Background: Race and ethnicity

Background: Race and ethnicity


Before getting into this blog, I want to remind you all of the concept of ‘social construction’: when discussing issues such as the social expectations around gender (what is expected of males and females), these expectations are socially constructed. In other words, they are not natural or innate. We are not discussing obvious physical differences (our bits so to speak), rather, we are looking at those things that are socially constructed.

In this blog, I want to discuss how similar issues emerge around ‘race’. What will we see, is that while we use the word ‘race’ in everyday language, it is a word that has an important and specific meaning that has to do with identifying the social as well as the biological traits that people display. This is the key theme of this blog, is that the word race is about looking at not simply biological traits, but the personality and social traits that has come to be associated with skin colour!

As we will see, this belief was driven and also drove scientific research that justified colonialism and slavery. As I discuss this, you will probably draw important parallels between historical attitudes to women and the attitudes we see towards different groups of people based on their skin, hair and eye colour.


What is race?


Theoretically, the concept of race is based on the idea that a specific population differs in the “frequency of one or more biological traits” (Blakey 1999: 1). In this way, races are usually characterised as having several distinguishing characteristics. Now, the way that we think of these characteristics in our contemporary society is usually biological: as I mentioned, skin colour, eye colour and shape, hair and other such features.

Importantly however, though race is a biological concept, it is also socially constructed (Blakey 1999: 1). Now there are two important dimensions to this.

The first is that biological traits are linked to social traits. That is, the colour of your skin and other such biological features also gives us insight into your personality and aspects of who you are. That is, by looking at the colour of your skin, I could automatically tell you the type of person that you. There are many examples of this that you may recognise include:

• That Asians are are good at maths;
• Middle Easterners do not respect women;
• Pacific Islanders and Africans are inherently lazy; and
• Jews are good with money.

Hopefully you can see that these generalisations are pretty silly: there is no reason that just because you come from somewhere in Asia (Vietnam, China, Thailand or the dozen or so other countries), you would be automatically good with maths. The point here is that we see social traits seen to extend biological features.

These are broad generalisations – and wrong ones at that – used to describe and define entire populations of people. All you need to do is think about the people that you know: how much are they represented by these descriptions?

Well, the obvious answer is that they are not: my friend Ella is Chinese: she is hopeless at maths. But according to the above descriptions, she should be: she should be genetically programmed to be good at maths. So we can immediately question these descriptions – for both their accuracy and why would they be used in the first place.

The second dimension aspect of race is that it is relational – much like gender. That is, I identify myself as advanced and civilised by comparing myself to you. So, for example, we know that we are more advanced by comparing ourselves to others.


What is racism?


So then, what is racism and why is it important to understand it in our contemporary society? Racism is a form of discrimination based on the belief of race: the belief that one race is superior to another. We can see racism expressed overtly: through explicit thoughts, feelings, or acts, or covertly (unconsciously) through institutions that promote inequality between races.

That is, racism is an inherent belief in the superiority of one population (or ‘race’) over all others and leads to a belief that one group of people have the right to dominance. In reverse, this also means that one ‘racial group’ is believed to be inferior to others. This gives the dominant group the right to control other groups. We see this as a combination of power, prejudice and discrimination.

We see racism expressed in different ways:

• Institutional racism: this can be seen as racial discrimination by governments, corporations, or other large organisations that is inherent in their structures and stops people from entering or progressing.

For example, in Australia we celebrate Easter and do not put exams on Easter weekends. As a lecturer I try and avoid exams and assignments anything due around Ede.

Historically, however, no universities recognise holidays other than traditional Christian ones – though this is changing. You could argue that the fact that we are blind to a religious celebration that represents a large proportion of our population is institutionalised racism.

• Environmental racism: is racial discrimination in environmental policy-making and the targeting of certain communities for toxic waste disposal and placement of polluting industries. For example, if you do a search in NSW of the location of highly polluting industries, you are likely to find a strong correlation between their location and the proximity of indigenous communities.


Origins of racism


It is important for us to understand where this came from and what the results are, for these also link to modernity and the way our societies function today.
The first phase of racism was based on simple observations: when the English for example, went to Africa for the first time they observed that the local population would sleep during the day. Now it was 40 degrees so it makes sense to me that you would work in the morning and the afternoon, while sleeping during the day. Based on simple observation, a number of simple correlations were drawn: blacks sleep during the day so all blacks are lazy.

This development expanded with increases in science and scientific processes: remember how observation was an important element of science and the rise of modernity. So in many ways, such racism is a direct result of modernity. So some people argue that racism, as we know it, emerged only in modern times.

Other ‘scientific’ measure also emerged that supported such observations especially around cranial measures (the thicker the skull the ‘dumber the person’). Importantly however, what you will find is that all these scientific tests merely reiterated the existing social order.

This also gave rise to the justification of colonialism and the slave trade. That is, how do you justify invading the nation and taking the land of another group of people? Well, you can justify it on the grounds of superiority and inferiority: that is, as the civilised and superior European, there was an inherent right to take lands and also civilise the ‘savages’.

While justified by science, it was couched in terms that it was a burden for the white man to have to carry: that is, it is the white man’s burden to bring civilisation to those less fortunate – in this case ‘black’ and coloured people.


Biological determinism

Now all this gave rise to the concept of ‘biological determinism’: that is, all human nature is inherited and all human attributes are fixed. Further, this human behaviour is based on the way that people look (absurd I know). The belief then, is that human behaviour is therefore innate and cannot be changed or altered. In this way, the concept of biological determinism disregards or denies the effects of environmental variables.

Such a viewpoint leads logically to the idea that criminals cannot be reformed – they are, in effect, ‘born that way’.

Biological determinism taken to its logical conclusion divorces human action from human responsibility. This then places the blame (or the credit) for actions (both failures and successes) simply on someone’s genetics. Indeed, in this form biological determinism dismisses the idea of free will entirely.

Between 1930-1980 such a concept was directly challenged, and we see the development of alternative theories of race that dismisses the concept of ‘innate superiority’ and the influence of biology on behaviour and social status.

During this period we see the civil rights movement really take hold as well as the emergence of anti-racist science. By 1950, the link between biology and social characteristics is broadly accepted as a social myth. This was confirmed beyond doubt, when in 1962 Frank Livingstone analysed blood group variations, and he found no evidence of differences of any genetic traits amongst different social groups such as Caucasian and “Negroid” (the official term for ‘black’ people then). In fact, he found that all biological traits were independent of one another. Livingstone also found that a great deal of genetic traits were based on the ecological conditions – as people biologically adapted to their environments.


Why is this important?

To understand the importance of the concept race, there is a need to understand both the political implications of biological categorisation as well as the scientific biases in this social construction. Blakey (1999: 1) argues that races are merely the “convenient way” of lumping and splitting human groups into different divisions based on the combination of several traits. But the reality of these categories is that their creation is by scientists rather than nature. Using ‘averages’ and generic categories, Blakey argues, we get statistical representations of group’s biological characteristics that in reality, represent no one. It is here that the social construction of race occurs.

Think about this class: imagine I was told to describe the average student in my class. Let’s say I did: but how representative is this average of any one of you. When I sat in the lecture today, I would say the ‘average’ student is: about 21, female, Caucasian with light hair. But who does this average really represent? The answer is very few people if anyone! And more than that, there is no way you can guess what that person is like by just looking at them.

Despite this, race remains a concept that is seen to be very real, natural and fixed. Politically, it can be used to define and marginalise people. Over the last few years, we have seen broad groups of people categorised together and described in certain ways: this does not need to be overt – it can be subtle and the results are devastating. Worst still, it follows a long tradition of giving social characteristics to biological traits.

What it also does do is that it establishes socially constructed hierarchies within our society that can be used for political purposes.


Conclusion

So where does all this take us? If we think about the last couple of weeks, we see a link between biology and social behaviour. This was a link that was justified by science and resulted in the justification of slavery and colonialism.

That link has been proven to be false – a myth – but it persists in more subtle ways today. In many ways, it is harder to identify because it is subtle: rather than overt it is covert. It is hidden in language and as I mentioned a few weeks ago, in the images we see on television.

I once heard a US General in Iraq state that they only keep body counts of Coalition servicemen and women – not that of Iraqi civilians. In his language, it sounded like that the dead from the other side did not matter as much. I struggle to understand how the suffering of one group of people can be calculated to be below that of our own: the death of a 12 year old in an explosion – be it a war zone or not – must be unbearable for any family no matter the colour of their skin or religion they follow. To suggest other wise buys into centuries and myths and falsehoods that has got us into the mess we are currently in.


References:
Arvanitakis, J. (2009) Contemporary Society, OUP, Melbourne
Blakey ML (1999), ‘Scientific racism and the biological concept of race’, Literature and
Psychology, vol. 45, pp. 29–43.