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"Race": The Political Classification of Humans
Introduction
Why Be Concerned About “Race” and
Racism?
Chapter 1
The History of the Ideas about "Race"
Chapter 2
Old and New Forms of Racism
Chapter 3
The Biological Side of the "Race"
Signifier
Chapter 4
The Political Side of the “Race Signifier
Chapter 5
Toward a Program of Anti-Racism From
a Communication Theory Perspective
Chapter 6
The Need for a Political Turn: Putting
Politics into the Study of Racism,
Ethnicism, and Prejudice
Chapter 7
Can America Move Toward PostRacialism?
Moving Forward With Courage
Conclusions
Index
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“RACE:” by Kenneth L. Hacker
© 2014 Sixth Edition (no permissions given)
Introduction:
Why Be Concerned About "Race" and Racism?
I began writing this book many years ago as my teaching of political communication
drew in more insights about the problems of racism and prejudice in American society. As I
did research for a lecture on racial aspects of voting in the United States, I was struck by
some academic references to debates about the very existence of human races. Like most
Americans, I took the word “race” at face value and equated it with skin color patterns.
Later, I realized that nationality, culture, heritage, family lines, genetic patterns, religious
affiliation, ideology, personality, motivations, and social networks might be as important as
or more important than these superficial patterns of outer physical traits.
For many years, like most people I knew, I wondered how anyone could doubt what
you saw all around you – people of different colors and physical traits and groups of people
with clusters of those traits. Only later would I reflect on the naiveté of thinking that “red
people,” “yellow people,” “brown people,” and other skin-based categories had any real
scientific meaning. Today, I still wonder what people are talking about when they mention
“white people.” Look at the color of this paper – that is white. This does not deny the
importance of what is called “white privilege” but simply means that the idea of white
biology or white culture does not seem as real as the concept of people who are lighter in
skin color having more social advantages than people who are darker.
The color line, history shows, is also a power line. I admire the activists how try to
turn the “race” construct on his head and to strip it of all political dominance. I am not sure
this is being accomplished, however. It appears to me that the term went from culture to
biology and anthropology and somewhat back to culture. I am still a little undecided on
whether or not the word should simply be buried. Everyone likes to put people into boxes
and mutually exclusive categories it seems. However, while I lean toward the elimination of
the “race” construct or concept, I understand that some people use the term to simply
describe superficial similarities like skin tone. If only the racialists and new racists were using
it, I would stand in line to throw dirt on it. But with anti-racists using the term for upend its
power, I am believe it is important now to expose the political nature of the word. The color
line exists in many nations; it is not just a product of American culture.
After reading thousands of pages of articles and books about the “race” construct, I
became convinced that the concept is based more on speculation and power than on
science. I joined those who use the term in parentheses to denote the fact that the term is
widely used, but scientifically contested. People vary by how important the “race” term is to
them. It changes meanings across time, across nations, and across individuals. Scientists have
no consensus about the exact meaning of the word. In its earliest usage, “race” referred to
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separate species, later as sub-species, and still later and today and distinct groups with similar
traits. After all of the speeches, articles, and books that have addressed the “race” term, it
appears that overall it is word in search of a meaning. And where it findings meanings, the
meanings appear to change by speaker, nation, and point in time.
The essentialism of the term has dwindled increasingly and the concept still searchers
for a meaning. A sparrow is not a robin, but even racial science experts admit that many
humans are mixed in the alleged racial constitution. Since there are in fact, patterns in certain
genetic markers related to geography, one might wonder why so many scientists don’t flee
from the “race” term’s baggage of racism and simply use a language of genetic groups. Some
of them argue that all will be lost if they lose the word, but this has never been proven. I
believe that it can be easily shown that the word usually does more harm than good and that
working against prejudice and social injustices of all sorts does not depend on it. The word
“race” is grounded in a history of assumed biological heritability of traits that are assumed to
have some position of inferiority or superiority. If you really think you need the word “race”
to talk about people, try doing without the term for a day or so. Nothing more painful that
shifting to other words like ethnicity, culture, community, or group is likely to happen.
While many scholars announced the death of the concept of “race,” after World War
II, some are now arguing that there is a resurrection, resuscitation, or unburying of the
concept due to genomics and the discovering of genetic markers that place people’s DNA
patterns into clusters of patterns that associate nicely with continents originally linked to the
old racial categories. Of course, the genetic scientists using racial categories deny any racist
linkages to their work and argue that racial categories can be proxies for geographic
populations. Thus, along with efforts of bringing the dead back to life, we see that the newly
resurrected concept can now also be sanitized and disinfected such that its roots in racism
can be dismissed.
In my position as a professor of communication studies, I created two new
university courses concerning ethnicity, prejudice, and communication. When I first began, I
expected some students to be shocked by my nonacceptance of traditional racial thinking.
Instead, I found them to be fascinated, curious, and fully capable of critical thinking –
exactly what we should encourage in higher education. I have taught these courses many
times now and it is common for students to tell me that they appreciate the opportunity to
explore some deep issues that normally are not addressed in most courses. In no way, do I
require them to abandon racial thinking as I have abandoned it. iI only seek to get them to
question its use and history and then to think about how ethnicity might be a more
productive concept with which to distinguish various groups of people that differ in
geographic, physical, and culture characteristics. I also encourage more thinking about
collective identities.
Critical race theorists are in favor multiculturalism and anti-racism and maintain the
use of the “race” term in order to fight for civil rights and lowering racism. While I do not
accept the premises that the race term is necessary to fight racism, I respect the drive of
critical race theory to turn the construct on its head and to it for liberation rather than
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subjugation. In the chapter on politics, I will argue that a more productive manner to work
against prejudice is to reject racialization rather than work with it. That of course is my
personal opinion. I tend to disagree with the American Sociological Association position
which says that “race” is invented but so important we need to study it in order to work
against it. I believe that many of the sources of social injustice stem from racial thinking and
discourse.
Social psychologists have noted many reasons for people categorizing each other
into groups such as “races.” Before there were racial categories there were tribal, religious,
national, and other forms of human kind methods of generalization. In fact, placing people
into categories has always fulfilled a desire to create taxonomies of things that are observed.
As we will see, the concept of “race” is different than other concepts such as nationality
because its meanings shift over time and while superficially related to biology, it tends to
have more force in terms of politics and power.
The historian David Cannadine (2012) argues that there were times in human history
where the “race” term was absent as a tool of human classification. He notes how Jews,
Christians, and Muslims once lived in harmony for hundreds of years in Spain, for example.
People were categorizing but with other categories such as religion, tribe, nation, and culture.
Consequently, the “race” term cannot be blamed for all of human polarization, oppression,
slavery, genocide, etc., but it can be found to be strongly employed to provide ideological
justifications for these human maladies. As we will see later, the culmination of the purposes
for inventing the term and its theories was in the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. Hitler and his
followers, when talking about racial groups, would never stop at labels but would move into
arguing the needs for “racial hygiene.” Biology was fused with ideology and bad science
produced the worst of politics.
By now, some gentle reader is thinking, but that is not me-- I am not a Nazi! This
misses the mark. The point it not being a Nazi or not, but rather that the fascists of
Germany employed the racism already existing all around them and from the foundations of
race theories built theories of racial superiority, racial hygiene, eugenics, and political
methods of racial purification. Of course, most people who talk in racial terms are not
political radicals seeking extreme political goals. But they may use the same taxonomies that
the extremists and that might give them pause.
The journey through human schemes of classifying each other forces one to
confront how they themselves are classified and what categories they have chosen to make
part of their personal identities. Historically, we know that humans have an easy tendency to
put each other into categories and to treat their own identities as better than the identities of
other people. The act of racializing yourself can be a political statement and communication
which racializes other people can also have political force.
Some psychologists say that this is a natural preferential process. In other words,
people are more naturally attracted to people like them in certain ways than to people who
differ from them on the same set of characteristics. These characteristics can involve eye
color, skin color, social class, age, facial features, attitudes, religion, political ideology, etc.
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etc. It is a painful pill to swallow if we think that prejudice is natural because we tend to
equate what is natural to what is normal. We must be careful because much of human
behavior can be selfish, destructive, and harmful if we do not check certain tendencies (such
as getting angry when offended) with emotional intelligence, social norms, and a sense of
morality.
Human classification and prejudice for and against classes of humans has been with
human cultures since human populations have been in existence. This does not make
prejudice justifiable. What is common is not the same thing as what is desirable, moral, or
ethical. Just as war and violence are not desirable, prejudice against classes or groups of
people are also not to be desired. The concepts related to racial categories have tended to
highlight human differences more than human similarities. One must contemplate why such
an emphasis has been so important in terms of possible political agendas. Some scholars and
commentators say that what they are doing with “race” theories, research, and investigation
is not political. I believe we have to question that them for the simple reason that
racialization is part of a larger political project.
Sometimes it appears that Americans and others have successfully dealt with
prejudicial thinking and simple-minded views of skin color and human groupings. And then
comes the evening newscast. Recently, for example, a popular Fox News commentator made
headlines by saying that both Jesus and Santa Claus are white. This woman actually has a law
degree. Maybe she never realized that Santa Claus is a story character told in many versions
and drawn and colored by whatever fashion desired by an artist or that Jesus did not come
from England or Scotland, but from a part of the Israel when many people have dark skin,
dark hair, and dark eyes. It is amazing how even people with university degrees can slip into
the most simplistic habits of categorization, apparently without one bit of thought
concerning the consequences of how foolish they may sound to others.
Prejudice against people because of human group membership, whether by cultural
grouping or subpopulation grouping known as "race," did not end with either the cessation
of slavery or the 1960s Civil Rights movement in the United States. Indeed, there is a
common confusion of ethnic or racial harmony with the absence of overt and blatant racism
and ethnic discrimination (known by some as “ethnicism”). I will talk more about this later
when I address Critical Race Theory.
We will see that even ending the use of the term “race” will not end prejudice and
discrimination because it is still possible to use other factors such as ethnicity for sorting out
groups in terms of worth and power. However, I will argue that racism depends on the term
“race,” and that racism can be lowered while other forms of prejudice are still found. I am
defining racism as thinking and acting as if one “race” is superior to another. Despite the
fact that a shift in focus from “race” to ethnicity does not guarantee any end to prejudice, I
believe that it shifts attention to cultures. One can believe that their culture is superior to
others, but this has always paralleled the possible belief that that one’s “race” is superior
also. This does not mean that I will argue for an end to the term ethnicity. In fact, I intend
to do the opposite, to suggest that the term “race” has less scientific and sociological utility
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than the term ethnicity. Both words are used in political communication but the key point
for science and improving communication is that the term “ethnicity” does not link
behaviors and communication in a deterministic way to biology or genetic inheritance. One’s
cultural background can shape one’s identity, language, habits, norms, and world view, but it
does not necessarily cause any behaviors.
It is because we cling to the term “race” as a valid scientific word that we get tangled
in the meanings of alleged racial groups and their relative talents, worth, and power. Ending
prejudice based on other categories depends on lessening what is known as in-group
centrism and out-group derogation. This is completely possible and the knowledge and skills
involved with lessening prejudice can be taught and learned. The fundamental theme of this
book is that the term “race” and its usages in all kinds of contexts, helps to bolster racist
thinking and communication and serves more political purposes than valid scientific
purposes. ii
Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat and official who visited America in the
late 1800s, said that White Americans (another term I will challenge later) first violated every
right of humanity by their treatment of black Americans. He heard the noble rhetoric about
freedom and equality for all, yet also saw that the grand talk about justice did not apply to
black Americans.
De Tocqueville believed that racism in the United States would continue even after
the slaves were freed. He was correct and it has continued not only after emancipation, but
also after desegregation voting rights acts, affirmative action programs and dismantling
affirmative action programs. It persists in the minds and discourse of the dominant ethnic
group in the United States, the Anglo Americans (a term I will replace with European
Americans in my writing later).
While we in the United States have ended large-scale overt and malicious
discrimination as the enactment of racism, we have not ended the prejudices in the minds of
our citizens and leaders which allow racism to continue unfettered. Some say this is not
possible, but many social and behavioral scientists including myself believe that it is possible
over a long period of time if we get things moving in that direction.
While this book is an adventure, my next one on this topic will continue the journey
though some murky waters. I will be writing a possible post-racial America. This concept
alone is enough to draw emotional responses. iii When I mentioned the concept to an
African-American friend and scholar a few years back, he called me a racist for suggesting
the book. Obviously, I was startled by the accusation and explained to him that I will be not
be arguing a post-racism America or anything suggesting that issues of prejudice are over.
My view of a post-racial America is one where Americans quit racializing each other and face
issues of culture rather than issues of skin-color based and artificial categories. In this
upcoming book, I will be discussing the possible movement away from talking about
American in terms of racial categories. I think my friend is willing to look at the context of
my plan and I will seek out the kind of argument he made when I begin that book.
The issues of racism and prejudice in America and the rest of the world are deep and
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invoke all sorts of sensitivities. I will present in this book some of the arguments about what
certain authors call a new kind of racism – a color-blind racism. I will argue that the
arguments they make are worthy of serious consideration, but also that the arguments are
wrong. I think they are wrong because they grossly over-simplify the class of people who are
argue for color-blind societies. Both racists and anti-racists be lumped together in an illogical
manner.
There is no easy solution to diminishing racism or prejudice in any nation and there
is controversy about how or if it can ever be eliminated totally. Yet, like war, disease, and
poverty, we have a calling in a progressive democratic society to work against this massive
social problem that creates animosities, violence, discrimination, and social inequalities.
There would have been far less power for Hitler in pre-World War II Germany if the
Germans has rejected the pseudo-science of racial theories that were used to promoted ideas
of inferiority and superiority. I will be discussing this episode of history as instructive for
modern academia. Bad anthropology made bad politics rooted in racism possible. More
successful challenges to the junk science of the Nazis along with its theories of “races,”
could have blocked much of Hitler’s discourse about a “master race.”
The status quo line that there has always been racism and therefore there will always
be racism is sheer nonsense. Imagine physicians saying, well there has always been disease
and there will always be disease, so let’s give up! Or how about communication scientists
saying something similar about communication problems! Human populations have made
progress in developing cultural norms that make racism, hate speech, and advocacy of
genocide less acceptable than at any point in the past. World leaders know that a third world
war would result in the destruction of our planet. An increasing, not decreasing, number of
societies accept democracy as a desirable element of effective political systems.
I will be arguing that three fundamental behavioral changes will guide the lessening
of prejudice in the United States. The first is a diminishing of categorization of people into
alleged, yet contested categories such as “races.” This includes lowering the amount of inane
questions (often asked on CNN, for example), about how “race” affects this and that in our
lives. The second key factor is diminishing the values we place on human groups, whatever
we call them, and shifting our focus to values of individuals as people who have ethnic
backgrounds and cultures but also personal identities, goals, talents, and contributions to our
society. Third, I argue that what is far more useful and far less likely to encourage racial
discrimination is a focus on nationality and culture as factors that help to explain the
contexts in which each human is raised.
I will not be arguing an end to anyone’s group identities, but rather challenging the
meanings of racial identities and attempting to steer energy toward increasing the value of
ethnic diversity and cultural differences as normal and desirable. When we see the low
scientific value of racial language and the high political value of racial language, we will see
the power effects of putting people into “race” categories. Such assignment is an act of
power. This is power which imposes hierarchy or the limitations of heredity where they may
be unwanted or invalid. Human differences, in my view, can positively be documented in the
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studies of nations and cultures. Poverty can addressed by examining poverty for any and all
people. In the end, I find myself celebrating the differences and diversities among ethnic and
national groups and getting quite bored with attempts to resuscitate the “race” construct.
As you read this book, I assume that you care about racism or prejudice and know
that it need a great deal of attention. On the other hand, I have to also assume that most
Americans will know little about the knowledge described in this book. News media are
asleep at the wheel when it comes to the issues that arise in these pages. Many Anglo
Americans live with a delusion that racism ended with the civil rights movement of the
1960s. Despite this lack of attention to key events in our society related to human
grouping, there are some facts should dispel the delusion that everything is fine:
 In the late 1960s, 75% of all black men were working but by the end of the 1980s,
only 57% had jobs (Julian Bond quoted in U.S. News, July 27, 1998).
 In the presidential election of 2008, about 30% of voters said that “race” would
affect how they voted. There were efforts during the presidential election campaign
of 2008 to portray Obama as someone untrustworthy because of his ethnicity or
alleged religion (false claimed to be Islam).
 Anglo Americans continue to hold racist beliefs about the genetic inferiority of
African Americans (Andrew Hacker, Two Nations, 1992).
 While strong White Supremacy movements are minority views in the United States,
research continues to show that Americans are prejudicial in their treatment of
minorities. The newer forms of racism are covert and concealed at times.
 A report released by the Clinton White House indicated some disturbing data about
attitudes held by majority ethnic group members, i.e., "white Americans" in regard to
African Americans and Hispanic Americans. The data show that despite public
attitudes of harmony and inter-ethnic acceptance are images and feelings of
superiority.
 There continue to be academic researchers who publish scholarly research claiming
that African-Americans are inferior in terms of intelligence to White Americans.
 Current research in social psychology indicates that many Americans have lower
explicit negative attitudes toward ethnic groups like African Americans while holding
much higher implicit negative attitudes.
 Despite civil rights and cultural commitments to diversity and acceptance, many
Americans are still prejudiced against ethnic groups that are not their own.
 After the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Serbs began to practice “ethnic
cleansing” (they coined the term) against other groups (Cornell & Hartmann, 2007).
 In 2005, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported that there were about 210,000
hate crimes per year with racial prejudice motivating half of them. The numbers
below are from more current BJS reports:
o Approximately 293,800 violent and property hate crime victimizations
occurred in 2012 against persons age 12 or older residing in U.S. households.
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




o The victims of hate crimes perceived that over half (51%) of the crimes were
motivated by ethnicity bias in 2012. This was an increase over previous years
-- 2011 (30%), 2004 (22%).
o Reports show that the percentage of hate crimes that involved violence went
up from 78% in 2004 to 90% in 2011 and 2012.
SOURCE: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4883
There is a surge of neo-Nazi groups in both the United States and Germany. Some
Americans believe in a “rational racism” or prejudice based on objective facts rather
than negative emotions (Harford, 2008). One aspect of this kind of racism is noting
that African Americans struggle with problems in education, medical care,
employment, earnings, etc., and therefore some assume that they can justified in
considering group membership (black “race”) above individual qualifications.
A recent study showed that if job interviewees have names that sound like AfricanAmerican names more than white American names, they are less likely to be invited
for a personal interview (Harford, 2008). This is not old data; this is right now!
While we are familiar with the history of the German Nazis and Hitler employing
racialization to justify the Holocaust and genocide, we are less familiar with the fact
that the Nazis learned some of their racial beliefs from American scientists who
provided both racialization arguments and arguments for eugenics (Cornell &
Hartmann, 2007).
Recently, the old rock star Ted Nugent called President Obama a “sub-human
mongrel.”
In 2012, public opinion data in the United States indicated that whites still have
negative attitudes about African Americans. iv When whites were asked if they agree
with the following statement, “Irish, Italians, Jewish, and other minorities overcame
prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special
favors, “46% agreed in 2012 as opposed to 48% in 2010. When asked if they agree
with the statement “”It’s really a matter of some people just not trying hard enough;
if blacks would only try harder, they could just be as well off as whites,” whites
agreed at the rate of 33% as opposed to 31% in 2010. When asked ”How much of
the racial tension that exists in the United States today do you think blacks are
responsible for creating?” the number of whites saying either all of it or most of it 3
4 most of it is 28% in 2012 as opposed to 23% in 2010. In the same poll, 39% of
white Americans said they think Barack Obama was born in another nation.
http://surveys.ap.org/data/GfK/AP_Racial_Attitudes_Topline_09182012.pdf
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are presently (year 2014) over 1,000
hate groups in the United States. These groups include Nazis, member of the Ku Klux Klan,
white supremacists, and ethnic nationalists. v The number of hate groups has increased
67% since 2000.
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Despite the fact that many anthropologists and geneticists have shown that
categories of “race” are unscientific and arbitrary, people continue to assign people to these
categories and attribute wholesale group characteristics to individuals. At one time in
America, the Irish were considered a separate “race” as were Jews, Hindus, and Italians
(Andrew Hacker, 1992). Of course, compliant and lighter-skinned minorities are able to
“pass” into the “White race” as time goes by. Humans have a historical tendency both to
categorize each other and to mix themselves genetically across categories. Despite the fact
that the categories change and the cross-influences across categories make discrete and
opposing membership less tenable, we get caught in discourses of differences and absurdities
of trivialities. It is bad enough to encounter this in a barroom, let alone in the texts of
physicians and scientists. How can brilliant people be so naïve? That question is now
answered by psychology. Intelligence simply does not guarantee critical thinking. Moreover,
political ideologies and cognitive biases related to them can overpower rational thinking.
Racial classification in the United States has been more than efforts to classify people
on the basis of physiological features and has included a process of political signification.
Differing tribes of Native Americans such as Chippewa and Seminoles have been lumped
together into one “Indian” racial category. Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Thai people were
once called “Mongoloid” or “yellow,” then “Orientals,” and now members of one cluster
called “Asian.” All of these clustering categories were designed by European and American
racialists and not by the people being classified. The same kind of ludicrous classification is
seen in the signification of a “Hispanic race.” The racialization of these people breaks
down once one finds that people who are called Hispanic can be black, white, or mixes of
white and other natives peoples in the Americas.
An interesting and fairly recent study done by Ann Morning (2005) on how nations
differ in how they classify people. Studying 147 nations, Morning found that most countries
categorize people on the basic of ‘race,” ethnic origin, nationality, ancestry, “tribal,
“indigenous,” or “aboriginal” group membership. As such terms are often confusing within
a country, they are also confusing across nations. What is called a “race” in nation might be
called an ethnicity in another. Since different classifiers use terms like “race,” ethnicity, and
nationality in differing ways, it is useful to examine how the concepts of categorization differ
among each other. Racial language appears to be more physical than the discourse of
ethnicity or nationality. While we might assume biological commonality among members of
ethnic groups, it appears to be less of a sine qua non of membership than “race.” Notions of
innate differences appear to be a key aspect of racial grouping. Self-categorization also
appears more possible with ethnic identity than racial identity. Thinking about nationality
appears to historically be related to both racial and ethnic concepts. Nationality is more than
political citizenship (Morning, 2005). All three concepts share the idea of common descent.
Some summary findings from Morning (2005) include the following:
1. The most common classification in the world is ethnicity.
2. The second most common category is nationality. This refers to national
origins rather than citizenship.
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3. About 15% of the nations ask people about their indigenous status.
4. About 15% of the nations ask racial questions. However, in most cases, the
term “race” is used to clarify a primary concept like color or ethnicity.
a. Racial questions are not employed in Europe.
5. Most of the nations asking racial questions are former slaveholding
societies.
6. The United States is alone in calling certain people Hispanic as a unique
category.
The fact that nations vary greatly in how they use the “race” concept and the fact that the
most useful questions about identity appear more related to descent and nationality, confirm
suspicions about the possible expiration of racial classification.
The fact that term has problems, does not mean that the ‘race” concept goes away,
although I argue that its steady scientific disintegration will relegate to an ash heap of dead
concepts in the sciences and social sciences. Meanwhile, however, I also predict that the
concept will stay alive for many years as a demographic concept reflection socially, culturally,
and politically constructed categories for various forms of identity politics and statistical
analysis.
In 1990, in the census, 51% of Hispanics told the census takers that they had no
“race.” Some Hispanics have managed to “pass” into the white racial category. In 1910,
we had racial categories which began to include mixes such as “mulatto.” These are no
longer used. Instead, we follow a degeneration principle which says that the child of a white
and nonwhite is placed into the nonwhite category. To see how slippery the concept of
“race” is, categorize the man below as a) white, b) black, or c) mixed “race.”
So how do you assign him a racial role? If the news media call him America’s “first black
President,” how can he be mixed? If all three answers are correct, how can the categories be
taken seriously?
Historian Andrew Hacker (1992) claims that most Anglo Americans (“whites”) still
believe that blacks carry inferior genes. This is over a decade ago and we should hope that
number has declined. Certainly they do not express these beliefs publicly. As these beliefs
now stand, only a minority of Americans agree with Hacker’s claim that it is possible for our
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society to bring all ethnic groups into a position of equal performance scores on a variety of
tests. A 2012 Associated Press story reporting their poll on white attitudes toward blacks
says the following:
In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48
percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of
Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last
presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell. vi
A poll done at the University of Arkansas viishowed the following for American
white attitudes toward blacks:
While about 85% of black Americans have the preference of living in integrated
neighborhoods, studies have shown that regardless of economic standing, when the
proportion of black residents reaches 8-20% of a neighborhood, whites begin to move out.
Such behaviors are attributable to the racist images of blacks as criminals.
Respected professors like Nobel Prize winner William Shockley (one of the inventors
of the transistor), and psychologist Arthur Jensen continue to assert that blacks are inferior.
viii
There are numerous other such “professors of hate” in the United States -- scholars who
are endorsed and sometimes sponsored by white supremacist organizations. Racist
politicians like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms long held key Congressional committee
assignments and positions of seniority in the United States Senate.
Despite continuing overt racism at one level, most of the racism today in the United
States appears to be unintentional. For example, unscientific (or pseudo-scientific) analyses
found in books called the Bell Curve continue to be promoted by credible sources like CSPAN because the book review hosts do not know the kinds of statistical analysis errors
committed by Charles Murray and Richard Herstein in the book, partly because Dr. Murray
brags about his “technical” skills of analysis.
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Alexis deTocqueville noted many interesting aspects of the newly forming American
democratic republic. His own problem with slavery however was a moral ambivalence which
is also seen in contemporary American attitudes about racism. de Tocqueville prepared a
report for the French government about slavery which concluded that one human does not
have the right to possess another human, but also that “If the Negroes have the right to
become free, it is undeniable that the colonials have the right not be ruined by the Negros’s
freedom.” (Mallik, 1996).
While many arguments for slavery were based on economics, racist attitudes
regarding black inferiority allowed such arguments to have any standing at all. Today, we
want black Americans to believe in the system as much as whites do, but only with what has
been called the “delicate balance” rule -- blacks can be helped to the extent that whites are
not hurt, or if that rule has been abandoned, only by having blacks struggle on their own
with no systematic assistance which gains the label “preferential treatment.”
We have progressed far from the days of overt and accepted racism which labeled
native peoples “savages” and taught school children that “Caucasians” were more intelligent
and biologically superior to all other “races.” Progress alone, however, is not success. There
is still a great deal of racism and prejudice in the Unites States today. ix Its nature has
changed from public display to private reserve, however. It still exists in the minds of many
Anglo American, many representations of mass media, and in the practices of companies
who discriminate against minorities. One of the greatest problems in lessening American
racism is the ideological defense that racism simply does not exist. Here are the planks of
this racism denial platform:
1.
2.
3.
4.
We do not have responsibility for what happened in the past.
If subordinate cultures would put aside their roots, and assimilate, they would be
accepted.
Things are better now so why do they keep complaining?
There are many successful blacks (and other minority group members) so they can
all succeed.
One sure way to avoid doing something about a problem is to deny that the problem exists.
Racism is perpetuated so strongly in the U.S. because of this perpetual denial.
Both liberals and conservatives are responsible for the perpetuation of racism in
America. Conservatives, in general, believe the subordinate groups (minorities) are to blame
themselves for whatever problems they face. Some do not believe the nonwhites have the
talents held by whites. Conservatives are often dedicated to blocking political efforts to aid
minorities in direct ways. Crimes committed by minorities require tougher law enforcement
rather than programs dealing with root causes of crimes, in the conservative view. Liberals,
in general, have a different contribution to racism. Liberals like Alexis de Tocqueville and
Thomas Jefferson, along with Democrats today, sense guilt over the past horrors done to
14 | P a g e
subordinate groups. They seek to atone with social programs designed to expand benefits
to minorities. Of course, these benefits stop at the point that they hurt the dominating
majority groups too much. They seek to raise the tide that raises all ships, never confronting
the fact that racism in the system keeps some people without boats and with no real chance
of significant competition in a healthy economy.
Racism continues in the news media as well. We continuously hear about the
negative aspects of black life and how the blacks are different in bad ways. So we hear
about how black women have more children but we don’t hear facts such as unmarried
white women are twice as likely to terminate their pregnancies with abortions as are
unmarried black women. We hear about black men committing crimes and filling prisons,
but we seldom hear facts such as the fact that black men who have the same four-year
college level as white men earn $798 for each $1,000 the white men earn.
Racism continues in education. While many studies have shown that SAT scores do
not significantly predict performance in college courses or in occupational success, they
continue to be used as a way to say that some student applications should be accepted over
others. Since blacks on the average have lower SAT scores, this allows blacks to be
excluded on the basis of a pseudo-objective standard. While ethnoviolence against minorities
continues in the form of actions and hate speech, these actions are defended as free
expression or nonracist behaviors.
Before World War II, Americans were not embarrassed by open racism in the United
States. It was overt, accepted, and ubiquitous. When the black soldiers returned from
combat and asked for their rights, however, things began to change. Desegregation was
enforced by the federal government. After the civil rights protests in the 1960s, Americans
were willing to take proactive steps against racism. During the 1980s, however, there was a
significant backlash against previous progress. Many Americans, both conservative and
liberal, began to abandon support for the programs designed to end discrimination. An
entire language emerged to attack programs of anti-racism – “preferential treatment,”
“reverse discrimination,” and “quotas.”
And today we have a great retreat from anti-racism that even included even President
Clinton who was great at talking the talk but doing nothing little substantial and specific to
work against prejudice, discrimination, and racism. His successor, President Bush, who
helped his father’s campaign with the notorious Willie Horton campaign TV spot release,
retreated from proactive White House efforts to work against racism in the U.S. This great
retreat engenders a lessened commitment to helping minorities obtain the opportunities to
gain parity in education, technology, and income. Sadly the blame appears to be shifting
from the victimizers to the victims.
While strong White Supremacy movements are minority views in the United States
today, research continues to show that majority-groups Americans are prejudicial in their
treatment of minorities and that all ethnic groups can hold negative ethnic attitudes toward
15 | P a g e
other groups. x1 The newer forms of racism are covert and concealed at times. A report
released by the Clinton White House indicated some disturbing data about attitudes held by
majority ethnic group members, i.e., "white Americans" in regard to African Americans and
Hispanic Americans. The data show that despite public attitudes of harmony and interethnic acceptance are images and feelings of superiority. For example, as a Clinton White
House report indicated, 1/5 Americans believe that inter-"race" marriages should be illegal;
more than 20% of Americans disapprove of such marriages; most whites prefer to live in
white-dominated neighborhoods; over 50% of whites in America rate Blacks and Latinos as
less intelligent; over 50% of whites in America believe Blacks and Latinos are violent; and
over 2/3 of white Americans believe that Blacks and Latinos like welfare. If you tried to find
the Internet link just cited, you would learn that the Bush administration took it down.
Because racial and ethnic prejudices are not simply held in the minds of individuals
but are talked over by those in the in-groups, they are an important subject for those who
study human communication. Other disciplines provide useful information about macrolevels of prejudice, but communication scientists have the ability to explain the more micro
levels. This is necessary because racism and ethnicism are related not only to sociological and
psychological factors, but also to processes of social interaction. Communication scientists,
and other social scientists, should be able to link the micro levels of prejudice which occur at
levels of individual perception, thought, attitudes, and cognitions t the macro levels of
prejudice which occur in mass media representations, political discourse and various societal
actions or refusals to act.
We will see that all humans wish to build their personal identities in various ways
including membership in ethnic or “racial” groups. This is an automatic and natural
process. 2 The issues with such identification began after the most basic levels of simple
personal identity. In-group members may talk about the necessities of their dominance and
develop means of persuading each other about the truth and necessity or their racial or
ethnic attitudes. One of the basic levels of this kind of in-group communication consists of
claims and perceptions of positive self-presentation contrasted with negative other or outgroup presentation about foreigners, immigrants, people are so different, etc.
Racism comes from excessive use of the concept of “race.” Federal government
reports show that the concepts of "race" and "ethnicity" are quite fluid and change over
time. One report (Office of Management and Budget) indicates this:
"There are no clear, unambiguous, objective, generally agreed-upon definitions of the terms, "race" and
"ethnicity." Cognitive research shows that respondents are not always clear on the differences between race and
2 Processes in human which are natural and automatic may be very negative.
Examples include stereotyping, violent reactions, and a “truth bias” in message
reception.
16 | P a g e
ethnicity. There are differences in terminology, group boundaries, attributes, and dimensions of race and
ethnicity. Historically, ethnic communities have absorbed other groups through conquest, the expansion of
national boundaries, and acculturation. Groups differ in their preferred identification. Concepts also change
over time. Research indicates some respondents are referring to the national or geographic origin of their
ancestors, while others are referring to the culture, religion, racial or physical characteristics, language, or
related attributes with which they identify. The 1977 Directive No. 15 categories are a mix of these. The
categories do not represent objective "truth" but rather, are ambiguous social constructs and involve subjective
and attitudinal issues."
People are confused about "race" because it seems like such a clearly present part of life and
many people don’t understand why scientists are backing down on what has been thought to
be a scientific term. In fact, the term “race” has been one that is defined in many
contradictory ways and even denied to exist by some.
While I prefer to minimize the use of the term “race” myself, I understand that many
scholars still believe it is a useful term. I have erased it from my own vocabulary because I
find enormous issues of validity with it from a measurement point of view. Moreover, I
think its history brings connotations that accompany ostensibly innocent efforts to simple
name groups by physical feature clusters and that many of those connotations are politically
oppressive or alienating. I will not try to take away the word from you but I will ask you to
consider what it does for your life as a signifier and what it does for how you communicate
with others about various groups of people.
What I am going to do with this book is to attempt to expose the fictions behind the
construct or concept known as "race" and demonstrate how the construct is more useful for
power and dominance or for inconsequential cataloging of surface-level physical appearance
differences among human groups. By processes of pseudo-speciation or artificial
classification by physical appearances, millions of people in the world have suffered gross
injustices and the pattern will continue until everyone is willing to confront the political
nature of "race" discourse.
Is There Really Such a Thing as "Race?"
I have struggled with the question about how real "race" actually is in human beings
as I have done research for writing here. If there actually is "race" in the human species, at
best it is something identifiable on the skin, bone structure, facial features, and externalities
more than anything else. However, the history of the concept seems to indicate that it is a
term in search of a meaning and that the meanings are always minute in terms of explaining
anything substantial about human behavior. Indeed, with all of the differences in skin tone,
hair texture, etc. humans are very much alike in structure and their most consequential
differences appear to be differences in individuals and differences among cultures. It does
seem to me that there are identifiable clusters of outer-feature patterns for many people and
that the extremely different groups are easy to peg as what we call racial groups. At the same
17 | P a g e
time, however, there are millions of people who are not in the extremities of group outerfeature differences and can be easily pegged incorrectly on the basis of racial assumptions.
One clear mistake is noting a person’s membership in one group when they are the
result of intermingling of members from multiple groups. I am not bothered by being
prodded to state is there or there not such a thing as a “race”? My easiest answer is too easy
– of course there is and it is called the Human Race. If you don’t let me get away from the
issue so quickly, you might ask me to define “race” and then I must give you this. A “race” is
a sociocognitive construct used to communicate about the relationships between one’s own
ethnic in-group and other groups, some of whom are out-groups. In other words, the term is
a relational term and its history shows that it is used primarily to set up differences among
human groups and then to rank the groups based on those differences.
The "race" construct arose deductively and was derived from political premises
about cultural superiority and inferiority. This political baggage makes it difficult to take the
concept seriously from a scientific point of view. On the other hand, we know that there are
groupings of people that are possible in light of shared outer characteristics. I prefer to use
the term sub-populations to refer to these groupings.
Thus, my position is that the "race" construct has very limited scientific utility and
that an inductive approach to sub-populations is likely to be more fruitful. The latter would
show groupings by appearances, behaviors, and genetics found in the Human Genome
Project. Even in this latter case, I expect we will come back to what the ancient Greeks and
Hebrews knew about people. That is, we are more alike than different and what makes us
different in truly important ways is how we choose to live our lives and build our societies.
Racialization and “Race” Realities
Our thoughts involve thousands of concept and associations among those concepts.
These associations affect how we perceive situations and what behavioral choices we have in
those situations. Racial categories give us alleged biological schemata used in perception and
interpretation and therefore affect how communicate with others.
Graves argues that racial categorization produces social antagonism. Part of this is
identities that are used to form coalitions against other identity coalitions. While this appears
common in history, we must also remember that identities do not exclude acceptance of
alternative identities.
Behavioral differences in human beings have less to do with biological evolution and
factors than they do with cultural evolution and cultural factors. Often we people cannot
explain what causes certain human behaviors, they will say it must genetic, al the while not
knowing what genetics actually have to do with behavior. Genetic-environment causes of
behavior may be more typical of causation that genetic causes alone. Culture may not directly
cause behaviors, but we can see culture and we watch how people refer to their cultures and
its influence on them. In human evolution, good communication and negotiation skills may
have been important for surviving to the point that human evolution would include social
interaction.
Ethnocentrism as well as racism can encourage communication which stresses
18 | P a g e
differences far more than similarities or in conjunction with similarities. What are the effects
of such communication? Human communication evolves as humans evolve. How was very
primitive human communication more likely to encourage prejudice and discrimination than
communication today?
How are many conflicts in the world today related to either racialiation or cultural
discrimination (the ethnic sense of the word, not the sense of thoughtful choices)? People
did not need race theories to start violence, conflict, competition, and war, but Graves
suggests that racializing made these even easier. Discourses of biological differences could be
added to discourses about religious and cultural differences.
In the language of cultural analysis and ethnicity studies, bigotry refers to intolerance
of differences in groups other than your own. Prejudice refers to stereotypical thinking and
judgments made on scant information about others. Discrimination refers to behaviors that
act out prejudice. Prejudice involves beliefs, attitudes, and negative schemata for social
groups. Our concern here is ethnic prejudice. Ethnic discrimination is the process by which
an ethnic group behaves in ways which deny members of other ethnic groups equal or full
access to desirable resources such as food, income, education, housing, etc.
Racialization can be used to add polarization to cultural antagonisms. The conflict
between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Rwanda is just one example. Some say they are not
even separate tribes and that they share language, customs, territory, and religion. The two
tribes racialized each other as much as possible to make them seem more different than they
were. In Nazi Germany, the Nazis worked against the fact that German Jews and non-Jews
were not that much different in looks, so the Jews were forced to wear yellow stars.
Much of what makes up racial content is racializing imagination. Concepts like pure
blood, racial superiority, human sub-species (“races”), and racial essence appear to be many
more arts imagination than parts science. For example, the Japanese fantasized about being a
race before World War II. As Hitler developed his imaginary concept of an “Aryan” race,
the Japanese developed theirs of a pure Japanese blood line.
With both of these nations, master race narratives help to spin ideologies that said
that they were justified in their invasions and abuse of other populations. Japanese racism
still thrives today and relations between South Korea and Japan are still bad because the
Japanese only faintly apologize for their abuse of Korean women during World War II. As
late as 1986, some Japanese leaders were still talking about the country’s racial purity.
Our thoughts involve thousands of concept and associations among those concepts.
These associations affect how we perceive situations and what behavioral choices we have in
those situations. Racial categories give us alleged biological schemata used in perception and
interpretation and therefore affect how communicate with others.
Graves argues that racial categorization produces social antagonism. Part of this is
identities that are used to form coalitions against other identity coalitions. While this appears
common in history, we must also remember that identities do not exclude acceptance of
alternative identities.
Behavioral differences in human beings have less to do with biological evolution and
factors than they do with cultural evolution and cultural factors. Often we people cannot
19 | P a g e
explain what causes certain human behaviors, they will say it must genetic, al the while not
knowing what genetics actually have to do with behavior. Genetic-environment causes of
behavior may be more typical of causation that genetic causes alone. Culture may not directly
cause behaviors, but we can see culture and we watch how people refer to their cultures and
its influence on them. In human evolution, good communication and negotiation skills may
have been important for surviving to the point that human evolution would include social
interaction.
Ethnocentrism as well as racism can encourage communication which stresses
differences far more than similarities or in conjunction with similarities. What are the effects
of such communication? Human communication evolves as humans evolve. How was very
primitive human communication more likely to encourage prejudice and discrimination than
communication today?
How are many conflicts in the world today related to either racialiation or cultural
discrimination (the ethnic sense of the word, not the sense of thoughtful choices)? People
did not need race theories to start violence, conflict, competition, and war, but Graves
suggests that racializing made these even easier. Discourses of biological differences could be
added to discourses about religious and cultural differences.
In the language of cultural analysis and ethnicity studies, bigotry refers to intolerance
of differences in groups other than your own. Prejudice refers to stereotypical thinking and
judgements made on scant information about others. Discrimination refers to behaviors that
act out prejudice. Prejudice involves beliefs, attitudes, and negative schemata for social
groups. Our concern here is ethnic prejudice. Ethnic discrimination is the process by which
an ethnic group behaves in ways which deny members of other ethnic groups equal or full
access to desirable resources such as food, income, education, housing, etc.
Racisms and racial talk are visible even in the 21st century in all forms of
communication – conversation, meetings, organizational practices, political discussions,
news, and all forms of entertainment. Racial talk, however, is not always about racism.
Sometimes it is about shortcuts in thinking about or describing other people. It is like
profiling in that is provides an easy descriptor. Sometimes it is about group identity and
pride. Sadly, group pride can get exaggerated to the point of noting flaws in other groups.
We tend to believe that if there is a term for something, that something must exist and be
important. Do you believe in ghosts? If you do, is it because you have seen one or because
there is this concept of ghost that is familiar to you?
Racialization can be used to add polarization to cultural antagonisms. The conflict
between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Rwanda is just one example. Some say they are not
even separate tribes and that they share language, customs, territory, and religion. The two
tribes racialized each other as much as possible to make them seem more different than they
were. In Nazi Germany, the Nazis worked against the fact that German Jews and non-Jews
were not that much different in looks, so the Jews were forced to wear yellow stars.
Much of what makes up racial content is racializing imagination. Concepts like pure
blood, racial superiority, human sub-species (“races”), and racial essence appear to be many
20 | P a g e
more parts imagination than parts science. For example, the Japanese fantasized about being
a race before World War II. As Hitler developed his imaginary concept of an “Aryan” race,
the Japanese developed theirs of a pure Japanese blood line.
With both of these nations, master race narratives help to spin ideologies that said
that they were justified in their invasions and abuse of other populations. Japanese racism
still thrives today and relations between South Korea and Japan are still bad because the
Japanese only faintly apologize for their abuse of Korean women during World War II. As
late as 1986, some Japanese leaders were still talking about the country’s racial purity.
Racism Builds Upon the Concept of "Race"
History reveals some ugly lessons about the use of racism for applications of political
decisions and policies such as early American foreign policy. This was recently noted well by
Noam Chomsky in his book, Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Boston: South End Press,
1993). As done in most of his past books, Professor Chomsky shows how the savage
injustice of Europeans and American to native peoples of small islands and states, has been
buried in much of history. 3
Chomsky notes that even Adam Smith, architect of laissez-faire capitalism, wrote
that Europeans were using force on remote countries to force on them their commercial
interests and dominance. It was not only financiers who thought such conquest was good,
but even intellectuals like Frederick Hegel, who saw native people as "aborigines" and wrote
racist comments about blacks and American Indians. Chomsky notes that Europeans and
early American entrepreneurs saw non-white peoples as animals, incapable of anything
worthwhile, and ripe for the benefits of being conquered by the superior and benevolent
new masters. The course he describes follows the Spanish Inquisition, The Netherlands’
Dutch East India Company, and other examples of economics being served by other forms
of power.
Chomsky (1993) cites many cases of 18th and 19th century racist language, including
George Washington's reference to Indians as savages, Jefferson's note about their
backwardness and Teddy Roosevelt's call for a war against "savages." More importantly,
Chomsky notes how the metaphor of "Indian fighting" was carried through dealing with the
less-than-human creatures in the Philippines and Mexico, China, and Vietnam. As historians
have noted, Americans sought to annex lands to compete with European nations and to
become stronger than England after the War of Independence. For example, Chomsky notes
that Andrew Jackson sought to annex Texas to gain a monopoly of cotton which would
hinder England's role in the international market. President Tyler boasted about how well
the U.S. could progress, after conquering one-third of Mexico, toward placing the world's
3 Contrary to what some ideologues argue, this is not a matter of ideology but of more complete and critical
historical analysis.
21 | P a g e
nations at America's feet.
These are not trivial observations and Chomsky notes how the pattern is consistent:
American leaders seek to establish and protect American dominance whenever and wherever
possible. Often, such dominance is conducted in the name of "competition." As in the days
when Americans believed the peopling the New World with white civilization would better
the new territories, Americans today believe that they are invariably and naturally helping
those nations they invade or dominate.
Chomsky's description of European and American racism underpinning colonialism
provides glimpses of the linguistic roots of American political culture. While overt racism is
far less in force than in the past, cultural superiority continues to permeate American (and
British) policy formation. The origins of this superiority have connections to days such as
the early 1600s in Massachusetts when colonists saw the Native American Indians as needing
and asking for help from the white Europeans. Early Americans believed that their selfinterests and exploitation of native people was part of divine and noble civilizing missions.
It is common to think that colonialism and conquest necessitated racialization but
history shows that racialization preceded both colonialism and theories of racial categories.
While the ancients did not have race theories, they did have racialization and other means of
producing social and political hierarchies among types of people, whether it be culture,
nation, geographic location, or religion. For example, in 13th century European nations, Jews
were oppressed, demonized, and murdered (Heng, 2011). In 1218, in England, Jews were
required to wear badges to identify their religion. Genocide against Jews was occurring as far
back as 12th century in England (Heng, 2011). In medieval Europe, Jews were said to have
bodies that had a foul odor, horns and tails, and a desire to drink the blood of Christian
children (Heng, 2011).
It is clear that categorization into evaluative categories preceded racial theories but
that the latter added the weight of alleged scientific analysis to the bigotries of previous
centuries. Also, it is important to realize that prejudice and discrimination did not begin with
theories of “race.” Yet still, the political force of the bio-political term exacerbated prejudice
and discrimination. Despite all of this, there is current disagreement about whether the
construct of “race” serves any useful purpose and if it does, what purpose is found. Thus far,
I have come across four general arguments regarding the term “race,” with two being in
favor and two being opposed to the construct. They are summarized below.
Four Arguments about the “Race” Construct
Two Arguments in Favor
The first and original argument says that humans fall into one of several or
numerous (3-60+ now) groupings or “races.” Those who do not fall neatly into one category
can be considered mixes of the categories. This argument says that there is a first race which
is known as either Caucasian or Aryan or Indo-European and that all other races are
degenerated forms of this original “white race.” A variation of this argument, however, is
known as the polygenesis argument; it says that all races are like species and each one has a
22 | P a g e
separate point of origin. The monogenesis (single point of origin) and polygenesis subarguments are unified by the larger argument about “race” categories and natural hierarchy
of supremacy following skin color. The lighter the person, the more superior they are
because they are closest the white “race.”
Although the first argument was considered scientific in the 19th century, most
scientists today subscribe to a differing view of “race.” They believe they have a non-racist
view of “races” since the racial categories refer only to outer characteristics or traits as well
as some genetic patterns. Unlike the first argument which is openly racist, the second denies
being racist and says that is makes no claims about intelligence, personality, or other
behaviors based on the racial categories. This argument asserts that it is possible to group
humans by physical traits into racial categories and there may be differences in biology and
culture related to these categories.
Two Arguments Against
The first opposing argument says that people are part of one “race” -- the human
race which is simply the human species. Within this species are numerous variations but
humans have been genetically intermingling throughout history so any pure types of
groupings are accompanied by many groups of varied mixes of people types. This argument
says there really is no such thing as “race,” except in the heads of the people who use the
term. Some proponents of this argument call “race” theories and categories superstition and
others say the word has only been used by scientific racists in order to promote racism and
discrimination.
The second argument says that “races” exist as biological groups but that there are
no inferences that can be drawn to behavior. Hence, the construct has no biological utility
and appears to be more political than biological. Some geneticists use this argument and say
that if there are “races,” they will have to be found in patterns of genes, not in lists of outer
physical characteristics alone. This kind of soft belief in “race” actually places little faith in
the construct and therefore appears more opposed to the construct than in favor of it. These
scientists are more likely to talk about “subpopulations” or “human groupings.”
Why Do We Continue to Believe in Something That May be Discredited?
In pursuing this research on the topic of the "race" construct, I have come to believe
that there are phylogenic (outer features) patterns for human groups but that the most
scientific groupings are in the genetic patterns beneath the skin and away from the political
baggage that is wrapped tightly around the traditional racial categories.
The proportion of scientists that doubt the validity of the "race" construct does not
seem to match the high numbers of laypeople who continue to treat the concept as if it is
valid and useful. This phenomenon occurs in many areas of belief such as faith in
extraterrestrials, faith in "subliminal persuasion," and confidence in all sorts of charlatans.
Social scientists need to explain why people believe in ideas that are discredited. Most likely,
part of the reasons is that the idea, even if discredited, serves some useful social function.
23 | P a g e
While the term “race” can be used to described human groups in terms of general outer
similarities that are different than other groups, it is possible that the term has more political
than biological importance. The concept of race is troubling for many reasons. It is not
precise. It is perpetually contested. And it is easily used for stemming into discourse that is
consistent with social hierarchies and racial hierarchies. Sheldon Krimsky (2011) observes
that “the concept of ‘race’ has been steeped in paradox, embraced by ideology, adopted and
rejected by science, but nevertheless remains an indisputable part of public discourse.” (p.2).
The disciplines of anthropology, biology, and genetics are heavily involved with
discourse about human groups. There are competing arguments about the reality of “races,”
and what they signify if they do exist as meaningful entities. In the chapter on biology, I will
return to these arguments but wish to preview the controversy now since the fact that
scientists do not agree upon the exact nature of “races” or the need to discuss them makes it
clear that “race” talk is increasingly problematic over time.
There is a kind of “biologism” behind the notions of “races” that I will explain in
later chapters. For now, it is useful to note how scientists debate the validity of the
construct. It is my hunch that genetic determinism and racial thinking go hand in hand. In
other words, both assume that people’s actions are driven by their internal and external
biological differences. A kind of behavioral reductionism can follow as it is assumed that
contexts are trumped by traits.
In her study of racism, Philoma Essed (1991) discovered that black women, even if
successful professionals, experience racism on a daily basis while they are at work, in stories,
and simply going about everyday life. She argues that this is true despite the fact that most
“white” Americans claim that they are not prejudiced against blacks. Additionally, she finds
streams of political discourse which attacks those African Americans which complain too
much about racism. A theme she located is this type of discourse is that blacks are too
sensitive and whites are criticized too much. Essed’s husband, Teune van Dijk, has been
studying the relationship of communication processes to prejudice for decades. He believes
that one must be part of either the problem or the solution to prejudice and discrimination.
Attitudes have functions for people and this applies to racial and ethnic attitudes. They have
purposes that help people cope with living as they wish to live. With prejudicial attitudes,
one gains help (even if illusory) in explaining the social world and sorting out people in one’s
environment. Stereotyping, while negative, performs a function of cognitive shorthand that
people enjoy.
I am fully aware of the contested state of much of this domain of inquiry. The issues
and controversies are enormous. Dunbar (2002) makes the point that one does not have to
be racist due to the fact that one describes racial features in people. Dunbar also argues that
there are groups, for instance, the Basques that do have distinctive genetic and cultural traits.
I believe these arguments are correct but that they do not eliminate the arguments made
throughout this analysis. They inform it and they are worthy of constant consideration.
Some people wish to cling to systems of pure racial categories. These have been
abandoned by scientists. Other people wish to have some fairly stable racial categories with
24 | P a g e
the understanding that many people are “interracial.” Many scientists do accept this
approach. Both views can be problematic for the same reasons, however. For example, in
both, one can over-attribute how a person behaves or communicates to their “racial”
membership. I sighed deeply when a man recently told me about how his adopted black son
is doing so well in basketball due to his “nature.” My non-black Hispanic stepson is a great
basketball player also -- due to lots of practicing!
After reviewing so many differing arguments about the “race” construct, I am left
with a discursive approach to whole set of debates and the term “race” itself. My position
might only be appreciated in light of the argument made by Lindee, Goodman, & Heath
(2003, p. 10) who argue that “Race, ethnicity, and national identities are salient identity
signifiers regardless of whether they are biologically legitimate categories.” The deeper level
of meaning for the construct might have some degree of biology, a higher degree of social
construction, and an unavoidable amount of political positioning. This does not sanitize the
term but rather makes it more problematic than suspected in the past two decades.
Scientists who reject the “race” construct note that research indicates that human
variation is greater within groups than across groups (racial groups). While early racialist
scientists thought that “races” were like separate species, later ones imagined subspecies, and
current ones think about biologically distinct but not too distinct human subgroups. The
changing meanings of the construct have made it suspect for many decades but true
believers (those who like to racialize) argue that the construct is simply becoming more
precise as older meanings (and politics) are shed.
Some scholars argue that precisely because “race” involves politics, it cannot be
dropped as an important term in the lexicon of words used to describe relations among
humans and their groups. Some scientists even make this argument, acknowledging the
fledgling nature of a “race” construct linking biology to behavior or human nature but
noting that the term has some utility to contrast human groups.
From his molecular genetic perspective, Alan Templeton (2003) argues that the term
has weak biological usefulness but has specific functions in human communication. If the
concept of “race” was useful, there would be more genetic diversity across racial groups than
within racial groups and this has not been found to be true (Templeton, 2003). There are no
longer and serious and credible scientists who argue that “races” are like subspecies.
Necessary conditions for the existence of “races” include quantitative thresholds of genetic
differences between “races,” a distinct line of evolution, and demonstrable genetic
differentiation for what are observed as racial traits (Templeton, 2003).
Templeton (2003) argues that “race” is a real factor in human communication while
it holds little scientific validity. While there are biological differences among alleged racial
groups, he argues that such differences are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the
status as “races.” With the human condition of lots of contact and gene flow, any local
population has access to the alleles (alternative forms of genes) that are created by mutations
in other locations (Templeton, 2003). If there is no gene flow between two populations, they
are said to be genetically isolated. Populations not involved in gene flow with other
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populations are known as isolates. (Templeton, 2003). Isolates may the most valid model for
what are called racial groups but there are no true isolates in the world. Even is one argues
they have found isolates, these populations can cease being isolates through reproductive
admixture.
While geneticists have provided data showing the invalidity of many claims about
“races,” there is a contemporary surge in efforts to use the construct “race” to classify
humans. (Templeton, 2003). This should be not be viewed simply as a campaign to
resuscitate a dying concept. Population genetic analysis indicates that past claims about pure
“races” are false and that humans tend to mate with others nearby but often mate outside of
their native group (Templeton, 2003). Statistical genetic analysis reveals that there has always
been recurrent genetic interchange among humans.
There are genetic differences among human populations but these differences do not
match most of the historical definitions of “race.” (Templeton, 2003). There is a very simple
rule that explains genetic variation and that is simply that as geographic distance increases, so
does genetic distance (Templeton, 2003). This reveals the secret that what are historically
called “races” are actually geographically diverse populations. Melanasians and Africans are
the most genetically distant populations in the world. Europeans are closer to Africans and
Melanasians than Africans are to Melanasians (Templeton, 2003).
This is true despite the fact that the Melanasians and Africans share more of the
three traditional “race” markers – skin color, cranial-facial morphology, and hair texture
(Templeton, 2003). In the past, the Melanasians and Africans were assigned one “race.”
Most of the genetic differences among human populations are related to the dynamics of
changes in genetic drift vs. genetic flow. Genetic drift leads to group differentiation from
others while genetic flow makes groups more similar. One of the most isolated groups is the
Amish community in the U.S. because of their choice to mate only within their communities
(Templeton, 2003). Yet no one has yet suggested an Amish “race…”
Another scholar, sociologist Troy Duster, does not agree that the “race” term needs
to be abandoned because of its scientific flaws. He correctly notes that many concepts in
science suffer from imprecision or changing meanings (Duster, 2003). He admits the finding
that there is more genetic variation within assumed racial groups than across them. However,
he also notes that medical professionals use the concept because it can summarize certain
likelihoods of individuals having certain blood types and disorders (Duster, 2003). Duster
notes that the critics of the construct may be right about the validity issues, but the term has
meaning for people who use it and humans finding meaning in differences they perceive. He
also argues that how people identify themselves affects their behaviors. Duster makes many
arguments are very interesting and which help to hold a candle up the racial theories of the
past and to say that while they were wrong, there is something about racial categories that
remains useful.
Duster is in no way a scientific racist or someone who sees no problems at all in the
term. He genuinely believes than abandoning the term is throwing out the baby with the
bath water. He is fully aware of the importance of how people identify themselves and other
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and also the problems of racializing humans. Yet he notes that while humans at least 99.9%
similar, there are important biological differences. He says that people say we are all the
same, but the possibility of racial groups remains. He says that ethnicity is a code word for
scholars who do not want to talk about racial groups. He says that racial taxonomy terms are
not ethnic groups. Criminology procedures, Duster argues, depend on some racial identity
steps that help to find criminals. Duster argues that “race” is not merely a social construct
and that even the social construct part of the term is sociologically important.
Medical Prejudice and the Use of “Race”
It is possible that medical experts like physicians could use “race” as physiological
short-cuts and even do harm with pre-judging patients on the basis of alleged racial-group
membership? If you have not read about the cognitive errors made by physicians, you need
to; it might save your life. One book I can highly recommend on this subject is called How
Doctors Think, written by physician Jerome Groopman.
There is the interesting and tragic case of a boy who nearly died because his doctor
cognitively linked sickle-cell anemia to African-Americans and not to Italians. The boy was
Italian. This is akin to an ethnically prejudiced person not processing the details of a person
they meet by getting to know them with a motivation to be accurate, but rather by matching
them with groups they have memories of and can then apply group characteristics to the
person in front of them.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin has a view of racialization that differs
greatly from the apologists of the “race” construct. He argues that the ultimate refutation of
the validity of the concept comes from quantitative analysis. The word “race” has meaning
that vary in all sorts of ways, so quantitative analysis adds more precision than intuitive
impressions about racial boundaries and definitions. Lewontin notes that scientists found
differences among three class racial groups – “Negroid, Mongoloid, and Caucasoid.” This
involved various forms of a gene. The numbers look like big differences among the three
groups. With some genes, there big difference, but there is no known gene that allows
scientists to distinguish one group from the others.
Lewontin argues that the study of racial differences in genetics of “races” is always
problematic because of the vast differences in racial taxonomies, the movements of people
historically, and populations like the Turkish who are difficult to clearly put into one
category vs. anotherxi. This scientist argues that how you study racial groups depends on
you’re a priori assumptions about those groups. More importantly, Lewontin addresses the
question of how much genetic variation occurs among people within one group such as a
nation, how much within sub-groups, and how much across differing groups such as socalled races. Within-populations differences in genetic factors were very high and differences
across groups was very small. In other words, most genetic variation is among individuals
within the same racial group. The general findings indicates something like 85% variation
within racial groups and 15% across racial groups. While very bright scholars might argue
that there is great importance in the 15% of differences, the 85% number shows the utility
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problem of the construct. Skin pigmentation is genetic, but how important is skin color for
creating taxonomies of human types?
Objectives in Pursuing this Topic
To accept the challenges of lowering prejudice in thought, communication, and
actions, as I will advocate, requires a commitment to the ethical responsibility for improving
one’s communication and taking on the moral responsibility for what effects micro-level
behaviors on larger-scale interaction and patterns of behaviors. This kind of commitment
should be agreeable to someone with any mainstream political ideology since it appeals to
the political values in our political culture that most Americans agree with, in the same way
that most of agree with the need for free speech.
It is not my goal to advocate the extermination of a term but to suggest that its
demise may be imminent in terms of biology and science in general. Scientists should recall
the term “phlogiston” and how it served a purpose for while – until oxygen was discovered.
Once the political aims of “race” discourse are achievable by other means and it becomes
obvious that genetic groups are more useful than racial groups to describe biological patterns
among humans, the term “race” might have less footing for its continuance. But even
assuming that this is wrong, my goal is to show the political content of the construct from
various angles. Indeed, I will argue that the political dimensions of the construct are larger
than the biological dimensions despite the fact that “race” does signify certain physiological
patterns. Thus, a term with little genetic or biological meaning has a great deal of political
meaning.
We will see that Ruth Benedict and other scientists would take issue with many of
my arguments and offer the counterargument that the use “race” as a term does not infer
any necessary racism by the users of the term. I can actually accept that claim. My retort is
simply that “race” talk makes it easy to classify people in ways that suggest that some groups
are better than others in heritable ways.
It is also my intention to show how the “race” construct shifts meaning in order to
sustain its life. When one meaning is refuted, another emerges. For example, when it was
once assumed that all people could neatly fit into one racial category and that assumption
collapsed, it was argued that racial categories can overlap and any individual can be a
member of more than one racial group. I believe that one can racialize without being a racist
or even prejudiced but the ice is thin when it comes to effects of using “race” categorization
because of the historical baggage attached to the term and the fact that racial thinking tends
to be stereotypic. Studies have shown that stereotypic thinking is foundational to ethnic
prejudice.
More importantly, I seek to show that talking about “race” encourages
generalizations about causes of behaviors that lie beneath the skin. Outer-features clusters
used to identify group membership of a person lead to the identification of the group leading
to inferences about causes of actions. The assignment of a person to an alleged racial group
is not simply attributing membership. It is also attributing membership that carries baggage
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and this means generalizations from group traits back to the individual who is being
perceived. The power in inherent in such a process is found in the history of racial group
narratives and in-group shared representations of out-groups.
On the Nature of This Book
This book has been online now for nearly five years. It is what I call an online book.
I have made it free so that it can be easily distributed and discussed. I welcome questions
about claims made in these pages. As I address various questions, further editions will
emerge. By 2015, I will end the online format and change the book into traditional print
form. By then, it will have gone through many revisions and the mistakes corrected as much
as possible.
If you wish to cite this book for any reason, please be sure to use the proper citation
method: Hacker, K. (2014). “Race”: The Political Classification of Humans. Available:
http://web.nmsu.edu/~comstudy/race2014.pdf. The online book is copyright protected
and no permission is given for the use of its contents other than general and accurate
citation.
This is the sixth round of editing this book and I will continue this until 2015 at
which time, I will end the free online version of the book and turn this into a product. That
will allow me to move onto the project described earlier as a new book concentrating the
potential for a post-racializing American culture.
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Chapter One: The History of the Ideas about "Race"
It is quite common for people today to be classified as members of one "race" as
opposed to other "races." Many people take the validity of the term "race" for granted,
including academics, government officials, and statisticians. In so doing, "race" functions as
a signifier that maintains a purpose of classifying individuals into categories of human beings
which purportedly have important differences. The genetic nature of these differences is
taken for granted and hence assumed to be immutable. Recently, however, the American
Anthropological Association recommended that the term "race" be dropped from the
United States Census.
In this essay, I argue that the construct "race" is a biological and anthropological
term which has little scientific utility but has great deal of political utility. While many people
are trying to take the term out of biology and argue that is a social construction or cultural
construction only, others are clinging to a biological view. My objective is to problematize
the "race" construct to the point that its historical roots, biological uncertainty, and political
functions become clearly visible. To the extent that this is achieved, the role of the "race"
construct in political communication will become evident. I make no pretense of offering a
final judgment on the validity of the concept in all of its uses. If people talk about a concept
that has little scientific utility, it may have usefulness to them in other ways. What I do
commit to, however, is the position that we would be better off without the concept in
human communication and that the concept is more political than biological in utility.
There are numerous views on the “race” concept. I sometimes call it a construct
rather than a concept because it includes many dimensions such as physical traits, alleged
DNA markers, some geographic factors, and a host of sociological and cultural implications.
Thus, as some scholars note, the construct/concept marries biology with non-biological
thoughts like geography or culture. As long as people use the term, it needs to be studied
because it cannot be finalized either as word of science or a word of pure fiction. While the
term can found in the employment of hard-core racism and oppression from the 17-20th
centuries, it seems to get re-invented today by scientists and non-scientists alike. Regardless
of definition, the term always serves to classify people into categories that suggest that
membership in one group is significantly different than membership in another group.
Below are shown a few of the common denotative meanings for the term today:
a) A biological reality such as species or sub-species.
b) A unique cluster of genetic markers related to geography and subpopulations.
c) A social construct with little if any biological substance.
d) A cultural construct that links ethnicities into pan-ethnic groups.
e) A pure fiction.
f) A convenient way to cluster people by out-feature traits like skin color.
Just as one could look for a genealogy of racial groups, it is also possible, and perhaps more
useful, to look for a genealogy of racial language and constructs.
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History of the "Race" Signifier/Construct
When did people begin thinking of humans as groups of "races?" Biologist Stephen
Jay Gould says that the "race" term was not found in ancient times or in the Bible of the
Hebrews and Christians. Other scholars have noted that the term and use of race categories
are also absent in the work of the ancient Greeks and Romans (Hannaford, 1996). As we will
see later, however, we need to avoid the assumption that prejudice was not present in these
societies. In fact, it was alive and well as culturalism preceded racism.
This does not mean that the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans did not sort out people
in terms of who was better. They did do this but it was usually in relation to tribes and
cultures. Some observers try to find evidence in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament
Bible) for racial thinking. They trace three “races” to three sons of Noah. Some say that one
son of Noah, Ham, was cursed and made black to show his cursedness for his disobedience.
However, more objective observers find that the descendants of Ham would live in the
Middle East. In the time between the 2nd and 6th centuries, some authors of the Babylonian
Talmud decided to call these descendants black (Graves, 2001). The Hebrew leader Moses
was married to a black woman named Zipporah (Graves, 2001). In the New Testament,
Christ is quoted as saying that “God hath made of one blood all nations of men.” (Graves,
2001, p. 17).
The Greeks believe that non-Greeks were barbarians. Yet all a barbarian had to do to
raise his status was to become Greek by taking on the culture in language, practices and
values. Although Hippocrates said that the Greeks were superior to the people in the Asian
areas, he attributed the Asian weaknesses in war to their less demanding agricultural
environment (Graves, 2001). He did not attribute his alleged Asian weaknesses to heredity.
While Aristotle believed in natural rulers and natural slaves, he did not use any detailed
taxonomy of human groups to show some being better than others, although he did
attribute group differences to differences in environments (Graves, 2001).
Like the Greeks, the Romans had a strong ethnocentrism and they characterized the
Germans, French, and Britons as being mentally slow (Graves, 2001). The attributed this
alleged slowness to what they saw as inferior cultural achievements (Graves, 2001). One
Roman, Emperior Julian became a “race” theorist of sorts and argued that there were
superior and inferior groups of people with innately determined characteristics. Although
Julian is an early racist, it is interesting to note that he said the Aryans and Anglo-Saxons
were barbaric while the Africans were intelligent and civilized (Graves, 2001). He also said
the Celts and Germans were fierce while the Greeks and Romans were political (Graves,
2001).
To both the Greeks and Romans, slaves were not a matter of any kind of racial
grouping. Anyone could be made a slave. Captured people were easy candidates for slavery
despite their place of origin (Graves, 2001). There was no preference to make Africans slaves
in these two societies.
The ancients were not thinking of the world in terms of a color line with black on
one side (the inferior side) and whites on the other (the superior side). This is not to say they
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were color-blind. They did perceive color separation among various nations like the
differences between Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians (McCoskey, 2012). One hand, they
might say something negative about darker people occasionally, but they did not spend any
significant time discussing themselves as some sort of white category (McCoskey, 2012). The
Romans considered the Ethiopians as darker than them and the Gauls as lighter than them.
Thus, there was not strong color line or racial hierarchy to the ancients despite their sporadic
references to color and cultural differences (McCoskey, 2012).
In days of colonial expansion, the concept appeared somewhat to describe the new
people seen by explorers in the New World (Montagu, 1964). The term also had early origins
in the 17th century as it was used by European tribes who fought each other for land and
resources. The purpose in each case was to attribute observed physical, behavioral, and
intellectual features of people to “race” and then to rank races in relation to the race
considered superior ("AAA Recommends "Race" be Scrapped," 1997).
Jewish people came from numerous tribes and constituted a cultural group. Converts
to their religion came from other tribes such as the Amorites, Amalekites, Egyptians, and
Hittites (Graves, 2001). Additionally, they intermingled with many groups of people making
it impossible for anyone to seriously consider them a “race.” Yet that is what Hitler and
other strong racists would do to isolate and oppress them. However, the German Nazis did
not begin the prejudice against the Jews; it was common in Europe in the Middle Ages.
While Pope Gregory banned the persecution of Jews by Christians in the 6th century, Pope
Urban II (Council of Clermont) exorted the Crusaders the 11th century to secure the Holy
Land from the Muslims and to also go after the Jews. In 1215, Pope Innocent III ordered
all Jews to wear badges and to live in ghettos (Gravesa, 2001).
Francois Bernier, a French physician, in 1684 was the first European to formally
name and classify human “races.” He saw these races as sub-races of the human species.
Bernier argued four categories for humans – Europeans, Far Easterners, blacks, and Lapps.
He could not decide to what group the indigenous people of America belonged (Gosset,
1997). He argued that the blacks have hair like wool, Far Easterners have oddly shaped eyes,
and Lapps are short with large feet (Gosset, 1997). At the time of his writing, even
classification of lower forms of life was barely developed in science.
The Swedish biologist, Carolus Linnaeus, father of taxonomy, described Native
Americans as having reddish skin, being choleric (easily angered) and being governed by
custom. He described Africans as having black skin, being indolent (prone to laziness),
anointing themselves with grease and having governance by caprice (sudden changes of
mind). He saw Europeans as white, gentle, muscular, inventive, having flowing hair and blue
eyes, and being governed by law ("AAA Recommends "Race" be Scrapped," 1997). An air of
science was added to the notion of "race" by the writings of Linnaeus and those who read
his work. Linnaeus was publishing about this in early 18th century.
George Buffon was a French biologist who set the “white” race as the norm for
assessing the qualities of other races. While he argued that blacks are inferior to whites, he
did not support slavery (Graves, 2001). Johann Blumenbach invented the term "Caucasian"
to designate the light-skinned people of Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa.
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Blumenbach cited the superiority and beauty of these people as the reason he named them
after the Caucasus Mountains (Gould, 1994). Blumenbach, who began the study of humans
we know today as anthropology, developed five categories or classifications of "race":
Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay (Gould, 1994).
Johann Herder, in 1784, followed the writing of Blumenbach which appeared in
1775 about races. Herder argues that all we really have for human groupings is variations one
of big picture (Montagu, 1964). In the nineteenth century, the race construct appeared more
scientific but still was used to contrast newly labeled races with the perfect ideal race known
as Caucasians. In other words, racial variation was discussed as degeneration from the
original and superior race. Races were ranked on what were considered scientific measures of
intellect, facial prognathism (outward jaw projection), phrenology (character, mental traits
related to bumps on the skull), cranial capacity, etc.
Stereotypes about different sub-populations resulted with the race construct. Thus,
some were called more intelligent than others and some more athletic than others and some
more mathematical than others.
Scientific Utility of the Term "Race"
If one examines the terms used to classify people into categories with clear
distinctions, one finds that people can be placed in quantifiably different classes such as age,
sex, height, weight, and years of education. However, we should note that there is only one
correct answer to all of these. You can only have one age, one height, weight, and years of
education. What of "race?" Many people cannot fall into one racial category because they
have ancestors or parents from different racial lineages. Thus, there is nothing discrete about
the term.
If the construct does not place one person into one race, it begins to falter as a
means of classification for all humans, since many, if not most, people have mixed lines of
descent in terms of national and racial origins. Shreeve (1994) notes, for example, that about
20-30% of African-Americans in the United States are of a pure African type which we
might label as one "race."
In public opinion polling today, people are still asked for their "race," despite the fact
that about 30% of Americans have changed their racial designation within two years. I once
talked with a student who said that she was less than 1/10 Native American, but would selfclassify herself as such in order to receive federal money. The validity and reliability of
scientific measures are crucial to their being considered scientific and useful with either
research or reports. Yet, the validity and reliability of the "race" construct is highly suspect.
Validity is the extent that we are measuring what we purport to be measuring and reliability
is the consistency of a measure over repeated measurements. The "race" construct falters on
both counts.
Biologists report that the efforts to count races have yielded totals that vary from
three to sixty (Wilson, 1992). Since 1900, 26 different categories for race or ethnicity have
been used by the U.S. Census ("AAA Recommends "Race" be Scrapped," 1997). How can
scientists or pollsters know what they are measuring in regard to race when there are
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between 3 and 60 racial categories?
We have always known that all humans belong to one biological species: Homo
sapiens. The categories known as race are difficult to use because they are not fixed, pure,
discrete, or satisfactory in validity and reliability. Moreover, they do not contribute any
knowledge about human beings that surpasses the simple fact that all humans are part of one
species. Users of the construct might wish to argue that the "race" construct allows us to
understand more about human behavior. Yet this appears to be false since most differences
in behaviors are attributable to factors that have nothing to do with "race." In fact,
differences in "race" have been found to account for no more than 6% of human behaviors
(Shreeve, 1994).
It is known that there are changes in human beings in certain qualities and
characteristics that can be related to geographic isolation. The "race" construct is not based
on these pockets of geographic isolation, however, as much as it is based on arbitrary
groupings of people by physical characteristics (Shreeve, 1994). Marco Polo and others who
traveled thousands of miles at the slow speed of 25 miles per day by foot and camel, never
talked about difference races of people (Shreeve, 1994). These explorers did not talk about
such groupings because they encountered people of many varying characteristics who would
appear to be blends of what are known as "races." They saw in-between types of people as
they made their way gradually across a continent as opposed to the New World explorers
who left Europe, crossed the ocean, and then encountered very different types of people
much more suddenly. Today, about 50% of anthropologists believe that the race construct is
no longer useful (Shreeve, 1994).
Criticizing the "race" construct for its problems with validity and reliability is not to
say that there are no genetic differences among humans. Rather, it argues that the denotative
meaning of the construct is quite fluid and the connotative meanings of the construct are
easily used for political purposes. The American Anthropological Association ("AAA
Recommends "Race" be Scrapped," 1997) recommended that the United States Census drop
the category of race from its measures. They argue that the concept has no basis in human
biology and cannot be tested or proven scientifically.
Additionally, they argue the survey respondents confuse the terms race, ethnicity,
and ancestry. They acknowledge that genetic data do indicate differences among groups, that
such groups can be traced to geographic origins, and that some of this data can be helpful
for health screening. On the other hand, they point out that any two people within one socalled race, are as genetically different as any two people selected from two different groups.
Race and Ethnicity
These two terms may be difficult for most people who not study human variations
to sort out. Anthropologist Ashley Montagu (1964) argues that we should substitute ethnicity
for race in order to label variations in humans. The American Anthropological Association
says that terms like ethnicity or ethnic origins might be less susceptible to misunderstanding
than the term race ("AAA Recommends "Race" be Scrapped," 1997). The association argues
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that both race and ethnicity, however, are constructs for categorizing people on perceived
physical and behavioral differences.
The key difference, however, is that populations with similar physical appearances
may have varying ethnic identities and populations with varying physical appearances may
have common ethnic identities. The association notes that while people rarely know their
complete ancestry, they do know what ethnic groups they identify with the most. They say
that the term "ethnic group" has been shown to less confused with race than the term
"ethnicity" and that respondents know it refers more to ancestry and origins. What were
considered separate races in the early 1900s in the United States are now considered ethnic
groups. These include the Italians, Irish, and Jews. In other words, these people were
considered non-white then and now are considered variations within the white race.
How did these groups become white? Certainly, it had more to do with power than
with biology. If you are less likely to be approved by a bank for a loan because you are black,
it is race that makes you do something wrong in applying for the loan or are you rejected for
the loan because someone is categorizing you as black and attributing certain features to the
category? If you have one parent who is Anglo and one who is Mexican, are you white or
Mexican? If you have one parent who is black and one who is white, are you white or black?
Historian Andrew Hacker (1992) (no relation) notes that if a white American marries
a Hispanic or Asian, the children can be considered white, but if the partner is black, the
children will be called black. He notes that we lost a spectrum of racial categories view that
we present in the early century. A person born of one white and one black parent back then
was labeled "mulatto." In 1910, the Census reported 20% of blacks as mulattoes (Hacker,
1992). "Mestizo" was a term referring to mixed European and Native American. "Creole"
referred to mixed European and Negro. Hacker notes that many American do not fit into
race categories.
For example, Native Americans are described as one race but he notes that they are
more of a collection of loosely related tribes than a biological entity. How about Asian
people? About 20 years ago, we spoke of them as Orientals because Europeans like the term
to sort them all apart from Europe, the center of civilization. The race category of Asian was
not chosen by the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians, Burmese, Thai people
themselves. This as a European and American lumping together of people who have few
activities and interests in common. Is there really a race that we can call Hispanic? Some
people in this group have purely European roots, some have African roots, and some have
American tribal roots. In California, in the 1990 Census, 51% of Hispanics/Latinos said they
identify themselves as Hispanic without a race category (Hacker, 1992).
Ethnic and racial categories are both related to processes of identity formation. The
categories are neither completely independent or the same. However, most scientists today
prefer to talk about ethnicity because it minimized phenotypic clusters of features in favor of
heritage, culture, and other characteristics that can be attributed to groups because of
location and birth lineage while abandoning some of the racialist baggage of the “race”
construct.
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However, as Cornell and Hartmann (1998) point out, there is the always the political
issue of assignment (categorization done to one by others) versus assertion (categorization of
oneself by oneself). Additionally, we find that people can discriminate on the basis of
ethnicity in ways that are similar to discrimination done with older racial grouping. It is also
very important to note, as Cornell and Hartmann point out, that people take on racial and
ethnic identities for specific purposes of acting on the meanings of these categories. I believe
that the political aspects of both ethnicity and racial thinking must be carefully considered as
one of the most potent sources of social conflict and political oppression.
Oppression from "Pseudospeciation"
As Andrew Hacker (1992) argues, dividing people into races began with convenience
but then the categories tool on lives that contort facts about human beings. While we no
longer have slavery in the United States, many Americans still believe that blacks are inferior
to whites (Hacker, 1992). What we do legally is not what we think privately. Both Thomas
Jefferson, who said that all men are created equal, and Abraham Lincoln, who ended slavery
in the United States, believed that blacks are inferior to whites. Fifteen years after the
Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, (Hacker, 1992, p. 25) said the following:
"Nobody wishes more than I do to see proofs that nature has given to our black brethren
talents equal to those of the others colors of men, and that the appearance of a lack of them
is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence in African and America."
Hacker (1992) argues that Jefferson's racism in this statement is similar to white
racism toward blacks today in that they hope that blacks have equal talents but doubt that
they do. White Americans feel most comfortable about blacks when blacks stop talking
about their cultures (Hacker, 1992). While black residency of neighborhoods reaches the 8%
mark, whites begin to abandon the neighborhood (Hacker, 1992). While many white
Americans are opposed to programs like affirmative action, they are also opposed to other
whites campaigning for causes to help blacks. Often the racism is concealed by arguments
which say that whites made their successes by individual efforts alone and that is what blacks
should do (Hacker, 1992).
Hacker (1992) argues that black Americans subsist as aliens in the only homeland
that they know. He says that this is a segregation that they have not chosen. They suffer the
greatest prejudice because of deep historical roots in biology, anthropology, and religion in
the U.S. which described them as low forms of human life -- something in between monkeys
and other humans. No other group has the stigma of former slavery. Other minority groups
have been able to be accepted by whites by joining in the white discrimination and
oppression of black Americans. Hacker (1992) points out that most Americans still believe
that blacks are more likely than other groups to carry primitive genes.
Oppression from Racism
Racism exists as ideas, attitudes, and posturing of superiority of one's own race in
relation to those considered inferior. But, as Hacker (1992) observes, racism is most
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insidious because it springs out of assumptions and viewpoints that we are often unaware
exist in our minds. Many whites can cheer on black athletes, talk about black friends that
they have, and still generalize blacks in terms that are negative (Hacker, 1992). What are the
foundations of racism at the individual level? One is personal experiences.
Another is ignorance. We may think that someone lives as people like them live on
TV rather than visiting them and getting first-hand impressions. Another reason is that we
keep telling ourselves that America has no racism -- that everything was fixed long ago.
Hacker (1992) notes key difference between blacks and whites in America -- very similar to
differences between men and women -- like men don’t have to have fears related to their
gender, whites do not experience fears on a daily basis related to their skin color.
Political Utility of the "Race" Term
"Race" does not appear to be only an attempted biological category. It is related to
the power distributions of human societies and historically has performed useful political
functions. In fact, it may be that "race" if far more useful as a political signifier and one
useful for purposes of biology, anthropology, and social science. Events like the Holocaust,
slavery in the United States and Europe, forced relocations of Native Americans, can be seen
as historically bolstered by racial thinking. By the mid-nineteenth century, "race" became a
tool of American imperialism (Montagu, 1964). White Americans mean the term white to
signify European origins along with its superior cultures and civilization (Hacker, 1992).
Whites felt morally justified in having slaves and white men felt free to force themselves on
black women. Groups like Irish, Jews, Hindus, Italians, Mexicans, etc. were sorted out from
the white category. Why are dark-skinned Iranians considered white?
One useful political aspect of the race construct in the maintenance of biological
determinism to support efforts to stop trying to encourage equalities in society. Even before
the book The Bell Curve was released, psychologist Arthur Jensen was claiming that
programs like Head Start will inevitably fail because black children have been found to
genetically inferior (Hacker, 1992). Scholars publish differences about racial groups in regard
to crime, rape, welfare, intelligence, etc. Why? In terms of genetics, the "race" construct is
not a useful discriminator of anything more than surface-level appearances such as skin
color. In terms of politics, it has functioned dutifully to justify segregation, discrimination,
slavery, and ending social programs which attempt to bring about multiculturalism and aid in
education to minority sub-populations. Said differently, as a biological construct, "race"
contributes virtually nothing useful to the student of human beings. Yet as a political
construct, "race" can have strong and significant effects upon communication and behavior.
A Concept That Will Not Go Away?
A term or construct does not go away when it has as much intuitive appeal as the
"race" construct and when it has as much political power. As the anthropologists advocating
its disuse have noted, it will take a very long time for the term to be retired. This is because
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the word signified something that people believe in, namely, biological and anthropological
groupings that link skin tone and other outer features with internal and behavioral
regularities. Until the basic term is minimized into its rightful position of a category force
fitted onto observable traits, racism will not likely decline in any significant fashion.
Racialization is a process of putting people into racial categories or formations. The
reasons for doing this are more diverse that it might seem and include objectives of power,
classfiication by similarity and difference, stereotyping for easy psychological processing, and
others. We can “act our age” but some people today seen to want themselves and others to
act their fact, whatever that means.
While some activists claim that racialization is necessary to fight racism which holds
back many minority groups, I suspect that America could end many of the problems in
education, health, the Digital Divide, etc., by providing what is necessary for all Americans
regardless of their skin color. Without the political will of the American people and their
leaders, of course, this is unlikely.
The Rebellion Against Racial Science
While there is a long history of racial science and scientific racism, there is also a long
history of resistance to racializing humans and human populations. Gossett (1997) notes that
people who are not scientists generally use racism against racism when they are victimized by
prejudice. For example, he observes that the Irish were called “furious and mercurial Celts”
by the English the Irish responded by calling the English “boorish and sluggish AngloSaxons.” (p. 410). Gossett refers to this kind of phenomenon as counter-racism. This is not
what began to dismantle scientific racism and scientific racialism.
Racial theories and “science” became so extreme before the early twentieth century,
that scientists were even dividing Europe into European “races.” I believe that this reflect
the politics of European competition among nations where the southern nations would be
classified as inferior by the northern ones and even some nations would think of themselves
are superior to other European nations by employing racial discourse.
Eventually, some better scientists began to question the validity and science of racial
theories. Their strong argument began with the assertion that racial theories were of little or
no use in explaining the character of various human populations. The alleged science of
racialization was so bad that even some racists rejected the science while maintaining their
racism. For example, Thomas Huxley rejected the science of racializing the Irish as inferior
to the English, but still argue that the Irish were members of an inferior race (Gossett, 1997).
Other scholars like John Stuart Miller, however, began a direct assault on the racial
arguments. Mill said “Of all vulgar modes of escaping from consideration of the effects of
social and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the
diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences.” (Gossett, 1997, p.
412).
William Babbington in 1895, noted that almost everything that had been written
about intelligence and racial temperaments had no value (Gossett, 1997). While William
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Ripley used a kind of anthropology to describe what he called the “races of Europe,” he
criticized other scientists for talking about an “Aryan race,” and also criticized the value of
craniology for studying racial groups (Gossett, 1997). In a revealing statement he said that
some of the racial theories “made sponsor for nearly every conceivable form of social,
political, economic virtues or ills, as the case may be.” (Gossett, 1997, 413).
While the anti-racists attacking racial theories were good at point out problems with
data, methods, and logic, they had trouble with concept to explain the commonalities among
certain populations and the differences across populations. This failure to offer strong
alternative theories of human differences made it possible for the race theorists to attack the
critics of racial theories as uniformed, over-sentimental, etc. These attacks on anti-racists are
still being made today, in the year 2014. An early 20th century Harvard psychologist William
McDougall provided objections to those who attacked race theories that are still being used
now. xii I will call these the McDougall objections. Here they are:
1. Those who deny racial groups are what McDougall called “race slumpers.” These
observers avoid the main issues and dedicate their time to criticizing the theories of
racial composition and innate human differences.
2. They make much of the fact that few people are pure racially.
3. They assert that all “human stocks” are of equal value.
4. They deny that racial factors explain the character of individual or societies.
Such thinking was increasingly assailed by the argument that human societies were more
dependent upon social processes than upon biological traits. A newer focus began on social
traits. This meant less of a biology overlay on culture or trying to explain cultural differences
with biology. Thus, social relations and interaction would be more important to cultural
differences than physiology in some of the newer thinking. This is no to suggest that early
cultural anthropology did not suffer from prejudice as it moved past racial theories. Cultural
superiority could easily supplant hunches of racial superiority.
One of the main racialist antagonists was the German anthropologist who moved to
American, Franz Boas. He directly attacked biological accounts of history and populations
(Gossett, 1997). Boas had a doctorate in physics. While doing his physics dissertation, he
observed that much of what humans observed cannot be subjected to objective
quantification. Like other scientists, Boas recognized that methods like craniometry looked
like science but suffered from a failure to acknowledge the fact that children do not always
inherit the cranial characteristics of their parents in cases of differing environments (Gossett,
1997). Boas made it clear that understanding a population is better done with inductive
observation that with intuitive and ideological deduction.
Part of what Boas encouraged was the discovery of thinking, ideas, and practices
from within a population rather than from a privileged position of the observer. Instead of
using one scale, each population or culture could be observed on its own scale (Gossett,
1997). Boas rejected the idea that “race” determined mental characteristics and showed that
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cultural factors are more important in relation to mental traits (Gossett, 1997). It was easy
for him to attack the American racists’ theories and later the German Nazi racializng.
In the 1920s, psychology began to leave its mission of using intelligence tests to
support racial theories of group IQ means. Boas attacked a racist behavioral science of his
day by arguing that psychologists never had any proof that IQ tests give any insight into the
way the brain functions (Gossett, 1997). Other scientists began to support his arguments by
noting that differences in the intelligence levels of racial groups was never really proven. One
study done on Native American children whose parents and grandparents became wealth
from oil discovered on their land tested as equal or superior in intelligence than children in
the general population (Gossett, 1997). Wealth seemed to trump innate abilities as the
explanation for intelligence levels…
As the rebellion against racial science continued, scientific racists fought back. As
they tried to do so with the language of science, Boas challenged them with a damning
question – where is the proof?
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Chapter 2: Old and New Forms of Racism
This is the kind of book that will get under the skin of those racists who wish to
pretend there no longer is such a thing or that to the extent that racism continues in the
United States, it is perfectly normal and no longer to be challenged. Sorry, but the job is not
yet done. Racism must be confronted until it finds no refuge whatsoever. The contemporary
refuge for racism is a soft racism that is not easily recognizable and which may even deny its
own existence. This book is also likely to agitate those academics who think that they are
producing something useful by talking about racial differences in human traits or behaviors
and cannot stand the fact that they may be simply reflected 19th century means of
stereotypical attribution.
For example, President George W. Bush all but abolished the White House Office
for Race Relations. This may be seen as nothing more than economic re-arrangement or it
can be seen for what it represents in terms of communication -- a willingness to stop
working on racism and failure of nerve to confront it. The question is why and the answer
suggests a set of values consistent with soft racism. Such a hunch can be confirmed in stories
told by reporters about Bush and his aids telling ethnic jokes on plane rides, a Bush advisor
saying that the Administration lacks "Panda-huggers" for dealing favorably with the People's
Republic of China (Newsweek, April 16, 2001, p. 28), the speaking engagement of Bush the
candidate at racist Bob Jones University, etc. etc. There are even essays circulating with
charges about Bush's family siding with German Nazis during World War II but those
stories , whether true or false, lack scrutiny by most of our new media.
Various Forms of Racism
It is a mistake to think that there is only one kind of racism, for example, the oldfashioned “no doubt” racism that makes openly bigoted comments about members of other
groups. Scholars have noted that today, we can observe experience many types of racism and
prejudice that range from intentional prejudice to non-intentional prejudice and from open
racism to silent racism.
We are familiar with the old-fashioned racism that amounts to open bigotry. This has
been demonstrated in recent times by actor Mel Gibson and musician Ted Nugent. The
latter recently called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel.” He also called him a
“chimpanzee.” Know that Nugent has also been accused of pedophilia pretty much
dismisses him from any serious political discussion. What is more important today that the
kinds of racial craziness displayed by the radical right is the more mainstream and more soft
spoken racism of scholars like Charles Murray who simply say that they are doing nothing
more than pointing out interesting facts. There is nothing bizarre about Murray in his selfpresentation. He seems like a nice guy that might make us wonder if racists can actually be
friendly people.
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Scholars in discursive psychology identify the following types of racism. Following
the differences among this types of racism helps us understand how societies like American
society have moved from old and blatant racism to more subtle forms of racism. While the
American civil rights movement and legislation of the 1960s made it less socially acceptable
to speak in negative racial terms, the discourse of egalitarianism did not match the negative
ethnic or racial attitudes still present among whites. Ironically, those people who were
symbolically racist could speak the language of tolerance and egalitarian values.
What scholars began to label as symbolic racism and modern racism included a
rejection of the old, blatant racism. Prejudice was still present but in different ways. Antiblack feelings could be expressed in a language of individualism and personal responsibility
that rejected helping minorities rather than a discourse expressing negative attitudes about
blacks. A critical finding here is that anti-prejudice discourse can be accompanied by negative
and prejudicial attitudes (Walker, 2001). This hidden negativity can result in communication
that is anxious or awkward. A person is this position might say they are not bigoted and then
go on to give reasons for not supporting efforts to help ethnic minorities.
Ambivalent racism is involves attitudes that have both positive and negative beliefs
about certain groups. Aversive racism involves strong language of supporting work against
prejudice while accompanied by negative ethnic attitudes. This is certainly a strange
contradiction as the open discourse is not consistent with the internal feelings. Subtle racism
or prejudice involves a dense of traditional values, an exaggeration of group differences, and
a denial positive ethnic attitudes.
New Racism
Teune van Dijk (1982) and others have long noted that subtle racism is more
insidious than overt racism since it is denied and concealed, perhaps even unrecognized by
the person holding the prejudiced attitudes. This opens up strong challenges to
communication scientists and analysts trying to reduce prejudice since the holders of the
negative attitudes keep denying the existence of those attitudes.
Van Dijk is interested in content, organization, operation of prejudice. He is not
talking about simply having negative attitudes or mental states, but rather about strategies of
information processing about ethnic or racial groups. This is related to the idea of social
information processing. Van Dijk (1982) argues that prejudice is a social phenomenon
involving group-based and shared cognitions. Social cognition is always involved with this.
Attitudes are taken to be social attitudes, in this view, rather than as mediating
structures affected by stimuli and affecting behavior. Social attitudes are shared cognitions
that are schematically organized. Attitudes are schematic clusters of evaluative beliefs (also
known as opinions). As people do not have personal language, they do not have personal
language. Only opinions or evaluative beliefs are personal. Attitude categories develop with
personal experiences in relation to how people match our goals, values, interests. Once
developed the attitudes influence our interactions with others.
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Attitudes are also organized into clusters of attitudes known as ideologies or what we
might consider cognitive ideologies. Ideologies are closed systems of thinking and
communicating which allow fast political processing as when one concept can be rapidly
evaluated by its similarity a previously evaluated concept. Note that despite the fact that
ideologies are social and sociocognitive, each person has multiple cognitive ideologies related
to a multiplicity of contexts related to values, interests, goals. Sets of ideologies may be
organized into more abstract ideologies such as the isms we mentioned before.
Van Dijk (1982) describes two types of memory that are important to racism and
prejudice. Episodic memory consists of subjective representations of personal experiences in
short-term memory. Semantic memory consists of abstract knowledge. Since there is a social
nature to the contents of semantic memory, he refers to social memory -- semantic memory
about social affairs. Social memory has not only semantic information, but also procedural
information.
You might want to use the metaphors of episodic memory as personal diary and
social memory as dictionary, encyclopedia and grammar. Frames are clusters of knowledge
which have general properties and leave details to be filled in by specific situations.
Prototypes are representations of typical members of a class of people. Scripts are
knowledge structures guiding routine behaviors. Ex. Driving. Schemata are categorical
networks organizing cognitive representations. Frames, prototypes, scripts are types of
schemata. A script is also called an event schema. A hierarchical structure formed by
repeated situation categories is a situation model schema.
PRINCIPLES OF INFORMATION PROCESSING WITH THE ABOVE
STRUCTURES:
1. From experience models, mental models, we form more general models for our
experiences.
2. When we understand what occurs, we have formed models of specific instances that
match models of similar episodes.
3. A control system monitors the flow of information between short-term and long-term
memory.
4. Macro-level negative opinions dominate more specific or micro-level opinions.
5. When faced with contradictory evidence, prejudice attitudes remain stable by conflicts
getting resolved through strategies of reinterpretation.
SPECIFIC COGNTIVE ORGANIZATION OF PREJUDICE -- THE GROUP
SCHEMA:
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1. APPEARANCE -- fast identification and categorization by this high-level category.
Skin color etc are examined a person is classified as race or ethnic group member. The
latter is now more acceptable than the former.
2. ORIGIN -- territorial or geographic boundaries.
3. SOCIOECONOMIC POSITION -- how can elites preformulate prejudice for other?
4. SOCIOCULTURAL PROPERTIES - beliefs about norms, values, rules, habits of
outgroups. Note that cultural differences are exaggerated and polarized to the extent that
what is typical of the outgroup is also what is unacceptable.
5. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS -- inherency or immutability is part of this.
What are the functions of ethnic prejudice or racism?
1. Easy social information processing about groups.
2. Cognitive programs for planning and justifying negative
actions.
3. Fast schema retrieval and application.
Research indicates that such group schemata are stable and similar across individuals
belonging to the same in-group.
Difference is an issue we have mentioned, but it is not difference alone that is the
problem. Once differentiation occurs, it can lead to two directions, one respectful of
difference and combined with some form of commonality, and the other turns difference
into deviance, threat, immutability, categorical superiority and inferiority, etc. etc.
The bottom line of prejudice to van Dijk is shown in thought and communication
about other groups (other than your own) and how they should either leave or they should
adapt. They should not create competition with the autochthonous group, should not be
threatening, should conceal their differences, and accept being second-class. Both Jefferson
and Lincoln thought that the blacks would not be able to adapt and therefore should be
shipped out of the United States]
Note how tolerance can thus be based on the proposition that they can stay if they
do not bother us. Ideological work is done as demands are made by the out-groups and in
the ingroup can repel those demands by not appearing overtly racist or ethnicist. Thus,
instead of protecting the dominant group, you can argue you are protecting the entire
society. As the Southerners argued in the 19th century, the issue of slavery was about
States’ rights. With prejudice, ingroup members highlight differences rather than similarities
with outgroups, minimize differences among outgroups and minimize differences between
outgroup members.
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Prejudice in Everyday Thinking and Communicating
A prejudiced person seeks to form models that are consistent with stored attitude
schemata. Discourse is interpreted in biased ways and this is a central feature of racism being
reproduced through communication. Both internal and external data are combined to form
input for understanding and evaluation. . Episodic models provide structures and contents
of previous encounters. Scripts and attitude schemata supply socially shared knowledge and
opinions necessary for interpretation.
Attention is focused on a minority member category. Other ethnic events are
accessed. Negative evaluations from previous events can be associated with the present one.
The minority classification of the encountered persona can then lead to the assignation of
more importance and negative evaluations will become more prominent.
Negativization can result from the special focus on ethnic difference and minority
status. Dominant group members recall and reproduced negative facts from various sources.
Same behaviors for dominants are classified in good ways and for outgroup members are
negative. Ex. Well-deserved rest vs. Being lazy.
Note that what we call interpretation is being controlled by attitude schemata. Even
objective news can be cognitively processes as racist or prejudiced discourse -- how?
Discounting is a method of minimizing information not consistent with existing attitudes.
The observations can be dissociated from stored representations. Another technique is
detopicalization which makes a theme positive or neutral about outgroups as a minor detail.
Attribution involves putting the minority group member into a negative situation as
the causal agent. Negative acts by majority members are attributed to social contexts. This
applies to scapegoating and making victims victimizers. For employment, a dominant group
member might be a victim of the system or of minority members while the out-group or
minority group members are told that they must personally responsible.
Discourse is controlled by cognitive structures of prejudice. There is tworeinforcement between what is stored and the models used to process new encounters.
Each ethnic encounter is not taken a unique event but as an instantiation of attitudes. The
person is not represented as an individual but as a group member. This is a process of
deindividualization and dehumanization.
Further abstraction of models is possible with continued processing of ethnic
encounters. Each instance is confirmation. Contradictory information is treated as
exceptional and may have no effect. In-group members become experts at dealing with
inconsistent messages.
More About Categorizing and Otherizing
Teun van Dijk helps us understand the automatic categorization and matching
process we go through cognitively. He also notes what part of categorizing and evaluating
begins to produce prejudicial thinking and feeling.
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van Dijk notes that racism has both cognitive and social aspects and that the two
often work together in sociocognitive ways. Micro levels of communication affect macro
levels and vice versa. We can see three layers to his description of racism and prejudice:
macro -- ideologies, mythologies, mass media
meso --- language, discourse, and shared stereotypes
micro -- conversations and social interaction
What we see and hear in ordinary everyday conversation has roots in language and
mythologies. There is nothing inborn or innate about prejudice or racism. As with most
human behavior, prejudiced communication is learned.
While ceaseless contrasts of one’s group with other groups may seem innocent, it can
create divisions and polarization that help along otherization and prejudice. Like Ruscher
(2002), van Dijk identifies specific linguistic patterns in racist discourse. For example,
prejudice might steer one to talk in vague terms about the bad behaviors of one’s own group
but in specific and agentic terms for various out-groups. Noting interesting differences
among ethnicities may not be problematic but when the difference taxonomies continue the
point of evaluation which traits are better or preferred, negative and positive emotions may
become involved and ethnic attitudes are formed in either positive or negative directions.
As one begins to otherize or racialize other people, communication is more distorted
and one takes on various tones of superiority in their language and interaction. Making fun
of other group, whether by culture or by racialization, amounts to the same thing –
prejudiced communication, even if denied as being prejudiced. In 2008, about 33% of
Americans thought Barack Obama was a Muslim (Kristof, 2008). More than that number
today in 2014 think that President Obama was not born in the United States. The discourse
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on radio, TV, and conversations about the President can get so silly along these lines that
people wonder if the President is a Muslim who took his oath of office with the Koran and
some even whisper that he might be the anti-Christ… I have never seen any form of racism
or prejudice so strong in America as what we now see regarding President Obama, our
nation’s first black President. Rather than taking the chance of saying that they do not like
Obama because he is black, some Americans fall back on otherizing him as Muslim
(knowing that he is a Christian most likely), as someone “foreign,” or as someone who
represents a threat to the nation. When his opponents talk about “taking our nation back,”
we need to query them on exactly what they mean – really mean. Just as there is code to the
Morse code used in the old telegraph systems and there is code in computer programming
and algorithms, there are goods for human discourse and messages. Talking down to a highly
intelligent an educated black President says more about the speakers than it does about their
rhetorical target.
A case of the low-level communication used to signify the President is the product
of movie producer Roma Downey, the wonderful actress from the wonderful TV show,
Touched by an Angel. At issue is the portrayal of Satan in her new movie. Although she had
the scene shown below removed from her movie, Son of God, she does not appear to be
apologizing to President Obama for what clearly appears to be demonizing imagery.
On the left is the actor in Downey’s new movie and on the right is the President. One can
only wonder why the producers chose an actor who looks so much like Obama to play Satan
in the film. This is not a matter of spotting the racist; it is a matter of challenging strange
semiotics.
Learning How to Deal with Social Identity
Social Identity Theory from social psychology makes it clear that all humans are born
into certain groups, self-categorize later and affiliate with many other groups and
consequently develop identities that link social affiliation with personal identity. Once there
is group identity, there is group preference and this can easily lead to prejudice as simple as
one’s own groups being perceived as naturally better than other groups. Thus, member
encourages preference and preference encourages differentiation and prejudice. Prejudice
can be diminished, however, once one learns that is it not productive and works against
ethical and effective communication and relationships.
There is some recently published nonsense that has become bestseller material by
telling people that human babies are natural racists. The public and the journalists who
confuse them, think that that claims are scientific when the opposite is the case. Studies
show that human infants have group preference, not that they have racism. Some studies in
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recent psychology shows that while babies may prefer to touch someone of their same skin
color, they do not do anything beyond that which can be classified as discriminating
behaviors. Prejudice, racism, or discrimination can be learned in later childhood but is only
learned if it is taught. Psychologist Paul Bloom explains this is in his recent book, Just
Babies.
The nonsense about babies being natural racists appears in a recent book titled
Nurture Shock. In that book (Bronson & Merryman, 2009) the author’s claim that children
are likely to think that their parents do not like members of other racial groups if such
groups are not talked about in the home. They also observe that choose members of their
own group as being smarter than kinds of other skin-color groups. Children are attracted
more to people who are like them than those that are different. While this is true of most
humans, it certainly does not show racism in any way. These authors reach the sad (and
poorly reasoned) conclusion that “diversity translates into more division between students
(p. 61). “ In this way of thinking, multicultural, cultural diversity, and lessening prejudice by
lowering race talk is a fantasy.
Just as racism and ethnic prejudice are produced in various forms of communication,
so is anti-racism, multiculturalism, and movements to lessen prejudice in everyday life and
mass media. However, the new racism and its fellow traveler, scientific racism continue their
quests to prove while superiority. An interesting discourse has emerged over the past decade
which attempts to make anti-racists look irrational and as people who ignore science.
Science, in this discourse, not only confirms the validity of the “race” concept but also the
historical claims of white superiority. As before, this new wave of “racial realists” claim that
they know that they are talking about because they hold doctoral degrees, teach at large
universities, publish many journal articles, and have empirical data to support their claims.
The new racists or “realists” have fascinating claims about what motivates their research.
These include the following:
A. Basic scientific curiosity about human differences.
B. Wanting to know possible dangers of immigration or mixing of certain populations.
C. A need to refute the claims made by scholars and governments that all people are
equal and that everyone should be helped with equal social opportunities.
D. Wanting to show that environmental factors do explain population differences in
crime, intelligence, and abilities.
As we progress to examine the use of the “race” construct today, we will that there are
specific, even if unspoken, political motivations to the new racism also.
Unpacking the New “Racial Realism”
While none of the racial “realists” will admit to racism, they all share a common
belief in the innate qualities of human characteristics like intelligence. They do not believe
that external factors like socialization, enculturation, learning, social influence, and various
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other social factors have as much determination of intelligence and achievement as innate
factors. While thee voices prattle on about “science” vs. those who oppose racial constructs,
they appear to cherry pick various scientific report to merely support their preferred themes.
It is a variation of the themes of scientific racism but with a new twist. Now, the inferior
have a chance to adapt, with the help of the higher-status cultural groups.
One might argue that this is more a matter of culturalism than racism and I admit
that such a possible characterization should be explored. First, however, we should listen
carefully to the discourse, its claims, and its manner of presentation and insulation from
criticism. Some of this line of thinking comes from what is called evolutionary psychology, a
line of psychology writing that speculates on how past human evolution affects
contemporary human nature and behavior. Some of this writing implies that much of our
behavior is hard-wired and less susceptible to cultural socialization as commonly assumed.
They assume that mind and behavior can be studies without studying cultural or
environmental influences. This is fairly striking in light of actual biological and genetics
research which emphasizes the interactions of genes and environment.
Here are some of the arguments made in this line of “racial realist” discourse:
1. Steven Pinker argues that you can have a fair society without assuming fairness or
biological equalities.
2. Humans may have a nature that moves them toward bad behaviors like rape, but
they also have the free will and decision-making abilities to not live out their bad
motives.
3. People are not born as blank slates but have certain traits that innate.
4. Michael Levin argue that there are real differences among human groups and
inequalities are part of these differences. Inequalities are related to ideas of
superiority and data indicate the superiority of whites. European and American white
technology and science made the world as advanced as it is today.
5. Samuel Francis argued that racial consciousness is necessary for whites. Denial of
racial realism is irrational. Francis died in 2005.
The leitmotif of this kind of realism is that inequalities are natural and biological. While
some of these scholars do call for more social justice, others appear comfortable with the
status quo of everyday prejudice and discrimination.
One scholar who denigrates others who do not subscribe to “race realism,” notes
that he views himself as someone in line with Thomas Hobbes and libertarianism. Leaving
the tensions between Hobbes and libertarianism asides, it is worthwhile exploring the
contributions that the political theory of Hobbes might be making to the new scientific
racism. Hobbes was an English political theorists who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries. He
was a royalist who wrote the well-known book in 1651 title Leviathan (Scruton, 1982).
Hobbes believed that the natural state of nature and human nature involves a “war of every
man against every man.” Security, therefore, comes from a social contract between people
and strong government. This includes allegiance to strong leaders like kings.
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The newer discourses of racism use new labels and attempt to build a new aura of
pure science, completely freed from the hatred of old scientific racism. It is up to critical
scholars and citizens to pull the mask off this charade.
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Chapter 3:
THE BIOLOGICAL SIDE OF THE "RACE" SIGNIFIER
In the 18th century, biology was a word applied by Karl Burdach to the study of
humans. Later in 1812, Jean Baptiste Lamarck used the term to denote chemistry,
meteorology, geology, botany, and zoology. Today, biology is generally thought of in a more
focused way as simply the science of living things (Greek "bios" = life). The two main
subsets of biology are the study of plants (botany) and the study of animals (zoology), but
there are many other areas including human studies, anatomy, genetics, paleontology, etc.
etc.
In 1735, Carolus Linneaus divided all living things into five taxonomic levels kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. For human beings, the order
became animalia (kingdom), chordata, mammalia, primates, homo, and sapiens (species).
With this means of categorization and classification, scientists like Linneaus believed that
they could make meaningful comparisons among living things. In biology, since Linneaus,
the categories for living things have changed as discoveries have been made. So the fact that
categories change is not enough reason to reject a means of classification. The "race"
construct changes as do scientific constructs. The question is how scientific the "race"
construct is to begin with and why it seems so embedded in cultures of racism.
In describing the origins of "races," scientists who use the term trace the following
line of events. First there were apes these evolved into ape-people as well as various types of
apes. Ape-people evolved into Homo erectus hominids and some of these evolved into
Neanderthal people. Around 38,000 BC, it is assumed that the modern human, homo sapien,
evolved from the Neanderthals. From there, from the homo sapiens human species, six
"stocks" arose -- Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasoid (1), Australoid, Amerindian, and
Polynesian. Each of these "stocks" could be further divided as with the Caucasoid stock
including the categories of Alpine, Mediterranean, and Nordic (Trager, 1992). Historian J. M.
Roberts (1999) argues that DNA research shows clearly that all humans come from one line
of human heritage and that the "races" today began as geographical and climatical
specializations in skin pigment, skull shape, hair features, and bone structure. He continues
that all of the main racial groups existed by 10,000 BC in the groupings of Mongoloid,
Pacific, Australian, American, Caucasian, and African. Despite these categories, however,
Roberts argues that after 10,000 BC, human evolution was about mental and social
phenomena more than genetic changes (Roberts, 1999).
Racism is grounded in the concept of race and ethnicism is grounded in perceptions
of cultural differences with an accompaniment of ethnocentrism. The basic power of racism
is in its taken-for-granted linguistic status. People feel lost if you tell them that the word is
what Jacques Barzun calls superstition or what Ashley Montagu calls one of humankind's
most dangerous, yet meaningless concepts.
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It is not possible to find one exact starting point for either racialism in thought or
racism as a social problem. However we know that the concept was used by scientists to
establish believes in biological determinism as well as beliefs in natural hierarchies among
human groups in which some are simply inferior to others. Some observers including myself,
belief that racism and the race concept go together. Some say that racism preceded the race
concept and that ideas about race were necessary to expand racist thinking. This is less
provable than the co functioning argument about race and racism going together.
Those who promoted the construct of "race" also promoted the ideas of polygenesis,
inequalities among groups and social-political ideologies which privilege one group as the
master over others. Perhaps today we have made the last part of this silent, but have we
eliminated it? Politically, slavery and exploitation of other peoples could be justified by
theories of race. I argue that this political purpose far exceeds any other purpose for the
word in terms of specific human actions. I believe that we need to understand some basic
human tendencies to see why ethnicism can easily follow racism even if the "race" construct
is severely limited or even eliminated. I get my notions about "race" being a floating
signifier from the great cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall. Hall argues that "race" is never
solely defined by biological factors, but rather is made by culture and discourse. Still, to see
how this shifting and fluid quality of the "race" signifier is possible, we must understand its
roots in biology and pseudobiology.
Historical Background of the Biosignification Leading to the Concept
Anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1940) noted long ago that in the nineteenth century,
Vacher del Lapouge was arguing that people would kill each other because of 1-2 degrees of
differenced in their cephalic index. The cephalic index is a ratio of width of the head divided
by length. Benedict observes that narrow head and broad head can be found in all
populations. Moreover, people have been killed for reasons of property, geography,
ambitions, religion, etc. and not for any cephalic dimensions.
While racism is actually a creation of the 19th century, segregation and prejudice has
ancient origins. Before concept of "race," people discriminated on other bases. Socrates, for
example, told the Greeks that a stable society requires status distinctions among citizens
(Gould, 1996). Biological determinism is a central part of the early racial theories. It holds
that differences between human groups arise from innate differences (Gould, 1996). A
corollary of this premise is the assumption that intelligence can be measured as a single
quantity (Gould, 1996). This corollary is the foundation of the Bell Curve assertions
(Herstein & Murray, 1994 ).
Louiz Agassiz (1850) assigned blacks to a separate species and said that naturalists
have a right to consider human beings without reference to religion or politics (Gould,
1996). Biological determinism made political inequalities appear normal and natural.
Consequently, attempts to lessen inequalities would be viewed as abnormal and working
against natural laws.
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Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was a respected French diplomat and author. In
France he had been appointed by Foreign Minister Alexis de Tocqueville as "chef de
cabinet." Yet Gobineau provided many key assertions supporting the beliefs in Aryan race
superiority drawn upon by the Nazis in Germany. According to Gobineau, writing in the
mid-1800s, there are three human races: white, yellow and Negroid. He says that this is the
order of superiority to inferiority also. He treated "race" as a kind of species and argued that
white people have superior intelligence, creativity and courage.
Russian zoologist, Theodosius Dobzhzansky (1963) shows that no two human
beings are biologically identical. In other words, genes and chromosomes vary for both
individuals and subpopulations, but people should not confuse this diversity with inequality.
In this way, as we will see argued in the section on politics, equality is more a political term
than a biological one. Each human has cells which contain nuclei and those nuclei house
chromosomes. Within the chromosomes are genes that are made up of deoxyribonucleic
acids (DNA). Each human inherits thousands of genes from their ancestors. There are also
thousands of pairs of genes from the two parents of the individuals. Because of this
enormous diversity of inherited genes, even a brother and sister may have differing genes
while they have the very same two parents. This is obviously tied to Mendel's Laws.
Certainly, Dobzhansky (1963) notes, there are human groups which vary in skin
color, etc. However, he argues that individuals within these subpopulations also differ in
traits among themselves. He observes that when such a group is named, a stereotype usually
follows. People then tend to assume that all members of the group are the same. Following
this, people who belong to a particular human grouping ("race") are then likely to be treated
in accordance to the stereotype rather than in terms of their characteristics as individuals.
This latter point by Dobzhansky is the central part of prejudice, whether it is racial or ethnic.
The Biological Realities of the Sub-populations
As geographic isolation increases, so does the validity of grouping people by what we
might call sub-population or what some call "race." The less that people are living in pockets
isolated from other pockets of humans, the lower the validity of such categories. In 1910, a
former Harvard professor of biology ran the Eugenics Records Office in New York. His
name was Charles Davenport. The office was supported by the wife of a railroad tycoon -Mrs. E. H. Harriman. People who advocated eugenics in the United States would draw upon
the publications done by this office for support (Shapiro, 1991).
The founder of eugenics was Sir Francis Galton. Advocates also drew upon Mendel's
work and listed things which they believed were hereditary: hemophilia, feeblemindedness,
nomadism, eroticism, pauperism, and pellagra (actually due to vitamin deficiency). A fellow
racist along with Galton and Davenport was Karl Pearson who you know from the famous
correlation coefficient or one of them -- Pearson's r. Davenport claimed that Italians tend
toward crimes of personal violence and Jews have tendencies of prostitution and sexual
immorality (Shapiro, 1991). A fellow racist and eugenics believer of this group, Madison
Grant, wrote in 1916 that: "Whether we like it or not, the result of a mix of two races in the
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long run gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type... The
cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro, and a cross between any of the three
European races and a Jew is a Jew." Science magazine called this man's work "a work of
solid merit." (Shapiro, 1991, p. 44).
As Robert Shapiro says, there were serious scientists at the time who did not have
political agendas, but many if not most of the eugenicists had goals of bigotry. So what are
the realities about subpopulations? Here are three key points:
1. Many strong difference predate geographic separation and thus "race." One example is
blood types A, B and O. These exist in every human subpopulation.
2. Human beings have migrated or navigated from one place to another and intermingled in
the process since at least 40,000 B.C. This means that one part of human cultures and the
world population has been continual gene flow.
3. Some humans look the same with external features but are classified as members of
differing "races."
The United States Office of Management and Budget in 1997 decided that there are
seven useful categories for humans -- American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, African
American or Black, Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino, and Not
Hispanic or Latino. (DNA Differences Challenge the Meaning of Race, " 1998). While these
categories are meaningful to demographers, to many geneticists they are meaningless since
they believe that genetic diversity is a continuum with no clean boundaries among groups or
subpopulations (DNA Differences Challenge the Meaning of Race, " 1998).
While some debaters continue to insist on the validity of racial categories, geneticists
note that humans have a great degree of genetic intermingling and also the fact that many
think we all have origins in Africa, like it or not (DNA Differences Challenge the Meaning of
Race, " 1998). What is especially puzzling with the OMB categories is the inclusion of a
linguistic category --Hispanic -- among the list of "racial" groupings. As geneticists observe,
people in the Hispanic category come from very diverse genetic populations with great
differences in population characteristics (DNA Differences Challenge the Meaning of Race,
" 1998).
Yes, there are differences among human subpopulations. The question is what are
they are how important are they. S. L. Washburn, an anthropologist, held onto the concept
of "race," while noting the many problems with its usage in anthropology. For example, he
argued that the older three-race typologies lumped people together into single categories like
all black-skinned people whether they live in Africa or in Australia. Even with the Pygmies,
he found no single "race." Washburn states, "As I was reviewing classifications in preparing
for this lecture, I found that almost none of them mentioned any purpose for which people
were being classified. Race isn't very important biologically." The question becomes an
interesting one at this point. If "race" is not a useful category for science, what is it useful
for? Of course, I argue that its main utility is for politics rather than for either biology or
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anthropology. I heartily agree with Washburn when he says that discussions about "race"
generate lots of confusion and "endless emotion" but I think are productive ways to ferret
out the science from the politics.
What are known as "races" are groupings of people attributed to outer (phylogenetic)
appearance differences related to assumed processes of geographically oriented evolution
(Washburn, 1963). Because of the polluted nature of the term "race" I prefer to use the word
suggested by some experts, that is, "sub-populations." There are no clear-cut boundaries
between human groups that can be considered mutually exclusive and exhaustive, but we do
know that there are logical groupings possible even as once done simply by tribe or citystate.
Thus, there were once Spartans and Athenians, Mongols, Hittites, Philistines, etc.
etc. The branching of all humans into a finite number of sub-populations if largely fictive.
The isolation of these populations is not only fictive but absurd after the invention of the
boat or even travel by foot and animal. Thus, we see that the African Bushmen do not fit
neatly into one grouping that incorporates all "black" people, but rather that the Bushmen
are considered by anthropologists who use the "race" construct as a mix of "Negro" and
"Mongoloid" races (Washburn, 1963).
We always need to return the fundamental fact that human beings regardless of
external features are all part of the same species and all share more characteristics than
diverge in characteristics, particularly the most important ones. While the notion of "race"
and even sub-population (1) to some extent depends on assumptions of geographic
separation or isolation, we must face the fact noted by Washburn (1963), that "There is no
such thing as human populations which are completely separated from other human
populations." Any human group is able to intermix with any other group. And they have
been doing so since time began for the species. The German Nazi concept of racial purity is
not only instance but completely idiotic. Even Hitler was most likely the product or various
sub-population mixtures in the past of his parents and ancestors. (2) There is no pure
German "race" and the Germans can be traced to various European tribal intercourse.
Is There Such a Thing as "White People?"
The heart of the concept of "race" is common biological descent that is isolatable
from others. With this is mind, we can see that the grouping known as '"white" or even
"Caucasian" is inflated beyond reason when it comes to phenotypical feature
characterization. This sub-construct is the most imprecise and perhaps the most insidious
aspect of the concept of "race" since it creates an overly large majority of people who are
superior on the hierarchy that is used for political purposes. As you ask yourself what makes
up so-called “white people,” “white culture,” or a “white race,” you might the same about
the color ascriptions of “black,” “red,”, “yellow,” and “brown.”
It is fascinating that people who are at one time non-White can be "Whitened"
through time. This happened to Italians, Irish, Jewish, and Slavic Americans. One can only
understand the lack of biological validity to the "race" construct when one notes how this
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occurred and for what reasons.
The Human Species is the Human Race
One reason for the "race" construct outlasting any useful purpose is that racists
sought to preserve the idea of superiority for their in-group. This implied an isolation of
"races" that is largely fictive. While it is true that there are visibly differing sub-populations, it
is also true that miscegenation is nothing new and has been occurring since at least the
invention of the boat. While some observers (and racists) have sought to preserve isolatable
Saxons, Jutes, Goths, Romans, Vikings, Berbers, Hittites, Mongols, etc., it is not possible in
the light of history which reveals that tribes like these moved around, conquered, raped,
intermarried, fused, etc., etc., in a fashion that led to a mongrelized culture we know as
Europe with national boundaries we know as nations (Barzun, 2000). It is no accident that
geneticists today tell us that Europeans are indiscernible genetically regardless of what nation
they claim. According to journalist Nancy Shute (2001), p. 36) who interviewed various
experts in genetics:
"Most people of European origin are so genetically mixed that it's impossible to tell
German from Frenchman, Bosnian from Serb."
This obviously does not mean that people will not continue looking for those biological
boundaries but most likely they keep confusing is culture with biology. Bloodlines are
irrelevant for human cultures in comparison to cultural traditions.
The concept of “race” originated more with zoology than it did with the scientific
study of humans (Krimsky, 2011). Taxonomic categories were used for classifying animals as
had been done also with plant. Living things were categorized by kingdom, phylum, class,
order, family, and genus. In zoology, the term “race” referred to variations in a species. Subspecies groups or “races” referred to groups that interbred and whose members were
genetically distinct from other races. In the 18th century, the terms was imported in the
discourse of scientists were looking at human populations (Krimsky, 2011).
Krimsky (2011) shows how confused “race” science was by listing the numbers of
“races” described by various scientists who believed in the concept:
Virey
Jacquinot
Kant
Blumenbach
Buffon
Morton
Crawfurd
Burke
2
3
4
5
6
22
60
63
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From Tribes to Nations: What History and Anthropology Actually Tell Us
Once one recognizes that there are vast problems with coming up with distinct
“race” groups or anything of large groupings that mean anything significant, one if forced to
go back to history and locate the origins of peoples in ancient villages, civilizations and
tribes. The tribes moved around, intermingled and eventually settled into geopolitical entities
we know as nations. Their national identities are based on culture. While there is no Arya,
and no clearly identifiable people known as Aryans separable from tribes in India and
Persian, there were people using what is known as an Indo-European language and we can
see that language and culture provides more useful classification from a scientific and
historical view than does the “race” construct. A contemporary example is the racial term
“Asian.”
The word has little significance for anything other than much generalized notions of
outer looks or geographic hemisphere. Now move into cultures and nations like Korea,
Burma, Vietnam, China, Japan, etc. and you find important factors encouraging behaviors,
economies, ideologies, practices, and differences among the “Asian” peoples as well as nonAsian peoples.
The idea of an “Aryan race” is the product of Nazi imagination. If one looks at
geography and cultural records, it appears that the white supremacists were stretching so far
for some superior group to claim as their ancestors, they neglected to notice that those called
Aryans were actually dark-skinned people in India and possibly those known as the Indus.
Some say that the Aryans came from the Eurasian steppes and moved into India. Aryan
stories were known as Vedas and included cow worship (Trager, 1992).
Ancient Civilizations
Mesopotamia (where Iraq is today) may be the site of the oldest human civilizations.
Cities were being built there at about 4,000 B.C. These included the cultures of Babylon and
Sumer. The wheel was invented by the Sumerians about 6500 BC and in 3500 BC they
developed animal- drawn vehicles and oar-powered ships (Trager, 1992). They also
developed the first alphabet. An Akkadian empire existed in Mesopotamia in 2350 BC
(Trager, 1992).
It is said that there was a civilization at Jericho about 6000 BC (Roberts, 1999). In
Ur, Mesopotamia, Abraham (of Bible history) replaced human sacrifice with animal sacrifice
in 1700 BC (Trager, 1992). The Hebrews fought against the Philistines in 1141 BC. They
also did battle with Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites (Trager, 1991). Babylonia
replaced Sumer as a dominating power (Trager, 1992). Babylonians invented decimal
notation and windmills (Trager, 1992). In the 12th century BC, the Assyrians destroyed
Babylon (Trager, 1992).
Egyptian culture extends back to at least 3100 B.C. The first dynasty is traced back to
3400 BC under the leadership of the pharaoh Menes (Trager, 1992). Egypt was invaded by
Hyksos warriors coming in from Syria and Palestine in 1680 BC (Trager, 1992). The
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Egyptians were conquered by Ethiopians in 710 BC (Trager, 1992). Chinese civilization
emerged somewhere around 2000 B.C., but some historians argue that it is much older.
Also at about 2000 B.C. a Minoan civilization was in place on the island of Crete.
The Minoans were conquered by Mycenaens coming in from Greece. The Greeks founded
Byzantium in 685 BC (Trager, 1992). Greeks invented metal coins, and perhaps most
importantly, democracy. Andean and Inca culture began in Peru. The Olmecs created the
first civilization in Mesoa about 1000 B.C.
Contacts Among Civilizations
The history of humanity includes the continuous movement of populations and
intermingling of gene pools. Seafaring is traceable to at least 42,000 BC when some say that
Asian explorers landed on Australia (Trager, 1992). In 2750 BC, Tyre became a great
Phoenician seapower. The Phoenicians also made their way to the Iberian Peninsula (Trager,
1992). Phoenicians founded the city of Carthage in North Africa. The Carthagians became a
major military power (Trager, 1992). Italian cities were formed by Etruscans coming in from
Lydia (Trager, 1992). Before there were nations, there were tribes. We might say that
tribalism preceded racism as one tribe saw itself as better than other tribes.
Human diversity is very really and easy to visually detect. We differing nose shapes,
skin colors, hair texture, etc. We can hear differing language and ways of speaking. We see a
feature that we associate with one group or supposed “race,” and we are ready to generalize
that feature to all members of that group. For example, many people from Asian nations
have an epicanthic fold or extra layer of skin on their eyelids. We might forget that there are
non-Asians that also have the epicanthic fold and that some Asians do not have it (Olson,
2003).
Despite the fact that humans are so visibly and audibly diverse, they are also
remarkably alike. Cultural variations are more striking that physical differences. Personalities
add psychological variation to the commonalities that people share by looks or cultural
norms. A pointless but persistent focus on human differences encourages tensions among
human populations. I believe that W.E. B. Du Bois was correct when he stated that the
problem of the twentieth century was the color line. I think today we can say the problem is
now sustained in the 21st century.
People throughout time has moved around, migrated, intermingled with others in
different nations, married across families and ethnic groups, and produced gene pools that
are inconsistent with the concept of static gene pools. Humans are generally mixing all of the
time. As is commonly noted, the urge to categorize and build boundaries is met by the urge
to merge. What is the political angle to all of this categorization? It also appears to be
axiomatic that human groups compete with each other and seek power for their own group.
This seeking of power for one’s group is a core component of political motivation.
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The Miscegenated Nations of Europe
Whether we discuss France, England, Spain or any other European nation, there is
single “race” category that can be equated with the population. Each one has a history of
tribal and inter-tribal mixing and gene flow. Here if the constant problem with the “race”
term or construct. No matter how much history and science refutes its reification of human
differences, it marches on with an unexplained and unearned aura of legitimacy.
The Dorians invaded and took over territory. The Greeks had many years of war
with the Persians (Trager, 1992). The Greeks did the same followed by the Romans. The
Huns, coming in from Mongolian in the 4th c. invaded Europe. Earlier the Goths and
Vandals had sacked Rome. Franks overtook Gaul which later becomes France. Angles and
Saxons invaded Britain which had been Roman. Slavs moving in from Asia took over lands
held by Germanic tribes. Romans were attacked by Aequians in 458 BC (Trager, 1992).
The Celts took over the British Isles in 450 BC (Trager, 1992). In the year 1000
AD, there were 10 tribes of Magyars from Central Asia who were invading Europe. Later,
these marauders became Christians and seven of their tribes were brought into the kingdom
of Hungary. Throughout Europe, tribes were attacking other tribes. The Vikings, for
example, attacked the Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and French and this included plundering and
5
enslavement.
What later became Spain was a site of strong Islamic control in the year 1000. In the
city of Cordova, the Islamic people ruled but Jews and Christians were welcome to
6
participate in the society and economy if they paid a special tax. There were Jewish
academies in Cordova, Granada, Toledo, and Barcelona. With the reign of Alfonso of Leon
and Ferdinand III of Castile, the cooperation of three religions ended and these monarchs
declared a doctrine of limpieza de sangre or “purity of the blood.”
The New Scientific Racialism
There are scholars and scientists today who want to rescue the “race” concept from
extinction by attacking those who not the validity issues of the term and by calling them
“race deniers.” Whether racists or simply elitists, they display an impervious commitment to
showing that humans are not equal.
The problems of “race” talk are more about discourse and communication than they
are about scientific value since the latter has been decimated over the past few decades. It is
verbal habit to refer to the “race” of someone when we wish to note certain skin color traits
that they have with someone else. If we are racist, we might also want to talk about their
inferior or undesirable traits, again shared with their racial group.
Scientists who cling to the term “race” do so in hope of producing a non-racist
version of the construct, whereby the terms simply denotes clusters of genetic or biological
traits and leave behind evaluations judgments about levels of inferiority or desirability. This
is either wishful thinking or simply a total ignorance of how human language and
communication operate. Language and communication are packed with cognitive
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associations and one thought stimulating another. Because of the fact that “race” began with
prejudice and racism, the term is hardly capable of being sanitized.
The Advent of “Racial Realism”
One way to make racialization more acceptable is say that one is not being racist, but
only being realistic about racial differences in human groups. We will see how this view is
being taken up by many scholars today. We must always ask why. I will argue that so-called
racial realism is simply scientific racism in new clothing and with a clenched-fist commitment
to preserving the old ideas of racial hierarchy.
From Racializing to Discovering Genetic Groups
Geneticists have raised major scientific objections to theories and the “race”
concept. In the research done on genetic groups or what are called haplogroups, there is
room for ethics discussions about how much the categories based on DNA markers and
geography might lead to a kind of geneticization, if you will, vs. racialization. In other words,
once you have say 25 halpogroups you are examining and you can locate people in their
specific haplogroup, what keeps you from then assigning a new hierarchy once you link
DNA groups, cultures, and geographic locations.
I believe the problems of racialization can be avoided with the new science of genetic
population determination. However, this requires a thorough and strong rejection of the
racial science the produced racial hierarchies and ideologies of supremacy and inferiority.
It involves what researchers refer to as bioethics. Ethicists examining the political
implication of new forms of group assignment must point out the dangers of using science
once again to serve the interests of politics. Ethics concerns have been raised by geneticists
working on the sequencing of the human genome and on discovering more about how
genetics are in fact, related to human health and behavior. Ethics boards working with the
Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) have been addressing ethics issues related
collecting population DNA samples since at least 1992 (Greely, 1999). Two keys issues are
scientific racism and threats to indigenous population cultures. What is called the Alghero
Report made the following observation:
“Human history- and the human present – is full of racism, xenophobia,
hypernationalism, and other tragedies stemming from beliefs about human
populations… (Greely, 1999, p.299).”
What is called the Model Ethical protocol stated the following:
“The study of human genetics did not create hatred between differing
populations;whether based on ‘race,’ ethnicity, religion, or other grounds. It is
unlikely to end it. But it can defeat efforts by racists to enlist ‘science’ in their causes
(Greely, 1999, p. 299).”
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It is important to the note the ethical commitment by some, hopefully most, geneticists to
not replicate nor support the pseudo-science practiced by some scholars in biology,
anthropology, socio-biology, and evolutionary psychology, when they talk about “races” and
what membership in those racial groups allegedly causes.
The Challenge of Racialized Medicine
Physicians love to sound definitive about biology, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, and
treatment options, but if you listen closely, you will hear them often back into the “We don’t
know yet” routine. This is because medical science, like all science, changes over time and
gets more accurate over time. If you look at past medical practices, they are part superstition,
part good science and part wishful thinking. Tests like the prostate PSA blood analysis
change in terms on how useful they are considered. Some medications considered safe at
one time are deemed dangerous at another. Some of the most primitive and invalid thinking
and writing about human “races,” was done by physicians like Bernier, Blumenbach, Broca,
and others.
This is not an attack on medicine but rather a comment about the uncertainty and
possible false conclusions that accompany medical thinking. Today, we know for example,
that a good physician should ask you more about your family history of illness than your
“race” because getting you name a racial group can be full of erroneous identity as well as
faulty inferences about diagnostics and prognoses. My uncle, a physician, once took me to a
medical museum and showed me how treatments were done in the past. They included such
science-based procedures as drilling holes in patients’ head to relieve headache pain.
Geneticists and biologists can help physicians come up to speed with DNA analysis,
family analysis, and less reliance on old and painfully inadequate racial assumptions.
END NOTES:
(1) It seems ironic that the Caucasian grouping, arbitrarily assigned its term because of the
mountains by the same name, practiced cannibalism in the 5th century BC (Trager, 1992).
(2) While it may appear that "sub-population" is the same as "race" with a new wrapper or
label, I think there are important differences beyond cutting the bonds from racism
disguised as science and these include a term that is open and may be defined loosely in
terms of geography as well as culture, perhaps with minor references to outer anatomical
features. In turn, this concept of sub-population may be more amenable to inductive
grouping that results from genetic research indicating patterns of genes rather than patterns
of phenotypic traits.
(3) Some observers have even argued that it is possible that Hitler may have had some
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Hebrew biological influence in the past of his genetic inheritance. This may be difficult to
ascertain without DNA testing, however.
(4) Chinese inventions include herbal medicine, acupuncture, medical texts, grain mills,
refrigeration, (Trager, 1992). In 1078, China had the amount of iron production that was
twice of what England would have 700 years later (U.S. News and World Report, August 23,
1999).
5
6
U.S. News and World Report, August 23, 1999.
U.S. News and World Report, August 23, 1999.
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"Whether we like it or not, the result of a mix of two races in the long run gives us a race
reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type... The cross between a white man
and a Negro is a Negro, ...and a cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is
a Jew."
---Madison Grant, 1916
"We talk all the time glibly of races and nobody can give us a definite answer to the question
what constitutes a race."
---- Franz Boas, anthropologist
"I know perfectly well, just as well as all those tremendously clever intellectuals that in the
scientific sense there is no such thing as race. But you, as a farmer and cattle-breeder, cannot
get your breeding successfully achieved without the conception of race. And I as a politician
need a conception which enables the order which has hitherto existed on historic bases to be
abolished and an entirely new and anti-historic order enforced and given an intellectual
basis... With the conception of race, National Socialism will carry its revolution abroad and
recast the world."
--- Adolph Hitler
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Chapter 4:
THE POLITICAL SIDE OF THE "RACE" SIGNIFIER
Thus far, we have seen that racism is very rooted in the concept of "race" and that an
absence of this concept might pull the foundation out from much of the racist ideologies
and discourse still plaguing the world and still lingering in the culture of the United States.
Once the biological utility is recognized for the minimal role it plays in any scientific
explanation of anything important, attention can easily shift the real potency of the construct
- power, hierarchy, and control.
None of this discussion regarding racism is going to show its importance if we do
not seriously take stock of what various contexts of effects are for racial thinking and hence,
racial communication. What are some of the effects of racism, ethnicism, or prejudices based
on physical appearances?
• Exploitation of indigenous peoples -- note what occurs in some islands today -- article
citation.
• Slavery and what follows slavery -- new forms of servitude?.
• Job discrimination -- is it really gone today? Is it unimportant?
• Early laws in US allowing sterilization of feebleminded people and prohibiting
miscegenation.
Politics versus Religion and Then Racism
To the ancient Greeks and Romans, there was a necessity of politics. This historical
necessity of politics in the political systems created by the Greeks and Romans was rejected
by the theocratic systems of the Hebrews and Muslims.
Political activity is closely related to the ideals of community vs. privatization, polity,
democracy, and persuasion as the means for reaching consensus about power. It is an
alternative to laws handed down, rule by family clans, and a use of communication and
dialective as an alternative to force for obtaining and maintaining power.
Politics opens debates and contestation and resists automatic allegiance to
hierarchies, tribes, customs, etc. The ancient Greeks explained their transition from rule by
families and tribes by their adoption of logos and reason. Politics is related to debating and
philosophy and these take place in public places. Choices replace matters of Nature as the
source of solutions to social problem in the ancient Greek view.
Moses Maimonides was a scholar, physician, and philosopher who taught that the
Mosaic Code provides for rationality and practical living. However, he also taught that there
is no room for those who are unclean and define faith (Hanaford, 1996). Prior to 1492 when
the Jews were expelled from Spain, Jews had lived honorable lives in Spain for about 1500
years and the Moors had also for about 800 years. The Moors had invaded Spain in 711 AD.
Maimonides taught that Jewish law and the logic of Aristotle are the only means of
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rational thought. He taught the absolute necessity of following 613 precepts of Jewish law
and that the precepts are absolutes with no flexibility. Like the Catholic philosopher
Augustine and the Muslim leader Muhammad, he intellectually integrated Church and State
into the kind of governance we know as theocracy. He rejected the Greek ideas about
politics which was governance based upon consensus, debate, and philosophy. He taught
against mercy for sinners.
However, Maimonides also wrote that the Turks and others near them were
irrational people and something less than human and above monkeys. He then said the
Muslims were even worse and that it may be necessary to kill them, to extirpate their false
doctrines in order to prevent others from being misled. Ivan Hanaford, the historian, argues
that this is the first major case of Western philosophy in which sets of people are described
as being beyond the hope of rationality and also of not being fully human.
While this man contributed to the love of logic, math, science, and even cooperation
among the three religions for a while, he hatched the doctrine of extirpation which would
plague human societies for centuries after him. This was a much respected theologian then
and now. I know that at least one person has been offended by saying these things about
him, but this fact should be borne in mind: good people can make bad mistakes and even
with good intentions can contribute to racist thinking. I also admire Augustine for many
reasons, but must confront some of the damage he did with some of his teachings.
A doctrine taught by Maimonides was turned against his own people in Spain. In the
early 1200s, Pope Innocent threatened excommunication to any Christian who carried on
business with Jews. In 1209, he had 20,000 Jews in southern France killed. The Fourth
Lateran Council of 1215 declared that Jews would have to wear badges to identify
themselves as Jews. One historian says this was the day that Jews became things.
In Spain, Jews were accused of having started the Black Death plague with black
magic that included poisons made of spiders, frogs, lizards, and hearts of Christians they had
killed. In France, Catholics began burning Jews at the stake. The extirpation doctrine aided
all of this because before it, the Jews were protected by the political leaders of Spain and the
other nations. They were part of what the Greeks had referred to as nomos -- a system of
law. Now they were expelled from the political communities by the religious communities.
Torquemada and his Spanish Inquisition agreed with Augustine that the Church
must make decisions about religion and the State must execute those decisions. The notion
of purity of blood was introduced in addition to purity of faith. Those who had kept
themselves from Moorish blood were good. Marranos were accused of being Jews in Spain
who drank the blood of Christian children after the murdered them. The doctrine of
extirpation makes violence against people easy to plan because they are inferior and a strong
threat to true faith.
In 1910, German biologist Eugene Fischer says that superior race should only help
inferiors to a point utility for the superior race. He become head of University of Berlin in
1939 and says that "alien racial elements" should be suppressed and perhaps eliminated to
protect one's superior people (Shapiro, 1991, p. 45).
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Political Origins of "Race"
Jacques Barzun (2000, p. 108) observes that the people in Britain used the concept of
"race" to change their political identities from descendents of the Romans to allies of the
Saxons and Germans: For a thousand years they had been the sons and daughters of the
ancient Romans. Now the idea of different "races" replaced that of a single, common
lineage. The bearing of this shift is clear; it parallels the end of empire and the rise of
nations."
According to Barzun, "race" functioned as a political term that both united and
separated for purposes of nationalism. In the 1500s, the Germans were told by Martin
Luther and others that they should not connect themselves to the Romans as they had done
historically. This line of thinking generated a racialization of Germanic people as good and
Romans as bad (Barzun, 2000). While tribal names were used rather than racial ones, the
characterizations shared in-group and out-group separation along with the theme that
character in inborn and heritable (Barzun, 2000).
From racialization and political differentiation sprung the concept of “races.”
Languages were one of describing various peoples in the 18th century. Philologists discussed
Celts, Semites, Hindus, and the source of a common ancestral language known as IndoEuropean. A form of this early language was a called “Aryan” and from that concept
emerged a concept of an “Aryan” people (Barzun, 2000).
One does not have to recollect history, even very recent history as in Rwanda or
Yugoslavia to witness the blatant use of "race" to perform these functions. Of course, aiding
nationalism is the accompanying assumption that racial/national characteristics are both
inborn and unchanging.
Racism and Power in the United States
Historian Martin Marty (1970) notes how religious colonists in what became United
States, had little compunction about assuming that native Americans (whom Columbus and
they incorrectly called "Indians") had no rights. The political policies of exploitation were
supported by the clergy of the day. This is why most of the natives supported the British
during the War of Independence.
There were even religious voices in the late 1800s who advocated genocide in regard
to Native Americans (Marty, 1970). A missionary in Massachusetts, Timothy Flint, said that
"In the changeable order of things, two such races cannot exist together..." (Marty, 1970, p.
12). This was typical of rhetoric at that time which linked racism to assumed laws of nature
and laws of God.
Unfortunately, the early days of empire and nation-building in the United States were
not only related to politics and rationalism, but also to racism. George Washington perceived
America as a "rising empire" that had the right to expand wherever it chose to (Thompson,
Stanley & Perry, 1981). When this empire could no longer expand justifiably on its own
continent, it would seek out colonies and annexation on other continents.
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The ideology of Manifest Destiny obviated any discussions about the morality of
annexing Texas, California, Oregon, etc. America shared this type of ideology with European
nations. Between 1870 and 1900, European nations had conquered over 1/5 of the earth's
land surface and 1/10 of the world population (Thompson, et al., 1981). And what would
allow the total disregard for the indigenous people of the nations taken over? Quite simply, it
was the concomitant racism of the dominant groups of Europe and America and their
assumptions of non-white group natural inferiority.
Political Utility over Biological Utility
The "race" construct has allowed centuries of racism to progress in various forms
ranging from outright bigotry and hatred to more subtle forms of exclusion and
discrimination witnessed today. Washburn (1963) notes that "Racism is based on a profound
misunderstanding of culture, of learning, and of the biology of the human species." He also
argues that we know more about how language and culture affect human behavior and
human life than the ways they are affected by membership in any given "race." The question
is then why the construct continues to have any independent importance in any analysis not
designed to simply taxonomize human outer features. The answer to this question is found
in tracing the political origins and uses of the construct. xiii
Social Darwinism and Racialization
On the on the political links to racial research can be found in the emergence,
acceptance, and present-day usages of Social Darwinism, a political ideology promulgated by
philosopher Herbert Spence ever before the theory of evolution was published by Charles
Darwin. It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the term “survival of the fittest. With
Spencer’s doctrine, inferior people would need no help because their inferiority should be
seen as a reason to let them succeed less that better people. Before Darwin’s biological
evolution theory, Spencer had already spun a theory of social evolution (Graves, 2001).
Spencer, a sociologist, wrote his theory in his book Principles of Psychology in 1855.
Darwin’s book The Origin of Species came out in 1859. Barzun (2000) argues that Spencer
coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” in 1849.
Spencer himself was not a racialist, but his doctrine fit nicely with racism. This was
true in the 19th century, and sadly it appears true today. The political mission of racial
taxonomy from the 18th century on and the political mission of Social Darwinism are one in
the same, that is, stop trying to help inferior people and focus on helping those are better
and superior. In addition, the mission includes the goal of maintaining a hierarchy of human
value in which those at the lowest end can at tome time be slaves, and in the present, can
work for sub-standard and nearly inhumane wages.
Once the biological layers of racial taxonomy are given the minimal importance they
deserve, one can deal the social, sociological, and cultural aspects of the “race” construct.
This does not mean the term can be salvaged in very useful ways, but rather we can see more
accurately what the word is doing to how communicate about each other. Racialism and
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Social Darwinism share the political commitment to heritable inequalities and the futility of
social reforms to deal with those inequalities.
The philosophy of Social Darwinism could uphold the natural hierarchy arguments
that went back to the ancient Greeks and help to sustain the racialism developing from bad
science in the 18th and 19th centuries. Activists who sought to abolish slavery called upon
Christianity and the Bible for moral support. There so was no racialization in Christian
teachings and the idea of universal equality matched religious doctrines (Cannadine, 2013).
The concept of the monogenesis (Adam and Eve) or single origin for all human populations
was consistent with Christianity also. Racialists promoted the concept of poly genesis
(“races” appear in differing regions on their own). Social Darwinism made direct assaults on
assumptions of human equalities.
The Raw Political Force of “Race” in Nazi Germany
The ultimate culmination of racial thinking came in Germany after World War I and
later in the rise of Hitler and his Nazi regime. The Nazis were proud to fuse biology with
politics and shouted out what had already been whispered before in America. I believe that
the political agenda of the new racism today is the same as that of the racial theorist in
Germany as the Third Reich began to emerge. The racial theories did not begin at this time,
but they were marshalled for political force.
It was common to accuse the Germans of inbred cultural barbarism after World War
II. Some scholars thought something about the German “character” caused the people to
German to fall for Hitler’s lies and racial ideology. The Stanley Milgram studies done in the
United States on authority and giving people electrical shocks, of course, made it evident
that any people are susceptible to the persuasion of strong authority figures. The Germans
were also philosophically close the Enlightment, the age or reason and the age of science;
they were not really the “Huns” that England and American accused them of being in World
War I. Nor were the Ostrogoths, Visogoths, or Vandals that would ransack what was left of
the Roman Empire in ancient times. Instead, they had a commitment to rationalism and
even democratic politics (Malik, 1996). While Hitler was appointed (by Hindenberg), his
fellow Nazis were elected in increasing numbers over time to the German parliament.
Malik (1996) argues that it is difficult to see how barbarism can spring forth from
modernity, but that German science and philosophy were supporting German Nazi political
communication. Rationalism suggested the master of nature by humans and perhaps the
eventual improvement of human cultures over time through principles of science. In Malik’s
(1996) words, “A humanity which could enslave nature was quite capable of enslaving fellow
human beings.” (p.241). Certainly, we do not see a historical challenge to colonialism and
imperialism coming from science. Science, domination, and ideas of racial superiority predate Nazism by centuries. The Nazis did not see themselves as destroying civilization, but as
saving it. The Nazi concept of the “Final Solution” or the genocide of Jews was an extension
of the racial science in the United States which advocated a racial “hygiene” just short of
genocide.
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The Fusion of Scientific Racism and Politics
The German Nazi regime and ideology was an amalgam of racial science and
political ideology. The two were fused into a program of racial cleansing concepts that
originated before the rise of Hitler in biological research conducted in the United States.
Anti-racism emerged as scientists began to recognize the lack of objectivity and the
political agendas of the early “race” theories. Racial science was never untainted. Theories or
speculation of about racial groups was brought into the service of Social Darwinism,
eugenics, genocide, and legal discrimination. The Civil Rights movement in the United States
in the 1960s fought against legal discrimination and sought to create new social norms of
racial integration and cooperation. The movement was successful in ending school
segregation practices open discrimination in housing and public places. However, many
scholars today believe that racism never ended despite the Voting Rights Act and the Civil
Rights Act. In fact, Critical Race Theory scholars today argued that racism is embedded in
American cultural and it various social and political practices.
Critical Race Theory
Critical Race Theory (CRT) brings up the possibilities of a “color blind racism.”
CRT assumes that with or without racial language, racism is structurally present in American
society. Some of what perpetuate such structural prejudice and discrimination is “white
privilege” whereby people who are not members of so-called minority groups have abilities
to gain resources and power commonly withheld from others.
Liberalism is cited as promoting a color-blind view of society which CRT says does
not match the realities of continued and structural racism. “Race” consciousness is believed
to be necessary to work against racism. The theory is heavily concerned with institutionalized
prejudice.
Here are some major CRT claims:
o When “whites” say that they do not see “race” or talk about it, they believed that
they are not racist while they are not confronting the problems of deeply structural
racism.
o Regardless of racial term origins, racial considerations affect a great deal of life in
America.
o There is a contradiction between claims about American having become color-blind
and the nation having a great deal of color-coded inequality.
o Color blind racism can result from sincere fictions in which liberals and others think
that biological characterizations of racial status are over and that problems faced by
minority groups are today problems of market dynamics and cultural limitations.
o New racism practices of discrimination are related to subtle procedure which appear
to be nonracial.
o New racism and color-blind racism can describe prejudice while denouncing
racialization.
o While speaking a discourse of non-racism, whites can speak their negative views of
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non-whites in codes other than racial terminology.
o In a “racism without racists” claims of prejudice can be reversed to those who
actually the victims. Codes like “reverse discrimination” are part of this.
“Race” while socially constructed, according to CRT, is often linked to crime, academic
achievement, tests scores, etc. as if social dynamics are less important than birth. The social
reality is not with consequences and has tangible effects on people. Throughout American
history, the social system has been racialized and this continues today. With this racialization
comes the guarantee that whites will have the most advantages, power, and opportunities.
CRT argues it is the job of scholars to show how social, political, and economic mechanisms
reproduce racial privilege even while denying racial concerns.
I share a commitment to exposing institutional racism and prejudice as enunciated by
CRT, but take issue with preserving the discourse of racialized groups in doing so. Rather
than reproduce the construct what is imbued with hierarchy and hatred, it might be
productive to expose racialization as a process linked to a political term that people for so
have believed a modicum of biological validity.
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Chapter 5:
Toward a Program of Anti-Racism from a Communication Theory
Perspective
Drawing on the work of historians and anthropologists who have documented the
racist origins of the concept "race," and the resulting movements known as "racialism," as
well as the communication science work of Teune van Dijk (1987) and Philomena Essed
(1991), it is now possible to articulate some starting points for a program of anti-racism.
A Summary of Racism in American Society
We know that there are at least five levels of racism in our society. These are, moving
from the macro to micro-levels, the following:
• national and transnational economic infrastructures
• mass media representations of various groups of people
• socially shared representations and ethnic attitudes in communication
• sociocognitive phenomena of prejudice
• cognitive structures of prejudice
Two key points about these five layers of racism are a) without simultaneous anti-racist
efforts within all five, racist practices will change forms and continue to survive; and b)
moving from the micro to the macro layers reveals a system of hierarchical ordering of
racism. Each success layer upward toward the macro draws from generalizations below and
adds control back down toward the micro.
Why There Has Been Little Success With Anti-Racism in America
It is not common to recognize that you can be ethnically tolerant but still prejudiced.
It is not popular to assert that even those who advocate tolerance may have thoughts and
feelings and actions of racism and prejudice. It is not comfortable to admit that AfricanAmericans in the United States perceive their nation as continuing a system of
discrimination, exclusion, and separation of whites from blacks. And those who have
worked against racism in the open and covert versions certainly do not want to hear that
even they may harbor prejudiced social attitudes. Certainly, most people in the United States
wish to believe that racism died off long ago and that discrimination is something of the past
of only isolated instantiations.
To face the realities of all this required an honesty and boldness about racism and
communication that is presently missing in American society, even in the most expected
places of anti-racism -- the universities.
Members of our society must recognize that legal nondiscrimination does not end all
social discrimination and may not significantly affect racism as a sociological, psychological,
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and sociocognitive phenomenon.
Most journalists and editors and most entertainment producers are not anti-racists.
Thus, we see little mass media effort to challenge racism in any pragmatic or in-depth
manner. With no media support for anti-racism, there is an absence of circulation for antiracist models and discourse.
A strong beginning to anti-racism in our nation will require a national consensus on
the need for systematic anti-racism. This includes a widespread willingness to recognize that
while we prohibit manifestations of racism in overt and blatant behaviors, we tolerate racism
in thoughts, communication, and everyday workplace and educational practices.
Proponents of programs to combat racism has generally not learned the cognitive
processes and structures which protect racist attitudes and ideology. In-group members are
experts at insulating these ethnic attitudes, regardless of what they are required to do
verbally, nonverbally, and with actions.
Worse yet, people who initiate anti-racism are attacked by racists as working against
them and making them the real victims. Even mass media join the assaults on anti-racists
(van Dijk, 1987).
Anti-racism is in its crawling stages because it lacks strong counterarguments, strong
models of refutation, and few strategies for people to intervene in racist talk as it occurs in
everyday life. While there are corners of anti-racist activity and teaching, there are no
widespread ideologies of anti-racism. Racist ideologies and shared attitudes are far more
developed than anti-racist ones (van Dijk, 1987).
Initiation of Anti-Racism
Anti-racism must begin with honest history. If a nation denies its past, it cannot face
its present or change its future. Next, it is necessary to have an empirical look at the
prevalence of racism to end any doubts that it is a present, real-time problem in America.
Beyond knowing that racism is a genuine problem, people need to learn that this problem
has severe negative consequences on individual and on the society as a whole. Next, the
dominating subpopulation must surrender its goals of having other subpopulations work to
adapt only to the former.
Positive Equality Rather than Negative Equality
It is possible to view anti-racism as enforced tolerance. This is the norm in the
United States. Social discrimination and economic inequalities are not considered political
matters. Thus, we have a situation of negative equality wherein equality is defined as the
absence of covert and overly obvious discrimination.
An alternative to negative equality is positive equality whereby society says that we
will take assertive and affirmative measures to make sure that people are treated as fully
participating and equal members of our communities, culture, and society. Thus, equality is
not simply seen as the absence of behaviors supporting inequalities, but rather as deliberate
actions taken to treat people proactively with values of equality in politics, economics, media
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representation, and social interaction. Types of anti-racism programs can be part of positive
equality.
A fully status quo view of racism either denies it or says that it has always been and
always will be -- therefore its inevitability and overcomplexity makes remedies impossible. A
more moderate view of racism says that there should be legal constraints on legal
discrimination. In other words, as it happens, it should be stopped. Thus, equality becomes
the absence of overly obvious inequality-bases actions. This is negative equality.
The goal of positive equality argues for sociopolitical policies that recognize that
equal opportunity coupled with inequalities in abilities or resources produces unequal results.
Therefore, efforts must be made politically to gain more equality in outcomes. One strategy
is to educate those who fear that the gain of one group is the loss of another. For example,
people need to recognize that that money or resources come from the rich and go to the
poor help the poor more than hurt the rich.
Promising Possibilities for Anti-Racism Programs
For anti-racism programs to have any chance of success, certain barriers must be
alleviated. The dominating Anglo subpopulation must learn to accept the following premises
in order for success:
• Racism, ethnicism, and prejudice are strong problems of contemporary American society
• Old racism has been joined by more prevalent new racism.
• Racism will never dissipate without intervention.
• Racism is a major cause of many of our nation's domestic and international problems.
• Equality is still not a major value that is put into practice in our society.
• Differences in cultures should not be interpreted as superiority or inferiority.
As members of the dominating group become cognizant of their historical and
perpetual racism, they are able to do something to diminish their domination and
exploitation. As anti-racists, they can liberate themselves as well as those who suffer from
their unawareness of domination and subordination affecting how subpopulations relate to
each other.
Scholars are beginning to find the subtle distinctions between anti-racism programs
and programs which make people feel good without changing attitudes and ideological
frames. For example, we know that differences among peoples should be respected, but not
overhighlighted or exaggerated into deviance. We know that we should form one larger
culture as a nation and political community, but not to the point of forfeiting unique ethnic
identities. We know that there are physical differences in people, but that we should not
engage in pseudo-speciation.
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Possible Programs for Anti-Racism: Conceptual Models
If we examine what processes of communication contribute to racism, we can see
oppositional processes are possible remedies for diminishing racism. One model as below,
shown for interpersonal communication, is necessary for each of the five levels of racist
practices described above. This line of thinking is new in social science in terms of
systematic and systemic reasoning. Further work needs to be done in model development
and follow-up training for the people involved at each level of racism reproduction.
RACISM COMMUNICATION
Focus on differences to point of over- highlighting
Exclusion behaviors
Denial of racism in the nation
ANTI-RACISM
COMMUNICATION
Simple recognition of differences
without attributions
Inclusion behaviors
Acknowledgement of racism as
problem needing solutions
The Discourses of Racialization
Those of us who study human communication cannot spend our days trying to sort
out bad biology from good biology. That is for the biologists to do. We social scientists,
however, can note that biologists disagree with each other on a concept that should be
agreed upon for valid and accurate measurement and assessment. For our purposes, that is
explaining human behavior, we need to learn more about why people use communication
and discourse to racialize each other. No one has noted this more clearly than the
communication scholars, Stuart Hall.
According to Hall, “race” is a “floating signified.” Its meaning indefinitely changes
across time and across experts. Stuart Hall is a cultural studies scholar who argues that the
word “race” is a floating signifier which changes its meaning for different people and
times. He is concerned about why people focus on this term so much. He argues that we
should study how people use the term in stories and discourse. The changes, he says, in the
meanings of the word, are less related to biology than they are to culture and power.
According to Hall, we cannot diminish racism or prejudice if we do not know how it
works. Humans have tendencies to break up human diversity into categories and this can
be ok until it becomes political. One problem with classifying people that we encounter or
study is that and order tends to be related to the categories. When the category systems are
challenged, some people perceive a threat. For groups like African-Americans,
understanding their oppression is accomplished more by studying their history than by
studying their biology. This is an interesting argument that Hall makes because it raises the
question again whether or using racial terms really help to challenges the racism of the
racialists.
Hall argues that if “race” has biological meanings that being replaced by cultural
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meanings, we must ask if culture will be assumed to inborn and fixed. Even those who talk
about “tolerance” can promote fixed racial categories. Early ideas about race began with
separating “savage” cultures from civilized cultures. Certainly, according to Hall, culture may
be more related to human diversity than biological categories. Discourses of human
differences may make fixed what scientifically cannot be made fixed. This is one of Hall’s
most important arguments, namely, that racialization is a form of discourse and be
interpreted with an analysis of discourse. One negative political effect of the race signifier is
that it can present an equivalence of nature and culture and this in turn might encourage
beliefs that groups or problems among groups cannot be changed and that inequalities are
inevitable. Hall never denies that people have variation in looks and that there are patterns in
certain physical feature occurrences. However, he says that tangible and easily recognizable
physical differences among people are real but these physical outer differences are markers
which direct communication that adds more than physical outer appearance to the groups what Hall calls the “trap of the surface.” What is crucial to understand is how we organize
our perceptions of fairly low-importance outer physical differences among people. We must
play close attention to Hall’s concept of humans reading “race” off of physical feature and
then falling into the “trap of the surface.” This trap surely diminishes open-mindedness.
Hall notes the incessant drive by racialist scientists to find the links between “race”
and levels of intelligence. Of course, we know the motivation appears constant through time
– the political quest to prove forever the superiority of whites over other categories. Hall
also notes that even liberals can join such a campaign. They do so by reproducing certain
racial assumptions. More importantly, Hall argues that signifiers like “race” take on meaning
in a “signified field.” This facts makes an assumed clinical study of racial groups quite sterile.
Communication and Otherization
Otherizing communication is classic case of what happens when we make neat
categories where can sort out member and non-members. Members are acceptable and nonmembers are less acceptable. Members are expected to adhere to membership rules and
norms. The opposite of otherizing and prejudiced communication is open-mindedness,
celebrating cultural differences, and following the very simple principle of effective human
communication - that people should try to understand those they are engaging in social
interaction.
Some tend to believe that stereotypes not only simplify their thinking abut also help
them to understand another culture. This kind of comparison of the new to a template of
the old and ideal, encourages prejudice and otherizing. Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman show
how otherizing and prejudice are related other concepts that work against effective human
communication.
We begin descending into prejudice as we perceive people that are different than us.
These people may seem foreign and odd, or at least interesting. Whether religion, ethnicity,
nation, or other kind of group, we evaluate more on in relation to our schemata (stored
cognitive or memory structures) than on the basis of emerging conversation and learning.
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Emerging knowledge comes from social interaction that leads to deeper understanding.
Otherizing occurs as we move away from emerging knowledge toward reduction of
possible characteristics and complexity in favor of what we prefer to precede. If you have
never met an Amish person, you are still likely to think of one as a member of a community
that you can describe from data you have stored in your memory. Where does that memory
of a group come from?
Another component of otherizing is culturalism. The others or the foreign selves can
be linked together by what we perceive as cultural commonalities. This does not suggest
anything wrong in cultural analysis but brings up a principle of cultural analysis that some
scholars believe is important: We can take cultural observations and conclusions too far if
the concept of culture becomes greater than the people sharing that culture. Some scholars
today might refer to their concept of cultural racism or the use of culture to create categories
and hierarchies of value among those categories. Culturalism involves pre-defining people
who share a culture in terms of what they are like and why they behave or communicate as
they do.
A reification of culture can result in making categories fixed and people related to
those categories determined by them. This leads to what is called essentialism. When can
cannot study another culture or members of it without taking off our own cultural lenses, we
can see that we will slip into some form of otherizing.
When two people with differing cultural backgrounds communicate, they may share
meanings that they themselves produce, but they also bring cultural representations to the
interaction from their respective cultures. Without practicing skilled intercultural
communication, these communicators may have trouble with the cultural negotiation and
understanding that part of effective communication.
So where do the stereotypes come from? As we have learned, the former reduce and
otherize. They contribute to essentialism, prejudice, and bigotry. Mythologies, which provide
stories and narratives for a culture, undergird a huge variety of stereotypes. Negative frames
for non-whites for example, are part of the mythology of a superior Western European
culture of science, reason, and colonization.
New information which does not confirm a stereotype is often discarded.
Stereotypes aid a sense of WE vs. THEY or US vs. THEM. Differences are reinforced as as
hierarchies of group value. Language is part of the otherization process as is social
interaction in general. Both generate perceptions and validate memories. When Africa, for
example is spoken of as a primitive continent, many perceptions and inferences follow, most
of them negative.
If we refuse to deal with everyday communication and mass media that produce
racism and prejudice and refuse to replace hateful and stereotypical discourse with discourse
that encourages understanding, acceptance, we have decided to make racism and prejudice a
permanent part of our social structures. It is all about choice and not about destiny or
inevitability.
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Reducing Racism
There is good news about reducing prejudice. Research shows that it is possible and
one can learn how to do it. This means that is teachable and learnable. There is nothing
inevitable about ethnic animosities despite what the “racial realists” would love to believe
and have you believe.
Despite progress in moving away from blatant no-doubt racism, there are new forms
of more subtle and even silent racism that continue to perpetuate stereotyping, prejudice,
and discrimination. Ruscher argues four main areas of culture and prejudice: advertising,
video, humor, and hate speech.
Advertising
Because ads are usually brief, it is common for them to contain stereotypes. The
older the advertising, the more likely it contains blatantly racist images. Old Cream of Wheat
ads are just one example of this. Despite many changes in the Aunt Jemima character, many
think that the symbol continues to reinforce racial stereotypes.
Genderism is still present in advertising also. The older ones are more blatant and
the newer ones are more subtle. Men solve problems and buy electronics while women are
still shown are subordinate to men and as sex objects. More are more likely to be shown
taking care of children than working with tools or technologies.
In TV commercials, Rusher notes that minorities are more likely today to shown in
background roles than are majority actors. What is the “choral approach” to advertising that
Rusher describes? Notice that putting minority group members into visuals can create an
impression of cultural diversity.
Rusher observes that blacks in advertising tend to have lighter skin than black in
other print photographs. The models in advertising, she argues, follow a pattern of adopting
qualities or traits of the higher-status cultural groups.
Simple awareness of these problems is never enough to stop their effects. We see
effects on self-esteem, perceptions of self, and group identification. How is communication
affected? The negative images in media activate cognitive stereotypes.
If you believe that we are “biochemical puppets,” or victims of our “savage”
cultures, you will have trouble recognizing the fundamental principles of human behavior
and communication either produce and reproduce prejudice or reduce it to some degree.
At the most basic level, there are the cognitive aspect of prejudice that give us clues
about the reasons why studies show that prejudice, despite genetic urges for survival and
adaptation is heavily related to schemata (memory structures), attitudes (composites of
beliefs) and networks of associated ideas, feelings, attitudes, values, and ideologies. None of
these things are inherited through anything found to be genetic but rather are learned
through information processing and persuasion.
In addition to the cognitive level of prejudicial thinking, we have the social level
constructing identities, assigning labels, sharing stories and characterization, and forming
social and political identities. Prejudice is both personal and social and is clearly related to
shared representations of one’s ethnic in-group. You can learn to derogate out-groups but
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you can learn not to or even learn to be neutral about them (a balance of positive and
negative beliefs or a lack of beliefs at all).
Neuroscientists and biologists have noted that the human brain has evolved into
what it is today -- three kinds of brains linked together into one system or what is called the
“triune brain.” Unfortunately, some scholars talk about primitive part of the human brain
(the reptilian part) as if we have not evolved past the days when humans were simply bipedal
animals. Science shows that people have higher-order reasoning that is not only much
different than the most primitive part of the brain, but which can also override as in the case
of emotional intelligence.
To describe humans today solely in terms of the most automatic, reflexive, and
irrational parts of the brain is an illogical way of arguing that humans lack rationality. It is
more useful to study how neuroscientists and psychologists study information processing,
persuasion, and social influence. This is real-time and observable processes with observation
effects on behaviors.
The logic saying that our behaviors and communication are determined by our
chemistry, wiring, or genetics is that our brains are the physical housing for our minds and
our bodies and brains work together. Because laws of physics govern the world around us, it
is tempting to assume their govern our mental world. Thus, ideas about choice, rationality,
ethics, morality, interpretation, and meanings can be minimized light of the (alleged) bigger
causes.
You do not have to believe in a separation of mind and body or mind and brain to
believe that we have free will, free choice, and cognitive abilities to make moral choices
about actions. The interesting findings about rapid cognition, behavioral economics, and
automatic reactions to social influence do not mean that all of our behavior is triggered by
cues alone. Robert Cialdini, for example, who has done a huge amount of research on
automatic behavioral responses, notes that people can increase their attention to how they
are responding in any given situation and regain cognitive and rational control over it if they
choose to do so.
From a methods point of view, the problems with many of the claims that we are
moved by forces we cannot control is proof. Many of these things, whether they be
unconscious motives (Freud), gene-behavior connections, or speculation about how evolved
over time to where we are now are not falsifiable and therefore subject to a great of doubt.
If we have trouble with our reasoning processes or skills of logic that does not
necessarily mean that we are pushed without control by unseen internal factors. This does
not mean that we do not have automatic responses; we do as in the case when a very
attractive person walks near you. Because we experiences feelings of anger that sometimes
get out of control and are followed by behaviors that get out of control. we might write off
the idea of a rational mind. In fact, we are sometimes rational and sometimes irrational.
Certainly, we have biochemical reactions in our body and brain, but this does not
mean that we lose control continuously. As psychologist Philip Zimbardo proved over
many decades of research is that any human is capable of good and evil and that the
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directions we take are often the result of heavy social influence.
Unless we are drugged, forced, victimized by horrible brain dysfunctions, or
incapable of any rational thought at all, we are capable of thinking about our behavioral
choices. We are responsible for our own thinking including prejudice and our own
communication, including racism and discrimination. Only Mel Gibson thinks that racism
appears out of nowhere as with drinking too much beer!
The trouble with inferring that racism is beyond your control or that that prejudice is
part of your “hard wiring,” is that many of the studies show automatic behavioral responses
to brief cues have no social or behavioral context due to experimental controls. In actual
social situations, many variables are interacting with many other variables.
Take the resume and clipboard example. While impressions are better with you in
the lab, this does not mean you will get hired because you carry a clipboard with your resume
in an actual job interview. Why?
As Paul Bloom notes, research shows that we often make fast judgments about
people based on gender, ethnicity, etc. Blooms notes that most of the force of factors is
when meeting strangers. The more we get to know someone, the more we are influenced by
facts about them than by their social category.
Cognitive stereotypes are personal and shared stereotypes are sociocognitive. We
think of outgroups members in more abstract terms. Ruscher points out how media provide
us with expectations for genders and ethnicities. Men should be one way and women
another. Media also tend to give positive agency to whites and negative agency to other
groups.
Prejudice in communication maintains social status and dominance differences.
Rucher argues that rules against prejudicial communication and hate speech do not deal with
underlying causes of behavior and prejudice. In other words, language change does not
assure cognitive change. This makes Rusher argues against censorship.
Bloom notes something very important about norm construction that we should
along with Rusher’s arguments. Blooms argues that we move toward cultural inclusiveness as
we evolve our morals and norms over time. These things change as people debate and
discuss events and problems. New conclusions lead to increasing evolution. We invent ways
to increase cultural diversity and decrease prejudice. We use rules, policies, laws, etc. to
develop customs and norms.
In other words, we are learning over time, despite our irrationality, to find where and
how we can become more rational.
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Chapter 6: The Need for a Political Turn:
Putting Politics into the Study of Racism, Ethnicism, and Prejudice
This chapter takes a hard look at politics and the failure of scholars to involve
politics and political theory in their research and writing about issues involving racism,
ethnicism, and prejudice. I begin this discussion with the assertion by historian Ivan
Hannaford regarding the history of the "race" construct and the racism that accompanied it.
According to Hannaford (1996), the failure of societies to incorporate politics as
their central mechanism of political debate and struggle, led to the use of racialism as such a
central mechanism. The historical necessity of politics can be witnessed in the political
systems created by the Greeks and Romans in contrast to other systems such as the
theocratic systems of the Hebrews and Muslims, which rejected politics. The ancient Greeks
explained their transition from rule by families and tribes by their adoption of logos and
reason. Politics is related to debating and philosophy and these take place in public places.
Choices replace matters of Nature as the source of solutions to social problems in the
ancient Greek view.
Greek citizens were more concerned about political life (polis) and law (nomos) than
with physical or cultural groupings. Hannaford (1996) identifies key assumptions that guided
their thinking. First, they believed in a common origin for all humans. Second, they believed
that all humans can excel through education. Third, they believed that public law-making is
better than private family decisions. Fourth, they favored critical argumentation as the way to
settle conflicts in interests. The most essential point is that the Greeks did not view
individuals with mental models of group membership, but rather in terms of sociopolitical
knowledge which was revealed in communication.
Note the key point here. In a sociopolitical society, we may be able o lower he
prejudices of group categories by increasing the salience of communication behaviors was
indicators of personal qualities. The Greeks did have groupings of favored and unfavored
people, but these categories were based on observed communication behaviors. In fact, a
person who was antisocial in their action was considered to be an idiot. Political activity is
closely related to the ideals of community vs. privatization, polity, democracy, and
persuasion as the means for reaching consensus about power. It is an alternative to laws
being handed down and rule by family clans. It is also a use of communication and dialectic
as an alternative to force for obtaining and maintaining power. Politics opens debates and
contestation and resists automatic allegiance to hierarchies, tribes, customs, etc. Democracy
and democratization are concepts and ideas that result from theories about how people
organize themselves politically. Without discourse about rights and principles of democracy,
a society is unlikely to have the values and practices necessary to sustain a democratic
system.
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What Would a "Political" Democratic System Look Like?
The political turn which I am advocating here would like the positioning of social
relationships between groups and members of society as more important than differences
among groups. As psychology (study of mind) and communication science (study of social
interaction) are both important for understanding human behavior, a focus on group
characteristics (anthropology, ethnic studies) should be accompanied by study of intergroup
politics (political communication) as well as cultural aspects of political behavior and political
aspects of cultural behaviors. Clearly, the social would be treated as political and the
sociopolitical (social-political) would not be confused with racial or ethnic boundaries.
Dominance and submission would be a constant issue, while working as political groups
would be a constant motivation. Society would take on more of the Greek themes of
community and would be constructed by various groupings of people based on interests and
motivations more than on histories of birth and socialization. The political society would
stress deep knowledge for all citizens as well as freedom from power hierarchies, exclusion
by group memberships, and communication premised on in-group/out-group boundaries.
All of this assumes a rationalist, albeit critical rationalist, approach to politics, political
theory, and political communication. Doors of controversy have just swung open!
The Trouble with Old (Cartesian) Rationalism
The old rationalists thought that they were above ethics and values and later
rationalists and scientists found out that this is never the case. Rationalist had created racism
with their theories of "race" and their "natural history" that supported all types of political
inequalities. I do not accept the dualism or positivism of old rationalism, but do believe that
research without theory is akin to what Chomsky describes as simply collecting butterflies.
You may end up with a nice collection but without any explanation of what a butterfly is or
what it does.
The Trouble with Nonrationalism
If one does art history or literary criticism, there is problem whatsoever with being
nonrationalist. When dealing with power, political communication, and issues of racism,
however, there are enormous problems. Nonrationalists adopt Friedrich Nietzche's claim
that there is no truth; rather there are only interpretations (Solomon & Higgins, 1996). I
submit that if this claim is true, there are no politics and no political ends such as equality.
Moreover, the solutions to struggles among interpretations alone are adjudicated by
intellectual or material force rather than by reason. Repeating their own pompous truths,
nonrationalists keep denying truths. This is much like Descarte's Circle -- I use my reason to
prove human reasoning. What is critical of dogma in political theory or rationalism simply
turns out to be a dogma in itself. A dogma of negation takes on dogmas of assertion!
Extremities like Pre-fascism Italian communication scholar Umberto Eco and others have
noted that fascism is a kind of political ideology always awaiting emergence when rational
and fair ways of dealing with power diminish and falter. Strong personalities play upon social
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uncertainties and replace politics with a discourse of sheer power.
Professor Martin Heidegger, student of Husserl, was a phenomenologist who battled
against Cartesianism and rationalism. He had little concern with science and taught the
importance of discovering one's authenticity and becoming committed to one's culture
(Solomon & Higgins, 1996). In 1933, he joined the German Nazi party, became rector of the
University of Freiburg, fired Jewish professors, and praised Hitler (Solomon & Higgins,
1996). Some scholars say that there is no link between his philosophy and his political stand
(in favor of Nazism) while others, including myself, argue that his political stand was linked
to his ways of thinking and teaching about human life. Hitler did not create or even generate
anti-Semitism in Germany or Europe. It was already present and some might even argue that
it was also present in the United States.
Hitler began ending Jewish civil liberties in 1933 and Jews were being losing their
property and synagogues by 1938. Execution squads and gas chambers followed, but the
United States did nothing to intervene until 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor
(Solomon & Higgins, 1996). At this time, both rationalists and irrationalists (or what I will
call nonrationalists because of connotation problems!), were unable to address Hitler from
their philosophical perspectives since the rationalists (many of whom were Jewish scientists)
had previously connected concerns about ethics with irrationality and as unimportant to
science.
The nonrationalists, including Heidegger and Nietzche, had also denied ethics.
Heidegger spoke about those concerned about ethics as people who "fish in the false sea of
values," and Nietzche had written about his dancing on the grave of morality (Solomon &
Higgins, 1996). Of course, the nonrationalists did not dismiss all morality; they dismissed the
forms of morality that they thought were unimportant. Their (existentialist) ideal of
authenticity included a call for integrity and responsibility. But such authenticity, they
believed, could not be explained by rationalists.
Today when people embrace nonrationalism, particularly in the social sciences, they
may oversimplify the epistemological assumptions of rationalists, particularly those who have
developed scientific means of working for equality, anti-racism, democracy, etc. etc. For
example, not one scholar has ever come close to Noam Chomsky in exposing the horrors of
racism, exploitation, fascism, and political inequalities today. Chomsky believes in truth and
uses his rationalist epistemology to point out lies.
With a nonrationalist view, this division of truth and falsity politics blurs into points
of view. I do not agree with the claim by political scientist James Ceaser that postmodernists
(one flavor of nonrationalism) are either fascists or racists. I do agree that they can till some
ground, however, for fascists and racists to farm. Nietzche and other nonrationalists have
argued views that assume that it is possible to transcend a rational conceptualization of
political good and political evil, and that morality is not part of a valid discussion about
political matters (Solomon & Higgins, 1996).
Thus, progress toward idealistic ends (such as equality) are not something that
Nietzche and his nonrationalist compatriots could endorse. Nietzche argued that humans are
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"will to power" and that they are driven by a desire to increase their vitality. This desire, to
him, is the meaning of human life. He rejected ethics, in part, because he believed that ethics
are devices intended to help people who are weak and mediocre. Such devices, in his view,
hurt those who are the most talented (Solomon, 1996).
In classic nonrationalist form, Nietzche believed that there are no truths, only
perspectives. James Ceaser notes that Nietzche also believed that the only way to make
anything great in society is to embrace the ideas of hierarchy. Nietzche abhorred the ideas of
citizens being united through political community as practiced by the ancient Greeks
(Hannaford, 1996). With old rationalism having flaws and nonrationalism being too flimsy
to be political, what is left as an intellectual basis for anti-racism? I think is it is found in a
critical type of rationalism and science. Critical Rationalism as One Method of Anti-Racism
Just as many communication scholars beat the dead horses of positivist ghosts, they also
beat the gravestones of old Cartesian rationalism. In both cases, they neglect to see that both
science and philosophies of science change through time.
Thus, rationalism can be faulted for many problems of the past, without a doubt. It
is foolish, however, in my opinion, to become nonrationalist or irrationalist because of past
historical inadequacies in science and theories of science or scientific approaches to human
behavior. I believe the alternatives to science (or what I will refer to as "rationalism" in a
contemporary sense), are far worse and even politically powerless when used as tools to
confront racism, ethnicism, and prejudice. While rationalism had sponsored racialism long
ago, today it tends to use science to refute or at least mute racism; and strong forms of antiracism emerge assertively in social science research like that of Teune van Dijk.
A critical rationalism, like the work of Noam Chomky on political imperialism and
biological rejection of racialism by Stephen Jay Gould, can admit that ethics and values and
political commentary are part of doing science. I believe this makes far more sense than
abandoning science as a means of working toward equality in favor of adopting nonrational
perspectivalism as a way of talking (and talking...) about equality.
While it is certainly true that old Cartesian rationalism endorsed colonialism, racism,
Social Darwinism, etc., it is also true that rationalist philosophies built on those of Aristotle
and others who conceived of democratic forms of society including ideas about equality
which also progressed through time. Democratic revolutions like the French Revolution
were constructed with ideas and ideals generated in rationalist views of power penned by
Rousseau, Voltaire, Locke, and others. The entire history of democracy is a history of
political theories and struggles over how to implement those theories. In the United States,
rationalist views of Locke, Aristotle, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Paine, and
Jefferson are conjoined to form a political doctrine which values free markets, private
property, self-reliance, individual liberties, public education, religious freedom, and free
speech (Solomon & Higgins, 1996).
Imagine a democratic political system with no such doctrine or without at least a
basic theory of democracy. Without the pattern just described, there would be no "rights" as
they have evolved over time. Imagine a nonrationalist political system; one person's claim of
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inhumane inequality would simply equal another person's claim of natural fairness
(perspective vs. perspective). Through politics (and attendant political theory and critical
rationalism), the Unites States has progressed with rights for various groups of its society.
This has not meant and end to racism or ethnicism, but the stage is available for new
debates about these matters since the history of the nation indicates a willingness, albeit a
slow one, to abandon old ideas about hierarchy and take on newer forms of empowerment
or at least discussions about them. Still, American racism and ethnicism persist through
various mechanisms of concealment. But tools of science as basic as survey data can be used
to counter denial of racism by pointing out the existence of negative ethnic attitudes. More
importantly, scientific analyses, such as those done by van Dijk and Essed, can be used to
document the ways that racism is produced and reproduced in a society that wishes to avoid
talking about racism. Egalitarian and democratic concerns tend to coexist. The separation
of political democracy from equality as values in a society is artificial from a theoretical,
philosophical, social scientific and historical point of view.
The ancient Greeks were not bound to the idea of "natural rights" as were the
American colonials. In fact, the Greeks believed that political rights and duties liberate
people from nature. You might see an analogy here to communication skills as we teach
them; the natural ways of behaving are often sloppy and ineffective, such as being aggressive,
impolite, etc. The effective skills we must learn as we unlearn out natural habits of poor
communication.
Where the old rationalism supported natural history and natural rights, a critical
rationalism might be more likely to argue in favor of socially constructed rights and duties
premised on cultural axioms of democracy and equality. A political turn in the study of
racism and prejudice may be able to situate political communication as a constitutive source
of power relations, including those which are anti-racist and egalitarian. As the Greeks
viewed people who follow the pressures of nature (physics) alone as barbarians, they also
honored those who lived according to human-made laws (nomos). All of this required a
commitment to rational discourse and knowledge. This included axioms about justice,
virtues, and citizenship.
Anti-Racism as a System of Communication Changes
By the year 2050, European Americans (“whites”) will decline from 68% of the
American population to about 46% of the population. Latinos will go from 15% of the
American population to 46%. African Americans will grow from about 12% of the
population today to about 15% then. Asian-Americans will double in proportion to about
9% of the population while Native Americans will not increase in percentage, remaining at
about 1% of the population (Aguirre & Turner, 2011). If you find these changes
troublesome, you are most likely in the majority position, feeling yourself moving a minority
position across time. Of course, such projections do not account for the fact that the white
percentages have increased over time for decades as more immigrants “passed” into the
white category
Over time, the amount of cultural and ethnic diversity in the United States has
increased. While no society on the planet has successfully integrated all ethnic
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subpopulations to the point that there are no more ethnic tensions, Americans have learned
to produce a unifying national identity that brings various subpopulations together with a
superordinate cause. Scholars learning more about how to value and even celebrate cultural
diversity without exaggerating groups’ differences to the point that they turn into group
antagonisms. As we learn about how to balance ethnic identity and pride with integration
and a common cultural core that does not involve hierarchy, we learn more about how to
lower the threat perceptions that produce both prejudice and discrimination.
Americans are known for their commitment to the pursuit of social justice and social
progress. We are not enamored to fake science ideas about inevitable inner drives left over
from the days of the Neanderthals. We have values of a common core American identity,
respect for differences, providing opportunities for people to succeed, and attempting to
improve the nation in the present and future. However, these values are still commonly
violated by actions and policies that make structural prejudice and discrimination a
widespread norm. While we talk about equal opportunities, many of them are not provided.
As life chances remained limited by unnamed structural factors, ethnic conflict is likely to be
social problem (Aguirre & Turner, 2011).
Extending access to important opportunities that make life better are important to
the lessening of structural discrimination and the conflicts that stem from such
discrimination. “Race” and ethnicity are not equally important to individuals, groups, and
communities. They vary in importance and salience. Some communities today and some
points in history illustrate the simple fact that ethnic conflict is not a necessity beyond
intervention or replacement. With less competition among groups for scarce resources, for
example, ethnic tensions decline (Aguirre & Turner, 2011).
John Duckitt (2001) notes several specific ways that can be used to reduce prejudice.
Prior to the 29th century, there was nearly no opposition to racialization, prejudice, and
discrimination. Only in the 19th century was slavery ended in England the United States. The
concept of prejudice did not even exist before the 20th century (Duckitt, 2001). After World
War I and increasing challenges to colonial rule at that time, racist attitudes were subjected
the criticism that they were unfair and irrational group attitudes. More attention was paid to
racism and its causes after the collapse of the German Nazi regime in World War II. After
large-scale Civil Rights legislation during the 1960s in the U.S., it became clear that laws
alone cannot reduce prejudice and discrimination. Old-fashioned, blatant racism was
replaced by modern racism whereby the social dominance of whites over blacks would
continue as institutionalized prejudice that was not illegal (Duckitt, 2001). Multiculturalism
arose in resistance to the newer and softer forms of racism.
Duckitt (2001) observes that there are four specific levels of communication change
that can be made to lessen prejudice and all four must be worked on together at the same
time. His principles are laid out below.
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COGNITIVE LEVEL
INDIVIDUAL LEVEL
INTERPERSONAL LEVEL
SOCIETAL LEVEL
Salience of prejudicial inter-group difference perceptions must
be lowered.
o De-categorization: Treat people as individuals and not
as members of categories.
o Superordinate identity: Work on a common identity
that brings groups together.
Ethnic individual attitudes need to be questioned.
o Cultural knowledge: Increasing knowledge of other
ethnicities and cultures can learn to take the
perspectives of other communicators.
o Cognitive sophistication: Increasing education can
reduce prejudice.
Sources of learned prejudice should be determined.
o Norms of non-prejudice can reduce prejudice.
o Norm formation requires clear and enforced policies
regarding prejudice and discrimination.
o History and cultural diversity must be taught.
o Cooperative learning and work must be done with
involvement of differing ethnic groups.
Conditions affecting intergroup relations must be examined.
o Government and laws must be used to block
discrimination and encourage conflict resolution.
o Equal opportunities must be created and enforced
with policies.
o Working against structural inequalities must be
initiated and reinforced.
With these four areas for work, the perpetuation of structuralism racism is possible to break.
By no means is this to be interpreted as an easy task. There is hard work to do in order to
free ourselves every year and in every generation from the racist baggage of our pasts. The
job is daunting, but not impossible.
News Media
Outgroups or groups that are looked down at by other groups are portrayed
differently in news coverage than in-groups or dominating groups in a society. The claims
about news media bias bandied about in the news media itself are fairly childish because bias
is a human trait. What gets done with bias and how systematic the bias is remain the real
issues of importance. As with prejudice, it is important to note that news bias or prejudice
does not have to be intentional. That realization helps us to understand the importance of
the communication skills related to non-prejudiced communication. One of those skills is
recognizing our unconscious biases and diminishing them. News involves both text and
images. There is also framing, priming, and discursive themes that are involved in stories and
discussions. What are some common news images that you might consider stereotypical?
News images, like other stereotypical depictions, function as cognitive and
presentation shortcuts. Why do so many Americans think that most poor people are blacks?
Do news media contribute to this perception or belief? Findings from studies of face-ism
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show that dominant groups are show in visual displays with more facial than body
dominance which in turn encourages reactions of more generalized dominance.
Journalists can be encouraged to use less prejudicial in many ways. For example, it
can be pointed out to them that file footage may be stereotypical. Rusher raises the
interesting issue of whether or not accuracy motivation is enough to diminish or stop
prejudice. She argues that accuracy may not follow the motivation for accuracy. How is this
possible?
Outcomes follow motivation but they may not be objectively accurate. It is even
possible for a person to speak against prejudice while being prejudiced. How is this
possible? An example Rusher gives is a journalist who adds some comments about cultural
diversity while still presenting stereotypic framing of minorities.
Loss framing and gain framing are part of news presentation. Studies in Psychology
and Communication Studies show that reactions to stories as frames used in the stories are
altered. Ruscher notes that women in the news are more commonly associated with risks like
depression than are men.
Rusher draws attention to the fact that praising one groups for certain strengths can
sound good but it can actually limit their portray as being good in other things. This can
occur with something like praise for a minority leader or a female leader. The praise may
make look like exceptions to the the less-than-good group they represent. As this “subtyping” occurs, the overall prejudiced view of the group can remain stable.
News headlines can prime news consumers and frame the stories in ways that
activate schemata that are then used to form impressions, conclusions, and even decisions
about various events and people. Innuendo can be a powerful instrument of intentional
prejudiced communication because direct statements can be denieds while inferred meanings
are clear in the interpretation of the messages. Outgroup members and question the
morality, decision making abilities, skills, etc of groups and infer very negative traits without
openly making strong negative assertions.
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CONCLUSIONS: Moving Forward with Courage
Without political theory, a product of rationalism in various forms and philosophy,
there are no necessary conditions for democracy, equality, empowerment, reform, or
revolution. Moreover, anti-racism loses it focus since the power struggle endemic to politics
is overshadowed by unlimited uncertainties of what is what in the political side of life.
Those who opposed the French Revolution were often also those who generated
racial and racist theories. Both can be seen as rationalist, but the contradiction makes
politics. Revolutionary theorists like Voltaire and Rousseau had rejected racialism. Today, it
appears that racists are anti-revolutionary and anti-democratization. Both anti-racism and
democracy depend on politics and political theory.
To deal with the structural level of racism requires a new and critically rationalist
approach to democracy and equality -- one that admits that equality is good and inequality is
not good. The social scientists and physical scientists who stood shoulder to shoulder to
refute the Herrnstein and Murray claims about black inferiority in 1994, are examples of this
critical rationalism. In my view, there is no reason why critical rationalists should not
endorse multiculturalism, provided that the latter is not separatist, prejudicial, or apolitical.
Clearly, multiculturalism begins with the mission of resisting the assumptions and
results of classical racism. James Ceaser objects to the reluctance of multiculturalists to
connect unique ethnic group identities to the common community of a democracy. Ceaser
may be correct in arguing that democracy requires community and the multiculturalists may
be correct in noting that the United States, with all of its rationalist political theory, has been
ethnically oppressive and exploitive. So what is the bottom line? Perhaps there is none. On
the other hand, if atrocities are committed under the aegis of rationality, science, and
political theory, what more can be expected under the aegis of endless perspectivalism? I
suspect that there must be a dialectic that brings about a clash of the rationalism and the
nonrationalism and the foundationalism and the nonfoundationalism that is splitting antiracists in the United States.
The ancient Greeks, who invented democracy, also invented dialectic. It is in newer
forms of political dialectic that we may reinstate politics into political communication. We
are finally forced to ask some difficult question and sort out what possible answers can most
be defended. One of our central challenges today concerns how each person can form their
identity, something fundamental to their well being, without over differentiating themselves
from others by looking for markers of difference as provided by the "race" construct.
The meaning of "race" changes by point in time and by speaker. There is a vague and
enduring sense that there must be "races" since there are different looking people and some
of the differences seem extreme at times. It is not easy for some people to accept the idea of
one human species with many variations within the species, and of course, more difficult is
the task of accepting the fact that surface level differences such as skin tone are largely
unimportant in human affairs.
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The concept of "race" was hatched by racists, men who were known as scientists and
who used their knowledge of science to promote their visions of white supremacy. Later the
concept seemed to make intuitive sense since we can easily see differences in human
populations and we can see how people fit into categories of skin color and facial features.
We forget that most human features are more similar than different and what is most
important to human behavior cannot be ascribed to racial narratives.
The facts which speak to the invalidity of the "race" construct are more numerous
that those which argue for its validity, yet the urge to classify people into boundaried
categories perpetuates the concept in a manner that exceeds any scientific utility. There is
more within-group variation than between-group variation for most behaviors. There are
polymorphisms for all groups. The Australian Aborigines are more related to the Asians
genetically than to Africans yet they also receive the label "black." Charles Darwin noted that
there 2-63 types of "races" in his day. Europeans appear to have genetics related to Asian
and African populations. Some nations label people in India and black and some as white.
Some Native American tribes are related to population outside of America, even to people
living in Siberia, yet all native tribes in the United States are lumped together into a
fabricated "race" called Native American or Indian. Contemporary geneticists have called the
concept a fiction.
The "race" construct did not begin with the Hebrews, Greeks, Egyptians, or
Romans. It did gain its currency with scientists in Europe who sought to create a typology
that placed them on the upper tier and all other people as steps downward. This was
profoundly unscientific and profoundly political. Along with the acceptance of racial
communication and categorization, came many problems that force fitted millions of people
into constructs or conceptual processes that are increasingly at odds with improved scientific
examinations of human classes and kinds. These problems include:
Pseudo-speciation: Placing humans into categories of physical, psychological, and social
traits that make each category analogous to a species. We know today that subpopulations
were once thought of separate species or “races,” but that humans are not different enough
to treat in this manner.
Over-attribution: Observers will often attempt to explain the reasons or causes for the
behaviors of others with single-factor explanations. Racial categories are sometimes
employed as attributed causes in ways that are illogical and hardly explanatory. The results
can range from false attributions to neglecting the actual set of factors affecting behavioral
choices.
Fallacies of inference: By stereotyping human subpopulations into so-called racial groups, we
can generate inferences about individual traits and behavioral causes in ways that are not
justified. Such poor reasoning can produce poor communication and many kinds of
judgmental errors.
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Biased cognitive processing: If we accept racial groups as something more than discursive
generalizations with weak scientific validity, we can bias our processing of messages coming
from people of other ethnic groups or subpopulations.
Communicative profiling: Just as with law enforcement using what is known as “racial
profiling” for linking physical traits with groups who are believed to be more dangerous than
others, racializing others in everyday social interactions can encourage a projection of group
traits onto individuals simply because of what we perceive of as group characteristics and an
individual being a member of a particular group.
Biologizing culture: Cultural and ethnic differences among humans are real and observable.
Just as language and values change over time, so do cultures. There are variations and subcultures within cultures. When cultures or ethnicities are treated as biological categories such
as “race,” what it dynamic is treated as static.
As I have struggled to define the reality or non-reality of the concept of “race” for
human classifications, I have journeyed through biology, anthropology, history,
communication studies, psychology, and genetics. This journey has shown the pernicious
and tenacious nature of this floating signifier, a word more rhetorical than scientific. Still, the
modicum of science that allows the word to summarize various phenotypic patterns of
certain subpopulations, keeps “race talk” alive and well.
After wading through thousands of pages of theory and research, I have reached the
personal conclusion that “race” is a political and rhetorical construction with a reality as a
sociological construct more than any biological entity. Accordingly, racializing discourse, and
even research, in my view, involves power differentials and agendas dedicated more to
illuminating differences among subpopulations than to showing their similarities.
Whether or not a diminishment of racial discourse will lower prejudice or
discrimination, remains to be seen. I argue and conclude, however, that the political power
of discourse that perpetuates the fallacies of inborn inequities of intellectual potential,
communication styles, or cultural practices, is easily lowered by discourse which says, let’s
talk about psychology, personality, culture, and individual differences rather than biological
classes of humans. When we learn to deal with all social inequities such as income,
education, social class, age, and handicaps, we can treat all members of the human race as
needing help in succeeding in this world. As Martin Luther King would note, we will then be
able to focus more on character and less on skin tone.
And so what would our world be like without racial talk? Would racism be gone?
Yes, perhaps because without “races” to speak about seriously any longer, one can hardly
promote ideas about racial differences or degrees of superiority or inferiority? Would
prejudice be gone? No, it would not. Prejudice would still exist on the basis of culture
(ethnic groups), age, social class, occupation, education, gender, etc. etc. This does not mean
that the work done by social scientists to lessen prejudice would lose progress.
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A Post-Racial Society vs. Color-Blind Racism
More awareness of prejudice and its irrational foundations could increase the
prevalence of human difference acceptance and decrease visceral reactions to difference on
the basis of a bias that says that differences are a problem. Without continuous racialization
of humans by other humans, the biologizing of what is social and political would become
more obvious to more people. What is considered natural for certain groups of people could
be more easily called into question.
So is it possible to have a post-racializing society? I believe it is completely possible
and could very well happen as better science replaces poorer science. Human diversity can
be described in many way without using the foundational language of racism. Biology can
freed from political power and ideology and politics need no longer be tethered to absurd
ideas about biology. The dream of Martin Luther King and others who struggle against
prejudice could be connected more to concepts of cultures, ethnicities, and groups, rather
than old ideas about heritability. While prejudice against groups can continue against culture,
age, gender, and other factors of membership and identity, at the least the immutable nature
of human differences and the exaggerated importance of differences can be more
intelligently examined without racialization.
We want to believe that the United States in 2014 is a society no longer suffering
from racism, but we know that this not true. There is still prejudice in everyday conversation,
media presentations, and within our social and political priorities. They are not as overt as
before, but we know they have continued and we seem lost in coming to terms with the
question of whether or not Americans can abandon their racializing of each other. While I
don’t expect an early end to racializing, I think it is naïve to believe that it is impossible, just
as it does not make sense to assume that violence and war are always inevitable. If the latter
were, the human race would have already annihilated itself. There is preference in social
identity but preference does not have to lead to alienation. And just as prejudice is learned
thinking and behavior, non-prejudice can be learned. Another way of saying this is that
prejudice can be unlearned. I believe this is also possible for racialization. It is only necessary
for your perceptual and thought processes if you believe that it is and the good news is that
no such necessity has ever been proven.
While progress is made in reinforcing norms against old-fashioned and blatant
racism, institutional racism continues to survive with progress being much smaller and
slower. For example, 97% of the Fortune 500 executives are European-Americans
(Gallagher, 2012). Meanwhile, 30% of the American population is made up of minority
group members. Of the 100 Senators in the United States Senate, only 4 are nonwhite
(Gallagher, 2012). Whites make up about 70% of the American population (using a common
racial yardstick…) but well over 70% of the Senate. There are zero Native Americans in the
Senate (Gallagher, 2012).
Despite such facts, there has been progress in working against prejudice and there is
still hope for less racialization and more focus on accuracy-based communication and
descriptions of fellow humans. Tensions among human groups of all sorts are common all
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over the world. There are demographic changes occurring in the United States that appear
threatening to some in the majority ethnic group. But threat perception in this way is neither
a matter of evolution, hard-wiring of the brain, so some other form of inevitability. Instead,
it comes from a failure to cease thinking about differences as dangers.
By the year 2050, European Americans (“whites”) will decline from 68% of the
American population to about 46% of the population. Latinos will go from 15% of the
American population to 46%. African Americans will grow from about 12% of the
population today to about 15% then. Asian-Americans will double in proportion to about
9% of the population while Native Americans will not increase in percentage, remaining at
about 1% of the population (Aguirre & Turner, 2011). If you find these changes
troublesome, you are most likely in the majority position, feeling yourself moving a minority
position across time. Of course, such projections do not account for the fact that the white
percentages have increased over time for decades as more immigrants “passed” into the
white category
Over time, the amount of cultural and ethnic diversity in the United States has
increased. While no society on the planet has successfully integrated all ethnic
subpopulations to the point that there are no more ethnic tensions, Americans have learned
to produce a unifying national identity that brings various subpopulations together with a
superordinate cause. Scholars learning more about how to value and even celebrate cultural
diversity without exaggerating groups’ differences to the point that they turn into group
antagonisms. As we learn about how to balance ethnic identity and pride with integration
and a common cultural core that does not involve hierarchy, we learn more about how to
lower the threat perceptions that produce both prejudice and discrimination.
Americans are known for their commitment to the pursuit of social justice and social
progress. We are not enamored to fake science ideas about inevitable inner drives left over
from the days of the Neanderthals. We have values of a common core American identity,
respect for differences, providing opportunities for people to succeed, and attempting to
improve the nation in the present and future. However, these values are still commonly
violated by actions and policies that make structural prejudice and discrimination a
widespread norm. While we talk about equal opportunities, many of them are not provided.
As life chances remained limited by unnamed structural factors, ethnic conflict is likely to be
social problem (Aguirre & Turner, 2011).
Extending access to important opportunities that make life better are important to
the lessening of structural discrimination and the conflicts that stem from such
discrimination. “Race” and ethnicity are not equally important to individuals, groups, and
communities. They vary in importance and salience. Some communities today and some
points in history illustrate the simple fact that ethnic conflict is not a necessity beyond
intervention or replacement. With less competition among groups for scarce resources, for
example, ethnic tensions decline (Aguirre & Turner, 2011).
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While there is much to do, much has been accomplished in the United States and
other nations in the struggle to lessen or at least control prejudice, racism, culturalism, and
discrimination. There are few good reasons to be pessimistic about making progress in
lessening racism and prejudice. Just as it took time for people to learn that the world is
round rather than flat, it will take time for them to learn that they do not have to treat people
as members of groups above treating them as individuals.
Anti-racism and efforts to reduce prejudice in psychology, communication studies,
and other social and behavioral sciences should be not be evaluated on the basis of ending
prejudice but rather on the basis of developing knowledge and skills that help to diminish
and control it.
One way we can control prejudice is by intervening with the psychological and
communication processes which produce prejudicial thinking and interacting. There is no
proof, whatsoever that this not possible even while there is proof that bad communication is
often our first impulse. If you take a sociocognitive approach to this, you will see that
cognitive and the interactive are working together rather than separately.
COGNITION -- thoughts from schemata and incoming messages.
INTERACTION -- message exchange
LINKAGE -- mental models -- connecting schemata, feelings, and messages both inward
and outward.
An impression of another human being triggers many psychological and cognitive responses
ranging from recognition, feelings, and matches to stored schemata. Schema activation then
triggers more internal responses. These responses then get you ready for how you manage
your communication with that person.
ex. This man looks Chinese → Chinese schema activated.
Good Chinese schema → positive emotional orientation → positive interaction
Bad Chinese schema → negative emotional orientation → negative interaction
OR one of the above with compensation to monitor impression management
One cognitive structure that affects your perception or other people is what we call a
stereotype -- a generalized set beliefs about a group that you apply to members of that group
nearly automatically. Cognitive stereotypes are closely related to shared representations in
conversation and media imagery. They are oversimplifying, whether positive or negative.
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We can contrast prejudiced perception and communication from non-prejudiced
communication fairly directly.
PREJUDICED PERCEPTION/COMM.
Perceived individual is treated as a member.
Membership attributions imposed on
person.
Stereotypes are activated and allowed to
guide the processes.
NON-PREJUDICED PER/COMM.
Perceived individual is treated as unique.
Individual attributes explored or
discovered.
Activated stereotypes are blocked with
accuracy motivation and messages.
Unlike the arguments that our bad nature can be managed by laws (Hobbes, Pinker, others),
we can have good laws and continuation of bad perceptions, communication and behavior.
Reducing prejudice thus requires changes in law as well as changes in cognitive and
communicative processing.
You cannot tell exactly how much prejudice is in a person’s mind. They may not
know themselves. This means that claims about not wanting to be prejudiced or not being
prejudiced must be left unevaluated or met with confirmation as something, should it be
true, that is good.
One of the most important findings about prejudicial thinking and communicating is
that they are learned behaviors. Social learning and modeling shape childhood perceptions of
outgroups. Bigoted parents may even reward their children for being prejudiced. Mass media
add later to what children think about themselves and other people.
Social identity can be a strong factor in prejudice when one confuses group pride
with outgroup denigration. In-group solidarity boosts a member’s self-esteem. How
important is your in-group in relation to others? In you keep inflating the importance of
your own group, you make easier to see other groups as less important or valued.
Prejudice comes from two main sources: a) social identity splits of in-group and outgroups with in-group preferences, and b) competition between in-groups and out-groups.
Simple categorization is not the same thing as prejudice.
Automatic reactions to other people in the mind and brain are not inborn but rather
are culturally acquired. What is inborn is the will to survive and the ability to learn selfprotection. Enculturation may teach us automatics ways of responding to members of other
or specific groups. The Harvard implicit attitudes test for example, has shown that about
66% of test takers who are not Arabs or Muslims have negative attitudes toward Arab
Muslims.
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Today, we know that can employ specific strategies to reduce prejudice. This include the
following.
1. Increase your contacts with people of differing ethnicities or cultures.
2. Work with people different than you on cooperative tasks.
3. Speak out against racism and prejudice and seek to create norms or rules as you do so.
4. Teach others and yourself the positives aspects of other cultures.
5. Refuse to be a victim of what is called stereotypes vulnerability. If you are put down by
such a stereotype without resisting it, you may weaken your chances at success.
Over time, the amount of cultural and ethnic diversity in the United States has increased.
While no society on the planet has successfully integrated all ethnic subpopulations to the
point that there are no more ethnic tensions, Americans have learned to produce a unifying
national identity that brings various subpopulations together with a superordinate cause.
Scholars learning more about how to value and even celebrate cultural diversity without
exaggerating groups’ differences to the point that they turn into group antagonisms. As we
learn about how to balance ethnic identity and pride with integration and a common cultural
core that does not involve hierarchy, we learn more about how to lower the threat
perceptions that produce both prejudice and discrimination.
Americans are known for their commitment to the pursuit of social justice and social
progress. We are not enamored to fake science ideas about inevitable inner drives left over
from the days of the Neanderthals. We have values of a common core American identity,
respect for differences, providing opportunities for people to succeed, and attempting to
improve the nation in the present and future. However, these values are still commonly
violated by actions and policies that make structural prejudice and discrimination a
widespread norm. While we talk about equal opportunities, many of them are not provided.
As life chances remained limited by unnamed structural factors, ethnic conflict is likely to be
social problem.
Extending access to important opportunities that make life better are important to
the lessening of structural discrimination and the conflicts that stem from such
discrimination. “Race” and ethnicity are not equally important to individuals, groups, and
communities. They vary in importance and salience. Some communities today and some
points in history illustrate the simple fact that ethnic conflict is not a necessity beyond
intervention or replacement. With less competition among groups for scarce resources, for
example, ethnic tensions decline.
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The Arguments for Not Letting Go
Some experts believe that the racial constructs discussed in this book cannot be
abandoned because such abandonment would increase rather than decrease prejudice and
discrimination. These arguments are not made by racists, but rather by people who think
that racial consciousness and measurement helps to shed light on how certain groups are left
behind. While I have respect for the good intentions of these arguments, I believe they
suffer from numerous flaws in logical reasoning.
"To use the rhetoric of the enemy to fight the enemy is often to become the enemy." --Ivan Hannaford
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“Race" by Kenneth L. Hacker
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"To bigotry, give no sanction."
-- George Washington
Dr. Kenneth Hacker is a Professor of Communication Studies at New Mexico State
University. You can write to him at [email protected] or [email protected].
i
I have noticed that students tend to agree with the criticisms of the “race” construct and accept the
claim that there are huge validity issues with its usage, but then continue to use it themselves in
describing human sub-populations.
ii
I do recognize the immediate objection that without the term, racism cannot be confronted as a social
problem. I do not accept this argument because prejudice and discrimination can be confronted without
racial language.
iii
Recently (Jan. 2, 2014), a FOX TV commentator, Laura Ingram, suggested that she thought Americans
had moved past racial discussions. While her intent might be admired, America is nowhere near this goal
in the year 2014.
iv
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/27/racial-views-new-polls-shn2029423.html
v
http://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/hate-and-extremism
vi
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-poll-majority-harbor-prejudice-against-blacks
vii
http://blairrockefellerpoll.uark.edu/6107.php
viii
These scholars are now deceased.
ix
This is certainly true for other nations, of course, but I can only focus on the United States at this time.
x
I reject the notion that racism is limited only to majority groups and argue that any group is capable of
both racial and cultural discrimination.
xi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvG1ylKhzoo
xii
William McDougall wrote in 1908 about human instincts and human behavior. He also discussed the
superiority of the Nordics and in 1921 talked about the dangers of racial mixing. (Gossett, 1997).
xiii
It is possible for some scientists to reduce the concept of “race” to strictly biological or genetic markers
in order to avoid charges of racism. Such use of the term, however, is always subject to scientific validity
debates.
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