Forgetting Class

Last night I had my monthly Paul Gilroy reading group and the text under discussion was Against Race. There are some intriguing ideas in this book, especially the central thesis, which is that in order to really attack racism, we need to discard "race" as an analytical category once and for all because it's not doing us any good to replicate these notions of "race" that are perniciously associated with fascism [caveat: some of these ideas Gilroy spells out and others, like the links to fascism, are a result of last night's discussion and my own interpretation of this text].

One of the things that frustrated me about Gilroy's text was the central question of how we are to do this--how to rid ourselves of race as an analytic--a major difficulty within the academy and an impossibility outside of it. And another of my group members (a very astute colleague from History) pointed out that one of the things that Gilroy doesn't do enough of in this work or in other works is to pay attention to class.

I think we centered mostly on class as economics, but ala Pierre Bourdieu (French sociologist/cultural critic) class can also be thought of as your educational level, your regional/geographic location, as well as your economic earning power. A plumber may make more than a junior faculty member but may not have a college degree. The professor will be perceived as having a higher class status (higher cultural capital in terms of education) but a lower financial class status (money in the bank)--of course this is also dependent on people realizing that assistant professors get paid less than plumbers on average, and the type of school (Research I vs. community college) and region (plumbers in CA I wager make far more than in NC, especially in rural areas). Of course, you could argue that depending on the discipline, the earning potential of someone with a PhD is much greater than a high school graduate with a certificate/qualifications in plumbing. (but if you are in the humanities then this argument tends to fall apart).

All of which is to say, class is tricky--and not talked about enough--and especially the intersections of class and race. I've started to assume that when people talk about people living in "urban" areas they are racially coding people and what they really mean are black (and sometimes Latino) people, but rarely does an image of an Asian immigrant come to mind. References to "ghettoes" or "projects" seem to be references to black and Latino people living in these spaces, while "trailer parks" seem to be the domain of poor whites.

NPR's Juan Williams just did a piece about a study released by the Pew Research center on how African Americans are divided by class issues--for more, go to this link here.

I do think that as much as we don't talk about race in our society, we REALLY don't talk about class issues and differences. Almost everyone I know is part of America's "middle class" but the range of who either self-identifies or gets told that they are part of the middle class includes a couple, both doctors and another couple, a nurse and a data manager (neither of whom ever went to college) and whose household incomes are, respectively, just under half a million and just over one hundred thousand. This seems to me a very wide middle class indeed.

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.