanding of race?
• How does the former treatment of colonial subjects influence their current socio-economic positions?
• Are the origins and vocabulary of contemporary racial discrimination traceable to the not so distant past?

Racism and the History of ‘Race’

Academics are far from united in their approach regarding how racism is defined; whilst some consider it a reflection of class inequalities in a capitalist society (Miles, 1989), others emphasise a need to evaluate the multiple ways in which racisms have been historically constructed (Goldberg, 1993). Furthermore, for some the focus should be on understanding the concept of ‘racialisation’, i.e. how some groups of people become socially constructed as ‘races’ which are biologically or culturally inferior (Back and Solomos, 2000). In order to fully comprehend how such divergent approaches have arisen we must explore the very origins of the modern concept of ‘race’ itself.

Earliest Notions of ‘Race’ and Racial Difference

Some scholars have asserted that the roots of racism pre-date the science of race which emerged during the nineteenth century. It has been noted that in Antiquity the Babylonian Talmud construed humankind as descendants of the three sons of Noah. According to certain religious narratives and mythology some of those descended from Ham were ‘cursed’ by being black. Some of those descended from Ham were cursed by being black (El-Hamel, 2002; Garner, 2010). Furthermore, the Greek philosopher Aristotle, whilst not discussing specific ‘races’, distinguished between Greeks being free by nature but barbarians being slaves by nature (Lewis, 2003). Scholars have also highlighted the common use of black slaves amongst early Jewish, Christian and Islamic societies despite the absence of any theologically sanctioned differentiation of black people amongst these Abrahamic faiths (Byron, 2003; Schwartz, 1997). Furthermore, the expulsion of Muslim and Jewish populations from Spain as part of the violent Reconquista of the fifteenth century was built upon the cleanliness of blood doctrine which sought to establish a firm demarcation between those within white Christian Europe and barbarians outside its fold (Lacey, 1983).

Such conceptions of the world had a profound impact upon European expansion, colonisation and the consequent subjugation and indeed destruction of native peoples in Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Americas.

It is important to recall these historical contexts for they arguably shape the discourse about race which permeated the subsequent eras. However, the modern concept of race can be traced to the European Enlightenment, although as discussed below, distinctions must be drawn between pre-Enlightenment prejudice, the universal commonality of humankind principles of early Enlightenment thinkers and the subsequent overturning of this position following the expansion of European capitalism.

The European Enlightenment and ‘Race’

Jurists applaud the intellectual inroads made by Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Beccaria and Rousseau with regard to checking the vagaries and harshness of European legal systems of the time. However, there are other less explored consequences of Enlightenment scholarship which arguably compounded discriminatory beliefs of this period. The scholar Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze asserts that the modern concept of ‘race’ can be traced to the Enlightenment during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Eze, 1997). The assertion made by Eze, and others such as Said (1978) and Gilroy (1993), is that the Enlightenment scholars, including Hume, Kant and Voltaire, blended populist and early scientific notions of ‘race’ to articulate an ‘Age of Reason’ which was essentially racially constructed. Whilst humankind was free to use reason, this reason was the preserve of white Europeans within the fold of a civilised Europe; those lands outside Europe were deemed void of reason and consequently marked by savagery and barbarism (Eze, 1997).

A closer examination of Enlightenment scholarship, however, reveals a series of complex intellectual developments which confirms that early thinkers such as Rousseau, Locke and Degerando conceived a common humanity devoid of racial hierarchical divisions between Europeans and non-Europeans. Whilst some Enlightenment thinkers did espouse what could be deemed racist views, it is important not to wholly judge their writings with twenty-first-century eyes. For example, assertions of racism in Hume’s work may be contested since his work contains both a footnote to a text which ranks white Europeans above black people but also a subsequent text which is diametrically opposed to this ranking. Similarly, Buffon accepted the existence of distinct races of humans and slavery but also claimed that human differences were determined by environmental and cultural factors (Malik, 1996).

A clear distinction can be made between the universality of humankind principles articulated by the first architects of the Enlightenment such as Rousseau, Locke and Degerando and the racialised discourse and thoughts of others inspired by Enlightenment thinkers one hundred years later such as Thomas Huxley in Britain. Kenan Malik asserts that ‘belief in reason, espousal of the scientific method and a universalist conviction do not of themselves imply a racial viewpoint’ (Malik, 1996: 41). According to Malik, the Enlightenment is a useful starting point for understanding racism but ‘not because Enlightenment discourse was imbricated with the concept of race, but because through Enlightenment philosophy humanity had for the first time a concept of a human universality that could transcend perceived differences. Before the modern concept of race could develop, the modern concepts of equality and humanity had to develop too’ (Malik, 1996: 42).

The assertion, therefore, that the modern concept of race is simply a continuation of age-old prejudices is contested. The early common humanity view, espoused by thinkers such as Locke, was overturned with the arrival of capitalism. An expanding bourgeoisie in Europe were emboldened by the equality principles of the Enlightenment aiming to dismantle the feudal system and ultimately culminating in the French Revolution. However, the social and political upheaval also gave vent to a backlash against the Enlightenment amongst some sections of the bourgeoisie. A particular contradiction arose amongst thinkers about equality and more particularly towards the ownership of property. How could the belief in equality be reconciled with defending the inequality of private property? Rousseau had argued that there were differences between natural and artificial inequality, the ‘modern concept of race arises from the attempt to attribute to nature the inequality that Rousseau rightly regards as the product of the moral or political domain’ (Malik, 1996: 60).

The ‘Science of Race’

In the mid-eighteenth century the discipline of biology was making significant progress in terms of classifying the natural world. Carl Linne (Linneaus) established a classification system for plants before establishing a racial taxonomy for his ‘homo sapiens’ construed within an hierarchy based upon skin colour with white humans on top (Eze, 1997). Linne described the white race as:

... ‘inventive, full of ingenuity, orderly and governed by laws’ whereas ‘negroes were endowed with all the negative qualities which made them a counterfoil for the superior race; they were regarded as lazy, devious and unable to govern themselves’. (Mosse, 1978: 20)

In 1775, Johann Fredrich Blumenbach developed his physical anthropology and the most widely accepted racial taxonomies of the period originating from skull measurements. He divided humanity into five types based on geographical factors and representing gradations: I. Caucasian, II. Mongolian, III. Ethiopian, IV. Malay and V. American (Blumenbach, 1969 [1775, 1795]). It is worth noting that Blumenbach did not assert any physical hierarchy or ranking amongst humans although he did erroneously claim that the earliest humans were most likely to be white rather than black. Blumenbach established humans were a distinct species (monogeny) and that there was no evidence of cross-species of humans as a result of breeding with animals. Perhaps most importantly, Blumenbach recognised heterogeneity amongst populations living in one geographical location; the classifications represented gradations rather than distinct races (Bhopal, 2007).

The early ‘scientific’ view of races as fixed and determined buttressed the birth of racist ideology with the writings of Joseph Arthur Gobineau in his essay of 1853 entitled ‘The Inequality of Human Races’ (Gobineau, 1853). Gobineau is often attributed with the infamous title of ‘father of racist ideology’ since his work asserted a belief that the decline of civilisation was due to the disease of ‘degeneration’ of ‘racially superior’ stock which was ‘inbreeding with inferior stock’ (Bowling and Phillips, 2002: 2). This work was subsequently translated into German and English providing fuel for the development of white supremacist ideologies in Europe and America.

The absurdity of some early genetics research is particularly well demonstrated by the proponents of polygenesis which asserted that the varied ‘races’ of man reflected their origins in different animal species. The work of Nott and Gliddon in 1854 entitled Types of Mankind included elaborate pictorial examples of how, according to the theorists, contemporary racial attributes could be traced to their distinct evolutionary paths. The theory of polygenesis, therefore, enabled theorists to assert that one race may have originated from bison, whilst another could be traced to the giraffe or ox (Nott and Gliddon, 1854).

Although economic utility rather than racial ideology has been asserted as underpinning slavery (see Malik, 1996), perceptions of humankind divided biologically were instrumental in the expansion and perpetuation of the Atlantic slave trade as well as in the eradication of native peoples in the Americas, Australasia and South Africa during European colonial expansion. This was made possible in part by the ability of white Europeans to view such expansion as part of the natural order of events whereby racially superior races superseded those deemed racially inferior (Fryer, 1984). Similarly, such reasoning was expanded to include beliefs that white Europeans were empowered via divine guidance and endorsement to civilise the world and this eventually led to the development of moral trusteeship and paternalism towards colonial subjects (Bowling and Phillips, 2002).

It was the psychologist and son-in-law of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, who asserted his objections to the existence of natural equality among humans. In his text of 1869 entitled Hereditary Genius Galton developed his theory of ‘racial hygiene’, which essentially founded the eugenics movement. Galton also founded the use of intelligence testing and in the same text asserts, ‘The mistake that the Negroes made in their own matters were so childish, stupid and simpleton-like, as frequently to make me ashamed of my own species’ (Galton, 1869: 339). Galton influenced the birth of psychometry, which was particularly popular during World War II in Britain initially for military recruits and subsequently in the sphere of education. The reduction of human behaviour into testable units was reflective of the essentially anti-democratic nature of the Galton paradigm, centred upon determining why certain people in society should be excluded from decision making (Daniels and Hougton, 1972).

More profound was the development of the eugenics movement which was essentially founded upon Social Darwinian ideology. Advocates for eugenics believed that the state should actively encourage certain populations to breed whilst others should be restricted from doing so, policies extended to the taking of lives if society as a whole would benefit. Such concepts of racial hygiene were actualised most destructively during Nazi rule in Germany from 1933 to 1945. The Nazis resurrected the fictional notion of a superior Aryan race and legislated for the preservation of an assumed German racial purity via the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour (1935). This law, inter alia, prohibited persons deemed to have German or kindred blood from marrying Jews on the basis that such prohibition would safeguard the future of the German nation. The Nazi racial purification programme included research, experimentation and sterilisation of people designated racially impure, criminals, homosexuals and ‘mixed-offspring’ of German women and French North African troops based in the Rhineland (Bowling and Phillips, 2002).

Manipulating Racial Identity: Historical Examples

Indentured Labour

Taking into consideration the preceding overview, the following examples demonstrate how notions of race have been socially constructive for ‘political’ purposes at key moments in the nineteenth century. History has presented many examples from which to demonstrate the creation, maintenance and utilisation of constructions about race; for the purposes of this text the examples are largely, though not exclusively, from British rule in India.

The Emancipation Act of 1833, whilst abolishing slavery, had created the need for the cost-effective provision of labour on plantations. One of the solutions came in the form of indentured labour as part of the nineteenth-century coolie system of Indian and Chinese labour. Between 1834 and 1927, 30 million Indians left India as part of this global division of labour (Davis, 1951). The indentured labourers went to colonies which were governed by Europeans to work on plantations, railroads, canals and in mines. The coolie system was a hybrid system somewhere between slavery and free-waged labour (Banaji, 1933). Scholars have identified evidence, for example in correspondence between plantation owners and British recruitment agents as well as Parliamentary and Royal reports, which illustrates the construction of racial stereotypes by Europeans to entice and govern indentured labourers from Asia (Mahmud, 1997). Indian recruits were deemed useful in disciplining and controlling black labourers who had been labelled as ‘lazy, unreliable and dishonest’ (Mahmud, 1997: 644). In contrast, an initial stereotype emerged of Indians who were praised for their industriousness, loyalty and respect for authority. The latter shifted once indentured labourers experienced the harsh conditions in plantations and construction sites in the Caribbean, Kenya and East Africa. As resistance and self-preservation movements developed amongst them, the indentured Indians were to become labelled as ‘avaricious, jealous, dishonest, idolatrous and filthy’ (Mahmud, 1997: 644). Such dissatisfaction with Indian labourers prompted plantation owners to shift their strategies to the Chinese, who for a short time at least were viewed in a positive light.

Martial Races Theory

A further example of racial identity formation and manipulation during European colonial rule is found within the policies and practices of recruitment for the Indian colonial army and the promotion of the martial races theory by the British following the uprisings of 1857. Martial races theory asserts that certain races and people are inherently more martial than others. Martial in this sense was to imply a capacity for warfare, not in a barbaric sens...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Sidebar List
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The History of Race
• 2 Defining and Conceptualising Racism
• 3 Anti-Racism: Law and Policies
• 4 Race, Racism and Everyday Life
• 5 Race, Racism and Qualitative Methods
• 6 Racism Research: Three Case Studies
• 7 Conclusion: Racism and Future Directions
• Appendix a Racism Researcher’s Toolbox
• References
• Index