Most of us are staunch anti-racists. We are fiercely against all forms of racism, of whatever shape, type or colour. It just seems so obvious: since we do not even think in terms of race, the idea that one ‘race’ would be ‘superior’ to another is totally foreign to us. When we walk down a busy street we surely do not think “gosh look at those inferior races mingling about.” If someone accuses us of such a thought, that’s an insult.
If you want to come across as anti-racist today, however, such a clear and explicit rejection of racist beliefs is no longer enough. As soon as you take such a stance, it will quickly be pointed out that by taking such a position, you may overlook another kind of racism: a sly, structural racism that lurks just beneath the surface of our explicit beliefs and positions; a shadowy, non-acknowledged, non-personal set of beliefs, that wander around in our institutions, our history textbooks, our festivals and rituals, our jokes, our cultural archive; a racism almost imperceptible and therefore all the more effective.
But what could we possibly mean when we say that racism is implicit, structural or institutional?
It is quite important to be precise on this point. Many interpretations evaluate the question of implicit racism primarily in terms of individual responsibility, or personal morality – the possibility of an individual to do ‘the right thing.’ However, as the reactions on Wekker’s book White Innocence show, this strategy keeps dragging us into a practical quagmire. Why?
There seems to be a good reason to start with individual responsibility, as this approach worked quite well with traditional anti-racism. The latter presents the individual with a clear commandment: judge a person by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. In other words, as long as you approach others without taking into account their skin colour (or ethnic background, or whatever ‘irrelevant trait’) you qualify as an anti-racist. If we take into account implicit racism, however, we are confronted with a different, more paradoxical injunction. In the words of black writer Pat Parker: “The first thing you do is to forget that I’m Black/Second, you must never forget that I’m Black.” In other words, in order be anti-racist, you must acknowledge both the existence of skin colour (and thus be a racist in the traditional sense of the term) and forget skin-colour at the same time. Thus, according to Baukje Prins, the notion of implicit racism presents you a vicious double bind. She captures this widely shared sentiment as follows: “whatever you do, you can’t do it right.”
This immediately implies a second worry: if we put (white) people in this vicious double-bind, if they can’t do it right anyhow, does it not imply that they are by definition on the ‘wrong side of history’? We encounter this sentiment under the term of ‘polarization:’ Gloria Wekker and Sylvana Simons are are often charged with dividing up society into two groups, with on the one hand unredeemable, forever guilty white people – caught in a double bind – and on the other hand their resentful victims. This is why Baukje Prins cautions Wekker that: “by repeatedly insisting that the (‘white’) other is on the wrong side of history, Wekker will not find many allies.” Wekker and Simons, in other words, are thought to propagate a divisive mode of anti-racism, which does not allow for a common struggle anymore.
Thus, third and finally, we often hear calls to overcome this ‘polarization.’ For example, Baukje Prins – Lector Citizenship and Diversity at The Hague Universtity – quite nobly urges us to be (again) prepared to believe in ‘certain shared values:
In striving for a less racist, more equitable society, alliances can only arise if, beyond the innocence of denying a problematic history and still existing privileges, we are prepared to believe that we do indeed have certain shared interests and values today.
Prins clearly thinks that Wekker’s view of implicit racism – contrary to her conciliatory suggestion – does not allow for alliances to arise. She implies, in other words, that there is a big, unsurpassable gap between her own anti-racist values (that probably concur with the values of Citizenship and Diversity), and Wekker’s (which are based on her views on implicit racism and which would entail the vicious double-bind and polarization) that preclude the possibility of an anti-racist alliance.
It is here that this quite familiar strategy – from the recognition of the double-bind, to the accusation of polarization, to the renewed appeal for unity – ultimately falters. It clearly cannot work. Prins’ seemingly reasonable intention is to bring back unity in a ‘polarizing’ situation. But the unity she proposes is salient only because she herself sets up another division: between her idea of shared values, and Wekker’s ideas that in Prins’ view endanger those shared values. For her proposal for unity to work, she must herself become divisive: she needs to cast out Wekker’s ‘divisive’ and ‘demoralizing’ views from those ‘shared values’ she asks us to believe in. In other words, behind the seemingly conciliatory plea for a ‘trust in unity’ lies a divisive act of expulsion.
Prins, starting with the evaluation of the possibility of individual responsibility, ends up with a double-bind of her own: in order for us to be prepared to believe that we do indeed have certain shared interest and values, we must be prepared to believe that Wekker does not share those same interest and values. Effectively she claims that in order to unite, we must be prepared to exclude. Her proposed unity is ultimately a false one. If we take this oft-trodden road – double-bind, polarization, plea for unity – it is ultimately us, not Wekker, who create what we wanted to avoid at all cost: an unsurpassable dichotomy, the impossibility to forge alliances.
Does this mean we must reject Prins appeal to be prepared to believe in certain shared values? Should we give up the quest for a certain unity, a common anti-racism?
Perhaps it is better not to shoot ourselves in the foot again by casting Prins ideas aside and thus dividing the situation once again. Perhaps we better hold Prins to her call for unity, and urge her to ‘be prepared to believe’ that Wekker and Prins (and all of us anti-racist that agree with both their worries) in fact do have certain shared interests and values (anti-racism, for example!). The only way to go beyond the current divisions is to insist that another kind of unity might be possible; that some shared battle indeed exists.
What is clear, however, is that this unity will have to be constructed in a different way. It is also clear, is that in order to construct this shared battle we should reject the current strategy, and reevaluate what we mean when we say racism is implicit, structural or institutional.
Perhaps there is an easy and quite obvious way to change the perspective. It’s clear that Prins comes to her contradictory conclusions because she focuses – almost without reflection – on the question of the personal double-bind, and thus on (the possibility of) personal morality, the possibility for an individual to do good deeds. Why? If implicit racism is about structural racism – as Wekker constantly emphasises– is it not very clear that we should start, not with evaluating (the possibility of) individual moral acts, but rather with evaluating structures?
Since the debate on implicit racism is easily overheated, and since it is quickly brought back to a question of individual or collective (cf. Arnold Grunberg) culpability, perhaps it is best to first leave the debate on implicit racism, and first – in a totally different domain – get some sense of what an implicit structure may look like. Thus we bracket both the moralistic question and the question of racism for some time. Only after we have some sense of what an implicit structure might be, do we slowly return to the topic of implicit racism, and then finally to the question individual and collective ethics.
In the next blog-post, we will turn to the The Fantastic Four. There we find a very precise example how implicit structures, or ‘silent orderings’ as Gloria Wekker calls them, come about.
Crude Thinking 