Race & Ethnicity
Structural Inequalities
• What percentage of population?
• Approx 10%
• Educational disadvantage –African
Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Pakistani
• Unemployment rates 2 or 3 times that of
white group – even when well qualified
• More likely to live in social housing, and in
poor over-crowded conditions.
Race & Ethnicity
• ‘Race’: 'socially defined but on the basis of
physical criteria.‘
• Ethnicity: 'socially defined but on the basis of
cultural criteria'
Van den Berghe, 1967: 9 in Goldberg, 1992, 553
• ‘For social boundaries to be actively maintained,
they need to be continually validated, and this
requires regular interaction with members of out
groups’ (Frederick Barth, 1969, Ethnic Groups
and Social Boundaries)
Race – ‘shifting signifier’
• Race – said to be a social invention
• does not have a fixed referent
• At different times has been associated
with species divide, religious belief,
class, nation, citizenship, culture,
ethnicity
• Consider notions of ‘breeding’ and
eugenicist views
Instrumental or Primordial?
• Ethnicity as a resource to be used in times
of competition.
• Ethnicity and race as deep-seated and
relatively fixed
Marxism & Race
• Marx recognised that racism – the divide and
rule of colonialism prevented a united working
class opposing the bourgeoisie
• Race is not a primary category of analysis
• But serves as a convenient tool of capitalism
which will wither away when economic
reality is recognised,
• or a mask which serves to obscure true
relations of power in a society, which are, in
fact, class-based.
Neo-Weberian
• Rational Choice theory –
• ‘race relations’ approach - the work of
John Rex and Michael Banton
• Complex matrix of factors – class, status,
economic and cultural factors, patterns of
consumption, stereotypes, forms of
representation etc…
Neo-Marxists
• 1. Relative Autonomy Model (Hall, 1980)
• class and ‘race’ should be examined together.
• 2. Autonomy Model (Gabriel and Ben-Tovim,
1979)
• racism cannot be reduced to class conflict
• 3. Migrant Labour Model (Miles & Phizacklea
• “Race is an idea which should be explicitly and
consistently confined to the dustbin of
analytically useless terms.”(Miles, 1984:42 in
Solomos p8).
Pierre Bourdieu
• concept of 'habitus', grounded in material
conditions and experience
• struggle for ‘symbolic dominance’
• the habitus is a reflexive, generative
structure
• a useful tool to look at cases of inter-ethnic
differences, alienation, and conflict
• which are in a state of constant
adjustment and negotiation.
Black Feminism
• Historically profound connection between
gender, sexuality and race
• Sojourner Truth: “...aint I a woman?”
highlights the ‘double burden’ : sexism and
racism
• Feminism recognised processes which are
equally applicable to racialised groups:
• Erasure, Denial, Invisibility, Tokenism
• critique of White feminism
Postmodernism & Race
•
•
•
•
End of ‘grand narratives’ of history
Advent of Identity politics
Depoliticised, factionalised
Focus on representation rather than
ideology
• Relativism and ‘differences’ rather than
universalism and ‘equal’ rights
Genocide and Postmodernism
Race & Media
blaxploitation
genre
slave figure
Clown figures
Rising Middle
class nonthreatening
Race & Television
Four Key Themes in Racial
Representation
• exotic
• dangerous
• humorous
• pitied
•
(Alvarado et al. 1987: 153)
The Circuit of Culture
•
•
•
•
•
Production
Consumption
Identity
Regulation
Representation
The reality is often life in harsh
and squalid urban camps – as
below in Darwin
Dominant white discourses:
Romantic, Anthropological,
Literary and Racist
An imagined indigenous idyll
Moral Panics
• described as a condition, episode, person
or group of persons which emerge to
become defined as a threat to societal
values and interests (Cohen, 1972, p.9).
• 1970s the image of the black mugger
• 1980s – image of rioter
• 1990s – gangsta, gun crimes etc
• 2000s – Media focus shifts to Muslims
Politics and Race
Multiculturalism
• What does it mean?
• Ideal state – integration around a dominant
culture – or complex negotiation between many
cultures?
• Trevor Philips of CRE recent reversal over
multiculturalism
• ‘Sleepwalking towards segregation.’
• Relativism V Universalism arguments
• Identity Politics V struggle against inequality
Steel Bands
+
Samosas
Saris
+
=
MULTICULTURALISM
Identity politics
• Criticised by left-leaning analysts as
capitulation to cultural criticism
• in place of analysis of the material roots of
oppression
• factionalizing and depoliticizing
• dominance of symbolic over material
Too Diverse? Multicultural Debate
• Kenan Malik responds:
• “the real problem is not a surfeit of strangers in
our midst but the abandonment over the past
two decades of ideologically based politics for a
politics of identity...
• The result has been the fragmentation of society
as different groups assert their particular
identities - and the creation of a well of
resentment within white working class
communities who feel left out.”
Bibliography
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Bronowski, J (1973) The Ascent of Man, BBC books
Goldberg D. T. and Solomos J.(eds) 2002, A Companion to racial and ethnic studies, Oxford, Blackwell
Goldberg D.T. (1993) Racist Culture, Blackwell
Goldberg D.T. (Ed) 1994, Multiculturalism, a Critical Reader, Blackwell.
Goodhart, David ‘Too diverse’ February 2004 Available online at: http://www.geocities.com/jjrinst/DavidGoodhartImmigration-Prospect.htm
Hall, S (2000) The Multicultural Question, Political Economy Research Centre, Lecture, transcript available on http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/perc/lectures/Hall.html)
Hall, S. et al. (1978), Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, Macmillan, London.
Jenkins R (1997) Rethinking Ethnicity : arguments and explorations, Sage
Loomba A (1998) Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Routledge
Malik, K (1996) The Meaning of Race, Macmillan
Malik, K (2002) Race, pluralism and the meaning of difference, ( paper in New Formations, no33 (Spring 1998)
Available online at : http://www.kenanmalik.com/papers/new_formations.html
Malik, K (2002) Against Multiculturalism first appeared in the New Humanist (Summer 2002).
http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/against_mc.html
Malik, K (2004) Too Diverse: A Response to David Goodhart
Muecke, S. (1982) ‘Available Discourses’ in Botsman, P. d (1982) Theoretical Strategies, Sydney, Local
Consumption Press.
PARIAH website (People Against Racism In Australian Homelands) managed by Mick Lambe (Better a Pariah than
a Liar) http://www.country-liberal-party.com/pages/incarc_p5.htm
Spencer, S (2006) Race and Ethnicity: Culture, Identity and Representation, Routledge