Defining Racism

If anyone has been following the comments in my last post, "If only we could take it back..." (January 11, 2008) then you will see that I have been asked the question:

"How do you define racism?"

Which is an important question to ask, given the topic and given a blog called "Mixed Race America."

And I have actually answered this in various forms in previous posts:

"Can I be racist?" (August 28, 2007)
and
"Individual Bigotry vs. Institutional Racism" (November 11, 2007)

And I've also acknowledged the difficulty of talking about race--why it's hard and why it can be so emotionally exhausting:

"Talking about race" (July 9, 2007)

And about my idealized vision of getting rid of the analytic category of race and replacing it with an anti-racist praxis and philosophy:

"Getting rid of race" (December 14, 2007) and "Living the Anti-racist Praxis" (December 14, 2007).

I don't expect anyone to go back and re-read all of these posts, unless you really do want to know what I think about all of this and how I define racism. I included these posts to show that I have blogged about it before but what I really want to know is, how do YOU define racism. I didn't get a lot of responses when I blogged about these issues in the past, so perhaps if I withhold my own definition, people will be more willing to give your opinion in the comment section--and of course if you then want to read what my definition is, you can and we can have a dialogue about it.

Or perhaps if it would help to know my own thumbnail belief, the cocktail party definition I would give is that racism is about an institutional system that upholds a racial hierarchy; in the U.S. this has meant those of European descent having access and privileges unavailable to non-European Americans.

I also think if we are going to talk about racism, we should also talk about white privilege--and one person who really talks about this in a very clear way is Peggy Macintosh, whose essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" is available by clicking on the title of the essay.

So another heavy topic--and here I was planning to tell you about some films I've recently seen featuring Paris as a little lighter blogging. C'est la vie!

Dressing White

This weekend I went to a party and was describing my research on passing to a party guest I had never met before. He told me he knew someone in his MBA program who was passing--a young woman who had a black father and a white mother. I asked him how he knew she was "passing"--and he said that she had disclosed her family background to him and that since she "dressed" and "talked" white then it seemed as if she was passing as white.

I know I said I would write more about bigotry vs. institutional racism, but I thought I'd start with this anecdote because in some ways it reflects both in nuanced form. I'm not necessarily calling this person a "bigot" but I find his remarks problematic and steeped, at heart, in a rhetoric of racial hierarchy. Because what does it mean that she "dressed" and "talked" white? Especially in the context of being in an MBA program? The unspoken element was that she was not "dressing" or "speaking" as a black person--but what does that mean? And if she were acting "black" would that be more or less appropriate in an MBA program? Do people who act "black" have less resources in gaining an entry into a Fortune 500 company upon completion of an MBA program? This kind of thinking--subtle beliefs in the essence of whiteness and blackness and the implicit hierarchy and privileging of this coding, especially in certain spaces like MBA programs shows the deep effects of racial and racist thinking.

I mean, lets think about it. This guy I was speaking to (who, should I mention, presented as a white American man, but since we're talking about passing, I suppose I can't say for certain how he identified since it never came up) graduates, gets a job, is responsible for hiring people: is he going to be more or less likely to hire an African American person who fits with his conception of "whiteness" which he equated with "normalacy" (this came out when I pressed him about what he meant that she dressed and talked white--like everyone else--like every other middle-class normal American). Doesn't this imply that if you don't present as a white-middle-class American that you are labeled as "other" and will therefore be less likely to be hired? And if normalcy is, indeed, equated with whiteness, then isn't this an example of how, institutionally, racism gets perpetuated at the micro level? Can we imagine Condoleeza Rice, with the same set of credentials and ideologies, wearing cornrows? I'm not a fan of Rice but I did sympathize HUGELY when she caught all the flack she did for just wearing knee-high boots a few years back when she went touring Europe (there's that famous photo of her with the boots at a US army base in Germany). What would happen if she started wearing more "ethnic" clothing or letting her hair go natural?

Individual Bigotry & Institutional Racism

The first time I remember hearing a formal definition for racism was in my freshman year black studies class, which was an introduction to race class. The professor was clear about defining racism (in the U.S.) in terms of a system of power--in terms of institutions. And that because the system of power (at least in the late 80s although really it is true to this day) was skewed towards white people (and more specifically straight white men), people of color could not be racist. They could exhibit internalized racism or individual acts of bigotry, but because, on the whole, people of color did not have access to systems of power and institutional influence (if you just look at the U.S. government, people of color are either absent or in extreme minority in every branch--executive, legislative, and judicial--and we haven't even talked about the scarcity of people of color who own Fortune 500 companies, major media outlets, or who act as presidents of universities), then they could not be racist.

Although I'm not sure I entirely agree with this definition now (things have *slightly* improved in 20 years, although depending on who you talk to, they may have gotten worse, but more importantly thinking and theorizing about race has also become more nuanced and tried to account for the complexity of race to acknowledge that there are some people of color who actually do wield some institutional influence and a measure of power in which they could act in a racist fashion--let alone hold racist beliefs--Omi & Winant (see list of favorite books to the right) are really great in terms of these issues).

I know I've written about these things before, but I suppose in a blog devoted to mixed race issues, it's not a bad thing to repeat, especially in light of the recent posts around judgment.

Because I think the central question that people have (or that gets debated) is whether people of color can be racist. And the funny thing is, I think for many people there is an automatic answer (either yes, ie: "I know lots of black people who hate white people and treat them badly" or no, ie: "black people may hate white people but they can't force them out of a job").

And we can go back and forth on this question, but the real issue is about history & power. Because history has a long reach and power is nebulous--it isn't just about who holds public office or runs Fortune 500 companies. It's about social and cultural beliefs related to race--and these are harder to overcome than just appointing an African American to be Secretary of State.

Yes, each person is able to discriminate on an individual basis--to perform individual acts of bigotry and hatred--to voice them and in some instances act on them. But racism--this is about the combination of history and power and the residue of that. It's about racial hierarchies and a belief in who fits into a norm or standard--it is about believing there IS a norm or standard to fit into--racially.

I think this post is already long enough so I'm going to save the rest (particularly some examples and why this is even an important topic to talk about) for Part II tomorrow. But as always, feel free to chime in with your comments.