Theories of Race and Racism A Reader This comprehensive reader brings together foundational works in the study of race and racism by such authors as W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon and Robert Park with some of the most exciting contemporary writings in the field by, amongst others, Paul Gilroy, Homi Bhabha and bell hooks. Theories of Race and Racism is divided into six main sections covering the following key topics: • • • • • • Origins and Transformations Sociology, Race and Social Theory Racism and Anti-Semitism Colonialism, Race and the Other Feminism, Difference and Identity Changing Boundaries and Spaces Each section begins with a brief editorial introduction, providing a guide to the readings in that section by historically contextualising them and relating them to other writings in the reader. Cross-national in content, historical in scope and offering a variety of perspectives, Theories of Race and Racism will be an invaluable resource for undergraduates across a range of disciplines. Les Back is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. John Solomos is Professor of Sociology at South Bank University. Routledge Student Readers Series Editor: Chris Jenks, Professor of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London ForthcomingTitles: Gender: A Reader Edited by Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott Theories of Race and Racism A Reader Edited and introduced by Les Back and John Solomos London and New York First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. © 2000 Les Back and John Solomos: editorial material; individual chapters to their contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Theories of race and racism: a reader/edited by Les Back and John Solomos. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Race. 2. Race relations. 3. Racism. I. Back, Les, 1962– II. Solomos, John. HT1521.T473 1999 305.8—dc21 99–16826 CIP ISBN 0–415–15671–8 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–15672–6 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-00597-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17520-4 (Glassbook Format) For Nikolas Solomos, Daniel Solomos, Stephanie Back, Sophie Back and Charlie Back, in the hope of a better future Contents Notes on contributors Series Editor’s Preface Preface Acknowledgements xi xvii xix xxi Les Back and John Solomos I NT R O D U C T I O N : T H E O R I S I N G R A C E A N D R A C I S M 1 PART ONE O r i gi n s a n d t r a n s fo r m a t i o n s 1 Winthrop D. Jordan F I R ST I MPR E S S I O N S 33 2 Michael Banton THE IDIOM OF RACE 51 3 Tzvetan Todorov RACE AND RACISM 64 4 Oliver C. Cox R A C E R E L AT I O N S 71 5 W. E. B. Du Bois T H E C O N S ERVAT I O N O F R A C E S 79 viii CONTENTS 6 Gunnar Myrdal RACIAL BELIEFS IN AMERICA 87 PART T WO S o c i o l o gy, ra c e a n d s o c i a l t h e o r y 7 Rober t E. Park T H E N AT UR E O F R A C E R E L AT I O N S 105 8 Ruth Benedict R A C E : W H AT I T I S N OT 113 9 John Rex R A C E R E L AT I O N S I N S O C I O L O G I C A L T H E O RY 119 10 Robert Miles A PR O P O S T H E I D E A O F ‘ R A C E ’ . . . A G A I N 125 11 Stuart Hall OLD AND NEW IDENTITIES, OLD AND NEW ETHNICITIES 144 12 David Theo Goldberg RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 154 13 Howard Winant T H E T H E O R E T I C A L STAT US O F T H E C O N C E P T O F R A C E 181 PART THREE Racism and anti-Semitism 14 George L. Mosse T H E J E W S : M Y T H A N D C O UNT ER - M Y T H 195 15 Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer ELEMENTS OF ANTI-SEMITISM 206 16 Zygmunt Bauman M O D ER N I T Y, R A C I S M , E X T ER M I N AT I O N 212 17 Sander L. Gilman ARE JEWS WHITE? 229 CONTENTS ix 18 Matthew F. Jacobson LOOKING JEWISH, SEEING JEWS 238 PART FOUR Colonialism, race and the other 19 Frantz Fanon T H E FA C T O F B L A C K NE S S 257 20 Lola Young IMP ER I A L C U LT UR E 267 21 Anne McClintock T H E W H I T E FA M I LY O F M A N 287 22 Chandra Talpade Mohanty UN D ER WE ST ER N E Y E S 302 23 Ann L. Stoler SEXUAL AFFRONTS AND RACIAL FRONTIERS 324 24 Homi K. Bhabha ‘ R A C E ’ , T I M E A N D T H E R E V I S I O N O F M O D ER N I T Y 354 PART FIVE Feminism, difference and identity 25 bell hooks RACISM AND FEMINISM 373 26 Hazel V. Carby W H I T E W O M A N L I ST E N ! 389 27 Patricia Hill Collins B L A C K F E M I N I ST T H O U G H T 404 28 Patricia J. Williams RACE AND RIGHTS 421 29 Avtar Brah D I F F ER E N C E , D I V ER S I T Y, D I F F ER E NT I AT I O N 431 x CONTENTS 30 Ruth Frankenberg W H I T E W O M E N , R A C E M AT T ER S 447 31 Barbara Christian BLACK FEMINISM AND THE ACADEMY 462 PART SIX Changing boundaries and spaces 32 Gargi Bhattacharyya BLACK SKIN/WHITE BOARDS 478 33 Paul Gilroy T H E D I A L E C T I C S O F D I A S P O R A I D E NT I F I C AT I O N 490 34 Kobena Mercer I D E NT I T Y A N D D I V ER S I T Y I N P O ST M O D ER N P O L I T I C S 503 35 Michael Keith I D E NT I T Y A N D T H E S PA C E S O F AU T H E NT I C I T Y 521 36 Richard Dyer T H E M AT T ER O F W H I T E NE S S 539 37 Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw RACE, REFORM AND RETRENCHMENT 549 38 Stephen Steinberg A M ER I C A A G A I N AT T H E C R O S S R O A D S 561 39 Chetan Bhatt T H E L O R E O F T H E H O M E L A N D : H I N D U N AT I O N A L I S M A N D I N D I GE N I ST ‘ NE O R A C I S M ’ 573 40 Slavoj Zizek E N J OY YO UR N AT I O N A S YO UR S E L F ! 594 41 K. Anthony Appiah R A C I A L I D E NT I T Y A N D R A C I A L I D E NT I F I C AT I O N Guide to further reading Name index Subject index 607 616 629 639 Notes on contributors TheodorW. Adorno (1903–69) was one of the leading figures in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research from the 1930s until his death. He published a number of books on various aspects of critical theory, including Prisms (1967), Negative Dialectics (1973) and The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (1990). K. Anthony Appiah is Professor of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also an editor of the journal Transition. He has researched and written on the history of ideas about race and on philosophical thought and race. His books include In My Father’s House:Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (1992) and The Dictionary of Global Culture (with Henry Louis Gates Jr, 1997). Michael Banton is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Bristol. He is a former President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. He has written widely on race and ethnicity, and his previous books include Racial and Ethnic Competition (1983), Promoting Racial Harmony (1985), RacialTheories (1987 and 1998) and International Action Against Racial Discrimination (1996). Zygmunt Bauman is Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the University of Leeds. He is the author of a wide range of studies in social theory, including Legislators and Interpreters (1987) Modernity and Ambivalence (1991) and Postmodern Ethics (1993). Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) was a leading American anthropologist and taught at Columbia University in NewYork. Her books included Patterns of Culture (1945) and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1947). xii CONTRIBUTORS Homi K. Bhabha is Chester D.Tripp Professor in Humanities at the University of Chicago. He is one of the most influential theorists in the field of postcolonialism and he has written widely on key issues related to colonialism and postcolonialism. He is the author of The Location of Culture (1994) and the editor of Nation and Narration (1990). Chetan Bhatt is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Goldsmiths College. He has carried out extensive research on race, ethnicity and new religious movements, including detailed studies of Hindu nationalism and Aryanism in India. He is the author of Liberation and Purity (1997) and a number of papers on aspects of Hindu nationalism. Gargi Bhattacharyya is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Sociology at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of Tales of Dark-skinnedWomen (1998) and numerous articles on questions of race, gender and culture. Avtar Brah is Senior lecturer in Extra-Mural Studies at Birkbeck College in the University of London. She is the author of Cartographies of Diaspora (1996) and of numerous articles and reports on aspects of race, gender and identity. She is a member of the editorial collective of Feminist Review. Hazel V. Carby is Chair of African and African-American Studies and a Professor of American Studies at Yale University. She is the author of Reconstructing Womanhood:The Emergence of the AfroAmericanWoman Novelist (1987) and Race Men (1998). Barbara Christian is Professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of BlackWomen Novelists (1980) and Black Feminist Criticism (1985). Patricia Hill Collins is Charles PhelpsTaft Professor of Sociology in the Department of AfricanAmerican Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She has written widely on issues of gender, race and social class, especially in relation to African-American women. She has written Black FeministThought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1990) and FightingWords: BlackWomen and the Search for Justice (1998). Oliver C. Cox (1901–74) was born in Trinidad and spent most of his life in the United States. He taught at Lincoln University andWayne State University. He researched various aspects of the history of capitalism and its evolution, including the history of race and racism. He published a number of studies of the history of capitalism, including The Foundations of Capitalism (1959) and Capitalism as a System (1964). KimberléWilliams Crenshaw is Professor of Law at UCLA and the Columbia School of Law in NewYork. She is one of the leading scholars in the area of race and law in developing what is called a Critical Race Theory in legal studies. She is a co-editor, along with N. Gotanda, G. Peller and K. Thomas, of Critical RaceTheory (1995). W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was a student at Fisk, Harvard and Berlin and became a leading black CONTRIBUTORS xiii sociologist and activist. He was a staff member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the editor of its journal The Crisis from 1910 to 1934. He published a wide range of books during his lifetime, including The Philadelphia Negro (1899), Dusk of Dawn (1940) and Black Reconstruction (1956). Richard Dyer is Professor of Film Studies at the University ofWarwick. He has written on stars, entertainment and representation and on gay and lesbian culture. He is the author of Heavenly Bodies (1986), Only Entertainment (1992) and The Matter of Images (1993). Frantz Fanon (1925–61) was born in the French Caribbean island of Martinique. He studied medicine and psychiatry in France and worked in a hospital in Algeria between 1953 and 1956. He identified with Algeria’s struggle for independence. He was the author of a number of books, including TheWretched of the Earth (1961) and A Dying Colonialism (1967). Ruth Frankenberg is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Davis. She has researched and written on racism, anti-racism and whiteness, and is currently researching spiritual practices in the United States. She is the editor of DisplacingWhiteness (1997). Sander L. Gilman is Henry R. Luce Professor of the Liberal Arts and Biology at the University of Chicago. He has researched and written on the history of medicine, sexuality and race. Among his books are Difference and Pathology (1985), Jewish Self-Hatred (1986) and Smart Jews (1996). Paul Gilroy is Professor of African-American Studies and Sociology at Yale University. He was previously Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is one of the leading theorists on questions of race and culture in relation to the African diaspora and his major books include There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack (1987), The Black Atlantic (1993) and Small Acts (1993). David Theo Goldberg is Director and Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Arizona State University. He has researched and written on the history and contemporary expression of racism and was one of the founding editors of the journal Social Identities. He is the author of Racist Culture (1993), and he has edited a number of influential collections, including Anatomy of Racism (1990), Jewish Identity (1993) and Multiculturalism (1994). Stuart Hall is Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the Open University. He was the co-author of the influential text Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (1978), the author of The Hard Road to Renewal:Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (1988) and the editor of numerous volumes, including NewTimes:The Changing Face of Politics (1988) and Formations of Modernity (1992). bell hooks is Distinguished Professor of English at City College in NewYork. She has written a wide range of essays on racism, feminism and contemporary popular culture. Her numerous books include Yearning (1990), Black Looks (1992) and Outlaw Culture (1994). xiv CONTRIBUTORS Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) was the Director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt from 1930 to 1958. He was the author of a number of books, including Eclipse of Reason (1947) and CriticalTheory: Selected Essays (1972). Matthew F. Jacobson is Associate Professor of American Studies and History atYale University. He is the author of Special Sorrows:The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish and Jewish Immigrants in the United States (1995). Winthrop D. Jordan isWilliam F.Winter Professor of History at the University of Mississippi. He has published a number of books on the history of race relations in the United States, including White Over Black:American Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550–1812 (1968), TheWhite Man’s Burden (1974) and Tumult and Silence at Second Creek (1993). Michael Keith is Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has carried out research on race and policing, urban politics and the politics of identity. He is the author of Race, Riots and Policing: Lore and Disorder in a Multi-Racist Society (1993) and he has co-edited such influential collections as Place and the Politics of Identity (edited with Steve Pile, 1993) and Geographies of Resistance (edited with Steve Pile, 1997). Anne McClintock is Professor of English at Columbia University. She has written on gender, race and sexuality in a number of journals, including Social Text,Transition and Critical Inquiry. Her books include Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nations, and Postcolonial Perspectives (edited with Aamir Mufti and Ella Shohat, 1997). Kobena Mercer studied at the St Martin’s School of Art and Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has worked at the British Film Institute and at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His publications include Welcome to the Jungle (1994) and a wide range of articles on the intersection between race and cultural studies. Robert Miles is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow. He has written widely on various aspects of racism and has carried out extensive research on the history of racism in Britain. Among his books are Racism and Migrant Labour (1982), Racism (1989) and Racism After ‘Race Relations’ (1993). Chandra Talpade Mohanty is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at Hamilton College, and Core Faculty at the Graduate School of the Union Institute, Cincinnati. She has worked extensively on questions of feminist theory, pedagogy and democratic culture. Her books include Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (edited with M. Jacqui Alexander, 1997) and ThirdWorldWomen and the Politics of Feminism (edited with Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres, 1991). George L. Mosse (1918–99) was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He previously held academic positions in the UK, South Africa, Holland and Israel. He was involved in theWiener Library and was co-editor of the prestigious Journal of Contemporary History. He CONTRIBUTORS xv has written and researched on a wide range of issues, including studies of modern German and European history. His books include The Crisis of German Ideology (1966), The Nationalization the Masses (1975) and Nationalism and Sexuality (1985). Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) was a leading Swedish economist and sociologist who carried out research on a wide range of social and economic issues. He was commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation to conduct one of the first systematic studies of the position of black Americans.The study was eventually published as An American Dilemma (1944) and he also published a number of other influential books, including Value in Social Theory (1958) and Asian Drama (1968). Robert E. Park (1864–1944) was one of the leading figures in the Chicago School of Sociology. He, along with his students, made major contributions to the development of urban sociology, and the study of race relations, collective behaviour and social control. He published An Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1924) and numerous papers that were published in edited collections after his death, including Race and Culture (1950). John Rex is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Warwick. He has researched and written widely on theories of race relations and on race relations in Britain. Among his books are Race, Colonialism and the City (1973), Race and Ethnicity (1986) and Ethnic Minorities in the Modern Nation State (1996). Stephen Steinberg is a Professor in the Department of Urban Studies at Queens College and the PhD Program in Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of NewYork. His books include The Ethnic Myth (1981) and Turning Back (1995). Ann L. Stoler is Professor of Anthropology, History and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. She has published widely on race and sexuality in colonial societies, including Race and the Education of Desire (1995) and Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a BourgeoisWorld (with Frederick Cooper, 1997). Tzvetan Todorov works at the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. He was written a number of books, including Mikhail Bakhtin (1977), The Conquest of America (1984) and The Morals of History (1995). Patricia J.Williams is a Professor of Law at Columbia University. She also writes a column for The Nation, and her books include The Rooster’s Egg (1995) and Seeing a Color-Blind Future (1997). Howard Winant is a Professor of Sociology at Temple University, Philadelphia. He is the author, with Michael Omi, of Racial Formation in the United States (1986 and 1994) and Racial Conditions (1994). Lola Young is a former professional actress and is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Middlesex University. She has published widely on questions about race and the cinema, including her book Fear of the Dark (1996). xvi CONTRIBUTORS Slavoj Zizek is a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He has published widely on social theory, psychoanalysis and related issues. His numerous books include The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Looking Awry (1991), The Plague of Fantasies (1997) and TheTicklish Subject (1999). Series Editor’s Preface S O C I O L O G Y, I N U N I V E R S I T I E S , colleges and schools, remains an attractive and buoyant subject – one with which students find it easy and rewarding to connect, and consequently a high recruiter. Undergraduate students, often in large classes with limited contact time with lecturers, have not, however, always been well served with accessible and appropriate foundational reading material. The Routledge Student Readers series has been developed to answer that need. It aims to fill the gap between introductory textbooks, which tend to be perspectival in character and are all too often culture-specific and ahistorical, and the truly independent learning which is the goal of all good university education. The series is envisaged as a positive and informative response to the mass audiences and rapidly changing circumstances that increasingly shape initial university education. Books within the series are also intended to stimulate the interest of undergraduates and to engage the critical faculties of the reader in a manner likely to enable a transfer of analytic skill from one context to another. This is to be achieved by directing the student through a series of carefully selected core readings which transcend particular social structures both in space and time. These books are therefore not dedicated to encouraging students in an over-attachment to the detailed retention of particular empirical situations. Their concerns are theoretical, though informative of practice, rather than purely empirical. Sociologists do need to know ‘facts’ about the social world but primarily they require conceptual frameworks within which all and any social facts can be understood and problematised. It is not the intention of this series to attempt to produce an orthodoxy or a ‘middle-way’ for the discipline or its sub-disciplines, nor to recommend an established xviii SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE set of topics for its curriculum and pedagogy. It intends rather to engage the student in a set of oppositions, contradictions and dilemmas that have preoccupied and thus organized sociological thought over the years. Critically the books in this series are organized in the form of readers but readers arranged thematically to combine the ancient and modern (or traditional and fashionable) at a conceptual level. Students of our discipline need to be strongly advised that the sociological tradition is neither a museum nor a series of islands disconnected through heroic epistemological breaks. They need to know, for example, that Foucault would make no sense unless Durkheim had set the problem before, that the nihilism of postmodernity only acquires vitality in response to the formalism of modernity, that modernity and science are and continue to be major human achievements in controlling and organizing the world. Welcome to the new series, Routledge Student Readers, and I trust that your experience as a reader of this work matches up to our aspirations in compiling the series. I am particularly pleased that our first volume should be on such a timely and critical topic as Race and Racism. It would be hard to imagine, in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry in the UK and the Rodney King incident in the US, that any part of our culture or any institution or organization within our society could be untouched by a conscious recognition of issues concerning ethnic integration. However, we are also only too painfully aware of the differentiation and stratifications that race continues to draw, marked out by vicious overt neo-fascist thuggery at one end of the spectrum and, perhaps more dangerously, by unthinking, covert ‘institutional racism’ at the other. This is a fine book, brimming with insightful, stimulating and carefully selected pieces of writing on the topic. It also has the advantage of having been diligently edited by John Solomos and Les Back, two of the leading sociological contributors to this area of study with reputations extending beyond national boundaries and beyond academic circles. Chris Jenks, Professor of Sociology Goldsmiths College, University of London Preface T H E P R O D U C T I O N O F A R E A D E R of this kind is a long and arduous process, and is in many ways more demanding than writing a book on the same topic. As usual we have accumulated a range of debts on the way that need to be acknowledged. In particular we are grateful to the encouragement and advice in one way or another of Martin Bulmer, Chetan Bhatt, David Theo Goldberg, Clive Harris, Michael Keith, Tony Kushner, Marco Martiniello and Liza Schuster at various stages of the project. The comments of the anonymous academic referees used by Routledge to look at a draft of the whole Reader (a thankless task) were also extremely helpful in influencing us to revise it somewhat in ways that have hopefully made it more useful. Even if we did not listen to all the suggestions, we thought about them. Jeffrey Weeks, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at South Bank University, was helpful in facilitating the final stages of work on the project. The help of our publisher, Mari Shullaw, who first suggested to us that we put this Reader together, has been important at a number of stages. Even after all the delays she believed in the project and we hope that the final product justifies her faith. We are also grateful for the hard work of Geraldine Williams in tracking down copyright holders and ensuring that we gained permission to use the extracts that we wanted to use. Liza Schuster diligently searched for some of the less accessible books and articles and made our job easier; she also kindly read a draft of all the introductory material and provided useful suggestions. Finally, but not least, we are both aware that projects such as this one would not be feasible without the help and indulgence of our families. They put up with the time taken by yet another book with a sense of humour and patience, and xx PREFACE provided us with the love and care we needed as well as encouragement. Though this may be a lost cause, we do hope to make up for time lost in the future. For John Solomos numerous trips to watch the Baggies play the beautiful game and struggle to return to their place in the sun have as usual provided a source of inspiration and a distraction from the pettiness of academic life, helping to put things in perspective. Various London-based Baggies provided good company, a sense of humour and a fair degree of cynicism on our often wasted trips. Our memorable ‘retro’ trip to Norwich stands out. The struggle continues. John Solomos, South Bank University Les Back, Goldsmiths College May 1999 Acknowledgements The publishers would like to thank the following for their permission to reprint their material: Barbara Christian for permission to reprint ‘Diminishing Returns: Can Black Feminisms Survive the Academy?’ in Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader by David Theo Goldberg, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, pp. 1–10, 236–8, 238–40, 242–3. Beacon Press for permission to reprint Stephen Steinberg,‘America Again at the Crossroads’, from Turning Back: the Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy, Boston: Beacon Press, 1995, pp. 205–13, 214–20. Turning Back by Stephen Steinberg ©1995 by Stephen Steinberg. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston. Berg Publishers for permission to reprint Avtar Brah,‘Difference, Diversity, Differentiation’, in John Wrench and John Solomos, eds, Racism and Migration inWestern Europe, Oxford: Berg, 1993, pp. 195–9, 200–9, 211–14. Blackwell Publishers for permission to reprint David Theo Goldberg,‘Racial Knowledge’, chapter 7 in DavidTheo Goldberg, Racist Culture, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993, pp. 149–55, 155– 9, 163–6, 168–77; Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Modernity, Racism Extermination II’, in Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1989, pp. 61–70, 72–82. Carfax Publishing Limited, PO Box 25,Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 3UE, for permission to reprint Michael Keith,‘Identity and the Spaces of Authenticity’, Social Identities, vol. 1, no. 2, 1995. xxii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Chetan Bhatt for permission to print ‘The Lore of the Homeland: Hindu Nationalism and Indiginist “Neoracism”’. Continuum Publishing Group for permission to reprint Max Horkheimer and TheodorW. Adorno, ‘Elements of Anti -semitism: Dialectic of Enlightenment’, trans. John Cumming, London: Verso, 1976, pp. 168–70, 173–6, 183–6. From Dialectic of Enlightenment, by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Copyright (English translation by Herder and Herder. Reprinted by permission of the Continuum Publishing Company, NewYork. Cornell University Press for permission to reprint Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Modernity, Racism, Extermination II’, in Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1989, pp. 61–70, 72–82. Harvard University for permission to reprint PatriciaWilliams,‘Race and Rights’, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 166–78. Reprinted by permission of the publisher from The Alchemy of Race and Rights by Patricia Williams, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ©1991 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; Tzvetan Todorov,‘Race and Racism’, from On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism and Exoticism in French Thought, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 90–5, 153–7. Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Race and Racism byTzvetanTodorov, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ©1993, the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Homi K. Bhabha for permission to reprint Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Race, Time and the Revision of Modernity’, in Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1994, pp. 236–51. JAI Press Inc. for permission to reprint Michael Banton,‘The Idiom of Race:A Critique of Presentism’, from Research and Race Relations, vol. 2, (1980), London: JAI Press, pp. 21–2, 24–30, 32–8, 39– 40. Michael Keith for permission to reprint Michael Keith, ‘Identity and the Spaces of Authenticity’, Social Identities, vol. 1, no. 2, 1995. Monthly Review Foundation for permission to reprint Oliver C. Cox, ‘Race Relations’, Caste, Class and Race, NewYork: Monthly Review Press, 1948, pp. 321–2, 331–4, 345–8 © 1948, Oliver C. Cox, printed by permission of Monthly Review Foundation. Parallax for permission to reprint Gargi Bhattacharyya,‘Black Skin/White Boards: Learning to be the “Race” Lady in British Higher Education’, Parallax 2: ‘Theory/Practice’, edited by Joanne Morra and Marquand Smith, (February 1996), pp. 161–71. Pluto Press for permission to reprint Frantz Fanon,‘The Fact of Blackness’, Black Skin,White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann, London: Pluto Press, 1986/1952, pp. 109–22, 130–5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xxiii Princeton University Press for permission to reprint Anthony Appiah, ‘Racial Identity and Racial Identification’, Color Conscious, © 1996, Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. Robert Miles for permission to reprint Robert Miles, ‘Apropos of the Idea of “Race” . . . again’, in Robert Miles, Racism after ‘Race Relations’, London and NewYork: Routledge, 1993, pp. 28–34, 35–43, 44–50. Routledge for permission to reprint Anne McClintock,‘White Family of Man’ © 1995. From Imperial Leather by Anne McClintock. Reproduced by permission of Routledge, Inc.; Hazel Carby, ‘White Woman Listen!’, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 1970s Britain, London and New York: Routledge, 1982, pp. 212, 24, 228–33; Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Race, Time and the Revision of Modernity’, in Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge: London and New York; John Rex, ‘Race Relations in Sociological Theory’, The Theoretical Problem Stated, London and New York: Routledge, 1970, pp. 1–6, 13–16, 30; Patricia Hill Collins, ‘Black Feminist Thought’ © 1990. From Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins. Reproduced by permission of Routledge, Inc; Richard Dyer,‘The Matter ofWhiteness’, in Richard Dyer, White, London and New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. 1, 2–4, 10–12, 12–14, 39–40; Robert Miles, ‘Apropos of the Idea of “Race” . . . again’, in Robert Miles, Racism after ‘Race Relations’, London and NewYork: Routledge, 1993, pp. 28–34, 35–43, 44–50; Sander Gilman,‘Are JewsWhite?’ © 1991, from The Jew’s Body by Sander Gilman. Reproduced by permission of Routledge, Inc.: Kobena Mercer,‘Identity and Diversity in Postmodern Culture’, in Kobena Mercer, New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, London and NewYork: Routledge, 1994, pp. 259–63, 265–71, 274–85; LolaYoung, ‘Imperial Culture’, in LolaYoung, Fear of the Dark: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema, London and NewYork: Routledge, 1986, pp. 55–6, 56–62, 62–8, 70–4, 79–83. Ruth Frankenberg for permission to reprint ‘White Women, Race Matters’ in Ruth Frankenberg, WhiteWomen, Race Matters:The Social Construction of Racism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, pp. 1–10, 236–8, 238–40, 242–3. Serpent’s Tail Ltd for permission to reprint Paul Gilroy,‘The Dialectics of Diasporic Identification’, from Small Acts, London: Serpent’s Tail, 1991, pp. 120–7, 131–42. South End Press for permission to reprint bell hooks,‘Racism and Feminism’, in bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman?, Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1981, pp. 119–26, 127–130, 136–9, 144–6, 148–50, 151–2, 153–5, 157–8. Taylor and Francis Ltd for permission to reprint Gargi Bhattacharyya, ‘Black Skin/White Boards: Learning to be the “Race” Lady in British Higher Education’, Parallax 2:‘Theory/Practice’, edited by Joanne Morra and Marquand Smith, (February 1996), pp. 161–71. Transaction Publishers for permission to reprint Gunnar Myrdal,‘The Nature of Race Relations’, An American Dilemma, New Jersey:Transaction Publishers, 1962, pp. 84–8, 88–9, 89–93, 97–9. xxiv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Reprinted by permission of Transaction Publishers. Copyright 1944, © 1962, by Harper and Row, Publishers, Incorporated; copyright renewed 1972 by Gunnar Myrdal; all rights reserved. University of Minnesota Press for permission to reprint Ruth Frankenberg, ‘White Women, Race Matters’, in Ruth Frankenberg, WhiteWomen,Race Matters:The Social Construction of Racism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, pp. 1–10, 236–8, 238–40, 242–3. University of Minnesota Press for permission to reprint Stuart Hall,‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities’, in Culture, Globalisation and the World System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, ed.Anthony D. King, University of North Carolina Press for permission to reprintWinthrop D. Jordan,‘First Impressions’, pp. 3–4, 4–8, 11–15, 20–3, 24–7, 28–32, 32–6, 43, from White Over Black:American Attitudes to the Negro, 1550–1812 byWinthrop D. Jordan (1968, the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. Verso for permission to reprintTheodorW.Adorno and Max Horkheimer,‘Elements of anti-Semitism’, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming, London:Verso, 1976, pp. 168–70, 173–6, 183– 6. The publishers have made every effort to contact authors and copyright holders of works reprinted in The Race and Racism Reader. This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would welcome correspondence from individuals or companies we have been unable to trace. Introduction: Theorising race and racism John Solomos and Les Back E V E N A F E W Y E A R S A G O, A C O L L E C T I O N of this kind would have been difficult to put together. This is not because questions about race and racism were not of importance in either social or political terms. Rather, the major difficulty would have been in finding the variety of studies that seek to address questions about how to theorise race and racism and develop conceptual tools for the analysis of the variety of ways in which they have shaped both past and contemporary societies. This is no longer the case, as is evidenced by the everexpanding range of books and journals that address questions about race, racism and related topics from a variety of disciplinary and conceptual perspectives (for an overview of some of these developments see Bulmer and Solomos 1999). It is also clear that there is growing academic and public recognition of the importance of studying these phenomena and developing conceptual tools for analysing the role and impact of racial inequality, racist movements and parties and forms of racial and ethnic violence. It is as a result of this growing recognition of the need for greater theoretical clarity and conceptual analysis that we have put together this Reader on Theories of Race and Racism. In doing so we had two related sets of objectives. First, to provide for students and the general reader a collection that introduces them to the key arenas around which theoretical debates have been conducted, and the range of perspectives that have emerged over the years in this field. We have consciously tried to reflect different perspectives and avoid the obvious danger of putting together extracts from texts close to our own theoretical starting point. This is not to say that we have not been selective in terms of the authors and the particular extracts we have chosen to include. Given the breadth of material we had to cover in one volume we have inevitably been selective and in places the choice of extracts may 2 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK seem arbitrary. But we hope that whether readers agree with our choice of texts or not, that they find them of interest and reflective of the range of positions and attitudes that have shaped the study of race and racism in recent times. Our second objective is closely related to the first, in that we have attempted to use texts that cover a range of disciplines, historical situations and geographical contexts. This arises partly out of our concern to show the diversity of theoretical and empirical work that has been evident in this field. In addition, however, we wanted to provide in one single volume a range of original sources that could be critically evaluated and analysed in some detail in relation to the conceptual issues they seek to explore or the situations they are attempting to understand. Part of the problem with the recent proliferation of textbooks and monographs in this field is that there has been a noticeable neglect of some important texts, along with a lack of historical perspective about the origin of current theoretical debates. It is partly in order to balance this neglect that we have included extracts from works published at various stages of the twentieth century as well as more contemporary texts. Bearing these objectives in mind, we have also sought, as far as is possible in a single volume, to make the main ideas more accessible by organising them into six interrelated parts and providing introductory material that outlines the main themes. Although all the component parts of the Reader link up, we have divided the main debates around key themes and illustrated them by including extracts from some of the main contributors to each sub-field. Part One explores the question of the origins of race and racism, and includes extracts from the work of some of the main scholars in this field. This is an issue that has in fact attracted much attention in recent times and the various extracts included in this Part address questions that are still the subject of intense scholarly debate. From this starting point Part Two moves on to explore some important facets of social theorising about race and what is often called race relations. Bringing together both classical and more contemporary theorising in this field, the main objective of this Part is to provide an overview of the place of race and racism within social theory. Part Three shifts the focus somewhat by looking at one specific manifestation of racism, but one which has had murderous consequences, namely anti-semitism. Anti-semitism is an issue that tends to be treated somewhat separately from other expressions of racism, and relatively few attempts have been made to include it within the core of contemporary debates about race and racism. But, as we attempt to illustrate in this Part, any comprehensive analysis of racism has to include anti-semitism as a key component. In Part Four the complex linkages between colonialism and constructions of race are explored in some detail. This is an issue that has been at the heart of much contemporary scholarship, both in the social sciences and in the humanities and cultural studies, and the extracts included here highlight the shifting boundaries of race in colonial and postcolonial situations. Part Five includes a number of influential contributions to the development of a feminist, or more specifically a black feminist, perspective on racism. The main concern that holds the somewhat divergent extracts here together is the argument that theories of race and racism need to be re-imagined in such a way that a gendered perspective comes more to the fore. As a number of the contributors to INTRODUCTION 3 this part emphasise the interplay between race, class and gender can take complex forms in specific situations. The final part of the reader, Part Six, brings together a group of suggestive pieces that explore the changing boundaries and spaces within which contemporary debates about race and racism are being carried out. One of the shared concerns to be found in a number of the contributions to this part is the need to place questions about race and racism within an analytic framework that allows for change and diverse experiences. Another underlying theme in this part is the question of what issues are likely to shape academic and public discourses in this field in the coming period. In addition to these substantive parts we have included an annotated Guide to Further Reading that provides a basis for exploring important themes and debates in an organised manner. We are aware that many of the linkages in theoretical debates are by no means self-evident or easy to place within the parameters of wider theoretical debates. This is partly because a number of the issues that have been the focus of much recent debate in this field are conceptually difficult. But it is also the case that many of the core texts in this field are written with little concern about their accessibility to students and even less so for the wider public. The fixation with theoretical abstraction has produced a plethora of texts that may in some fashion have something valuable to say, but that in practice are addressed to other scholars in very narrow specialised fields. Some of the difficulties this has given rise to are evident in the readings we have included in this Reader, though we have made an effort to avoid this. Thus, in order to provide a starting point for using this Reader in the most productive manner, we, as editors, have felt it important to include a substantive introductory overview of the main themes covered in this volume. We have done this in the form of this introduction and in brief introductions at the beginning of each Part. In doing so we are not intending to simplify what are often complex scholarly debates, but to provide a map of key themes and terminology that is suggestive and contemplative rather than exhaustive. Elsewhere we have indeed attempted to provide a more detailed theoretical overview of issues covered in this Reader and fleshed out our own analytic framework (Solomos and Back 1996). Our concern here is more basic, in the sense that we have sought to use the introductory overviews as a way of engaging with the main arguments of the chosen authors. It is to this mapping that we now turn before moving on to the substantive parts that make up Theories of Race and Racism. Race and racism in perspective One of the more reliable, if depressing, predictions about the twentieth century was made by the black American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois back in 1903 when he asserted that ‘the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and in the islands of the sea’ (1903: xx). It is perhaps with Du Bois’s words in mind that the black British scholar Stuart Hall asserted a few years ago 4 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK that ‘the capacity to live with difference is, in my view, the coming question of the twenty-first century’ (Hall 1993: 361). This is because, argues Hall, in contemporary societies we are seeing an increasing diversity of subject positions, social experiences, and cultural identities that cannot be grounded in a set of fixed transcultural or transcendental racial categories and which therefore are constantly evolving and changing (see contribution by Hall in Part Two). As the next millennium fast approaches, these contrasting statements provide an important point of reference for those of us thinking about the future of race and racism. It is of course not possible to make any sensible comment on the relevance of Du Bois’s or Hall’s predictions for the next century. But one reason to counterpose the two statements here is that one of the vital questions we have to reflect on is the meanings that are attached to ideas about race and ethnicity in the contemporary social context. One way to see the different language used by Du Bois and Hall is to remember that while for scholars of Du Bois’s generation the ‘colour line’ was an everyday reality based on institutional patterns of racial domination, in recent times questions about race and racism have been refashioned in ways that emphasise cultural difference. This is not to say, of course, that for writers such as Hall questions about race and racism are in any way less important. It is clear that whatever the changing terms of language used to talk about race and ethnicity in the present day environment, we have in practice seen growing evidence of forms of racial and ethnic conflict in many parts of the globe. The shifts in conceptual language that have become evident in the past two decades are symptomatic of wider debates about the analytical status of race and racism, as well as related shifts in political and policy agendas. The study of race and ‘relations relations’ as important social issues can be traced back to the early part of the twentieth century, at least in relation to the United States of America. It has to be said, however, that the expansion of research and scholarship in this field is far more recent. It is really in the period since the 1960s, in the aftermath of the social transformations around questions of race that took place during that decade, that we have witnessed a noticeable growth of interest in the theorisation of race and racism and more generally what is called the ‘sociology of race relations’. The publication in 1967 of Michael Banton’s book Race Relations and in 1970 of John Rex’s Race Relations in Sociological Theory can be seen as symptomatic of wider social trends and of their impact on the course of scholarly research and debate. Banton’s study looked at race relations from a global and historical perspective, concentrating particularly on situations of cultural contact, beliefs about the nature of race, and the social relations constructed on the basis of racial categories. By looking at the experience of changing patterns of interaction between racial and ethnic groups from a historical perspective Banton argued that six basic orders of race relations could be delineated: institutionalised contact, acculturation, domination, paternalism, integration and pluralism (Banton 1967). It was during the period of the 1960s that what Banton and others have called the ‘race relations problematic’ became the dominant approach in this field (Banton INTRODUCTION 5 1991). While often utilising racial classifications, this literature also incorporated anthropological perspectives on ethnicity and social boundaries. Richard Jenkins, among others, has shown that there are continuities between the methodological and theoretical approach applied to tribal societies and their ‘modern’ equivalent – ethnic groups (Jenkins 1986 and 1997). John Rex’s Race Relations in Sociological Theory, along with his subsequent output, represents another important attempt to construct a theoretical framework for the analysis of race relations and racism. Rex’s work has exercised a major influence over this field and his contribution remains one of the most ambitious attempts to provide a theoretical grounding for research in this field. According to Rex’s analytic model, the definition of social relations between persons as race relations is encouraged by the existence of certain structural conditions: e.g. frontier situations of conflict over scarce resources, the existence of unfree, indentured, or slave labour, unusually harsh class exploitation, strict legal inter-group distinctions and occupational segregation, differential access to power and prestige, cultural diversity and limited group interaction, and migrant labour as an underclass fulfilling stigmatised roles in a metropolitan setting (Rex 1983). From this perspective the study of race relations is concerned with situations in which such structured conditions interacted with actors’ definitions in such a way as to produce a racially structured social reality. What is also interesting about Rex’s work is that he has attempted to utilise his conceptual framework in two seminal studies of race relations in Birmingham during the 1960s and the 1970s. In the study conducted by Rex and his associates in the Handsworth area of Birmingham during the mid 1970s (Rex and Tomlinson 1979) the basic research problem was to explore the degree to which immigrant populations shared the class position of their white neighbours and white workers in general. The substance of the analysis goes on to outline a class structure in which white workers have been granted certain rights that have been won through the working class movement, through the trade unions and the Labour Party. For Rex an important feature of the position of migrant workers and their children is that they are located outside the process of negotiation that has historically shaped the position of white workers. They experience discrimination in all the areas where the white workers had made significant gains, such as employment, education, housing. It follows from this that the position of migrant workers placed them outside of the working class in the position of an ‘underclass’: The concept of underclass was intended to suggest . . . that the minorities were systematically at a disadvantage compared with their white peers and that, instead of identifying with working class culture, community and politics, they formed their own organisations and became effectively a separate underprivileged class. (Rex and Tomlinson 1979: 275) From this point Rex and Tomlinson develop a model for analysing the changing position of minority communities within the context of class and political relations 6 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK in societies such as Britain. In the process of this analysis they also explore the differential positioning of minorities, through a comparison between Asian and West Indian communities. Within Asian communities they highlight the concentration on capital accumulation and social mobility. In the West Indian community they point to a pattern of withdrawal from competition altogether, with an emphasis on the construction of a black identity. This all leads to what Rex refers to elsewhere as the ‘politics of defensive confrontation’ (Rex 1979). As can be seen from the extracts included in Parts One and Two, the approach adopted by scholars such as Banton and Rex has much in common with the arguments to be found in the work of American sociologists of the time. Quite apart from the classical work of Robert Park, whose early studies of American race relations continue to influence key aspects of contemporary debates, there are important links with the arguments to be found in the work of contemporary scholars. A case in point is the work of William Julius Wilson, whose early theoretical work in this field attempted to outline a historical and comparative framework for the analysis of race relations, focusing particularly on the situation in the USA and South Africa (Wilson 1973). A recurrent theme in the work of Wilson, which was produced in the aftermath of the riots and turmoil that characterised American race relation in the 1960s, was the relationship of the concepts of racism and power and their role in explaining processes of change in the context of race relations. Rethinking the boundaries of race The arguments articulated by writers as diverse as Banton, Rex and Wilson were in many ways shaped by the discussion of race relations that was developing during the 1960s and the 1970s in both the USA and Britain. This was a time when social reforms implemented in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, urban violence and unrest, and the development of black power ideas and forms of cultural nationalism helped to reshape the politics of race in America, as well as in other parts of the world. It became clear, however, that by the early 1980s a number of fundamental criticisms of the whole field of race relations research were emerging. These critiques were influenced to some extent by theoretical arguments that emanated from neoMarxist, feminist, postcolonial and related theoretical perspectives. Such criticisms were influenced both by theoretical and political considerations, and they helped to stimulate new areas of debate. As a result there has been a rapid expansion of scholarship on race and racism within the social sciences and the humanities, particularly in sociology, political science, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, cultural studies and geography (Rex and Mason 1986; Goldberg 1990). A number of questions have come to the fore in recent times: What kinds of meaning can be given to the category ‘race’? How should racism be identified as a political force within European societies, the USA and other parts of the globe? Have we seen a growth of new forms of racist expression in contemporary societies? INTRODUCTION 7 While it is clear what questions are being asked, what remains in dispute is exactly how to respond to them. A number of distinct paradigms have emerged in response to these key questions, influenced in particular by changing research agendas as well as by political transformations. In the context of the concerns of this volume we want to focus particularly on the influence of (i) the neo-Marxist approach articulated by Robert Miles, and (ii) the approach associated with the collectively produced volume The Empire Strikes Back, that emanated from the Race and Politics Groups of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (hereafter CCCS) at the University of Birmingham (1982). The starting point of Miles’s critique was his opposition to the existence of a sociology of race, and his view that the object of analysis should be racism, which he viewed as integral to the process of capital accumulation and class relations in capitalist societies (Miles, 1982; 1986). His analysis was first articulated in Racism and Migrant Labour and it is perhaps the most sustained attempt to include the study of racism within the mainstream of Marxist social theory. His empirical research has focused specifically on the situation in Britain and the rest of Europe, and has looked at the role of political, class and ideological relationships in shaping our understandings of racial conflict and change in these societies. As can be seen from a number of extracts in Parts Two, Four and Five, in particular Miles was not alone in making these criticisms of the conceptual focus on ‘race’. His influence on recent debates can be seen in the way that the status of race as a social and analytical concept has been an important and recurring area of concern. For Miles the idea of race refers to a human construct, an ideology with regulatory power within society. Analytically race constitutes a paper tiger (Miles 1988) that may be a common term of reference within everyday discourse, but which presents a serious theoretical problem. It is here that Miles diverges from what he sees as the race relations problematic. While Rex is concerned with models of social action (i.e. for Rex it is enough that race is utilised in everyday discourse as a basis for social action) Miles is concerned with the analytical and objective status of race as a basis of action (Miles 1982: 42). Race is thus an ideological effect, a mask that hides real economic relationships (Miles 1984). Thus the forms of class consciousness that are legitimate for Miles must ultimately be seen as shaped by economic relations that are hidden within the process of racialisation. For Miles the process of racialisation is inter-related with the conditions of migrant communities. Its effects are the result of the contradiction between ‘on the one hand the need of the capitalist world economy for the mobility of human beings, and on the other, the drawing of territorial boundaries and the construction of citizenship as a legal category which sets boundaries for human mobility’ (Miles 1988: 438). Within the British setting this ideological work, conducted primarily by the state, acts as a means of crisis management and results in racialising fragments of the working class. Race politics are thus confined to the forces of regulation. For Miles the construction of political identities that utilise racial consciousness plays no part in the development of a progressive politics. 8 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK Miles’s work raises some fundamental questions about the nature of racism and migration in contemporary societies. The most important of these is the degree to which black and minority politics are really distillations of class conflict. If this is true any movements away from class-based political action (i.e. movements towards any notion of black community politics) are doomed to failure (Miles 1988, 1989). If one takes this argument further, class-based political action is ultimately in opposition to any sort of sustained political organisation around a notion of race. For Miles the politics of race is narrowly confined to the struggle against racism. This is neatly captured in the way he uses Hall’s (1980: 341) statement on the relationship between class and race. He concludes that it is not race but racism that can be the modality in which class is lived and fought through (Miles 1988). Miles’s insistence that racial differentiations are always created in the context of class differentiation (Miles 1989) is a core feature of his critique of the work of Banton and Rex. One danger of his position, however, is that it can result in a kind of class reductionism that ultimately limits the scope of theoretical work on conceptualising racism and racialised social relations. For example, in some contexts class exploitation may be incidental to the construction of situations of racial dominance (Goldberg 1992). However, the greatest contribution that Miles makes is his insistence that ‘races’ are created within the context of political and social regulation. Thus ‘race’ is above all a political construct. It is within this context that the concepts of racial categorisation and racialisation have been used to refer to what Robert Miles calls ‘those instances where social relations between people have been structured by the signification of human biological characteristics in such a way as to define and construct differentiated social collectivities’ (1989: 75). His work constitutes an attempt to reclaim the study of racism from an apoliticised sociological framework and locate it squarely in a Marxist theorisation of social conflict. In contrast to Mile’s approach, the arguments articulated in The Empire Strikes Back (CCCS 1982) were less concerned with the development of a neo-Marxist analysis of racism than with the analysis of the changing nature of the politics of race and the development of new forms of racial ideology. The theoretical approach of this volume was influenced by the work of Stuart Hall in particular (Hall 1980). This volume attracted widespread attention at the time and it still remains a point of reference in current debates (Bulmer and Solomos 1999).The approach articulated in this volume has also been extended in the work of key authors associated with it, including Hazel Carby, Paul Gilroy and John Solomos. A major concern of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies Group was the need to analyse the complex processes by which race is constructed as a social and political relation. They emphasised that the race concept is not simply confined as a process of regulation operated by the state, but that the meaning of race as a social construction is contested and fought over. In this sense they viewed race as an open political construction where the political meaning of terms like ‘black’ are struggled over. Collective identities spoken through race, community and locality are, for all their spontaneity, also a powerful means to co-ordinate action and INTRODUCTION 9 create solidarity (Gilroy 1987). In some ways The Empire Strikes Back shared Rex’s concern with social action but it rejected his overall framework as being at best ill-founded and at worst politically spurious. Within this model of political action a multiplicity of political identities can be held. An inclusive notion of black identity can prevail and at the same time allow heterogeneity of national and cultural origins within this constituency. In his subsequent work, for example, Gilroy argues that the crucial question here is the extent to which notions of race can be re-forged into a political colour of opposition (Gilroy 1987: 236; see also Gilroy 1990). He holds little hope that this process can be developed within the arena of representative democracy. Instead he views pressure group strategies that have evolved out of community struggles and utilise a specifically black political vernacular as the way forward. Gilroy argues for a radical revision of class analysis in metropolitan contexts. He suggests that political identities that are spoken through race can be characterised as social movements that are relatively autonomous from class relations. It should also be noted that The Empire Strikes Back was one of the first books on race relations in Britain to look in any depth at the question of gender and the role of sexism in the context of racialised relations. The contributions of Hazel Carby and Pratibha Parmar to this volume provided a point of reference and discussion in the debates about the interplay of race, class and gender during the 1980s. Along with the interventions of bell hooks and Angela Y. Davis in the USA, they were among the first authors to argue for a specifically black feminist voice. They also highlighted the relevance of looking at this dimension of racial relations in a context where the bulk of research remained gender blind. In exploring these issues, The Empire Strikes Back acted as a catalyst to a politicisation of debates about the role of research in connection with race relations. In a sense the political struggles that were occurring around the question of race during the 1980s were being echoed in the context of the production of knowledge about racism. The sociology of race relations stood accused of being implicitly conservative and unable to articulate the theorisation of racism with an analysis of class divisions and structural inequalities in power. Sociologists of race and ethnic relations were also criticised for letting their theoretical imaginations be coloured by an implicit Eurocentrism. The result was that the sociological literature demonstrated an inability to record the experiences of minority communities in a sympathetic way. The arguments to be found in the work of Miles and The Empire Strikes Back marked an attempt to articulate a theoretical debate about how to understand racism within the political environment of the 1980s, including the ideological challenge of the Conservative New Right. It is quite clear that the preoccupation with prioritising the analysis of racism was linked to a concern to fix the theoretical debate on questions of power and inequality. In this sense the radical critiques of race relations that have become a recurrent refrain in the literature on race and racism during the 1990s were produced in an environment where the main question that interested many researchers was the role of racism in structuring the social 10 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK and political marginalisation of minority communities. However, in making the conceptualisation of racism a priority, these critiques failed to develop a theoretical framework for an elaborated analysis of the complex ways in which questions about race tie up with wider social cultural processes. As we shall see later on in this Introduction this is an issue that has come more to the fore in recent years. Racism and anti-semitism One of the most noticeable gaps in many contemporary texts on race and racism is a failure to examine the question of anti-semitism in a substantive fashion. Yet it should be clear from the whole history of racism over the past two centuries that anti-semitism has been a central theme in racial discourses and in political mobilisations around questions of race.This relative absence is all the more surprising since it seems to be an inescapable fact of our recent history that the experience of the Holocaust and the genocidal policies of the Nazi state are an integral part of any contemporary discussion of race and racism. Although there is by now a very substantial literature on the racial theories and practice of the Nazis and on the Holocaust (Proctor 1988; Weindling 1989; Burleigh and Wippermann 1991), little of this has been fed into broader discussions about race and racism. This gap is beginning to be filled, particularly through the growing body of work that explores the interrelationship of anti-semitism and racism from both a conceptual and a political perspective (see Guide to Further Reading). It is partly for this reason that we have chosen to focus in Part Three of this Reader on Racism and Anti-semitism, with the inclusion of a set of extracts that explore this dimension in some detail. This concern to link the analysis of racism to discussions about antisemitism is embedded in our awareness of the important role that the rise of Nazism had on scholarship and research in this field. The actual term anti-semitism came into popular usage at the end of the nineteenth century. But it is widely accepted that as a term it captures the long history of resentment and hatred of Jews. Antisemitism can be seen therefore as a term that refers to the conception of Jews as an alien, hostile and undesirable group, and the practices that derive from, and support, such a conception. The history of anti-semitism is of course much more complex and of longer historical origin that the racial theories of the Nazis (Poliakov 1974; Gilman and Katz 1991). It has existed in a variety of historical contexts and it has been legitimised by a wide range of beliefs and folklore about Jews. Indeed it seems quite clear that if one looks at all the major European countries they all have quite specific histories of anti-semitism, influenced both by sets of beliefs about Jews and by broader socio-political processes. In the British context, for example, there is evidence of anti-semitism at different historical conjunctures. But it is perhaps in the period of the late nineteenth century that the arrival of a sizeable number of Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe became a focus of political debate, leading to the development of a political anti-semitism in particular localities. The political INTRODUCTION 11 influence of anti-semitism in France towards the end of the nineteenth century can also be seen as related to the changing political and social relations in French society at the time. Not surprisingly, in the aftermath of the Holocaust one of the main concerns of research on political anti-semitism has been in relation to Germany. Although the history of anti-semitism in Germany was by no means unique, it is certainly the case that in the aftermath of the Holocaust the German experience has been at the heart of most research. Whatever the limitations of this focus on the German experience, the wealth of research on the social and political context within which various kinds of anti-semitism developed in Germany has provided some important insights into the ways in which racial ideologies and practices are constructed by and through specific political movements. A case in point is Theodor Adorno’s and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, an extract from which is included in Part Three. Adorno and Horkheimer sought, on the one hand, to situate anti-semitism in the broader context of class and political struggles in German society and, on the other, to underline its specific and unique characteristics. Although they sought to locate anti-semitism in the broader framework of capitalist society, they also highlighted the murderous consequences of the fascist construction of the Jews as a ‘degenerate race’: he fascists do not view the Jews as a minority but as an opposing race, the embodiment of the negative principle. They must be exterminated to secure the happiness of the world. (Adorno and Horkeimer 1986: 168) The usages of racial theories by the Nazis thus provided not only a basis for the articulation of anti-semitism but a means of justifying the ‘final solution to the Jewish question’ and the inevitability of a ‘race war’. From this perspective the political consequences of Nazi racial theories, with their emphasis on race as a total criterion, provided the basis for the extermination of Jews. The Holocaust itself needs to be analysed in the context of what actually happened during the period of Nazi rule from 1933 to 1945. As a number of studies have shown, a key feature of the Nazi state was precisely its ‘racial’ nature. A fascinating discussion of the role that anti-semitism played in German society during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is provided by George Mosse’s magisterial study on The Crisis of German Ideology (1966). Mosse provides perhaps the best insight into the variety of factors that helped to shape the articulation between anti-semitism and racism in the period from the second half of the nineteenth century to the rise of Adolf Hitler. He also illustrates the complex variety of processes that went into the transformation of latent anti-semitism, including the role of educational institutions, youth organisations and political parties. Mosse’s rich account of Volkish thought during the nineteenth century provides perhaps the best and most powerful account of the social and political roots of German anti-semitism, 12 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK highlighting the contrast in images of ‘the uprootedness of the Jew’ with those of the ‘rootedness of the Volk’ (Mosse 1966: 27–8). He also provides a detailed analysis of the linkages between the growth of anti-semitism and the rise of national socialism as a mass political movement: That the Volkish ideology, wedded as it as to anti-modernity, could be absorbed by the modern mass movement techniques of National Socialism led to its final realisation.To be sure, if it had not been for very real grievances and frustrations, both on a personal level and on the national level, Germany’s development in modern times might have taken a different turn. But the most important question is: Why did millions of people respond to the Volkish call? (Mosse 1966: 317) In some ways of course Mosse’s question has not been fully answered, even when one takes into account the wealth of research on this question. What is clear is that the fact that the Nazis used racial anti-semitism as an important plank of their platform has cast a long shadow over subsequent debates about racism. This has been highlighted by one of the most challenging recent attempts to rethink the whole experience of the Holocaust, namely Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust (1989). Bauman seeks to reinterpret the meaning of the Holocaust and its role in contemporary history from the perspective of contemporary sociological theory. One of the ironies that he points to is that anti-semitism in Germany at the beginning of this century was weaker than in many other European countries. He points to the ways in which there were many more Jewish professionals and academics then in Britain, France and America. He also cites evidence that popular antisemitism was not that widespread in Germany, although it grew rapidly in the aftermath of the First World War. Perhaps most controversially, Bauman contends that the Holocaust was not an aberration but an integral feature of modernity: The Holocaust was born and executed in our modern society, at the high stage of our civilisation and at the peak of human cultural achievement, and for this reason it is a problem of that society, civilisation and culture . . . (Bauman 1989: 13) From this perspective Bauman argues that a core feature of Nazism was its view of the need for ‘social engineering’ through its racial policies. The use of genocide by the Nazis was a means to an end, an element in the construction of the ‘perfect society’ (Bauman 1989: 91). In this sense Bauman is agreeing with the arguments articulated by historians such as Mosse. But he also wants to go beyond such historical accounts and explore more deeply the implications of the Holocaust for how we think about our societies today. The Nazi attempt to construct a ‘racially pure’ society and to use state power to help bring this about has exerted a major influence in discussion about race and INTRODUCTION 13 racism in the post-1945 period. In particular it helped to emphasise and warn against the destructive and genocidal consequences of racist theorising and political mobilisation. It also helped to highlight the complex forms which racist ideologies can, and do, take in particular historical conjunctures. In addition, it highlighted the genocidal impact of the use of state power as a tool of racial policy (Wolf 1999), an issue that has returned to haunt European societies once again in the 1990s. Colonialism, race and the other While much of the literature on racism and on race relations tends to leave the question of anti-semitism to one side, there has been a noticeable growth of interest in the issue of the role of racial ideologies and practices during the colonial period. This has been reflected in important and valuable accounts of the impact of colonialism on our understandings of race and culture. A key point of reference in this discussion has been the work of the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (1967), along with the work of Edward Said (1978) on orientalism. Among other things this work has helped to highlight, for example, the complex processes of racial and gender identification experienced by the colonised during the colonial and postcolonial periods. Other studies have sought to show that the oppressed themselves have produced their own discourses about race and identity in the context of their own experiences of domination and exclusion. In much of the literature on the development of racist ideologies and practices an important role is assigned to the ways in which colonialism and imperialism helped to construct images of the ‘other’ (Mannoni 1964). In particular there have recently been numerous studies of the development of images of colonised peoples and the ways these were popularised and reproduced in British society. There have also been a number of attempts to analyse the ways in which ideas about race were in one way or another the product of attempts to analyse the ‘differences’ between coloniser and colonised. Such studies have certainly done much to shed light on an issue that has by and large been marginal to the study of race and racism. Part of the problem in discussing the interplay of imperialism and colonialism with racism is the tendency to over-generalise without exploring in any detail the connections between the institutionalisation of imperial domination and colonisation and the emergence of racist ideas and practices. Mosse is surely right when he argues that: ‘Imperialism and racism . . . were never identical; their interrelationship was dependent upon time and place’ (Mosse 1985: x). It is precisely the nature of this relationship that remains to be fully analysed, particularly if we are to understand how and why common-sense images about race were influenced by the role that countries such as Britain played as colonial and imperial powers. A variety of recent critical research on the politics of colonialism has shown that images of the ‘other’ played a central role in colonial discourses (Ross 1982; Pratt 1992; Parry 1998). Such images were closely tied to racial stereotypes, but it 14 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK was also clear that they related to all aspects of the relationship between the colonised and colonisers. Sander Gilman has made this linkage clear when he argues: In the nineteenth century, in the age of expanding European colonies, the black becomes the primitive per se, a primitivism mirrored in the stultifying quality of his or her dominant sense, touch, as well as the absence of any aesthetic sensibility. (Gilman 1991: 20) From this perspective the linkage of colonised peoples with images of the ‘primitive’ was the product of complex historical processes and it took different forms in specific colonial situations. A case in point is the impact of the ‘scramble for Africa’ on images of the peoples of the ‘dark continent’, and the circulation of these images in the metropolitan societies. While, as we have shown above, European images of Africa had taken shape over some centuries it is also the case that the expansion of colonial power during the nineteenth century helped to invent new images and to institutionalise specific forms of class, gender and racial relations (Mudimbe 1988 and 1994; Appiah 1992; Coombes 1994). What of the impact of these images on racial ideas and values in the colonial powers themselves? In the British context it seems clear that in the Victorian era the experience of colonialism and imperial expansion played an important role in shaping ideas about race, both in relation to Africa and India. It was also during this period that the question of the Empire become rooted as an integral part of British politics and society. Images of colonial peoples were not the outcome of any singular process. In the context of both Africa and Asia, for example, a number of interlinked processes were at work in the construction of images of both the ‘natives’ and the ‘colonisers’ (Dirks 1992; Spurr 1993; Sharpe 1993). We need to remember that most Victorians had no personal contact with the ‘exotic’ peoples and places that they were assuming responsibility for. Their opinions were formed according to the sources of their information, and these sources were for the most part the popular press and literature. The linkages between colonialism and racism became evident throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the form of the articulation between nationalism and patriotism in the construction of the very definition of ‘Englishness’ and ‘Britishness’. It would be a mistake, however, to see such racial images in isolation from wider sets of social relations. As a number of commentators have forcefully argued, an important aspect of racial thinking during the nineteenth century was the similarity between discourses about race and those about class. This was evident in both Britain and the rest of the Empire. Douglas Lorimer’s study of racial attitudes in Victorian society brings out the parallels between the colour and the class prejudice of middle class Victorians in the clearest manner. He notes the similarities between the attitudes of those middle class travellers whose tourism took them to India, Egypt, and to the East End of London, in order to view the strange, the primitive and the exotic creatures of the world (Lorimer 1978). INTRODUCTION 15 It is also clear that during the high point of imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racial ised notions of national identity were pertinent outside of the colonial context. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries imperialist ideologies had developed a racial notion of national identity to refer to other European nations as well as colonial people. It was during this period that nationalist movements and ideals began to gain a degree of influence in many European countries. What this process made clear is the variety of ways in which the idea of race could be used to refer to the putative ‘racial’ differences between competing nations and states. Interestingly enough, in the period before the First World War it was precisely such ideas about ‘race’ that gained an important role in political discourses of the time. This is not to say that colonialism and imperialism did not also have an important impact on political ideologies, literature and popular culture. Certainly if one looks at literary and cultural output from the period at the end of the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth, it is redolent with images of the role of Britain as an imperial power and as a source of civilised culture for the colonies. Some of the most interesting research in this field has been about the role that colonialism and imperialism played in influencing political discourses and values through popular culture at this time. In the British context a number of valuable studies have helped to show the depth of the impact that imperialism had on popular cultural expressions through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. John MacKenzie has shown in his interesting studies of imperialism and popular culture both the complexity and the depth of the impact of imperial propaganda on popular culture, education, literature and other cultural forms (MacKenzie 1984, 1986). Other studies of colonial societies have also highlighted the depth of the cultural and political imagery of colonialism and its impact on Western societies (Miller 1990; Pieterse 1992). The important role of sexuality in constructions of the ‘native’ has also been highlighted by recent research about imperial culture (Hyam 1990; Parker et al. 1992; Young 1995). Yet it has to be said that one of the major lacunae in the existing literature is that while much has been written about the impact of colonial expansion and imperial domination on racial attitudes there has been surprisingly little comment on the role and impact of anti-colonial ideas and movements. Given the extent of its influence on political and social discourses during this period, it is indeed surprising that we have little knowledge of both the nature of the anti-colonialist movements and the influence that they had on the changing ideas about race in Britain and elsewhere. It is perhaps this absence that has helped to produce a rather monolithic view of the impact of the Empire on domestic British political culture. It has to be noted here that in practice recent research has tended, if anything, to question the idea of a uniform and unchanging colonial view of ‘race’ that was prevalent at all stages of colonial history and European expansion. Rather, a number of scholars have shown that in reality colonial societies were by no means static and unchanging in their articulation of racial ideologies and social relations. In summary, while it is important in analysing the history of racism to include the role 16 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK played by processes of domination and colonisation, it would be misleading to construct a simplistic one to one relationship between the two. It is perhaps understandable in the immediate aftermath of the decline of colonialism that much of the attention of researchers has focused on its role in fostering and spreading racial stereotypes and myths in metropolitan societies. The danger, however, is that in so doing we may lose sight of the complexity and diversity of colonial social relations and blame many of our contemporary mores on the ‘experience’ of colonial domination. Feminism, difference and identity Alongside the increased attention given to colonialism and postcolonialism in recent years, we have seen a proliferation of feminist writings on race and racism from a variety of angles. Indeed it can be said that during the past decade some of the most important contributions to the analysis of racism have come from writers whose work can be seen as deriving from feminism, though often also influenced by some of the perspectives we have touched upon already. From the early 1980s a growing number of studies, chiefly from the USA and Britain, have sought in one way or another to place questions about sexism, gender and sexuality on the agenda of the study of racial relations. This has led to some valuable insights into the everyday social processes that helped to shape the interrelationship between race and gender in particular historical contexts (Hall 1992; Ware 1992). It has also produced a wealth of theoretical interventions by black and minority feminist writers into debates about contemporary racisms and their socio-political contexts (Carby 1987 and 1998; Williams 1991). As we noted earlier in discussing the British context, for example, The Empire Strikes Back was one of the first books on race relations in Britain to look in any depth at the question of gender and the role of sexism in the context of racialised relations. The contributions of Hazel Carby and Pratibha Parmar to this volume provided a point of reference and debate in the literature about the interplay between race, class and gender during the 1980s (CCCS 1982). They also highlighted the relevance of looking at this dimension of racial relations in a context where the bulk of research remained gender blind. Carby’s contribution in particular is a point of reference in discussion within feminism about racism, and led to some heated debates in Feminist Review, among other journals. At the same time a vibrant and critical discussion about the position of black and other minority women in relation to feminism was emerging in the USA. This took a number of forms. The work of writers such as bell hooks addressed the limits of feminist theory in dealing with questions of race and class. The work of other writers questioned the limitations of black nationalist politics when dealing with questions of gender. A particularly controversial example of this trend was the book by Michele Wallace Black Macho and The Myth of the Superwoman, that was originally published in 1979, and which sought to explore important aspects of the INTRODUCTION 17 relationship between black men and women (Wallace 1990). Another influential text was Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks, originally published in 1981, and which was concerned with both establishing the possibility of a dialogue between black women and feminism and with a critical analysis of the limits of feminism in relation to the question of race (hooks 1981). The work of theorists such as Gyatri Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty also helped to bring questions about non-Western versions of feminist thought into academic discussion about this issue (see Parts Four and Five). In the aftermath of these debates a growing number of studies have begun to explore the interrelationship between racism and sexism, racial inequality and gender inequality and the position of African-Caribbean, Asian and other migrant women in British society. This has helped to overcome the gender-blind approach of many studies of racial relations, though there are still many aspects of the position of black and ethnic minority women that have received little attention. Most attention has focused on: (a) the role of women in the migration process; (b) the employment and social position of black women; (c) family relations; and (d) the links between racial and gender equality. All these studies have contributed to a growing awareness of the complex sets of interrelationships that take place between racial, class and gender relations in specific socio-economic contexts (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992). They have also helped to shed light on often neglected but nevertheless crucial aspects of racialisation. Debates between feminists about the boundaries of identity and the different positionings of black and white women have been an important undercurrent in recent times, and this is one of the central themes that is explored in a number of the extracts in Part Five. Perhaps one of the most controversial areas of debate has been the issue of whether feminists have over-concentrated on patriarchy, and neglected race and ethnicity as sources of women’s oppression. This is certainly a theme that pervades many of the early black feminist critiques of the mainstream of feminist politics, and it has continued to be a key area of debate. It is certainly the case that many feminist texts from the 1960s and 1970s showed little or no awareness of the historical background and contemporary context of racial inequalities. Whatever the merits of the specific debates that have taken place over this issue, it is worth emphasising that contemporary feminism has had to take on board questions about race and ethnicity in a systematic manner. The mainstream of contemporary feminism has been forced in one way or another to come to terms with questions about race and racism. There is now a wealth of literature that has arisen out of the ongoing debates between white and black feminists over the past decade. What is more important, however, is that this dialogue has encouraged the development of grounded research on the position of black and minority women (Mohanty et al. 1991; Alexander and Mohanty 1997). One interesting example of this is the growth of research on the position of migrant women in various societies. Studies of migration have tended in the past to make assumptions about migration that have either excluded or underplayed the position of women in the migration process. More recently an increasing amount of 18 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK research has focused either directly or indirectly on the position of migrant women. A number of important studies have explored the impact of immigration and nationality legislation on black and ethnic minority women, their employment patterns, the impact of racism on their lives, and their struggles to improve their social and economic position. Quite apart from the academic research that has taken up the question of race and gender, over the past decade we have seen a massive growth of writings by and about black and minority women. The works of novelists such as Toni Morrison have explored key aspects of the experience of black women in America through the form of the novel and have become another important contribution to current debates. A good example of the impact of Morrison’s work is her novel Beloved whose narrative provides a powerful and chilling account of the experience of black Americans through and after slavery. As Morrison herself comments about the contemporary situation in America: . . . For both black and white American writers, in a wholly racialised society, there is no escape from racially inflected language, and the work writers do to unhobble the imagination from the demands of that language is complicated, interesting, and definitive. (Morrison 1992: 12–13) In this context it is perhaps not surprising that literary texts, such as those of Morrison and Alice Walker among others, have come to occupy an important and vibrant role in contemporary debates about the historical interface between race and gender. This is perhaps because, more than traditional sociological studies, they have done much to give voice to the experience of black women and to highlight the lived realities of racial ideologies and practices. Another important area in recent research has been the issue of the construction of black female sexuality in racial ideologies. There is a wealth of research that has shown that at various historical conjunctures sexuality has played an important role in the fantasies that make up the world of racism. This research has tended to have a historical focus, and to be concerned specifically with slavery and colonialism. It is also clear that aspects of contemporary popular culture and advertising involve the reproduction of images of black female sexuality and sensuality. The role that such images play in the articulation of racialised culture in the context of contemporary societies remains to be fully investigated (see the extract from Stoler in Part Four and Stoler 1995). Perhaps the main achievement of the debates outlined above has been that they have helped to establish the complex historical linkages between racism and sexism and encouraged theoretical debate about the interrelationship between the two (Collins 1990; James and Busia 1993). Despite important contributions, however, questions about gender and sexism have remained a neglected aspect of the mainstream of studies of racial and ethnic relations. The main research centres in this field have been largely unaffected by the debates discussed above and they INTRODUCTION 19 have done little or no substantive research with a clear gender dimension. Even where issues of race have been looked at there has been an implicit assumption that ‘the three worlds of inequality’ (race, class and gender) are somehow separate from each other. There is a long way to go before the gender dimension is fully integrated into the study of race and racism, but, as we shall see in Part Five and other parts of this Reader, it would be impossible to analyse important aspects of contemporary racism without serious consideration of the changing social relations which shape the position of minority women. Race, culture and identity A major dilemma we faced in putting together Theories of Race and Racism derives from the fact that we were attempting to provide an overview of a field that is constantly changing. Whilst it may have been possible two decades ago to provide a reliable guide to the sociology of race relations and see that as a relatively complete survey of key theoretical debates, this is no longer the case. In recent years it has become increasingly difficult to provide a reliable map of this field, particularly as it has become increasingly multidisciplinary and as it has spread out to include arenas that were largely neglected by previous generations of scholars. Thus, whilst the debates of the 1970s and 1980s continue to influence research agendas, a number of recent developments have led to a questioning of many of the certainties that dominated theorising in this field even a decade ago. Perhaps the most important influence in this new situation has been the decline of both mainstream and neo-Marxist approaches. In this context some have called for a radical revision of class analysis in order to incorporate political movements that mobilise around forms of identity other than class. Others have suggested a need for a move away from both narrow sociological and neo-Marxist theoretical models as a framework of analysis and have: (i) sought to develop a self-consciously multidisciplinary approach to the study of race and racism and (ii) have taken on board some of the concerns of post-structuralism and postmodernism in relation to the analysis of changing forms of social and cultural identity. One of the results of this shift is the growing concern with the status of cultural forms and a return to an analysis of the nature of ethnicity in metropolitan settings. The political naivety of the early work on ethnicity meant that for much of the 1980s the analysis of cultural processes and forms was rejected in favour of a focus on the politics of racism. The rejection of culture was tied up with the notion that one of the inherent dangers of focusing research on the culture of minority communities was the tendency to shift attention from racism to the characteristics of racialised minorities. However, the question of cultural production and the politics of identity are fast becoming an important area of contemporary debate. New perspectives are being developed which examine the ways in which cultural forms are being made and re-made producing complex social phenomena. These new syncretic cultures are being plotted within the global networks which have been formed by diasporic and transnational communities. 20 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK The process of reclaiming culture in critical debate has simultaneously involved a re-examination of how racism is conceptualised. As a number of the extracts that are included in Part Six make clear, a major influence in theoretical debates during the 1990s has been an engagement of theories about race and racism with wider controversies in the social sciences surrounding questions of culture and identity. One of the constant refrains in this discussion has been the need to avoid uniform and homogeneous conceptualisations of racism. Although not yet part of the agenda of mainstream research on race relations, a range of studies of racialised discourses in the mass media, literature, art and other cultural forms have begun to be produced. Reacting against what they see as the lack of an account of cultural forms of racial discourse, a growing number of scholars have sought to develop a more rounded picture of contemporary racial imagery by looking at the role of literature, the popular media and other cultural forms in representing changing images of race and ethnicity. David Goldberg has pointed out that ‘the presumption of a single monolithic racism is being displaced by a mapping of the multifarious historical formulations of racisms’ (Goldberg 1993). In this context it is perhaps not surprising that a core concern of many recent texts in this field is to explore the interconnections between race and nationhood, patriotism and nationalism rather than analyse ideas about biological inferiority. One of the core ideas that is explored in a number of the extracts in Part Six is precisely this issue of the complex and varied nature of contemporary forms of racist discourses and political symbols. Let us take the example of the changing terms of debate about race in Britain during recent times. The ascendancy of the political right in Britain during the 1980s prompted commentators to identify a ‘new racism’, or what Fanon (1967) referred to as ‘cultural racism’, within the political culture and in everyday life. This ‘new racism’ has been conceptualised as having its origins in the social and political crisis afflicting Britain. Its focus is the defence of the mythic ‘British/ English way of life’ in the face of challenges posed by the incursion of ‘foreign influences’. In this environment it has become all too easy for new forms of racial discourse to achieve common currency in everyday debates about the role and position of minorities in British society. Similar trends towards the articulation of forms of cultural racism have been noted by commentators on the situation in a number of other societies in recent times, including France, Germany and the USA. We make this point because it seems to us that it highlights the need to situate racism and ideas about race as changing and historically situated. From this perspective the question of whether race is an ontologically valid concept or otherwise is in many ways not the most relevant question to ask, since it is perhaps more important to understand why certain racial ised subjectivities become a feature of social relations at particular points in time and in particular geographical spaces. One of the most important features of the contemporary situation is that manifestations of race are coded in a language that aims to circumvent accusations of racism (see contributions by Stuart Hall and David Goldberg in Part Two). In the case of contemporary racist discourses, for example, race is often coded in terms of ‘difference’ and ‘culture’. However, the central feature of these processes is that the INTRODUCTION 21 qualities of social groups are fixed, made natural, confined within a pseudobiologically defined culturalism. What is clear from these writings is that a range of discourses on social differentiation may have a metonymic relationship to racism. As Goldberg shows clearly in his work on racist culture, the semantics of race are produced by a complex set of inter-discursive processes where the language of culture and nation invokes a hidden racial narrative. The defining feature of this process is the way in which it naturalises social formations in terms of a racial/ cultural logic of belonging. Another focus within the emerging literature on the cultural politics of racism has been the social construction of race and difference in literature and the cinema. This has been a neglected area of research but in recent years this has been remedied by the publication of a number of important studies of race, culture and identity. Originating largely from the United States, such studies have looked at a number of areas, including literature, the cinema and other popular cultural forms. They have sought to show that within contemporary societies our understandings of race, and the articulation of racist ideologies, cannot be reduced to economic, political or class relations. This type of approach is in fact more evident outside of sociology. The work of literary and cultural theorists in the United States and Britain has in recent years begun to explore seriously the question of race and racism, and has led to a flowering of studies which use the debates around post-structuralism and postmodernism as a way of approaching the complex forms of racialised identities in colonial and postcolonial societies. Equally, it has also become clear that there is a need to shed the narrow confines of the race relations problematic and develop a more sophisticated analysis of the impact of various racisms on the white majority. A growing literature now exists on the politics of whiteness that is attempting to develop such a focus of enquiry. However, there are immediate difficulties with this endeavour, as Richard Dyer has shown in his discussion of whiteness in film and other cultural representations (see Dyer’s paper in Part Six). Dyer contends that white ethnicity in the cinema is implicitly present but explicitly absent and as a result it has ‘an everything and nothing quality’. In these representations whiteness is equated with normality and as such it is not in need of definition. Thus ‘being normal’ is colonised by the idea of ‘being white’. From a different perspective, bell hooks has graphically discussed the terrorising effect that ‘whiteness’ has on the black imagination. Writing on her experience of growing up as a black woman in the American South she comments: ‘whiteness in the black imagination is often a representation of terror’ (hooks 1992: 342). Clearly there is a need for a research agenda which looks at the way white subjectivities are racial ised, and how ‘whiteness’ is manifested in discourse, communication and culture. This turn within critical writing has important implications. One of the fundamental criticisms of the sociology of race and ethnic relations is that it has too often focused on the victims rather than the perpetrators of racism. Prioritising whiteness as an area of critical endeavour has the potential to disrupt the sociological common sense that equates the discussion of racism with the empirical scrutiny of black communities. Toni Morrison in her analysis of whiteness in American novels comments: 22 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK My project is an effort to avert the critical gaze from the racial object to the racial subject; from the described and imagined to the describers and imaginers; the serving to the served. (Morrison 1992: 90) In the context of Britain, Stuart Hall, among others, has pointed out the urgency of deconstructing the meanings of whiteness, not just in order to counter racism but also in order to understand the complex realities faced by the African and Asian diaspora living in Britain (Hall 1993). There is already an emerging literature that is trying to provide a critical analysis of the complex meanings that are attached to ideas about whiteness in everyday cultural processes (Frankenberg 1993; Back 1996). The analysis of whiteness is certainly an important theme in many current debates, though it is not always clear how far it has helped to develop a better analysis of contemporary expressions of racism. There are also a number of possible shortcomings in the recent turn towards whiteness. In the hurry to shift the critical gaze there is always a danger of suspending reflection on the analytical terms of this project. Like many of the debates on the ontological status of culture, there is a danger of reifying whiteness and reinforcing a unitary idea of race. In order to avoid this it is crucial to locate any discussion of whiteness in specific empirical and historical contexts. Equally, it is important to understand that whiteness is a political definition that has gained historical meaning in the context of white supremacy. Any discussion of whiteness must, therefore, incorporate an appreciation of how gendered processes are inextricably articulated within the semantics of race. In this sense, interrogating whiteness as a form of identity and a political discourse must (i) focus on de-colonising the definition of ‘normal’, and (ii) avoid the reification of whiteness as a social identity. Whatever the merits of the recent turn towards an emphasis on culture and identity in the literature on race and racism, it is evident that questions of cultural production and change are an integral component of any contemporary conceptualisation of racism. Nevertheless, these theoretical debates need to be contextualised within a shifting political context. The certainties of the debates that have dominated much of the discussion on racism in the 1980s and 1990s have all but disappeared. What seems to characterise the contemporary period is, on the one hand, a complex spectrum of racisms and, on the other, the fragmentation of the definition of blackness as a political identity in favour of a resurgence of ethnicism and cultural differentiation. At the same time, and perhaps paradoxically, new cultures and ethnicities are emerging in the context of dialogue and producing a kaleidoscope of cultural syncretisms (Bhatt 1997). INTRODUCTION 23 Reformulating the agenda As we have tried to show in this Introduction the study of race and racism has been rapidly transformed in recent times and this has in turn led to a reformulation of research agendas and the boundaries of scholarship in this field. In this period of change our main hope in putting together Theories of Race and Racism is that it can help to provide an overview of important debates about the status of race and racism and explore important theoretical and political dilemmas that are faced at the present time. We are aware that this process is not simply an academic process, since researchers in this field are almost inevitably forced to confront questions about politics. While some authors writing in the tradition of race and ethnic relations studies have been careful to separate the research process from political action, such a separation is in some ways impossible and even undesirable. Perhaps the main lessons that we can learn from the rapid expansion of studies of race and racism in recent years are the following: • • • • first, that there is a need for greater theoretical clarity on key concepts; second, there is a need to broaden the research agenda to cover issues that have been neglected, such as culture and identity; third, there is a need for research agendas to address political and policy dilemmas in order to understand racism and how to counter it; fourth, there is a need to integrate the analysis of racism with a conceptualisation of related issues, such as gender and sexuality. Precisely because the question of how to conceptualise racism is not purely an academic matter, it is important to develop analytic frameworks that explain the role of ideas about race in specific historical and political conjunctures. It is from this starting point that we can begin to understand the complex mechanisms through which contemporary racisms have evolved and adapted to new circumstances. A recurrent concern of the various extracts in Part Six is to outline some of the new areas of research that need further exploration. In this context, unitary or simplistic definitions of racism become hard to sustain. However, it seems clear that contemporary racisms share some central features. They attempt to fix human social groups in terms of natural properties of belonging within particular political and geographical contexts. The assertion that racialised subjects do not belong within – say British society – is then associated with social and cultural characteristics designated to them within the logic of particular racisms. It follows from the above argument that racist discourses need to be rigorously contextualised. This means that racisms need to be situated within specific moments. The effect of a particular racist discourse needs to be placed in the conditions surrounding the moment of its enunciation. In this context, the meanings of race and racism need to be located within particular fields of discourse and articulated to the social relations found within that context. It is then necessary to see what kinds of racialised identities are being 24 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK formed within these contexts. Take, for example, the definition of the category ‘black’. It is clear that it is a notion used somewhat differently in specific national situations, and that this has been influenced by particular historical and cultural processes. The contrasting usages of the category ‘black’ in America and Britain is a case in point. With regard to the ontological status of these classifications we view them as political constructions of identity that need to be situated within specific social and discursive contexts. We in no way accept that these identifications relate to ‘natural communities’, or that one notion is more politically legitimate than others. Rather they constitute moments where community and identity is defined: manifestations of racial and ethnic closure. We are suggesting a position that builds into any analysis a rigorous scrutiny of racialised definitions, whether they are operated by the state or through political mobilisations that are occurring around racial and ethnic identities within minority communities. This approach seeks to decipher the meanings of racialised identities without attempting to prioritise one classification as more legitimate than another. We are suggesting a model for conceptualising racisms that is: • • • sensitive to local and contextual manifestations of racist discourse; able to connect local manifestations with wider or national public discourses; able to develop a sensitivity to the trans-local matrices of racist culture and ethnic absolutist movements. Here we are particularly thinking of the ways in which racist cultures are being integrated across time and space through technological advances such as the Internet. In this way we are suggesting a model that situates racisms at both local, national and global levels. As yet, much theoretical work on racism has produced accounts of racism that derive contemporary forms of racism from public political discourse. This evidence is then used to generalise about broader trends within British society. We are suggesting that there is a need to move beyond the limits of this approach by situating racisms within particular settings before moving towards a more general account of their wider significance. Theories of Race and Racism provides a guide through the complex debates about the ways in which ideas about race and racism need to be conceptualised in the present political environment. We are aware that this whole field of research is going through a rapid period of change and that it is not possible to cover all these transformations in one volume. It is clear that the coming period will pose serious questions with regard to the way racism is conceptualised, particularly in a context where new forms of racial and ethnic conflict have come to the fore in various parts of the globe. But precisely because of these uncertainties there is a need to go beyond the limited perspectives that have dominated academic discourses in recent years and meet the challenges we are likely to face in the century to come. We hope that in putting this Reader together we have provided some of the tools for moving beyond current preoccupations in order to analyse new trends and developments. INTRODUCTION 25 Using the Reader One of our main hopes in putting this collection together was to make it accessible and usable. We have therefore included a number of features to help you get the most out of it. We have provided a general overview of the main thematic issues covered by the Reader in the course of the preceding Introduction and so it may be useful to go carefully through the arguments here before moving on to the specific Parts. In addition, at the beginning of each Part we have included an introduction that surveys the main arguments to be found in each contribution. The main point of these introductions is to provide a guide to the specific themes covered by the extracts in each Part and to clarify important points of debate. If you want to follow up other relevant important texts we have included separate lists for each part in the annotated Guide to Further Reading that comes at the end of the Reader. The suggestions contained there are not meant to be complete, but we have attempted to include texts that reflect a variety of conceptual perspectives and which are in themselves important contributions to their fields of study. Finally, at the end of each Part introduction we have included lists of Key Questions that can serve as a point of departure for thinking through the main themes that are covered in each Part. References Adorno. T. W. and Horkheimer, M. 1986. Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Verso Alexander, M. J. and Mohanty, C. T. (eds) 1997. Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, New York: Routledge Anthias, F. and Yuval-Davis, N. 1992. Racialized Boundaries, London: Routledge Appiah, K. A. 1992. In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture, London: Methuen Back, L. 1996. New Ethnicities and Urban Culture, London: UCL Press Banton, M. 1967. Race Relations, New York: Basic Books —— 1991. ‘The Race Relations Problematic’, British Journal of Sociology 42, 1: 115–130 Bauman, Z. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust, Oxford: Blackwell Bhatt, C. 1997. Liberation and Purity: Race, New Religious Movements and the Ethics of Postmodernity London: UCL Press Bulmer, M. and Solomos, J. (eds) 1999. Ethnic and Racial Studies Today, London: Routledge Burleigh, M. and Wippermann, W. 1991. The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Carby, H. V. 1987. Reconstructing Womanhood, New York: Oxford University Press —— 1998. Race Men, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies 1982. The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in ‘70s Britain, London: Hutchinson 26 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK Collins, P. H. 1990. Black Feminist Thought, London: Unwin Hyman Coombes A. 1994. Reinventing Africa, New Haven and London: Yale University Press Davis, A. Y. 1982. Women, Race and Class, London: The Women’s Press Dirks, N. B. (ed.) 1992. Colonialism and Culture, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1996. The Souls of Black Folk, New York: Penguin Fanon, R. 1967. Towards the African Revolution, New York: Monthly Review Press Frankenberg, R. 1993. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, London: Routledge Gilman, S. L. 1991. The Jew’s Body, New York: Routledge Gilman, S. L. and Katz, S. T. (eds) 1991. Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis, New York: New York University Press Gilroy, P. 1987. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, London: Hutchinson —— 1990. ‘One Nation Under a Groove: The Cultural Politics of ‘Race’ and Racism in Britain’ in D. T. Goldberg (eds) Anatomy of Racism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Goldberg, D. T. 1992. ‘Polluting the Body Politic: Racist Discourse and Urban Location’ in M. Cross and M. Keith (eds) Racism, the City and the State, (London: Routledge) Goldberg, D.T. (ed.) 1990. Anatomy of Racism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Hall, C. 1992. White, Middle Class and Male: Explorations in Feminism and History, Cambridge: Polity Press Hall, S. 1980. ‘Race Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance’ in UNESCO Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, Paris: UNESCO —— 1990. ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ in J. Rutherford (ed.) Identity: Culture, Community, Difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart —— 1993. ‘Culture, community, nation’, Cultural Studies 7, 3: 349–63 hooks, b. 1981. Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Boston: South End Press —— 1992. ‘Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination’ in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Treichler (eds) Cultural Studies, London: Routledge Hyam, R. 1990. Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience, Manchester: Manchester University Press James, S. and Busia, A. (eds) 1993. Theorizing Black Feminisms, London: Routledge Jenkins, R. (1986) ‘Some Anthropological Models of Inter-Ethnic Relations’ in J. Rex and D. Mason (eds) Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press —— (1997) Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations, London: Sage Kohn, M. (1995) The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science, London: Jonathan Cape Lorimer, D. A. (1978) Colour, Class and the Victorians, Leicester: Leicester University Press INTRODUCTION 27 MacKenzie, J. M. 1984. Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion 1880–1960, Manchester: Manchester University Press MacKenzie, J. M. (ed.) 1986. Imperialism and Popular Culture, Manchester: Manchester University Press Mannoni, O. 1964. Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonisation, New York: Fredrick A. Praeger Miles, R. 1982. Racism and Migrant Labour, London: George Allen and Unwin —— 1984. ‘Marxism Versus the “Sociology of Race Relations”?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 7, 2: 217–37 —— 1986. ‘Labour Migration, Racism and Capital Accumulation in Western Europe’, Capital and Class 28: 49–86 —— 1988. ‘Racism, Marxism and British Politics’, Economy and Society 17, 3: 428–60 —— 1989. Racism, London: Routledge Miller, C. L. 1990. Theories of Africans, Chicago: University of Chicago Press Mohanty, C. T., Russo, A., and Torres, L. (eds) 1991. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press Morrison, T. 1992. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press Mosse, G. L. 1966. The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson —— 1985. Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press Mudimbe, V. Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge, Bloomington: Indiana University Press —— 1994. The Idea of Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press Parker, A., Russo, M., Sommer, D. and Yaeger, P. (eds) 1992. Nationalisms and Sexualities, New York: Routledge Parry, B. 1998. Delusions and Discoveries: Studies on India in the British Imagination 1880–1930, London: Verso Pieterse, J. M. 1992. White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture, New Haven and London: Yale University Press Poliakov, L. 1974. The Aryan Myth, Brighton: Chatto Heinemann for Sussex University Press Pratt, M. L. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London: Routledge Proctor, R. M. 1988. Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Rex, J. [1970] 1983. Race Relations in Sociological Theory, second edition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul —— 1979. ‘Black Militancy and Class Conflict’ in R. Miles and A. Phizacklea (eds) Racism and Political Action in Britain, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 28 JOHN SOLOMOS AND LES BACK Rex, J. and Mason, D. (eds) 1986. Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Rex, J. and Tomlinson, S. 1979. Colonial Immigrants in a British City, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ross R. (ed.) 1982. Racism and Colonialism, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Said, E. 1978. Orientalism, Harmondsworth: Penguin Sharpe, J. 1993. Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Solomos, J. and Back, L. 1996. Racism and Society, Basingstoke: Macmillan Spivak, G. C. 1988. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, London: Routledge Spurr, D. 1993. The Rhetoric of Empire, Durham NC and London: Duke University Press Stoler, A. L. 1995. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things, Durham NC: Duke University Press Wallace, M. [1979] 1990. Black Macho and The Myth of the Superwoman, London: Verso Ware, V. 1992. Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History, London: Verso Weindling, P. 1989. Health, Race and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism 1870–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Williams, P. J. 1991. The Alchemy of Race and Rights, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University press Wilson, W. J. 1973. Power, Racism and Privilege, New York: Macmillan Wolf, E. 1999. Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis, Berkeley: University of California Press Young, R. J. C. 1995. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London: Routledge PART ONE Origins and transformations INTRODUCTION T H E E X T R A C T S I N C L U D E D in this Part seek to explore in one way or another the origin of ideas about race and racism. While we do not aim to cover all possible aspects of this dimension, we have chosen to include contributions that reflect both the growing interest in the genealogy of racial thinking and the concern to place the question of racism within a historical framework. Given the fact that all six Parts of the Reader are closely interlinked, it is best to see Part One as essentially concerned with outlining the broad contours of ongoing debates about the origins and development of ideas about race. Indeed, a number of the themes that will be touched upon in this Part are ones that we shall return to, albeit from rather different angles, in other Parts of the Reader. As we have indicated in the Guide to Further Reading this is now one of the key areas of research and debate, and so if you want to follow up the issues that are touched upon here it may be as well for you to read some of the texts that we list there. One of the areas that we have not been able to cover fully here is the issue of the impact of European expansion and exploration, particularly after 1492, and its impact on the construction of ideas about race and ‘other’ peoples. This is a subject that is imaginatively explored in Winthrop Jordan’s classic reconstruction of the narratives of first contact that rapidly became evident in the case of English ideas about Africans. Jordan’s reconstruction of these images and his attempt to place them in context, helps us to see the ways in which, from the earliest stages of European expansion into Africa and other parts of the globe, corporeal properties such as skin colour, hair and other phenotypical differences constructed an epidermal schema not only for anchoring difference but for placing different groups of humankind into distinct types. Jordan’s account also usefully shows that the historical backdrop of European expansion and patterns of domination over the 30 O R I G I N S A N D T R A N S F O R M AT I O N S past few centuries is an important point of reference for an historically grounded study of racial ideas and the development of institutional forms of racism in different societies. The dilemmas faced in analysing the history of ideas about race while avoiding the danger of presentism are explored sympathetically by Michael Banton. Banton’s research into the history of the idea of race and the variety of ways it has been used to categorise humankind since the eighteenth century has played an important role in the development of the historical and sociological study of racial relations. In this particular piece he seeks to highlight important dilemmas that we face when we seek to analyse the development of ideas such as race, or indeed racism, over a long period of time without adequate recognition of the shifts in meaning that have emerged and taken shape over time. For Banton the most obvious consequence of presentism is that is means scholars have paid insufficient attention to the social, cultural and intellectual context within which ideas about race have emerged and spread. But he is also concerned to highlight the need to avoid the danger of reading directly from the present into the past. The concern to place the changing meanings attached to race in context is also at the heart of Tzvetan Todorov’s account of the development of ideas about race in French political and social thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although Todorov is writing from a perspective that is quite removed theoretically from that of Banton, he also shows an acute awareness of the importance of locating the development of ideas about race within the intellectual and social changes that have shaped societies such as France over the past three centuries or so. In particular, he is concerned with the question of how the values of the Enlightenment were distorted by racism and nationalism in such a way that led to the development of ideologies of racial superiority and hatred of ‘Others’. From this perspective Todorov sees the nineteenth century as the highpoint of racial thinking, a period in which modern ideas which can be defined as racist took the form that we are familiar with today. The next two extracts are by Oliver C. Cox and W. E. B. Du Bois, two of the first generation of black scholars to make an impact on academic debates in this field. Cox’s contribution reflects one of the earliest attempts to place the question of racism, or racial prejudice, as he prefers to call it, centrally within a Marxist analytic framework. Cox’s work was written from the perspective of historical sociology and he was particularly interested in the ways in which the origins of race prejudice could be seen to link quite closely with European expansion from the end of the fifteenth century onwards. For Cox the development of race prejudice was a social attitude propagated by exploiting classes for the purpose of stigmatising some group as inferior so that the exploitation of either the group itself, or its resources, or both, may be justified. It is from this angle that Cox sought to analyse both the Atlantic slave trade and the plantation slavery that came to characterise the Americas in the aftermath of European expansion. But he also used the same model to analyse other patterns of racial domination and exclusion in other parts of the globe historically and in contemporary times. O R I G I N S A N D T R A N S F O R M AT I O N S 31 The extract from the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, which is the oldest of the extracts included in this Reader, is an example of the contribution of black thinkers such as Du Bois to a reconceptualisation of the role of race in shaping the experience of race in the United States of America. Written at the end of the nineteenth century, the Du Bois piece is particularly concerned with the position of the ‘Negro race’ in the context of American culture and society. What is interesting about this extract from Du Bois’s work is the way it shows him attempting to engage in an evaluation of scientific ideas about race in order to question the way such ideas positioned American blacks, and other Africans, in the hierarchy of ‘races’. Although this particular extract represents merely one facet of the rich diversity of Du Bois’s scholarship it provides an interesting insight into the development of early black scholarship about race and racism, and the linkages with wider trends in research and debate. We have included a number of more contemporary black scholars in subsequent parts of this Reader and it may be helpful to compare their perspectives with those of Cox and Du Bois. The final contribution in this part is from Gunnar Myrdal, and it is focused on the development of what he calls ‘racial beliefs’ in the United States. Myrdal’s analysis was originally published in 1942 and he was concerned to explore the history of the ‘Negro problem’ in the United States. In this particular extract he seeks to look at the development of racial ideas and values about American blacks from the nineteenth century onwards. Myrdal’s core concern was to explore the contradictions to be found in American society’s treatment of black Americans in the context of the wider vision of a society based on equality of opportunity and justice. He was particularly concerned with how ideas of racial superiority became an established element of American culture and society. Much of Myrdal’s study is taken up with detailed accounts of institutional processes of exclusion against American blacks and their role at different historical points. But he also showed an acute awareness of the role of racial ideologies in facilitating institutionalised behaviour. Indeed for Myrdal the ‘chief hindrance to improving the Negro is the white man’s firm belief in his inferiority’. 32 O R I G I N S A N D T R A N S F O R M AT I O N S KEY QUESTIONS • • • • • What role did the process of European expansion and exploration play in shaping images of Africans and of ‘races’? Michael Banton argues that ‘the historical study of racial thought and attitudes has often been flawed by an unreflecting presentism’. What are the implications of this argument for how we analyse the history of racial ideas? Examine Oliver C. Cox’s argument that the origins of racism can be directly linked to the development of capitalism. In what ways does the work of W. E. B. Du Bois contribute to the analysis of the race question in the United States? Analyse Gunnar Myrdal’s account of ‘The American Dilemma’ and how it may be resolved. Chapter 1 Winthrop D. Jordan FIRST IMPRESSIONS [. . .] E N G L I S H V O Y A G E R S did not touch upon the shores ofWest Africa until after 1550, nearly a century after Prince Henry the Navigator had mounted the sustained Portuguese thrust southward for a water passage to the Orient. Usually Englishmen came to Africa to trade goods with the natives; the principal hazards of these ventures proved to be climate, disease, and the jealous opposition of the “Portingals” who had long since entrenched themselves in forts along the coast.The earliest English descriptions of West Africa were written by adventurous traders, men who had no special interest in converting the natives or, except for the famous Hawkins voyages, in otherwise laying hands on them. Extensive English participation in the slave trade did not develop until well into the seventeenth century. The first permanent English settlement on the African coast was at Kormantin in 1631, and the Royal African Company was not chartered for another forty years.1 Initially, therefore, English contact with Africans did not take place primarily in a context which prejudged the Negro as a slave, at least not as a slave of Englishmen. Rather, Englishmen met Negroes merely as another sort of men. Englishmen found the natives of Africa very different from themselves. Negroes looked different; their religion was un-Christian; their manner of living was anything but English; they seemed to be a particularly libidinous sort of people. All these clusters of perceptions were related to each other, though they may be spread apart for inspection, and they were related also to circumstances of contact in Africa, to previously accumulated traditions concerning that strange and distant continent, and to certain special qualities of English society on the eve of its expansion into the New World. 34 WINTHROP D. JORDAN [. . .] The most arresting characteristic of the newly discovered African was his color.Travelers rarely failed to comment upon it; indeed when describing Negroes they frequently began with complexion and then moved on to dress (or rather lack of it) and manners. At Cape Verde, “These people are all blacke, and are called Negros, without any apparell, saving before their privities.”2 Robert Baker’s narrative poem recounting his two voyages to the West African coast in 1562 and 1563 first introduced the natives with these engaging lines: And entering in [a river], we see a number of blacke soules, Whose likelinesse seem’d men to be, but all as blacke as coles. Their Captaine comes to me as naked as my naile, Not having witte or honestie to cover once his taile.3 Even more sympathetic observers seemed to find blackness a most salient quality in Negroes: “although the people were blacke and naked, yet they were civill.”4 Englishmen actually described Negroes as black – an exaggerated term which in itself suggests that the Negros complexion had powerful impact upon their perceptions. Even the peoples of northern Africa seemed so dark that Englishmen tended to call them “black” and let further refinements go by the board. Blackness became so generally associated with Africa that every African seemed a black man. In Shakespeare’s day, the Moors, including Othello, were commonly portrayed as pitchy black and the terms Moor and Negro used almost interchangeably.5 With curious inconsistency, however, Englishmen recognized that Africans south of the Sahara were not at all the same people as the much more familiar Moors.6 Sometimes they referred to Negroes as “black Moors” to distinguish them from the peoples of North Africa. During the seventeenth century the distinction became more firmly established and indeed writers came to stress the difference in color, partly because they delighted in correcting their predecessors and partly because Negroes were being taken up as slaves and Moors, increasingly, were not. In the more detailed and accurate reports aboutWest Africa of the seventeenth century, moreover, Negroes in different regions were described as varying considerably in complexion. In England, however, the initial impression of Negroes was not appreciably modified: the firmest fact about the Negro was that he was “black.” The powerful impact which the Negro’s color made upon Englishmen must have been partly owing to suddenness of contact.Though the Bible as well as the arts and literature of antiquity and the Middle Ages offered some slight introduction to the “Ethiope,” England’s immediate acquaintance with black-skinned peoples came with relative rapidity.While the virtual monopoly held by Venetian ships in England’s foreign trade prior to the sixteenth century meant that people much darker than Englishmen were not entirely unfamiliar, really black men were virtually unknown except as vaguely referred to in the hazy literature about the sub-Sahara which had filtered down from antiquity. F I R ST I MPR E S S I O N S 35 Native West Africans probably first appeared in London in 1554; in that year five “Negroes,” as the legitimate traderWilliam Towerson reported, were taken to England, “kept till they could speake the language,” and then brought back again “to be a helpe to Englishmen” who were engaged in trade with Negroes on the coast. Hakluyt’s later discussion of these Negroes, who he said “could wel agree with our meates and drinkes” though “the colde and moyst aire doth somewhat offend them,” suggests that these “blacke Moores” were a novelty to Englishmen.7 In this respect the English experience was markedly different from that of the Spanish and Portuguese who for centuries had been in close contact with North Africa and had actually been invaded and subjected by people both darker and more highly civilized than themselves.The impact of the Negro’s color was the more powerful upon Englishmen, moreover, because England’s principal contact with Africans came in West Africa and the Congo where men were not merely dark but almost literally black: one of the fairest-skinned nations suddenly came face to face with one of the darkest peoples on earth. Viewed from one standpoint, Englishmen were merely participating in Europe’s discovery that the strange men who stood revealed by European expansion overseas came in an astounding variety of colors.A Spanish chronicle translated into English in 1555 was filled with wonder at this diversity: “One of the marveylous thynges that god useth in the composition of man, is coloure: whiche doubtlesse can not bee consydered withowte great admiration in beholding one to be white and an other blacke, beinge coloures utterley contrary. Sum lykewyse to be yelowe whiche is betwene blacke and white: and other of other colours as it were of dyvers liveres”8 As this passage suggests, the juxtaposition of black and white was the most striking marvel of all. And for Englishmen this juxtaposition was more than a curiosity. In England perhaps more than in southern Europe, the concept of blackness was loaded with intense meaning. Long before they found that some men were black, Englishmen found in the idea of blackness a way of expressing some of their most ingrained values. No other color except white conveyed so much emotional impact. As described by the Oxford English Dictionary, the meaning of black before the sixteenth century included, “Deeply stained with dirt; soiled, dirty, foul. . . . Having dark or deadly purposes, malignant; pertaining to or involving death, deadly; baneful, disastrous, sinister. . . . Foul, iniquitous, atrocious, horrible, wicked. . . . Indicating disgrace, censure, liability to punishment, etc.” Black was an emotionally partisan color, the handmaid and symbol of baseness and evil, a sign of danger and repulsion. Embedded in the concept of blackness was its direct opposite – whiteness. No other colors so clearly implied opposition, “beinge coloures utterlye contrary”; no others were so frequently used to denote polarization: Everye white will have its blacke, And everye sweete its sowre.9 White and black connoted purity and filthiness, virginity and sin, virtue and baseness, beauty and ugliness, beneficence and evil, God and the devil.10 Whiteness, moreover, carried a special significance for Elizabethan Englishmen: it was, particularly 36 WINTHROP D. JORDAN when complemented by red, the color of perfect human beauty, especially female beauty.This ideal was already centuries old in Elizabeth’s time,11 and their fair Queen was its very embodiment: her cheeks were “roses in a bed of lillies.” (Elizabeth was naturally pale but like many ladies then and since she freshened her “lillies” at the cosmetic table.)12 [. . .] Black human beings were not only startling but extremely puzzling.The complexion of Negroes posed problems about its nature, especially its permanence and utility, its cause and origin, and its significance. Although these were rather separate questions, there was a pronounced tendency among Englishmen and other Europeans to formulate the problem in terms of causation alone, for if that nut could be cracked the other answers would be readily forthcoming; if the cause of human blackness could be explained, then its nature and significance would follow. Not that the problem was completely novel.The ancient Greeks had touched upon it without ever really coming to grips with it.The story of Phaëton’s driving the chariot sun wildly through the heavens apparently served as an explanation for the Ethiopian’s blackness even before written records, and traces of this ancient fable were still drifting about during the seventeenth century. The Æthiopians then were white and fayre, Though by the worlds combustion since made black When wanton Phaëton overthrew the Sun.13 Less fancifully, Ptolemy had made the important suggestion that the Negro’s blackness and woolly hair was caused by exposure to the hot sun and had pointed out that people in northern climates were white and those in temperate areas an intermediate color.14 Aristotle, Antigonus, Pliny, and Plutarch, an impressive battery of authorities, had passed along the familiar story of a black baby born into a white family (telltale trace of some Ethiopian ancestor), but this was scarcely much help as to original cause.The idea that black babies might result from maternal impressions during conception or pregnancy found credence during the Middle Ages and took centuries to die out, if indeed it ever has entirely.15 Before the fifteenth century, though, the question of the Negro’s color can hardly be said to have drawn the attention of Englishmen or indeed of Europeans generally. The opening of West Africa and the development of Negro slavery, which for the first time brought Englishmen frequently into firsthand contact with really black Negroes, made the question far more urgent and provided an irresistible playground for awakening scientific curiosity.The range of possible answers was rigidly restricted, however, by the virtually universal assumption, dictated by church and Scripture, that all mankind stemmed from a single source. Giordano Bruno’s statement in 1591 that “no sound thinking person will refer the Ethiopians to the same protoplast as the Jewish one” was unorthodox at best. Indeed it is impossible fully to understand the various efforts at explaining the Negro’s complexion without bearing in mind the strength of the tradition which in 1614 made the chronicler, the Reverend Samuel Purchas, proclaim vehemently: “the tawney Moore, blacke Negro, duskie Libyan, ash-coloured Indian, olive-coloured American, should with the whiter European become one sheep-fold, under one great Sheepheard, till this mortalitie being swallowed up of Life, F I R ST I MPR E S S I O N S 37 wee may all be one, as he and the father are one . . . without any more distinction of Colour, National, Language, Sex, Condition, all may bee One in him that is One, and onely blessed for ever.”16 In general, the most satisfactory answer to the problem was some sort of reference to the action of the sun, whether the sun was assumed to have scorched the skin, drawn the bile, or blackened the blood. People living on the Line had obviously been getting too much of it; after all, even Englishmen were darkened by a little exposure. How much more, then, with the Negroes who were “so scorched and vexed with the heat of the sunne, that in many places they curse it when it riseth”17 The sun’s heat was itself sometimes described as a curse – a not unnatural reaction on the part of those Englishmen who visited the West African coast where the weather was “of such putrifying qualitie, that it rotted the coates of their backs.”18 This association of the Negro’s color with the sun became a commonplace in Elizabethan literature; as the Prince of Morocco apologized, “Mislike me not for my complexion,/ The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun,/ To whom I am a neighbour and near bred.”19 Unfortunately this theory ran headlong into a stubborn fact of nature which simply could not be overridden: if the equatorial inhabitants of Africa were blackened by the sun, why not the people living on the same line in America? Logic required them to be the same color.As Ptolemy’s formidably authoritative Geographia stated this logic, “Reason herself asserts that all animals, and all plants likewise, have a similarity under the same kind of climate or under similar weather conditions, that is, when under the same parallels, or when situated at the same distance from either pole.”20 Yet by the middle of the sixteenth century it was becoming perfectly apparent that the Indians living in the hottest regions of the NewWorld could by no stretch of the imagination be described as black.They were “olive” or “tawny,” and moreover thay had long hair rather than the curious wool of Negroes; clearly they were a different sort of men. Peter Martyr, the official Spanish court chronicler whose accounts Richard Eden translated in 1555, made the point as early as 1516, a trifle overenthusiastically to be sure: “in all the navigation, he [Columbus] never wente oute of the paralelles of Ethiope. . . . [Yet] the Ethiopians are all blacke, havinge theyr heare curld more lyke wulle then heare. But these people [in America] . . . are whyte, with longe heare, and of yellowe colour.” Fortunately it did not take long to calm down this entrancing, overly Nordic presentation of the Indian.Toward the end of the century Richard Hakluyt picked up Eden’s own account of a voyage of 1554 which had carefully noted that the Indians were “neither black, nor with curlde and short wooll on their heads, as they of Africke have, but of the colour of an Olive, with long and blacke heare on their heads.”21 Clearly the method of accounting for human complexion by latitude just did not work.The worst of it was that the formula did not seem altogether wrong, since it was apparent that in general men in hot climates tended to be darker than in cold ones.The tenacity of the old logic was manifest in many writers who clung to the latitudinal explanation and maintained stoutly that for one or many reasons the actual climate on the ground was more temperate in America than in Guinea and men accordingly less dark.22 Another difficulty with the climatic explanation of skin color arose as lengthening experience augmented knowledge about Negroes. If the heat of the sun caused the Negro’s blackness, then his removal to cold northerly countries ought to result in his losing it; even if he did not himself surrender 38 WINTHROP D. JORDAN his peculiar color, surely his descendants must. By mid-seventeenth century it was becoming increasingly apparent that this expectation was ill founded: Negroes in Europe and northern America were simply not whitening up very noticeably. Still, the evidence on this matter was by no means entirely definite, and some observers felt that it was not yet all in hand.Though they conceded that lightening of black skin by mixture with Europeans should be ruled out of the experiment, these writers thought they detected a perceptible whitening of the unmixed African residing in colder climates, and they bolstered their case by emphasizing how long it was going to take to whiten up the African completely.23 [. . .] While distinctive appearance set Africans over into a novel category of men, their religious condition set them apart from Englishmen in a more familiar way. Englishmen and Christians everywhere were sufficiently acquainted with the concept of heathenism that they confronted its living representatives without puzzlement. Certainly the rather sudden discovery that the world was teeming with heathen people made for heightened vividness and urgency in a long-standing problem; but it was the fact that this problem was already well formulated long before contact with Africa which proved important in shaping English reaction to the Negro’s defective religious condition. In one sense heathenism was less a “problem” for Christians than an exercise in self-definition: the heathen condition defined by negation the proper Christian life. In another sense, the presence of heathenism in the world constituted an imperative to intensification of religious commitment. From its origin Christianity was a universalist, proselytizing religion, and the sacred and secular histories of Christianity made manifest the necessity of bringing non-Christians into the fold. For Englishmen, then, the heathenism of Negroes was at once a counter-image of their own religion and a summons to eradicate an important distinction between the two peoples. The interaction of these two facets of the concept of heathenism made for a peculiar difficulty. On the one hand, to act upon the felt necessity of converting Negroes would have been to eradicate the point of distinction which Englishmen found most familiar and most readily comprehensible.Yet if they did not act upon this necessity, continued heathenism among Negroes would remain an unwelcome reminder to Englishmen that they were not meeting their obligations to their own faith – nor to the benighted Negroes. Englishmen resolved this implicit dilemma by doing nothing. Considering the strength of the Christian tradition, it is almost startling that Englishmen failed to respond to the discovery of heathenism in Africa with at least the rudiments of a campaign for conversion. Although the impulse to spread Christianity seems to have been weaker in Englishmen than, say, in the Catholic Portuguese, it cannot be said that Englishmen were indifferent to the obligation imposed upon them by the overseas discoveries of the sixteenth century.While they were badly out of practice at the business of conversion (again in contrast to the Portuguese) and while they had never before been faced with the practical difficulties involved in Christianizing entire continents, they nonetheless were able to contemplate with equanimity and even eagerness the prospect of converting the heathen. Indeed they went so far as to conclude that converting the natives in America was sufficiently important to demand English settlement there.As it turned out, the wellpublicized English program for converting Indians produced very meager results, but the avowed F I R ST I MPR E S S I O N S 39 intentions certainly were genuine. It was in marked contrast, therefore, that Englishmen did not avow similiar intentions concerning Africans until the late eighteenth century. Fully as much as with skin color, though less consciously, Englishmen distinguished between the heathenisms of Indians and of Negroes. The suggestive congruence of these twin distinctions between Negroes and Indians is not easy to account for. On the basis of the travelers’ reports there was no reason for Englishmen to suppose Indians inherently superior to Negroes as candidates for conversion. While in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Englishmen who had first-hand contact with Africans were not, unlike many of the Portuguese, engaged in missionary efforts, the same may be said of most English contact with Indians. On the other hand, America was not Africa. Englishmen contemplated settling in America, where voyagers had established the King’s claim and where supposedly the climate was temperate; in contrast, Englishmen did not envision settlement in Africa, which had quickly gained notoriety as a graveyard for Europeans and where the Portuguese had been the first on the scene. Certainly these very different circumstances meant that Englishmen confronted Negroes and Indians in radically different social contexts and that Englishmen would find it far easier to contemplate converting Indians than Negroes.Yet it remains difficult to see why Negroes were not included, at least as a secondary target, by extension from the program actually directed at the Indians.The fact that English contact with Africans so frequently occurred in a context of slave dealing does not entirely explain the omission of Negroes, since in that same context the Portuguese and Spanish did sometimes attempt to minister to the souls of Negroes (somewhat perfunctorily, to be sure) and since Englishmen in America enslaved Indians when good occasion arose. Given these circumstances, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the distinction which Englishmen made as to conversion was at least in some small measure modeled after the difference they saw in skin color. Although Englishmen failed to incorporate Negroes into the proselytizing effort which was enjoined by the Christian heritage, that heritage did much to shape the English reaction to Negroes as a people. Paradoxically, Christianity worked to make Englishmen think of Negroes as being both very much like themselves and very different.The emphasis on similarity derived directly from the emphatic Christian doctrine which affirmed that mankind was one.The Old Testament, most notably the book of Genesis, seemed absolutely firm on this point: all men derived from the same act of creation and had at first shared a common experience. So too the NewTestament declared all nations to be of one blood.The strength of this universalist strain in Christianity was evident in the assurances offered by a number of English travelers in Africa that they had discovered rudiments of the Word among the most barbarous heathens. In 1623 Richard Jobson exclaimed that “they have a wonderous reference, to the leviticall law, as it is in our holy Bible related; the principalls whereof they are not ignorant in, for they do report concerning Adam and Eve, whom they call Adama and Evahaha, talking of Noahs flood, and of Moses, with many other things our sacred History makes mention of.” Another commentator hinted at covert Calvinism in the jungle: “They keep their Fetissoes [Fetish] day, one day in seven, and that Tuesday (a Sabbath it seems is natural) more solemnly and strictly than the Hollanders do their Sunday.”24 To call the Sabbath “natural” among heathens was an invitation to the 40 WINTHROP D. JORDAN missionary to harvest the seed planted everywhere by God. Such a description also serves to demonstrate how powerfully the Christian tradition operated to make Englishmen and other Europeans consider the new peoples of the freshly opened world as being inherently similar to themselves. At the same time, Christianity militated against the unity of man. Because Englishmen were Christians, heathenism in Negroes was a fundamental defect which set them distinctly apart. However much Englishmen disapproved of Popery and Mehometanism, they were accustomed to these perversions.Yet they were not accustomed to dealing face to face with people who appeared, so far as many travelers could tell, to have no religion at all.25 Steeped in the legacy and trappings of their own religion, Englishmen were ill prepared to see any legitimacy in African religious practices. Judged by Christian cosmology, Negroes stood in a separate category of men. [. . .]The condition of savagery – the failure to be civilized – set Negroes apart from Englishmen in an ill-defined but crucial fashion. Africans were different from Englishmen in so many ways: in their clothing, huts, farming, warfare, language, government, morals, and (not least important) in their table manners. Englishmen were fully aware that Negroes living at different parts of the coast were not all alike; it was not merely different reactions in the observers which led one to describe a town as “marveilous artificially builded with mudde walles . . . and kept very cleane as well in their streetes as in their houses” and another to relate how “they doe eate” each other “alive” in some places but dead in others “as we wolde befe or mutton.”26 No matter how great the actual and observed differences among Negroes, though, none of these black men seemed to live like Englishmen. To judge from the comments of voyagers, Englishmen had an unquenchable thirst for the details of savage life. Partly their curiosity was a matter of scientific interest in the “natural productions” of the newly opened world overseas.To the public at large, the details of savage behavior appealed to an interest which was not radically different from the scientist’s; an appetite for the “wonderful” seems to have been built into Western culture. It is scarcely surprising that civilized Englishmen should have taken an interest in reports about cosmetic mutilation, polygamy, infanticide, ritual murder and the like – of course English men did not really do any of these things themselves. Finally, reports about savages began arriving at a time when Englishmen very much needed to be able to translate their apprehensive interest in an uncontrollable world out of medieval, religious terms.The discovery of savages overseas enabled them to make this translation easily, to move from miracles to verifiable monstrosities, from heaven to earth. As with skin color, English reporting of African customs constituted an exercise in self-inspection by means of comparison.The necessity of continuously measuring African practices with an English yardstick of course tended to emphasize the differences between the two groups, but it also made for heightened sensitivity to instances of similarity. Thus the Englishman’s ethnocentrism tended to distort his perception of African culture in two opposite directions.While it led him to emphasize differences and to condemn deviations from the English norm, it led him also to seek out similarities (where perhaps none existed) and to applaud every instance of conformity to the appropriate standard. Though African clothing and personal etiquette were regarded as absurd, equivalents to European practices were at times detected in other aspects of African culture. Particularly, Englishmen F I R ST I MPR E S S I O N S 41 were inclined to see the structures of African societies as analogous to their own, complete with kings, counselors, gentlemen, and the baser sort. Here especially they found Africans like themselves, partly because they knew no other way to describe a society and partly because there was actually good basis for such a view in the social organization of West African communities.27 Most English commentators seem to have felt that Negroes would behave better under improved circumstances; a minority thought the Africans naturally wicked, but even these observers often used “natural” only to mean “ingrained.” (English accounts of West Africa did not emphasize ingrained stupidity in the natives; defect of “Reason” was seen as a function of savagery.)28 Until well into the eighteenth century there was no debate as to whether the Negro’s non-physical characteristics were inborn and unalterable; such a question was never posed with anything like sufficient clarity for men to debate it.There was no precise meaning in such statements about the Africans as, “Another (as it were) innate quality they have [is] to Steal any thing they lay hands of, especially from Foreigners . . . this vicious humor [runs] through the whole race of Blacks,” or in another comment, that “it would be very surprizing if upon a scrutiny into their Lives we should find any of them whose perverse Nature would not break out sometimes; for they indeed seem to be born and bred Villains: All sorts of Baseness having got such sure-footing in them, that ’tis impossible to lye concealed.”29 These two vague suggestions concerning innate qualities in the Negro were among the most precise in all the English accounts ofWest Africa. It was sufficient to depict and describe.There might be disagreement as to the exact measure of tenacity with which the African clung to his present savage character, but this problem would yield to time and accurate description. Despite the fascination and self-instruction Englishmen derived from expatiating upon the savage behavior of Africans, they never felt that savagery was as important a quality in Africans as it was in the American Indians. Two sets of circumstances made for this distinction in the minds of Englishmen. As was the case with heathenism, contrasting social contexts played an important role in shaping the English response to savagery in the two peoples. Inevitably, the savagery of the Indians assumed a special significance in the minds of those actively engaged in a program of bringing civilization into the American wilderness.The case with the African was different: the English errand into Africa was not a new or a perfect community but a business trip. No hope was entertained for civilizing the Negro’s steaming continent, and Englishmen lacked compelling reason to develop a program for remodeling the African natives. The most compelling necessity was that of pressing forward the business of buying Negroes from other Negroes. It was not until the slave trade came to require justification, in the eighteenth century, that some Englishmen found special reason to lay emphasis on the Negro’s savagery. [. . .] If Negroes were likened to beasts, there was in Africa a beast which was likened to men. It was a strange and eventually tragic happenstance of nature that the Negro’s homeland was the habitat of the animal which in appearance most resembles man.The animal called “oran-outang” by contemporaries (actually the chimpanzee) was native to those parts of western Africa where the early slave trade was heavily concentrated. Though Englishmen were acquainted (for the most part vicariously) with monkeys and baboons, they were unfamiliar with tailless apes who walked about like men.30 42 WINTHROP D. JORDAN Accordingly, it happened that Englishmen were introduced to the anthropoid apes and to Negroes at the same time and in the same place.The startlingly human appearance and movements of the “ape” – a generic term though often used as a synonym for the “orang-outang” – aroused some curious speculations. In large measure these speculations derived from traditions which had been accumulating in Western culture since ancient times. Medieval bestiaries contained rosters of strange creatures who in one way or another seemed disturbingly to resemble men.There were the simia and the cynocephali and the satyri and the others, all variously described and related to one another, all jumbled in a characteristic amalgam of ancient reports and medieval morality.The confusion was not easily nor rapidly dispelled, and many of the traditions established by this literature were very much alive during the seventeenth century. The section on apes in EdwardTopsell’s Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes (1607) serves to illustrate how certain seemingly trivial traditions and associations persisted in such form that they were bound to affect the way in which Englishmen would perceive the natives of Africa.31 Topsell, who built principally upon the work of the great Swiss naturalist Konrad von Gesner (1516–65), was careful to distinguish tailless apes from monkeys. They were to be found in three regions: south of the Caucasus, India, and “Lybia and all that desart Woods betwixt Egypt, Æthiopia and Libia.” When he came to describe the various kinds of “apes,” however,Topsell was far less definite as to location than as to their general character: above all else, “apes” were venerous. In India the red apes were “so venerous that they will ravish their Women.” Baboons were “as lustful and venerous as goats”; a baboon which had been “brought to the French king . . . above all loved the companie of women, and young maidens; his genitall member was greater than might match the quantity of his other parts.” Pictures of two varieties of apes, a “Satyre” and an “Ægopithecus, graphically emphasized the “virile member.” In addition to stressing the “lustful disposition” of the ape kind,Topsell’s compilation contained suggestions concerning the character of simian facial features. “Men that have low and flat nostrils,” readers were told in the section on apes, “are Libidinous as Apes that attempt women, and having thicke lippes the upper hanging over the neather, they are deemed fooles, like the lips of asses and Apes.”This rather explicit association was the persistent connection made between apes and devils. In a not altogether successful attempt to distinguish the “Satyre-apes” from the mythical creatures of that name,Topsell straightened everything out by explaining that it was “probable, that Devils take not any dænomination or shape from Satyres, but rather the Apes themselves from Devils whom they resemble, for there are many things common to the Satyre-apes and devilish Satyres.” Association of apes and/or satyrs with devils was common in England: James I linked them in his Daemonology (1597).32 The inner logic of this association derived from uneasiness concerning the ape’s “indecent likenesse and imitation of man”; it revolved around evil and sexual sin; and, rather tenuously, it connected apes with blackness. Given this tradition and the coincidence of contact, it was virtually inevitable that Englishmen should discern similarity between the man-like beasts and the beast-like men of Africa.33 A few F I R ST I MPR E S S I O N S 43 commentators went so far as to suggest that Negroes had sprung from the generation of ape-kind or that apes were themselves’ the offspring of Negroes and some unknown African beast.34 These contentions were squarely in line with the ancient tradition that Africa was a land “bringing dailie foorth newe monsters” because, as Aristotle himself had suggested, many different species came into proximity at the scarce watering places. Jean Bodin, the famous sixteenth-century French political theorist, summarized this wisdom of the ages with the categorical remark that “promiscuous coition of men and animals took place, wherefore the regions of Africa produce for us so many monsters.”35 Despite all these monsters out of Africa, the notion that Negroes stemmed from beasts in a literal sense did not receive wide credence; even the writers who advanced it did not suggest that the Negro himself was now a beast. Far more common and persistent was the notion that there sometimes occurred “a beastly copulation or conjuncture” between apes and Negroes, and especially that apes were inclined wantonly to attack Negro women.36 The very explicit idea that apes assaulted female human beings was not new; Negroes were merely being asked to demonstrate what Europeans had known for centuries. Englishmen seemed ready to credit the tales about bestial connections, and even as late as the 1730’s a well-traveled, intelligent naval surgeon, John Atkins, was not at all certain that the stories were false: “At some Places the Negroes have been suspected of Bestiality with them [apes and monkeys], and by the Boldness and affection they are known under some Circumstances to express to our Females; the Ignorance and Stupidity on the other side, to guide or control Lust; but more from the near resemblances are sometimes met to the Human Species would tempt one to suspect the Fact.” Atkins went on to voice the generally received opinion that if offspring were ever produced by such mixtures they would themselves be infertile: “Altho” by the way, this, like other Hebridous productions, could never go no farther; and as such a monstrous generation would be more casual and subject to Fatality, the Case must be uncommon and rare.”37 [. . .] It was no accident that this affinity between Negroes and apes was so frequently regarded as sexual, for undertones of sexuality run throughout many English accounts of West Africa.To liken Africans – any human being – to beasts was to stress the animal within the man. Indeed the sexual connotations embodied in the terms bestial and beastly were considerably stronger in Elizabethan English than they are today, and when the Elizabethan traveler pinned these epithets upon the behavior of Negroes he was frequently as much registering a sense of sexual shock as describing swinish manners: “They are beastly in their living,” young Andrew Battell wrote, “for they have men in women’s apparel, whom they keep among their wives.”38 Lecherousness among the Negroes was at times merely another attribute which one would expect to find among heathen, savage, beast-like men. A passage in Samuel Purchas’s collection makes evident how closely interrelated all these attributes were in the minds of Englishmen: “They have no knowledge of God; those that traffique and are conversant among strange Countrey people are civiller then the common sort of people, they are very greedie eaters, and no lesse drinkers, and very lecherous, and theevish, and much addicted to uncleanenesse: one man hath as many wives as hee is able to keepe and maintaine.”39 Sexuality was what one expected of savages. 44 WINTHROP D. JORDAN Clearly, however, the association of Africans with potent sexuality represented more than an incidental appendage to the concept of savagery. Long before first English contact with West Africa, the inhabitants of virtually the entire continent stood confirmed in European literature as lustful and venerous. About 1526 Leo Africanus (a Spanish Moroccan Moor converted to Christianity) supplied the most authoritative and influential description of the little-known lands of “Barbary,” “Libya,” “Numedia,” and “Land of Negroes”; and Leo was as explicit as he was imaginative. In the English translation (ca. 1600) readers were informed concerning the “Negroes” that “there is no Nation under heaven more prone to Venery.” Having reduced the “Numedians” to being “principally addicted unto treason, Treacherie, Murther, Theft and Robberie” and the inhabitants of Libya to living a “brutish kind of life” destitute of “any Religion, any Lawes, or any good form of living,” Leo went on to disclose that “the Negroes likewise leade a beastly kind of life, being utterly destitute of the use of reason, of dexteritie of wit, and of all arts.Yea, they so behave themselves, as if they had continually lived in a Forrest among wild beasts.They have great swarmes of harlots among them; whereupon a man may easily conjecture their manner of living.”40 Nor was Leo Africanus the only scholar to elaborate upon the classical sources concerning Africa. In a highly eclectic work first published in 1566, Jean Bodin sifted the writings of ancient authorities and concluded that heat and lust went hand in hand and that “in Ethiopia . . . the race of men is very keen and lustful.” Bodin announced in a thoroughly characteristic sentence, “Ptolemy reported that on account of southern sensuality Venus chiefly is worshiped in Africa and that the constellation of Scorpion, which pertains to the pudenda, dominates that continent.”41 Depiction of the Negro as a lustful creature was not radically new, therefore, when Englishmen first met Negroes face to face. Seizing upon and reconfirming these long-standing and apparently common notions about Africa, Elizabethan travelers and literati spoke very explicitly of Negroes as being especially sexual. Othello’s embraces were “the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor.” Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (ca. 1624) referred to “an 1holy hermit” who “desired to see the Spirit of Fornication; and there appeared to him a little foul ugly Æthiop.” Negro men, reported a seventeenth-century traveler, sported “large Propagators.” In 1623 Richard Jobson, a sympathetic observer, reported that mandingo men were “furnisht with such members as are after a sort burthensome unto them”; it was the custom in that tribe not to have intercourse during pregnancy so as not to “destroy what is conceived.” During this abstinence, Jobson explained, the man “hath allowance of other women, for necessities sake,” though this was not to be considered “overstrange” since in the twenty-third chapter of Ezekiel two incontinent sisters were “said to dote upon those people whose members were as the members of asses.” Jobson’s explanation for the unusual size of these men was incorporated neatly into the context of scriptural anthropology. “Undoubtedly,” he wrote, “these people originally sprung from the race of Canaan, the sonne of Ham, who discovered his father Noahs secrets, for which Noah awakening cursed Canaan as our holy Scripture testifieth[;] the curse as by Scholemen hath been disputed, extended to his ensuing race, in laying hold upon the same place, where the originall cause began, whereof these people are witnesse.”43 The neatness of Jobson’s exegesis was unusual, but his initial observation was not. Another F I R ST I MPR E S S I O N S 45 commentator, the anonymous author of The Golden Coast (1665), thought Negroes “very lustful and impudent, especially, when they come to hide their nakedness, (for a Negroes hiding his Members, their extraordinary greatness) is a token of their Lust, and therefore much troubled with the Pox.”44 By the eighteenth century a report on the sexual aggressiveness of Negro women was virtually de rigueur for the African commentator. By then, of course, with many Englishmen actively participating in the slave trade, there were pressures making for descriptions of “hot constitution’d ladies” possessed of a “temper hot and lascivious, making no scruple to prostitute themselves to the Europeans for a very slender profit, so great is their inclination to white men.”45 And surely it was the Negro women who were responsible for lapses from propriety: “If they can come to the Place the Man sleeps in, they lay themselves softly down by him, soon wake him, and use all their little Arts to move the darling Passion.”46 While the animus underlying these and similar remarks becomes sufficiently obvious once Englishmen began active participation in the slave trade, it is less easy to see why Englishmen should have fastened upon Negroes a pronounced sexuality virtually upon first sight. Certainly the ancient notions distilled in the alembics of Bodin and Leo Africanus must have helped pattern initial English perceptions.Yet it is scarcely possible that these notions were fully responsible for the picture of Negro sexuality which developed so rapidly and in such explicit terms in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Another tradition was of possible relevance – the curse upon Ham’s son Canaan. According to the Scriptural account Ham’s offense was that he had “looked upon the nakedness of his father.”To the post-Freudian ear this suggests castration. To early Jewish commentators it suggested not merely castration but other sexual offenses as well.The Hebraic literature of ca. 200–600 A.D. which saw the posterity of Ham and Canaan as smitten in the skin speculated as to whether Ham’s offense was (variously) castrating his father Noah (described in the Midrash Rabbah as Noah’s saying “You have prevented me from doing something in the dark”), and (in the same source) as copulating “in the Ark,” and (again) copulating “with a dog . . . therefore Ham came forth black-skinned while the dog publicly exposes its copulation.”The depth and diffuse pervasiveness of these explosive associations are dramatized in the mystic Zohar of the thirteenth century, where Ham, it was said, “represents the refuse and dross of the gold, the stirring and rousing of the unclean spirit of the ancient serpent.” What is especially striking in these commentaries is that for centuries they remained peculiar though not secret to Jewish scholars. Although some Christian writers in the early centuries of the church seem to have been aware of sexual connotations in Ham’s offense, they appear never to have dilated upon them.With the onset of European expansion in the sixteenth century, some Christian commentators, or rather some commentators who were Christians, suddenly began speaking in the same mode which Jews had employed a thousand years and more before.Though the genealogy of Noah’s descendants was always somewhat tangled, Ham always represented for the ancient Jews the southward peoples including the Canaanites, whom the Jews drove from the promised land and upon whom they fastened the millstone of sexual offenses which are repeatedly and so adamantly condemned and guarded against in the Pentateuch. More than two thousand years later a similar disquietude 46 WINTHROP D. JORDAN seems to have come over Europeans and Englishmen as they embarked upon a program of outward migration and displacement and exploitation of other peoples.The curse upon Ham’s posterity took on for Christian Englishmen a potential immediacy and relevance which it could never have had if Englishmen had not as a people been undergoing an experience which they half sense was in some measure analogous to that of the ancient special people of God’s word.47 [. . .] It was the case with English confrontation with Negroes, then, that a society in a state of rapid flux, undergoing important changes in religious values, and comprised of men who were energetically on the make and acutely and often uncomfortably self-conscious of being so, came upon a people less technologically advanced, markedly different in appearance and culture. From the first, Englishmen tended to set Negroes over against themselves, to stress what they conceived to be radically contrasting qualities of color, religion, and style of life, as well as animality and a peculiarly potent sexuality.What Englishmen did not at first fully realize was that Negroes were potentially subjects for a special kind of obedience and subordination which was to arise as adventurous Englishmen sought to possess for themselves and their children one of the most bountiful dominions of the earth.When they came to plant themselves in the newWorld, they were to find that they had not entirely left behind the spirit of avarice and insubordination. Nor does it appear, in light of attitudes which developed during their first two centuries in America, that they left behind all the impressions initially gathered of the Negro before he became pre-eminently the slave. Notes and references 1 Kenneth G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London, 1957), 38–46; John W. Blake, trans. and ed., Europeans inWest Africa, 1450–1560; Documents to Illustrate the Nature and Scope of Portuguese Enterprise in West Africa, the Abortive Attempt of Castilians to Create an Empire There, and the Early EnglishVoyages to Barbary and Guinea (Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, 2d Ser., 87 [1942]), II, 254–60. 2 “The voyage made by M. John Hawkins . . . to the coast of Guinea and the Indeas of Nova Hispania . . . 1564,” in Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations,Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation . . . 12 vols., 1598 ed. (Glasgow, 1903–05), X, 15. See Katherine Beverly Oakes, “Social Theory in the Early Literature of Voyage and Exploration in Africa” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1944), 120–23. 3 “The First Voyage of Robert Baker to Guinie . . . 1562,” in Richard Hakluyt, The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation . . . (London, 1589), 132. The entire poem was omitted in the 1598 edition. 4 “The Voyage of M. George Fenner . . .Written by Walter Wren” (1566), Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 270. All ensuing references are to this reprinted 1598 edition unless otherwise indicated. 5 Warner Grenelle Rice, “Turk, Moor and Persian in English Literature from 1550–1660, with Particular Reference to the drama” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1926), 401–2n; Robert R. Cawley, TheVoyagers and Elizabethan Drama (Boston, 1938), 31; Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam F I R ST I MPR E S S I O N S 47 and England during the Renaissance (N. Y., 1937), 521–24; Wylie Sypher, Guinea’s Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the XVIIIth Century (Chapel Hill, 1942), 26. 6 An early instance is in “The Second Voyage to Guinea . . .” (1554), in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 167–68. See the associations made by Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa and of the Notable Things Therein Contained . . ., trans. John Pory [ca. 1600], ed. Robert Brown, 3 vols. (London, 1896), I, 130. 7 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations,VI, 176, 200, 217–18. Just how little Europeans knew about Africa prior to the Portuguese explorations is evident in T. Simar, “La géographie de l’Afrique central dans l’antiquité et au moyen âge,” La Revue Congolaise, 3 (1912), 1–23, 81–102, 145–69, 225–52, 288–310, 440–41. 8 Francisco López de Gómara, in Peter Martyr (D’Anghera), The Decades of the Newe Worlde . . . trans. Richard Eden (London, 1555), in Edward Arber, ed., The First Three English Books on America . . . (Birmingham, Eng., 1885), 338. 9 Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry . . . , ed. Robert A. Willmott (London, 1857), 27 (Sir Cauline, pt. 2, stanza 1). 10 Numerous examples in Middle English, Shakespeare, the Bible, and Milton are given by P. J. Heather, “Colour Symbolism,” Folk Lore, 59 (1948), 169–70, 175–78, 182–83; 60 (1949), 208–16, 266–76. See also Harold R. Isaacs, “Blackness and Whiteness,” Encounter, 21 (1963), 8–21; Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us (Boston, 1958), 64, 66–69, 158; Arrah B. Evarts, “Color Symbolism,” Psychoanalytic Review, 6 (1919), 129–34; Don Cameron Allen, “Symbolic Color in the Literature of the English Renaissance,” Philological Quarterly, 15 (1936), 81–92; and for a different perspective, Francis B. Gummere, “On the Symbolic use of the Colors Black and White in Germanic Tradition,” Haverford College Studies, 1 (1889), 112–62. 11 Walter Clyde Curry, The Middle English Ideal of Personal Beauty; As Found in the Metrical Romances, Chronicles, and Legends of the XIII, XIV, and XV Centuries (Baltimore, 1916), 3, 80–98. 12 Elkin Calhoun Wilson, England’s Eliza (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 337; Charles Carroll Camden, The Elizabethan Woman (Houston, N. Y., and London, 1952), chap. 7; Cawley, Voyagers and Elizabethan Drama, 85; Elizabeth Jenkins, Elizabeth the Great (London, 1958), 62, 100, 159, 296; Gamaliel Bradford, Elizabethan Women, ed. Harold O. White (Boston, 1936), 82, 212; Violet A. Wilson Queen Elizabeth’s Maids of Honour and Ladies of the Privy Chamber (N. Y., n.d.), 4–5. Hugh Plat Delightesfor Ladies,Written Originally by Sir Hugh Plat, First Printed in 1602, London, England ed. Violet and Hal W. Trovillion (Herrin, III., 1939), 87–94, 99, 102–3, contains advice on cosmetics. 13 R. Warwick Bond, ed., The Poetical Works of William Basse (1602–1653) (London, 1893), 279; Conway Zirkle, “The Early History of the Idea of the Inheritance of Acquired Characters and of Pangenesis,” American Philosophical Society, Transactions, New Ser., 35 (1945–46), Pt. ii, 145. The original story of Phaëton is in Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch’s Mythology (N. Y.: Modern Library, n.d.), 36–42; Edith Hamilton, Mythology (N. Y.: Mentor, 1953), 131–34. 14 [Claudius] Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, trans. and ed. F. E. Robbins (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1940), 121–25, 439. 48 15 WINTHROP D. JORDAN Conway Zirkle, “The Knowledge of Heredity before 1900,” L. C. Dunn, ed., Genetics in the 20th Century: Essays on the Progress of Genetics during Its First 50 Years (N. Y.: 1951), 42; Thorndike, “De Comlexionibus,” Isis, 49 (1958), 400; Don Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah: Renaissance Rationalism in Art, Science and Letters (Urbana, 1949), 119. For an interesting modification, Browne, “Of the Blackness of Negroes,” Sayle, ed., Works of Browne, II, 375–76. 16 T[homas] Bendyshe, “The History of Anthroplogy,” Anthropological Society of London, memoirs, 1 (1863–64), 355; Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage. Or Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in All Ages and Places Discovered, from the Creation unto This Present, 2d ed. (London, 1614), 656. 17 “Second Voyage to Guinea,” Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 167; Cawley, Voyagers and Elizabethan Drama, 88–89, 159–60. A remarkably early suggestion that sun-blackened skin afforded protection against the sun “as if naturaliz’d” was made by John Ogilby, Africa: Being an Accurate description of the Regions of Ægypt, Barbary, Lybia and Billedulgerid, the Land of Negroes, Guinee, Æthiopia, and the Abyssines . . . Collected and Translated from Most Authentick Authors, and Augmented with Later Observations (London, 1670). 18 19 “The First Voyage to Guinea and Benin” (1553), Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 148. The Merchant ofVenice, II, i, 1–3; also Ben Jonson, “Masque of Blackness,” Gifford, ed., Works of Jonson, VII, 12. 20 Edward L. Stevenson, trans. and ed., Geography of Claudius Ptolemy (N. Y., 1932), 31–32. 21 Martyr, Decades of NeweWorlde, trans. Eden, 88, 387–88; “Second Voyage to Guinea,” Hakluyt, Principal 22 Both Martyr and Hakluyt did so in the preceding passages; James Spedding, Robert L. Ellis, Douglas Navigations, VI, 176. D. Heath, eds., TheWorks of Francis Bacon . . . 14 vols. (London, 1857–74), II, 473; John Selden’s notes in Works of Michael Drayton, II, 675; John Ovington, A Voyage to Suratt, in the Year 1869, ed. H. G. Rawlinson (London, 1929), 285. For a more general statement of the influence of climate on complexion, Matthew Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and examined According to the Light of Nature (London, 1677), 200–201. 23 A widely popular work, [Thomas Burnet], The Theory of the Earth . . . the First Two Books . . . , 2d ed. (London, 1691), 191, bk. II, chap. 2, announced that “after some generations they become altogether like the people of the Country where they are.” Ovington, Voyage to Suratt, ed. Rawlinson, 285, was at pains to deny this “current Opinion.” 24 Jobson, Golden trade, ed. Kingsley, 78 (probably there was good basis for Jobson’s contention since the Negroes he referred to were Muslims); The Golden Coast, 80. 25 For example, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 144. 26 Both seem to be eyewitness reports. “Voyage of Thomas Candish,” Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, XI, 293; anonymous author on Hawkins’ third voyage quoted in James A.Williamson, Sir John Hawkins:The Time and the Man (Oxford, 1927), 509. There is an interesting description of (almost certainly) the now well-known symbiotic relationship between Negroes and Pygmies in The Golden Coast, 66–67, “I have not found so much faith, nor faithfulness, no not in Israel.” 27 An early instance is in Clements R. Markham, ed., The Hawkins’Voyages during the Reigns of Henry VIII, F I R ST I MPR E S S I O N S 49 Queen Elizabeth, and James I (Works Issued by the Hakluyt Soc., 1st Ser., 57 [1878]), 19. 28 For example, H[eylyn], Microcosmus, 379. But compare a later and precursively environmentalist argument that culturally dictated lack of mental and moral exercise had literally weakened the African brain: John Atkins, The Navy Surgeon . . . and Physical Observations on the Coast of Guiney, 2d ed. (London, 1742), 366 –67; also his Voyage to Guinea, 80–88. 29 Ogilby, Africa, 452; William Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, Divided into the Gold, the Slave, and the Ivory Coasts . . ., trans. from the Dutch (London, 1705), 117. 30 H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, 1952), chap. 11; also Robert M. and Ada W.Yerkes, The Great Apes: A Study of Anthropoid Life (New Haven, 1929), 1–26; John C. Greene, The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact onWestern Thought (Ames, Iowa, 1959), chap. 6. I have oversimplified the confused state of terminology concerning simians; see M. F. Ashley Montague, Edward Tyson, M.D., F.R.S., 1605–1708, and the Rise of Human and Comparative Anatomy in England; A Study in the History of Science (Phila., 1943), 228, 244–49. By 1600 “baboons,” “marmosets.” “monkies,” “apes” were common in literature; several (probably baboons) were on show in London.Yet a foreign visitor in 1598 did not list any sort of “apes” in the Tower menagerie, though there were lions there. W. Strunk, Jr., “The Elizabethan Showman’s Ape,” Modern Language Notes, 32 (1917), 215–21; Emma Phipson, The Animal-Lore of Shakespeare’s Time . . . (London, 1883), 5. 31 Edward Topsell, The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes . . . Collected out of All theVolumes of Conradus Gesner, and All OtherWriters to This Present Day (London, 1607), 2–20. 32 G. B. Harrison, ed., King James the First Daemonologie (1597) . . . (London, 1924), 19. 33 Jobson, Golden Trade, ed. Kingsley, 186; Thomas Herbert, A Relation of SomeYeares Travaile, Begunne Anno 1626. Into Afrique and the Greater Asia, Especially the Territories of the Persian Monarchie . . . (London, 1634), 16–17; Herbert, SomeYears Travels (1677), 16–17. 34 Herbert, Some Years Travels, 18; Zirkle, “Knowledge of Heredity,” Dunn, ed., Genetics in the 20th Century, 39–40. 35 Quotation from Alexander B. Grosart, ed., The Complete Works of Thomas Nashe, 6 vols. (London and Aylesbury, 1883–85), I, 160: Aristotle, Historia Animalium, trans. D’Archy W. Thompson, in J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross, eds., The Works of Aristotle, IV (Oxford, 1910), 606b; Bodin, Method of Easy Comprehension of History, 105. 36 Quotation from Herbert, SomeYears Travels, 18. Montague, Edward Tyson, 250–52; John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2 vols, in 1 (London, 1721), II, 53 (Bk. III, chap. 6, sec. 23); Phillips, Journal, Churchill, comps., Voyages, VI, 211; William Smith, A New Voyage to Guinea . . . (London, 1744), 52; Zirkle, “Knowledge of Heredity,” Dunn, ed., Genetics in the 20th Century, 39–40; Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, 267–76. 37 Atkins, Voyage to Guinea, 108; also his Navy Surgeon, 369. 38 Ernest George Ravenstine, ed., The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battell of Leigh, in Angola and the Adjoining Regions. Reprinted from “Purchas His Pilgrimes” (ca. 1607) (Works Issued by the Hakluyt Soc., 2d Ser., 6 [London, 1901]), 18. The term bestiality was first used to denote sexual relations with animals early in the 17th century; it was thus used frequently only for about 150 years! 50 39 WINTHROP D. JORDAN “A Description . . . of Guinea . . .” in Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others, 20 vols. (Glasgow, 1905–07), VI, 251. 40 Leo Africanus, History and Description of Africa, trans. Pory, ed. Brown, I, 180, 187. Leo continues concerning the Negroes, “except their conversation perhaps bee somewhat more tolerable, who dwell in the principall Townes and Cities: for it is like that they are somewhat more addicted to Civilitie.” Leo’s work was available to Englishmen in Latin from 1556. 41 Bodin, Method for Easy Comprehension of History, 103–6, 143. 42 Rice, Turk, Moor, and Persian, 401; Othello, I, i, 127; Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, eds., Works of Francis 43 Jobson, Golden Trade, ed. Kingsley, 65–67. 44 The Golden Coast, 75–76. Bacon, III, 152; Ogilby, Africa, 451. 45 Smith, New Voyage to Guinea, 146; Barbot, Description of the Coasts, Churchill, comps., Voyages, V, 34. 46 Smith, New Voyage to Guinea, 221–22, clearly based on Bosman, New and Accurate Description, 206–7. 47 I hope to discuss this complex matter more fully on another occasion and in the meantime cite only the sources directly quoted. Freedman and Simon, trans., Midrash Rabbah, I, 293; Sperling and Simon, trans., Zohar, I, 246. Chapter 2 Michael Banton THE IDIOM OF RACE A critique of presentism [. . .] T H E H I S T O R I C A L S T U D Y of racial thought and attitudes has often been flawed by an unreflecting presentism. Earlier writers are held up to scorn without any adequate attempt to locate their understandings within the context of the knowledge available to their generation. Modern writers all too easily neglect the shifts in the meaning attributed to the word “race” (for a recent example of serious study vulnerable to this criticism, see Horsman, 1976).This essay will contend that as new modes of explanation of human variation have arisen, so the word “race” has been used in new ways, but the old uses have often continued side by side with the new ones. “Race” and associated words suggesting commonality of descent or character were developed into popular modes of thought and expression in many European languages in the eighteenth century so that they constituted an idiom in which people related themselves to others and developed conceptions of their own attributes. In the nineteenth century this idiom was extended through the identification of race with nation (and Volk), and the rise of potent beliefs about national character. Where previously there had been an emphasis upon supposed innate differences between persons distant in social rank, the stress was shifted to differences between people of distinct nations. Political circumstances helped mold these changes but they cannot be fully appreciated without taking account of changes in scientific understanding. Possibly the most notable feature of race as a concept is the way it has inveigled observers into assuming that the main issue is that of the nature of differences between populations, and that they should concentrate upon what “race” is, as if this would determine the one scientifically valid use for the word. Physical differences catch people’s attention so readily that they are less quick to appreciate 52 MICHAEL BANTON that the validity of “race” as a concept depends upon its value as an aid in explanation. From this standpoint, the main issue is the use of the word “race,” both in rational argument and in more popular connections, for people use beliefs about race, nationality, ethnicity and class as resources when they cultivate beliefs about group identities. The failure to allow for changes in the sense in which the word race has been used has important consequences, for those who misunderstand the past of their society are likely to misunderstand the present, because people judge the present in the light of what they believe the past to have been.The past cannot be properly understood if changes in the significance of words are not allowed for. Historians and sociologists judge their predecessors, but will themselves be judged by a later generation because they are not standing outside history. Since the limitations of their knowledge will bemuse their successors, they should be charitable in assessing the limitations of their predecessors. Race as descent [. . .] Up to the eighteenth century at least, the dominant paradigm in Europe for explaining the differences between groups of people was provided by the Old Testament. It was the story of God’s creating the world and, on the sixth day, of his making “Adam” (alternatively translated as “the man”) in his own image.The Old Testament provided a series of genealogies by which it seemed possible to trace the peopling of the world and the relations which different groups bore to one another.Thus Augustine derided the idea that there might be men in unknown lands on the other side of the world because the suggestion that some of Adam’s descendants might have sailed there was “excessively absurd.” Many writers attempted to ascertain the date when the world was created by working back through these genealogies. Others attempted to explain the assumed inferiority of black people by reference to a curse supposedly placed by Noah on the descendants of Ham, decreeing that they should be servants of his sons Shem and Japheth; or by relating it to the despersal of peoples after the fall of the tower of Babel. Implicit in such arguments is the assumption that differences are to be explained by tracing them back to particular events the consequences of which are then transmitted genealogically.This is also a view of the world in which God is likely to intervene to punish or reward particular individuals and in which men are therefore less motivated to develop and improve classificatory concepts like that of species. A species was seen simply as the product of an arbitrary action by the Creator. Within a paradigm of explanation in terms of descent there were several possible ways of accounting for physical variation. First, it could be held that differences of color and such like were all part of God’s design for the universe; perhaps, as in the hypothesis about the curse on Ham’s descendants, they were the result of divine judgment; perhaps, though, they were a part of God’s plan that had not yet been revealed or that man could not properly understand, and this led to a line of reasoning which may be called racial romanticism. Secondly, it could be held that physical differences were related in some way to climate and environ ment and were irrelevant to the important questions THE IDIOM OF RACE 53 of man’s obligations to do God’s will. Thirdly, it was sometimes argued that since the differences between Europeans, Africans and Asians were repeated in successive generations they must have had separate ancestors. It was hazardous and perhaps unnecessary to challenge the story of Adam directly, so the doubters suggested that the OldTestament account was incomplete: Adam was the ancestor of the Europeans alone.The debate about whether mankind consisted of one or many stocks had to be cast in terms of the dominant paradigm and therefore it was phrased as a choice between monogenesis and polygenesis. The use of “race” as a term in explanations of its kind is reflected in the first major definition of the word given in the Oxford English Dictionary (1910), viz. “I. A group of persons, animals, or plants, connected by common descent or origin.” This is the principal sense in which the word is used in English in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it continues to be used, though rather less frequently, in this sense. But already in the sixteenth century the notion of likeness because of descent was generalized and “race” was used to denote instances of likeness without any claim of common descent, like Dunbar’s reference in 1508 to “backbiters of sundry races” and Sidney’s of 1580 to “the race of good men.” As the Dictionary records, this use continued into the nineteenth century, as with Lamb’s reference to “the two races of men”, the men who borrow and the men who lend, but thereafter it was less frequent. If there was a principle explaining the differences in the appearance of peoples, either theistic or atheistic, then it could have operated through either moral or physical causes. Moral causes would today be called cultural: they consisted of the ways in which men responded to their environment. Physical causes were inherited dispositions and capacities. Both monogenists and polygenists used the word “race” to designate the outwardly identifiable populations of their time, but the same word meant different things to them. The monogenists believed that men started off the same and had become different because of climate and their different response to environmental opportunities.The polygenists suspected that men must have been different to begin with and their understanding of race was later systematized as “type.” For an illustration of how people subscribing to these two schools of thought could use the same word in what superficially appears to be the same sense, but draws upon two different modes of explanation, it is appropriate to turn to an essay by the historian Macaulay on the capacities of Negroes. It was written in response to a report by a Major Moody, who contended that though blacks in the West Indies could work hard, their preference for leisure was such that they would not do so unless coerced. According to Macaulay’s reading, Moody maintained that there was an instinctive and unconquerable aversion between the white and black races which stemmed from a physical cause. Against this, Macaulay contended that the blacks did not work harder because, unless they emigrated, they could not get an adequate return for their labor.The antagonism, he said, was caused by slavery and for the major to prove his case he needed to provide evidence of the alleged aversion in circumstances unaffected by slavery or the memory of it. Both men used the word “race” to designate blacks and whites: “the two races could not live together,” wrote Moody, while his critic referred to the “policy which excludes strangers, of all races, from the interior of China and Japan”. 54 MICHAEL BANTON Where Moody stressed “the consequences arising from physical differences in form, colour, feature and smell,” Macaulay referred to ‘the Gypsey race, one of the most beautiful and intelligent on face of the earth . . . persecuted under a thousand pretexts . . . yet the remnant of a race still preserves its peculiar language and manners” (Macaulay, 1827: 137–38, 151–52). It should be noted that Macaulay, who elsewhere displayed his own variety of ethnocentrism, misrepresented his opponent’s arguments (Williams, 1978), but yet it is still clear that for the one writer the history of a race was determined by its physical nature; for the other, its history was the story of how more varied circumstances caused it to become or remain distinctive. Race as type Classification by descent was more easily manageable so long as the number of species was fairly limited, but with the revival of observation and the exploration of new continents in early modern times, the number of known kinds of plants increased rapidly. It was time for someone to distinguish essential forms from accidental variations, and to define a stable unit on which botanical classification could be based.The problem was most pressing in botany, but in principle it applied to all biology.The man who did most to resolve it was the Swedish naturalist known to later generations as Linnaeus (1707–1778). In Linnaeus’ view, natural history consisted of describing the various productions of the earth, their appearance, their habits, their relations to each other, and their uses. Implicit in this conception of classification as the goal of science was the belief that nature had been constructed on a pattern discoverable, at least in part, by human reason. It was man’s duty to study nature diligently so that he could come closer to God, could better understand his purpose, and could glorify Him in his works. At the heart of the conception of nature to which Linnaeus came was the idea of an oeconomia, a rationally ordered system of means and ends. The earth, with its delightful variety of climate and topography, was populated with an equally varied assemblage of living beings, each perfectly adapted to the region in which it lived. The economy of nature lay in the balance between its constituent elements. Linnaeus never tired of describing the mechanisms which maintained the adaptation of organism and environment and the equilibrium of species (Greene, 1959: 134–37). God had created not a series of individual species but a self-regulating system. He did not need to intervene in the dayto-day affairs of his creation. The man who more than anyone else extended the method of Linnaeus to the study of the animal kingdom and – though only in outline – to that of man, was the French comparative anatomist Cuvier (1769–1832).The system which he hoped to discover by relating animal structure to conditions of existence was the “great catalogue in which all created beings have suitable names, may be recognized by distinctive characters, and [are] arranged in divisions and sub-divisions.” Cuvier’s method of classification rested heavily upon the conception of a type (defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a person or thing that represents the characteristic qualities of a class; a representative specimen”). If the right representative specimen was chosen, then the essential of the category could THE IDIOM OF RACE 55 be understood. Cuvier divided man into three main subspecies (which he called races): Caucasian, Mongolian, and Ethiopian, which were further subdivided. He stated that they were all one species but they had been separated by some great natural catastrophe. He presented the three races as differing permanently in ability because of the biological differences between them that were as yet little understood.Thus the earlier physical cause interpretation of human variation was given a new foundation. Cuvier’s influence was immense, and during the course of the nineteenth century the notion of type was extended to the analysis of poetry, aesthetics, biography, personality, culture, social movements, and many kinds of differences other than those of interest to biologists. His teaching was one of the principal factors behind the emergence in the middle years of the nineteenth century of an international school of anthropological thought. It is important to note that the conception of type was independent of the Linnaean classificatory system. A zoological type could be a genus, a species, or a subspecies. Critics therefore protested that the notion of type was redundant since the Linnaean classifications would serve. As the usual criterion for a species was that its members could breed with one another, and since the races of man engaged so frequently in interbreeding, Homo sapiens must be one species.The typologists criticized the orthodox definition of species. Prominent among them were Charles Hamilton Smith, Samuel George Morton, Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, Robert Knox, Josiah Clark Nott, George Robins Gliddon, James Hunt, and Karl Vogt.They are often identified as proponents of “scientific racism” but their key concept was that of the permanence of types and their theory is better designated as “racial typology.” Though there were variations from one writer to another and Vogt at least changed his opinions significantly, they more or less agreed in presenting man as a genus divided into types which in effect were species. They believed that each type was permanent and was suited to a particular zoological province of the earth’s surface, but they recognized that the actual races of the contemporary world were all mixed.They accounted for this by arguing that hybrids were ultimately sterile so that though because of human foolishness, races might deviate from their type, nature kept the deviation within bounds. An alternative interpretation was advanced by Gobineau who believed that the mixing had gone much too far and had spoiled the stocks responsible for progress so that humanity was going into decline (see Banton 1977: 32–55). The typological mode of explanation differed from the previous one in being agnostic about origins. The typologists rejected earlier beliefs that the earth was about six thousand years old. Whatever might have happened in earlier epochs, within the period for which there wasn’t anatomical evidence types appeared to have been constant. One of the main attractions of typology was that it offered a theory of history purporting to explain the differential pattern of human progress. The record of history also contributed to the theory by revealing the special cultural attributes of types that went along with the physical differences. Since changes were the outcome of the essential characteristics of types in relation to particular environments, the theory attributed little significance to purely contingent events like the reported curse upon Ham’s descendants.Though the typological theory could be reconciled with a belief in polygenesis it was really of a very different kind. For its appeal it relied on the one hand upon science rather than the Bible, and on the other, upon the 56 MICHAEL BANTON growing European acceptance of an association between differences in physical appearance and ability to build a progressive civilization. Some of these writers, like Smith, Nott, Gliddon, and Broca, made a clear distinction between “type” and “race.” Gobineau, Knox and Hunt utilized the distinction but were less careful, and Knox indeed usually used “race” where on his own terms “type” would have been preferable. In the subsequent period a few writers did try to keep to the expression “type” but it is noticeable that in the very considerable literature about the nature of racial differences published in the United States after the CivilWar there is a strong tendency to use the word “race” in the sense of “type.” It is unfortunate that the major study on American writing in this period – apart from its strong inclination to presentism – regards race and type as synonymous. It does indeed quote a passage in which Nott refers to the “permanence of races, types, species, or permanent varieties, call them what you please” (Haller, 1971: 80) but when Nott, in Types of Mankind (1854: 95) wrote, “every race, at the present time, is more or less mixed,” he was clearly referring to actual physically distinguishable populations and not to permanent types. Many of the passages in Haller’s book (e.g., the reference in the American context to “both races,” 1971: 208) refer to the latter usage and the interpretation of them is less clear than it would be were the distinction drawn. It would probably be worthwhile engaging in further more detailed research into the usage of the authors of the period in the light of Mayr’s analysis (1972) of the multiple nature of the reorientation necessitated by Darwin’s discovery of natural selection. It could also be of interest to trace the ways in which the European idiom was carried to other continents. In South Africa before WorldWar I, any reference to the races was likely to relate to the English-speaking and the Afrikaans-speaking sections of the white population. Equally, it was common to refer to the Zulu race, the Xhosa race, the Tswana race, differentiating groups within the African section of the population. Before World War II it seems to have been unusual to employ “race” to distinguish blacks from whites. Field Marshal Smuts wrote of the European type and the African type, identifying ethnic groups within these types as races (Graaff, 1973: 4). Most writers were less meticulous but it is interesting to note that the memorandum of Association marking the foundation in 1929 of the South African Institute of Race Relations sets out as the main objective the encouragement of “co-operation between the various sections and races of the population of South Africa” as if blacks and whites constituted sections that were divided into races (Horrell, 1976). [. . .] It was noted in the previous section that the explanation of human differences by reference to descent was associated with a concern about the original creation and God’s design for the world. One outcome of this was the conclusion that God had created men of different colors for a purpose, and that each color category had its part to play in his plan. The most striking illustration of this approach to race is found in the early nineteenth-century school of thought rather misleadingly called natur-philosophie (see Banton, 1977: 35–40). An echo of it can be heard in the New England writer Ralph Waldo Emerson who in 1844 was insisting that the civility of no race could be perfect so long as another race was degraded, for mankind was one.Yet within a decade Emerson had been attracted THE IDIOM OF RACE 57 to Knox’s explanations and was arguing that England’s economic prowess was the result of “the rare coincidence of a good race and a good place” (Nicoloff, 1961: 124, 139). It is difficult to be certain but it looks as if here, in less than a decade, Emerson switched from a sense of race as descent to that of race as type. It is also relevant that he did so in a book that tried to analyze the character of the Englishman. In later years there was to be a minor literary industry producing volumes about national character, and it was rooted in the presuppositions of racial typology. Race as subspecies Darwin cut the ground from under the feet of the typologists by demonstrating that there were no permanent forms in nature. Each species was adapted to its environment by natural section, so that people of one racial type who migrated to a new habitat would there undergo change.The ups and downs of history could therefore not be explained in terms of the qualities of particular types. In the Origin of Species Darwin recognized “geographical races or sub-species” as local forms completely fixed and isolated, but concluded that since they did not differ from each other in important characteristics there was no certain way of deciding whether they should be considered species or varieties. He employed the word race primarily when referring to domestic races as the outcome of human breeding, and presented them as incipient species, for as his subtitle suggested, it was by natural selection that favored races became species (Darwin, 1859: 62–63, 73). Darwin’s revolution was so complex (Mayr, 1972) that it took decades even for the specialists to appreciate its implications. In the 1930s, more than seventy years after the publication of the Origin of Species, new lines of reasoning and research in biology led to the establishment of population genetics. Human variation was to be comprehended statistically in terms of the frequencies of given genes within the gene pool of the relevant population.This meant that for biologists, “population” was the successor concept to the discredited notion of racial type, and race could be legitimately used only as a synonym for subspecies, as explained above. Yet the first adaptations of Darwinian thought to social affairs preserved much of the older mode of explanation, in part because the reorientation demanded of people was so great, and in part because of the particular circumstances of the late nineteenth century.That period saw unparalled technological advances which helped knit together the peoples of Europe in larger, more effective units, and to increase the gap between them and the peoples of most other regions. Social evolution was pictured therefore not as adaptation to changing environments but as the story of man’s progress to superior modes of living. Sociologists represented it as a process in which men first lived in small bands, then successively as members of clans, tribes, peoples, states and empires. Groups designated as races were often thought to belong somewhere in such a scale; skin color and similar traits served as signs of membership in groups that had progressed in different measure, and therefore functioned as boundary markers. The conception of race as subspecies is not easily grasped by the man in the street, whereas that of race as type is much simpler and can easily be twisted to deal with conflicting 58 MICHAEL BANTON evidence.The idea of race in the popular mind in the twentieth century has therefore usually been that of race as type. This conception was invalidated by Darwin’s work, whereas that of race as descent was not.Although confusing, it is therefore still legitimate to use the word “race” in the earlier sense. Race in current usage The idea of race was important to Europeans in the late nineteenth century on account of its value in philosophies of history. It was widely believed that the success of the European powers sprang from the qualities inherent in the white race, or races, and that these promised continuing European supremacy. Probably there would be less support for such views in Europe and North America in the 1970s. The bulk of the population is more likely to believe that the ups and downs of nations in history are a reflection of technological skill and material resources, though this is not a question that has been thought worth detailed investigation. Probably more people would agree that the cultural characteristics of racial groups are an outcome of environment and opportunity than would consider them genetically determined.Those who believe that the universe was built by divine design and that everything in it has a place in that design might well echo the racial romanticism of an earlier era. One twentieth-century expression of this, though scarcely contemporary, is to be found in a history of the British and Foreign Bible Society (Canton, 1925), entitled The Five Colours. After the title page comes the verse: Not for one race nor one colour alone Was He flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone! Not for you only – for all men He died. ‘Five were the colours’,The Angel said, ‘Yellow and black, white, brown and red; Five were the wounds from which he bled, On the Rock of Jerusalem crucified’. “TheVision of Peter” If race remains a word in popular usage, religious groups concerned for international harmony may well stress the complementarity of races and again employ metaphors of this kind. In England in the years preceding and followingWorld War II, the tendency was for less use to be made of the idiom of race. Sir Julian Huxley and A. C. Haddon, the senior anthropologist at Cambridge, set the tone in We Europeans, in which they declared that “the term race as applied to human groups should be dropped from the vocabulary of science” because it had “lost any sharpness of meaning” (1935: 107). Ideal types had to be distinguished from the existing mixed populations which might also be political and cultural units and were best called ethnic groups.The unity of race as a concept in either biological or social science was doubted by the leading authorities in both THE IDIOM OF RACE 59 fields, while the extravagancies of Nazi rhetoric, coupled with the growing threats presented by their regime, helped to descredit it in popular usage. Earlier practices, such as that of identifying the French- and English-speaking sections of the Canadian population as “the two races” began to appear quaint.The same could be said of SirWinston Churchill’s rather archaic usage in his History, of which Book I was entitled “The Island Race.” In 1957 he could still write about the early twentieth century, “meanwhile in Europe the mighty strength of the Teutonic race, hitherto baffled by division or cramped in lingering mediaeval systems, began to assert itself with volcanic energy” (1958: Preface). This echo of a previous century’s parlance was a reminder of the change that had been occurring. From the scientific standpoint it is unfortunate that just as the word “race” was being less used in any context where it might be thought to claim explanatory value, New Commonwealth immigration into England led to its greatly increased use in the press and in popular speech to designate the different population groups. An examination of the present use of the words “race,” “races,” and “racial” would probably show that they are employed chiefly to designate outwardly identifiable categories, and that people differ greatly in the degree to which they believe or assume that the labels explain anything. If questioned about why such groups should be called races, or what is the nature of race, many people will say that they are not sure but leave such matters to the experts. Since there are few situations in everyday life which require a precise use of “race” its employment in a diverse and loose fashion causes few problems. Two situations calling for precise definition of ethnic or racial identification are provided by censuses and legislation. In the United States afterWorld war II social scientists moved away from the use of race to designate social categories, preferring to write about minorities.The Federal government has been more slow to change: until recently they were using five “racial/ethnic categories,” viz.: 1 American Indian or Alaskan Native: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North America. 2 Asian or Pacific Islander: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Pacific Islands.This area includes, for example, China, Japan, Korea, the 3 4 Philippine Islands, and Samoa. Black/Negro: A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. Caucasian/White: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, or the Indian subcontinent. 5 Hispanic: A person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race. [This list is quoted from the Federal Interagency Committee on Education Report, vol. 2(1), May 1975.] The Association of Indians in America – i.e. of Indians from Asia – protested against their classification as whites. In May 1977 the President’s Office issued a revision of Circular A–46. It modified category 60 MICHAEL BANTON 1 by adding the qualification “and who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition.” To the first sentence of category 2 it added “the Indian subcontinent.” Category 3 was redesignated “Black.”The numbers of categories 4 and 5 were changed round; 5 is now designated simply “White,” and the reference to the Indian subcontinent has been deleted.The circular further states that if separate race and ethnic categories are used, the minimum designations are: (a) (b) Race: • American Indian or Alaskan Native • Asian or Pacific Islander • Black • White Ethnicity • Hispanic origin • Not of Hispanic origin. Thus “ethnicity” becomes a subdivision of the categories Black andWhite alone.The circular also lays down that when someone is “of mixed racial and/or ethnic origins” the category to be used is that which “most closely reflects the individual’s recognition in his community.”The designation “nonwhite” is no longer acceptable. In Britain there is [currently] a controversy about categories to be used in the 1981 census. It is said that the procedure almost certain to be recommended by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys contains the instruction: “Race or ethnic group (1) Please tick the appropriate box to show the race or ethnic group to which the person belongs or from which the person is descended. 1.White; 2.West Indian; 3. African; 4. Arab; 5.Turkish; 6. Chinese; 7. Indian; 8. Pakistani; 9. Bangladeshi, 10. Sri Lanka; 11. Other” (Mack, 1978).’1 It will be unfortunate if the word “race” is retained in this context by the American and British governments since this will add legitimacy to the lingering remains of the typological doctrine that were on their way to the lumber room of discarded science. The United States government’s use of ethnicity as a subdivision of a racial category has little support in contemporary social science, but their practice of classifying individuals by their having origins in particular peoples seems far preferable to the British assumption that a person can belong to a race. It should also be noted that though the British Race Relations Act of 1976 penalizes discrimination on racial grounds, it does not define race, and that there is at present little case law that bears upon this question.The Act does, in Section 3 (i) define racial groups but only as “a group of persons defined by reference to colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins.” Consideration of these issues does, however, suggest that a fourth use of the word “race” is now being established. It is an administrative and political use which does not pretend to any explanatory significance but will doubtless be used to support old-style racial explanations.The political implications of the racial idiom have always been complex. It can be argued, for example, that a salient feature of the use some Englishmen made of it in the middle and later decades of the nineteenth century was to THE IDIOM OF RACE 61 celebrate the positive qualities of their own stock and that the disparagement of the qualities of other stocks was to start with only an incidental consequence of their self-centeredness. (Sir Charles Dilke’s Greater Britain of 1868 is an illustration of this.) Only as contact and conflict between Europeans and non-Europeans became closer did the political use of racial doctrines become important. In recent times peoples who have been the victims of such doctrines have been inclined to turn the tables by appealing for nonwhite solidarity against whites. In the United States some blacks prefer to identify themselves in racial terms because they believe that their experience of disadvantage has been so much more profound than that of white ethnic minorities. In the United Kingdom it seems as if people who stand to the left in political terms are the more inclined to identify New Commonwealth immigrant minorities in racial terms because they wish to challenge the typological preconceptions which seem still to be widespread in the white population.This appears to have been the major reason why the agency established under the 1976 Act has been called The Commission for Racial Equality whereas its predecessor was the Community Relations Commission.Therefore though it may seem desirable on strictly academic grounds to abandon the use of the word race, there are political pressures, from non-whites as well as whites, from radicals as well as conservatives, which are likely to keep it in current use and to shape the fourth stage in the career of this troublesome concept. Other perspectives If the meaning of the word race has changed in the way suggested, reflecting changes in popular understanding of the significance of phenotypical variation, then it is reasonable to expect that the character of the arguments which get classified as “racist” will have changed likewise. When race meant descent, then it may be expected that whites considered alliance with blacks as socially dishonorable.When race meant type, whites would have seen sexual union with blacks as producing stock physicaly inferior to whites but superior to blacks.When race meant subspecies, most members of the public would not have comprehended the workings of inheritance and selection, and since it takes time for scientific advances to reach the wider public it might be expected that the typological doctrine would have retained its appeal.2 Now that race is coming to be defined by bureaucratic and political concerns it is not surprising that there is no agreement upon a clear definition of racism. Historical evidence is not lacking to support this thesis at least in respect to the change between the first and second stages. In 1771 the Viceroy of Brazil ordered the degradation of an Amerindian chief who, “disregarding the signal honours which he had received from the Crown, had sunk so low as to marry a Negress, staining his blood with this alliance” (Boxer, 1963: 121). Such a statement recalls a judgment that in eighteenth-century Latin America the “almost pathological interest in genealogy” and honorable descent was characteristic of the age (Mörner, 1967: 59). It suggests that it is the social rather than the physical consequences of marriages between persons of contrasting status which are to be avoided, and can be placed alongside the French memoire du roi of 1777 that declared of the transplanted Africans in Saint Dominque: 62 MICHAEL BANTON Whatever distance they may be from their origin, they always keep the stain of slavery, and are declared incapable of all public functions. Even gentlemen who descend in any degree from a woman of color cannot enjoy the prerogatives of nobility. This law is harsh, but wise and necessary. In a country where there are fifteen slaves to one white, one cannot put too much distance between the two species ... (Hall, 1972: 183–84). This is an explicitly political argument which utilizes a doctrine of descent – to which Europeans admitted exceptions when it suited them – in order to exclude a category of people from civil rights. It lacks the biological presupposition which a twentieth-century reader might expect. Conclusion [. . .] Physical differences between peoples have been observed throughout human history; all over the world people have developed words for delineating them. “Race” is a concept rooted in a particular culture and a particular period of history which brings with it suggestions about how these differences are to be explained. It lends itself to use in a variety of contexts and gets elaborated into a whole style or idiom of interpretation. In the earliest phase of its career “race” meant descent at a time when people understood little of the biology of descent. In the nineteenth century “race” became identified with a controversial scientific theory that was found to be erroneous and which, had science been a more logical and less human enterprise, should have been discarded after 1859. Instead, the old idea was salvaged and rebuilt on a foundation quite different from that of the preDarwinian era, while in the present it is being used for purely political purposes to identify communities without intending to imply that the chief differences between then stem from inheritance. Some scholars overlook these differences in the meaning that has been given to the word; they interpret the racial attitudes of earlier centuries in terms of their own generation’s understanding of biological variation and condemn anything which to a modern reader smacks of racial intolerance. This practice diminishes some of the differences between periods of history; it distracts attention from the forces for change which exist in the present and will extend into the future. Presentism tends to slow down the process whereby erroneous or unhelpful formulations are discarded, and it can be pernicious when analyses of past events are distorted by a desire to support a contemporary political strategy. Since all writers will be influenced in some degree by the circumstances of their own time, and most believe that it is possible to learn lessons from history, the problem is implicit in any account of another period, but it can still be kept under control. Since people’s ideas about the special characteristics of their own time are influenced by their beliefs about previous periods they have a particular reason to be on their guard against presentism. THE IDIOM OF RACE 63 Notes 1 In March 1980 it was announced that the 1981 United Kingdom census would not contain any question 2 Although overlain by some other lines of thought, sophisticated writers for a time advanced social on race or ethnic origin. See also White, 1979. Darwinist theses that racial prejudice served an evolutionary function, while the slogan ‘survival of the fittest’ seemed to justify white aggressiveness overseas. References Banton, Michael 1977. The Idea of Race, London: Tavistock. Boxer, C. R. 1963. Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415–1825, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Canton, William 1925. The Five Colours. London: The Bible House. Churchill, Winston S. 1956–1958. A History of the English-speaking Peoples, London: Cassell. Darwin, Charles 1959. On the Origin of Species by Means of Selection; or,The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, (page references to New York: Mentor Books edition). Graaff, J. F. de V. 1973. “Kosmos and Chaos: The racial attitudes of Jan Christian Smuts”, unpublished MSc. Thesis, University of Bristol. Greene, John C. 1959. The Death of Adam, New York: Mentor Books. Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo 1972. “Saint Domingue,” pp. 172–192 in David N. Cohen and Jack P. Greene (eds), Neither Slave nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University press. Haller, John S. 1971. Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority 1859–1900, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Horrell, Muriel 1976. Personal communication. Horsman, Reginald 1976. Origins of racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850”, Journal of the History of Ideas 37: 387–410. Huxley, Julian S. And Haddon, A. C. 1935. We Europeans: A Survey of ‘Racial’ Problems, London: Cape. Macaulay, Thomas B. 1827. “The social and industrial capacities of Negroes”, reprinted in Race, 1971, 13: 133–164. Mack, Joanna 1978. “A question of race”, New Society 43, 5 Jan: 8–9. Mayr, Ernst 1972. “The nature of the Darwinian revolution” Science, 176: 981–989. Mörner, Magnus 1967. Race Mixture in the History of Latin America, Boston: Little, Brown. Nott, J. C. and Gliddon, Geo. R. 1854. Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches, Philadelphia: Lippincott. Nicoloff, Philip L. 1961. Emerson on Race and History: an examination of “English Traits”, New York: Columbia University Press. White, R. M. 1979. “What’s in a name? Problems in official and legal usages of ‘race’”, New Community, 7: 333–349. Williams, David O. 1978. “Macaulay and the commission to Tortola”, unpublished MSc. Thesis, University of Bristol. Chapter 3 Tzvetan Todorov translated by Catherine Porter RACE AND RACISM [. . .] T H E W O R D “ R A C I S M ,” in its usual sense, actually designates two very different things. On the one hand, it is a matter of behavior, usually a manifestation of hatred or contempt for individuals who have well-defined physical characteristics different from our own; on the other hand, it is a matter of ideology, a doctrine concerning human races.The two are not necessarily linked.The ordinary racist is not a theoretician; he is incapable of justifying his behavior with “scientific” arguments. Conversely, the ideologue of race is not necessarily a “racist,” in the usual sense: his theoretical views may have no influence whatsoever on his acts, or his theory may not imply that certain races are intrinsically evil. In order to keep these two meanings separate, I shall adopt the distinction that sometimes obtains between “racism,” a term designating behavior, and “racialism,” a term reserved for doctrines. I must add that the form of racism that is rooted in racialism produces particularly catastrophic results: this is precisely the case of Nazism. Racism is an ancient form of behavior that is probably found worldwide; racialism is a movement of ideas born inWestern Europe whose period of flowering extends from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth. Racialist doctrine, which will be our chief concern here, can be presented as a coherent set of propositions.They are all found in the “ideal type,” or classical version of the doctrine, but some of them may be absent from a given marginal or “revisionist” version.These propositions may be reduced to five. 1 The existence of races.The first thesis obviously consists in affirming that there are such things as races, that is, human groupings whose members possess common physical characteristics; or rather (for the differences themselves are self-evident) it consists in affirming the relevance and the significance RACE AND RACISM 65 of that notion. From this perspective, races are equated with animal species, and it is postulated that there is the same distance between two human races as between horses and donkeys: not enough to prevent reproduction, but enough to establish a boundary readily apparent to all. Racialists are not generally content to observe this state of affairs; they also want to see it maintained: they are thus opposed to racial mixing. The adversaries of racialist theory have often attacked the doctrine on this point. First, they draw attention to the fact that human groups have intermingled from time immemorial; consequently, their physical characteristics cannot be as different as racialists claim. Next, these theorists add a two-pronged biological observation to their historical argument. In the first place, human beings indeed differ from one another in their physical characteristics; but in order for these variations to give rise to clearly delimited groups, the differences and the groups would have to coincide. However, this is not the case.We can produce a first map of the “races” if we measure genetic characteristics, a second if we analyze blood composition, a third if we use the skeletal system, a fourth if we look at the epidermis. In the second place, within each of the groups thus constituted, we find greater distances between one individual and another than between one group and another. For these reasons, contemporary biology, while it has not stopped studying variations among human beings across the planet, no longer uses the concept of race. But this scientific argument is not really relevant to the argument against racialist doctrines: it is a way of responding with biological data to what is actually a question of social psychology. Scientists may or may not believe in “races,” but their position has no influence on the perception of the man in the street, who can see perfectly well that the differences exist. From this individual’s viewpoint, the only properties that count are the immediately visible ones: skin color, body hair, facial configuration. Furthermore, the fact that there are individuals or even whole populations that are the product of racial mixing does not invalidate the notion of race but actually confirms it.The person of mixed race is identified precisely because the observer is capable of recognizing typical representatives of each race. 2 Continuity between physical type and character. But races are not simply groups of individuals who look alike (if this had been the case, the stakes would have been trivial).The racialist postulates, in the second place, that physical and moral characteristics are interdependent; in other words, the segmentation of the world along racial lines has as its corollary an equally definitive segmentation along cultural lines.To be sure, a single race may possess more than one culture; but as soon as there is racial variation there is cultural change. The solidarity between race and culture is evoked to explain why the races tend to go to war with one another. Not only do the two segmentations coexist, it is alleged, but most often a causal relation is posited between them: physical differences determine cultural differences.We can all observe these two series of variables, physical and mental, around us; each one can be explained independently, and the two explanations do not have to be related after the fact; or else the two series can be observed without requiring any explanation at all.Yet the racialist acts as if the two series were nothing but the causes and effects of a single series.This first assertion in turn implies the hereditary transmission of mental properties and the impossibility of modifying those properties by education.The quest for 66 T Z V E TA N TO D O R O V unity and order in the variety of lived experience clearly relates the racialist attitude to that of the scholar in general, who tries to introduce order into chaos and whose constructions affirm the kinship of things that remain separate in the phenomenal world. It must be added that up to now, no proof has been provided for the relation of determinism or even for the interdependence of race and culture.This does not mean, of course, that proof might not one day be found, or that the search for proof is in itself harmful.We must simply note that, for the time being, the hypothesis has turned out to be unproductive. Here I should like to mention a recent proposal to maintain the causal relation while overturning it.This view no longer holds that physical characteristics determine mental ones; rather, it holds that culture acts on nature. If, within a given population, tall people are preferred to short people, or blonds are preferred to brunettes, the population as a whole will evolve toward the desired end: its value system will serve as a genetic filter.We can also imagine a population that would prefer physical strength to intelligence, or vice versa; once again, conditions will be favorable for an extension of the qualities valued. Such an inversion of perspective opens up new possibilities for the study of mind– body interactions. 3 The action of the group on the individual.The same determinist principle comes into play in another sense: the behavior of the individual depends, to a very large extent, on the racio-cultural (or “ethnic”) group to which he or she belongs.This proposition is not always explicit, since it is self-evident: what is the use of distinguishing races and cultures, if one believes at the same time that individuals are morally nondetermined, that they act in function of their own will freely exercised, and not by virtue of their group membership – over which they have no control? Racialism is thus a doctrine of collective psychology, and it is inherently hostile to the individualist ideology. 4 Unique hierarchy of values.The racialist is not content to assert that races differ; he also believes that some are superior to others, which implies that he possesses a unitary hierarchy of values, an evaluative framework with respect to which he can make universal judgments. This is somewhat astonishing, for the racialist who has such a framework at his disposal is the same person who has rejected the unity of the human race.The scale of values in question is generally ethnocentric in origin: it is very rare that the ethnic group to which a racialist author belongs does not appear at the top of his own hierarchy. On the level of physical qualities, the judgment of preference usually takes the form of aesthetic appreciation: my race is beautiful, the others are more or less ugly. On the level of the mind, the judgment concerns both intellectual and moral qualities (people are stupid or intelligent, bestial or noble). 5 Knowledge-based politics.The four propositions listed so far take the form of descriptions of the world, factual observations. They lead to a conclusion that constitutes the fifth and last doctrinal proposition – namely, the need to embark upon a political course that brings the world into harmony with the description provided. Having established the “facts,” the racialist draws from them a moral judgment and a political ideal.Thus, the subordination of inferior races or even their elimination can be justified by accumulated knowledge on the subject of race. Here is where racialism rejoins racism: the theory is put into practice. RACE AND RACISM 67 The refutation of this last inference is a task not for the scientist but rather for the philosopher. Science can refute propositions like the first three listed, but it may also turn out that what appears self-evident to biologists today may be considered an error tomorrow. Even if this were to happen, however, it would not justify behavior that could be properly condemned on other grounds. Geneticists are not particularly well qualified to combat racism. Subjecting politics to science, and thus subjecting what is right to what is, makes for bad philosophy, not bad science; the humanist ideal can be defended against the racist ideal not because it is more true (an ideal cannot be more or less true) but because it is ethically superior, based as it is on the universality of the human race. The whole set of features described constitutes racialist doctrine; each of them taken alone can also be found independently of racialism.They are all necessary to racialism; the absence of any one of them produces a related but nevertheless distinct doctrine.We shall discover that the first proposition was rejected as early as the nineteenth century, leading to a “culturalism” that is in other respects very similar to racialism. In the twentieth century, the fourth proposition has also been frequently rejected, in situations where relativist neutrality has been favored over the obligation to judge (whereas this proposition was the only common feature of racialism and universalist humanism).There are also racialists who have no interest whatsoever in any possible political implications of their doctrines (this is the case with the most famous racialist of them all, Gobineau). Still, the conjunction of the five features must be considered the classical model of racialism. On the other hand, the supplementary elements of the doctrine mentioned here are optional – for example, the fear of racial mixing, or the belief that mental faculties are inherited, or the explanation of racial warfare. Several common features indicate that racialism belongs to the spiritual family of scientism. Indeed, we have seen how the latter is characterized by its affirmation of an integral determinism (which includes the relation of the moral realm to the physical as well as the relation of the individual to the group). Scientism is also characterized by its demand that science formulate society’s goals and indicate legitimate means for attaining them. One might call racialism the tip of the scientistic iceberg. Racialist theories are no longer in fashion today, but the scientistic doctrine continues to flourish. This is why I am inclined to conduct parallel analyses of racialist ideas as such and their general scientistic context. [. . .]The most significant change in the notion of race in the late nineteenth century is its transposition from the physical to the cultural plane, under the influence of such authors as Renan,Taine, and Le Bon. [. . .] Let us now consider the notion of “historical” race shared by Taine and Le Bon. Hippolyte Taine’s place in the history of racialism is somewhat difficult to pin down. His influence is quite considerable, although his writings include only a few pages devoted to the issue of race. Moreover, there is a troubling discrepancy between his programmatic exposés and his own practice. Like Renan, his contemporary, Taine in fact swings back and forth between physical and cultural interpretations of the word “race,” thus authorizing his disciples to find arguments in his writings in support of contradictory theses. In his statements of principle, as we have seen,Taine aligns himself with an integral determinism (this is not the case with his practice). In his introduction to the History of English Literature, Taine’s systematic presentation of the factors governing human behavior reduces them to three: race, 68 T Z V E TA N TO D O R O V surroundings, and epoch – that is, what man contributes in himself, what the external environment imposes on him, and finally the results of the interaction of these two factors.The “epoch” (le moment) is not actually the result of the era in which one lives, but rather the result of the phase of an internal evolution proper to each human group; in other words, it combines the two preceding factors, yet it becomes a determining factor in turn. “With the forces within and without, there is the work which they have already produced together, and this work itself contributes to produce that which follows”. But just what does the contribution from “within” (called “race”) consist of?What are its nature and its scope? In “The Philosophy of Art in the Netherlands” (“Philosophy de l’art dans les Pays-Bas”),Taine attempts to draw a rigorous distinction between race and nation (or people), but he does so with the help of a metaphor that leaves room for a certain interpretive license. “I shall first show you the seed, that is to say the race, with its fundamental and indelible qualities, those that persist through all circumstances and in all climates; and next the plant, that is to say the people itself, with its original qualities expanded or contracted, in any case grafted on and transformed by its surroundings and its history” (Philosophie de l’art, in English The Philosophy of Art, II. But just what do these vegetable images yield when they are transposed onto the human species? When he sets out to illustrate the influence of race, in the History of English Literature, Taine resorts to an example that seems to confirm the foregoing distinction. “A race, like the old Aryans, scattered from the Ganges as far as the Hebrides, settled in every clime, and every stage of civilization, transformed by thirty centuries of revolutions, nevertheless manifests in its languages, religions, literatures, philosophies, the community of blood and of intellect which to this day finds its offshoots together.” Let us note here that while Taine may be talking about “blood” and “intellect,” his list includes only intellectual products, languages and literatures, religions and philosophies; the common denominator of activities as numerous and varied as these can hardly be very powerful. In any event, race is presented here as a supranational entity. However, the same text also includes statements that tend to identify race with nation. Races, according toTaine, “vary with various peoples.”Why, then, are two terms needed instead of just one? He goes on to give examples of “regulating instincts and faculties implanted in a race” that involve the Germanic, Hellenic, and Latin races – or rather Spain, England, and France, which is to say nations and not races. In another passage, where he lists “the fundamental causes” that govern human behavior,Taine specifies that he means “nationality, climate, temperament”; here “nationality” appears again as a synonym for “race.” At the same time,Taine says he intends to complete the task Montesquieu had set for himself: the description of “the special psychology of each special formation” – that is, the spirit of nations. And it must be said that in practice, physical characteristics play only a small part in Taine’s analyses; thus, contrary to what his own distinctions imply, his races are nations, understood as “cultures.” We find the same ambiguity in the description of “race” itself. Race is what is innate; but is what is innate modifiable? Is it radically distinct from what is acquired? On the one hand,Taine implies that race is a stable entity. “There is one [fixed element], a character and spirit proper to the race, transmitted from generation to generation, remaining the same through cultural change, organizational shifts, and variation in products” (Essais, preface to the second edition, pp. xviii–xix).These are “the RACE AND RACISM 69 universal and permanent causes, present at every moment and in every case, everywhere and always acting, indestructible, and finally infallibly supreme” (History of English Literature). So much for the immutable side. But at the same time,Taine makes precisely the opposite claim.The brief passages in the History of English Literature that describe the entity called “race” are oddly focused on the search for the origin of races – which is nothing other than an adaptation to the surroundings. The inside that was supposed to be opposed to the outside is only a slightly older outside. “As soon as an animal begins to exist, it has to reconcile itself with its surroundings; it breathes and renews itself, is differently affected according to the variations in air, food, temperature. Different climate and situation bring it various needs, and consequently a different course of activity; and thus, again, a different set of habits; and still again, a different set of aptitudes and instincts.” It is no longer race and surroundings that are in opposition, but long and short time periods. “The race emigrates, like the Aryan, and the change of climate has altered in its case the whole economy, intelligence, and organization of society.”Taine then falls back on another comparison in which he has given up the qualitative difference between seed and plant: the race is “a kind of lake, a deep reservoir wherein other springs have, for a multitude of centuries, discharged their several streams.” Certain waters flow out of the lake, and others flow into it; but there is no difference in nature between them. When he turns to the study of the “surroundings,”Taine mentions the climate and geographical features, political circumstances, and social conditions as being among the most powerful environmental forces that act on men; taken together, “these prolonged situations, these surrounding circumstances” produce “the regulating instincts and faculties implanted in a race – in short, the mood of intelligence in which it thinks and acts at the present time.”Thus, race no longer produces history, but rather history produces race (or the spirit of the nation). Moreoever, by modifying the institutions or forms of social life, one can transform race: such actions “are to nations what education, career, condition, abode are to individuals.”The possibility of an educational project alluded to here is at the opposite pole from racialist thought, and it allows us to measure the full ambivalence of Taine’s position (although properly speaking there is no contradiction, and Taine was probably conscious of the apparent inconsistency). In his books (Philosophy de l’art, Essais de critique),Taine deals at length with “the spirit of nations.” He uses the term “race,” but he often leaves the impression that the word is only a substitute, sometimes synonymous with “nation,” sometimes with “essential element” or “dominant faculty.” Whatever the case, starting with Taine the word “race” comes into play with renewed vigor. In the transformations that Renan and Taine, or even le Bon, bring to racialist doctrine, we can see a prefiguration of its contemporary outlines.The term ‘race,” having already outlived its usefulness, will be replaced by the much more appropriate term “culture”; declarations of superiority and inferiority, the residue of an attachment to the universalist framework, will be set aside in favor of a glorification of difference (a difference that is not valorized in itself).What will remain unchanged, on the other hand, is the rigidity of determinism (cultural rather than physical, now) and the discontinuity of humanity, compartmentalized into cultures that cannot and must not communicate with one another effectively. The period of classical racialism seems definitely behind us, in the wake of the widespread condemnation of Nazi Germany’s policies toward Jews; thus, we can establish its 70 T Z V E TA N TO D O R O V chronological limits with a precision that is unusual in the history of ideas: from 1749 (Buffon) to 1945 (Hitler). Modern racialism, which is better known as “culturalism,” originates in the writings of Renan,Taine, and Le Bon; it replaces physical race with linguistic, historical, or psychological race. It shares certain features with its ancestor, but not all; this has allowed it to abandon the compromising term “race” (and thus the first “proposition” of classical racialism). Nevertheless, it can continue to play the role formerly assumed by racialism. In our day, racist behaviors have clearly not disappeared, or even changed; but the discourse that legitimizes them is no longer the same; rather than appealing to racialism, it appeals to nationalist or culturalist doctrine, or to the “right to difference.” [. . .] Chapter 4 Oliver C. Cox RACE RELATIONS Its meaning, beginning, and progress I N A D I S C U S S I O N O F “the origin” of race relations it should be well to determine at the outset exactly what we are looking for. We shall proceed, therefore, by first eliminating certain concepts that are commonly confused with that of race relations.These are: ethnocentrism, intolerance, and “racism.” Ethnocentrism, as the sociologists conceive of it, is a social attitude which expresses a community of feeling in any group – the “we” feeling as over against the “others.” This attitude seems to be a function of group solidarity, which is not necessarily a racial phenomenon. Neither is social intolerance [. . .] racial antagonism, for social intolerance is social despleasure or resentment against that group which refuses to conform to the established practices and beliefs of the society. Finally, the term “racism” as it has been recently employed in the literature seems to refer to a philosophy of racial antipathy. Studies on the origin of racism involve the study of the development of an ideology, an approach which usually results in the substitution of the history of a system of rationalization for that of a material social fact.1 Indeed, it is likely to be an accumulation of an erratic pattern of verbalizations cut free from any on-going social system. What then is the phenomenon, the beginnings of which we seek to determine? It is the phenomenon of the capitalist exploitation of peoples and its complementary social attitude. Again, one should miss the point entirely if one were to think of racial antagonism as having its genesis in some “social instinct” of antipathy between peoples. Such an approach ordinarily leads to no end of confusion.2 The beginning of racial antagonism Probably a realization of no single fact is of such crucial significance for an understanding of racial 72 O L I V ER C . C OX antagonism as that the phenomenon had its rise only in modern times.3 In a previous chapter on “the origin of caste” we have attempted to show that race conflict did not exist among the early Aryans in India, and we do not find it in other ancient civilizations. Our hypothesis is that racial exploitation and race prejudice developed among Europeans with the rise of capitalism and nationalism, and that because of the world-wide ramifications of capitalism, all racial antagonisms can be traced to the policies and attitudes of the leading capitalist people, the white people of Europe and North America. [. . .] In the study of race relations it is of major importance to realize that their significant manifestations could not possibly have been known among the ancients. If we had to put our finger upon the year which marked the beginning of modern race relations we should select 1493–94. This is the time when total disregard for the human rights and physical power of the non-Christian peoples of the world, the colored peoples, was officially assumed by the first two great colonizing European nations. Pope AlexanderVI’s bill of demarcation issued under Spanish pressure on May 3, 1493, and its revision by the Treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494), arrived at through diplomatic negotiations between Spain and Portugal, put all the heathen peoples and their resources – that is to say, especially the colored peoples of the world – at the disposal of Spain and Portugal.4 Sometimes, probably because of its very obviousness, it is not realized that the slave trade was simply a way of recruiting labor for the purpose of exploiting the great natural resources of America.5 This trade did not develop because Indians and Negroes were red and black, or because their cranial capacity averaged a certain number of cubic centimeters; but simply because they were the best workers to be found for the heavy labor in the mines and plantations across the Atlantic.6 If white workers were available in sufficient numbers they would have been substituted. As a matter of fact, part of the early demand for labor in theWest Indies and on the mainland was filled by white servants, who were sometimes defined in exactly the same terms as those used to characterize the Africans. Although the recruitment of involuntary labor finally settled down to the African coasts, the earlier kidnapers did a brisk business in some of the most enlightened European cities. Moreover, in the process of exploiting the natural resources of the West Indies, the Spanish conquistadors literally consumed the native Indian population. This, then, is the beginning of modern race relations. It was not an abstract, natural, immemorial feeling of mutual antipathy between groups, but rather a practical exploitative relationship with its socio-attitudinal facilitation – at that time only nascent race prejudice. Although this peculiar kind of exploitation was then in its incipience, it had already achieved its significant characteristics.7 As it developed and took definite capitalistic form, we could follow the white man around the world and see him repeat the process among practically every people of color. Earl Grey was directly in point when he described, in 1880, the motives and purpose of the British in one racial situation: Throughout this part of the British Dominions the colored people are generally looked upon by the whites as an inferior race, whose interest ought to be systematically disregarded when they came into competition with their own, and who ought to be governed mainly with a view of the advantage of the superior race. And for this advantage two things are considered to be especially necessary: first, that facilities should be afforded to the white colonists for obtaining possession R A C E R E L AT I O N S 73 of land heretofore occupied by the native tribes; and secondly, that the Kaffir population should be made to furnish as large and as cheap a supply of labor as possible.8 But the fact of crucial significance is that racial exploitation is merely one aspect of the problem of the proletarianization of labor, regardless of the color of the laborer. Hence racial antagonism is essentially political-class conflict. The capitalist exploiter, being opportunistic and practical, will utilize any convenience to keep his labor and other resources freely exploitable. He will devise and employ race prejudice when that becomes convenient.9 As a matter of fact, the white proletariat of early capitalism had to endure burdens of exploitation quite similar to those which many colored peoples must bear today. However, the capitalist spirit, the profit-making motive, among the sixteenth-century Spaniards and Portuguese, was constantly inhibited by the philosophy and purpose of the Roman Catholic Church.A social theory supporting the capitalist drive for the impersonal exploitation of the workers never completely emerged. Conversion to Christianity and slavery among the Indians stood at crosspurposes; therefore, the vital problem presented to the exploiters of labor was that of circumventing the assimilative effects of conversion to Christianity. In the West Indies the celebrated priest, Las Casas, was touched by the destructive consequences of the ruthless enslavement of the Indians, and he opposed it on religious grounds. But work had to be done, and if not voluntarily, then some ideology had to be found to justify involuntary servitude. “The Indians were represented as lazy, filthy pagans, of bestial morals, no better than dogs, and fit only for slavery, in which state alone there might be some hope of instructing and converting them to Christianity.”10 The capitalist exploitation of the colored workers, it should be observed, consigns them to employments and treatment that is humanly degrading. In order to justify this treatment the exploiters must argue that the workers are inately degraded and degenerate, consequently they naturally merit their condition. It may be mentioned incidentally that the ruling-class conception of degradation will tend to be that of all persons in the society, even that of the exploited person himself; and the work done by degraded persons will tend to degrade superior persons who attempt to do it. [. . .] The progress of racial antagonism This, then, is the nature of racial antagonism; developing in Europe, it has been carried to all parts of the world. In almost fateful terms Kipling’s celebrated poem written in 1899 describes a desperate conflict, “the white man’s burden,” a like obligation, incidentally, never assumed by any other race in all the history of the world: Take up the White Man’s burden – Send forth the best ye breed – Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness, 74 O L I V ER C . C OX On fluttered folk and wild – Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.11 The Europeans have overthrown more or less completely the social system among every colored people with whom they have come into contact.The dynamism and efficiency of capitalistic culture concluded this.The stability of color and inertness of culture, together with effective control over firearms, subsequently made it possible for whites to achieve a more or less separate and dominant position even in the homeland of colored peoples. “The white man’s conception of himself as the aristocrat of the earth came gradually through the discovery, as surprising to himself as to anyone else, that he had weapons and organization which made opposition to his ambition futile.”12 It should be made clear that we do not mean to say that the white race is the only one capable of race prejudice. It is probable that without capitalism, a cultural chance occurrence among whites, the world might never have experienced race prejudice. Indeed, we should expect that under another form of economic organization, say socialism, the relationship between whites and peoples of color would be significantly modified.13 The depreciation of the white man’s color as a social gift goes hand in hand with the westernization of the conquered peoples of color.The Hindus, for example, are the same color today as they were in 1750, but now the white man no longer appears to them to be the cultural magician of other days. His secret of domination has been exposed, and the Hindus are now able to distinguish between his white skin and that secret. Therefore, he is now left with only his nationalism and superior might, for should he pull a cultural rabbit out of his hat, some Hindu would promptly pull another, which might even overmatch the first. Krishnalal Shridharani puts it thus: “[The Saxon] has been accustomed to regarding himself as a supreme being for centuries. Now he faces a world which refuses to recognize him as such.With all his civilized values, he will have to go on the role of military tyrant.”14 There is no assumption, then, that race prejudice is a biological heritage of the white race. But we should not lose sight of the fact that whites have pre-empted this attitude.15 Since the belief in white superiority – that is to say, white nationalism – began to move over the world, no people of color has been able to develop race prejudice independent of whites. It may be, however, that the Japanese have now reached that stage of industrial development, nationalistic ambition, and military power sufficient to question their assignment to inferior racial rank; no other colored race has ever dared to do this.16 Indeed, since 1905 the Japanese have known how it felt to overcome the white man and make him like it. Furthermore, the Japanese are culturally ripe for a belief of their own in yellow superiority. But the problem now confronting them is not similar to that which lay before the Europeans when they began to take on the burden of exploiting the colored peoples of the world.The white opportunists had then come upon no race able to fathom their cultural superiority and power.Today, however, the Japanese are not only blocked at every point by powerfully entrenched whites but also relatively limited in their possible area of dominance. R A C E R E L AT I O N S 75 A still more crucial question is whether this world is large enough to accommodate more than one superior race. Barring the apparent illogic of the superlative, we should bear in mind that color prejudice is more than ethnocentrism; race prejudice must be actually backed up by a show of racial excellence, secured finally by military might.17 No race can develop color prejudice merely by wishing to do so. It would be ridiculous for the Chinese to say that they are prejudiced against whites when Europeans segregate the Chinese even in China.18 [. . .] Notes 1 See Hannah Arendt; “Race-Thinking Before Racism,” The Review of Politics, Vol. 6, January 1944, p. 36– 73; and Frederick G. Detweiler, “The Rise of Modern Race Antagonisms,” The American Journal of Sociology, vol. 37, March 1932, pp. 738–47. 2 Consider, for instance, the following definitive statement by professor Robert E. Park: “This [prejudice against the Japanese] is due to the existence in the human mind of a mechanism by which we inevitably and automatically classify every individual human being we meet.When a race bears an external mark by which every individual member of it can infallibly be identified, that race is by that fact set apart and segregated. Japanese, Chinese, and Negroes cannot move among us with the same freedom as members of other races because they bear marks which identify them as members of their race. This fact isolates them. . . . Isolation is at once a cause and an effect of race prejudice. It is a vicious circle – isolation, prejudice; prejudice, isolation.” In Jesse F. Steiner, The Japanese Invasion, p. xvi. Since, however, we may assume that all races “bear marks which identify them as members of their race,” it must follow, according to Park, that a certain human capacity for classification makes it impossible for races to come together without racial antagonism and prejudice. We shall attempt to show that this instinct hypothesis is too simple. 3 Cf. Ina Corine Brown, National Survey of the Higher Education of Negroes, J. S. Office of Education, Misc. No. 6, Vol. I, pp. 4–8. 4 As early as 1455 Pope Nicholas V had granted the Portuguese exclusive right to their discoveries on the African coast, but the commercial purpose here was still very much involved with the crusading spirit. 5 In a discussion of the arguments over slavery during the Constitutional Convention, Charles A. Beard observes: “South Carolina was particularly determined, and gave northern representatives to understand that if they wished to secure their commercial privileges, they must make concessions to the slave trade. And they were met half way. Ells worth said: ‘As slaves multiply so fast in Virginia and Maryland that it is cheaper to raise than import them, whilst in the sickly rice swamps foreign supplies are necessary, if we go no farther than is urged, we shall be unjust towards South Carolina and Georgia. Let us not intermeddle. As population increases, poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless.’” An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, p. 177. Quote from Max Farrand, Records, Vol. II, p. 371. 76 6 O L I V ER C . C OX In a discussion of the labor situation among the early Spanish colonists in America, Professor Bailey W. Diffie observes: “One Negro was reckoned as worth two, four, or even more Indians at work production.” Latin American Civilization, p. 206. 7 Francis Augustus MacNutt describes the relationship in Hispaniola: “Columbus laid tribute upon the entire population of the island which required that each Indian above fourteen years of age who lived in the mining provinces was to pay a little bell filled with gold every three months; the natives of all other provinces were to pay one arroba of cotton.These amounts were so excessive that in 1496 it was found necessary to change the nature of the payments, and, instead of the gold and cotton required from the villages, labour was substituted, the Indians being required to lay out and work the plantations of the colonists in their vicinity.” Bartholomew De Las Casas, p. 25. 8 Quoted by E. D. Morel, The Black Man’s Burden, p. 30. 9 In our description of the uses of race prejudice in this essay we are likely to give the impression that race prejudice was always “manufactured” in full awareness by individuals or groups of entrepreneurs. This, however, is not quite the case. Race prejudice, from its inception, became part of the social heritage, and as such both exploiters and exploited for the most part are born heirs to it. It is possible that most of those who propagate and defend race prejudice are not conscious of its fundamental motivation. To paraphrase Adam Smith: They who teach and finance race prejudice are by no means such fools as the majority of those who believe and practice it. 10 Francis Augustus MacNutt, Bartholomew De las Casas, p. 83. It should be kept clearly in view that this colonial movement was not a transference of the feudal manorial economy to America. It was the beginning of an entirely different economic enterprise – the dawn of colonial capitalism, the moving out of “white” capital into the lands of colored peoples who had to be exploited unsentimentally and with any degree of ruthlessness in the interest of profits. 11 Rudyard Kipling’s Verse, 1885–1926, p. 320. 12 Josef W. Hall (Upton Close), The Revolt of Asia, p. 4. In this early period there was a more or less conscious development of the exploitative system. In later years, however, the infants that were born into the developed society had, of course, to take it as they found it. The social system determined their behavior naturally; that is to say, the racial exploitation and racial antagonisms seemed natural and the conscious element frequently did not exist. In other words, the racial fate of the individual was determined before he was born. 13 See a popular discussion relative to this by Hewlett Johnson, The Soviet Power, Book V; Bernhard J. Stern, “Soviet Policy on national Minorities,” American Sociological Review, June 1944, pp. 229–35, and particularly Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National Question. 14 Warning to theWest, p. 274. 15 Pearl S. Buck likes to repeat the fact that “we differ in one important regard from the peoples of Asia. Race has never been a cause for any division among those people. But race prejudice divides us deeply.” “The Spirit Behind the Weapon,” Survey Graphic, Vol. XXXI, No. 11, November 1942, p. 540. In a broad historical description of this process Leonard Woolf says: “In no other period of the R A C E R E L AT I O N S 77 world’s history has there been such a vast revolution as the conquest of Asia and Africa by Europe. . . . Until very nearly the end of the nineteenth century, Europeans themselves regarded it with complacent pride as one of the chief blessings and glories of Western Civilization. The white race of Europe, they held, was physically, mentally, and morally superior to all other races; and God, with infinite wisdom and goodness, had created it and developed it so that it might be ready, during the reign of QueenVictoria in England, to take over and manage the affairs of all other people on earth and teach them to be, in so far as that was possible for natives and heathens, good Europeans and good Christians. Indeed, until the very end of the century, the natives and heathens themselves seemed to acquiesce in this view of the designs of providence and the blessings of being ruled by Europeans. It is true that in almost every case originally a considerable number of Africans and Asiatics had to be killed before the survivors were prepared to accept the domination or, as it was called, protection of the European State; but once the domination was established there were few revolts against European rule which could not be met with a punitive expedition.” Imperialism and Civilisation, New York, 1928, pp. 15–16. 16 And we should expect that all peoples of color will be gratified and inspired by this kind of accomplishment. It tends to restore their self-respect as nothing else can. “When the white man began his series of retreats before the yellow hordes,” Krishnalal Shridharani writes, “it was soothing balm to the ancient wounds of Asia. More than any Japanese words the Japanese deeds made propaganda. The white man, the most hated creature in Asia, was put to flight at Hong Kong, in Malaya, in Burma, and above all at Singapore.” Warning to theWest, New York, 1942, p. 196. Dr. SunYat-sen finds inspiration for all the colored peoples in Asia in the exploits of Japan. “Japan,” he says, “is a good model for us, if we wish for prosperity of China. . . . Formerly it was thought that of all the people in the world only the whites were intelligent and gifted”; but today Japan has shown all this to be false and hope has returned to the peoples of Asia. Le Triple Demisme, French trans. By Pascal M. D’Elia, pp. 20–21. One fairly widely read East Indian, P. S. Joshi, puts it in this way: “The whiteism steps an insane dance in all the continents of the world.There are in Asia only a handful of whites . . . . Still they have, by reason of their political might, introduced the colour bar in India, China, the Philippines and other countries. Had not Japan been triumphant over Russia, had not white prestige suffered a severe blow, the same colour bar would have spread . . . throughout the continent of Asia.” The Tyranny of Colour, p. 4. 17 Raymond Kennedy emphasizes the point that in the belief of racial superiority the confidence in superior might is elemental.Thus he writes: “The European peoples were enabled, some four hundred years ago, to extend conquest over the entire ‘native’ world. The ‘natives,’ who were just as good, man for man, as the Europeans, lacked the superior material equipment of the latter, and were either slaughtered or subjugated. The possessors of guns came to believe that they were also possessors of superior racial endowments, and attributed their success not to material advantages, but to innate mental and physical superiority. They were white and the beaten peoples mostly black, brown, 78 O L I V ER C . C OX yellow, and red; consequently inferiority must be linked with color and race.” The Ageless Indies, pp. 185–86. To the same effect see Leonard Woolf, op. cit, p. 12. LinYutang puts the idea in his own way: “How did nineteenth century imperialism begin, and how did the white man go about conquering the world, and what made him think he was superior to other peoples? Because the white man had guns and the Asiatics had none. The matter was as simple as that.” And he brings the argument up to date: “China will never . . . be accorded true equality until she is like Japan, twenty years from now, when she can build her own tanks and guns and battleships. When that time comes, there will be no need to argue about equality, such being the standards of the modern age.” Between Tears and Laughter, pp. 21, 4. 18 In reporting on social conditions in China, Theodore H. White says: “No one can understand China today . . . who does not understand the hatred and bitterness of the intelligent Chinese for the foreign businessman who treated him like a coolie in his own land. In some cities this foreigner closed the public parks to Chinese; on some boats Chinese were not allowed to ride first-class.” See “Life Looks at China,” Life, May, 1, 1944, p. 100. See also Nathaniel Peffer, The White Man’s Dilemma, Chap. IX. Chapter 5 W. E. B. Du Bois THE CONSERVATION OF RACES T H E A M E R I C A N N E G R O H A S A L WA Y S felt an intense personal interest in discussions as to the origins and destinies of races: primarily because back of most discussion of race with which he is familiar, have lurked certain assumptions as to his natural abilities, as to his political, intellectual and moral status, which he felt were wrong. He has, consequently, been led to deprecate and minimize race distinctions, to believe intensely that out of one blood God created all nations, and to speak of human brotherhood as though it were the possibility of an already dawning to-morrow. Nevertheless, in our calmer moments we must acknowledge that human beings are divided into races; that in this country the two most extreme types of the world’s races have met, and the resulting problem as to the future relations of these types is not only of intense and living interest to us, but forms an epoch in the history of mankind. It is necessary, therefore, in planning our movements, in guiding our future development, that at times we rise above the pressing, but smaller questions of separate schools and cars, wage discrimination and lynch law, to survey the whole question of race in human philosophy and to lay, on a basis of broad knowledge and careful insight, those large lines of policy and higher ideals which may form our guiding lines and boundaries in the practical difficulties of every day. For it is certain that all human striving must recognize the hard limits of natural law, and that any striving, no matter how intense and earnest, which is against the constitution of the world, is vain. The question, then, which we must seriously consider is this:What is the real meaning of Race; what has, in the past, been the law of race development, and what lessons has the past history of race development to teach the rising Negro people? When we thus come to inquire into the essential difference of races we find it hard to come at once to any definite conclusion. Many criteria of race differences have in the past been proposed, as 80 W. E . B . D U B O I S color, hair, cranial measurements and language. And manifestly, in each of these respects, human beings differ widely.They vary in color, for instance, from the marble-like pallor of the Scandinavian to the rich, dark brown of the Zulu, passing by the creamy Slav, the yellow Chinese, the light brown Sicilian and the brown Egyptian. Men vary, too, in the texture of hair from the obstinately straight hair of the Chinese to the obstinately tufted and frizzled hair of the Bushman. In measurement of heads, again, men vary; from the broad-headed Tartar to the medium-headed European and the narrow-headed Hottentot; or, again in language, from the highly-inflected roman tongue to the monosyllabic Chinese. All these physical characteristics are patent enough, and if they agreed with each other it would be very easy to classify mankind. Unfortunately for scientists, however, these criteria of race are most exasperatingly intermingled. Color does not agree with texture of hair, for many of the dark races have straight hair; nor does color agree with the breadth of the head, for the yellow Tartar has a broader head than the German; nor, again, has the science of language as yet succeeded in clearing up the relative authority of these various and contradictory criteria.The final word of science, so far, is that we have at least two, perhaps three, great families of human beings – the whites and Negroes, possibly the yellow race.That other races have arisen from the intermingling of the blood of these two.This broad division of the world’s races which men like Huxley and Raetzel have introduced as more nearly true than the old five-race scheme of Blumenbach, is nothing more than an acknowledgement that, so far as purely physical characteristics are concerned, the differences between men do not explain all the differences of their history. It declares, as Darwin himself said, that great as is the physical unlikeness of the various races of men their likenesses are greater, and upon this rests the whole scientific doctrine of Human Brotherhood. Although the wonderful developments of human history teach that the grosser physical differences of color, hair and bone go but a short way toward explaining the different roles which groups of men have played in Human Progress, yet there are differences – subtle, delicate and elusive, though they may be – which have silently but definitely separated men into groups.While these subtle forces have generally followed the natural cleavage of common blood, descent and physical peculiarities, they have at other times swept across and ignored these. At all times, however, they have divided human beings into races, which, while they perhaps transcend scientific definition, nevertheless, are clearly defined to the eye of the Historian and Sociologist. If this be true, then the history of the world is the history, not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and overrides the central thought of all history. What, then, is a race? It is a vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life. Turning to real history, there can be no doubt, first, as to the widespread, nay, universal, prevalence of the race idea, the race spirit, the race ideal, and as to its efficiency as the vastest and most ingenious invention for human progress. We, who have been reared and trained under the individualistic philosophy of the Declaration of Independence and the laisser-faire [sic] philosophy of T H E C O N S ERVAT I O N O F R A C E S 81 Adam Smith, are loath to see and loath to acknowledge this patent fact of human history.We see the Pharaohs, Caesars,Toussaints and Napoleons of history and forget the vast races of which they were but epitomized expressions.We are apt to think in our American impatience, that while it may have been true in the past that closed race groups made history, that here in conglomerate America nous avons changer tout cela – we have changed all that, and have no need of this ancient instrument of progress.This assumption of which the Negro people are especially fond, cannot be established by a careful consideration of history. We find upon the world’s stage today eight distinctly differentiated races, in the sense in which History tells us the word must be used.They are, the Slavs of eastern Europe, the Teutons of middle Europe, the English of Great Britain and America, the Romance nations of Southern and Western Europe, the Negroes of Africa and America, the Semitic people ofWestern Asia and Northern Africa, the Hindoos of Central Asia and the Mongolians of Eastern Asia.There are, of course, other minor race groups, as the American Indians, the Esquimaux and the South Sea Islanders; these larger races, too, are far from homogeneous; the Slav includes the Czech, the Magyar, the Pole and the Russian; the Teuton includes the German, the Scandinavian and the Dutch; the English include the Scotch, the Irish and the conglomerate American. Under Romance nations the widely-differing Frenchman, Italian, Sicilian and Spaniard are comprehended.The term Negro is, perhaps, the most indefinite of all, combining the Mulattoes and Zamboes of America and the Egyptians, Bantus and Bushmen of Africa. Among the Hindoos are traces of widely differing nations, while the great Chinese,Tartar, Corean and Japanese families fall under the one designation – Mongolian. The question now is: What is the real distinction between these nations? Is it the physical differences of blood, color and cranial measurements? Certainly we must all acknowledge that physical differences play a great part, and that, with wide exceptions and qualifications, these eight great races of to-day follow the cleavage of physical race distinctions; the English andTeuton represent the white variety of mankind; the Mongolian, the yellow; the Negroes, the black. Between these are many crosses and mixtures, where Mongolian and Teuton have blended into the Slav, and other mixtures have produced the Romance nations and the Semites. But while race differences have followed mainly physical race lines, yet no mere physical distinctions would really define or explain the deeper differences – the cohesiveness and continuity of these groups.The deeper differences are spiritual, psychical, differences – undoubtedly based on the physical, but infinitely transcending them.The forces that bind together theTeuton nations are, then, first, their race identity and common blood; secondly, and more important, a common history, common laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striving together for certain ideals of life. The whole process which has brought about these race differentiations has been a growth, and the great characteristic of this growth has been the differentiation of spiritual and mental differences between great races of mankind and the integration of physical differences. The age of nomadic tribes of closely related individuals represents the maximum of physical differences. They were practically vast families, and there were as many groups as families. As the families came together to form cities the physical differences lessened, purity of blood was replaced 82 W. E . B . D U B O I S by the requirement of comicile, and all who lived within the city bound became gradually to be regarded as members of the group; i.e., there was a slight and slow breaking down of physical barriers. This, however, was accompanied by an increase of the spiritual and social differences between cities. This city became husbandmen, this, merchant, another warriors, and so on.The ideals of life for which the different cities struggled were different.When at last cities began to coalesce into nations there was another breaking down of barriers which separated groups of men. The larger and broader differences of color, hair and physical proportions were not by any means ignored, but myriads of minor differences disappeared, and the sociological and historical races of men began to approximate the present division of races as indicated by physical researches. At the same time the spiritual and physical differences of race groups which constituted the nations became deep and decisive. The English nation stood for constitutional liberty and commercial freedom; the German nation for science and philosophy; the Romance nations stood for literature and art, and the other race groups are striving, each in its own way, to develop for civilization its particular message, its particular ideal, which shall help to guide the world nearer and nearer that perfection of human life for which we all long, that “one far off Divine event.” This has been the function of race differences up to the present time.What shall be its function in the future? Manifestly some of the great races of today – particularly the Negro race – have not as yet given to civilization the full spiritual message which they are capable of giving. I will not say that the Negro race has yet given no message to the world, for it is still a mooted question among scientists as to just how far Egyptian civilization was Negro in its origin; if it was not wholly Negro, it was certainly very closely allied. Be that as it may, however, the fact still remains that the full, complete Negro message of the whole Negro race has not as yet been given to the world: that the messages and ideal of the yellow race have not been completed, and that the striving of the mighty Slavs has but begun.The question is, then: How shall this message be delivered; how shall these various ideals be realized?The answer is plain: By the development of these race groups, not as individuals, but as races. For the development of Japanese genius, Japanese literature and art, Japanese spirit, only Japanese, bound and welded together, Japanese inspired by one vast ideal, can work out in its fullness the wonderful message which Japan has for the nations of the earth. For the development of Negro genius, of Negro literature and art, of Negro spirit, only Negroes bound and welded together, Negroes inspired by one vast ideal, can work out in its fullness the great message we have for humanity.We cannot reverse history; we are subject to the same natural laws as other races and if the Negro is ever to be a factor in the world’s history – if among the gaily-colored banners that deck the broad ramparts of civilization is to hang one uncompromising black, then it must be placed there by black hands, fashioned by black heads and hallowed by the travail of 200,000,000 black hearts beating in one glad song of jubilee. For this reason, the advance guard of the Negro people – the 8,000,000 people of Negro blood in the United States of America – must soon come to realize that if they are to take their just place T H E C O N S ERVAT I O N O F R A C E S 83 in the van of Pan-Negroism, then their destiny is not absorption by the white Americans. That if in America it is to be proven for the first time in the modern world that not only Negroes are capable of evolving individual men like Toussaint, the Saviour, but are a nation stored with wonderful possibilities of culture, then their destiny is not a servile imitation of Anglo-Saxon culture, but a stalwart originality which shall unswervingly follow Negro ideals. It may, however, be objected here that the situation of our race in America renders this attitude impossible; that our sole hope of salvation lies in our being able to lose our race identity in the commingled blood of the nation; and that any other course would merely increase the friction of races which we call race prejudice, and against which we have so long and so earnestly fought. Here, then, is the dilemma, and it is puzzling one, I admit. No Negro who has given earnest thought to the situation of his people in America has failed, at some time in life, to find himself at these cross-roads; has failed to ask himself at some time:What, after all, am I? Am I an American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be a Negro as soon as possible and be an American? If I strive as a Negro, am I not perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates Black andWhite America? Is not my only possible practical aim the subduction of all that is Negro in me to the American? Does my black blood place upon me any more obligation to assert my nationality than German, or Irish or Italian blood would? It is such incessant self-questioning and the hesitation that arises from it, that is making the present period a time of vacillation and contradiction for the American Negro; combined race action is stifled, race responsibility is shirked, race enterprises languish, and the best blood, the best talent, the best energy of the Negro people cannot be marshalled to do the bidding of the race.They stand back to make room for every rascal and demagogue who chooses to cloak his selfish deviltry under the veil of race pride. Is this right? Is it rational? Is it good policy? Have we in America a distinct mission as a race – a distinct sphere of action and an opportunity for race development, or is self-obliteration the highest end to which Negro blood dare aspire? If we carefully consider what race prejudice really is, we find it, historically, to be nothing but the friction between different groups of people; it is the difference in aim, in feeling, in ideals of two different races; if, now, this difference exists touching territory, laws, language, or even religion, it is manifest that these people cannot live in the same territory without fatal collision; but if, on the other hand, there is substantial agreement in laws, language and religion; if there is a satisfactory adjustment of economic life, then there is no reason why, in the same country and on the same street, two or three great national ideals might not thrive and develop, that men of different races might not strive together for their race ideals as well, perhaps even better, than in isolation. Here, it seems to me, is the reading of the riddle that puzzles so many of us. We are Americans, not only by birth and by citizenship, but by our political ideals, our language, our religion. Farther than that, our Americanism does not go. At that point, we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland.We are the first fruits of this new nation, the harbinger of that black to-morrow which is yet destined to soften the 84 W. E . B . D U B O I S whiteness of theTuetonic to-day.We are that people whose subtle sense of song has given America its only American music, its only American fairy tales, its only touch of pathos and humor amid its mad money-getting plutocracy. As such, it is our duty to conserve our physical powers, our intellectual endowments, our spiritual ideals; as a race we must strive by race organization, by race solidarity, by race unity to the realization of that broader humanity which freely recognizes differences in men, but sternly deprecates inequality in their opportunities of development. For the accomplishment of these ends we need race oganizations: Negro colleges, Negro newspapers, Negro business organizations, a Negro school of literature and art, and an intellectual clearing house, for all these products of the Negro mind, which we may call a Negro Academy. Not only is all this necessary for positive advance, it is absolutely imperative for negative defense. Let us not deceive ourselves at our situation in this country.Weighted with a heritage of moral iniquity from our past history, hard pressed in the economic world by foreign immigrants and native prejudice, hated here, despised there and pitied everywhere; our one haven of refuge is ourselves, and but one means of advance, our own belief in our great destiny, our own implicit trust in our ability and worth. There is no power under God’s high heaven that can stop the advance of eight thousand thousand honest, earnest, inspired and united people. But – and here is the rub – they must be honest, fearlessly criticising their own faults, zealously correcting them; they must be earnest. No people that laughs at itself, and ridicules itself, and washes to God it was anything but itself ever wrote its name in history; it must be inspired with the Divine faith of our black mothers, that out of the blood and dust of battle will march a victorious host, a mighty nation, a peculiar people, to speak to the nations of earth a Divine truth that shall make them free. And such a people must be united; not merely united for the organized theft of political spoils, not united to disgrace religion with whoremongers and wardheelers; not united merely to protest and pass resolutions, but united to stop the ravages of consumption among the Negro people, united to keep black boys from loafing, gambling and crime; united to guard the purity of black women and to reduce that vast army of black prostitutes that is today marching to hell; and united in serious organizations, to determine by careful conference and thoughtful interchange of opinion the broad lines of policy and action for the American Negro. This, is the reason for being which the American Negro Academy has. It aims at once to be the epitome and expression of the intellect of the black-blooded people of America, the exponent of the race ideals of one of the world’s great races. As such, the Academy must, if successful, be (a) (b) (c) Representative in character. Impartial in conduct. Firm in leadership. It must be representative in character; not in that it represents all interests or all factions, but in that it seeks to comprise something of the best thought, the most unselfish striving and the highest ideals. There are scattered in forgotten nooks and corners throughout the land, Negroes of some considerable training, of high minds, and high motives, who are unknown to their fellows, who exert T H E C O N S ERVAT I O N O F R A C E S 85 far too little influence.These the Negro Academy should strive to bring into touch with each other and to give them a common mouthpiece. The Academy should be impartial in conduct; while it aims to exalt the people it should aim to do so by truth – not by lies, by honesty – not by flattery. It should continually impress the fact upon the Negro people that they must not expect to have things done for them – they MUST DO FOR THEMSELVES; that they have on their hands a vast work of self-reformation to do, and that a little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving would do us more credit and benefit than a thousand Force or Civil Rights bills. Finally, the American Negro Academy must point out a practical path of advance to the Negro people; there lie before every Negro today hundreds of questions of policy and right which must be settled and which each one settles now, not in accordance with any rule, but by impulse or individual preference; for instance:What should be the attitude of Negroes toward the educational qualification for voters?What should be our attitude toward separate schools? How should we meet discriminations on railways and in hotels? Such questions need not so much specific answers for each part as a general expression of policy, and nobody should be better fitted to announce such a policy than a representative honest Negro Academy. All this, however, must come in time after careful organization and long conference. The immediate work before us should be practical and have direct bearing upon the situation of the Negro.The historical work of collecting the laws of the United States and of the various States of the Union with regard to the Negro is a work of such magnitude and importance that no body but one like this could think of undertaking it. If we could accomplish that one task we would justify our existence. In the field of Sociology an appalling work lies before us. First, we must unflinchingly and bravely face the truth, not with apologies, but with solemn earnestness.The Negro Academy ought to sound a note of warning that would echo in every black cabin in the land: Unless we conquer our present vices they will conquer us; we are diseased, we are developing criminal tendencies, and an alarmingly large percentage of our men and women are sexually impure.The Negro Academy should stand and proclaim this over the housetops, crying with Garrison: I will not equivocate, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.The Academy should seek to gather about it the talented, unselfish men, the pure and noble-minded women, to fight an army of devils that disgraces our manhood and our womanhood. There does not stand today upon God’s earth a race more capable in muscle, in intellect, in morals, than the American Negro, if he will bend his energies in the right direction; if he will Burst his birth’s invidious bar And grasp the skirts of happy chance, And breast the blows of circumstance, And grapple with his evil star. In science and morals, I have indicated two fields of work for the Academy. Finally, in practical policy, I wish to suggest the following Academy Creed: 86 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 W. E . B . D U B O I S We believe that the Negro people, as a race, have a contribution to make to civilization and humanity, which no other race can make. We believe it the duty of the Americans of Negro descent, as a body, to maintain their race identity until this mission of the Negro people is accomplished, and the ideal of human brotherhood has become a practical possibility. We believe that, unless modern civilization is a failure, it is entirely feasible and practicable for two races in such essential political, economic and religious harmony as the white and colored people of America, to develop side by side in peace and mutual happiness, the peculiar contribution which each has to make to the culture of their common country. As a means to this end we advocate, not such social equality between these races as would disregard human likes and dislikes, but such a social equilibrium as would, throughout all the complicated relations of life, give due and just consideration to culture, ability, and moral worth whether they be found under white or black skins We believe that the first and greatest step toward the settlement of the present friction between the races – commonly called the Negro problem – lies in the correction of the immorality, crime and laziness among the Negroes themselves, which still remains as a heritage from slavery.We believe that only earnest and long continued efforts on our own part can cure these social ills. We believe that the second great step toward a better adjustment of the relations between the races, should be a more impartial selection of ability in the economic and intellectual world, and a greater respect for personal liberty and worth, regardless of race.We believe that only earnest efforts on the part of the white people of this country will bring much needed reform in these matters. On the basis of the foregoing declaration, and firmly believing in our high destiny, we, as American Negroes, are resolved to strive in every honorable way for the realization of the best and highest aims, for the development of strong manhood and pure womanhood, and for the rearing of a race ideal in America and Africa, to the glory of God and the uplifting of the Negro people. Chapter 6 Gunnar Myrdal RACIAL BELIEFS IN AMERICA [. . .] W H E N T H E N E G R O WA S F I R S T E N S L AV E D , his subjugation was not justified in terms of his biological inferiority. Prior to the influences of the Enlightenment, human servitude was taken as a much more unquestioned element in the existing order of economic classes and social estates, since this way of thinking was taken over from feudal and post-feudal Europe.The historical literature on this early period also records that the imported Negroes – and the captured Indians – originally were kept in much the same status as the white indentured servants.1 When later the Negroes gradually were pushed down into chattel slavery while the white servants were allowed to work off their bond, the need was felt, in this Christian country, for some kind of justification above mere economic expediency and the might of the strong.The arguments called forth by this need were, however, for a time not biological in character, although they later easily merged into the dogma of natural inequality. The arguments were broadly these; that the Negro was a heathen and a barbarian, an outcast among the peoples of the earth, a descendant of Noah’s son Ham, cursed by God himself and doomed to be a servant forever on account of an ancient sin.2 The ideas of the American Revolution added their influence to those of some early Christian thinkers and preachers, particularly among the Quakers, in deprecating these arguments. And they gave an entirely new vision of society as it is and as it ought to be. This vision was dominated by a radically equalitarian political morality and could not possibly include slavery as a social institution. The philosophical ideas of man’s natural rights merged with the Golden Rule of Christianity, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” How it actually looked in the minds of the enlightened slaveholders who played a prominent role in the Revolution is well known, since they were under the urge to intellectual clarity of their age, and in pamphlets, speeches, and letters frequently discussed the troubles of their conscience. 88 G UNN A R M Y R D A L Most of them saw clearly the inconsistency between American democracy and Negro slavery.To these men slavery was an “abominable crime,” a “wicked cause,” a “supreme misfortune,” an “inherited evil,” an “cancer in the body politic.” Jefferson himself made several attacks on the institution of slavery, and some of them were politically nearly successful. Later in his life (1821) he wrote in his autobiography: . . . it was found that the public mind would not bear the proposition [of gradual emancipation], nor will it bear it even at this day.Yet the day is not far distant when it must bear it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.3 It was among Washington’s first wishes “. . . to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery]; but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished and that is by legislative authority. . . .”4 Even in terms of economic usefulness slavery seemed for a time to be a decaying institution. Slave prices were falling. Public opinion also was definitely in motion. In the North where it was most unprofitable, slavery was abolished in state after state during this revolutionary era. Also Southern states took certain legislative steps against slave trade and relaxed their slave codes and their laws on manumission. It is probable that the majority of Americans considered Negro slavery to be doomed. But in the South the slaves represented an enormous investment to the slave owners, and the agricultural economy was largely founded on slave labor.When the Constitution was written, slavery had to be taken as an economic and political fact. It is, however, indicative of the moral situation in America at that time that the words “slave” and “slavery” were avoided. “Somehow,” reflects Kelly Miller, “the fathers and fashioners of this basic document of liberty hoped that the reprobated institution would in time pass away when there should be no verbal survival as a memorial of its previous existence.”5 In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the Abolitionist movement was as strong in the South as in the North, if not stronger. A most fateful economic factor had, however, entered into the historical development, and it profoundly changed the complexion of the issue. Several inventions in the process of cotton manufacture, and principally Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1794, transformed Southern agriculture. Increased cotton production and its profitability gave impetus to a southward and westward migration from the old liberal Upper South, and raised the prices of slaves which had previously been declining.6 In explaining the ensuing ideological reaction in the South we must not forget, however, that the revolutionary movement, typified by the Declaration of Independence, represented a considerable over-exertion of American liberalism generally, and that by the time of the writing of the Constitution a reaction was on its way. In Europe after the NapoleonicWars a reaction set in, visible in all countries and in all fields of culture. The North released itself rather completely from the influences of the European reaction.The South, on the contrary, imbibed it and continued on an accentuated political and cultural reaction even when the European movement had turned again toward liberalism. Around the 1830’s, the pro-slavery sentiment in the South began to stiffen. During the three decades leading up to the Civil War, an elaborate ideology developed in defense of slavery. This Southern RACIAL BELIEFS IN AMERICA 89 ideology was contrary to the democratic creed of the Old Virginia statesmen of the American Revolution. The pro-slavery theory of the ante-bellum South is basic to certain ideas, attitudes, and policies prevalent in all fields of human relations even at the present time.The central theme in the Southern theory is the moral and political dictum that slavery did not violate the “higher law,” that it was condoned by the Bible and by the “laws of nature,” and that “free society,” in contrast, was a violation of those laws. More and more boldly as the conflict drew nearer, churchmen, writers, and statesmen of the South came out against the principle of equality as formulated in the Declaration of Independence. This principle came to be ridiculed as a set of empty generalities and meaningless abstractions. Common experience and everyday observation showed that it was wrong. Indeed, it was “exuberantly false, and arborescently fallacious”: Is it not palpably nearer the truth to say that no man was ever born free and no two men were ever born equal, than to say that all men are born free and equal? . . . Man is born to subjection. . . .The proclivity of the natural man is to domineer or to be subservient.7 Here we should recall that Jefferson and his contemporaries, when they said that men were equal, had meant it primarily in the moral sense that they should have equal rights, the weaker not less than the stronger.8 This was fundamentally what the South denied. So far as the Negroes were concerned, the South departed radically from the American Creed. Lincoln later made the matter plain when he observed that one section of the country thought slavery was right while the other held it to be wrong. The militant Northern Abolitionists strongly pressed the view that human slavery was an offense against the fundamental moral law.Their spiritual ground was puritan Christianity and the revolutionary philosophy of human rights.They campaigned widely, but most Northerners sensing the dynamite in the issue and not liking too well the few Negroes they had with them in the North – kept aloof. In the South the break from the unmodified American Creed continued and widened. Free discussion was effectively cut off at least after 1840. Around this central moral conflict a whole complex of economic and political conflicts between the North and the South grew up. The most bloody contest in history before the FirstWorldWar became inevitable. DeTocqueville’s forecast that the abolition of slavery would not mean the end of the Negro problem came true. It is with the American nation today, and it is not likely to be settled tomorrow. It should be observed that in the pro-slavery thinking of the ante-bellum South, the Southerners stuck to the American Creed as far as whites were concerned; in fact, they argued that slavery was necessary in order to establish equality and liberty for the whites. In the precarious ideological situation – where the South wanted to defend a political and civic institution of inequality which showed increasingly great prospects for new land exploitation and commercial profit, but where they also wanted to retain the democratic creed of the nation – the race doctrine of biological inequality between whites and Negroes offered the most convenient solution.9The logic forcing the static and conservative ideology of the South to base itself partly on a belief in natural inequality is parallel but opposite to 90 G UNN A R M Y R D A L the tendency of the original philosophy of Enlightenment in Europe and the American Revolution to evolve a doctrine of natural equality in order to make room for progress and liberalism.10 [. . .] After theWar and Emancipation, the race dogma was retained in the South as necessary to justify the caste system which succeeded slavery as the social organization of Negro–white relations. In fact, it is probable that racial prejudice increased in the South at least up to the end of reconstruction and probably until the beginning of the twentieth century.11 The North never had cleansed its own record in its dealing with the Negro even if it freed him and gave him permanent civil rights and the vote. In the North, however, race prejudice was never so deep and so widespread as in the South. During and after the CivilWar it is probable that the North relaxed its prejudices even further. But Reconstruction was followed by the national compromise of the 1870s when the North allowed the South to have its own way with the Negroes in obvious contradiction to what a decade earlier had been declared to be the ideals of the victorious North and the polity of the nation.The North now also needed the race dogma to justify its course. As the North itself did not retreat from most of the Reconstruction legislation, and as the whole matter did not concern the average Northerner so much, the pressure on him was not hard, and the belief in racial inequality never became intense. But this period was, in this field, one of reaction in the North, too. The fact that the same rationalizations are used to defend slavery and caste is one of the connecting links between the two social institutions. In the South the connection is psychologically direct. Even today the average white Southerner really uses the race dogma to defend not only the present caste situation but also antebellum slavery and, consequently, the righteousness of the Southern cause in the CivilWar.This psychological unity of defense is one strong reason, among others, why the generally advanced assertion is correct that the slavery tradition is a tremendous impediment in the way of improvement of the Negro’s lot.The caste system has inherited the defense ideology of slavery. The partial exclusion of the Negro from American democracy, however, has in no way dethroned the American Creed.This faith actually became strengthened by the victoriousWar which saved the Union and stopped the Southerners from publicly denouncing the cherished national principles that all men are born equal and have inalienable civil rights. The question can be asked: What do the millions of white people in the South and in the North actually think when, year after year, on the national holidays dedicated to the service of the democratic ideals, they read, recite, and listen to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Do they or do they not include Negroes among “all men”? The same question is raised when we observe how, in newspaper editorials and public speeches, unqualified and general statements are made asserting the principles and the fact of American democracy. Our tentative answer is this: In solemn moments, Americans try to forget about the Negroes as about other worries. If this is not possible they think in vague and irrational terms; in these terms the idea of the Negroes’ biological inferiority is a nearly necessary rationalization. The dogma of racial inequality may, in a sense, be regarded as a strange fruit of the Enlightenment. The fateful word race itself is actually not yet two hundred years old.The biological ideology had to be utilized as an intellectual explanation of, and a moral apology for, slavery in a society which went out emphatically to invoke as its highest principles the ideals of the inalienable rights of all men to freedom and equality of opportunity. It was born out of the conflict between an old harshly RACIAL BELIEFS IN AMERICA 91 nonequalitarian institution – which was not, or perhaps in a short time could not be, erased – and the new shining faith in human liberty and democracy. Another accomplishment of early rationalistic Enlightenment had laid the theoretical basis for the racial defense of slavery; the recognition of Homo sapiens as only a species of the animal world and the emerging study of the human body and mind as biological phenomena. Until this philosophical basis was laid, racialism was not an intellectual possibility. The influences from the American Creed thus had, and still have, a double-direction. On the one hand, the equalitarian Creed operates directly to suppress the dogma of the Negro’s racial inferiority and to make people’s thoughts more and more “independent of race, creed or color,” as the American slogan runs. On the other hand, it indirectly calls forth the same dogma to justify a blatant exception to the Creed.The race dogma is nearly the only way out for a people so moralistically equalitarian, if it is not prepared to live up to its faith. A nation less fervently committed to democracy could, probably, live happily in a caste system with a somewhat less intensive belief in the biological inferiority of the subordinate group. The need for race prejudice is, from this point of view, a need for defense on the part of the Americans against their own national creed, against their own most cherished ideals. And race prejudice is, in this sense a function of equalitarianism.The former is a perversion of the latter.12 [. . .] This split in the American soul has been, and still is, reflected in scientific thought and in the literature on the Negro race and its characteristics.Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the supreme exponent of early American liberalism, in his famous Notes on Virginia (1781–1782) deals with the Negro problem in a chapter on “The Administration of Justice and the Description of the Laws.” He posits his ideas about race as an argument for emancipating the slaves, educating them, assisting them to settle in Africa: Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.13 He goes on to enumerate the “real distinctions” between Negroes and whites and gives a fairly complete list of them as they were seen by liberal people of his time: color, hair form, secretion, less physiological need of sleep but sleepiness in work, lack of reasoning power, lack of depth in emotion, poverty of imagination and so on. In all these respects he is inclined to believe that “it is not their condition, then, but nature, which has produced the distinction.” But he is cautious in tone, has his attention upon the fact that popular opinions are prejudiced, and points to the possibility that further scientific studies may, or may not, verify his conjectures.14 This guarded treatment of the subject marks a high point in the early history of the literature on Negro racial characteristics. In critical sense and in the reservation for the results of further research, it was not surpassed by white writers until recent decades.As the CivilWar drew nearer, intellectuals were increasingly mobilized to serve the Southern cause and to satisfy the Southern needs for 92 G UNN A R M Y R D A L rationalization. After Reconstruction their theories were taken over by the whole nation. Biology and ethnology were increasingly supplanting theology and history in providing justification for slavery and, later, caste. Even the friends of the Negroes assumed great racial differences, even if, out of charity, they avoided elaborating on them.The numerous enemies of the Negro left a whole crop of pseudo-scientific writings in the libraries, emphasizing racial differences. Robert W. Shufeldt’s book, America’s Greatest Problem: the Negro15 which had considerable influence for a time – illustrating the inferiority argument by a picture of a Negro lad between two monkeys and filled with an imposing mass of presumed evidences for Negro inferiority – is a late example of this literature at its worst.16 Without much change this situation continued into the twentieth century. At this time the heavily prejudiced position of science on the race problem was, however, beginning to be undermined. Professor Franz Boas and a whole school of anthropologists had already come out against these arguments for racial differences based on the primitive people’s lack of culture.17 The outlines of a radically environmentalistic sociology were being drawn by W. G. Sumner,W. I.Thomas and C. H. Cooley.The early research on intelligence pronounced that there were considerable racial differences but it had already encountered some doubts as to validity.18 Improved techniques in the fields of anatomy and anthropometry had begun to disprove earlier statements on Negro physical traits.19 The last two or three decades have seen a veritable revolution in scientific thought on the racial characteristics of the Negro.This revolution has actually a much wider scope: it embraces not only the whole race issue even outside the Negro problem, but the fundamental assumptions on the nature– nurture question. The social sciences in America, and particularly sociology, anthropology, and psychology,20 have gone through a conspicuous development, increasingly giving the preponderance to environment instead of to heredity. In order to retain a proper perspective on this scientific revolution, we have to recall that American social science is not many decades old. The biological sciences and medicine, firmly entrenched much earlier in American universities, had not, and have not yet, the same close ideological ties to the American Creed.They have been associated in America, as in the rest of the world, with conservative and even reactionary ideologies.21 Under their long hegemony, there has been a tendency to assume biological causation without question, and to accept social explanations only under the duress of a siege of irresistible evidence. In political questions, this tendency favored a do-nothing policy.This tendency also, in the main, for a century and more, determined people’s attitudes toward the racial traits of the Negro. In the years around the First World War, it exploded in a cascade of scientific and popular writings22 with a strong racialistic bias, rationalizing the growing feeling in America against the “new” immigrants pouring into the country whose last frontier was now occupied and congregating in the big cities where they competed with American labor. In addition to the social friction they created, the idea that these newcomers represented an inferior stock provided much of the popular theory for the restrictive immigration legislation.23 The wave of racialism for a time swayed not only public opinion but also some psychologists who were measuring psychic traits, especially intelligence, and perhaps also some few representatives of related social sciences.24 But the social sciences had now developed strength and were well on the RACIAL BELIEFS IN AMERICA 93 way toward freeing themselves entirely from the old biologistic tendency.The social sciences received an impetus to their modern development by reacting against this biologistic onslaught.They fought for the theory of environmental causation.Their primary object of suspicion became more and more the old static entity, “human nature,” and the belief that fundamental differences between economic, social, or racial groups were due to “nature.” From the vantage point of their present research front, the situation looks somewhat like this: a handful of social and biological scientists over the last fifty years have gradually forced informed people to give up some of the more blatant of our biological errors. But there must be still other countless errors of the same sort that no living man can yet detect, because of the fog within which our type of Western culture envelops us. Cultural influences have set up the assumptions about the mind, the body, and the universe with which we begin; pose the questions we ask; influence the facts we seek; determine the interpretation we give these facts; and direct our reaction to these interpretations and conclusions. Social research has thus become militantly critical. It goes from discovery to discovery by challenging this basic assumption in various areas of life. It is constantly disproving inherent differences and explaining apparent ones in cultural and social terms. By inventing and applying ingenious specialized research methods, the popular race dogma is being victoriously pursued into every corner and effectively exposed as fallacious or at least unsubstantiated. So this research becomes truly revolutionary in the spirit of the cherished American tradition. A contrast is apparent not only in comparison with earlier strands of American social science but also with contemporary scientific trends in other countries. The democratic ones have, on the whole, followed a similar course, but America has been leading. It is interesting to observe how on this point the radical tendency in American social research of today dominates even the work and writings of scientists who feel and pronounce their own political inclination to be conservative. What has happened is in line with the great traditions of the American Creed, the principles of which are themselves, actually, piecemeal becoming substantiated by research and elaborated into scientific theory. American social scientists might – in a natural effort to defend their objectivity – dislike this characterization, but to the outsider it is a simple and obvious fact that the social sciences in America at present have definitely a spirit in many respects reminiscent of eighteenth century Enlightenment.The ordinary man’s ideas have not, however, kept up to those of the scientist. Hardly anywhere else or in any other issue is there in spite of intensive and laudable efforts to popularize the new results of research – such a wide gap between scientific thought and popular belief. At least potentially these ideas have, however, a much greater importance in America than could be assumed upon casual observation and for the reason that the ordinary American has a most honored place in his heart for equalitarianism. This trend in social sciences to discount earlier notions of great differences in “nature” between the advantaged and the disadvantaged groups (rich–poor, men–women, whites–Negroes) runs parallel to another equally conspicuous trend in American political ideology since the First World War: an increased interest and belief in social reforms. The latter trend broke through in the course of the Great Depression following the crisis of 1920; and it materialized in the New Deal, whose principles, 94 G UNN A R M Y R D A L even if not methods, are now widely accepted.We have already stressed the strategic importance for political liberalism and radicalism of the modern social science point of view on the basic problem of nurture versus nature.The scientific trend in non-democratic countries during the same period – and specifically the sway of racialism over German universities and research centers under the Nazi regime – provides a contrast which vividly illustrates our thesis. As always, we can, of course, assume that basically both the scientific trend and the political development in a civilization are functions of a larger synchronized development of social ideology. A suspicion is, then, natural that fundamentally the scientific trend in America is a rationalization of changed political valuations.This trend has, however, had its course during a remarkable improvement of observation and measurement techniques and has been determined by real efforts to criticize research methods and the manner in which scientific inferences are made from research data. It has, to a large extent, been running against expectation and, we may assume, wishes.This is the general reason why, in spite of the natural suspicion, we can feel confident that the scientific trend is, on the whole, a definite approach toward objective truth. [. . .] Our characterization of the race dogma as a reaction against the equalitarian Creed of revolutionary America is a schematization too simple to be exact unless reservations are added. Undoubtedly the low regard for the Negro people before the eighteenth century contained intellectual elements which later could have been recognized as a racial theory in disguise.The division of mankind into whites, blacks, and yellows stretches back to ancient civilization. A loose idea that barbarism is something inherent in certain peoples is equally old. On the other hand, the masses of white Americans even today do not always, when they refer to the inferiority of the Negro race, think clearly in straight biological terms. The race dogma developed gradually.The older Biblical and socio-political arguments in defense of slavery retained in the South much of their force long beyond the CivilWar. Under the duress of the ideological need of justification for Negro slavery, they were even for a time becoming increasingly elaborated.Their decline during recent decades is probably a result of the secularization and urbanization of the American people, which in these respects, as in so many others, represents a continuation of the main trend begun by the revolutionary ideological impulses of the eighteenth century. In this development, the biological inferiority dogma threatens to become the lone surviving ideological support of color caste in America. In trying to understand how ordinary white people came to believe in the Negro’s biological inferiority, we must observe that there was a shift from theological to biological thinking after the eighteenth century. As soon as the idea was spread that man belongs to the biological universe, the conclusion that the Negro was biologically inferior was natural to the unsophisticated white man. It is obvious to the ordinary unsophisticated white man, from his everyday experience, that the Negro is inferior. And inferior the Negro really is; so he shows up even under scientific study. He is, on the average, poorer; his body is more often deformed; his health is more precarious and his mortality rate higher; his intelligence performance, manners, and morals are lower.The correct observation that the RACIAL BELIEFS IN AMERICA 95 Negro is inferior was tied up to the correct belief that man belongs to the biological universe, and, by twisting logic, the incorrect deduction was made that the inferiority is biological in nature. Race is a comparatively simple idea which easily becomes applied to certain outward signs of “social visibility,” such as physiognomy. Explanations in terms of environment, on the contrary, tax knowledge and imagination heavily. It is difficult for the ordinary man to envisage clearly how such factors as malnutrition, bad housing, and lack of schooling actually deform the body and the soul of people. The ordinary white man cannot be expected to be aware of such subtle influences as the denial of certain outlets for ambitions, social disparagement, cultural isolation, and the early conditioning of the Negro child’s mind by the caste situation, as factors molding the Negro’s personality and behavior. The white man is, therefore, speaking in good faith when he says that he sincerely believes that the Negro is racially inferior, not merely because he has an interest in this belief, but simply because he has seen it. He “knows” it. Tradition strengthens this honest faith.The factors of environment were, to the ordinary white man, still less of a concrete reality one hundred years ago when the racial dogma began to crystallize. Originally the imported Negro slaves had hardly a trace ofWestern culture.The tremendous cultural difference between whites and Negroes was maintained25 and, perhaps, relatively increased by the Negroes being kept, first, in slavery and, later, in a subordinate caste, while American white culture changed apace. By both institutions the Negroes’ acculturation was hampered and steered in certain directions.The Negroes, moreover, showed obvious differences in physical appearance. From the beginning these two concomitant differences – the physical and the cultural – must have been associated in the minds of white people. “When color differences coincide with differences in cultural levels, then color becomes symbolic and each individual is automatically classified by the racial uniform he wears.”26 Darker color, woolly hair, and other conspicuous physical Negro characteristics became steadily associated with servile status, backward culture, low intelligence performance and lack of morals. All unfavorable reactions to Negroes – which for social if not for biological reasons, are relatively much more numerous than favorable reactions – became thus easily attributed to every Negro as a Negro, that is, to the race and to the individual only secondarily as a member of the race.Whites categorize Negroes. As has been observed also in other racial contacts, visible characteristics have a power to overshadow all other characteristics and to create an illusion of a greater similarity between the individuals of the out-race and greater difference from the in-race than is actually warranted.27 This last factor is the more important as the unsophisticated mind is much more “theoretical” – in the popular meaning of being bent upon simple, abstract, clear-cut generalizations – than the scientifically trained mind.28 This works in favor of the race dogma. To conceive that apparent differences in capacities and aptitudes could be cultural in origin means a deferment of judgment that is foreign to popular thinking. It requires difficult and complicated thinking about a multitude of mutually dependent variables, thinking which does not easily break into the lazy formalism of unintellectual people. We should not be understood, however, to assume that the simpler concept of race is clear in 96 G UNN A R M Y R D A L the popular mind. From the beginning, as is apparent from the literature through the decades, environmental factors to some extent, have been taken into account. But they are discounted, and they are applied in a loose way – partly under the influence of vulgarized pre-Darwinian and Darwinian evolutionism – to the race rather than to the individual. The Negro race is said to be several hundreds of thousands of years behind the white man in “development.” Culture is then assumed to be an accumulated mass of memories in the race, transmitted through the genes. A definite biological ceiling is usually provided: the mind of the Negro race cannot be improved beyond a given level.This odd theory is repeated through more than a century of literature: it is phrased as an excuse by the Negro’s friends and as an accusation by his enemies.The present writer has met it everywhere in contemporary white America. Closely related to this popular theory is the historical and cultural demonstration of Negro inferiority already referred to. It is constantly pointed out as a proof of his racial backwardness that in Africa the Negro was never able to achieve a culture of his own. Descriptions of hideous conditions in Africa have belonged to this popular theory from the beginning. Civilization is alleged to be the accomplishment of the white race; the Negro, particularly, is without a share in it. Notes and references 1 See, for example: John H. Russell, The Free Negro inVirginia, 1619–1865 (1913); J. C. Ballagh, A History of Slavery in Virginia (1902); John C. Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States (1858– 1862). 2 A weak variation of this popular theory – weak because it looked forward only to temporary subordination of backward peoples – was that in making the Negroes slaves, white men were educating and Christianizing them. This variation is known as the “white men’s burden” doctrine and played an especially important role in nineteenth century exploitation. For some statements of this doctrine, see W. O. Brown, “Rationalization of Race Prejudice,” The International Journal of Ethics (April, 1933), pp. 299–301. 3 H. A. Washington (editor), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1859), Vol. 1, p. 49. 4 Letter to Robert Morris, dated April 12, 1786. Jones Viles (editor), Letters and Addresses of George 5 “Government and the Negro,” Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science (November, 1928), p. 6 This materialistic explanation is not a new idea. It was already seen clearly by some in the ante-bellum Washington (1908), p. 285. 99. South. George Fitzhugh, for example, writes: “Our Southern patriots, at the time of the Revolution, finding Negroes expensive and useless, became warm anti-slavery men. We, their wiser sons, having learned to make cotton and sugar, find slavery very useful and profitable, and think it a most excellent institution. We of the South advocate slavery, no doubt, from just as selfish notices as induce theYankees and English to deprecate it.” RACIAL BELIEFS IN AMERICA 97 “We have, however, almost all human and divine authority on our side of the argument. The Bible nowhere condemns, and throughout recognises slavery.” (Sociology for the South [1854], p. 269) 7 Chancellor William Harper, “Memoir on Slavery,” paper read before the Society for the Advancement 8 This stress on moral equality has not been lost throughout the ages. T. J. Woofter, Jr., a representative of Learning of South Carolina, annual meeting at Columbia, South Carolina, 1837 (1838), pp. 6–8. of modern Southern liberalism, writes: “It is desirable frankly to recognize the differences as they actually exist, but there is absolutely no ethical justification for the assumption that an advantaged group has an inherent right to exploit and oppress, and the prejudice based upon the assumptions is the most vicious enemy to human peace and cooperation.” (Basis of Racial Adjustment [1925], p. 11) Vance, another Southern liberal, writes: “In a field where doubts abound, let us make one sweeping statement. If biological inferiority of the whole Negro group were a proved fact, it would, nevertheless, be to the benefit of both white and black to behave as though it did not exist. Only in this way can the Section be sure of securing, in the economic sphere, the best of which both races are capable.” (Rupert B. Vance, Human Geography of the South [1932], p. 463) 9 “Prejudice of any sort, racial or otherwise, is regarded as derogatory to intellectual integrity, incompatible with good taste, and perhaps morally reprehensible. Hence the prejudiced in order to be secure in their illusions of rationality, impeccable taste, and moral correctness find rationalizations essential. The rationlization inoculates against insights as to the real nature of one’s reactions. It secures the individual in his moral universe. It satisfies his impulse to rationality. The mind thus becomes an instrument, a hand-maiden, of the emotions, supplying good reasons for prejudiced reaction in the realm of racial, class, or sectarian contacts.” (Brown, op. cit., p. 294). 10 In this connection it is interesting to note, as an example of how political reaction fosters racialism, that in the ante-bellum South racial thinking also turned toward beliefs in biological differences between whites. The legend was spread that the white Southerners were a “master race” of Norman blood while New England was settled by descendants of the ancient British and Saxon serfs. The Northerners and Southerners, it was said, “are the same men who cut each other’s throats in England, under the name of Roundheads and Cavaliers.” The Southerners were a Nordic race with greater capacity to rule. (See James Truslow Adams, America’s Tragedy [1934], pp. 95 ff, 121, and 128 ff.) A late example of this ideology will be found in a chapter entitled “The Tropic Nordics,” of H. J. Eckenrode, Jefferson Davis, President of the South (1923). The present writer has on several occasions in conversation with Southerners met vague reminiscences of this popular theory, usually related to the myth that the South, unlike the North, was settled mainly by English aristocrats. The more common theory of Southern racial superiority nowadays is, however, simply the assertion that the white Southerners belong predominantly to “the pure Anglo-Saxon race,” as the South has received so few immigrants in recent decades when these were recruited from other European countries. In addition, one often meets the idea that “the poor whites” and generally the lower classes of whites are racially inferior, as 98 G UNN A R M Y R D A L they descend from indentured servants. 11 Guion G. Johnson, “History of Racial Ideologies,’ unpublished manuscript written for this study (1940). Vol. 1, pp. 149, passim; Vol. 2, pp. 331, passim. 12 The same principle operates also outside the Negro problem. The American Creed, in its demand for equality, has strong support from the very composition of the new nation. As immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants with diverse national origins, Americans have an interest – outside of the Negro problem – in emphasizing the importance of environment and in discounting inheritance. In order to give a human and not only political meaning to the legend e pluribus unum, they feel the need to believe in the possibility of shaping a new homogeneous nation out of the disparate elements thrown into the melting pot. This interest plays on a high level of valuations where the individual identifies himself with the destiny of the nation. In daily life, however, the actual and obvious heterogeneity in origin, appearance, and culture of the American people acts as a constant stimulus toward prejudiced racial beliefs. Thus – even outside the Negro problem – there is in America a considerable ambivalence in people’s thoughts on race. On a lower valuation level, there appears to be in America an extreme belief in and preoccupation with all sorts of racial differences, while on a higher level a contrary ideology rules, equally extreme when compared with more homogeneous nations.The former side of the American personality is responsible for much friction and racial snobbishness in social life. The latter side finds its expression not only in empty speeches – what the Americans call “lip-service” – but also in national legislation and in actual social trends. 13 H. A. Washington (editor), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1854), Vol. 8, pp. 380–381. 14 ibid, pp. 380 ff. 15 1915. 16 Concerning this literature, see G. G. Johnson, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 149, passim, Vol. 2, pp. 250–258 and 17 Much of the earliest literature of this sort is summarized in W. I. Thomas (editor), Sourcebook for Social 18 Cooley challenged Gallon’s hereditary explanation of racial genius in 1897. (Charles H. Cooley, 311–338. Origins (1909). “Genius, Fame and the Comparison of Races,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science [May, 1897], pp. 317–358); see Chapter 6, Section 3. 19 Several scientists, for example, had criticized much of the early research on brain and skull differences. One of the most notorious of the exposés was that of Robert B. Bean by Franklin P. Mall. Bean was a Southern student of Mall’s in the latter’s laboratory at Johns Hopkins. In an elaborate study of Negro skulls and brains, he attempted to show that the skulls were smaller than the skulls of white men, and that the brains were less convoluted and otherwise deficient. After Bean published his findings (Robert B. Bean, “Some Racial Peculiarities of the Negro Brain,” American Journal of Anatomy [September, 1906], pp. 27–432), Mall repeated the measurements on many of the same specimens and found that Bean had completely distorted his measurements and conclusions. (Franklin P. Mall, “On Several Anatomical Characters of the Human brain, Said to Vary According to Race and Sex, With Especial Reference to the Weight of the Frontal Lobe,” American Journal of Anatomy [February, 1909], pp. 1–32). RACIAL BELIEFS IN AMERICA 99 Bean’s sample, too, was grossly inadequate; it consisted of 103 Negroes and 49 whites in the Baltimore morgue who had been unclaimed at death. 20 The change toward environmentalism in American psychology has been most radical in child psychology, psychiatry and educational psychology, applied psychology, “social psychology,” and other branches which are in close relation to social practice and social science. Undoubtedly the biologistic approach has still a stronghold in academic psychology proper. But even there a change is under way which can be registered by comparing the present situation with the one prevalent two or three decades ago. An indication is the almost complete abandonment of the “instinct” psychology. 21 This connection between biology and conservatism will have to be remembered when explaining why, with some outstanding exceptions, the medical profession has, on the whole, in all countries, taken a rather reactionary stand on questions of social and health reforms. 22 Perhaps the most influential of the popular racialistic writers were: Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (1916); Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color (1920); Charles W. Gould, America, A Family Matter (1920). 23 The acts restricting immigration not only cut down the total number of immigrants admitted to the country, but also provided that those allowed entrance should be predominantly from Western and Northern Europe.The 1921 act permitted an immigration from each country equal to 3 per cent of the number of foreign-born from that country resident in the United States in 1910.The 1924 act reduced the quota to 2 per cent and set the determining date back to 1890. Immigration from the orient was completely prohibited, but that from independent countries in the Americas and from Canada was not restricted at all. 24 As examples we may cite the following: Carl C. Brigham, an outstanding psychologist who has since repudiated his book (A Study of American Intelligence [1923]); William McDougall, the father of many trends in psychology (The Group Mind [1920], and Is America Safe for Democracy? [1921]); Albert Bushnell Hart and H. H. Bancroft, the eminent historians (The Southern South [1920], and Retrospection, Political and Personal [1912]). 25 When we say that cultural differences were maintained, we do not refer one way or the other to the retention of African culture. 26 Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States, pp. 99–100. 27 Edward K. Strong, The Second-Generation Japanese Problem (1934), p. 100. The classic statement on the difference between categoric and sympathetic contacts is that of Nathaniel S. Shaler, The Neighbor (1904), pp. 207–227. 28 The tendencies of unsophisticated thinking to be “theoretical” are worthy of much more study than they have been given hitherto. They can be illustrated from all spheres of human life. To give an example outside our problem: The most human concept, bona fide, in jurisprudence is a late juristical development in all civilizations; originally legal systems are formalistic and behavioristic (they do not consider people’s intentions); bona fide is even today only the trained lawyer’s way of thinking and has, as yet, never and nowhere really been understood by the mass of laymen whose thinking of legal matters always seems formalistic to the lawyer. Similarly the simple “economic laws” are thoughtforms adhered to by business people when they speculate in this strange field, while the economic 100 G UNN A R M Y R D A L theorists, instead, devote their labor to criticising, demolishing, and complicating economic theory. It is the common man, and not the statistician who “thinks in averages,” or, rather, in pairs of contrasting types: good–bad, healthy–sick, man–woman, white–black. And the common man is likely to handle averages and types as if they applied to the individuals. He will confidently tell you something about “all Negroes,” in the same breath as he observes an exception. He is, further, likely to construct his types without a thought as to sampling difficulties. He has a tendency to forget about range and spread. He has, of course, a pragmatic understanding that things and happenings have their causes. Otherwise he would not be able to get on with his several pursuits in a rational way. But particularly when it comes to social questions, causation becomes to the untrained mind divested of complications. Social causation is to him mostly monistic, direct, apparent and simple.The very idea of causal interrelations within a mutually dependent system of a great many factors is usually entirely absent. In his thoughts on social causation he mingles his ideas about what is right and wrong. The unsophisticated mind is not questioning; it answers questions before they are stated. Generally speaking, it is a fact that “to think in concrete terms” when reaching for generalizations is the endeavor of theoretical training and a mark of the highest intelligence, while “theoretical,” abstract and formalistic thinking is the common man’s philosophy. PART TWO Sociology, race and social theory INTRODUCTION T H E M AT E R I A L I N C L U D E D I N PA R T O N E has hopefully helped to provide some of the background to contemporary theoretical debates about race and racism. We move on in this part to an exploration of attempts to locate the issue of race within the bounds of social theory. As we saw in the previous part from the extracts by Du Bois and Myrdal this is not completely a recent phenomenon as such, and attempts to theorise about racial relations have been made throughout the twentieth century. Indeed the first extract that we have chosen to include in here is from Robert Park, one of the founding figures of the Chicago School of sociology, whose writings from the 1920s and 1930s continue to exercise the interest of contemporary scholars. Park’s work was centrally concerned with the development of race relations in the United States, and particularly in the context of the complex social and cultural relations that developed in the major urban conurbations. In the extract included in this volume he reflects on the meaning of the notion of ‘race relations’, and in doing so he attempts to provide an overview of the key elements of his theoretical perspective. Park’s writings on race are difficult to summarise but a recurrent concern in his writings is with the subjective dimensions of racial consciousness that help to produce the conditions for the emergence of racial conflict. From the classic account of Park we move on to the critique of the idea of race that was developed by the anthropologist Ruth Benedict. Benedict’s text was originally published in 1943 but it continues to influence contemporary scholarship on the relationship between race and racism. Written at a time when there was much public concern about Nazi racial theories Benedict’s text was concerned to challenge 102 S O C I O L O GY, R A C E A N D S O C I A L T H E O RY ideas of racial supremacy and to provide a basis for a rigorous analysis of the idea of race and its various meanings. Although in some ways her work is very much linked to the period in which it was written, its main arguments are still an important point for reflection, particularly at a time when new discourses of race are coming forth from a variety of sources. The next extract in this Part, by John Rex, is taken from one of his early works and reflects his first sustained attempt to outline the broad theoretical contours of his analysis of race relations. Rex’s work over the years has been concerned with the need to locate the study of race relations on a firm theoretical footing and in this piece he sets out the main elements of his conceptual model. Drawing to some extent on the work of Max Weber as well as Robert Park, among others, he attempts to develop a theoretical model for the analysis of different patterns of race relations that could potentially be applied to a variety of national situations. An important concern in Rex’s work, and certainly the one that has exercised the most influence on subsequent generations of students and scholars, is the need to link the analysis of race relations to class as well as other social processes. Although Rex has been a vociferous critic of the more reductionist elements of neo-Marxist theories of race and racism, he has also consistently argued for the need to examine the interrelationships between race and class based forms of social consciousness. In contrast to Rex, the extract from Robert Miles can be seen as a rejection of the whole idea of developing a sociology of race or race relations. In its place he seeks to develop an analytical model that is based on a broadly neo-Marxist theoretical framework, although one that is quite distinct from that of earlier Marxists, such as Oliver Cox (see Part One). Miles is particularly concerned to expose what he sees as the limitations of the whole ‘race relations problematic’ and to highlight the need to move beyond the category of race in social analysis. Over the past two decades Miles has been one of the most productive scholars in this field and has attempted to outline key elements of his theory both in more conceptual as well as more empirical work. But a recurrent theme in his work, which is reflected in this extract, is the attempt to reject the language and analytical models of ‘race relations’ in favour of an analytical model that seeks to analyse the processes that produce ‘racialised groups’ in specific social and historical conditions. Perhaps the most important theme in his work is the need to analyse racism as an ideology which is produced by specific economic and social processes, such as the defence of domination, subordination and privilege. The extracts from Stuart Hall and David Goldberg are examples of the shifting terms of theoretical debates in this field in the past decade. Hall’s piece is a particularly fine example of a growing body of work that seeks to explore the changing dimensions of how identities are formed and reformed in multicultural societies. An important point of departure for Hall, and other writers who have followed in his footsteps, is a recognition that an analysis of race and ethnic relations in contemporary societies needs to recognise the diversity of subject positions that have been formed over time. From this there follows an emphasis on the need to see S O C I O L O GY, R A C E A N D S O C I A L T H E O RY 103 racial identities as constantly crossed and recrossed by the categories of gender, class and ethnicity. In this regard Hall’s argument has much in common with important undercurrents in recent feminist theorising about race and gender (see in particular the contributions in Part Five). David Goldberg’s piece is concerned particularly with the questions of how racial knowledge is produced and reproduced. Goldberg’s work is inspired by the need to understand the historical, social and cultural conditions that produce racial knowledge and lead to the articulation of racist ideas and practices. An important aspect of Goldberg’s innovative account of these issues is the argument that we need to locate the role of specific kinds of racism within particular time periods as well as geographical spaces. In this respect his arguments can be seen as tied up with a concern to understand how ideas about race, and the role of specific racial identities, help to structure political institutions, social relationships and cultural processes. The final extract, from Howard Winant, returns us to the underlying question that holds all the contributions to this part together, namely the theoretical status of the concept of race. In an impressively wide-ranging overview of important themes in current debates, Winant is particularly concerned to draw out some of the main limitations of current theoretical debates, especially in a global environment that is going through processes of rapid social and cultural transformation. In doing so he reminds us that whatever the intricacies of conceptual debates the mundane realities of everyday politics may force us to confront new dimensions of race and racism in years to come. 104 S O C I O L O GY, R A C E A N D S O C I A L T H E O RY KEY QUESTIONS • • • • • • How does Robert Park’s concept of the ‘race relations cycle’ explain the development of race and ethnic relations in cities? John Rex’s work seeks to outline a model for a ‘distinct field of race relations studies’. What are the key elements of his model and how successful is it? Robert Miles argues that race constitutes a notion that may be a common term of reference within everyday discourse but is not useful analytically. Why does he argue this and what are the consequences of his analysis? Stuart Hall argues that in contemporary societies we are seeing the development of new ethnicities that cannot be grounded in a set of fixed trans-cultural or transcendental racial categories. How does this argument help us to understand the changing patterns of race and ethnic relations in today’s world? David Goldberg argues that racial identities have become increasingly ambivalent and ambiguous, and that they need to be contextualised in terms of time and space. How would you utilise this argument to analyse the changing forms of racial identity in contemporary societies? How do recent theories of racism explain the changing expressions of racial ideologies and movements in contemporary societies? Chapter 7 Robert E. Park THE NATURE OF RACE RELATIONS R A C E R E L A T I O N S , A S T H A T T E R M is defined in use and wont in the United States, are the relations existing between peoples distinguished by marks of racial descent, particularly when these racial differences enter into the consciousness of the individuals and groups so distinguished, and by so doing determine in each case the individual’s conception of himself as well as his status in the community.Thus anything that intensifies race consciousness; anything, particularly if it is a permanent physical trait, that increases an individual’s visibility and by so doing makes more obvious his identity with a particular ethnic unit or genetic group, tends to create and maintain the conditions under which race relations, as here defined, may be said to exist. Race consciousness, therefore, is to be regarded as a phenomenon, like class or caste consciousness, that enforces social distances. Race relations, in this sense, are not so much the relations that exist between individuals of different races as between individuals conscious of these differences. Thus one may say, without doing injustice to the sense in which the term is ordinarily used, that there are, to be sure, races in Brazil – there are, for example, Europeans and Africans – but not race relations because there is in that country no race consciousness, or almost none. One speaks of race relations when there is a race problem, and there is no race problem in Brazil, or if there is, it is very little if at all concerned with the peoples of African and European origin.1 On the other hand, when one speaks of race relations and the race problem in South Africa one does not think of the African and the European.The African does, to be sure, constitute a problem, but in South Africa, it is described as the “native problem.” South Africa has, also, the problem of the Cape Coloured, a hybrid people of mixed Hottentot and European origin.The native, as the term is there used, is a Bantu, and of a quite different racial origin than the “native.” South Africa has, 106 R O B ERT E . PA R K likewise, the problem of the East Indian. Hindus were first imported into Natal about 1860 in the interest of the sugar industry in that province. However, when one speaks or writes in common parlance of the race problem in South Africa, it is to the relations existing between the English and the native Dutch or Africanders that this expression refers. In this context and in this sense the expression race relations seems to describe merely the sentiments and attitudes which racial contacts invariably provoke and for which there is, apparently, no more substantial basis than an existing state of the public mind. For the purpose of this chapter, however, the term has been employed in a somewhat wider universe of discourse, in which it includes all the relations that ordinarily exist between members of different ethnic and genetic groups which are capable of provoking race conflict and race consciousness or of determining the relative status of the racial groups of which a community is composed. Race relations, in this more inclusive sense, might comprise, therefore, all those situations in which some relatively stable equilibrium between competing races has been achieved and in which the resulting social order has become fixed in custom and tradition. Under such circumstances the intensity of the race consciousness which a struggle for status inevitably arouses, where it did not altogether disappear, would be greatly diminished.The biracial organizations of certain social institutions that have come into existence in Southern states since emancipation exhibit the form which such racial accommodations sometimes take. Some of these, as in the case of the churches and the labor organizations, seem to have grown up quite spontaneously and have been accepted by both races as offering a satisfactory modus vivendi. In other instances, as in the case of the public school, the segregation which such dual or biracial organizations necessitate, in spite of certain advantages they offer, has been bitterly opposed even when they have later been reluctantly accepted by the colored people.They were opposed (1) because of the discrimination they inevitable involve and (2) because the separation of the races in the schools as elsewhere has seemed to imply the acceptance of an inferior civic and social status. All this suggests that the term race relations, as here conceived, includes relations which are not now conscious or personal, though they have been; relations which are fixed in and enforced by the custom, convention, and the routine of an expected social order of which there may be at the moment no very lively consciousness. Historically, the races of mankind at different times and places have lived together in a wide variety of ways.They have lived over long periods of time in a relationship not unlike that existing between the plant and animal species occupying the same territory, that is to say, a relationship of biotic interdependence, without interbreeding. Under these conditions the different races, like the different species, have been able to maintain their integrity as distinct races while living in a form of association that might be described as symbiotic rather than social. Examples of this sort of symbiosis among human creatures are the gypsies ofWestern Europe or theWildTribes of India, particularly the so-called “CriminalTribes.” On the other hand, other racial stocks, notably those that have fused to create the existing T H E N AT UR E O F R A C E R E L AT I O N S 107 peoples of Europe, have lived together in an intimacy so complete that the original racial differences that once distinguished them have almost wholly disappeared, or at best can now only be clearly determined by the formal investigations of anthropologists. This is the case, for example, of the Germanic and Slavic tribes which, politically united by the conquests of the Markgraf of Brandenburg and theTeutonic Knights, in the thirteenth century, eventually fused to produce the Prussian people.2 Evidence of this modern instance of racial amalgamation are the occasional “racial islands,” particularly in East Prussia, where, because the process of fusion has not been completed, some remnants of the Slavic peoples and their cultures still persist. Perhaps the most notable example of this incomplete amalgamation and assimilation is the existence, a short distance from Berlin, of an ancientWendish folk, which still preserves it language and culture, and still cherishes a kind of tribal identity.They are called the Spree-wälder, i.e., the people of the Spree Forest, where they exist in the midst of a German population, as a kind of racial and cultural enclave. There are, however, numerous examples of such isolated racial islands nearer home.There are, for example, the interesting little communities of Negro, Indian, and white mixed bloods, of which there are a great number scattered about in out-of-the-way corners of the Southern and Eastern estates. Perhaps the most notable of these is the community of white and Negro half-castes, living near Natchitoches, Louisiana, described by Lyle Saxon in his recently published novel, Children of Strangers.3 All these various and divergent types of isolated, and more or less outcast racial and cultural groups, have recently been classed, for the purposes of comparison and study, as minority groups, although the term as originally used acquired its meaning in a European rather than American context. Among these such sectarian and religious groups as the Amish of Eastern Pennsylvania, or the Mormons of Utah, have sometimes been included. The classic examples of such racial minorities, however, are the Jewish communities in Europe and the Near East, where Jews have maintained, in spite of their very intimate association with other peoples, their racial identity and their ancient tribal religion. All these relations of cultural or racial minorities with a dominant people may be described, for our purposes, as types of race relationship, even though no evidences exist either of active race conflict, on the one hand, or of obvious racial diversity on the other. [. . .] In the modern world, and particularly outside of Europe, wherever race relations – or what, in view of the steadily increasing race mixture, we have called race relations – have assumed a character that could be described as problematic, such problems have invariably arisen in response to the expansion of European peoples and European civilization. In the period of four hundred years and more sinceVasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and Columbus landed at San Salvador, European discoveries and European enterprise have penetrated to the most remote regions of the earth.There is nowhere now, it seems – either in the jungles of the Malayan peninsula or the remote islands of New Guinea – a primitive people that 108 R O B ERT E . PA R K has not, directly or indirectly, come under the influence of European peoples and European culture.4 The growth of European population is, among other evidences of European expansion, the one that is perhaps least obvious. However, the growth and decline of populations are basic to every other form of social or cultural change. Between 1800 and 1930 the population of Europe increased from 180,000,000 to 480,000,000, and the number of individuals of European origin overseas amounts at the present to 160,000,000. During this period, and indirectly as a result of this emigration of European peoples, a corresponding movement of African and Asiatic peoples has been in progress.The number of people of African origin in the New World, that is, in North America, the West Indies, and South America, is at the present time, as near as can be estimated 37,000,000. Of this number something over 12,000,000 are in the United States and Canada; 8,148,000 are in Bermuda, Central America, and the West Indies; 14,200,000, including, according to the best estimates, 8,800,999 mulattoes, are in Brazil. The remainder, 2,400,000, are in South America. Meanwhile oriental peoples, mainly Chinese and East Indians, in response to the demands for crude labor to do the rough work on Europe’s advancing frontier, have been imported into almost every part of the world outside of Europe.There are settlements of both Hindus and Chinese in the West Indies, in Australia, South and East Africa, and the islands of the Pacific, particularly the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and the Hawaiian Islands.They are employed mainly, but not wholly, in plantation agriculture.They are imported to work in the gold mines.There are Chinese in Cuba, in Jamaica, and British Guiana.They were imported in the first instance to replace Negroes on the sugar plantations after emancipation. There are Japanese in Brazil as in the United States. They were brought to Brazil to work in the coffee plantations in São Paulo and to the United States to work in the fruit and vegetable gardens of the Pacific coast. The number of Chinese, Indians, and Japanese who have gone abroad and are now living outside of their native states has been estimated at 16,084,371.There is in South Africa a Chinese community in the Transvaal and an Indian community in Natal.The Chinese were imported as laborers to work in the Rand gold mines; the Indians, to work on sugar plantations in Natal. In theWest Indies, Indians and Chinese took the places, after emancipation in 1834, of Negroes on the plantations. Japanese, who are more recent emigrants, have gone mainly to Hawaii and Brazil. There are, at the present time, between 16,000,000 and 17,000,000 people of Asiatic origin living in the diaspora, if I may use that term to designate not merely the condition but the place of dispersion of peoples.5 Of the Orientals in this diaspora, 10,000,000, it is estimated, are Chinese 2,125,000 are Indians, and 1,973,960 are Japanese.There are 1,900,000 Chinese in Siam; 1,800,000 in Malaya; 1,240,000 in the Dutch East Indies; 700,000 in Indo-China; 150,000 in Burma; 74,954 in the United States; 45,000 in Canada; and 4,090,046 in other parts of the world. Of the 4,125,000 Indians abroad, 1,300,000 are in Burma; 628,000 in Malaya; 1,133,000 in Ceylon; 281,000 in the island of Mauritius; 278,000 are in South and East Africa: 133.277 are in the T H E N AT UR E O F R A C E R E L AT I O N S 109 British island ofTrinidad: 181.600 in British and Dutch Guiana; 76,000 are in the Fiji Islands; 6,101 in the United States and Canada, and 100,225 in other countries. Of the 1,969,371 Japanese living outside Insular Japan, 1,351,383 are in Korea, the Island of Sakhalin, Manchuria, Formosa, or other parts of the world including China, which have become, or are in a process of incorporation in, the Japanese Empire. Of the remaining 617,988 Japanese abroad, 162,537 are in Brazil, and 297,651 are in the Unites States and Canada. Of the number of Japanese in the United States, 139,634 are in Hawaii.6 The Hawaiian Islands are occupied by what, from the point of race and cultural differences, is probably the most thoroughly scrambled community in the world. The census for the Hawaiian Islands, where, different from continental America, the population is classified by racial origin, recognizes twelve different racial categories, two of them hyphenated.They are: Hawaiian, Caucasian– Hawaiian, Asiatic–Hawaiian, Other Caucasian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Porto Rican, and Filipino.Among the laborers that have a various times been imported to perform the work on the plantations a considerable number were from Europe, among the Scandinavians, Germans, Galicians, Russians, Poles, Portuguese, and Spaniards. Of the total population of 347,799 in Hawaii in 1930, 236,673 were Orientals, 562 were Negroes, and 46,311 were hybrids. Of this 46,311, or 47,560 according to another and different calculation, 5,404 were person who counted their ancestry in more than two races.7 Commenting on the situation, one of these products of miscegenation, a very charming young lady, incidentally, remarked: “Mixed?Yes; I am a kind of league of nations in myself.” I have conceived the emigration of European peoples and the emigration of extra-European peoples – since most, if not all, of these movements have taken place in direct and indirect response to conditions in Europe – as integral parts of a single mass migration. So considered, this is, undoubtedly, the most extensive and momentous movement of populations in history. Its consequences, likewise, have been in proportion to its numbers. Everywhere that European peoples – including their commerce and culture – have penetrated they have invariably disturbed the existing population balance; undermined the local economic organization; imposed upon native societies, sometimes a direct form of control, more often political and judicial processes which were strange to them, but processes which have, at any rate, more or less completely superseded those of the native and local authorities. The invaders have frequently, but not always, inoculated the native peoples with new and devastating diseases.They have invariably infected them with the contagious ferment of new and subversive ideas. All this disorganization and demoralization seems to have come about, however, in the modern world as it did in the ancient, as an incident of ineluctable historical and cultural processes; the processes by which the integration of peoples and cultures have always and everywhere taken place, though not always and everywhere at a pace so rapid or on so grand a scale. It is obvious that race relations and all that they imply are generally, and on the whole, the products of migration and conquest.This was true of the ancient world and it is equally true of the modern.The interracial adjustments that follow such migration and conquest are more complex than 110 R O B ERT E . PA R K is ordinarily understood.They involve racial competition, conflict, accommodation, and eventually assimilation, but all of these diverse processes are to be regarded as merely the efforts of a new social and cultural organism to achieve a new biotic and social equilibrium. [. . .] What then, finally, is the precise nature of race relations that distinguish them, in all the variety of conditions in which they arise, from other fundamental forms of human relations? It is the essence of race relations that they are the relations of strangers; of peoples who are associated primarily for secular and practical purposes; for the exchange of goods and services. They are otherwise the relations of people of diverse races and cultures who have been thrown together by the fortunes of war, and who, for any reason, have not been sufficiently knit together by intermarriage and interbreeding to constitute a single ethnic community, with all that it implies. Obviously that does not imply as much in the modern world as it did in the ancient; it does not imply as much in the Occident as it does in the orient, where society is still organized on the familial pattern. It possibly implies less in America, or parts of America where divorce is easy and people are not generally interested in genealogies, than it does in Europe. Although people in America and the modern world are no longer bound and united as people once were by familial and tribal ties, we are, nevertheless, profoundly affected by sentiments of nationality, particularly where they have an ethnic and a cultural basis. Furthermore, national and cultural differences are often re-enforced by divergence of physical and racial traits. But racial differences would not maintain social distances to the extent they actually do if they were not symptoms of differences in custom, tradition, and religion, and of sentiments appropriate to them. Differences of race and custom mutually re-enforce one another, particularly when they are not broken up by intermarriage.8 Traditions and customs are ordinarily transmitted through the family and can be most effectively maintained by intermarrying, i.e., endogamous groups. Evidence of this is the fact that every religious society tends to assume the character of a caste or endogamous group in so far at least as it prohibits or discourages marriage outside of the church or the sect.The Catholic clergy are profoundly opposed to marriage outside of the church, and the Jews who are, perhaps, the most mixed of peoples, have only been able to preserve their tribal religion for three thousand years and more because by endogamy they converted a religious society into a racial minority. It has become commonplace among students of anthropology that most of the traits which we attribute to the different historic races are, like language and a high-school education, acquired by each succeeding generation for itself, sometimes by painful experience and always by a more or less extended formal education. Nevertheless, it is likewise becoming more obvious to students of human nature and society that the things that one learns in the intimate association of the family are likely to be the more permanent and more profound in their effects upon one’s character in determining the individual’s conception of himself, his outlook on life, his relations to other people. It is obvious that society, so far as it is founded on a familial or genetic basis is concerned – as a secular society based on commercial and political interest is not – with maintaining not T H E N AT UR E O F R A C E R E L AT I O N S 111 merely a definite life program, but a manner, moral order, and style of life consistent with that conception. All this implies that the family and religion, the home and the church, in spite of public schools and social welfare institutions of every sort, still have the major responsibility for directing the career of youth and transmitting that intimate personal and moral order in accordance with which individuals freely govern themselves.Where custom breaks down, order may still be maintained, not by custom but by the police. The consequence of this is that where there are racial and cultural minorities, whether Jews, Negroes, Catholics or religious sects that do not intermarry, the conflicts ordinarily described as racial but which are mainly cultural, do everywhere tend to arise.They arise even in an equalitarian society, like our own where “all men are,” in principle if not in fact, “born equal,” and they arise perhaps more readily here than they do in a society based on caste, because in theory they should not arise. The obvious source and origin of most, if not all of the cultural and racial conflicts which constitute our race problems, are, therefore, conflicts of the “we groups” and the “other groups,” as Sumner calls them, groups which are, however, integral parts of a great cosmopolitan and a free society. They are the ineluctable conflicts between the “little world” of the family in its struggle to preserve its sacred heritage against the disintegrating consequences of contact with an impersonal “great world” of business and politics. They are, in fact, individual instances of an irrepressible conflict between a society founded on kinship and a society founded on the market place; the conflict between the folk culture of the provinces and the civilization of the metropolis. Looking at race relations in the long historical perspective, this modern world which seems destined to bring presently all the diverse and distant peoples of the earth together within the limits of a common culture and a common social order, strikes one as something not merely unique but milennial! Nevertheless, this new civilization is the product of essentially the same historical processes as those that preceded it.The same forces which brought about the diversity of races will inevitably bring about, in the long run, a diversity in the peoples in the modern world corresponding to that which we have seen in the old. It is likely, however, that these diversities will be based in the future less on inheritance and race and rather more on culture and occupation. That means that race conflicts in the modern world, which is already or presently will be a single great society, will be more and more in the future confused with, and eventually superseded by, the conflicts of classes. Notes and references 1 See unpublished MS by Donald Pierson, The Black Man in Brazil. 2 “In 1226 the Polish Duke Conrad of Masovia invited the Teutonic Knights into his territory to combat the heathen Prussians. After a difficult struggle, the Order conquered the territory of the heathen Prussians, exterminated most of the native population, and invited German peasants and townspeople 112 R O B ERT E . PA R K into the country as settlers. In the fourteenth century the State ruled by the Knights was a power in northeastern Germany. It acquired Pommerellia and for a time the Neumark also, and through its connection with the Order of the Sword, of Livonia, extended its influence as far as Estonia. A string of flourishing cities sprang up along its coast” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed., XVIII, 654). 3 4 Boston, 1937. The situation seems to have brought about something approaching an anthropological crisis. Since there are now, or soon will be, no living examples of primitive peoples to investigate, anthropologists seem to have arrived at a cross-roads with the following result: One school of thought is directing its attention more exclusively to antiquarian and prehistorical investigation, seeking to extend the limits of our knowledge of historical facts; another school is more particularly interested in the historical processes they observe going on about them in contemporary life – the processes of history in the making. But the processes of history, so far as they reveal the manner in which new societies and new civilizations have arisen on the ruins of their predecessors, are the processes by which new and more sophisticated types of personality have succeeded earlier and simpler types. Anthropology thus merges into sociology. 5 Diaspora is a Greek term for a nation or part of a nation separated from its own state or territory and dispersed among other nations but preserving its national culture. In a sense Magna Graecia constituted a Greek diaspora in the ancient Roman Empire, and a typical case of diaspora is presented by the Armenians, many of whom have voluntarily lived outside their small national territory for centuries. Generally, however, the term is used with reference to those parts of the Jewish people residing outside Palestine. It was used at first to describe the sections of Jewry scattered in the ancient GrecoRoman world and later to designate Jewish dispersion throughout the world in the twenty-five hundred years since the Babylonian captivity. Diaspora has its equivalents in the Hebrew words galuth (exile) and golah (the exiled), which, since the Babylonian captivity, have been used to describe the dispersion of Jewry. Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, V, 120–127. 6 Radhakamal Mukerjee, Migrant Asia (Rome, 1936), Appendix A. The figures for the Japanese in the United States and Brazil have been corrected in accordance with more recent figures. 7 Romanzo Adams, Interracial marriage in Hawaii (NewYork, 1937), pp. 12–20. See also Appendix C. pp. 334–345, for data relating to interracial marriages. 8 Ibid. Chapter 8 Ruth Benedict RACE: WHAT IT IS NOT C H I N E S E H AV E A Y E L L O W I S H S K I N and slanting eyes. Negroes have a dark skin and wide flat noses. Caucasians have a lighter skin and high thin noses. The colour and texture of the hair of these peoples differ as much as do their skin and noses.These are outward and visible signs by which we recognize race; they are racial characteristics. In briefest possible definition, race is a classification based on traits which are hereditary.Therefore when we talk about race we are talking about (1) hereditary and (2) traits transmitted by heredity which characterize all the members of a related group.The first necessity in discussing race is to outline what race is not.A great deal of the confusion about race comes from confusing hereditary traits with traits which are socially acquired. In the first place, race and language are not the same. This should be obvious, for not all who speak Arab are Arabians and not all who speak English are of the White race. Nevertheless the confusion occurs constantly. A man’s hereditary features and the language he speaks depend upon two different sets of circumstances. His hereditary anatomy depends upon his remote ancestors, and his language depends upon the speech he heard when he was a child. From the point of view of human morphology these two are not even related, for whatever the inherited conformation of his oral cavity and vocal cords, a child learns to speak any language spoken about him, and children with the same oral conformation speak languages with the most different sounds. If not even a man’s speech organs account for the language he speaks, still less do racial features like skin colour, cephalic index, eyes, and hair determine his mother tongue. The Negroes in America speak English or Spanish or Portuguese or French, depending upon the language of the country in which they live; and Negroes without White blood speak languages as readily as the light-brown. According to their associations they speak with the intonations of the poor White of the area or of the privileged minority. And this is not a situation which is new in the world. So the primitive Manchus who came from the Siberian tundras have for 114 RUTH BENEDICT centuries spoken in China a pure Chinese, and the Arab language was spread after the ninth century over immense areas of northern Africa among peoples of Negroid blood. When the people of one race speak the same language and that language is spoken only by that one race, as among some primitive tribes, this is not because the two are interdependent but because they both depend on a third circumstance.This circumstance under which both physical form and language take shape and become unique is isolation. In prehistoric times the world was sparsely populated, and in isolated regions both physical type and language might become different from those in any other part of the world.The process is so simple that it is the more remarkable that it did not happen oftener than it did. The principal reason why it did not was that isolation was so often broken. When two peoples became thoroughly intermingled by conquest or intermarriage, their descendants were racially one mixed type; but they spoke one or the other language. There was also another factor which operated in history from the earliest times. Racial types maintain themselves over longer periods and over greater areas than language does; people of the same racial type commonly speak several languages which cannot be reduced to a common linguistic family. In the early history of mankind this must have been even truer than it is today, for widespread languages, like Bantu and Polynesian, were once restricted to small groups and have spread far and wide only in comparatively recent times; in parts of the world like the Caucasus and like aboriginal California the early condition still survives. Languages in these latter areas stop short at the margins of one valley, but the racial type is the same over great areas. From earliest times, therefore, language and race have had different histories and different distributions; in the modern world they are shuffled like suits in a pack of cards. In spite, however, of the impossibility of arguing from race to language or from language to race, race and language are constantly confused. Aryan, the term now used in Germany for the preferred race, is the name of a group of languages which includes the Sanskrit of ancient India and languages of ancient Persia; and Aryan has also been commonly used as a term covering a much larger group of languages, the Indo-European, which includes not only Sanskrit and Old Persian but German, English, Latin, Greek, Armenian, and Slavic. In whichever sense Aryan is used, it is a language term and has no reference to a peculiar German racial heritage. Because of the ludicrous inapplicability of the first sense of the word Aryan, the Nazis, when they selected the term, were obviously thinking of it in the latter sense of Indo-European. But the people speaking Indo-European languages have no unity of racial type either in skin, in eye or hair colour, in cephalic index or in stature. The foremost student of the Aryan languages in the last century, Max Müller, exposed the fallacy vigorously even in the 1880’s – a fallacy which had already become current through the writings of Thomas Carlyle, the English historian J. R. Green, and the French racialist Count de Gobineau. “I have declared again and again,” Max Müller writes, “that when I say Aryas (Aryans) I mean neither blood nor bones nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who spoke an Aryan language.When I speak of them I commit myself to no anatomical characteristics.To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race,Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic R A C E : W H AT I T I S N OT 115 [narrow-headed] dictionary or a brachycephalic [broad-headed] grammar.”1 Nevertheless, as we shall see in discussing the history of racism in Europe, the list of sinners has increase rather than diminished since Max Müller’s time.2 The fundamental reason why language cannot be equated with race is that language is learned behaviour, and race is a classification based on hereditary traits. Language is only one special instance of how learned behaviour varies in mankind without relation to physical type. It was not only the Chinese language that the Manchus learned in China; they took over Chinese architecture, the forms of Chinese family life, Chinese ethics, Chinese literature, Chinese food. It is not only the English language that American Negroes use; they become Baptists and Methodists and Pullman car porters. Instead of learning, as in Africa, the elaborate technicalities of “throwing the bones” for divination, they learn the technicalities of reading and writing; instead of the complexities of mankala, the intricate peg-game of Africa and the Near East, they learn to shoot craps. Their culture becomes American. For culture is the sociological term for learned behaviour: behaviour which in man is not given at birth, which is not determined by his germ cells as is the behaviour of wasps or the social ants, but must be learned anew from grown people by each new generation. The degree to which human achievements are dependent on this kind of learned behaviour is man’s great claim to superiority over all the rest of creation; he has been properly called “the culture-bearing animal.” He does not grow wings or fins to cross the seas; he builds ships and airplanes, and the building and operating of these are culturally transmitted. He does not grow fangs and claws to kill his enemy; he invents gunpowder and Maxim guns. This non-biological transmission is a great advantage in that it allows for much greater adaptability to circumstances but it progressively lessens the importance of biologically transmitted behaviour. This elementary truth is essential for the understanding of race. Race is biologically transmitted, and among the social insects and to a lesser degree among the carnivores their tastes in food, their ways of obtaining it, their aggressiveness or lack of aggressiveness in assuring their own survival are also biologically transmitted. That “the leopard cannot change his spots” means that the leopard, because he belongs to a certain species, will always be found stalking the jungle for his prey. But in man the great aggressors of yesterday become the mild peace-lovers of today. In the ninth century Scandinavians were the feared aggressive Vikings of the sea; in the present generation they are the peaceful non-aggressive exponents of co-operatives and the “middle way.” Even more commonly, at the present time the non-aggressors of yesterday become the aggressors; their race has not changed, but their behaviour has. Japan has a history of peace and non-aggression that cannot be matched in the Western World. During the first eleven centuries of her recorded history she was engaged in only one war abroad. Indeed this sole conflict ended in 1598, and from that time until 1853, when Japan opened her doors to intercourse with the world outside, the building of all ocean-going boats was forbidden by imperial decree to make certain that Japan would preserve her policy of isolationism. The ceremoniousness, the light-heartedness, the aesthetic 116 RUTH BENEDICT appreciation of the Japanese were traits that passed current as their essential qualities. Since 1853 they have fought five times overseas and are well on their way to becoming one of the most aggressively warlike nations of the world. In the human race no centuries-long existence free from conflict as the lamb’s guarantees that the next generation may not become the lion. There is another aspect of this fact that race and culture are distinct. In world history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily in one race, and those of the same race have not all participated in one culture. In scientific language, culture is not a function of race. The more we know about the fortunes and the vicissitudes of any civilization, the less it proves to be the peculiar offspring of an unmixed race.This is true even far back in prehistory, and an eminent archaeologist has said that the great social truth made clear by archaeology is that culture lives on and maintains itself though the race perish; either as conquerors or as peaceable settlers a new racial type carries on the old ways of life of the conquered or earlier occupants of the land.The archaeologist looking back over the long centuries sees, not the destruction of that civilization when one racial carrier was superseded, but the continuity of its history in the hands of one racial type after another. The growth of human civilization in the European Palaeolithic (Old Stone) Age has cultural, but not racial, continuity.The culture which neanderthal man possessed was after his disappearance carried forward by Cro-magnon man, given new embellishments by men of the later Old Stone Age, and elaborated by the races of the new Stone Age. Only the last two types are racially ancestral to modern man.This lack of racial continuity in the small corner of Europe during prehistory is better established for Europe than for other parts of the world because the archaeology of Europe is better known, but all that prehistoric research is uncovering in Africa, in Asia, and in Central America tells the same story. This story has been repeated inWestern civilization since the dawn of history, and the evidence of it constantly accumulates. A century ago the historian ofWestern civilization was content to begin with Greece, but today this is inadequate. Historical study has unrolled a longer history under our eyes. Greece was the inheritor of earlier Oriental civilizations and its early culture owed much to Egyptian influences. Essential cornerstones of our civilization are the inventions of other races. Perhaps we describe this civilization of ours as built on steel and gunpowder. But steel was invented either in India or in Turkestan, and gunpowder in China. Perhaps we prefer to identify ourWestern culture by its printing presses and literateness. But paper and printing were both borrowed from China. Our economic life with its great concentration of population is based on the cultivation of grains and of animals which are Neolithic inventions from Asia; corn and tobacco were first domesticated by the American Indian. Our control of nature is overwhelmingly dependent on mathematical calculations. But the so-called Arabic system of notation which is essential to all complicated mathematics was unknown in Europe in the Roman era; it was invented in Asia and introduced to our civilization by the Moors. Algebra was a method of calculation also borrowed by Europeans from Asiatic peoples. Wherever we look, the truth is forced upon us that many different races have contributed to the growth of our culture, and that when we hold culture as the constant, race is a variable.The White R A C E : W H AT I T I S N OT 117 race was once the borrower as today Japan is.TheWhite race spent long centuries at the process and Japan as few decades, but by that token some literalists could argue the racial superiority of the Japanese over theWhite race. When we look at the fact of cultural–racial separateness from the other side, this time holding race constant, we find that the culture of any one race is of many degrees of complexity.While certain groups of a given race forge ahead and set up great states or build great cities which are architectural triumphs or carry out great public works, other groups of the same race may remain primitive nomadic herdsmen. A race does not move forward as a whole. So some groups of Arabs built up great states under Sultans with regal splendour, the arts and sciences flourished, and they were in the vanguard of the civilization of their day. Other members of the same race were simple Bedouins following their herds from pasturage to pasturage. Similarly the primitive Amur River tribes of Siberia or theYukaghir of the Siberian tundras are of the same race as the civilized Chinese.The Malay race also has its half-wild primitive tribes of the coastal Malay Peninsula and at the same time its centres of high civilization. Race is not a touchstone by which civilized people can be separated from uncivilized. Rude people of barbarian ancestry have shown themselves to be abundantly able to adopt the highest extant civilizations and to contribute to their development. The Manchus were a rude and unnoted nomadicTungu tribe, but first through contact with the Mongols, and later by their conquest of China in the mid-seventeenth century, they became the ruling dynasty of a country unsurpassed in riches and glory at that period. Wherever we look – to the Malays, the Manchus, the Mongols, the Arabs, or the Nordics – the same story repeats itself over and over. The Nordics belong to this list, and no one need quarrel with the extravagant claims that have been made for their “manifest destiny” if these same claims are allowed also for all other rude peoples who have come to participate ably in the building of civilization. When, however, the Nordics are singled out as a peculiar instance and their participation in civilization credited to their racial type and not to be universal processes of history, it is easy to recognize the special pleading. It is closer to actual history to speak of them as Hooton does – as “the rawboned ruffians from the North,”3 whose irruptions shattered the peace of early Europe – or to call attention, as Hankins4 does, to the fact that they “destroyed civilizations more frequently than they created them.”The point to note, however, is that they were a group with certain inherited features, and that though they were once rude, they later became exponents of a great civilization; their former rudeness in no way disqualified them from participating ably in its development. History cannot be written as if it belonged to one race alone. Civilization has been gradually built, now out of the contributions of one race, now of another.When all civilization is ascribed to the “Nordics,” the claim is the same one which any anthropolgist can hear any day from primitive tribes – only they tell the story of themselves.They too believe that all that is important in the world begins and ends with them; the creator gave to them exclusively in the beginning all that is good and at their downfall will destroy the world. We smile when such claims are made by a rude and tiny 118 RUTH BENEDICT American Indian tribe or a naked Papuan of New Guinea, but ridicule might just as well be turned against ourselves. After all, the world of these tribes extends but a little way beyond their borders and folk-tales serve them for history; their exaggerated claims are the result of ignorance. But when the same crude provincialism is put forward learnedly in our day, it is still a childish primitive error maintained in the face of all that historians have ascertained and in the face of modern knowledge of the whole extent of the globe. Provincialism may rewrite history and play up only the achievements of the historian’s own group, but it remains provincialism; it is not history. The lesson of history is that pre-eminence in cultural achievement has passed from one race to another, from one continent to another; it has embraced not whole “races” but certain fragments of an ethnic group which were for certain historical reasons favourably situated at the moment. Peace had been achieved for a certain period, or freedom from exploitation for certain groups. All those of the race who were within the range of these conditions profited by them, and the arts of life were advanced; individuals of whatever race rose to the opportunity and have often left their names enrolled in history. It has happened in Mesopotamia, in China, in India, in Egypt, in Greece, in Rome, and in England. Obviously no racial type has a monopoly of high culture. It behooves us, therefore, to study race historically and biologically and anthropometrically without expecting race to account for all human achievements. Race is a scientific field of study. But human history is a vastly more complicated thing than a mere record of the distribution of anthropomorphic measurements, and cultural achievements are not mechanically transmitted and guaranteed by any racial inheritance. Notes and references 1 Biography ofWords and the Home of the Aryans, London, 1888, p. 120. 2 I have myself in this volume used Slav, which refers to languages, as a racial term. There is no word in popular usage which designates this group in biological terms. 3 Hooton, Earnest A., Up from the Ape, London, Allen & Unwin, 1931, p. 525. 4 Hankins, Frank H., Racial Basis of Civilization, New York, 1926, p. 350; London, Knopf, 1927. Chapter 9 John Rex RACE RELATIONS IN SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY T H E P R O B L E M O F R A C E A N D R A C I S M challenges the conscience of the sociologist in the same way as the problem of nuclear weapons challenges that of the nuclear physicist. This is not to say that sociology can dictate to men and nations how they should behave toward one another any more than the nuclear physicist had some special competence to advise the American President whether or not he should drop the atom bomb on the Japanese. But it is to say that, in so far as whole populations have been systematically discriminated against, exploited and even exterminated, the sociologist might legitimately be asked to lay the causes of these events bare. The aim of this book is to provide a conceptual basis for doing this. Conceptual discussion might well appear to some to involve fiddling while the gas ovens burn. Yet it is important to realise that sociology as a discipline has had some difficulty in coming to grips with this problem.The claim of the racists in the Europe of the nineteen-thirties was that race was a biological category, and that appeared to exclude sociological discussion. And, when the falseness of racist biology was systematically exposed, some sociologists were inclined to argue that the problem simply did not exist. Race was a category based upon some sort of false consciousness, and it was the duty of sociologists to reduce all statements about racial difference to statements about some other kind of socially differentiated structure, such as class. Only recently has the question been raised as to whether class really does have some kind of superior ontological status to race, and whether there is not a sense in which the ‘race war’ is not a more important central structural and dynamic principle in sociology than the class war.1 A time has therefore arrived at which there is an urgent necessity for a reassessment of the rôle of the race concept in sociological theory. It might perhaps be said that the fact that the concept of race and the problem of racism is primarily a problem for social science rather than for biology has been established in a quite uniquely 120 JOHN REX authoritative way by a consensus of world experts. For, after the SecondWorld War, UNESCO called together first a group of biologists and social scientists (in 1947) and then on two occasions groups of biologists (in 1951 and 1964), in order to give an authoritative opinion on the race question.2 The biologists’ final statement, made in 1964 and issued as the ‘Moscow Declaration’, represents the most up-to-date biological opinion on the subject. The full significance of this declaration can be assessed in the light of papers prepared for the Moscow conference and particularly from the introduction to these papers prepared by the Belgian biologist Jean Hiernaux, who has summarised the areas of agreement and disagreement among the experts.3 The biologists’ conclusions are complex and technical and it would be quite beyond the scope of the present book to set them out in detail. Nonetheless it is important that we should indicate that they do not support certain popular conceptions as to the nature of race, which are systematically propagated by racist theorists, and which even today are widely accepted, even though they may not be so systematically rationalised as they were. The popular conceptions to which we refer are as follows: first, that the differences in rights which exist between groups of men, within a nation, between nations and between groups which are internationally dispersed, rest upon differences of behaviour and of moral qualities which are genetically determined.Thus the maintenance of a particular political order in the world is represented as being ‘scientifically’ determined, rather than being based upon force, violence and usurpation. Many subsidiary propositions flow from these basic ones, but they are the essential intellectual core of the racist position. The general position adopted by the biological experts in Moscow is that the concept of race, and more generally of genetic inheritance, which they feel justified in using, gives no support whatever to these popular conceptions. But this is best understood if we look briefly at what it was that the experts actually said under the headings of the use of the concepts of race and population, the rôle of heredity and environment in determining human characteristics, the actual nature of inter-group differences, the single or multiple origin of the human species, the degree of independence or association between different traits, the rôle of biological and cultural factors in evolution, the consequences of intergroup marriage, the survival value of proved differences between populations, and the possible inheritance of psychic characteristics. The principal conclusions reached on these points appear to be as follows:4 1 Race is a taxonomic concept of limited usefulness as a means of classifying human beings, but probably less useful than the more general concept of populations.The former term is used to refer to‘groups of mankind showing well developed and primarily heritable physical differences from other groups’.The latter refers to a ‘group whose members marry other members of the group more frequently than people outside the group’ and hence have a relatively limited and distinctive range of genetic characteristics. In any case, however, whether we use the concept of race or population, the experts agree that human population groups constitute a continuum, and that the genetic diversity within groups is probably as great as that between groups. R A C E R E L AT I O N S I N S O C I O L O G I C A L T H E O RY 2 3 4 5 6 121 It is agreed that observable human characteristics are, in nearly all cases, the result of biological and environmental factors.The sole difference which could be attributed to biological heredity alone was that relating to blood-groups and the populations which shared the same bloodgroup by no means coincided with ‘races’ in the popular usage of the term. The various characteristics commonly grouped together as racial, and said to be transmitted en bloc, are, in fact, transmitted either independently or in varying degrees of association. ‘All men living today belong to a single species and are derived from a common stock’ even though opinions may differ as to how and when groups diverged from this common stock. Interbreeding between members of different groups is possible and productive and in 1964 as distinct from 1951 the experts saw a ‘positive biological aspect of this process’ (i.e. saw interbreeding as possibly beneficial from an adaptive point of view) ‘while at the same time repeating the denial, at all events in the light of present scientific knowledge, of any negative aspect for mankind in general’. Taking into account the possibility of a looser usage of the term ‘race’ to refer to a national inbreeding population, it may not be desirable from a standpoint of combatting racism to deny that a particular national group may be referred to as a race, but rather to affirm that it is not justifiable to attribute cultural characteristics to the effect of genetic inheritance. Human evolution has been affected to a unique degree as compared with the evolution of other species by migration and cultural evolution. The capacity to advance culturally is one shared by all members of homo sapiens and, once it exists, is of far greater significance for the evolution of the species than biological or genetic evolution. Taken together these findings point clearly to one single conclusion.The concept of race as used by the biologists has no relevance to the political differences among men, and since the whole notion of race and racism as it appears in popular discussion is concerned with these political differences, the question which we have to face is what the characteristics are of those situations which men call racial. If the possibility of racial differences being biologically based is excluded, two other possible bases, neither of them necessarily sociological, might in principle be considered. One is that there are psychological differences between members of different racial groups, the other that the term merely refers to culturally distinct groups. Neither of these possibilities, however, provides an adequate explanation of how it is that men come to be classified as racially different. Many problems arise in the attempt to assess psychological differences between races.There are few tests if any which are so free of cultural content as to permit comparisons between subjects drawn from different cultural backgrounds, and it would certainly seem to be the case here, as it is more generally with biological characteristics, that differences between individuals within the same population are at least as great as those between groups. In any case, however, it is somewhat difficult to see what could be meant by a purely psychological determination of intergroup differences divorced from the notion of differences of genetic inheritance. If psychic character is thought of as the 122 JOHN REX consequence of the socialisation process then we should have to say (a) that a variety of types emerges from the socialisation process amongst all groups and (b) that insofar as socialisation processes do vary between cultures and produce differing distributions of the various personality types, the psychological determination of intergroup differences would appear to be dependent upon cultural differences. So far as the cultural causation of intergroup differences in appearance, behavioural characteristics, institutions, psychic character and so on is concerned, no one would deny it. There certainly are different nations and cultural minorities within nations to be observed in the world.The question is whether the problem of the differences between these groups is coincident with the differences between groups which are said to be racial. Our answer to this question is that, although these cultural differences, or as it is sometimes said, differences between ethnic groups, may sometimes become the basis of a race relations structure and of a race relations problem, this need by no means always be the case. Our task then would appear to lie in discovering which of these culturally differentiated groups come to be thought of as races, and also what other types of groups are so classified. It would appear to be the case that there are two observable features of any situation in which a problem of race is said to exist. One is the obvious one that the groups are called races, with whatever deterministic overtones that term might appear to have.The other is that there seem to be a definite and restricted number of social structures in relation to which in popular conceptions the term racial is used and in which there would appear to be a need for some distinctive sociological term. At this point we have to look at the problem of race sociologically. Clearly the problem of a sociology of race relations is a peculiar one as compared with most other special sociologies. It starts with the task of unmasking false biological or related theories. Having done this, the question is what it has to do next. A few writers have taken the view that beyond this all the sociologist has to do is to show the consequences of such theories being held, so that phenomena like those connected with anti-semitism in twentieth-century Europe would be seen or studied simply as the consequence of the preaching of racist ideas. This, however, would appear to involve cutting off the investigation of a causal chain more arbitrarily than is common in sociology.We should surely look not merely at the consequences of racist theory, but also at its causes and at its functions. [. . .]The first American attempt at a theory of race relations and one which remains prominent even to the present day was W. Lloyd Warner’s theory of colour-caste.5 According to this theory American society includes both class and caste divisions.The white population may be classified as belonging to one of a number of strata (or, as Warner would prefer to say, classes), which are arrived at by placing individuals in terms of two methods, which Warner elaborated in his studies ofYankee City. One of these classified the individuals according to their score on an index of objective and quantifiable status characteristics.The other was based upon the subjective assessments which individuals made of one another’s status. Having elaborated this picture of the American stratification systemWarner then went on to consider its relationship to the absorption of ethnic minorities. The Yankee City R A C E R E L AT I O N S I N S O C I O L O G I C A L T H E O RY 123 studies showed that most European minority groups moved up the stratification hierarchy over two or three generations, but that, so far as the negro population were concerned, however much they might achieve an improved position in terms of such objective status characteristics as income, they still found that there were barriers preventing their free association with whites at an equivalent level. Warner suggested that the best way to conceptualise the relationship of the negroes to the stratification system was to begin by imagining that at the bottom of the stratification system there was a barrier far more impenetrable than those which divided the various strata or classes. When some of those beneath this barrier began to acquire characteristics which prima facie should have placed them higher up in the stratification system, the effect was not to breach the barrier but to tip it diagonally, so that there was the possibility of an individual negro becoming an upper-class negro, just as there was a possibility of a white becoming a poor white. There would, however, be less association between these two groups than there would between poor whites and middle-class whites or between upper class, middle-class and lower-class negroes. Warner suggested that the barrier which thus split the stratification system into two was a caste barrier, at least in an incipient form, and he drew attention to similarities with the Hindu caste system, such as the taboos on intermarriage, eating together, and any other intimate form of association. Whether this fairly loose usage of the term caste is justified has been disputed, and probably the weight of opinion is against the introduction of the term caste to explain white–black relations in the United States. NonethelessWarner’s view that these relations cannot be explained in terms of normal stratification models survives, even if his notion of caste is rejected. Any adequate race relations theory must necessarily deal with this point. O. C. Cox,6 approaching the problem of the American negro from a sophisticated Marxist point of view, has sought to show that there are several crucial dissimilarities between intercaste and interracial relations as they occur in the United States, which make the use of the term caste in the latter case impermissible. He believes that a better theoretical construct for explaining race relations is that which may be derived from the Marxist theory of class conflict. Cox notes that the Hindu caste system is one in which there is a large measure of assent to the social inequalities and taboos on association amongst higher and lower castes, and that the central and characteristic feature of the system is the occupational specialisation of the castes. Neither of these two conditions prevails in the United States.The position of the negro worker in that society is that of the most exploited worker within a capitalist system of social relations of production.The absence of a race relations problem of the North American kind in Portuguese and Spanish Latin America is thus seen as explicable in terms of their being less advanced capitalist countries. So far from Catholic religion being a determining variable, its presence, like the absence of a race relations problem, is held to be dependent on the kind of economic system which exists. Clearly the difficulty in sustaining Cox’s theory is to show why it is that white workers are not in the same position as negro workers.The simplest Marxist way out of this is simply to attribute the subjectively felt divisions within the working class to a state of ‘false consciousness’ fostered in its 124 JOHN REX own interest by the bourgeoisie. A non-Marxist alternative would involve the introduction of a secondary hypothesis at this point.Thus it could be said that the position of the negro was explicable in terms of his relation to the means of production, but that a prior distinction had been made as to who should fill inferior working class rôles, and that this distinction was based upon non-economic criteria. As we shall argue later, this modified Marxist position does have considerable value in understanding the race relations situation not merely of the United States, but, even more, that of the Union of South Africa. [. . .] From this review of some of the basic sociological theories about the kinds of societies in which race relations situations and problems occur, we may now define our own approach to the problem of defining the sociological field of race relations. It includes the following three elements: 1 2 a situation of differentiation, inequality and pluralism as between groups; the possibility of clearly distinguishing between such groups by their physical appearance, their culture or occasionally merely by their ancestry; the justification and explanation of this discrimination in terms of some kind of implicit or explicit theory, frequently but not always of a biological kind. 3 Notes and references 1 See, for instance, R. Segal, The RaceWar, Cape, London, 1966; R. Debray, Revolution in the Revolution, Pelican, London, 1968; F. Fanon, TheWretched of the Earth, Macgibbon and Kee, London, 1965. 2 UNESCO, Paris, Statements on Race and Race Prejudice, 1950, 1951, 1964 and 1967. 3 Hiernaux, Introduction: ‘The Moscow Expert Meeting’, International Social Science Journal, Vol. XVII, No. 1, 1965, UNESCO, Paris. 4 5 Ibid. W. Lloyd Warner, ‘American Class and Caste’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XLII, Sept. 1936, pp. 234–7. 6 O. C. Cox, Caste, Class and Race, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1959. Chapter 10 Robert Miles APROPOS THE IDEA OF ‘RACE’ . . . AGAIN [. . .] The idea of ‘race’ and the concept of racism T H E H I S T O R Y O F T H E C O N S T R U C T I O N and reproduction of the idea of ‘race’ has been analysed exhaustively (e.g. Barzun 1938, Montagu 1964, Jordan 1968, 1974, Guillaumin 1972, Stepan 1982, Banton 1987). As a result, it is well understood that the idea of ‘race’ first appeared in the English language in the early seventeenth century and began to be used in European and North American scientific writing in the late eighteenth century in order to name and explain certain phenotypical differences between human beings. By the mid-nineteenth century, the dominant theory of ‘race’ asserted that the world’s population is constituted by a number of distinct ‘races’, each of which has a biologically determined capacity for cultural development. Although the accumulation of scientific evidence during the early twentieth century (e.g. Barkan 1992) challenged this theory, it was the use of ‘race’ theory by the National Socialists in Germany that stimulated a more thorough critical appraisal of the idea of ‘race’ in Europe and North America and the creation of the concept of racism in the 1930s. The concept of racism is therefore a recent creation in the English language (Miles 1989a: 42– 3). It was first used as a title for a book written in the German language by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1933/4 which was translated and published in English in 1938. In Racism, Hirschfeld refuted nineteenthcentury arguments which claimed the mantle of science to sustain the notion of the existence of a hierarchy of biologically distinct ‘races’. But he did so without offering any formal definition of racism and without clarifying how racism is to be distinguished from the concept of xenophobia 126 ROBERT MILES (1938: 227). During the same decade, a number of other books were published which sought to demonstrate that the idea of ‘race’ employed in Nazi ideology lacked any scientific foundation, some of which also used the concept of racism to label these ideologies (Huxley and Haddon 1935, Barzun 1938, Montagu 1974, Benedict 1983). But on one matter, these writers were divided, that of whether or not ‘races’ nevertheless existed. On the one hand, Benedict (1983) legitimated nineteenth-century biological and anthropological classifications of the human population into three ‘races’. On the other hand, Montagu (1974) argued that, in so far as there were biological differences between human beings, they did not correspond to these earlier classifications and he therefore recommended that the term ‘race’ be excised completely from scientific discourse. Hence, the scientific and political critique of fascist ideologies that resulted in the creation of the concept of racism was not accompanied by a consistent rejection of either the idea of ‘race’ or the belief that the human population was divided into biologically distinct ‘races’. Indeed, the dispute about whether or not the term‘race’ should be used within science to refer to populations characterised by particular genetic profiles continues to this day (Miles 1982: 15–19).Thereby, the basis for the continued confusion of the two terms was created and has been maintained. All the while that it is thought that ‘races’ exist then there is the possibility, indeed even the necessity, to constitute a theory of how different ‘races’ interact with one another. In so far as the ideology of racism is identified as one determinant of these ‘race relations’, a theory of racism becomes entangled in a theory of ‘race relations’.And in so far as Marxist writers have incorporated an idea of ‘race’ as an analytical, or even a descriptive, concept into their theorising about racism, they too have become similarly entangled. A Marxist theory of ‘race relations’? One of the earliest Marxist texts to analyse ‘race relations’ was O.C. Cox’s Caste, Class and Race (1970). It was first published in the United States in 1948. Despite the existence of another tradition of Marxist writing in the USA which claimed to theorise ‘race’, Cox’s book was cited for a long time by Marxists and non-Marxists alike (e.g. Castles and Kosack 1972: 16, Rex 1983: 15–16), as the seminal Marxist statement, and the work of the Frankfurt school (which was produced during its exile from Germany: see Outlaw 1990: 69–72) was largely ignored. Now, it is referred to rarely in the British and North American literature (see, for example, the passing reference in Omi andWinant 1986: 31), although recently one of the original British architects of the ‘race relations’ problematic has shown a renewed interest in it (Banton 1991). This silence results partly from the fact that there is no longer any widespread interest in Cox’s central theme, namely a comparison between caste and ‘race’ relations. It is also because Cox denied Afro-Americans any autonomous political role, a view that is contrary to more recent political philosophies of ‘black’ resistance which advocate autonomous political organisation on the part of ‘black’ people. Finally, as we shall see, Cox rejected the use of racism as an analytical concept, a concept that has in the past three decades become central to Marxist analysis and to critical analysis more generally. A PR O P O S T H E I D E A O F ‘ R A C E ’ . . . A G A I N 127 Nevertheless, at the time of its publication, Caste, Class and Race was a work of some originality and it remains a work of considerable scholarship. Cox set out to construct a Marxist theory of ‘race relations’ (1970: ix). He attempted this largely by means of an extended critique of extant writing on ‘race relations’ in the USA, most of which defined its object of analysis as ‘race relations’ in the southern States. His central argument was that ‘race relations’ were not similar, or equivalent, to ‘caste relations’, as most writers claimed at the time. As a result, a large part of Caste, Class and Race sought to establish the nature of caste in Indian society and then to demonstrate that ‘race relations’ in the USA did not exhibit the defining features of ‘caste relations’.The decline in the significance of the caste thesis means that much of this argument has little relevance to contemporary concerns. But Cox’s alternative theorisation is of interest because of the way in which it incorporated the ideas of ‘race’ and ‘race relations’ and attributed them with analytical status within the framework of Marxism. As a result, Marxists could claim, contra ‘bourgeois’ theorists, that they too had a theory of ‘race relations’, a theory that was (at least as far as they were concerned) superior. But the ideas of ‘race’ and ‘race relations’ had no specifically Marxist content. Cox, in the manner of mainstream sociological thinking, noted and then passed by the uncertainties about the biological meaning of ‘race’, and defined ‘race’ as ‘any group of people that is generally believed to be, and generally accepted as, a race in any given area of ethnic competition’ (1970: 319).What distinguished a group as a ‘race’ was their real or imputed physical characteristics (1970: 402), and hence he defined ‘race relations’ as ‘behaviour which develops among peoples who are aware of each other’s actual or imputed physical differences’ (1970: 320). The process by which these significations were established and reproduced did not capture Cox’s interest and, consequently, he accepted the existence of ‘races’ as distinctive, immutable collectivities.This verged on reification when he argued that it was impossible for human beings to establish ‘new races’ and that an individual becomes a member of a ‘race’ by birth in the course of inheriting certain inalienable physical characteristics (1970: 423). Thus, although he claimed that ‘races’ were social, and therefore human, constructions, once created they were attributed with the character of permanence: they became ‘things in themselves’, discrete social collectivities whose presence had to be related to other social collectivities. The problem then became one of locating ‘races’ within Marxist analysis, which attributes primacy to class and class relations. In order to assess Cox’s attempt to do this, another conceptual matter requires attention. In the light of the centrality of the concept of racism to much contemporary Marxist writing, it is intriguing that Cox explicitly rejected its use. He noted that the concept had been used, by Ruth Benedict, to refer to a ‘philosophy of racial antipathy’ (1970: 321, 480), and he repudiated this on the grounds that it tended to lead to the study of the origin and development of specific ideas. Although Cox did not use this terminology, he was in fact rejecting idealism. Cox sought alternatively to develop a materialist analysis that identified the class interests and exploitative practices which gave rise to what he preferred to describe as ‘race prejudice’, a notion that predated the creation of the concept of racism. 128 ROBERT MILES In the manner of the mechanistic and economistic Marxism that had not been challenged from within the Marxist tradition in the late 1940s, a now familiar argument resulted from this materialism. Cox proposed that, historically, ‘race prejudice’ was a recent phenomenon, and that its origin lay in the development of capitalism. He claimed that ‘race relations’ arose from the proletarianisation of labour power in the Caribbean,‘race prejudice’ being the rationalisation developed by the bourgeoisie for its inhuman and degrading treatment of the work force.Thus, ‘race prejudice’ was defined as ‘a social attitude propagated . . . by an exploiting class for the purpose of stigmatising some group as inferior so that the exploitation of either the group itself of its resources or both may be justified’ (1970: 393). It therefore facilitated a process of labour exploitation, and hence arose after that system of exploitation had been established (1970: 532). But exploitation and proletarianisation are, within the framework of Marxist theory, universal capitalist processes. Because ‘race relations’ are not deemed to have arisen from the process of proletarianisation within, for example, Europe, it follows that it is necessary to identify what distinguishes the exploitation and proletarianisation that give rise to ‘race relations’ in the Caribbean. ‘Race relations’, Cox argued, arose when the bourgeoisie successfully proletarianised ‘a whole people’ (i.e. a ‘race’).This happened in the Caribbean and the USA but not in Europe, where only a section of ‘white people’ (i.e. part of the ‘white race’) were proletarianised (1970: 344). For Cox, this did not alter the essential identity of the two processes: in both instances, a group of people was subordinated to a bourgeoisie whose primary interest was the exploitation of the former’s labour power. Hence, for Cox,‘racial antagonism’ was in essence class conflict (or political-class conflict as he conceptualised class struggle) because the latter arose from the exploitation of labour power (1970: 333, 453, 536). It follows that ‘race relations’ and ‘race prejudice’ arose from the historically specific processes of colonialism and imperialism that accompanied the development of capitalism as a world economic system (1970: 483). Cox theorised ‘race relations’ as, simultaneously, a specific form of group relations and a variant of class relations.Their specific character arose from the imputed existence of ‘races’ as collectives distinguished by real or alleged physical differences. Much of Cox’s attention was focused upon ‘races’ distinguished by skin colour, and he referred to ‘whites’ and ‘Negroes’ as distinct ‘races’. In this respect, his theoretical approach remained wholly within an emergent academic tradition which had incorporated common-sense understandings and definitions about ‘race’ into scientific analysis in the course of breaking with nineteenth-century biological and anthropological analysis.The work of Park,Warner, Dollard and Myrdal, about which Cox was so critical, was characterised by what was at the time a radical view that ‘race relations’ were social relations between collectivities which defined themselves as ‘races’, rather than biologically determined relations between biologically distinct and discrete ‘races’ (Banton 1987: 86–93, 99–110).These writers established ‘race relations’ as a particular sociological specialisation or field of study and Cox sustained and reinforced this paradigm by seeking and claiming to offer a Marxist theory of ‘race relations’. It is easy to criticise Cox’s analysis for being functionalist and economistic (Miles 1980, 1982: 81–7, George 1984: 139–47). Here I identify an additional difficulty with Cox’s analysis, the A PR O P O S T H E I D E A O F ‘ R A C E ’ . . . A G A I N 129 significance of which will be discussed further later in this chapter.We have seen that Cox argued that ‘race prejudice’ was a rationalisation of proletarianisation in the Caribbean. Cox did not elaborate on this interpretation, but it is not consistent with the Marxist conception of capitalism as a mode of production (although it is consistent with Wallerstein’s (1979) ‘world systems’ analysis of capitalism). If capitalism is understood as a mode of generalised commodity production in which the ownership and control of the means of production are held in the hands of the bourgeoisie, to which the working class is thereby forced to sell its labour power in return for a wage with which it can then purchase the means of subsistence in the form of commodities, the concept of proletarianisation refers to the social process by which a section of the population is transformed into sellers of labour power. Historically, this has entailed the divorce of a section of the population from the means of production in order that it should have no choice but to transform its labour power into a commodity which is exchanged within a labour market. But this is not what happened during the colonisation of the Caribbean in the seventeenth century (Miles 1987: 73–93). In order to establish commodity production, those who gained control over much of the land (by a combination of force and the establishment of private property rights) brought first European and then African migrants to the region and created indentured and, subsequently, slave relations of production. Under these relations, the labourer did not commodify labour power but was forced to provide labour power to the person who either purchased by contract the right to utilise that labour power or purchased the individual as a chattel.There was no labour market where the buyers and sellers of labour power met to realise their material interests. Rather, labour power was exploited and a surplus realised by means of unfree relations of production. What distinguished the establishment of agricultural commodity production in the Caribbean, and in several other parts of the world, was the absence of proletarianisation. It has been noted many times that Marx’s theoretical and historical analysis of the development of the capitalist mode of production, by virtue of being confined to the example of England and more generally to Europe, is of little value to an analysis of the historical development of the forces and relations of production outside Europe (e.g. Robinson 1983).With certain exceptions, much of the theoretical and historical work intended to ‘rescue’ Marxist analysis from this lacuna was undertaken only after the 1960s. Consequently, when Cox was formulating his Marxist theory of ‘race relations’, he was doing so in a Eurocentric vacuum. Few attempts had been made within the Marxist tradition at that time to analyse systematically the activities of merchant and finance capital outside Europe. Hence, we may regard his creation of a Marxist theory of ‘race relations’ as a refraction of the then contemporary silence within Marxist theory about the formation of unfree relations of production in the colonial context. In an attempt to comprehend and explain that context, Cox identified ‘race relations’ as the unique characteristic of the process of colonisation, a process which in all other respects had a universal, capitalistic character. Hence, Cox focused on the signification of phenotypical difference which was used subsequently by the colonising class to frame the expropriation of labour 130 ROBERT MILES power, and so elevated the ideological notion of ‘race’ to the status of a theoretical concept within Marxist theory. [. . .] The challenge of migration theory The post-1945 migrations from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent brought to Britain men and women in search of a wage who were understood by state officials and large sections of the British population to be members of distinct ‘races’. Rather than signify them as British subjects, which they were, they were designated as ‘coloured’ and ‘colonial’ people whose presence would change the ‘racial character’ of the British population (e.g. Carter et al. 1987: 335, also Joshi and Carter 1984). In the light of the fact that sections of the British ruling class commonly justified colonialism as an attempt to ‘civilise inferior races’ and sought special methods of administration and economic compulsion to achieve this (e.g. Lugard 1929), this is unsurprising. However, there was little political or academic interest in this migration until the hostile, and largely racist, reaction to the migration found a place on the domestic political agenda (Miles 1984b). Up until 1958,‘race relations’ were, in common-sense terms, a colonial ‘problem’: the racist attacks on British subjects of Caribbean origin in that year in England were interpreted by the state as evidence that the problem of ‘race relations’ had been transferred to the ‘Mother Country’.When British academics began to take an interest in these domestic developments, they drew upon concepts, theories and political strategies derived from the United States and South Africa (Rich 1986a: 191– 200), all of which had ‘race relations’ as the object of analysis. Most of these academics were anthropologists by training and liberal in political perspective (e.g. Banton 1967). The first major challenge from within the Marxist tradition to this ‘race relations’ paradigm came with the work of Castles and Kosack published in the early 1970s (1972, 1973, cf. Bolaria and Li 1985).They demonstrated the parallels between determinants and consequences of migration to other nation states in north-west Europe.Thereby, they deflected the institutionalised comparison between British and the United States and South Africa (evident, for example, in the early writing of Banton (1967) and Rex (1970)), arguing that it was more useful to analyse comparatively the British experience of post-1945 migration in the context of the reconstruction of capitalism throughout Europe. Castles and Kosack opened their seminal work by rejecting the dominant sociological paradigm of ‘race relations’.They argued that all contemporary capitalist societies contain a distinct stratum of people who occupy the worst jobs and live in inferior housing, and that in many of these societies this stratum is composed of immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.This immigration was explained as a consequence of uneven capitalist development on a world scale and immigrant workers were identified as having a specific socio-economic function found in all capitalist societies, namely to fill undesirable jobs vacated by the indigenous working class in the course of the periodic reorganisation of production.This stratum of immigrant workers thereby came to constitute a ‘lower stratum’ of the working class, which was thereby fragmented. Hence, for Castles and Kosack, the analytical focus A PR O P O S T H E I D E A O F ‘ R A C E ’ . . . A G A I N 131 was not ‘race’ or ‘race relations’, but the interconnections between capital accumulation, migration and class formation (1973: 1–13). But in proposing this paradigm shift, Castles and Kosack did not reject ‘race’ as an analytical concept. Rather, they subordinated it to a political economy of labour migration and class relations: that is, they retained the category of ‘race’ in order to deny its explanatory significance. When referring to the total number of eight million immigrants in western Europe, Castles and Kosack claimed that ‘At the most two million of them can be considered as being racially distinct from the indigenous population’ (1973: 2). In other words, because only a minority of the immigrants occupying this subordinate proletarian position were members of a ‘race’ distinct from that of the majority, neither ‘race’ nor racism could be the factor which determined occupation of this structural site in class relations (1973: 2). Rather, their social position was determined by the ‘normal’ working of the capitalist mode of production.The fact that Castles and Kosack used the idea of ‘race’ as a classificatory concept in this way without explanation or definition testifies to its unproblematic status amongst Marxist writers during the 1970s. This political economy of migration paradigm has been embraced by Sivanandan (1982, 1990), who also criticised academic ‘race relations’ analysis and sought an alternative perspective on the British situation. Sivanandan reproduced several of the central themes in the work of Castles and Kosack (1973), and of Nikolinakos (1975). He referred specifically to the importance of a reserve army of labour (or an underclass) to sustain capitalist expansion and to divide the working class, and to the ‘cheapness’ of a migrant labour system wherein the costs of the production and reproduction of labour power are met within the social formation from which the migrant originates and to which he or she is returned (Sivanandan 1982: 105–6, 1990: 153–60, 189–91). Sivanandan’s initial focus was not so much upon western European capitalism in general as on British capitalism in particular. For example, he devoted considerable attention to the state immigration controls of the 1960s which transformed British subjects from the Commonwealth into aliens who could enter Britain only on a temporary basis with a work permit (Sivanandan, 1982: 108–11; 1983: 2–3). But his analysis of the British situation was effected by a set of general Marxist categories and via an analysis of capitalism as a world system, categories and a perspective which equally structure his more recent interest in Europe (1990: 153–60). Formally, there is little that is new in this aspect of Sivanandan’s work.This is confirmed by his critique of the recent neo-Marxist analysis ofThatcherism which is signalled by the notion of ‘New Times’, a critique which reaffirms the importance of the fundamental struggle between capital and labour (1990: 19–59).What does distinguish Sivanandan’s work, making his voice and contribution distinctive, is the central place that the idea of ‘race’ occupies in his analysis: for example, the journal that he edits is called Race and Class, a title that places the idea of ‘race’ on an analytical level equivalent to class. Sivanandan’s use of the idea of ‘race’ is usually subordinated to the concept of racism. Put another way, his focus on ‘black struggle’ highlights the resistance of some British citizens of Asian and Caribbean origin to the racism, particularly institutionalised racism, that structures their lives: in the course of analysing the nature and effects of racism, Sivanandan employs the idea of ‘race’. For 132 ROBERT MILES example, Sivanandan claims that the migrant labour system ‘prevents . . . the horizontal conflict of classes through the vertical integration of race – and, in the process, exploits both race and class at once’ (1982: 104). Elsewhere, he refers to hierarchies of ‘race’ within the working class (1982: 113) and to the significance of learning about ‘other races, about other people’s cultures’ (1983: 5). In these formulations ‘race’ is attributed with an independent reality, equivalent to class as well as to sex, as in the argument that ‘racism is not . . . a white problem, but a problem of an exploitative white power structure; power is not something white people are born into, but that which they derive from their position in a complex race/sex/class hierarchy’ (1985: 27). More recently, in an interview, he has commented concerning the journal that he edits: ‘Yet Race and Class never subsumes race under class. It looks at race in terms of class, while at the same time bringing to an understanding of the class struggle the racial dimension’ (1990: 14). What Sivanandan means by his use of the idea of ‘race’ is rarely clearly stated: it usually functions to mark a symbolic site for the organisation of autonomous political resistance to capitalism, imperialism and racism, and, for this very reason, clarification of its meaning is unnecessary for him. But, in one of his less commonly cited papers in which he analyses South Africa as an exceptional capitalist formation, he does address (and reject) the argument that the use of the idea of ‘race’ implies a legitimation of racist classifications of the human species (1982: 161–71). He defends the commonsense definition of ‘race’ as a reference to a group of persons who share the same descent or origin, adding that group differences (presumably phenotypical differences) are ‘an observable fact’ (1982: 163). Thus, Sivanandan uses the idea of ‘race’ to refer to distinct, biologically defined groups of people. As a result,‘race’ is as much a reality as class, both concepts referring to some quality that all people possess. Sivanandan observes, for example that ‘Each man was locked into his class and his race, with the whites on top and the blacks below’ (1982: 166), and that ‘The settlers . . . were (and are) a slender minority, distinguished by race and colour’ (1982: 168). For Sivanandan, ‘racial groups’ therefore have a reality sui generis, a reality which parallels but also mediates class: hence, South Africa is exceptional only because ‘race is class and class race – and the race struggle is the class struggle’ (1982: 170).Yet, it is not the supposed reality of racial difference that matters theoretically or politically, but rather the use made of that difference by the ‘race’ (as mediated by class) that possesses the greatest amount of power. In other words, what matters most is the ‘racist ideology that grades these differences in a hierarchy of power – in order to rationalise and justify exploitation’ (1982: 163). For Sivanandan, the primary object of political struggle is the racism that legitimates capitalist exploitation and, hence, he observes that racism cannot be abolished by rejecting the idea of ‘race’ (1982: 162). However, it does not follow from this that the critique of the idea of ‘race’ is not an important moment in the struggle against racism. The shift in Marxist theory away from the construction of a Marxist theory of ‘race relations’ towards an analysis of the expression and consequences of racism within the framework of a political economy of migration represented a major theoretical break. It permits an analysis of the expression and consequences of racism within the framework of the dynamic process of capital accumulation, A PR O P O S T H E I D E A O F ‘ R A C E ’ . . . A G A I N 133 and situates the analysis of racism at the centre of Marxist theory (e.g. Miles 1982, 1986). But, for the Marxist writers mentioned to this point (see also Wolpe 1980, 1986, Wallerstein 1988), this was accomplished in the absence of any critical evaluation of ‘race’ and ‘race relations’ as analytical concepts. Rather than sweep the theoretical shelf clean, these writers retained certain core ideas of the ‘race relations’ paradigm and repackaged them with the central Marxist concepts of class, capital accumulation, reserve army of labour, etc. For Castles and Kosack, and for Sivanandan, the idea of ‘race’ has been retained in a form which suggests that the human population is composed of a number of biological ‘races’. Marxist theories of political and ideological crisis The development of a political economy of migration has been largely ignored by another strand of Marxist theory which has been concerned almost exclusively with the political and ideological crisis of British capitalism.This concern results from a preoccupation with the rejection of economism and an adoption of a field of analysis usually described as cultural studies. Given its concern with the social construction of meaning, one might expect that a cultural studies perspective, especially one that is allied with Marxism, would regard the critical evaluation of the idea of ‘race’ as a central and urgent task. Surprisingly, this has not been so. The important work of Stuart Hall is central to this strand of Marxist theory. Hall’s focus has been upon the role of the British state in reconstructing British society in the face of a series of political and ideological conflicts which have occurred in a conjuncture dominated by the declining profitability of British capital. Hall has devoted some attention to the role of the expression of racism in the resulting organic crisis of British capitalism and the rise of the authoritarian state (e.g. Hall et al. 1978, Hall 1978, 1980).While his observations have been theoretically grounded and influential, they are fragmented and have not been accompanied by a rigorous theoretical examination of the concepts employed. Elsewhere, I have suggested that, in the absence of such theoretical work, Hall represents ‘race’ as an independent force in itself (Miles, 1982: 176–7). Here, I cite another example: in a much celebrated paper, Hall argues that ‘At the economic level, it is clear that race must be given its distinctive and “relatively autonomous” effectivity, as a distinctive feature’ (1980: 339).This reification of ‘race’ is reproduced in the equally well-known work of the ‘Race and Politics Group’ of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), of which Hall was previously the Director. Hall’s previously cited assertion was subsequently echoed approvingly in the work of the CCCS group (1982: 11, my emphasis): Although . . . we see race as a means through which other relations are secured or experienced, this does not mean that we view it as operating merely as a mechanism to express essentially non-racial contradictions and struggles in racial terms.These expressive aspects must be recognised, but race must also be approached in its autonomous effectivity. 134 ROBERT MILES In both these formulations, ‘race’ is represented as a determinant force, something which has real effects and consequences (although for the ‘Race and Politics Group’ these effects are absolutely rather than relatively autonomous). But what ‘race’ is, what the character of this ‘feature’ is, is never defined.We are left to search for the clues which identify the meaning that lies behind the silence. Hall refers to ‘different racial and ethnic groups’ (1980: 339), suggesting that he employs ‘race’ to identify groups differentiated by biological characteristics (see also 1980: 342). If this is his meaning, it parallels Sivanandan’s usage. But this does not help us comprehend the claim that ‘race’ is a reality which has relatively autonomous effects within social relations. Without additional clarification, the claim remains vacuous and each new, approving citation only reinforces its unintelligibility. Similarly, the meaning attributed to the idea of ‘race’ in the work of the CCCS ‘Race and Politics Group’ (1982) is unclear and problematic (see Miles 1984a). One of the members of this group, Paul Gilroy, has subsequently responded to this critique, and to the broader argument upon which the critique was based (Miles 1982), as a prelude to an important analysis of the historical and contemporary expression of racisms, and their articulation with nationalism in Britain. Given that Gilroy states his agreement with my critique of ‘race relations sociology’ (1987: 40n), one expects him to reject the use of ‘race’ as an analytical concept in his more recent work. But this is not so. Moreover, the manner in which the idea of ‘race’ is theorised and celebrated in this recent text is characterised by a number of contradictions (Miles 1988). Gilroy begins by claiming that the idea of ‘race’ has a descriptive value (1987: 149) and that it is an analytical concept (1987: 247):‘“Race” must be retained as an analytical category not because it corresponds to any biological or epistemological absolutes, but because it refers investigation to the power that collective identities acquire by means of their roots in tradition.’ But if there is a reason to attribute the idea of ‘race’ with analytical status, that is if one represents it as a concept which can be employed to explain social processes, it must refer to a real, identifiable phenomenon which can have (autonomous) effects on those processes.Yet, if this is so, it is not clear why ambiguity should be expressed about the concept by the (inconsistent) use of inverted commas around it. Is Gilroy wishing to signal that there is something essentially problematic about the use of the term (which is the justification for my consistent use of inverted commas)? Or is the occasional absence of inverted commas an indication of some real (but unexplained) difference in the usage and meaning of the term? If ‘race’ is an analytical category that identifies a material object, what are its features? Gilroy offers several definitions.‘Race’ is variously described as an effect of discourse (1987: 14), a political category that can accommodate different meanings (1987: 38, 39), and a relational concept (1987: 229).These descriptions are confusing. If ‘race’ is an effect of discourse, or a political category, or a relational concept, how is it distinguished from the other effects of discourse or other political categories or other relational concepts?These descriptions by themselves do not refer to any specifically identifiable phenomenon: they do not provide identifying criteria. A PR O P O S T H E I D E A O F ‘ R A C E ’ . . . A G A I N 135 Elsewhere,‘race’ is represented both as a thing in itself when Gilroy refers to the ‘transformation of phenotypical variation into concrete systems of differentiation based on “race” and colour’, as well as a social collectivity when he refers to ‘racial groups’ (1987: 18), when he defines ‘race formation’ as the ‘manner in which “races” become organised in polities’ (1987: 38), and when he claims that ‘Races are political collectivities not ahistorical essences’ (1987: 149).The former implicitly refers to what he subsequently identifies as an ahistorical essence because it has a biological character (although the distinction between ‘race’ and skin colour adds to the confusion), while the latter identifies a specific form of social collectivity – but we are not told how this differs from any other social collectivity (for example, classes). Hence, within Gilroy’s text, ‘races’ are represented as really existing collectivities, although there is an ambiguity over whether these collectivities are biologically constituted or are the product of the articulation of racism and the expression of resistance by those thereby excluded and exploited. Ironically, his complaint that the Scarman Report fails to define what is meant by the reference to the Brixton riots as ‘racial’ (1987: 106) refracts precisely the same ambiguity in his own text. This ambiguity is further expressed in the contradiction between the representation of ‘race’ as a particular type of social group and the argument that ‘race’ has never been anything other than an idea, a social representation of the Other as a distinct sort of human being.The latter is expressed in the claims that ‘“Race” has to be socially and politically constructed’ (1987: 38) and that ‘race’ is only a device for the categorisation of human beings (1987: 218). These assertions parallel my own arguments (Miles 1982, 1984a) and hence I can agree with his claim that ‘the attempt to make “race” always already a meaningful factor, in other words to racialise social and political phenomena, may be itself identified as part of the “race” problem’ (Gilroy 1987: 116). But Gilroy resists accepting the logical conclusion of this observation.The definition of a ‘race’ problem is synonymous with the racialisation of social relations, and this process of attributing meaning to real or invented somatic (and cultural) variation can only be analysed and deconstructed consistently by eliminating all conceptions of ‘race’ as a thing in itself, with the power to have effects. This does not require denying that the idea of ‘race’ is a constituent element of everyday common sense: the issue is whether or not such usage is transferred into the conceptual language that it used to comprehend and explain that common sense. I see no reason to do this.There are no ‘races’ and therefore no ‘race relations’.There is only a belief that there are such things, a belief which is used by some social groups to construct an Other (and therefore the Self) in thought as a prelude to exclusion and domination, and by other social groups to define Self (and so to construct an Other) as a means of resisting that exclusion. Hence, if it is used at all, the idea of ‘race’ should be used only to refer descriptively to such uses of the idea of ‘race’. A comment is also required on Gilroy’s apparent rejection of Marxism.Throughout ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ (1987), he allies himself with those who argue that a Marxist analysis of capitalism based on the historical instance of nineteenth-century Europe is inappropriate in the late 136 ROBERT MILES twentieth century. This argument takes a number of (not always consistent) forms, but usually includes the assertion that the number of people involved directly in industrial production in advanced ‘capitalist’ social formations is declining and that, as a result, the industrial proletariat can no longer be the leading and progressive political force that it was in the past. Echoing writers such as Gorz andTouraine, Gilroy claims that the leading forces of resistance in the contemporary western world are social movements based around ‘race’, gender, demands for nuclear disarmament, etc., all of which are conceived as being disconnected from production relations. Consequently,‘if these struggles . . . are to be called class struggles, then class analysis must itself be thoroughly overhauled. I am not sure whether the labour involved in doing this makes it either a possible or a desirable task’ (Gilroy 1987: 245). Class struggle, for Gilroy, has been transcended by ‘the forms of white racism and black resistance’ which he describes as ‘the most volatile political forces in Britain today’ (1987: 247). If, in Gilroy’s view, class theory cannot be overhauled, he has dispensed with a theory of class struggle in favour of what is sometimes called ‘race’ struggle. Here, Gilroy seems to identify with the ‘Black radical tradition’ as Robinson (1983) describes it, a tradition which rejects Marxism as an adequate theory of revolution for ‘black people’ (1983: 1–6) and which is terminating the ‘experimentation with Western political inventories of change, specifically nationalism and class struggle’ (1983: 451). This is confirmed by Gilroy’s approval (1987: 38) of the work of Omi and Winant, which rejects class analysis on the grounds that it neglects ‘the specificity of race as an autonomous field of social conflict’ (Omi andWinant 1986: 52). [. . .] ‘Race’ as an ideological construction Certain currents in the French materialist tradition offer a more reflexive and critical approach to the use of the idea of ‘race’ as an analytical concept, reaching conclusions which parallel my own (Miles 1982, 1984a, Miles and Phizacklea 1984: 1–19) and which are emergent within some critical, if not Marxist, writing in the USA (e.g. Fields 1982, 1990, Goldberg 1990b).The work of Colette Guillaumin is the most important in this context (e.g. 1972, 1980, 1988). She has argued that use of the idea of ‘race’ necessarily suggests that certain social relationships are natural and therefore inevitable. Social relations described as ‘racial’ are represented as somatically determined and therefore outside historical, social determination. Consequently, the idea of ‘race’ is transformed into an active subject, a biological reality which determines historical processes.This amounts to a process of reification, as a result of which that which should be explained becomes an explanation of social relations. Guillaumin writes (1980: 39): Whatever the theoretical foundations underlying the various interpretations of ‘racial’ relations, the very use of such a distinction tends to imply the acceptance of some essential difference between type of social relation, some, somewhere, being specifically A PR O P O S T H E I D E A O F ‘ R A C E ’ . . . A G A I N 137 racial. Merely to adopt the expression implies the belief that races are ‘real’ or concretely apprehensible, or at the best that the idea of race is uncritically accepted; moreover, it implies that races play a role in the social process not merely as an ideological form, but as an immediate factor acting as both determining cause and concrete means. Guillaumin concludes (1980: 39, see also 1988: 26): the fact that such relationships are thought of as racial by those concerned (and sometimes this is as true of the oppressed as of the oppressors) is a social fact, and it ought to be examined as carefully and sceptically as any other explanation offered by a society of its own mechanisms. Such explanations can only refer to a particular time and place. The analytical task is therefore to explain why certain relationships are interpreted as determined by or expressive of ‘race’, rather than to accept without criticism and comment that they are and to freeze and legitimate that representation in the idea of ‘race relations’ as social relations between ‘races’. Hence, any analytical use of the idea of ‘race’ disguises the fact that it is an idea created by human beings in certain historical and material conditions, and used to represent and structure the world in certain ways, under certain historical conditions and for certain political interests.The idea of ‘race’ is therefore essentially ideological (Guillaumin 1980: 59). These arguments do not deny that there is considerable somatic variation between individual human beings. But the signification of phenotypical features in order to classify human beings into groups simultaneously designated as natural is not a universal feature of social relations. In Europe, it began in the eighteenth century: for the idea of naturalness is even more ‘modern’ than the idea of ‘race’ (Guillaumin 1988). Certain somatic features (some real and some imagined) were socially signified as natural marks of difference (e.g. skin colour), a difference that became known as a difference of ‘race’. Moreover, these marks, conceived as natural, were then thought to explain the already existing social position of the collectivity thereby designated by the mark (cf. Fields 1990: 106). This social process of signification was (and remains) an important ideological moment in a process of domination. The idea of ‘race’ thereby came to express nature, something given and immutable, with the result that what was in fact the consequence of social relations became understood as natural: and so ‘race’ was thought of as a determinate force, requiring social relations of domination to be organised in a specific form, thereby obscuring their human construction. By utilising the idea of ‘race’ as an analytical concept, social scientists deny the historicity of this social process, freezing it with the idea that the naturalness of somatic difference ineluctably constitutes eternal human collectivities. These arguments have been rarely addressed directly by Marxist writers, many of whom continue to defend the retention of ‘race’ as an analytical concept. Anthias (1990), for example, argues not only that ‘race’ should be retained as an analytical concept but also that its relationship to class should be specified. Anthias advocates retention of the idea of ‘race’ as an analytical concept to 138 ROBERT MILES denote ‘a particular way in which communal or collective differences come to be constructed and understood’, one that refers to ‘immutable fixed biologically or physiognomically based difference’ (1990: 22). If this is all the meaning that the idea of ‘race’ embodies in being transformed into a concept, then this is precisely the meaning that is denoted by the concept of racialisation (Miles 1982: 120, 150, 1989: 74–7). In other words, the social process that Anthias refers to with the idea of ‘race’ is better denoted by the concept of racialisation. But why does she ignore this concept in order to retain the idea of ‘race’ as an analytical concept? It is because she has chosen arbitrarily the class/‘race’ articulation as the starting point for her analysis (1990: 19): having made such a choice, she is required to theorise the idea of ‘race’ into an analytical concept in order to sustain the paradigm which constitutes her point of departure.Thus, rather than first reflect critically on the historical evolution of the idea of ‘race’, and on the implications of its attributed meaning through time, in order to second reach a conclusion about the validity of transforming it into an analytical concept, Anthias precludes the very possibility of such an epistemological evaluation by electing without any critical reflection to employ the idea of ‘race’ as a concept positioned relative to class. As a result, while acknowledging the ‘mythological representations that surround it’ (1990: 23) and while agreeing with me that the concept of racism should be separated from the idea of ‘race’ (1990: 22–4), she invests those very same mythological representations with an analytical status by treating the idea of ‘race’ as a scientific concept with an object in the real world.This is expressed in her various references to‘race formation’,‘race processes’, to the distinct ontological status of‘race’, to ‘race phenomena’ and to ‘racially organised communities’ (Anthias 1990: 20, 21, 35). So, the case against the incorporation of the idea of ‘race’ into Marxist theory (and indeed into sociological theory) as an analytical concept can be summarised as follows (see also Miles 1982, cf. Goldberg 1990b). First, all theoretical work is an integral part of the social world.We live in a world in which the nineteenth-century biological conception of ‘race’, although discredited scientifically, remains an important presence in ‘common sense’: large numbers of people continue to believe, and to act as if they believe, that the world’s population is divided into a number of discrete, biologically distinguishable groups, i.e.‘races’ (cf. Fields 1990: 95–101). Although this conception (especially in its explicitly racist incarnation) is rejected by most sociologists and Marxists, their conceptions and theories of ‘race’ and ‘race relations’, where they resonate in the wider structure of social relations, fail to challenge common sense. Indeed, by failing to explain consistently and explicitly their sociological conception of ‘race’ as a social construction, they implicitly (and often explicitly) endorse common sense (Rozat and Bartra 1980: 302, Smith 1989: 3, 11), and hence sustain an ideology which Barzun called a ‘Modern Superstition’ (1938) and which Montagu described as ‘Man’s [sic] Most Dangerous Myth’ (1974). A recent example of such an endorsement of the commonsense idea of ‘race’ is found in an argument which is intended to explicate ‘the salience of race as a social construct’: Smith (whose work, while not falling formally within the Marxist tradition, is nevertheless influenced by writing that is) A PR O P O S T H E I D E A O F ‘ R A C E ’ . . . A G A I N 139 suggests that the analysis of the salience of ‘race’ (1989: 3) ‘should centre not on what race explains about society, but rather on the questions of who, why and with what effect social significance is attached to racial attributes that are constructed in particular political and socio-economic contexts’. Here, the reference to ‘racial attributes’ resonates with all those ‘mythological representations’ of the nineteenth-century idea of ‘race’ as a biological type of human being characterised by certain somatic attributes. While there are all the usual sociological qualifiers (in the form of references to social processes of signification and construction), Smith’s reference to ‘racial attributes’ as the object of the ascription of meaning implies that there is some biological ‘reality’ underlying the somatic features thereby signified: an attribute denotes the existence of some other thing which, given the description ‘racial’, can only mean that that thing is a ‘race’. This is an example of the way in which the idea of ‘race’ as a natural division lives on, is reconstituted and renewed, by a critical sociological analysis which seeks to deny such a ‘reality’ by reprocessing the idea of ‘race’ as an analytical concept. This is also illustrated by a paper in a collection of essays intended to demonstrate recent advances in the critical analysis of racism (Goldberg 1990a). Christian (1990) offers a radical analysis of Afro-American women’s literature which prioritises as the conceptual framework ‘the intersection of . . . race, class, and gender’ (1990: 135). The novel that is the central focus of her analysis is described as ‘an exploration of the ways in which race affects the relations among women’, and its author is considered to have demonstrated ‘not only that race, class, and gender intersect but that they are never pure, exclusive categories. None of these categories exist on their own. Rather there are men or women of one class or another, of one race or another’ (1990: 136, 143). Thus, second, the reification of ‘race’ as an active subject, and ‘race relations’ as a distinct variety of social relations, represents somatic differentiation as an active determinant of social processes and structures. It follows that ‘the ideological notion of “race” does not have the rigour of an objective scientific definition, despite all later attempts to rationalise it’ (Lecourt 1980: 282). Its use obscures the active construction of the social world by those people who articulate racism and by those who engage in exclusionary practices consistent with racism. Our object of analysis, the active determinant of exclusion and disadvantage, is therefore not physical difference in itself, but the attribution of significance to certain patterns of, or the imagined assertion of, difference and the use of that process of signification to structure social relationships.The use of ‘race’ (and ‘race relations’) as analytical concepts disguises the social construction of difference, presenting it as somehow inherent in the empirical reality of observable or imagined biological difference. Third, the incorporation of ideological conceptions into Marxist and sociological theory has structured historical and empirical investigation in a manner which leads to comparative analyses of limited theoretical and political (including policy) relevance. By defining ‘race’ and ‘race relations’ as the subject of study, comparative attention is directed to those other social formations where identical social definitions prevail, usually South Africa and the USA. In other words, comparative analysis is determined by certain common ideological features (i.e. by phenomenal forms), rather than by a historical materialist analysis of the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production (i.e. 140 ROBERT MILES by essential relations).Yet, considered in terms of the historical dynamic of capitalist development, these two social formations (by virtue of their colonial origin and historical dependence on unfree labour) have little in common with post-1945 economic and political developments in Britain, despite sharing a common ideological definition of‘race’ as a social problem (but see Small (1991) for an important alternative analysis). Attention has thereby been distracted from the other social formations of north-west Europe where the interdependence of capital accumulation and labour migration has resulted, since 1945, in the permanent settlement of populations which are often culturally distinct from the indigenous populations. It is only in Britain that the political definition of this settlement as problematic has been defined as a matter of ‘race’: elsewhere it has been defined as a ‘minority problem’ or ‘immigrant problem’, for example. But these ideological variations are grounded in a common economic and political process, leaving one to pose the question ‘Why?’.This question can only be investigated by first deconstructing ‘race’ as an analytical concept, for only then does investigation come to focus upon the political and ideological processes by which the idea of‘race’ has been utilised to comprehend this process of migration and settlement. Conclusion In so far as Marxism asserts that all social relationships are socially constructed and reproduced in specific historical circumstances, and that those relationships are therefore in principle alterable by human agency, then it should not have space for an ideological notion that implies, and often explicitly asserts, the opposite.The task is therefore not to create a Marxist theory of ‘race’ which is more valid than conservative or liberal theories, but to deconstruct ‘race’, and to detach it from the concept of racism. By deconstructing the idea of ‘race’, the effects of the process of racialisation and of the expression of racism within the development of the capitalist world economic system are more clearly exposed (Miles 1982, 1987, 1989, Miles and Phizacklea 1984: 4–19) because the role of human signification and exclusionary practices is prioritised. And where racialisation and racism structure aspects of the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production or any other mode of production, then that mode appears in another of its historically specific forms. This can be illustrated by returning to consider the argument that ‘race relations’ arose from the proletarianisation of labour in the Caribbean. I have already argued that there was no proletarianisation of labour in this region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries because slave rather than wage relations of production predominated after an initial period during which indentured labour was prevalent. In a context where unfree relations of production were widespread, the initial enslavement of Africans was not in itself remarkable. It was only after Africans were enslaved that African people were represented in negative terms as an Other and that certain of their phenotypical characteristics were signified as expressive of their being a different (and inferior) type of human being. This racialisation of a population that was confined to the provision of labour power under A PR O P O S T H E I D E A O F ‘ R A C E ’ . . . A G A I N 141 slave relations of production was intensified with the emergence of the idea of ‘race’ and its utilisation to dichotomise the owners of the means of production and the suppliers of labour power as being naturally different ‘types’ of human being. Similar processes of racialisation and a similar expression of racism occurred elsewhere in the world (and not only outside Europe) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as colonial settlement was followed by the expansion of commodity production. As in the case of the Caribbean, these instances were usually accompanied by the forced migration of a group of people who were destined to provide labour power under relations of direct politico-legal compulsion. I have argued elsewhere (1987: 186–95) that in all these instances of unfree relations of production, through a process of racialisation, racism became an ideological relation of production: that is to say, the ideology of racism constructed the Other as a specific and inferior category of being particularly suited to providing labour power within unfree relations of production. Racialisation and racism were thereby ideological forces which, in conjunction with economic and political relations of domination, located certain populations in specific class positions and therefore structured the exploitation of labour power in a particular ideological manner. [. . .] References Anthias, F. (1990) ‘Race and class revisited – conceptualising race and racisms’, Sociological Review, 38(1): 19–42. Banton, M. (1967) Race Relations, London: Tavistock. ——(1987) Racial Theories, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——(1991) ‘The race relations problematic’, British Journal of Sociology, 42(1): 115–30. Barkan, E. (1992) The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barzun, J. (1938) Race: A Study in Modern Superstition, London: Methuen. Benedict, R. (1983) Race and Racism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bolaria, B.S. and Li, P. (1985) Racial Oppression in Canada, Toronto: Garamond Press. Carter, B., Harris, C. and Joshi, S. (1987) ‘The 1951–55 Conservative government and the racialisation of black immigration’, Immigrants and Minorities, 6: 335–47. Castles, S. and Kosack, G. (1972) ‘The function of labour immigration in western European capitalism’, New Left Review, 73: 3–21. ——and Kosack, G. (1973) ImmigrantWorkers and Class Structure inWestern Europe, London: Oxford University Press. CCCS (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) (1982) The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain, London: Hutchinson. Christian, B. (1990) ‘What Celie knows that you should know’, in D.T. Goldberg (ed.) Anatomy of Racism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cox, O.C. (1970) Caste, Class and Race, New York: Monthly Review Press. Fields, B.J. (1982) ‘Ideology and race in American history’, in J.M. Kousser and J.M. McPherson (eds) Region, Race and Reconstruction: Essays in Honour of C.Vann Woodward, New York: Oxford University Press. ——(1990) ‘Slavery, race and ideology in the United States of America’, New Left Review . 181: 95–118. 142 ROBERT MILES George, H. (1984) American Race Relations Theory: A Review of Four Models, Lanham: University Press of America. Gilroy, P. (1987) ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation, London: Hutchinson. Goldberg, D.T. (ed.) (1990a) Anatomy of Racism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ——(1990b) ‘The social formation of racist discourse’, in D.T. Goldberg (ed.) Anatomy of Racism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Guillaumin, C. (1972) L’idéologie Raciste: Genèse et Langage Actuel, Paris: Mouton. ——(1980) ‘The idea of race and its elevation to autonomous scientific and legal status’, in UNESCO, Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, Paris: UNESCO. ——(1988) ‘Race and nature: the system of marks’, Feminist Issues, 1988: 25–43. Hall, S. (1978) ‘Racism and reaction’, in Commission for Racial Equality, Five Views of Multi-Racial Britain, London: Commission for Racial Equality. ——(1980) ‘Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance’, in UNESCO, Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, Paris: UNESCO. ——, Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J., and Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, London: Macmillan. Hirschfeld, M. (1938) Racism, London: Gollancz. Jordan, W.D. (1968) White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ——(1974) TheWhite Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States, London: Oxford University Press. Joshi, S. and Carter, B. (1984) ‘The role of Labour in creating a racist Britain’, Race and Class, 25: 53–70. Lecourt, D. (1980) ‘Marxism as a critique of sociological theories’, in UNESCO, Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, Paris: UNESCO. Lugard, F.D. (1929) The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd. Miles, R. (1980) ‘Class, race and ethnicity: a critique of Cox’s theory’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 3(2): 169– 87. ——(1982) Racism and Migrant Labour: A Critical Text, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ——(1984a) ‘Marxism versus the “sociology of race relations”?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 7(2): 217–37. ——(1984b) ‘The riots of 1958: the ideological construction of “race relations” as a political issue in Britain’, Immigrants and Minorities, 3(3): 252–75. ——(1986) ‘Labour migration, racism and capital accumulation in western Europe’, Capital and Class, 28: 49–86. ——(1987) Capitalism and Unfree Labour: Anomaly or Necessity?, London: Tavistock. ——(1988) ‘Racism, Marxism and British politics’, Economy and Society, 17(3): 428–60. ——(1989) Racism, London: Routledge. ——and Phizacklea, A. (1984) White Man’s Country: Racism in British Politics, London: Pluto Press. Montagu, A. (ed.) (1964) The Concept of Race, New York: Free Press. ——(1974) Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, New York: Oxford University Press. Nikolinakos, M. (1975) ‘Notes towards a general theory of migration in late capitalism’, Race and Class, 17(1): 5–18. A PR O P O S T H E I D E A O F ‘ R A C E ’ . . . A G A I N 143 Omi, M. and Winant, H. (1986) Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s, New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Outlaw, L. (1990) ‘Toward a critical theory of “race”’, in D.T. Goldberg (ed.) Anatomy of Racism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rex, J. (1970) Race Relations in Sociological Theory, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ——(1983) Race Relations in Sociological Theory, 2nd edition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Rich, P.B. (1986a) Race and Empire in British Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, C.J. (1983) Black Marxism, London: Zed Press. Rozat, G. and Bartra, R. (1980) ‘Racism and capitalism’, in UNESCO, Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, Paris: UNESCO. Sivanandan, A. (1982) A Different Hunger:Writings on Black Resistance, London: Pluto Press. ——(1983) ‘Challenging racism: strategies for the ‘80s’, Race and Class, 25(2): 1–12. ——(1985) ‘RAT and the degradation of the black struggle’, Race and Class, 26(4): 1–34. ——(1990) Communities of Resistance:Writings on Black Struggles for Socialism, London: Verso. Small, S. (1991) ‘Racialised relations in Liverpool: a contemporary anomaly’, New Community, 17(4): 511– 37. Smith, S.J. (1989) The Politics of ‘Race’ and Residence, Cambridge: Polity Press. Stepan, N. (1982) The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1945, London: Macmillan. Wallerstein, I. (1979) The Capitalist World-Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——(1988) ‘Universalisme, racisme, sexisme: les tensions ideologiques du capitalisme’, in E. Balibar and I. Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Classe: Les Identités Ambiguës, Paris: Editions La Découverte. Wolpe, H. (1980) ‘Capitalism and cheap labour-power in South Africa: from segregation to apartheid’, in H. Wolpe (ed.), The Articulation of Modes of Production: Essays from Economy and Society, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ——(1986) ‘Class concepts, class struggle and racism’, in J. Rex and D. Mason (eds) Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 11 Stuart Hall OLD AND NEW IDENTITIES, OLD AND NEW ETHNICITIES [. . .] W H A T I A M G O I N G T O D O first is to return to the question of identity and try to look at some of the ways in which we are beginning to reconceptualize that within contemporary theoretical discourses. I shall then go back from that theoretical consideration to the ground of a cultural politics.Theory is always a detour on the way to something more important. I return to the question of identity because the question of identity has returned to us; at any rate, it has returned to us in British politics and British cultural politics today. It has not returned in the same old place; it is not the traditional conception of identity. It is not going back to the old identity politics of the 1960s social movements. But it is, nevertheless, a kind of return to some of the ground which we used to think in that way. I will make a comment at the very end about what is the nature of this theoretical–political work which seems to lose things on the one side and then recover them in a different way from another side, and then have to think them out all over again just as soon as they get rid of them. What is this never-ending theoretical work which is constantly losing and regaining concepts? I talk about identity here as a point at which, on the one hand, a whole set of new theoretical discourses intersect and where, on the other, a whole new set of cultural practices emerge. I want to begin by trying, very briefly, to map some of those points of intersection theoretically, and then to look at some of their political consequences. The old logics of identity are ones with which we are extremely familiar, either philosophically, or psychologically. Philosophically, the old logic of identity which many people have critiqued in the form of the old Cartesian subject was often thought in terms of the origin of being itself, the ground OLD AND NEW IDENTITIES 145 of action. Identity is the ground of action. And we have in more recent times a psychological discourse of the self which is very similar: a notion of the continuous, self-sufficient, developmental, unfolding, inner dialectic of selfhood.We are never quite there, but always on our way to it, and when we get there, we will at last know exactly who it is we are. Now this logic of identity is very important in a whole range of political, theoretical and conceptual discourses. I am interested in it also as a kind of existential reality because I think the logic of the language of identity is extremely important to our own self-conceptions. It contains the notion of the true self, some real self inside there, hiding inside the husks of all the false selves that we present to the rest of the world. It is a kind of guarantee of authenticity. Not until we get really inside and hear what the true self has to say do we know what we are “really saying.” There is something guaranteed about that logic or discourse of identity. It gives us a sense of depth, out there, and in here. It is spatially organized. Much of our discourse of the inside and the outside, of the self and other, of the individual and society, of the subject and the object, is grounded in that particular logic of identity. And it helps us, I would say, to sleep well at night. Increasingly, I think one of the main functions of concepts is that they give us a good night’s rest. Because what they tell us is that there is a kind of stable, only very slowly-changing ground inside the hectic upsets, discontinuities and ruptures of history. Around us history is constantly breaking in unpredictable ways but we, somehow, go on being the same. That logic of identity is, for good or ill, finished. It’s at an end for a whole range of reasons. It’s at an end in the first instance because of some of the great de-centerings of modern thought. One could discuss this very elaborately – I could spend the rest of the time talking about it but I just wanted to slot the ideas into place very quickly by using some names as reference points. It is not possible to hold to that logic of identity after Marx because although Marx does talk about man (he doesn’t talk about women making history but perhaps they were slotted in, as the nineteenth century so often slotted women in under some other masculine title), about men and women making history but under conditions which are not of their own choosing. And having lodged either the individual or collective subject always within historical practices, we as individuals or as groups cannot be, and can never have been, the sole origin or authors of those practices. That is a profound historical decentering in terms of social practice. If that was not strong enough, knocking us sideways as it were, Freud came knocking from underneath, like Hamlet’s ghost, and said, “While you’re being decentered from left to right like that, let me decenter you from below a bit, and remind you that this stable language of identity is also set from the psychic life about which you don’t know very much, and can’t know very much. And which you can’t know very much by simply taking thought about it: the great continent of the unconscious which speaks most clearly when it’s slipping rather than when it’s saying what it means.”This makes the self begin to seem a pretty fragile thing. Now, buffeted on one side by Marx and upset from below by Freud, just as it opens its mouth to say, “Well, at least I speak so therefore I must be something,” Saussure and linguistics comes along and says “That’s not true either, you know. Language was there before you.You can only say something 146 ST UA RT H A LL by positioning yourself in the discourse.The tale tells the teller, the myth tells the myth-maker, etc. The enunciation is always from some subject who is positioned by and in discourse.”That upsets that. Philosophically, one comes to the end of any kind of notion of a perfect transparent continuity between our language and something out there which can be called the real, or the truth, without any quotation marks. These various upsets, these disturbances in the continuity of the notion of the subject, and the stability of identity, are indeed, what modernity is like. It is not, incidentally, modernity itself.That has an older, and longer history. But this is the beginning of modernity as trouble. Not modernity as enlightenment and progress, but modernity as a problem. It is also upset by other enormous historical transformations which do not have, and cannot be given, a single name, but without which the story could not be told. In addition to the three or four that I have quoted, we could mention the relativisation of the Western narrative itself, the Western episteme, by the rise of other cultures to prominence, and fifthly, the displacement of the masculine gaze. Now, the question of trying to come to terms with the notion of identity in the wake of those theoretical decenterings is an extremely problematic enterprise. But that is not all that has been disturbing the settled logic of identity. Because as I was saying earlier when I was talking about the relative decline, or erosion, the instability of the nation-state, of the self-sufficiency of national economies and consequently, of national identities as points of reference, there has simultaneously been a fragmentation and erosion of collective social identity. I mean here the great collective social identities which we thought of as large-scale, allencompassing, homogeneous, as unified collective identities, which could be spoken about almost as if they were singular actors in their own right but which, indeed, placed, positioned, stabilized, and allowed us to understand and read, almost as a code, the imperatives of the individual self: the great collective social identities of class, of race, of nation, of gender, and of the West. These collective social identities were formed in, and stabilized by, the huge, long-range historical processes which have produced the modern world, just as the theories and conceptualizations that I just referred to very briefly are what constituted modernity as a form of self-reflection.They were staged and stabilized by industrialization, by capitalism, by urbanization, by the formation of the world market, by the social and the sexual division of labor, by the great punctuation of civil and social life into the public and the private; by the dominance of the nation-state, and by the identification between Westernization and the notion of modernity itself. I spoke in my previous talk about the importance, to any sense of where we are placed in the world, of the national economy, the nation-state and of national cultural identities. Let me say a word here about the great class identities which have stabilized so much of our understanding of the immediate and not-so-immediate past. [. . .] Identity means, or connotes, the process of identification, of saying that this here is the same as that, or we are the same together, in this respect. But something we have learnt from the whole discussion of identification, in feminism and psychoanalysis, is the degree to which that OLD AND NEW IDENTITIES 147 structure of identification is always constructed through ambivalence. Always constructed through splitting. Splitting between that which one is, and that which is the other.The attempt to expel the other to the other side of the universe is always compounded by the relationships of love and desire. This is a different language from the language of, as it were, the Others who are completely different from oneself. This is the Other that belongs inside one. This is the Other that one can only know from the place from which one stands.This is the self as it is inscribed in the gaze of the Other. And this notion which breaks down the boundaries, between outside and inside, between those who belong and those who do not, between those whose histories have been written and those whose histories they have depended on but whose histories cannot be spoken.That the unspoken silence in between that which can be spoken is the only way to reach for the whole history.There is no other history except to take the absences and the silences along with what can be spoken. Everything that can be spoken is on the ground of the enormous voices that have not, or cannot yet be heard. This doubleness of discourse, this necessity of the Other to the self, this inscription of identity in the look of the other finds its articulation profoundly in the ranges of a given text. And I want to cite one which I am sure you know but won’t remember necessarily, though it is a wonderful, majestic moment in Fanon’s Black Skin,White Masks, when he describes himself as a young Antillean, face to face with the white Parisian child and her mother. And the child pulls the hand of the mother and says, “Look, Mama, a black man.” And he said, “For the first time, I knew who I was. For the first time, I felt as if I had been simultaneously exploded in the gaze, in the violent gaze of the other, and at the same time, recomposed as another.” The notion that identity in that sense could be told as two histories, one over here, one over there, never having spoken to one another, never having anything to do with one another, when translated from the psychoanalytic to the historical terrain, is simply not tenable any longer in an increasingly globalized world. It is just not tenable any longer. People like me who came to England in the 1950s have been there for centuries; symbolically, we have been there for centuries. I was coming home. I am the sugar at the bottom of the English cup of tea. I am the sweet tooth, the sugar plantations that rotted generations of English children’s teeth. There are thousands of others beside me that are, you know, the cup of tea itself. Because they don’t grow it in Lancashire, you know. Not a single tea plantation exists within the United Kingdom.This is the symbolization of English identity – I mean, what does anybody in the world know about an English person except that they can’t get through the day without a cup of tea? Where does it come from? Ceylon Sri Lanka, India.That is the outside history that is inside the history of the English.There is no English history without that other history.The notion that identity has to do with people that look the same, feel the same, call themselves the same, is nonsense. As a process, as a narrative, as a discourse, it is always told from the position of the Other. What is more is that identity is always in part a narrative, always in part a kind of representation. It is always within representation. Identity is not something which is formed outside and then we tell stories about it. It is that which is narrated in one’s own self. I will say something about that in terms 148 ST UA RT H A LL of my own narration of identity in a moment – you know, that wonderful moment where Richard II says, “Come let us sit down and tell stories about the death of kings.”Well, I am going to tell you a story and ask you to tell one about yourself. We have the notion of identity as contradictory, as composed of more than one discourse, as composed always across the silences of the other, as written in and through ambivalence and desire. These are extremely important ways of trying to think an identity which is not a sealed or closed totality. [. . .] Now I can turn to questions of politics. In this conception of an identity which has to be thought through difference, is there a general politics of the local to bring to bear against the great, overriding, powerful, technologically-based, massively-invested unrolling of global processes which I was trying to describe in my previous talk which tend to mop up all differences, and occlude those differences?Which means, as it were, they are different – but it doesn’t make any difference that they are different, they’re just different. No, there is no general politics. I have nothing in the kitbag.There is nothing I can pull out. But I have a little local politics to tell you about. It may be that all we have, in bringing the politics of the local to bear against the global, is a lot of little local politics. I do not know if that is true or not. But I would like to spend some time later talking about the cultural politics of the local, and of this new notion of identity. For it is in this new frame that identity has come back into cultural politics in Britain. The formation of the Black diasporas in the period of post-war migration in the fifties and sixties has transformed English social, economic and political life. In the first generations, the majority of people had the same illusion that I did: that I was about to go back home. That may have been because everybody always asked me: when was I going back home? We did think that we were just going to get back on the boat; we were here for a temporary sojourn. By the seventies, it was perfectly clear that we were not there for a temporary sojourn. Some people were going to stay and then the politics of racism really emerged. Now one of the main reactions against the politics of racism in Britain was what I would call “Identity Politics One,” the first form of identity politics. It had to do with the constitution of some defensive collective identity against the practices of racist society. It had to do with the fact that people were being blocked out of and refused an identity and identification within the majority nation, having to find some other roots on which to stand. Because people have to find some ground, some place, some position on which to stand. Blocked out of any access to an English or British identity, people had to try to discover who they were. [. . .] It is the crucial moment of the rediscovery or the search for roots. In the course of the search for roots, one discovered not only where one came from, one began to speak the language of that which is home in the genuine sense, that other crucial moment which is the recovery of lost histories.The histories that have never been told about ourselves that we could not learn in schools, that were not in any books, and that we had to recover. OLD AND NEW IDENTITIES 149 This is an enormous act of what I want to call imaginary political re-identification, reterritorialization and re-identification, without which a counter-politics could not have been constructed. I do not know an example of any group or category of the people of the margins, of the locals, who have been able to mobilize themselves, socially, culturally, economically, politically in the last twenty or twenty-five years who have not gone through some such series of moments in order to resist their exclusion, their marginalization.That is how and where the margins begin to speak.The margins begin to contest, the locals begin to come to representation. The identity which that whole, enormous political space produced in Britain, as it did elsewhere, was the category Black. I want to say something about this category which we all now so take for granted. I will tell you some stories about it. I was brought up in a lower middle class family in Jamaica. I left there in the early fifties to go and study in England. Until I left, though I suppose 98 per cent of the Jamaican population is either Black or coloured in one way or another, I had never ever heard anybody either call themselves, or refer to anybody else as “Black.” Never. I heard a thousand other words. My grandmother could differentiate about fifteen different shades between light brown and dark brown.When I left Jamaica, there was a beauty contest in which the different shades of women were graded according to different trees, so that there was a Miss Mahogany, Miss Walnut, etc. People think of Jamaica as a simple society. In fact, it had the most complicated colour stratification system in the world. Talk about practical semioticians; anybody in my family could compute and calculate anybody’s social status by grading the particular quality of their hair versus the particular quality of the family they came from and which street they lived in, including physiognomy, shading, etc.You could trade off one characteristic against another. Compared with that, the normal class stratification system is absolute child’s play. But the word “Black” was never uttered.Why? No Black people around? Lots of them, thousands and thousands of them. Black is not a question of pigmentation. The Black I’m talking about is a historical category, a political category, a cultural category. In our language, at certain historical moments, we have to use the signifier.We have to create an equivalence between how people look and what their histories are. Their histories are in the past, inscribed in their skins. But it is not because of their skins that they are Black in their heads. I heard Black for the first time in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, in the wake of the decolonization and nationalistic struggles. Black was created as a political category in a certain historical moment. It was created as a consequence of certain symbolic and ideological struggles.We said, “You have spent five, six, seven hundred years elaborating the symbolism through which Black is a negative factor. Now I don’t want another term. I want that term, that negative one, that’s the one I want. I want a piece of that action. I want to take it out of the way in which it has been articulated in religious discourse, in ethnographic discourse, in literary discourse, in visual discourse. I want to pluck it out of its articulation and rearticulate it in a new way.” In that very struggle is a change of consciousness, a change of self-recognition, a new process of identification, the emergence into visibility of a new subject. A subject that was always there, but emerging, historically. 150 ST UA RT H A LL You know that story, but I do not know if you know the degree to which that story is true of other parts of the Americas. It happened in Jamaica in the 1970s. In the 1970s, for the first time, Black people recognized themselves as Black. It was the most profound cultural revolution in the Caribbean, much greater than any political revolution they have ever had.That cultural revolution in Jamaica has never been matched by anything as far-reaching as the politics.The politics has never caught up with it. You probably know the moment when the leaders of both major political parties in Jamaica tried to grab hold of Bob Marley’s hand.They were trying to put their hands on Black; Marley stood for Black, and they were trying to get a piece of the action. If only he would look in their direction he would have legitimated them. It was not politics legitimating culture, it was culture legitimating politics. Indeed, the truth is I call myself all kinds of other things.When I went to England, I wouldn’t have called myself an immigrant either, which is what we were all known as. It was not until I went back home in the early 1960s that my mother who, as a good middle-class colored Jamaican woman, hated all Black people, (you know, that is the truth) said to me, “I hope they don’t think you’re an immigrant over there.” And I said, “Well, I just migrated. I’ve just emigrated.” At that very moment, I thought, that’s exactly what I am. I’ve just left home – for good. I went back to England and I became what I’d been named. I had been hailed as an immigrant. I had discovered who I was. I started to tell myself the story of my migration. Then Black erupted and people said, “Well, you’re from the Caribbean, in the midst of this, identifying with what’s going on, the Black population in England.You’re Black.” At that very moment, my son, who was two and a half, was learning the colors. I said to him, transmitting the message at last, “You’re Black.” And he said, “No. I’m brown.” And I said, “Wrong referent. Mistaken concreteness, philosophical mistake. I’m not talking about your paintbox, I’m talking about your head.”That is something different.The question of learning, learning to be Black. Learning to come into an identification. What that moment allows to happen are things which were not there before. It is not that what one then does was hiding away inside as my true self. There wasn’t any bit of that true self in there before that identity was learnt. Is that, then, the stable one, is that where we are? Is that where people are? I will tell you something now about what has happened to that Black identity as a matter of cultural politics in Britain. That notion was extremely important in the anti-racist struggles of the 1970s: the notion that people of diverse societies and cultures would all come to Britain in the fifties and sixties as part of that huge wave of migration from the Caribbean, East Africa, the Asian subcontinent, Pakistan, Bangladesh, from different parts of India, and all identified themselves politically as Black. What they said was, “We may be different actual color skins but vis-a-vis the social system, visa-vis the political system of racism, there is more that unites us than what divides us.” People begin to ask “Are you from Jamaica, are you from Trinidad, are you from Barbados?”You can just see the OLD AND NEW IDENTITIES 151 process of divide and rule. “No. Just address me as I am. I know you can’t tell the difference so just call me Black.Try using that.We all look the same, you know. Certainly can’t tell the difference. Just call me Black. Black identity.” Anti-racism in the seventies was only fought and only resisted in the community, in the localities, behind the slogan of a Black politics and the Black experience. In that moment, the enemy was ethnicity.The enemy had to be what we called “multi-culturalism.” Because multi-culturalism was precisely what I called previously “the exotic.”The exotica of difference. Nobody would talk about racism but they were perfectly prepared to have “International Evenings,” when we would all come and cook our native dishes, sing our own native songs and appear in our own native costume. It is true that some people, some ethnic minorities in Britain, do have indigenous, very beautiful indigenous forms of dress. I didn’t. I had to rummage in the dressing-up box to find mine. I have been de-racinated for four hundred years.The last thing I am going to do is to dress up in some native Jamaican costume and appear in the spectacle of multi-culturalism. Has the moment of the struggle organized around this constructed Black identity gone away? It certainly has not. So long as that society remains in its economic, political, cultural, and social relations in a racist way to the variety of Black andThirdWorld peoples in its midst, and it continues to do so, that struggle remains. Why then don’t I just talk about a collective Black identity replacing the other identities? I can’t do that either and I’ll tell you why. The truth is that in relation to certain things, the question of Black, in Britain, also has its silences. It had a certain way of silencing the very specific experiences of Asian people. Because though Asian people could identify, politically, in the struggle against racism, when they came to using their own culture as the resources of resistance, when they wanted to write out of their own experience and reflect on their own position, when they wanted to create, they naturally created within the histories of the languages, the cultural tradition, the positions of people who came from a variety of different historical backgrounds. And just as Black was the cutting edge of politics vis-avis one kind of enemy, it could also, if not understood properly, provide a kind of silencing in relation to another.These are the costs, as well as the strengths, of trying to think of the notion of Black as an essentialism. What is more, there were not only Asian people of color, but also Black people who did not identify with that collective identity. So that one was aware of the fact that always, as one advanced to meet the enemy, with a solid front, the differences were raging behind. Just shut the doors, and conduct a raging argument to get the troops together, to actually hit the other side. A third way in which Black was silencing was to silence some of the other dimensions that were positioning individuals and groups in exactly the same way. To operate exclusively through an unreconstructed conception of Black was to reconstitute the authority of Black masculinity over Black women, about which, as I am sure you know, there was also, for a long time, an unbreakable silence about which the most militant Black men would not speak. To organize across the discourses of Blackness and masculinity, of race and gender, and forget the way in which, at the same moment, Blacks in the under class were being positioned in class terms, in 152 ST UA RT H A LL similar work situations, exposed to the same deprivations of poor jobs and lack of promotion that certain members of the white working class suffered, was to leave out the critical dimension of positioning. What then does one do with the powerful mobilizing identity of the Black experience and of the Black community? Blackness as a political identity in the light of the understanding of any identity is always complexly composed, always historically constructed. It is never in the same place but always positional. One always has to think about the negative consequences of the positionality. You cannot, as it were, reverse the discourses of any identity simply by turning them upside down. What is it like to live, by attempting to valorise and defeat the marginalization of the variety of Black subjects and to really begin to recover the lost histories of a variety of Black experiences, while at the same time recognizing the end of any essential Black subject? [. . .] Third generation young Black men and women know they come from the Caribbean, know that they are Black, know that they are British.They want to speak from all three identities.They are not prepared to give up any one of them.They will contest the Thatcherite notion of Englishness, because they say this Englishness is Black. They will contest the notion of Blackness because they want to make a differentiation between people who are Black from one kind of society and people who are Black from another. Because they need to know that difference, that difference that makes a difference in how they write their poetry, make their films, how they paint. It makes a difference. It is inscribed in their creative work. They need it as a resource. They are all those identities together. They are making astonishing cultural work, the most important work in the visual arts. Some of the most important work in film and photography and nearly all the most important work in popular music is coming from this new recognition of identity that I am speaking about. Very little of that work is visible elsewhere but some of you have seen, though you may not have recognized, the outer edge of it. Some of you, for example, may have seen a film made by Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi, called My Beautiful Laundrette.This was originally made as a television film for local distribution only, and shown once at the Edinburgh Festival where it received an enormous recep tion. If you have seen My Beautiful Laundrette you will know that it is the most transgressive text there is. Anybody who is Black, who tries to identify it, runs across the fact that the central characters of this narrative are two gay men. What is more, anyone who wants to separate the identities into their two clearly separate points will discover that one of these Black gay men is white and one of these Black gay men is brown. Both of them are struggling in Thatcher’s Britain. One of them has an uncle who is a Pakistani landlord who is throwing Black people out of the window. This is a text that nobody likes. Everybody hates it. You go to it looking for what are called “positive images” and there are none.There aren’t any positive images like that with whom one can, in a simple way, identify. Because as well as the politics – and there is certainly a politics in that and in Kureishi’s other film, but it is not a politics which invites easy identification – it has a politics OLD AND NEW IDENTITIES 153 which is grounded on the complexity of identification – it has a politics which is grounded on the complexity of identifications which are at work. I will read you something which Hanif Kureishi said about the question of responding to his critics who said, “Why don’t you tell us good stories about ourselves, as well as good/bad stories? Why are your stories mixed about ourselves?” He spoke about the difficult moral position of the writer from an oppressed or persecuted community and the relation of that writing to the rest of the society. He said it is a relatively new one in England but it will arise more and more as British writers with a colonial heritage and from a colonial or marginal past start to declare themselves. “There is sometimes,” he said, “too simple a demand for positive images. Positive images sometimes require cheering fictions – the writer as Public Relations Officer. And I’m glad to say that the more I looked at My Beautiful Laundrette, the less positive images I could see. If there is to be a serious attempt to understand present-day Britain with its mix of races and colours, its hysteria and despair, then writing about it has to be complex. It can’t apologize, or idealize. It can’t sentimentalize. It can’t attempt to represent any one group as having the total, exclusive, essential monopoly on virtue. A jejune protest or parochial literature, be it black, gay or feminist, is in the long run no more politically effective than works which are merely public relations. What we need now, in this position, at this time, is imaginative writing that gives us a sense of the shifts and the difficulties within our society as a whole. If contemporary writing which emerges from oppressed groups ignores the central concerns and major conflicts of the larger society, and if these are willing simply to accept themselves as marginal or enclave literatures, they will automatically designate themselves as permanently minor, as a subgenre.They must not allow themselves now to be rendered invisible and marginalized in this way by stepping outside of the maelstrom of contemporary history.” [. . .] Chapter 12 David Theo Goldberg RACIAL KNOWLEDGE [. . .] W H A T I A M C A L L I N G ‘racial knowledge’ is defined by a dual movement. It is dependent upon – it appropriates as its own mode of expression, its premises, and the limits of its determinations – those of established scientific fields of the day, especially anthropology, natural history, and biology. This scientific cloak of racial knowledge, its formal character and seeming universality, imparts authority and legitimation to it. Its authority is identical with, it parasitically maps onto the formal authority of the scientific discipline it mirrors. At the same time, racial knowledge – racial science, to risk excess – is able to do this because it has been historically integral to the emergence of these authoritative scientific fields. Race has been a basic categorical object, in some cases a founding focus of scientific analysis in these various domains.This phenomenon has no doubt been facilitated by the definitive importance of difference in modernity’s development of knowledge. As Foucault remarks: [A]ll knowledge, of whatever kind, proceeded to the ordering of its material by the establishment of differences and defined those differences by the establishment of an order; this was true for mathematics, true also for taxonomies . . . and for the sciences of nature; and it was equally true for all those approximative, imperfect, and largely spontaneous kinds of knowledge which are brought into play in the construction of the least fragment of discourse or in the daily process of exchange; and it was true finally for philosophical thought.1 Racial knowledge consists ex hypothesi in the making of difference; it is in a sense and paradoxically the RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 155 assumption and paradigmatic establishment of difference. An epistemology so basically driven by difference will ‘naturally’ find racialized thinking comfortable; it will uncritically (come to) assume racial knowledge as given. Power is exercised epistemologically in the dual practices of naming and evaluating. In naming or refusing to name things in the order of thought, existence is recognized or refused, significance assigned or ignored, beings elevated or rendered invisible. Once defined, order has to be maintained, serviced, extended, operationalized. Naming the racial Other, for all intents and purposes, is the Other. There is, as Said makes clear in the case of the Oriental, no Other behind or beyond the invention of knowledge in the Other’s name.These practices of naming and knowledge construction deny all autonomy to those so named and imagined, extending power, control, authority, and domination over them.To extend Said’s analysis of the ‘Oriental’ to the case of race in general, social science of the Other establishes the limits of knowledge about the Other, for the Other is just what racialized social science knows. It knows what is best for the Other – existentially, politically, economically, culturally: In governing the Other, racialized social science will save them from themselves, from their own Nature. It will furnish the grounds of the Other’s modification and modernization, establishing what will launch the Other from the long dark night of its prehistory into civilized time. The wiser, the more knowledgeable the governors are about subject races – at home or abroad, colonially or postcolonially – the less will their administrative rule or government require raw force. ‘Good racial government’ thus requires information about racial nature: about character and culture, history and traditions, that is, about the limits of the Other’s possibilities. Information, thus, has two senses: detailed facts about racial nature; and the forming of racial character. Information is accordingly furnished both by academic research and through practical expertise, through reading and observation, in schools and universities, in courts and prisons. Production of social knowledge about the racialized Other, then, establishes a library or archive of information, a set of guiding ideas and principles about Otherness: a mind, characteristic behavior or habits, and predictions of likely responses.The Other, as object of study, may be employed but only as informant, as representative translator of culture.The set of representations thus constructed and cataloged in turn confines those so defined within the constraints of the representational limits, restricting the possibilities available to those rendered racially other as it delimits their natures.The spaces of the Other – the colonies, plantations, reservations, puppet governments and client states, the villages and townships, or the prisons, ganglands, ghettoes, and crowded inner cities – become the laboratory in which these epistemological constructs may be tested. Even the literature, art, languages, and general cultural expression are appropriated as proper objects of ‘scientific’ evaluation. They are judged not as works among works of art in general, but the works or languages or expressions of the Other, representative of the cultural condition and mentality, of the state of Otherness – artifacts not art, primitive formulations not rationally ordered linguistic systems, savage or barbaric or uncivilized expressions not high culture. Learned societies linked to the colonial condition, even disciplines emerged for the sole purpose of studying various racial Others, or the racial Other as such, 156 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G its metaphysical being.These societies have served to inform the colonial or urban administration on whose account they have flourished, but they have also been defined and confined by the relation: what they could experience or represent, who and under what conditions objects could be approached, engaged, studied. Knowledge, accordingly, is socially managed, regulated by the general concerns of social authority, and self-imposed by the specific interests and concerns of the disciplinary specialist.2 So the central role of scientific authority in constituting Otherness cements such constitution into an objective given, a natural law.The characterizations accompanying, promoting, or instrumental to such constitutional creation of Others become reified, objectified as unalterable, basic parts of people’s natures. In this way, the various divisions of racialized personhood become set as naturally given, as universal and unavoidable. This epistemological manufacture of Otherness mirrors the abstraction typical if not inherent in philosophy’s constitution of its discursive object, namely, pure concepts indicative of universal, objective truths. Here, in the philosophical setting and interrelations of personhood (of mind and body), of civil society, and of the State, it is not that the Other is necessarily denied or abnegated (though this has often been so). Rather, in the abstraction of ideas about persons, society, and politics, the philosophical abstraction becomes objectified, once objectified reified as natural, and so extended universally. Part, indeed, an idealized part, is substituted for the whole, and the specificity of the Other, or Otherness itself is silently denied.Those thus rendered Other are sacrificed to the idealization, excluded from the being of personhood, from social benefits, and from political (self-)representation.3 Erased in the name of a universality that has no place for them, the subjects of real political economy are denied and silenced, ontologically and epistemologically and morally evicted.The universal claims ofWestern knowledge, then, colonial or postcolonial, turn necessarily upon the deafening suppression of its various racialized Others into silence. This process of silencing furnishes the solution to what Bauman identifies as the ‘technological challenge’ faced by social knowledge in the face of the erratic, and so unpredictable behavior of an Other unruled, or insufficiently ruled, by Reason.Admitting the Other’s subjectivity is at once to give up epistemological and political control; it is to admit scientific and administrative inefficiency.To retain control, the scientist as much as the administrator, the theoretical expert as much as the advisor and consultant has to control the variables, to manage the environment.The outcomes must be predictable, the more strictly so the better. Calculation is methodologically central, the more formalized the more acceptable. As Foucault remarks, ‘Recourse to mathematics, in one form or another, has always been the simplest way of providing positive knowledge about man with a scientific style, form, and justification.’ Racialized knowledge in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been no exception: witness phrenology, the measurement and weighing of skulls, IQ testing, and crime statistics.4 Implicit in these remarks is a hint of the relation between formally produced racialized knowledge, especially at the hands of social science, and the State. Etienne Balibar insists that the relationship to the Other at the heart of modern racism is necessarily mediated by State intervention.5 One of the basic modes this intervention assumes is concern over production of racialized knowledge. State conceptual mediation is as old as the category of race itself. But state mediation basically reinvents RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 157 itself with each of the major conceptual developments in racialized thinking: with polygenism and the colonial encounter, with social Darwinism and eugenics, with IQ testing, and, as we saw, with race relations analysis.We should pursue the conceptual relations between racialized social science and the State a little further. Race, social science, and the State Social science is important to the modern State both functionally and ideologically. In the former sense, social science furnishes the State and its functionaries with information, and it is often employed in formulating and assessing State policies to satisfy social needs. Ideologically, the State often invokes expedient analyses and the results of social science, whether by collaboration or appropriation, to legitimize State pursuits and to rationalize established relations of power and domination. I do not mean to suggest that the functional and ideological exhaust State support of social science, still less that these forms exhaust social science itself.The State may support a research program because of its scientific value; and much social science may have little formally to do with the State as such, though work that studiously avoids the social barely deserves the name. More important, the State – or some particular state – may be the object of a critical social science concerned with uncovering and attacking modes of repression. So State Functional and State Ideological Social Science could both be objects of critical analysis. What I am calling State Functional Social Science can be conducted in virtue of or in service of State ideology. Consider, for example, two related claims:‘People [in South Africa] . . . do define themselves, in the first instance, as members of a population group’; and ‘The research . . . showed that population group/race/ nationality are first-order interpretations, categorizations or characteristics in terms of which others are perceived’.6 These assumptions are so deeply entrenched in South African state ideology as to be unquestioned, and they are unquestioningly endorsed by the research that reproduces them.The claims hold, if at all, only in virtue of accepting the premises that ground the ideology; and in turn they give foundation to the conclusion that possible ‘solutions’ to the South African dilemma must be limited to producing ‘constructive intergroup relations’.7 Consider, by contrast, the claim that white settlers arrived at the Cape of Good Hope at the close of the seventeenth century coincidentally with African tribes migrating from the north. Asserted by amateur colonial historiansTheal and Cory early in the twentieth century, common in most school history texts, and until quite recently propounded by serious Afrikaner scholars, this claim was made in service of state ideology.8 (Perhaps it should be said that the claim functions as ideology.) It was designed to substantiate the idea that whites originally laid equal claim to the land with blacks and historically acquired control over (at least) 87 percent of South African territory by way of a ‘just’, and so justified war.The deeper insinuation here, of course, is one of white superiority. It seems obvious that State Ideological Social Science – the development and use of (a) social theory to rationalize, legitimize, or conceal repressive or unjust modes of social relation and expression 158 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G – has functional value.That is, ideologically State Social Science need not merely define but may serve given state interests. It remains an open question, however, whether State Functional Social Science – social science prompted by State defined purposes and structures – signifies ideologically. One is tempted to say that the ideology expressed by a State committed technocratically to functional social science is a form of instrumental pragmatism. Here, knowledge is treated as strictly instrumental to predefined State purposes, never as sustaining critique. Untheorized pragmatisms either generate or (more usually) cover up underlying ideological rationalizations of events, relations, and structures. The relevance of these distinctions to an understanding of racialized social science should become apparent as I proceed.Yet their application is seldom quite so straightforward. For example, during the 1980s, many South Africans were fond of citing data showing that the majority of that country’s black population did not support the call to disinvest. It is difficult to establish, without knowing considerably more and in the context of political hegemony, whether the data and, more significantly, the studies that produced them were functional or ideological; whether the studies were performed in virtue or in service of (function as) state ideology, or simply from the desire to know; and whether the use of the data thus collected was purely pragmatic, or in virtue, or in service of state ideology. The distinction between data and their use is one the positivist might appeal to in objecting that State Ideological Social Science is not social science at all; and I suspect that one who pursued this line of criticism would conclude likewise for functional social science in the way I have defined it. But this form of positivistic critique misses the deeper point that needs highlighting, namely, that social science – the study and analysis of human beings past, present, and future in their social relations – is affected in all kinds of ways by the Weltanschauung in terms of which it is conducted, that it is often conducted by and for the State, that it may be formative in constructing the ‘imagined community’ of racialized State- or nationhood, and that once collected the data has to be interpreted before conclusions about social policy or action can be drawn. In short, there is nothing remotely resembling pure social data whose meaning and truth are incontestably self-evident. Racialized knowledge production, and social science in particular, has been integral to State designs in both functional and ideological terms. It has often been noted that anthropology was handmaiden to colonialism. In furnishing information about those societies under the colonizing gun, anthropology both serviced the perceived needs of colonizing states and rationalized colonization as morally necessary for the sake of the colonized. Nevertheless, as Foucault reminds us, it should not be concluded that anthropology is nothing but a colonial discipline.9 This was, understandably, the general sense of many suffering at the hands of anthropologizing colonialisms.This conclusion might be implied from the fact that with independence, especially in Africa, anthropology departments were replaced largely by sociology faculties at local universities. It should be remembered, though, that while Western governments may have withdrawn from former colonial territories, Western social scientists clearly did not.With the growing move to independence in those states marked as racially Other, political scientists were substituted for anthropologists in representing the functional RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 159 and ideological inter ests of the West. Capitalism required new markets, and capital investment presupposed political stability. Western models of state formation were offered as necessary preconditions for the takeoff state10 of modernizing economic development: Rational political organization – for example, the Westminster model for former British colonies – would rationalize efficient use of economic resources. Indigenous political organization reflected prehistory, objects for anthropological study not modernization. Once the battle for ongoing political allegiance had been more or less won by the lure of capital, economists almost automatically replaced political scientists as the prevailing postcolonial experts of choice. If imperialist direct rule was replaced under colonialism by indirect rule (a prototype of the sort of independence to follow), the outmoding of indirect rule by independence was accompanied by the institution of rule by other means – by economic control. The influence of economists, of direct representatives of Western capital, and of local technicians trained in theWest furnished the skills necessary to rationalize control, in both senses of the term.11 More or less radical social science, while undertaking to alter the thrust of epistemological colonization, has nevertheless done little to transform the terms of racialized knowledge production. The terms used by social scientists to represent the racialized Other in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reflected popular representations in dominant Western culture at the times in question. This truncated and all too partial reading of the history of social science in colonial and postcolonial control shows that the terms of popular representations of racialized Others were in many cases set by prevailing modes dominant in social science at the time.What follows is a critical reading of three conceptual schemata hegemonic in the production of contemporary racialized knowledge that now define and order popular conceptions of people racially conceived: the Primitive, theThirdWorld, and the Underclass.These terms and the conceptual schemes they mark are the most prominent and general in silently ordering formal and popular knowledge of the Other in and through the study of cultural, political, and economic relations. [. . .] The primitive The word ‘primitive’ was first used in the late fifteenth century to refer to origins. In that sense, it assumed the connotations that were thought to accompany the image of an early, ancient, or first state, age, or period: old-fashioned, or rough, or rude. (It later acquired more neutral technical meanings in relation to the original words in a language, or members of the early Church.) The Enlightenment interest in human origins was, as we’ve seen, largely defined in physical terms. Original peoples or races were thought to have little or no social organization or cultural achievements worthy of mention, and the meaning of ‘primitive’ at the time seems to reflect this. It was in Darwin’s wake that scholarly interest in the ‘original’ social and cultural condition of society really flourished, though even at this time the concept of the Primitive was not necessarily racialized. Many of the major theorists of ‘primitive society’ in the late nineteenth century initially approached the object of study as a set of legal issues, the standard for which was an analysis of Roman law. Included in the 160 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G conception, accordingly, were Greek and Roman societies, those societies taken to be the primitive or early forerunners of modern Europe.The influence of this scholarly bent is reflected in the fact that art history initially included in the extension of the term ‘primitive art’ only pre-Renaissance Italian and Flemish painters. By the end of the century, the term had been broadened to include all ancient art; and by 1920, art’s historical connotation had assumed the racialized reference it had long had beyond the boundaries of that discipline, referring strictly to art of non-Western cultures: Africa, Oceania, and South America.12 The idea of a primitive society invented, as Adam Kuper points out, by nineteenth-century legal anthropologists referred to some primeval origin to which society could be archaeologically traced. The idea reified the ‘existence’ of its referent through the crafting of a set of specialized instruments, ultimately those of applied mathematics, to get objectively at the ‘real’ nature of primitive society. Like race, then, the concept of the Primitive proved theoretically adaptable, appropriating novel theoretical developments as its own by being appropriable as a concept central and so seemingly necessary to theoretical advance. Almost as vacuous in connotation as race, the Primitive transformed in meaning as race did.13 The Primitive assumed synonymy with the racial Other, a technical nomenclature for a popular category. Popular and scientific discourse merged, mutually influencing the terms of discursive formalization and expression. Indeed, the set of meanings that attaches to contemporary usage of ‘the Primitive’ and ‘primitive societies’, and by extension to ‘Primitivism’ is a legacy of this past century of scholarly and popular coproduction. Its transformative capacity makes it particularly suited as a basic trope, a primary element of racist expression. Formally, primitive societies were theorized in binary differentiation from a civilized order: nomadic rather than settled; sexually promiscuous, polygamous, and communal in family and property relations rather than monogamous, nuclear, and committed to private property; illogical in mentality and practicing magic rather than rational and scientific. In popular terms, non white primitives have come to be conceived as childlike, intuitive, and spontaneous; they require the iron fist of ‘European’ governance and paternalistic guidance to control inherent physical violence and sexual drives.14 If, Platonistically, there is conceived to be a primitive lurking deep in the soul of the civilized, it is ruled by Reason, contained and controlled by civility and the institutions of civil society. For the Civilized have a history, but the Primitive have none: their histories are frozen.15 It is a remarkable conceit, this, to think of ‘a people’ having no history, no past, no movement from one time to another, frozen stiff like a wax figure in MadameTussaud’s or the Museum of Man. Remarkable in its arrogance, in its abnegation of those seemingly so unlike themselves that they can assume away humanity, banish it to the shadows of their assumptions about what human beings are or are not; remarkable in its lack of self-conscious skepticism about their own limits and excesses, their own warts and odors and blemishes, of what they can or cannot do or know, of their own productive capacities and incapacities, developments and destructions. Remarkable, too, in its denial of the invented relationships between Self and Other in modernity and now postmodernity that have been necessary in making possible the standard of living achieved by the ‘civilized’, ‘developed’, RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 161 ‘progressive’,‘historical’ beings. If the Primitive has no history at all, it is only because the theoretical standard-bearers of Civilization have managed first to construct a Primitive Subject and then to obliterate his history. I do not mean to deny the importance of the anthropological critique of the primitivist discourse throughout much of this century. Two related points need stressing about the counterdiscourses. First, if Kuper is correct, although primitivist ideas no longer dominate anthropological theory, they continue to stamp initiation into the discipline and to be circulated at the fringes. Indeed, they continue to structure popular ideas about the racial and distant Other, as in the Blair brothers’ popular‘Adventure’ public television series, or National Geographic features, or coffee table books.16 Second, this popular discourse of the Primitive has partially been sustained by the fact that the anthropological critique of the discourse is internal, so much so that it reproduces (even if it transforms) key concepts: primitive society, the primitive or savage mind, totemism, and animism. Contemporary sophisticates often know all too fashionably the critical references but are largely ignorant of their content.This partial, superficial knowing promotes reproduction of the categories under critique rather than internalizing the point of the critique itself. There is an important sense in which this latter criticism also applies to scholarly production about the Primitive that borrows from, but is strictly beyond, anthropological confines.Two examples, quite different in various ways, will illustrate the point.The first is MariannaTorgovnick’s widely cited book, Gone Primitive, to which I have already referred in passing. The second is the controversial Museum of Modern Art exhibition on ‘Primitivism’, and its accompanying two-volume catalog. WhileTorgovnick discusses the MOMA exhibition in considerable detail, I will analyze each in turn. Torgovnick is concerned with the way modernists and postmodernists construct notions of the Primitive and import them into contemporary culture. She studies the various ways in which the discourse of primitivism signifies, both in racialized terms and in ways that have little if anything to do with racialized conceptions. In spite of her self-conscious resolve to distance herself from the discourse, it silently takes hold of her. On one hand,Torgovnick insists that in constructing a notion of the Primitive ‘we become primitive’. One would think she would accordingly take more seriously Kuper’s warning that there never was anything like a ‘primitive society’, that there is no coherent way of specifying what it is, that the history of the discourse is ‘a history of an illusion’.17 On the other hand,Torgovnick repeatedly, if tentatively, reaffirms the existence of primitive cultures that differ from ‘our’ modern or postmodern ones.18 A critique of primitivist discourse that so readily reiterates the discursive terms at issue tends to reproduce the terms it is committed to resisting. In an interesting and revealing discussion of the Tarzan phenomenon as primitivizing texts, Torgovnick offers a good example of the penetration of social scientific categories of racial Otherness into, and their distribution by, popular culture. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan’s American author, conducted nonprofessional research on plant and animal life in Africa, and he was no doubt familiar with popular anthropological knowledge in the first half of the twentieth century. So, as Torgovnick points out, the reticence and ultimate denial of miscegenation that Burroughs constructs ofTarzan’s 162 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G sexual relations with female apes is reflective of and reinforces prevailing dispositions in the United States toward interracial intercourse. But it is one deeply reflective, at the same time, both of the polygenic presuppositions lingering from nineteenth-century anthropology in popular literature and of eugenic dispositions socially influential in the United States well into the 1920s.19 Torgovnick’s understated commitment to the categories of primitivist discourse is reflected in her appreciation of Burroughs having Tarzan join the Waziri of West Africa in ‘their dance and fashioning within their societal norms’.There is an unstated assumption throughout that the reader is one with the postmodernist ‘we’, that the Primitive is in no position to read such a text.The ‘we’ here, of which Tarzan represents a recent predecessor, is identical with the anthropological ‘we’. Indeed,Tarzan may be read as the figure of an anthropologist. He enters the ‘primitive’ world of Africa ‘to learn what hierarchies exist in the human world and by suppressing his doubts about their inevitability and basis’.20 This is the anthropological drive, and the implication of this ‘realist’ ethnography – seemingly neutral in its objectivity but masking the imperialist imperative – is the affirmation of ‘Western hierarchies’, of superiority and subjection.21 Thus, Gone Primitive becomes an example of the production of social knowledge reproducing certain sorts of established presuppositions about relations between racialized natures.Torgovnick approves of what she takes to be the central thematic of theTarzan series: leaving nature as it is, being true to nature, living in ‘harmony with nature, without troubling relations of hierarchy and otherness’.22 It is as though this utopian naturalism escapes racist expression, which may yet be advanced through the assumption of natural difference. It also leaves resistance to racisms unproblematically coming to terms with nature, with what Torgovnick leaves (and one is left to assume she takes) as natural difference, with the differences of racialized natures – analogized in keeping with a long history of racist expression in terms of apes! ‘Going primitive’ inTorgovnick’s reading, then, is ultimately to ‘go home’ to a space of comfort and balance, to a space that is supposed to save us from‘our estrangement from ourselves and our culture’.23While this domesticated construal at least centralizes the inventedness of the Primitive, it uncritically recreates the notion of the West’s power over its creation, its appropriation as its own, as ‘home’ precisely, a place of comfort, a ‘return to origins’. If this is a place to which it belongs, to which it has privileged access – or which belongs to it – theWestern self must surely be justified in its appropriation.What is missing from the text is an account of the expense of the appropriation, the real life and death expense, for those so constructed as primitive. [. . .] TheThirdWorld [. . .] The theory of three worlds was first proposed in 1952 by a French demographer, Alfred Sauvy, writing in the newspaper L’Observateur. Sauvy provocatively suggested that the notion of the ‘Third World’ was a product of developing superpower antagonisms expressing themselves in terms of the cold war.The notion came to reflect superpower anxiety about escalating postcolonial conflict, the fear of expanding rival spheres of interest over vast territories, numbers of people, and resources. It RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 163 also expressed alarm among the newly decolonized or decolonizing at revitalized control by the iron fist of superpower domination. In this sense, as Pletsch argues, the concept of a ThirdWorld is nothing more than the by-product of aggression between the First and Second worlds. This threefold division has been accompanied by, indeed, it has been defined in terms of sets of accompanying characterizations.24 For social scientists and political theorists who have been seminal in constructing the model, the First World is strictly modern, scientifically and technologically ordered, ruled by utilitarian decision procedures. Governed by the laws of economic nature, of rational self-interest, it is unconstrained and self-regulating, the embodiment of the liberal, autonomous Kantian state. Of all societies, it is (as Pletsch says) the most natural, that which all others should seek to emulate, for it is guided by the invisible hand of universal Reason. The First World is thus efficient, democratic, and free. The SecondWorld, the space of (once) communist domination, is conceived as modernized and technologically developed, and so partially rational. But it is stricken unnaturally by ideology and by a socialist elite who must rely upon repression to maintain its privileges. This ideological veil and repressive reliance prevents the SecondWorld from being completely efficient, and unless it emulates the First World, it is destined sooner or later to stagnate. (The recent economic and political devolution of the Second World is being taken in many ways as triumphant vindication of the naturalism of the First, and so as confirmation of the model.) TheThirdWorld is also defined in economic and political terms.The accompanying geographical, environmental, and psychological characterizations are more or less expressly linked to racialized premises. Pletsch suggests that, but possibly for ‘left’ and ‘right’, the three-world division is ‘the most primitive’ scheme of political classification in social science.The rootedness of racialized discourse in modernity and the centrality of ‘black’ and ‘white’ within this discourse suggests that these racial designations are classificatory ‘primitives’ as basic perhaps as ‘left’ and ‘right’.25 It is in virtue of this racializing of the ThirdWorld that the First and Second worlds also silently assume racial character. The ThirdWorld is located baking beneath the tropical sun in contrast to the moderate climate of the Northern Hemisphere so conducive to intellectual productivity. It is the world of tradition and irrationality, underdeveloped and overpopulated, disordered and chaotic. It is also non-European and nonwhite. There has been considerable debate about how the world should be divided in three. Different configurations will result when one employs only economic or only political criteria, or some mix. The divisions will differ again from one interpretation of economic criteria to another, from level of production or development or technology, say, to capacity of the rich countries to exploit the poor. The climatic–geographic consideration, historically associated with race, has led a country like Greenland, for example, to be considered part of the FirstWorld, while others like Korea or Singapore or Taiwan, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, at least until recently, to ‘belong’ to the Third World, and still others like some Southern European countries to hover politically, and economically, and ideologically between the two. States with populations considered racially polarized, like Israel or South Africa, 164 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G are ambiguous: Under one interpretation of the criteria they turn out to ‘belong’ to the FirstWorld; under the other, to be Third. I am not interested here, at least not primarily, in pursuing the theoretical politics of representing the three worlds. Rather, my concern is to indicate how in its conception and articulation this tripartite division is racialized; how it perpetuates, conceptually and actually, racialized relations – relations of domination, subjugation, and exclusion. From the outset, the concept of the ThirdWorld captured the popular, political, and scientific imaginations. Journalists took to the term like vultures to a slain carcass. It came to dominate the way social science conceived of the world, of the basic differences between states, of what Pletsch calls the division of labor within the social sciences.The three-world scheme ordered the focal object of each discipline: Mainstream economics, sociology, and political science respectively concentrated on wealth, status, and power, especially in capitalist societies. Communist studies and international relations focused on the Second World. Area studies, development economics, and anthropology analyzed the ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘traditional societies’ of the ThirdWorld.26 The study ofWestern civilization, the classics or the Great Books is regarded as foundational, as the base and structure for knowledge, value, morality, and good citizenship. By contrast, area studies, and in particular specialization in geographical and cultural fields concerning Otherness are standardly taken to have little if any intrinsic value.They are, if anything, deemed only instrumentally valuable.They are not pursued as knowledge of the field for its own sake, for the value inherent in it. At best, they are thought to furnish knowledge about the Other, the better to deal with him.This amounts to ‘knowing how’, not‘knowing that’, to use a well-known epistemological distinction.The instrumental knowledge promoted concerns how to civilize, how to approach and relate to the Other. More significantly, perhaps, the terms ‘FirstWorld’ and ‘SecondWorld’ are rarely used. States so conceived are usually called capitalist or (formerly) communist, the West or the East, and their populations are termed European, (North) American and, generically,Westerners or East Europeans. ‘The West’ is similarly a sliding sign. Initially designating countries west of the iron curtain, its scope came to include those countries and their inhabitants that are capitalist in their mode of production, politically free with democratic institutions, culturally modernized, and largely white. Thus, the designation usually includes Australasia, which is almost as far east as one can go without being west, but excludes Japan (surely a First World state if there are any) and does so implicitly on racialized grounds, as in the title of a recent book by a British official with the European Community, JapanVersus theWest. Indeed,‘theWest’ has included South Africa insofar as that country has been considered white or non-African. (Under apartheid, Japanese have been considered, for obvious reasons, ‘honorary whites’.) The grandson of H. F. Verwoerd, for example, expressed a common sentiment among whites in South Africa when he once explained to me that he had ‘gone over to Africa’ (he meant Zambia).This is reiterated in a plaque at the Afrikaans Language Monument near Cape Town (which ironically is located on a hill across from the prison, in the valley below, from which Nelson Mandela was finally released): ‘Afrikaans’, the plaque reads, ‘is the language that links western Europe and Africa; . . . it forms a bridge between the enlightenedWest and magical Africa.’ Implicit in these claims RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 165 is a deep-seated presupposition that South Africa is a European country (in racial, cultural, political, and economic commitments), not an African one.Within a historical context of political economy, power, and dominant culture, this characterization strikes me as highly suggestive.27 By contrast,‘ThirdWorld’ is the generic term of choice in referring not only to those states that are taken to be underdeveloped but to populations considered traditional in their productive and cultural ways. Sometimes,‘theThirdWorld’ carries no racialized connotation:Argentina, for example, is often regarded as a Third World country (though not one that immediately comes to mind when using the term generically), and its population is not usually considered to be racially Other.Yet here, too, racial characterization can take over:Argentinean players in the 1990World Cup were repeatedly described by British football commentators, in a reinvocation of themes of the Falkland campaign, as ‘naturally violent’, displaying the sort of behaviour to be expected of ‘the Latin temperament’. Equally, the ‘exotic’ players of the ‘Cinderella team’ from the Cameroon – some players sported dreadlocks and wore ‘traditional’ jewelry – were characterized as ‘exciting’, but ‘wild’ and ‘undisciplined’.28 The racial connotations carried by the ascription,‘the ThirdWorld’, are captured most clearly in their usage by those in the United States and Europe who warn that blacks, the Gastarbeiter immigrants, and asylum seekers are turning their respective societies economically and culturally into ThirdWorld countries. In the political and cultural theater of the United States, Kirk Varnedoe is not that far from David Duke or Patrick Buchanan, or indeed from George Bush, in claiming that ‘Third World nations have intensified their concern for the integrity of their own tribal arts’. As a range of conservative political figures portray an undifferentiated blackness or Otherness for political effect and reduce it to an unspecifiedThirdWorld, so Varnedoe reifies an undifferentiated ThirdWorld and reduces it to the level of the Primitive. In a recent NewYork Sunday Times article on the declining fortunes of Detroit, Ze’ev Chafets draws a similar analogy between what he describes as the tragic decline of that city under black rule and the inevitable decline of independent African nations.29 In a similar vein, the racialized situation of guest workers in Europe, not that different from Mexican migrants in California, is increasingly obviated against the reconstructed measuring stick of a European identity.Their strictly economic status as guest workers transforms into a supranational, superracial one against the backdrop of a European identity. Europe, after all, was central to the initial manufacture of racialized identities and racist exclusions. It is an irony too great to be bypassed that the unification of a European ‘we’, racially exclusionary in reinvented fashion, occurs exactly half a millennium after voyages of discovery that prompted the initial manufacture of racial Otherness.Whereas European racism might initially be described as exclusion at a distance, it is now what Balibar terms ‘internal exclusion’, and it takes place at the world level.30 Migrant labour, then, is nothing else than racialized exploitation, an off-the-books form of what Worsley calls ‘cost-free aid from theThird World to the First’.31 The analogy with South Africa is accordingly worth pursuing [. . .]. Insofar as South Africa is considered a black country, it is ‘naturally’ designated Third World. In a recent visit to South Africa, I found whites widely bemoaning their observation that ‘the new South Africa’ is fast becoming ‘a 166 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G ThirdWorld country’. It follows that the notorious migrant labor system apartheid merely formalized must be a form of relatively free service to those identified as (ex-)European. [. . .] The underclass The notion of the Underclass has been present in social science literature for some considerable time. Myrdal used the term in passing in The American Dilemma and returns to it more firmly nearly twenty years later. Myrdal’s use was strictly economic, designating the persistently unemployed and underemployed, those marginalized or completely excluded from the postindustrial economy.32With structural transformations in the capitalist economy that began to be obviated towards the close of the 1970s, the connotation of the term in social science shifted from degrees of unemployment to deep-seated, chronic poverty.This shift signaled a series of conceptual chains forged as much by the popular media as by social scientists.The Underclass population came to be characterized in behavioral terms, as a set of pathological social attitudes, actions, and activities. The outward, visible sign of these pathologies was race.Thus, the notion was relinked to the nineteenth-century conceptions of the ‘undeserving poor’, the ‘rabble’, and the ‘lumpenproletariat’.33 Accordingly,‘the Underclass’ has come to signify not just the unemployed but the permanently unemployed and unemployable. It has come to include, particularly in the popular but also in the academic and political imaginations, those poor considered unmotivated to work – especially, women on welfare, vicious street criminals, drug pushers and addicts, hustlers and urban gangs, winos and the mentally deranged homeless. If these conditions are permanent, then they are necessary, and necessarily unchangeable, and so it would seem there is no responsibility for doing anything about them save improving the criminal justice response. The conditions of the Underclass are accordingly reduced to individual pathologies and the poverty of culture that generates the social disease of deviance.‘“Underclass” describes a state of mind and a way of life. It is at least as much a cultural as an economic condition.’34 The claim that the Underclass consists of pathological individuals is‘established’ by way of comparison with the‘deserving poor’, those adult, law-abiding, two-parent families that, despite steady male employment, are unable to make ends meet.35 The supposed fact that the underclass condition is produced by the poverty of culture is ‘explained’ in terms of the absence of moral virtues disabling individuals from ‘deferring gratification, planning ahead, and making sacrifices for future benefit’.36 So the social conditions of the undeserving poor can be blamed upon their own character. The interpenetrating lists of individual pathologies and cultural poverty that have been taken by social scientists and journalists alike to make up the Underclass condition carry patently racialized connotations.Though technically and historically the Underclass is purported to be ‘interracially’ constituted (poverty is supposed to know no color), it is obvious that blacks are for the most part being thus chronically identified. If there is a single identifying criterion of Underclass membership, it is idleness. And as J. M. Coetzee makes clear in relation to the history of white South African writing, RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 167 idleness has long expressed a central idea of racialized representation.37 In group terms, blacks in the United States, Britain, and now South Africa are often aggregated into Underclass characterization by the term’s conceptual extension: by police, on the street, in the media, at school. And they are so referenced whether they technically meet the sliding criteria or not. Inner city culture conjures up the very real political economy of racialized space that the concept of the Underclass is assumed to be theorizing.The individual pathologies and wanting culture of the Underclass are seen to be expressed against the blighted backdrop of the urban ghetto. Causal responsibility for the set of Underclass conditions nevertheless is largely traced not to urban location – this is thought to be a mere manifestation, a symptom – but to the pathological population, to its culture. It is this causal inversion that William Julius Wilson undertakes to rectify in his important work on the Underclass. Wilson has been careful to evade the poverty of culture thesis. He conceptualizes the Underclass as the set of individuals lacking training and skills, those experiencing long-term unemployment, and those not part of the labor force. Wilson seeks to explain the social position of the Underclass primarily in terms of the ‘mismatch’ hypothesis.38 Inner city residents in the past two decades have been caught by structural changes in the U.S. economy that have left them without the technological skills necessary for the financial service jobs their spatial position would otherwise give them access to.This dislocation has two main effects:The ‘concentration effect’ results in a large number of single parent families, the unemployed, and criminals ghettoized into a relatively small and intense urban area with diminishing social services. The ‘isolation effect’ leaves these people cut off from the ameliorating influence of a middle class, black and white, who have fled for the suburbs. ThoughWilson dismisses the poverty of culture position, he has not found the case for individual pathologies quite so objectionable. Included in his underclass membership are street criminals, welfare mothers, and other social deviants. His notion of the Underclass is thus identified against a paradigm of a healthy body politic from which the Underclass population by definition diverges.39 Although Wilson stresses that the Underclass includes many nonblacks, he is equally clear that his work focuses on the much larger black segment of the Underclass.These considerations prompt two implications forWilson’s analysis.The first is that he racializes the concept almost in spite of himself. The weight of Wilson’s scientific stature behind the use of the concept authorizes even its more dubious, racially obvious policy and popular usages, no matterWilson’s own guarded qualifications. The second implication is at the explanatory level.Wilson predicates his structural economic analysis of the state of the Underclass on the idea of isolated, albeit spatially concentrated individuals. It is this methodological assumption that leavesWilson holding on to the descriptive schemata of individual pathology. And it is in part this assumption that leads him to downplay the place of racism in his explanatory account of the black Underclass, as well as to de-emphasize race-specific programs as viable solutions. Wilson finds it important, particularly in his more recent work, to recognize the effects on the black Underclass of racism, past and present. Nevertheless, his overriding emphasis throughout has 168 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G been to stress the relatively greater weight of class considerations in the explanation of Underclass conditions. Class structure is specified in terms of individuals’‘attachment to the labor force’; in terms, that is, of individual job opportunities or access to job network and information systems.40 Contrast this, for example, with Marx’s notion of ‘the proletariat’, which is conceived as the group whose members own nothing but their labor power. This individualist methodological presupposition – perhaps it is even ontological – forces Wilson to underplay the influence of group effects. Similarly, Wilson thinks nonracialized programs aimed universally at alleviating poverty have far better political prospects in the racially tense political arena of the United States than race-based programs, which he takes to be racially polarizing. However, it is well-known that universally cast legislation and classrather than race-specific antipoverty programs end up benefiting the white poor far more than the black.41 One explanation for this is the ongoing perception among enforcers and administrators, linked to the prevailing image of the Underclass, that the former are deserving poor, the latter undeserving. Wilson has undertaken to integrate structural factors in the plight of the Underclass with individual and cultural ones.This is a commendable undertaking, but it is Wilson’s peculiar mix that proves troubling. Thus, while he acknowledges racialized experiences and racism, they are almost completely untheorized in the explanatory schema and openly criticized in relation to policy considerations. Wilson’s analysis has been widely influential, even upon critics of his work. One of his deeper influences is related to this individualizing that is at the heart of his conceptual and explanatory account. In a set of interesting critical remarks onWilson’s work, Jennifer Hochschild praisesWilson’s courage for insisting on the disturbing shift in the social values of the inner city black poor. As evidence of this shift, Hochschild quotes from unpublished work of the urban sociologist Elijah Anderson. Anderson notes the ‘general sense of alienation, lack of opportunity, and demoralization of certain aspects of the black community’. Nevertheless, Anderson seems to be noting something more subtly complex than Hochschild is implying, namely, that the shift in values among the urban black poor is structurally related, a frustrated response to the perception of perpetuated, racially defined limits the black poor find themselves facing.The frustration has become especially acute in light of the failed promises the civil rights era seemed to hold out.42 Anderson’s structurally defined observation is at odds with Hochschild’s ambivalent individualism, an individualism that becomes highlighted in Hochschild’s analysis of possible courses of action. Here, she locates responsibility for responding to the plights and problems of the racialized poor primarily with those closest to the problems: the individuals directly in touch with those whose values are seen to need transforming. These include parents, schoolteachers, social workers, police, potential employers, and local politicians. True, Hochschild proceeds from here to structural considerations and state obligations, but the latter are secondary, an afterthought, though a recognizably necessary one. Hochschild individualizes the issues by locating the nexus of both the problem of poverty and of the starting point for transforming its complex of individual and structural considerations with the poverty of culture. She works out from this localized individual space of responsibility, expanding the universe of obligation outward RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 169 from the ‘problematic individual’ ultimately to the political.43 This presupposes that the problems lie fore most with deviant individual expression and only vaguely with policies, prejudice, economic structure and political self-interest, the failure of moral imagination and application, and the poverty of political discourse. Experience might have taught us that where technologies of conceptualization create distance between what is needed and those with the responsibility and means to respond to the needs, little is likely to be done.The virtue ofWilson’s work is its recognition of the complex interaction all the way up and down, so to speak, between individual responsibilities (local and distant) and transformed structures. The Underclass, I want to insist, is one conceptual technology that stands in the way of fully satisfying that recognition. Naming the Underclass makes the Underclass, nominates it into existence, and constitutes its members at once as Other. Wilson’s understanding of the force of race and the effects of racisms in the account of contemporary poverty in a deeply racialized social order like the United States rests upon his underestimating the perpetual disadvantages blacks continue to suffer, irrespective of their class position. Employment opportunities for whites are considerably greater than for blacks across the class spectrum. Geographically defined unemployment rates for blacks are often double that for whites.The rates of unemployment for both male and female blacks with one or more years of college are greater than those for whites who failed to complete high school. Unlike the experience of inadequately educated immigrants, many educated blacks have to settle for relatively poor jobs, while uneducated blacks have to live with no legitimate work at all. As Fainstein concludes in his subtle and convincing analysis ofWilson’s ‘mismatch’ analysis, racism pervades the U.S. economy. It is built into the routine decisions of employers: the way they organize the division of labor, how they allocate men, women, blacks, and whites among jobs; what they decide to pay different kinds of workers, and the implicit criteria they utilize in hiring and promotion. Combined with virulent racism in housing markets, which keeps blacks concentrated in residential ghettoes in central cities and increasingly in suburban jurisdictions, outright discrimination along with more subtle forms of channeling in labor markets goes a long way toward explaining black economic disadvantage.44 Managing inflation through unemployment, for example, is a tax on the poor and, in the context of deeply racialized employment differentiation, upon blacks in particular.45This further disadvantages the truly disadvantaged, and it benefits those relatively well-off in ways analogous to the largely free aidThirdWorld migrant labor finds itself ‘forced’ into furnishing the First World. So, in general, the notion of the Underclass explicitly erases the exclusionary experiences of racisms from social science analysis while silently enthroning the demeaning impact of race-based insinuations and considerations. It distinguishes the especially impoverished from the ordinary poor while aggregating together those whose conditions of experience in various ways – in terms of race, 170 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G gender, and class – may be quite different. It thus promotes a single policy solution for perhaps very different difficulties and social problems people find themselves facing.46 In a society whose advantages and opportunities are racially ordered, a concept like the Underclass will almost inevitably assume racial connotation. No matter the protestations of social scientists of Wilson’s standing, race will likely be tied to pathological considerations of an underclass. As others have noted, in analyses where there is an underclass, there too implicitly must be supposed to be an overclass. However, we find both in social science and popular accounts no mention of this. The justificationWilson offers for using the concept turns on its identification of the structurally marginal position of some people in the labor force and the linking of this economic marginality to spatial location. He rightly criticizes Hochschild’s substitute, ‘the estranged poor’, for failing to reflect the relationship between people’s experience in the labor market and their neighborhood environment.47 If Wilson’s notion of the Underclass passes for the most part silently over the racial characterization of this relationship, Hochschild’s term seems to erase it altogether. I would like to suggest the racially marginalized as an alternative. It explicitly captures the class dimension of economic marginality; it references the ghetto as the spatial location of the racially marginalized (Wilson admits that the white poor seldom live in ghetto areas); it differentiates those who are racialized but nonmarginal from those who deeply experience the material effects of exclusion, namely, the racial poor; and in foregrounding the processes of marginalization, it refuses moralistic judgments as first causes of the marginal condition. Accordingly, it directs analysis properly away from individualized character traits, or their lack, to what Hughes identifies as the ‘isolated deprivation of the (impacted) ghetto’.The concept of the racially marginalized thus clearly captures the intersection of race and class that multiplies the depth of structural dislocation.48 It also bridges the imaginary conceptual divide between those ghettoized in the racialized locations of urban sites, the ‘urban jungles’ throughout ‘the West’ and those marginalized in ‘the Third World’, between those situated as the ‘Underclass’ and those whose (supposed lack of) history is reduced to ‘the Primitive’.49 There is a further dimension to the power of social science in effecting the ‘objects’ of its studies, one that is especially pertinent in the case of the racially marginalized. Debates in social science concerning important policy-related questions take place over a specified time span – a decade, say. During this time, the exchange becomes more precise – in the conceptual apparatus used, in hypothesis specification, testing, data accumulation, and analysis. Wilson’s ‘mismatch’ hypothesis is a case in point. In the meantime, en passant, policy decisions are implemented on the basis of one or another of the contesting positions in the unresolved debate, a debate that may never see satisfactory resolution. The policies are necessarily partial (in both senses), just as the debate is incomplete. Researchers proceed to new issues, driven by perceived social needs, or their own interests, or available funding. Monies for research on the black super poor, or for that matter on black racial attitudes50 have been notoriously difficult to come by, especially after the Moynihan and Kerner reports were issued in the late 1960s. Of course, there are real lives that are affected by the policies. So all too often the resolution of the issues under debate, insofar as there is resolution at all, is embodied in the lives of those trapped between the threads of tattered policies. RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 171 Blauner and Wellman emphasize the political and economic power major research universities represent to poor black populations whose neighborhoods are often adjacent to and controlled by the university trustees. University researchers are seen by communities to stand in positions of control, power, and exploitation, with little or no benefits accruing to the ‘objects’ of the research.51 I have argued that racialized power is primarily conceived through conceptual orders like the Primitive, the ThirdWorld, and the Underclass.These are constitutive metaphors of racialized experience, the power of which consists in their ability to order and order anew racialized exclusions. In terms of social science, power is here expressed, managed, and extended in and through representing racial Others – to themselves and to the world. As with ‘black’, it may be possible for those objectified by these categories to appropriate them, assuming the categories in assertive self-ascription.This appropriation is what I earlier called‘standing inside the terms’, making them one’s own, giving new meaning to and thereby redirecting them as forms of political engagement and critique. Of the three notions,‘theThird World’ has come closest to this, perhaps because it is less deeply positioned in the history and rhetoric of racialized discourse than the other two. Nevertheless, it has to take extraordinary effort on the part of all, or nearly all, so characterized to redirect the original connotations the three terms carry. For a term like ‘primitive’ this would prove exceptionally difficult.Where it is still used, its referential scope proves to be partial and vague, temporally vacant and spatially diffuse. Those so referenced are rarely in a position of power, politically and technologically, to take on the category as a form of self-reference, even should they choose to. In the case of ‘the Underclass’, the lack of representational power seems equally obvious. Indeed, it might be added that to the extent that people so referenced assume some semblance of representational authority, they cease under the imposed criteria to be ‘underclass’ or ‘primitive’. As we have seen, it is not necessary that members of any group get racialized, though some groups – blacks and American Indians especially – are more likely than others to be. Nor once racialized does it necessarily follow that all members will be treated in racial terms or that any one member be so treated all or even much of the time. Once a group is racialized, and especially where the racial creation of the group runs deep into the history of its formation, however, the more likely will it be that the group and its members are made to carry its racialized nature with them. Thus, not only is it the case, as Bauman observes, that the great effort exerted by the social sciences in studying race and racism has done little to alter the self-conception of the social sciences,52 it is perhaps more emphatically the case that the social sciences have done much to create, authorize, legitimate, and extend both the figures of racial Otherness and the exclusions of the various racisms. The ways in which the production of social knowledge in the name of science continues more or less silently, more or less explicitly, to do so will be obviated by analyzing two contemporary texts produced in and representative of differing though not unrelated racialized contexts.The first reads race strictly as Africa; the second undertakes to normalize racial comprehension in/of South Africa by reinventing it in terms of ‘Western’ social science. 172 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G A dying racism? Terence Ranger has long been concerned with representing Africa to and in theWest.Where earlier social scientists engaged in what Mudimbe properly calls inventing Africa,53 Ranger is committed to reinventing it. In the text I want to focus on here, his definitive statement on ‘race relations’, Ranger re-presents the civilizing mission of liberal good works in terms of charity beginning not at but from the home. Like earlier social science about the Other, then, it could be said that Ranger pursues Torgovnick’s primitivizing search for (a) home in modernity’s space-time of ‘transcendental homelessness’. And as before, the invention of this idealized home can only be sustained by the destructive denial of the Other’s actual home. The auspicious occasion of Ranger’s remarks is his inaugural lecture in 1987 as (Cecil John) Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at Oxford University. Ranger might thus be permitted some largesse, but the form the lecture assumes is the metaphor of a reimagined imperialism. In the address, ‘Rhodes, Oxford, and the Study of Race Relations’, Ranger engages in a range of metaphorical transmutations: metaphorical in the literary construction of his lecture; metaphorical in standing for the epistemological reproduction of the rule over Africa (which by implication cannot epistemologically rule itself, for it requires Oxford once again to know it, to be represented to itself); and metaphorical again for the place of racialized representation in Britain, in the terms of Ranger’s, of Rhodes’s Oxford. Ranger’s lecture transposes the Rhodes Chair of Race Relations into a Central African Kingdom; the Oxford pro-vice-chancellor, the highest-ranking university representative present, into a tribal elder; Ranger himself into an ascending king, a ruler over the domain of African Studies, not just at Oxford but universally; thus, Race Relations (itself a severe circumscription of a domain and a reification of its terms of representation as givens) into a certain sort of African Studies; race into what others are; and finally, Cecil John Rhodes, of all people, into a ‘tutelary deity’, a ‘patron divinity’ of Africa, of Race Relations as African Studies.54 The rhetorical medium of Ranger’s transmutations is the description of the figure of Rhodes as deity of African Studies. Ranger admits the Janus-faced nature of the figure: At once appealing and fraternal, paternalistic and condescending to local Africans, Rhodes approached African leaders as equals and as servants. Expressing a desire to live as peaceful neighbor or landlord, Rhodes was consumed with the drive for and expression of personal, political, and economic power.This figure of contradictory power Ranger contrasts with an antidotive figure, a ‘companion deity’ with whom Ranger more easily identifies, a figure representing ‘abnegation and powerlessness’.This is the figure of Arthur Shearly Cripps – British, white, a missionary (though‘radical’), and above all‘a quintessential Oxford man’. Yet, concludes Ranger with just a hint of melancholy, Cripps’s humanism – his ‘pastoralism and medievalism’, traveling on foot in his missionary Africa ‘like his African flock’ – is inadequate to salvage Africa for Oxford; it is unable ‘to conceptualize Africa’.55 The moral of Ranger’s narrative for Oxford – the University, that is – is neither to save nor ruthlessly to modernize (Rhodes’s) Africa.‘Oxford must settle for a relationship of equality (if it is RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 173 not in itself absurd to speak of equality between a university and a continent).’56 It is self-evidently absurd to speak in this way. But Ranger, recall, is speaking not anymore of a university but of the Oxfordian Kingdom, not of Africa but of African Studies, not of Africans but of Race Relations, over all of which he is assuming titular control. In moving to the concluding moments of his inauguration, to the assumption of his throne, Ranger reveals the state-to-be of the study of race relations at Oxford: an African Studies Centre not in the mold of any white divinity of the past – a Rhodes or Cripps or Smuts – but with the view to the need for understanding Africa ‘as much as Africa needs to understand us’.57 It is unclear in whose name the ‘us’ is being spoken here – Oxford, Britain, Europe, or the West. Postmodern irony and self-consciousness are not beyond the assertion of postcolonial power.What is clear is that Ranger refers by ‘race’ only to Africans, to the traditional Other; and clearer yet what his intentions are in representing Africa: to bring Africans to Oxford so as to be able ‘to render [them] accurately – to speak of, sometimes even for Africans in Oxford’.58 The power of representation remains fit for the king. In his construction of race and ethnicity in the name of Rhodes, not a word about race in contemporary Britain, about the ‘empire striking back’ or the ‘lack of black in the Union Jack’; no mention of the vast study of race relations and the critical debate about racial construction and exclusion. Not a word, that is, about the state of British race analysis impossible to ignore beyond the shadows of Oxford’s ivied bastions. No reference to race in the city of Oxford, of the testy relation between racialized town dwellers and the wearers of the university gown. Nothing about the fact that there are more African students attending Oxford than there are black British students, nor about the almost total lack of black faculty representation. Ranger is at one with Oxford’s past, the appropriate wearer of Rhodes’s crown: Race is Africa! TheWorld Bank would do no better than to respond to Ranger’s explicit appeal, to buy its knowledge of Africa – of an undifferentiated Africa if the language of this document is anything to go by, and despite all its qualifications – to fund his Centre. Ranger’s Kingdom is a market, a place to trade, to bring Africans once more to sell – this time their intellectual energy and their knowledge59 (though sometimes, too, the Other must understand, knowledge will have to be given them, they will have to be re-presented). Once more, African labor, this time intellectual, becomes foreign aid for the glorification of the great white man’s rule. [. . .] Notes 1 Foucault (1970), p. 346. 2 I have adapted loosely and liberally from Said’s stimulating analysis of Orientalism. Said (1979a), pp. 31–49. Cf. Wolf (1981), p. 388; Mudimbe (1988), pp. 1-43; and on art, Nettleton and HammondTooke, eds. (1989). 3 This expresses philosophically what anthropological ethnography has long practiced:‘given the dominant rhetoric of anthropological discourse, the Other’s ethnographic presence goes together with his 174 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G theoretical absence. In ethnography, as we know it, the Other is displayed, and therefore contained, as an object of representation; the Other’s voice, demands, teachings are usually absent from our theorizing.’ Fabian (1990), p. 771. 4 Foucault (1970), p. 351; more generally, see Bauman (1989), pp. 179–80. And on the epistemological 5 Balibar (1991), p. 15. 6 Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC of South Africa) (1985), p. 6. This may seem an extreme politics of the social sciences in historical context, see Mafeje (1976). case. But substituting various other states for South Africa in the quotations – the United States, Israel, Britain, to name only the more obvious – will hardly change their significance. In the case of the United States, there may be more self-consciousness and skepticism about the designations, a greater personal and institutional wrestling with the identifications than may have once been the case in South Africa, though even in this respect the latter may now be in the process of emulating the former. I have learned, not without cost and whether one intends it or not, that claims about South Africa, however generally stated, are dated: This is written in June 1991. 7 HSRC (1985), p. 157. It should be pointed out that leading South African ideologues are no longer committed to this claim, which is not the same as saying that they are no longer committed to some more or less formal racialized dispensation. I will be analyzing this document in greater detail later in the chapter. 8 A booklet published by the South African state in 1969, Progress through Separate Development, makes just this claim. However, the South African Museum, a state-sponsored national institution, for example, now acknowledges the arrival of blacks in South Africa two thousand years ago. 9 For evidence of the collaboration between anthropological study and colonial administration: ‘It has been said that modern anthropology is destined to be of great assistance to colonial governments in providing the knowledge of the social structure of native groups upon which a sound and harmonious Native Administration, as envisaged in indirect Rule, should be built. Let me say that I for one firmly believe in the possibility of such cooperation between anthropologists and administrators.’ S. F. Nadel, A Black Byzantium (1942), quoted in Frank (1979), p. 206. Cf. Foucault (1988), p. 162. Anthropologists have become much more self-conscious about the processes of what Johannes Fabian calls ‘othering’. They no longer assume ‘the givenness of the Other as the object of their discipline’. Fabian (1990), p. 755. In the first draft, I used ‘peoples’ in referring to the colonized. Alena Goldberg reminded me most forcefully that this, too, was to invoke, perhaps euphemistically, a category of the sort I am engaged in critiquing. 10 Theorization of ‘development’ in terms of stages can be traced to the Enlightenment. The four-stage theory of human development proposed by the Russian Semyon Efimovich Desnitsky, a student of Adam Smith’s, is typical: The earliest mode of human development consists of ‘peoples’ living by hunting-gathering. The second stage consists of ‘peoples’ engaged in the pastoral lives of shepherds. The third stage is agricultural. And the fourth consists of ‘peoples’ living by commerce. (‘Peoples’ is the term used by Desnitsky in the eighteenth century.) See Meek (1976), p. 5. W. W. Rostow’s fivestage theory of economic development has been the major influence in mainstream developmental economics in the past three decades. RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 11 175 See Mafeje (1976); and Mudimbe (1988), p. 44. The contemporary experience of South Africa in relation to the World Bank and the IMF is revealing. With the lifting of sanctions, the South African government is voluntarily subjecting itself to the ‘advice’ of these funding bodies without expecting further loans in the short term.Thus, they are using the economic expertise now being exported in the name of the G7 to rationalize greater privatization of nationalized industries, reduction in the tax rates, and introduction of an increasingly regressive tax structure in the form of a comprehensive value added tax, reduced government social service expenditures, and diminished welfare commitments. 12 Cf. Kuper (1988), pp. 1–4; Torgovnick (1990), pp. 18–19; Rubin (1984), p. 2. 13 Kuper thinks that transformations in the significations of theoretical concepts have played a major role in science, at least as significant as the role advocated by Kuhn’s ‘paradigms’. Kuper (1988), pp. 10– 14. 14 On the formal qualities of the Primitive, see Kuper (1988), p. 5; on the popular conception, see Torgovnick (1990), pp. 8, 99, 192.Torgovnick points out that the concept was also used to rationalize control of ‘lower classes, minorities, and women . . . the primitives at home’ (p. 192). This rationalization was sustained by the economy of conceptual identification in the late nineteenth century between racial Others, mainly blacks and Jews, women, and the working class. Torgovnick also points out that primitive society became the ‘testing ground’ for early twentieth-century psychoanalytic hypotheses about human sexuality (p. 7). She is only partially correct in ascribing this to the anthropological constitution of the Other and its corollary assumption that the Primitive was the Other in us, the precivilized form through which, in the form of our ancestry, we passed.The rush of sex theorists into the field of anthropological study also had to do with prevailing Victorianism in sexual matters, the veil of taboos prohibiting frank, open, unbiased study of sex in civilized society. If Victorianism proved to be the push, the lure of the Savage was the invitation behind the veil of taboos, the pull of an object pristine and pure, unself-conscious, and so perhaps a view into the unconscious. 15 Levi-Strauss, perhaps a little gingerly, refers to these (non)histories as ‘cold’. Wolf (1981), p. 385. 16 Kuper (1988), pp. 13–14. Compare Leni Riefenstahl’s popular photographic collection of African bodies with Lawrence and Lome Blair’s Ring of Fire, an account of their journeys through Indonesia. For more on the latter, see Torgovnick (1990), pp. 177–82. 17 Torgovnick (1990), p. 38; Kuper (1988), pp. 7–9. 18 Three brief quotes should suffice: ‘[The Asmat of New Guinea] is a good example of how rare an untouched example of a primitive culture really is’. ‘The tropes and categories through which we view primitive societies establish relations of power between them and us.’ And ‘[these are] some of our greatest thinking and thinkers about the primitive’.Torgovnick (1990), p. 280 n. 3, pp. 11 and 190. 19 Torgovnick (1990), ch. 2. Torgovnick (p. 186) badly misrepresents the history of racial theorizing in claiming that post-Darwinist views on race were a return to the monogenist conception that predated polygenism, and that monogenism ‘became the antiracist position’ while polygenism ‘became the assumption of the racist position’. That Gould, in another context, calls this a common misreading of the debate does not mitigate her mistake. Gould (1991), p. 13. 20 Torgovnick (1990), pp. 69–70. My emphases. 21 On realism as the dominant mode of ethnographical writing, see Fabian (1990). 176 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G 22 Torgovnick (1990), p. 71. Similarly, she approves largely of the 1980s film Greystoke:The Story of Tarzan, 23 Ibid., p. 185. 24 My characterization of the three worlds has been informed by Pletsch (1981), pp. 569–74; and Worsley 25 Pletsch (1981), p. 565. failing to question why this film at that time. (1984), ch. 1, and p. 308. See also Tipps (1973), esp. pp. 204, 208. 26 Ibid., p. 581. 27 Gorra suggests that the characterization can be generalized in the colonial context to Africa as (being) Europe’s, as belonging to Europe. Gorra (1991), p. 87.This spatial appropriation of Africa is accompanied, as Patricia Williams so forcefully argues, by an eviction of the cultural legacy of Africa from the denial of black contributors to the canon of ‘Western civilization’. P. J. Williams (1991), pp. 113–14. 28 As I was composing this, an article appeared in The New York Sunday Times, June 23, 1991, on the expressed commitment of the Congress Party in India (newly returned to power after Rajiv Ghandi’s assassination) to a ‘free market’ economy.The article referred to the encouragement of this newfound capitalism as expressed by ‘a senior Western diplomat’. Whose interests, one wonders, does this diplomat represent? The cementing of ‘the West’ in the aftermath of the Gulf War seems at once and paradoxically impenetrable and transparent. By contrast, adding a‘Fourth World’ to distinguish between different sorts of non-Western states simply reiterates the restrictions of the three-world system. 29 See Ridgeway (1990), p. 21; Varnedoe (1984a), p. 679. Chafets (1990), pp. 20–6. 30 Balibar (1991a), p. 14; cf. Balibar (1990), pp. 283–94.Two points attest to this growing phenomenon: In Germany, those initially deemed Gastarbeiter were later referred to as ‘foreign workers’ and now just as ‘the foreigners’. There is no immigration law, only Auslandergesetz, or ‘foreigner’s law’, dating back to 1965 and evocative of 1938 Nazi legislation, which it appears to emulate. Non-alien residents of European Community countries have the right of entry, employment, and self-employment. Rathzel (1990), pp. 32 ff. 31 Worsley (1984), pp. 238, 236. 32 Myrdal (1962). 33 Gans (1990), p. 271; Jencks (1988), p. 23; Innis and Feagin (1989), p. 14. 34 Magnet (1989), p. 130. 35 Jencks (1988), p. 23; Reed (1988). An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1988 described the ‘social pathologies’ as including ‘teenage pregnancies, out of wedlock births, single parent families, poor educational achievement, chronic unemployment, welfare dependency, drug abuse, and crime’. Coughlin (1988). 36 This is Boxill’s critical characterization of the ‘poverty of culture’ thesis. Boxill (1991), p. 588. 37 For an explicit expression of the Underclass in terms of idleness, see Jencks (1988), p. 24. Cf. Coetzee (1989), pp. 12–35. Another indication of the racialized character of the Underclass is revealed in its popular use to characterize animal pecking orders. Gans reports finding a new story referring to ‘underclass Mexican iguanas’. Gans (1990), p. 272. 38 Wilson (1987), p. 126. In a more recent paper, Wilson seeks to develop a ‘broader theoretical . . . framework that integrates social structural and cultural arguments’. Wilson (1991b), p. 1. RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 177 39 Reed (1988), p. 168. 40 Wilson (1991a), p. 600. 41 Where they help blacks in any measure at all, these programs tend to assist the black middle class more than the black poor, for the former are in a better position to take advantage of them because of better knowledge, greater institutional access, and more available resources. 42 Hochschild (1991), p. 564. Contrast E. Anderson (1990), pp. 72, 112–13. 43 Hochschild (1991), pp. 575 ff. 44 Fainstein (1986), p. 440. See also pp. 418, 439. Duster notes that when inner city businesses relocate to areas where employment of black youth is less likely, the proportion of blacks in the community may be one of the decisive considerations. Duster (1988), p. 3. Jencks also addresses this point. Jencks (1988). Even in respect to welfare treatment, whites on welfare fare better than those who are not white. See Torres (1988), p. 1058. 45 Hochschild (1991), p. 563. 46 On this latter point, see Gans (1990), p. 274. 47 Wilson (1991a), pp. 600–602. Cf. Hochschild (1991), p. 561. In his presidential address to the American Sociological Association, Wilson pertinently substitutes for his use of ‘the Underclass’ the term ‘the ghetto poor’. And he does this commendably ‘to focus our attention less on controversy and more on research and theoretical issues’. He nevertheless emphasizes that he ‘hop[es] that I would not lose any of the theoretical meaning that this concept [the Underclass] has had in my writing’. Wilson (1991b), p. 11. 48 Hughes (1989), pp. 191–2. 49 Defending the Bush administration’s new ‘violence initiative’ to ‘identify early in their lives people who may be prone to violent or antisocial behaviour’, the senior health official in the Health Department, Dr. Frederick Goodwin, argued that ‘male monkeys, especially in the wild . . . roughly half of them survive to adulthood. The other half die by violence. That is the natural way of it for males, to knock each other off . . . the same hyperaggressive monkeys who kill each other are also hypersexual, so they copulate more. . . . Maybe it isn’t just the careless use of the word when people call certain areas of certain cities jungles, that we may have gone back to what might be more natural, without all of the social controls that we have imposed on ourselves as a civilization over thousands of years in our own evolution.’ The NewYork Times, February 28, 1992, p. A:7.Torgovnick also insists on using the term the ‘urban jungle’ in her analysis of contemporary primitivism discussed above. Theodore Lowi rightly asks why we now need concepts like ‘culture of poverty’ and ‘underclass’ in relation to black ghettos but not formerly in relation to Jewish or Irish ones. Lowi (1988), p. 855. On ‘the West’, see Young (1990), Derrida (1992). 50 Surveys of racial attitudes of whites in the United States date at least to the 1950s. The first major social science survey of the racial attitudes of blacks nationwide in over twenty years only recently appeared. Sigelman and Welch (1991). The same is largely true in South Africa. Blauner and Wellman discuss some of the political issues involved in conducting attitude research among the black poor. Blauner and Wellman (1973), pp. 310–30.The title of Ladner’s well-known volume, The Death ofWhite Sociology, strikes one with the hindsight of nearly two decades and in spite of some dramatic changes, 178 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G as overly optimistic. 51 Blauner and Wellman (1973), p. 315. 52 Bauman (1989), p. 85. 53 See, for example, the book Becoming More Civilized by self-described liberal social psychologist Leonard Doob. Published in 1960, Doob’s study is concerned with the psychological effects of Africans as they ‘become more civilized’. ‘Civilization is intended as a description of the differences between the values of people who ‘unwittingly live next to one another in the bush and those who wittingly live on top of one another in modern apartment houses’.Though Doob does not intend the term to designate or justify inferiority or superiority, the comparison of the irrational necessity of bush life with the free choice of modernity reproduces a presumption long considered to be well-established. See Doob (1960), pp. ix–x. 54 Ranger (1989), pp. 1–3. 55 Ibid., pp. 1–13, 18. My emphasis. Religious animism is converted into referential animalism – again! 56 Ibid., p. 19. 57 Ibid., p. 21. 58 Ibid., p. 22. My emphasis. 59. Ibid., p. 24. References Andersen, E. (1990) Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Balibar, E. (1991) ‘Es Gibt Keinen Staat in Europa: Racism and Politics in Europe Today’, New Left Review 187 (May-June): 5–19. Balibar, E. (1990) ‘Paradoxes of Universality’. In D. T. Goldberg, ed., Anatomy of Racism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust (Oxford: Polity Press). Blauner, R. and Wellman, D. (1973) ‘Toward the Decolonization of Social Research’. In J. Ladner, ed., The Death of White Sociology (New York: Random House). Boxill, B. (1991) ‘Wilson on the Truly Disadvantaged’, Ethics 101 (April): 579–92. Chafets, Z. (1990) ‘The Tragedy of Detroit’, NewYork Sunday Times Magazine (July 29): 20–6, 38, 42, 50–1. Coetzee, J. M. (1989) White Writing (New Haven: Yale University Press). Coughlin, E. K. (1988) ‘Worsening Plight of the Underclass Catches Attention’, The Chronicle of Higher Education (March): A5. Derrida, J. (1992) The Other Heading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Doob, L. (1960) Becoming More Civilized (New Haven: Yale University Press). Duster, T. (1988) ‘Social Implications of the “New” Black Underclass’, The Black Scholar (May/June): 2–9. Fabian, J. (1990) ‘Presence and Representation: The Other and Anthropological Writing’, Critical Inquiry 16 (Summer): 753–72. RACIAL KNOWLEDGE 179 Fainstein, N. (1986)‘The Under class/Mismatch Hypothesis as an Explanation for Black Economic Deprivation’, Politics and Society 15, 4: 403–51. Foucault, M. (1988) ‘The Political Technologies of Individuals’. In L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, and P. Hutton, eds., Technologies of the Self, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Foucault, M. (1970) The Order of Things (New York: Random House). Frank, A. G. (1979) ‘Anthropology = Ideology, Applied Anthropology = Politics’. In G. Huizer and B. Mannheim, eds., The Politics of Anthropology (The Hague: Mouton). Gans, H. (1990) ‘Reconstructing the Underclass: The Term’s Dangers as a Planning Concept’, APA Journal 271 (Summer): 271–77. Gorra, M. (1991) ‘Tact and Tarzan’, Transition 52: 80–91. Gould, S. J. (1991) ‘The Birth of the Two-Sex World’, NewYork Review of Books XXXVIII, 11 (June 13): 11–13. Hochschild, J. (1991) ‘The Politics of the Estranged Poor’, Ethics 101 (April): 560–78. Hughes, M. A. (1989) ‘Misspeaking Truth to Power: A Geographical Perspective on the “Underclass” Fallacy’, Economic Geography 65, 3 (July): 187–207. Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) (1985) The South African Society: Realities and Future Prospects (New York: Greenwood Press). Innis, L. and Feagin, J. (1989) ‘The Black “Underclass” Ideology in Race Relations Analysis’, Social Justice 16, 4 (Winter): 13–34. Jencks, C. (1988) ‘Deadly Neighborhoods’, The New Republic (June 13): 23–32. Kuper, A. (1988) The Invention of Primitive Society (London: Routledge). Lowi, T. (1988) ‘The Theory of the Underclass: A Review of Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged’, Policy Studies Review 7, 4 (Summer): 852–8. Mafeje, A. (1976) ‘The Problem of Anthropology in Historical Perspective: An Inquiry into the Growth of the Social Sciences’, Canadian Journal of African Studies X, 2: 307–33. Magnet, M. (1989) ‘America’s Underclass: What to Do?’, Fortune 115 (May 11): 130. Meek, R. L. (1976) Social Science and the Noble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Mudimbe, V. (1988) The Invention of Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Myrdal, G. (1962) The Challenge to Affluence (New York: Vintage Books). Nettleton, A. and Hammond-Tooke, D., eds (1989) African Art in Southern Africa: From Tradition to Township (Johannesburg: Ad. Donker). Pletsch, C. (1981) ‘The Three Worlds, or the Division of Labor in the Social Sciences, circa 1950–75’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, 4 (October): 565–90. Ranger, T. (1989) Rhodes, Oxford, and the Study of Race Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Rathzel, N. (1990) ‘Germany: One Race, One Nation?’, Race and Class 32, 3: 31–48. Reed, A. (1988) ‘The Liberal Technocrat’, The New Republic (Feb. 6): 167–70. Ridgeway, J. (1990) ‘Here He Comes, Mr. America’, The Village Voice (October 9): 21. Rubin, W., ed. (1984) “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern Vols I and II (New York: Museum of Modern Art). Said, E. W. (1979a), ‘Knowing the Oriental’. In E. W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books). Sigelman, L. and Welch, S. (1991) Black Americans’Views of Racial Inequality: The Dream Deferred (Cambridge: 180 D AV I D T H E O G O L D B ER G Cambridge University Press). Tipps, D. (1973) ‘Modernization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies: A Critical Perspective’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 15, 2: 119–226. Torgovnick, M. (1990) Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Torres, G. (1988) ‘Local Knowledge, Local Color: Critical Legal Studies and the Law of Race Relations’, San Diego Law Review 25 (December): 1043–107. Varnedoe, K. (1984a) ‘Contemporary Explorations’. In W. Rubin, ed., “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art:Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern Vol. II (New York: Museum of Modern Art). Williams, P. J. (1991) The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Wilson, W. J. (1991a) ‘The Truly Disadvantaged Revisited: A Response to Hochschild and Boxill’, Ethics 101 (April): 593–609. Wilson, W. J. (1991b) ‘Studying Inner City Social Dislocations: The Challenge of Public Agenda Research’, American Sociological Review 56 (February): 1–14. Wilson, W. J. (1987) The Truly Disadvantaged:The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Wolf, E. (1981) Europe and the PeopleWithout History (Berkeley: University of California Press). Worsley, P. (1984) The ThreeWorlds (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Young, R. (1990) White Mythologies:Writing History and theWest (London: Routledge). Chapter 13 Howard Winant THE THEORETICAL STATUS OF THE CONCEPT OF RACE R A C E U S E D T O B E A R E L A T I V E L Y intelligible concept; only recently have we seriously challenged its theoretical coherence.Today there are deep questions about what we actually mean by the term. But before (roughly)WorldWar II, before the rise of nazism, before the end of the great European empires, and particularly before the decolonization of Africa, before the urbanization of the U.S. black population and the rise of the modern civil rights movement, race was still largely seen in Europe and North America (and elsewhere as well) as an essence, a natural phenomenon, whose meaning was fixed, as constant as a southern star. In the earlier years of this century, only a handful of pioneers, people likeW. E. B. Du Bois and Franz Boas, conceived of race in a more social and historical way. Other doubters included avantgarde racial theorists emerging from the intellectual ferment of the Harlem renaissance; black nationalists and pan-Africanists who sought to apply the rhetoric of national self-determination expressed at Versailles to the mother continent, and who returned from the battlefields of France to the wave of antiblack race riots that swept the United States in 1919; a few Marxists (whose perspectives had their own limitations); and to some extent the Chicago school of sociology led by Robert Ezra Park. But even these intellectuals and activists made incomplete breaks with essentialist notions of race, whether biologistic or otherwise deterministic. That was then; this is now.Today the theory of race has been utterly transformed.The socially constructed status of the concept of race, which I have labeled the racial formation process, is widely recognized (Omi and Winant 1986), so much so that it is now often conservatives who argue that race is an illusion.The main task facing racial theory today, in fact, is no longer to critique the seemingly “natural” or “commonsense” concept of race – although that effort has not by any means been entirely completed. Rather, the central task is to focus attention on the continuing significance and changing 182 H O WA R D W I N A NT meaning of race. It is to argue against the recent discovery of the illusory nature of race; against the supposed contemporary transcendence of race; against the widely reported death of the concept of race; and against the replacement of the category of race by other, supposedly more objective, categories like ethnicity, nationality, or class.All these initiatives are mistaken at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst. In order to substantiate these assertions, we must first ask, what is race? Is it merely an illusion? An ideological construct utilized to manipulate, divide, and deceive? This position has been taken by many theorists, and activists as well, including many who have heroically served the cause of racial and social justice in the United States. Or is race something real, material, objective? This view too has its adherents, including both racial reactionaries and racial radicals. In my view both of these approaches miss the boat. The concept of race is not an ideological construct, nor does it reflect an objective condition. Here I first reflect critically on these two opposed viewpoints on the contemporary theory of race.Then I offer an alternative perspective based on the approach of racial formation. Race as an ideological construct The assertion that race is an ideological construct – understood in the sense of a “false consciousness” that explains other “material” relationships in distorted fashion seems highly problematic.This is the position taken by the prominent historian Barbara Fields in a well-known article, “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America.”1 Although Fields inveighs against various uses of the race concept, she directs her critical barbs most forcefully against historians who “invoke race as a historical explanation” (101). According to Fields, the concept of race arose to meet an ideological need: its original effectiveness lay in its ability to reconcile freedom and slavery.The idea of race provided “the means of explaining slavery to people whose terrain was a republic founded on radical doctrines of liberty and natural rights” (114). But, Fields says, to argue that race – once framed as a category in thought, an ideological explanation for certain distinct types of social inequality – “takes on a life of its own” in social relationships is to transform (or “reify”) an illusion into a reality. Such a position could be sustained “only if race is defined as innate and natural prejudice of color”: Since race is not genetically programmed, racial prejudice cannot be genetically programmed either, but must arise historically. . . .The preferred solution is to suppose that, having arisen historically, race then ceases to be a historical phenomenon and becomes instead an external motor of history; according to the fatuous but widely repeated formula, it “takes on a life of its own.” In other words, once historically acquired, race becomes hereditary.The shopworn metaphor thus offers camouflage for a latter-day version of Lamarckism. (101; emphasis original) T H E O R E T I C A L STAT US O F T H E C O N C E P T O F R A C E 183 Thus, race is either an illusion that does ideological work or an objective biological fact. Since it is certainly not the latter, it must be the former. No intermediate possibility – consider, for example, the Durkheimian notion of a “social fact” – is considered. Some of this account – for example, the extended discussion of the origins of North American race thinking – can be accepted without major objection.2 Furthermore, Fields effectively demonstrates the absurdity of many commonly held ideas about race. But her position is so extreme that at best it can only account for the origins of race thinking, and then only in one social context.To examine how race thinking evolved from these origins, how it responded to changing sociocultural circumstances, is ruled out. Why and how did race thinking survive after emancipation? Fields cannot answer, because the very perpetuation of the concept of race is ruled out by her theoretical approach. As a relatively orthodox Marxist, Fields could argue that changing “material conditions” continued to give rise to changes in racial “ideology,” except that even the limited autonomy this would attach to the concept of race would exceed her standards. Race cannot take on a life of its own; it is a pure ideology, an illusion. Fields simply skips from emancipation to the present, where she disparages opponents of “racism” for unwittingly perpetuating an illusory concept of race. In denunciatory terms, Fields concludes by arguing for abolition of the concept: Nothing handed down from the past could keep race alive if we did not constantly reinvent and re-ritualize it to fit our own terrain. If race lives on today, it can do so only because we continue to create and recreate it in our social life, continue to verify it, and thus continue to need a social vocabulary that will allow us to make sense, not of what our ancestors did then, but of what we choose to do now. (118) Fields is unclear about how “we” should jettison the ideological construct of race, and one can well understand why. By her own logic, racial ideologies cannot be abolished by acts of will. One can only marvel at the ease with which she distinguishes the bad old slavery days of the past from the present, when “we” anachronistically cling, as if for no reason, to the illusion that race retains any meaning.We foolishly throw up our hands and acquiesce in race thinking, rather than . . . doing what? Denying the racially demarcated divisions in society?Training ourselves to be “color-blind”?3 I venture to say that only a historian (however eminent) could have written such an article. Why? Because at the least a sociologist would know W.I. Thomas’s famous dictum that if people “define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas andThomas 1928: 572). Nor is Fields alone in claiming that racial ideology persists because people insist on thinking racially. Her position is espoused by many, on both the left and the right of racial debates.4 In any case, the view that race is a kind of false consciousness is held not only by intellectuals, based on both well-intentioned and ulterior motivations; it also has a commonsense character. One hears in casual discussion, for example, or in introductory social science classes, variations on the 184 H O WA R D W I N A NT following statement: “I don’t care if a person is black, white, or purple, I treat them exactly the same; a person’s just a person to me . . .” Furthermore, some of the integrationist aspirations of racial minority movements, especially civil rights movement, invoke this sort of idea. Consider the famous line from the “I Have a Dream” speech, the line that made Shelby Steele’s career: “that someday my four little children will be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” The core criticisms of this “race as ideology” approach are two: first, it fails to recognize the salience a social construct can develop over half a millennium or more of diffusion, or should I say enforcement, as a fundamental principle of social organization and identity formation.The longevity of the race concept and the enormous number of effects race thinking (and race acting) has produced guarantee that race will remain a feature of social reality across the globe, and a fortiori in the United States, despite its lack of intrinsic or scientific merit (in the biological sense). Second, and related, this approach fails to recognize that at the level of experience, of everyday life, race is a relatively impermeable part of our identities. U.S. society is so thoroughly racialized that to be without racial identity is to be in danger of having no identity.To be raceless is akin to being genderless. Indeed, when one cannot identify another’s race, a microsociological crisis of interpretation results, something perhaps best interpreted in ethnomethodological or Goffmanian terms.To complain about such a situation may be understandable, but it does not advance understanding. Race as an objective condition On the other side of the coin, it is clearly problematic to assign objectivity to the race concept. Such theoretical practice puts us in quite heterogeneous, and sometimes unsavory, company. Of course, the biologistic racial theories of the past do this: here I am thinking of such precursors of fascism as Gobineau and Chamberlain (Mosse 1978), of the eugenicists such as Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, and of the “founding fathers” of scientific racism such as Agassiz, Broca,Terman. andYerkes (Kevles 1985; Chase 1977). Indeed, an extensive legacy of this sort of thinking extends right up to the present. Stephen Jay Gould (1981) makes devastating critiques of such views. But much liberal and even radical social science, though firmly committed to a social as opposed to a biological interpretation of race, nevertheless also slips into a kind of objectivism about racial identity and racial meaning.This is true because race is afforded an easy and unproblematic coherence all too frequently.Thus, to select only prominent examples, Daniel Moynihan,William JuliusWilson, Milton Gordon, and many other mainstream thinkers theorize race in terms that downplay its flexibility and historically contingent character. Even these major thinkers, whose explicit rejection of biologistic forms of racial theory would be unquestioned, fall prey to a kind of creeping objectivism of race. For in their analyses a modal explanatory approach emerges as follows: sociopolitical circumstances change over historical time, racially defined groups adapt or fail to adapt to these changes, achieving mobility or remaining mired in poverty, and so on. In this logic there is no reconceptualization of group identities, of the constantly shifting parameters through which race is T H E O R E T I C A L STAT US O F T H E C O N C E P T O F R A C E 185 thought about, group interests are assigned, statuses are ascribed, agency is attained, and roles are performed. Contemporary racial theory, then, is often “objectivistic” about its fundamental category.Although abstractly acknowledged to be a sociohistorical construct, race in practice is often treated as an objective fact: one simply is one’s race; in the contemporary United States, if we discard euphemisms, we have five color-based racial categories: black, white, brown, yellow, and red. This is problematic, indeed ridiculous, in numerous ways. Nobody really belongs in these boxes; they are patently absurd reductions of human variation. But even accepting the nebulous “rules” of racial classification “hypodescent,” and so forth5 – many people do not fit anywhere: into what categories should we place Turks, for example? People of mixed race? South Asians? Objectivist treatments, lacking a critique of the constructed character of racial meanings, also clash with experimental dimensions of the issue. If one does not “act” black, or white, or whatever, that is just deviance from the norm.There is in these approaches an insufficient appreciation of the performative aspect of race, as postmodernists might call it.6 To summarize the critique of this “race as objective condition” approach, then, it fails on three counts: First, it cannot grasp the processual and relational character of racial identity and racial meaning. Second, it denies the historicity and social comprehensiveness of the race concept. And third, it cannot account for the way actors, both individual and collective, have to manage incoherent and conflictual racial meanings and identities in everyday life. It has no concept, in short, of what Omi and I have labeled racial formation. Toward a critical theory of the concept of race The foregoing clearly sets forth the agenda that any adequate theorization of the race concept must fulfill. Such an approach must be theoretically constructed so as to steer between the Scylla of “race as illusion” and the Charybdis of “racial objectivism.” Such a critical theory can be consistently developed, I suggest, drawing upon the racial formation approach. Such a theoretical formulation, too, must be explicitly historicist: it must recognize the importance of historical context and contingency in the framing of racial categories and the social construction of racially defined experiences. What would be the minimum conditions for the development of a critical, processual theory of race? I suggest three conditions for such a theory: – It must apply to contemporary political relationships. – It must apply in an increasingly global context. – It must apply across historical time. Let us address each of these points very briefly. Contemporary Political Relationships. The meaning and salience of race is forever being reconstituted in the present.Today such new relationships emerge chiefly at the point where some 186 H O WA R D W I N A NT counterhegemonic or postcolonial power is attained. At that point the meanings and the political articulations of race proliferate. Examples include the appearance of competing racial projects, by which I mean efforts to institutionalize racial meanings and identities in particular social structures: notably those of individual, family, community, and state. As egalitarian movements contend with racial “backlash” over sustained periods of time, as binary logics of racial antagonism (white/black, ladino/indio, settler/native, etc.) become more complex and decentered, political deployment of the concept of race comes to signal qualitatively new types of political domination, as well as new types of opposition. Consider the U.S. example. In terms of domination, it is now possible to perpetuate racial domination without making any explicit reference to race at all. Subtextual or “coded” racial signifiers, or the mere denial of the continuing significance of race, may suffice. Similarly, in terms of opposition, it is now possible to resist racial domination in entirely new ways, particularly by limiting the reach and penetration of the political system into everyday life, by generating new identities, new collectivities, new (imagined) communities that are relatively less permeable to the hegemonic system.7 Much of the rationale for Islamic currents among blacks in the United States, for the upsurge in black antiSemitism, and to some extent for the Afrocentric phenomenon, can be found here. Thus the old choices – integration versus separatism, assimilation versus nationalism – are no longer the only options. In the “underdeveloped” world, proliferation of so-called postcolonial phenomena also have significant racial dimensions, as the entire Fanonian tradition (merely to select one important theoretical current) makes clear. Crucial debates have now been occurring for a decade or more on the question of postcolonial subjectivity and identity, the insufficiency of the simple dualism of “Europe and its others,” the subversive and parodic dimensions of political culture at and beyond the edges of the old imperial boundaries, and so forth.8 The Global Context of Race. The geography of race is becoming more complex. Once more easily seen in terms of imperial reach, in terms of colonization, conquest, and migration, racial space is becoming globalized and thus accessible to a new kind of comparative analysis.This only becomes possible now, at a historical moment when the distinction “developed/underdeveloped” has been definitively overcome. Obviously, by this I do not mean that now there are no disparities between North and South, rich and poor. Rather, I mean that the movement of capital and labor has internationalized all nations, all regions.Today we have reached the point where the empire strikes back,9 as former (neo)colonial subjects, now redefined as “immigrants,” challenge the majoritarian status of the formerly metropolitan group (the whites, the Europeans, the “Americans” or “French,” etc.). Meanwhile, phenomena such as the rise of “diasporic” models of blackness, the creation of “panethnic”10 communities of Latinos and Asians (in such countries as the United Kingdom and the United States), and the breakdown of borders in both Europe and North America all seem to be internationalizing and racializing previously national polities, cultures, and identities.To take just one example, popular culture now internationalizes racial awareness almost instantaneously, as reggae, rap, samba, and various African pop styles leap from continent to continent. T H E O R E T I C A L STAT US O F T H E C O N C E P T O F R A C E 187 Because of these transformations, a global comparison of hegemonic social/ political orders based on race becomes possible. I think that in a highly specified form, that is, not as mere reactions or simple negations of “Western” cultural/ theoretical dominance, such notions as diasporic consciousness or racially informed standpoint epistemologies deserve more serious attention as efforts to express the contemporary globalization of racial space.11 Furthermore, to understand such phenomena as the construction of new racial identities or in terms of the panethnicity dynamic is to recognize that the territorial reach of racial hegemony is now global. The dissolution of the transparent racial identity of the formerly dominant group, that is to say, the advancing racialization of whites in Europe and the United States, must also be recognized as proceeding from the increasingly globalized dimensions of race. As previous assumptions erode, white identity loses its transparency, the easy elision with “racelessness” that accompanies racial domination. “Whiteness” becomes a matter of anxiety and concern. The Emergence of Racial Time. Some final notes are in order in respect to the question of the epochal nature of racial time. Classical social theory had an Enlightenment-based view of time, a perspective that understood the emergence of modernity in terms of the rise of capitalism and the bourgeoisie.This view was by no means limited to Marxism.Weberian disenchantment and the rise of the Durkheimian division of labor also partake of this temporal substrate. Only rarely does the racial dimension of historical temporality appear in this body of thought, as, for example, in Marx’s excoriation of the brutalities of “primitive accumulation”: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of blackskins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations with the globe for a theater. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England’s Anti-JacobinWar, and is still going on in the opium wars with China, etc. (1967: 751) Yet even Marx frequently legitimated such processes as the inevitable and ultimately beneficial birth pangs of classlessness – by way of the ceaselessly revolutionary bourgeoisie. Today such teleological accounts seem hopelessly outmoded. Historical time could well be interpreted in terms of something like a racial longue durée: for has there not been an immense historical rupture represented by the rise of Europe, the onset of African enslavement, the conquista, and the subjugation of much of Asia? I take the point of much poststructural scholarship on these matters to be quite precisely an effort to explain “Western” or colonial time as a huge project demarcating human “difference,” or more globally as Todorov, say, would argue, of framing partial collective identities in terms of externalized “others” (Todorov 1985). Just as, for example, the writers of the Annales school sought to locate the deep logic of historical time in the means by which material 188 H O WA R D W I N A NT life was produced – diet, shoes, and so on12 – so we might usefully think of a racial longue durée in which the slow inscription of phenotypical signification took place upon the human body, in and through conquest and enslavement, to be sure, but also as an enormous act of expression, of narration. In short, just as the noise of the big bang still resonates through the universe, so the overdetermined construction of world “civilization” as a product of the rise of Europe and the subjugation of the rest of us still defines the race concept. Such speculative notes, of course, can be no more than provocations. Nor can I conclude this effort to reframe the agenda of racial theory with a neat summation.There was a long period – centuries – in which race was seen as a natural condition, an essence.This was succeeded although not entirely superseded by a shorter but potent way of thinking about race as subordinate to supposedly more concrete, “material” relationships; during that period, down to now, race was understood as an illusion, an excrescence. Perhaps now we are approaching the end of that racial epoch too. To our dismay, we may have to give up our familiar ways of thinking about race once more. If so, there may also be some occasion for delight. For it may be possible to glimpse yet another view of race, in which the concept operates neither as a signifier of comprehensive identity nor of fundamental difference, both of which are patently absurd, but rather as a marker of the infinity of variations we humans hold as a common heritage and hope for the future. Notes 1 Page references will be given in the text. 2 Minor objections would have to do with Fields’s functionalist view of ideology, and her claim that the race concept only “came into existence” (101) when it was needed by whites in North American colonies beginning in the late seventeenth century.The concept of race, of course, has a longer history than that. 3 Fields’s admirer David Roediger also criticizes her on this point: “At times she nicely balances the ideological creation of racial attitudes with their manifest and ongoing importance and their (albeit ideological) reality. . . . But elsewhere, race disappears into the ‘reality’ of class” (Roediger 1991, 7– 8; emphasis original). 4 Another important thinker who has at least flirted with the idea of race as illusion is Kwame Anthony Appiah. See Appiah 1986. 5 This concept is developed in Harris 1964. 6 “The question of identification is never the affirmation of a pregiven identity, never a self-fulfilling prophecy – it is always the production of an image of identity and the transformation of the subject in assuming that image” (Homi K. Bhabha, “Interrogating Identity,” p. 188). 7 The work of Paul Gilroy (1991) on the significance of black music in Afro-diasporic communities is particularly revealing on this point. 8 There is a vast literature by now on these matters. The founding statement is undoubtedly Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978); also useful is Bhabha 1990a. T H E O R E T I C A L STAT US O F T H E C O N C E P T O F R A C E 9 189 I borrow this phrase not from George Lucas but from the book of that title edited at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1982. 10 David Lopez and Yen Espiritu define panethnicity as “the development of bridging organizations and solidarities among subgroups of ethnic collectivities that are often seen as homogeneous by outsiders.” Such a development, they claim, is a crucial feature of ethnic change – “supplanting both assimilation and ethnic particularism as the direction of change for racial/ethnic minorities.” While panethnic formation is facilitated by an ensemble of cultural factors (e.g., common language and religion) and structural factors (e.g., class, generation, and geographical concentration), Lopez and Espiritu conclude that a specific concept of race is fundamental to the construction of panethnicity (Lopez and Espiritu 1990: 198). 11 Similar points are made in Mudimbe 1988, Rabinow 1986, and Harding 1987. 12 For example, the magisterial work of Fernand Braudel 1981. References Appiah, Kwame Anthony, “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race,” in Henry Louis Gates, ed., “Race,” Writing, and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). Bhabha, Homi K., “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation,” in idem, ed., Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990a). ——, “Interrogating Identity: The Postcolonial Prerogative,” in David Theo Goldberg, ed., Anatomy of Racism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990b). Braudel, Fernand, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, vol. I of Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1981). Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1982). Chase, Allan, The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism (New York: Knopf, 1977). Fields, Barbara Jeanne, “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America,” New Left Review 181 (May/June 1990). Gilroy, Paul, “There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack”: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Gould, Stephen J., The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1981). Harding, Sandra, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987). Harris, Marvin, Patterns of Race in the Americas (New York: Walker, 1964). Kevles, Daniel J., In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York: Knopf, 1985). Lopez, David, and Yen Espiritu, “Panethnicity in the United States: A Theoretical Framework,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 13 (1990). Marx, Karl, Capital, vol. I (New York: International Publishers, 1967). Mosse, George, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York: Howard Fertig, 1978). 190 H O WA R D W I N A NT Mudimbe, V. Y., The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s (New York: Routledge, 1986). Rabinow, Paul, “Representations Are Social Facts: Modernity and Post-Modernity in Anthropology,” in James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture:The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). Roediger, David R., TheWages ofWhiteness: Race and the Making of the AmericanWorking Class (New York: Verso, 1991). Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978). Thomas, W. I., and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, The Child in America (New York: Knopf, 1928). Todorov,Tsvetan, The Conquest of America:The Question of the Other, trans. Richard Howard (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1985). PART THREE Racism and anti-semitism INTRODUCTION O N E O F T H E R E G R E T TA B L E F E AT UR E S of much contemporary theorising about race and racism has been the tendency to leave the question of anti-semitism to one side, treating it almost as a separate issue. This is in spite of the fact that one of the most consistent themes that runs through racist thinking and the values articulated by racist and fascist movements throughout this century has been anti-semitism. The extracts we have been able to include in this Part are, of course, merely examples of a much wider body of work that has been produced over the years (see Guide to Further Reading). But in including these extracts we hope that we have at least given an indication of the kinds of questions that we need to think about in exploring the relationship between racism and anti-semitism. The first extract from George Mosse sets out to provide a brief overview of the ways in which myths and counter myths about ‘the Jew’ emerged and evolved. Drawing on a variety of historical sources, Mosse attempts to situate what he sees as the main elements of myths about Jews and the way these myths evolved and changed over time. In addition he is concerned to show how the evolving racial mythologies about Jews helped to construct them as a kind of ‘race apart’. To take the particular example of the image of the ‘wandering Jew’ Mosse attempts to show that such myths helped to construct Jews as the ‘eternal foreigner’ who would be unable to become a part of the ‘people’. Interestingly enough Mosse’s argument also shows that at least some Jews were influenced by racial thought and to some extent sought to develop ‘counter-myths’ about race and Jewish identity in order to question anti-semitism. The next extract by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer was originally written 192 RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM in 1944. Both Adorno and Horkheimer were leading members of the Frankfurt School of critical theory and they were in exile in the United States at the time. Given their experience as exiles from Nazi Germany it is perhaps not surprising that they saw the main arguments of their work on anti-semitism as an attempt to understand ‘the actual reversion of enlightened civilisation to barbarism’. More specifically, however, Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis is preoccupied by the need to make sense of how anti-semitism in Nazi Germany led to the ‘policy of extermination’, the idea that ‘Jews must be wiped from the face of the earth’. This is of course a question on which much has been written, both in the period immediately after the Second World War and in more recent times. But this extract helps to pose the need for an explanation of the relationship between anti-semitism and the Holocaust. Perhaps the most influential recent attempt to provide a theoretical framework for the analysis of anti-semitism is to be found in the work of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Bauman is particularly concerned with the question of the reasons why the Holocaust could happen in the context of modernity. The broad outline of his argument links up with some of the analytical arguments to be found in the work of Adorno and Horkheimer as well as the historical accounts of Mosse. A recurrent theme in his analysis is the way he attempts to show that the extermination and genocide of the Jews by the Nazi racial state was not the product of irrationality, but very much an integral part of the ‘rational world of modern civilisation’. From this basic premise he attempts to show how it was precisely the development of technology, large impersonal state bureaucracies and modern science that provided the necessary conditions for the institutionalisation of a policy of extermination against Jews. The next two extracts focus on the question of the role of images and stereotypes in the construction of ‘the Jew’. The first extract is from Sander Gilman, one of the most prolific and controversial figures in this field, and is concerned particularly with the changing terms of debate about the body in discourses about Jews. Using recent debates in America about the construction of Jews as white, Gilman sets out to show the tenuous and historically contingent nature of this ascription of ‘whiteness’. Writing in his usual powerful narrative style Gilman uses the imagery of ‘the Jewish nose’ as a way of exploring the changing representations of the skin colour of Jews from the nineteenth century onwards. His account links up with the broader discussion of whiteness that has become such an important theme in debates about race and racism in recent years (see contributions by Ruth Frankenberg in Part Five and by Richard Dyer in Part Six. Gilman’s analysis also links up with the concerns of the final extract in this part by Matthew Jacobson. This extract is symptomatic of a renewed interest by historians and others in the meanings attached to whiteness in America, particularly in relation to immigrant groups such as the Irish, Jews and Italians among others. Drawing on research about the construction of Jewishness in American culture RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM 193 from the nineteenth century onwards Jacobson’s account is specifically concerned with the ways in which Jews have been constructed as both white and Other. He also argues forcefully that images based on ‘racial Jewishness’ were not simply the product of anti-semitism, since Jewish writers and commentators were also constructing their own versions of what ‘Jewishness’ meant. In this sense Jacobson’s analysis can be taken as a case study of the importance of historical and cultural processes in shaping the meanings that are attached to racial categories. 194 RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM KEY QUESTIONS • • • • • • • Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argue that ‘the fascists do not view the Jews as a minority but an opposing race’. What does this argument tell us about the nature of Nazi anti-semitism? Critically review George Mosse’s analysis of the relationship between antisemitism and racism. Zygmunt Bauman has argued ‘modern civilisation was not the Holocaust’s sufficient condition; it was, however, most certainly its necessary condition’. Review the implications of this argument for the analysis of the Holocaust. Analyse Sander Gilman’s account of the role of changing images of ‘the Jew’ in racial discourses. ‘The history of racial Jewishness is not merely the history of anti-semitism’ (Matthew Jacobson). What do you understand by this argument? Should the analysis of anti-semitism be seen as separate from the question of racism? Some commentators have talked of the existence of ‘anti-semitism without Jews’. Discuss the implications of this argument. Chapter 14 George L. Mosse THE JEWS: MYTH AND COUNTER-MYTH T H E M Y S T E R Y O F R A C E T R A N S F O R M E D the Jew into an evil principle. This was nothing new for the Jew; after all, anti-Christ had been a familiar figure during the Middle Ages. But in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, the traditional legends which had swirled about the Jews in the past were revived as foils for racial mysticism and as instruments of political mobilization. Accusations of ritual murder, the curse of Ahasverus the wandering Jew, and fantasies about the universal Jewish world conspiracy had never vanished from the European consciousness even during the Enlightenment. Now they were to be revitalized and given renewed force. The accusation of ritual murder – the so-called blood libel – had medieval roots in the legend that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood during the feast of Passover. As part of their religious ceremonial, the Jews allegedly performed a “ritual murder,” typical of the perverse nature of their religion and the evil it represented. Moreover, this Jewish use of blood blasphemed the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, for Easter and Passover coincided.The blood libel provided the basis for an accusation of atavism, because in contrast to civilized people, Jews supposedly practiced human sacrifice.The so-called Jewish conspiracy against the Gentile world was also built into this myth from the beginning, for no Jew, so it was thought, would inform on any other Jew, while talkative Gentiles were bribed with gold to remain silent about this ritual of human sacrifice. The myth of the use and misuse of the sacred substance of blood served to separate out the Jews from the Christians. Blood libel had always surfaced in periods of stress. At the end of the nineteenth century, the times seemed out of joint and ritual murder accusations once more swept through eastern Europe. Between 1890 and 1914, there were no less than twelve trials of Jews for ritual murder; the last murder charge was leveled as late as 1930, in the Rutho-Carpathian Mountains by the prosecutor of the Czechoslovak government.1 196 GEORGE L. MOSSE The blood libel remained alive chiefly in the underdeveloped countries of eastern Europe and the Russian Empire. Within the Russian Empire the government shrewdly exploited the belief in order to provoke pogroms, and every lost Christian child was a menace to the local Jewish community, one of whose members might be accused of murder.Western and central Europe had also made use of this legend, but in these regions the accusations receded in time, especially among urban segments of the population where secularism had made large inroads. In rural regions the myth continued, encouraged in particular by the Catholic Church, which had trouble ending its long association with the accusation of ritual murder. Local priests still proclaimed its truth at times during the nineteenth and even into the twentieth century, and medieval saints like Simon of Trent, who were worshipped into our own day, kept the legend of martyred children supposedly brutally murdered by the Jews before the eyes of the pious.2 [. . .] If the blood libel encouraged Christians to look upon the Jew as harbinger of evil, the legend of the wandering Jew exemplified the curse laid upon that race by Christ himself.The figure of Ahasverus appears in legend as a Jew who sped Christ along to his crucifixion and refused him comfort or shelter. As a result, Ahasverus is doomed to a life of wandering, without a home, despised as rootless and disinherited.The wandering Jew, who can neither live nor die, also heralds terror and desolation.3 This medieval tale of the “wicked Jew” (as Ahasverus was often called) did not fade in the nineteenth century but instead became symbolic of the cursed fate of the Jewish people.The restless age and the restless Jew both became symbols of a desolate modernity. Ahasverus in legend is also associated with conspiracies against the righteous. In France, he symbolized the conspiracy of Jews and Masons against the nation. However, at times the wandering Jew could become a hero and the conspiracy be laid on other shoulders. Eugène Sue’s TheWandering Jew (Le Juif Errant, 1844–45), the most famous Ahasverus story of the century, turns him into a hero who foils a Jesuit conspiracy.Then again, during the FirstWorldWar the English satirized EmperorWilliam II as Ahasverus who had driven Christ from his door and was now wandering through Europe in the vain search of peace.4 Nevertheless, for the most part the ancient legend retained its original form, and remained symbolic of the curse which the Jewish people brought upon themselves and all they touched.These legends, whether the blood libel or that of the wandering Jew, offered explanation and coherence in a world of industrialization, instability, and bewildering social change, just as they had earlier been used as explanation for famines, sickness, and all manner of natural catastrophes. The legend of the wandering Jew re-enforced the view of the Jew as the eternal foreigner, who would never learn to speak the national language properly or strike roots in the soil. This myth, in turn, was linked to the supposed oriental origin of the Jew as described in the Bible. The Jew was assumed to be fixed for all time as a desert nomad wandering through the Sinai. The Viennese Orientalist Adolf Wahrmund popularized this image in his Law of the Nomads and Contemporary Jewish Domination (Das Gesetz des Nomadenthums und die heutige Judenherrschaft, 1887). The Jews had been nomads in the past, and were still nomads today, claimedWahrmund.This explained their shiftlessness in commerce, and their rootless, cosmopolitan way of thought, as opposed to the rooted Aryan T H E J E W S : M Y T H A N D C O UNT ER - M Y T H 197 peasantry.Wahrmund carried on the tradition of proving Aryan peasant origins through linguistics. Both as nomads and Asians, the Jews were indeed Ahasverus, not because of the curse of Christ, but because they were still a desert people.5Thus, an anti-Jewish image rooted in religion was secularized and given new credence by means of a pseudo-scientific environmentalism. Such legends catered to the love of the romantic and the unusual.The nineteenth century, which popularized Frankenstein and human vampires, was fascinated by horror stories that had a real people as their foil.The novel Biarritz, written in 1868 by Hermann Goedsche (under the pen name Sir John Redcliffe), was not only typical of this love of the unusual, but also significant as one of the chief sources of the notorious forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The setting of Biarritz is the Jewish cemetery of Prague. Significantly, other more famous writers, such as Wilhelm Raabe, used the identical setting to tell stories of Jewish mysteries and secret deeds. The Jewish cemetery in Prague was a romantic site; moreover, it was accessible, for Prague, although part of the Austrian Empire, was considered a German city. It was easy to travel there and to see for oneself the sights of the ghetto, while the other ghettos of eastern Europe were in regions with “obscure” languages and difficult to reach.The tourist from Germany or Austria, for example, would feel at home staying in the large German section of Prague and visiting the picturesque sights.The clash of different cultures, which was exemplified by the ghettos still existing in eastern Europe, could be symbolized through the Jewish cemetery in Prague with its mysterious graves and caftaned figures – at least as seen by the tourist from theWest. Goedsche summed up this symbolism when he wrote that Prague was the only German city where Jews still lived in isolation.6 In this way, Goedsche set the scene for a meeting of the thirteen Jewish elders in the cemetery. He named them the “cabalistic Sanhedrin,” referring to the many legends associated with the Jewish Cabalah and thus giving a wider historical dimension to the assembly at the cemetery. For Goedsche, the mystery of the Cabalah consisted in “the power of gold.”7 Thus through the Cabalah he cemented the traditional association of the Jews with base materialism. One of the elders is Ahasverus, the wandering Jew; his presence among the thirteen clearly shows how Goedsche exploited old antiSemitic traditions.8 The elders meet as the representatives of the chosen people, who show “the tenacity of a snake, the cunning of a fox, the look of a falcon, the memory of a dog, the diligence of an ant, and the sociability of a beaver.”9 The association of Jews with animal imagery should not surprise us; it was noted earlier when discussing the rise of the stereotype in the eighteenth century.The blacks suffered an identical fate when they were constantly compared to monkeys. Likening the so-called inferior races to animals put them low on the chain of being and, by analogy, robbed them of their humanity. In the eerie setting of the cemetery, the elders conspire to take over the world. They plot to concentrate all capital into their hands; to secure possession of all land, railroads, mines, houses; to occupy government posts; to seize the press and direct all public opinion.This bizarre plan was later to be borrowed from Biarritz and, as a “Rabbi’s speech,” circulated all over the Russian and Austrian Empires. 198 GEORGE L. MOSSE The myth of the sinister Jewish conspiracy was not confined to eastern Europe. Only a year after Biarritz appeared, Gougenot de Mousseaux in a polemic against the Jews of France depicted them as devotees of a secret mystery-religion presided over by the devil himself.10 Thus, the rapidly growing belief in occult forces during the last decades of the nineteenth century intersected with a revitalized medieval demonology. Indeed, Mousseaux declared that the devil was the King of the Jews, and his version of the Jewish plot would become part of the more famous Protocols, just as Biarritz also fed into this forgery. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion became both the climax and the synthesis of these conspiracy theories. They were forged in France in the midst of the Dreyfus Affair, with the assistance of the Russian secret police, probably between 1894 and 1899. The French right wanted a document in order to link Dreyfus to the supposed conspiracy of his race, and the Russian secret police needed it to justify czarist anti-Jewish policy.This time the “learned elders of Zion,” again meeting in the Jewish cemetery of Prague, reflected every aspect of the modern world which the reactionaries in France and Russia, but also in the rest of Europe, feared so much. The weapons that the elders were to use to achieve world domination ranged from the use of the French Revolution’s slogan, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” to the spreading of liberalism and socialism.The people of the world would be deprived of all faith in God and their strength undermined by encouraging public criticism of authority. At the same time, a financial crisis would be provoked and gold in the hands of the Jews would be manipulated in order to drive up prices. Eventually, “there should be in all states in the world, besides ourselves, only the masses of the proletariat, a few millionaires devoted to our interests and our own police and soldiers.”11 Blind obedience would then be demanded to the King of Jews, the ruler of the universe. In short, the conspiracy myth fed into the uncertainties and fears of the nineteenth century, bridging the gap between ancient anti-Semitic legend and the modern Jews in a world of dramatic change. What if the Gentiles discovered this plot and began to attack the Jews? In this case the elders would use a truly horrible weapon, for soon all the national capitals of the world would be undermined by a network of underground railways. If there should be danger to the Jews, these tunnels would be used to blow up the cities and kill their inhabitants. Such a nightmare bears traces of the fear of a new technology, but also of the stories of horror and fantasy so popular at the time. Furthermore, the elders would destroy the Gentiles by inoculating them with diseases. Opposition to inoculation was to become a part of racist thought. In 1935 the Weltkampf, a Nazi anti-Jewish journal, stated that inoculation had been invented by the Jews in order to subvert the Aryan blood, citing the Protocols as its evidence.12 Racism is basic to the nightmare of the Protocols, for the Jews were considered an evil race, coherent and well organized.The mystery of race had found one of its most popular supposed proofs in the conspiracy of the elders of Zion. Conspiracy theories might have been less popular and effective had it not been for certain past and present Jewish organizations which to some Gentiles seemed to serve a sinister purpose. In Russia it was charged that the Jewish communal organizations, which had been dissolved by Czar Nicholas I in 1844, were still alive and active as a secret Jewish government linked to foreign T H E J E W S : M Y T H A N D C O UNT ER - M Y T H 199 interests.13 An element of spurious reality was lent to these conspiracy charges with the founding of the “Alliance Israélite Universelle” in 1860 by French Jews.The Alliance was intended to aid Jews in nations where they were deprived of civic rights, and to support schools for North African Jews. These worthy purposes were, of course, ignored and the Alliance seen as the exposed tip of an iceberg of conspiracy. Aside from the reality of the Alliance, anti-Semites and racists pointed to the Masons as another existing secret conspiracy directed by Jews – the Protocols had linked Jewish and Masonic conspiracies. The fight against Masons in turn called the Catholic Church into action. The Anti-Masonic World Congress of 1897 was supported by Pope Leo XIII, and was placed under the protection of theVirgin Mary. During the Congress, the Jews were specifically linked to the anti-Catholic Masonic conspiracy, and the Union Antimaçonnique which was founded at that time received support from Drumont and other French racists.14 An anti-Masonic movement also existed in Germany, and eventually, under the Nazis, an anti-Masonic museum was established, but this particular myth was strongest in Catholic France. Powerful though the groups might have been that at times supported such theories and pointed to the Alliance or Masons as proof, they were still a minority (except, perhaps, among the Catholic clergy). Such myths and legends about the Jews were used in order to mobilize those who wanted to protect both traditional Christianity and traditional society. But much of the future importance of these anti-Jewish myths consisted in their association with a secular nationalism which lacked the traditional Christian inhibitions against embracing racism. Certainly, as we shall see, the line between Christian anti-Semitism and racism was thin; but the national mystique could without question accept these myths as inherent in the Jewish race. There was no need for secular nationalism to confront the problem of how Jews could be changed into Christians through baptism if their race was inherently evil, nor was it necessary as a part of the drama of Christian salvation to disentangle the Jews of the OldTestament from their inferior racial status.All racists did better to ignore Christianity whenever possible. In this regard, a journalist like Wilhelm Marr in Germany was typical. His Jewry’sVictory over Teutonism (Der Sieg des Judentums über das Germanentum, 1879) rejected the Christian accusations against the Jews as unworthy of the enlightened, but then repeated all the myths about rootless and conspiratorial Jews. For Marr the Jews were stronger than the Germans, for they were winning the racial battle for survival. He suggested a counteroffensive, spearheaded by anti-Semitic Russia. The one-time member of the German diet, Hermann Ahlwardt, became more famous than Marr with the publication of his The Desperate Struggle Between Aryan and Jew (Der Verzweiflungskampf der arischenVölker mit dem Judentum, 1890).Two years later, this primary school principal wrote a book in a similar vein entitled New Revelations: Jewish Rifles (Neue Enthüllungen Judenflinten, 1892), in which he once more sounded the alarm against the Jewish threat. Here, he contended that the Jewish armament firm of Löwe was selling defective rifles to the German army as part of a universal world Jewish conspiracy to destroy the Reich. And for all the absurdity of the allegation, the government initiated an inquiry into the charges.15 200 GEORGE L. MOSSE As yet, the attempts to act as if the Jewish conspiracy were true remained on the fringes of European thought and, apart from Russia, unsuccessful in immediate terms.They were forerunners of the concerted war against the Jews which began only after the trauma of the FirstWorldWar, in 1918, and of men like Hitler who not only believed in the Protocols but eventually had the means to act as if they were true.The anti-Masonic and anti-Jewish lodge founded by Jules Guérin in Paris during the 1890’s was seen as ludicrous.16 And the first international congress of the tiny rival anti-Semitic groups (mainly from Germany, Austria, and Hungary) meeting in Dresden in 1882 seemed scarcely more important, though it conceived itself as a rallying point against the Jewish world conspiracy. Its purpose was to consolidate the anti-Jewish struggle, but the congress could not overcome tensions between Christian anti-Semites like Adolf Stoecker and the racists, who were prone to violence and who denied that a baptized Jew differed from the rest of his race.The second meeting of this congress in 1883 bore the title “Alliance Antijuive Universelle” and clearly pointed to the Alliance Israélite as symbolic of the enemy.17 The legends about the Jews, as part of racial mysticism, penetrated beyond the relatively small groups who were obsessed with the Jewish conspiracy and had little time for other concerns. More important, however, such legends became a mechanism through which rightist movements sought to change society. The imaginary threat posed by the Jews could be used to rally people behind such interest groups as agriculture unions and conservative parties in their battle with liberals and Socialists. But Catholic and Protestant movements could also appeal to traditional legends about the Jews in order to fight atheism more effectively. Above all, those who wanted to reinvigorate the national mystique by emphasizing equality among the people used the Jews as a foil. Here, typically enough, an agitator like Wilhelm Marr, who was a democrat believing in universal suffrage and freedom of thought, accused the Jews of being liberals – a people without roots, who sought to substitute the slavery of finance capital for that of oppression by kings.18 Such National Socialists, as they were called long before Adolf Hitler usurped the term, will occupy us later. Moreover, racism was firmly allied to nationalism through the mystery of race and even to science through Darwinism. Within these frameworks, the legends about the Jews which we have mentioned were kept alive, now as part of the race war that seemed imminent. Even “The Universal Races Congress” of 1911, held in London and intended to reflect humanistic and Christian values, assumed that “pure” races could be said to exist, though such opponents of racism as John Dewey, Annie Besant, and the American black leaderW. E. B. DuBois attended.19 This Congress was one more sign of the abiding and deep interest in race. Were the Jews themselves exempt from the influence of racial thought which seemed so widely spread throughout European society? Did the Jews themselves counter the myth of the Jew as an evil principle with a myth of the Jew as a pure and noble race? Many, indeed most Jews who were highly assimilated in central or western Europe regarded themselves as full members of the nations in which they lived – not as separate people but rather as one of the tribes, like the Saxons, Bavarians, or Alsatians, which made up the larger nation.The FirstWorldWar enhanced such tendencies, and after T H E J E W S : M Y T H A N D C O UNT ER - M Y T H 201 1918 Jewish veterans associated in many European nations provided the principal support for such attempted national integration. However, those Jews who regarded themselves as a separate people must be our special concern. Did Jewish nationalism follow European nationalism in making an alliance with racism? The racial ideas of Gobineau had been introduced to the readers of the Zionist DieWelt in 1902, not merely to sing the praises of racial purity, but mainly to counter the accusation that Jews were degenerate people. Gobineau had admired the Jews precisely because they had not given in to modern degeneracy, and now his theories could be used to best advantage in order to prove that “Jewry has maintained its . . . toughness, thanks to the purity of its blood.” Miscegenation must be avoided at all costs.The Jewish and Aryan races could not interpenetrate, they could only live side by side in mutual understanding.20 The influences of racism were clearly accepted here, even if the concept of the blood was not defined in terms of “blood and soil,” but rather as the vehicle of the drives and peculiarities of the soul. Yet, this annexation of Gobineau (and of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, as we shall see later) proved the exception rather than the rule among Jews. If some Jews were attracted to racism, it was the science of race which seemed to have more appeal to them. Jews, for example, contributed to the German Journal for Racial and Social Biology. But like most of the contributors to that journal, a belief in the reality of race did not mean that any one race was necessarily superior to another. For example, Elias Auerbach, one of the pioneers of Zionist settlement in Palestine, wrote in 1907 that while the Jewish race had been a mixture in the dim past, it was now pure because it had kept itself separate through centuries. He concluded his article with a quote from Gobineau to the effect that a Volk will never die while it can maintain its purity and uniqueness of composition.21 Yet Auerbach advocated a binational Jewish–Arab Palestine, and opposed any domination of one people by another. It was possible to believe in pure races and still not be a racist; indeed, this was a trait shared by most Jews who believed in a Jewish race, and by many Gentiles as well. Auerbach did not stand alone in his belief in race.The German writer J. M. Judt in Jews as Race (Die Juden als Rasse, 1903) was more specific, for he wrote that, as a race, Jews share common physical and physiognomic traits.22 Even earlier, in 1881, Richard Andree, a German who was not a Jew but the founder of the discipline of ethnography and demography as applied to the Jews, had asserted that they represented a definite racial type kept intact through thousands of years. But for Andree, Jews and Aryans had a common root: both were Caucasians. Both were also the bearers of modern culture, in contrast to blacks who had remained in their primitive state.23 Andree, like Judt, attempted to base his arguments on anthropology as well as physiognomy. But it was the Austrian physician, anthropologist, and Zionist Ignaz Zollschan (1877–1948) who became the most famous theoretician of the Jews as a race. His major work, The Racial Problem with Special Attention to the Theoretical Foundation of the Jewish Race (Das Rassenproblem unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung derTheoretischen Grundlagen der Jüdischen Rassenfrage, 1910), held that race is transmitted by the human cell and thus not subject to outside influence. In this large work Zollschan praised 202 GEORGE L. MOSSE Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s racial ideals, such as the nobility that racial purity confers on a group and the necessity of developing the race to ever greater heights of heroism. Zollschan thought that Chamberlain was right about race, but wrong about the Jews. He felt that the evolution of culture could not be due to one race alone (such as the Aryans), but must be created by a series of pure races, including the Jews. The undesirable, materialistic aspect of the contemporary Jewish race would vanish when it found nationhood and escaped the ghetto.24 Zollschan’s ideal, as he restated it in 1914, was for a nation of pure blood, untainted by diseases of excess or immorality, with a highly developed sense of family, and deep-rooted, virtuous habits.25 The linkage of racial mysticism and middle-class morality could hardly be demonstrated with greater clarity. Zollschan broke with Zionism after the First World War, believing quite erroneously that the postwar world would see the decline of anti-Semitism and the end of ideas of national sovereignty.26 At the same time, he also began to reject his earlier belief in races – a process which culminated in his Racism Against Civilization (published in London in 1942). By this time, the lengthening shadow of the Nazis in Europe made it difficult for any Jew to uphold ideas of race, even if he had done so earlier. However, before the Nazis, and especially before the FirstWorldWar, the debate among Jews as to whether or not Jews were a race had been a lively one, especially in the German Journal of Jewish Demography and Statistics. The guiding spirit behind this journal was the social Darwinist Arthur Ruppin. Ruppin was in charge of Jewish settlement in Palestine from 1908 until his death in 1942. Like Auerbach he believed, however ambivalently, in the existence of races. Yet during his many decades in Palestine he was a committed binationalist. At first Ruppin thought race to be an instinct which could not be changed, though typically enough his Darwinism and Social Science (Darwinismus und Sozialwissenschaft, 1903) advocated eugenics, and not a doctrine of racial superiority. Beauty and strength depended on factors of inheritance, not on environment, and in this connection Ruppin did talk about racial types. When he contemplated The Jewish Fate and Future (Jüdisches Schicksal und die Zukunft) in 1940, however, he condemned the confusion of “people” with “race,” and referred to Virchow’s findings among the German schoolchildren which denied the existence of pure races. Jewish acceptance of the notion of race was ambivalent at best; being the foil of racism did not necessarily mean imitating the enemy.What about those orthodox religious Jews who believed in the reality of the concept of the chosen people? For the majority of such Jews, chosenness meant giving a living example of how life should be lived, and did not entail any claims to domination. Moreover, all peoples could be considered righteous, even Gentiles, provided they observed the seven Noahic laws instead of the 613 commandments binding on pious Jews. Thus belief in monotheism, and obedience to commandments against stealing, murder, false judgment, and adultery, as well as abstinence from eating live limbs of animals, would qualify anyone as chosen. No racism was inherent in this orthodoxy. To be sure, the Hasidic rabbinical dynasties believed that qualities of leadership were at times transmitted by the blood; but this was not held to consistently, and in any case was no more racist than traditional notions of royal descent. But for all the denial of racism in theory, the borderline to racism was at times as furtively crossed by such orthodox Jews as by believing Christians, who were T H E J E W S : M Y T H A N D C O UNT ER - M Y T H 203 also supposed to reject it.The true believer in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries always retained some secular elements of superiority and domination within his belief.27 Again, Zionism was not in fact racist in its orientation, in spite of the occasional ideas of Zollschan or even Auerbach, both of whom were not really important in the movement.Yet,Theodor Herzl himself once wrote that whether Jews remained in their host nations or emigrated, the race must first be improved wherever it was found. It was necessary to make it work-loving, warrior-like, and virtuous.28 Herzl often reflected hisViennese environment, whether in his vague and general use of the word “race” or in his condemnation of “kikes” who refused to follow his lead. Nevertheless, he stated that “No nation has uniformity of race.”29 Much more typical were those influential young Zionists who at the beginning of this century believed in a national mystique without at the same time believing in race. Whenever the Zionist movement attempted to be scientific, they proclaimed in 1913, it got mired in skull measurement and all sorts of “racial nonsense.”30 Judaism, instead, was an inner cultural unity, the revelation of belief in the substance of Jewish nationality.World history, as the young Zionist Robert Weltsch put it in 1913, is not made by zoologists but by ideas. He compared Jewish nationality to Bergson’s élan vital.The mystery of theVolk was accepted, but the racism which was often part of these mysteries in Gentile society was rejected.31 Even during the 1930’s, when Max Brod asserted that race was basic to Jewish separateness, he meant this as an exhortation to eugenics; but for Brod, as for Martin Buber, the JewishVolk became only a stepping stone to human unity and equality reflecting the oneness of God. Jewish nationalism did not embrace racism at a time when other nationalisms in Europe were becoming ever more racist themselves. Those who did not believe in the existence of any Jewish race – and they were the overwhelming majority among the Jews – referred to the Jewish physician Maurice Fishberg’s influential Racial Characteristics of Jews (Die Rassenmerkmale der Juden, 1913). Fishberg, a famed doctor and anthropologist living in New York, held that Jews have no such characteristics, and attacked Elias Auerbach for believing in a Jewish race. As proof for his contention, Fishberg cited the existence of those blond Jews who could be found all over Europe, tall Jews with long heads, Greek noses, and blue eyes.This “Aryan type among Jews,” as he called it, must be the result of miscegenation with the Nordic and the Slavic races.32 But another, even more influential and non-Jewish voice was raised to contend that Jews were no race or even a separate people. Felix von Luschan, an Austrian professor at the University of Berlin, had already replied to Auerbach that there was no Jewish race, but only a Jewish religious community, and that Zionism seemed opposed to all culture by forcing Jews back into the Orient where barbarism ruled.This highly respected Gentile anthropologist asserted that Jews, like everyone else, were a racial mixture. Indeed, for von Luschan there was only one race, Homo sapiens. No inferior races existed, only people with different cultures from our own; and the characteristics which divided men had their origin in climatic, social, and other environmental factors. Men like Chamberlain, he wrote, were not scientists but poets.33 204 GEORGE L. MOSSE Many Zionists who used words like “blood” or “race” actually agreed with von Luschan. Despite the scientific predilections of the nineteenth century, the use of terms like “blood,” “race,” “people,” and “nation” was often imprecise and interchangeable. Blood and race were sometimes shorthand for the transmission of spiritual factors and had nothing to do with appearance or racial purity.The “new man” of whom both racists and Zionists dreamed was opposed to rationalism, but for the Zionists he represented a “humanitarian nationalism” that was both voluntaristic and pluralistic.34 Ideas about the mystery of race remained strongest in central Europe, though the legends about Jews found a home in France as well as in the more primitive Balkan regions. Rootless and conspiratorial, the Jew became a myth. As revealed by Ahasverus or by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he was the adversary, all the more effective in that medieval myths were applied to modern times.The fears and superstitions of a bygone age had sunk deeply into the European consciousness, and could be used to mobilize people against the frustrations of the present. Still, European civilization was, after all, a Christian civilization, in spite of the increasing inroads of secularism. If racism had presented itself as a science and as a national belief, what was to be the attitude of the Christian churches toward race? Notes and references 1 The Jews of Czechoslovakia, The Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews (Philadelphia – NewYork, 2 See, for example, Jeannine Verdes-Leroux, Scandale Financier et Antisémitique: Le Krach de l’Union 3 George K. Andersen, The Legend of the Wandering Jew (Providence, 1965), 21, 22. 1968), 152. Générale (Paris, 1969), 223. 4 Raemaeker’s Cartoons (n.d., n.p.), Part 3, p. 69. 5 Josef Müller, Die Entwicklung des Rassenantisemitismus in den Letzten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts 6 Quoted in Herman Bernstein, The History of a Lie (New York, 1921), 23. 7 Ibid., 32. 8 Ibid. (Berlin, 1940), 25, 67; Müller analyzes the Antisemitische Correspondenz from, roughly, 1887 until 1892. 9 Ibid., 33. 10 Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide (New York, 1966), 43. I have followed this classic work in my 11 Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (Union, N.J., n.d.), 25. This is a modern version of the English discussion of the Protocols. edition of 1922. 12 Ibid., 33; Arbeiterzeitung (Vienna), December 3, 1933 (Wiener Library Clipping Collection, Tel Aviv). 13 H. Lutostanski, The Talmud and the Jew (n.p., 1876), passim. 14 Actes du Premier Congrès Antimaçonnique Internationale, September 24 to 30, 1894, at Trente (Fournay, 15 Paul W. Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction (New York, 1967), 94. 16 The Paris police called it “anti-Jewish confetti,” Archives de la Préfecture de Police. Paris. B. a/ 1897), 119, 124. 1341. T H E J E W S : M Y T H A N D C O UNT ER - M Y T H 205 17 Schmeitzner’s Internationale Monatsschrift, II (January 1883), passim; ibid., II (May 1883), passim. Schmeitzner 18 Mosche Zimmermann, “Gabriel Riesser und Wilhelm Marr im Meinungsstreit,” Zeitschrift des Vereins 19 Michael D. Biddiss, “The Universal Races Congress of 1911,” Race, XIII (July 1971), 43. 20 Max Jungmann, “Ist das Jüdische Volk degeneriert?”, Die Welt, 6. Jahrg., Nr. 24 (June 13, 1902). 21 Elias Auerbach, “Die Jüdische Rassenfrage,” Archiv für Rassenund Gesellschafts Biologie, IV (1907), was the secretary of the congress. für Hamburgische Geschichte, vol. 61 (1975), 59–84. 333. 22 J. M. Judt, Die Juden als Rasse: Eine Analyse aus dem Gebiet der Anthropologie (Berlin, 1903), 213. This was published by the Jewish publishing house, Jüdischer Verlag. 23 Richard Andree, ZurVolkskunde der Juden (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1881), 3, 10, 25. 24 Ignaz Zollschan, Das Rassenproblem unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung der Theoretischen Grundlagen der 25 Ignaz Zollschan, The Jewish Question (New York, 1914), 14. Jüdischen Rassenfrage (Vienna and Leipzig, 1910), 8, 235, 260ff., 427. 26 Adolf Böhm, Die Zionistische Bewegung, II (Tel Aviv, 1937), 84. 27 No study of this problem exists. I am grateful to Miss Deborah Herschmann and Mr.Warren Green for the information upon which this discussion of orthodox Jewry is based. See also the reliance on Noahic law as a code of morals for non-Jews in Germany in Sidney M. Bolkosky, The Distorted Image: German Jewish Perceptions of Germans and Germany, 1918–1935 (New York, 1975), 80. 28 Theodor Herzl quoted in DieWelt, XVIII (July 3, 1914). 29 Amos Elon, Herzl (New York, 1975), 171, 251. 30 Moses Calvary in DieWelt, XVII (November 7, 1913), 540. 31 Robert Weltsch in DieWelt, XVII (March 21, 1913), 366. 32 Maurice Fishberg, Die Rassenmerkmale der Juden (Munich, 1913), 49, 51; see also Maurice Fishberg, “Zur Frage der Herkunft des blonden Elementes in Judentum,” Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden (1907). 33 Felix von Luschan, Völker, Rassen, Sprachen (Berlin, 1922), 25, 169. 34 Gustav Krojanker, Zum Problem des Neuen Deutschen Nationalisms (Berlin, 1932), 17, 19. Chapter 15 Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer ELEMENTS OF ANTI-SEMITISM The limits of Enlightenment [. . .] F O R S O M E P E O P L E T O D A Y anti-Semitism involves the destiny of mankind; for others it is a mere pretext. The Fascists do not view the Jews as a minority but as an opposing race, the embodiment of the negative principle.They must be exterminated to secure happiness for the world. At the other extreme we have the theory that the Jews have no national or racial characteristics and simply form a group through their religious opinions and tradition. It is claimed that only the Jews of Eastern Europe have Jewish characteristics, and then only if they have not been fully assimilated. Neither doctrine is wholly true or wholly false. The first is true to the extent that Fascism has made it true.The Jews today are the group which calls down upon itself, both in theory and in practice, the will to destroy born of a false social order. They are branded as absolute evil by those who are absolutely evil, and are now in fact the chosen race.Whereas there is no longer any need for economic domination, the Jews are marked out as the absolute object of domination pure and simple. No one tells the workers, who are the ultimate target, straight to their face – for very good reasons; and the Negroes are to be kept where they belong: but the Jews must be wiped from the face of the earth, and the call to destroy them like vermin finds an echo in the heart of every budding fascist throughout the world.The portrait of the Jews that the nationalists offer to the world is in fact their own self-portrait. They long for total possession and unlimited power, at any price.They transfer their guilt for this to the Jews, whom as masters they despise and crucify, repeating ad infinitum a sacrifice which they cannot believe to be effective. The other, liberal, theory is true as an idea. It contains the image of a society in which irrational anger no longer exists and seeks for outlets. But since the liberal theory assumes that unity among ELEMENTS OF ANTI-SEMITISM 207 men is already in principle established, it serves as an apologia for existing circumstances.The attempt to avert the extreme threat by a minorities policy and a democratic strategy is ambiguous, like the defensive stance of the last liberal citizens. Their impotence attracts the enemy of impotence. The existence and way of life of the Jews throw into question the generality with which they do not conform.The inflexible adherence to their own order of life has brought the Jews into an uncertain relationship with the dominant order.They expected to be protected without themselves being in command.Their relationship with the ruling nations was one of greed and fear. But the arrivistes who crossed the gulf separating them from the dominant mode of life lost that cold, stoic character which society still makes a necessity.The dialectical link between enlightenment and domination, and the dual relationship of progress to cruelty and liberation which the Jews sensed in the great philosophers of the Enlightenment and the democratic, national movements are reflected in the very essence of those assimilated.The enlightened self-control with which the assimilated Jews managed to forget the painful memories of domination by others (a second circumcision, so to speak) led them straight from their own, long-suffering community into the modern bourgeoisie, which was moving inexorably toward reversion to cold repression and reorganization as a pure “race.” But race is not a naturally special characteristic, as the folk mystics would have it. It is a reduction to the natural, to sheer force, to that stubborn particularity which in the status quo constitutes the generality. Today race has become the self-assertion of the bourgeois individual integrated within a barbaric collective. The harmony of society which the liberal Jews believed in turned against them in the form of the harmony of a national community.They thought that anti-Semitism would distort that order which in reality cannot exist without distorting men.The persecution of the Jews, like any other form of persecution, is inseparable from that system of order. However successfully it may at times be concealed, force is the essential nature of this order – and we are witnessing its naked truth today. [. . .] Modern society, in which primitive religious feelings and new forms of religion as well as the heritage of revolution are sold on the open market, in which the Fascist leaders bargain over the land and life of nations behind locked doors while the habituated public sit by their radio sets and work out the cost; a society in which the word which it unmasks is thereby legitimized as a component part of a political racket: this society, in which politics is not only a business but business the whole of politics, is gripped by a holy anger over the retarded commercial attitudes of the Jews and classifies them as materialists, and hucksters who must give way to the new race of men who have elevated business into an absolute. Bourgeois anti-Semitism has a specific economic reason: the concealment of domination in production. In earlier ages the rulers were directly repressive and not only left all the work to the lower classes but declared work to be a disgrace, as it always was under domination; and in a mercantile age, the industrial boss is an absolute monarch. Production attracts its own courtiers.The new rulers simply took off the bright garb of the nobility and donned civilian clothing.They declared that work was not degrading, so as to control the others more rationally.They claimed to be creative 208 T H E O D O R W. A D O R N O A N D M A X H O R K H E I M ER workers, but in reality they were still the grasping overlords of former times.The manufacturer took risks and acted like a banker or commercial wizard. He calculated, arranged, bought and sold. On the market he competed for the profit corresponding to his own capital. He seized all he could, not only on the market but at the very source: as a representative of his class he made sure that his workers did not sell him short with their labor.The workers had to supply the maximum amount of goods. Like Shy lock, the bosses demand their pound of flesh. They owned the machines and materials, and therefore compelled others to produce for them. They called themselves producers, but secretly everyone knew the truth. The productive work of the capitalist, whether he justifies his profit by means of gross returns as under liberalism, or by his director’s salary as today, is an ideology cloaking the real nature of the labor contract and the grasping character of the economic system. And so people shout: Stop thief! – but point at the Jews.They are the scapegoats not only for individual maneuvers and machinations but in a broader sense, inasmuch as the economic injustice of the whole class is attributed to them.The manufacturer keeps an eye on his debtors, the workers, in the factory and makes sure that they have performed well before he pays them their money. They realize the true position when they stop to think what they can buy with this money. The smallest magnate can dispose of a quantity of services and goods which were available to no ruler in the past; but the workers receive a bare minimum. It is not enough actually to experience how few goods they can buy on the market; the salesmen continue to advertise the merits of things which they cannot afford.The relationship between wage and prices shows what is kept from the workers.With their wages they accept the principle of settlement of all their demands.The merchant presents them with the bill which they have signed away to the manufacturer. The merchant is the bailiff of the whole system and takes the hatred of others upon himself.The responsibility of the circulation sector for exploitation is a socially necessary pretence. The Jews were not the sole owners of the circulation sector. But they had been active in it for so long that they mirrored in their own ways the hatred they had always borne. Unlike their Aryan colleagues, they were still largely denied access to the origins of surplus value. It was a long time before, with difficulty, they were allowed to own the means of production. Admittedly, in the history of Europe and even under the German emperors, baptized Jews were allowed high positions in industry and in the administration. But they had to justify themselves with twice the usual devotion, diligence, and stubborn self-denial. They were only allowed to retain their positions if by their behavior they tacitly accepted or confirmed the verdict pronounced on other Jews: that was the purpose of baptism. No matter how many great achievements the Jews were responsible for, they could not be absorbed into the European nations; they were not allowed to put down roots and so they were dismissed as rootless.At best the Jews were protected and dependent on emperors, princes or the absolute state. But the rulers themselves all had an economic advantage over the remainder of the population. To the extent that they could use the Jews as intermediaries, they protected them against the masses who had to pay the price of progress.The Jews were the colonizers for progress. From the time when, in their capacity as merchants, they helped to spread Roman civilization ELEMENTS OF ANTI-SEMITISM 209 throughout Gentile Europe, they were the representa tives – in harmony with their patriarchal religion – of municipal, bourgeois and, finally, industrial conditions.They carried capitalist ways of life to various countries and drew upon themselves the hatred of all who had to suffer under capitalism. For the sake of the economic progress which is now proving their downfall, the Jews were always a thorn in the side of the craftsmen and peasants who were declassed by capitalism.They are now experiencing to their own cost the exclusive, particularist character of capitalism.Those who always wanted to be first have been left far behind. Even the Jewish president of an American entertainment trust lives hopelessly on the defensive in his cocoon of cash.The kaftan was a relic of ancient middle-class costume.Today it indicates that its wearer has been cast onto the periphery of a society which, though completely enlightened, still wishes to lay the ghosts of its distant past.Those who proclaimed individualism, abstract justice, and the notion of the person are now degraded to the condition of a species.Those who are never allowed to enjoy freely the civil rights which should allow them human dignity are referred to, without distinction, as “the Jew.” Even in the nineteenth century the Jews remained dependent on an alliance with the central power. General justice protected by the state was the pledge of their security, and the law of exception a specter held out before them.The Jews remained objects, at the mercy of others, even when they insisted on their rights. Commerce was not their vocation but their fate.The Jews constituted the trauma of the knights of industry who had to pretend to be creative, while the claptrap of anti-Semitism announced a fact for which they secretly despised themselves; their anti-Semitism is self-hatred, the bad conscience of the parasite. [. . .] The howling voice of Fascist orators and camp commandants shows the other side of the same social condition.The yell is as cold as business.They both expropriate the sounds of natural complaint and make them elements of their technique.Their bellow has the same significance for the pogrom as the noise generator in the German flying bomb: the terrible cry which announces terror is simply turned on. The cry of pain of the victim who first called violence by its name, the mere word to designate the victim (Frenchman, Negro, or Jew), generates despair in the persecuted who must react violently.The victims are the false counterparts of the dread mimesis.They reproduce the insatiability of the power which they fear. Everything must be used and all must obey.The mere existence of the other is a provocation. Every “other” person who “doesn’t know his place” must be forced back within his proper confines – those of unrestricted terror. Anyone who seeks refuge must be prevented from finding it; those who express ideas which all long for, peace, a home, freedom – the nomads and players – have always been refused a homeland.Whatever a man fears, that he suffers. Even the last resting place is emptied of peace.The destruction of cemeteries is not a mere excess of anti-Semitism – it is anti-Semitism in its essence. The outlawed naturally arouse the desire to outlaw others. Violence is even inflamed by the marks which violence has left on them. Anything which just wants to vegetate must be rooted out. In the chaotic net regulated escape reactions of the lower animals, in the convolutions of the sudden swarm, and the convulsive gestures of the martyred, we see the mimetic impulse which can never be completely destroyed. In the death struggle of the creature, at 210 T H E O D O R W. A D O R N O A N D M A X H O R K H E I M ER the opposite pole from freedom, freedom still shines out irresistibly as the thwarted destiny of matter. It is opposed by the idiosyncracy which claims anti-Semitism as its motive. The mental energy harnessed by political anti-Semitism is this rationalized idosyncracy. All the pretexts over which the Führer and his followers reach agreement, imply surrender to the mimetic attraction without any open infringement of the reality principle – honorably, so to speak. They cannot stand the Jews, yet imitate them. There is no anti-Semite who does not basically want to imitate his mental image of a Jew, which is composed of mimetic cyphers: the argumentative movement of a hand, the musical voice painting a vivid picture of things and feelings irrespective of the real content of what is said, and the nose – the physiognomic principium individuationis, symbol of the specific character of an individual, described between the lines of his countenance. The multifarious nuances of the sense of smell embody the archetypal longing for the lower forms of existence, for direct unification with circumambient nature, with the earth and mud. Of all the senses, that of smell – which is attracted without objectifying – bears clearest witness to the urge to lose oneself in and become the “other.” As perception and the perceived – both are united – smell is more expressive than the other senses. When we see we remain what we are; but when we smell we are taken over by otherness. Hence the sense of smell is considered a disgrace in civilization, the sign of lower social strata, lesser races and base animals.The civilized individual may only indulge in such pleasure if the prohibition is suspended by rationalization in the service of real or apparent practical ends. The prohibited impulse may be tolerated if there is no doubt that the final aim is its elimination – this is the case with jokes or fun, the miserable parody of fulfillment. As a despised and despising characteristic, the mimetic function is enjoyed craftily. Anyone who seeks out “bad” smells, in order to destroy them, may imitate sniffing to his heart’s content, taking unrationalized pleasure in the experience.The civilized man “disinfects” the forbidden impulse by his unconditional identification with the authority which has prohibited it; in this way the action is made acceptable. If he goes beyond the permitted bounds, laughter ensues. This is the schema of the anti-Semitic reaction. Anti-Semites gather together to celebrate the moment when authority permits what is usually forbidden, and become a collective only in that common purpose.There rantings are organized laughter.The more terrible their accusations and threats and the greater their anger, the more compelling their scorn. Anger, scorn, and embittered imitation are actually the same thing.The purpose of the Fascist formula, the ritual discipline, the uniforms, and the whole apparatus, which is at first sight irrational, is to allow mimetic behavior.The carefully thought out symbols (which are proper to every counterrevolutionary movement), the skulls and disguises, the barbaric drum beats, the monotonous repetition of words and gestures, are simply the organized imitation of magic practices, the mimesis of mimesis. The leader with his contorted face and the charisma of approaching hysteria take command.The leader acts as a representative; he portrays what is forbidden to everyone else in actual life. Hitler can gesticulate like a clown, Mussolini strike false notes like a provincial tenor, Goebbels talk endlessly like a Jewish agent whom he wants murdered, and Coughlin preach love like the savior whose crucifixion he portrays – all for the sake of still more ELEMENTS OF ANTI-SEMITISM 211 bloodshed. Fascism is also totalitarian in that it seeks to make the rebellion of suppressed nature against domination directly useful to domination. This machinery needs the Jews.Their artificially heightened prominence acts on the legitimate son of the gentile civilization like a magnetic field.The gentile sees equality, humanity, in his difference from the Jew, but this induces a feeling of antagonism and alien being. And so impulses which are normally taboo and conflict with the requirements of the prevailing form of labor are transformed into conforming idiosyncracies. The economic position of the Jews, the last defrauded frauds of liberalistic ideology, affords them no secure protection. Since they are so eminently fitted to generate these mental induction currents, they serve such functions involuntarily.They share the fate of the rebellious nature as which Fascism uses them: they are employed blindly yet perspicaciously. It matters little whether the Jews as individuals really do still have those mimetic features which awaken the dread malady, or whether such features are suppressed. Once the wielders of economic power have overcome their fear of the Fascist administrators, the Jews automatically stand out as the disturbing factor in the harmony of the national society.They are abandoned by domination when its progressive alienation from nature makes it revert to mere nature.The Jews as a whole are accused of participating in forbidden magic and bloody ritual. Disguised as accusation, the subconscious desire of the aboriginal inhabitants to return to the mimetic practice of sacrifice finds conscious fulfillment. When all the horror of prehistory which has been overlaid with civilization is rehabilitated as rational interest by projection onto the Jews, there is no restriction.The horror can be carried out in practice, and its practical implementation goes beyond the evil content of the projection. The fantasies of Jewish crimes, infanticide and sadistic excess, poisoning of the nation, and international conspiracy, accurately define the anti-Semitic dream, but remain far behind its actualization. Once things have reached this stage, the mere word “Jew” appears as the bloody grimace reflected in the swastika flag with its combination of death’s head and shattered cross.The mere fact that a person is called a Jew is an invitation forcibly to make him over into a physical semblance of mat image of death and distortion. [. . .] Chapter 16 Zygmunt Bauman MODERNITY, RACISM, EXTERMINATION [. . .] T H E R E I S A N A P P A R E N T P A R A D O X in the history of racism, and Nazi racism in particular. In the by far most spectacular and the best known case in this history, racism was instrumental in the mobilization of anti-modernist sentiments and anxieties, and was apparently effective primarily because of this connection.Adolf Stöcker, Dietrich Eckart,Alfred Rosenberg, Gregor Strasser, Joseph Goebbels, and virtually any other prophet, theorist and ideologue of National Socialism used the phantom of the Jewish race as a lynch-pin binding the fears of the past and prospective victims of modernization, which they articulated, and the ideal volkisch society of the future which they proposed to create in order to forestall further advances of modernity. In their appeals to the deep-seated horror of the social upheaval that modernity augured, they identified modernity as the rule of economic and monetary values, and charged Jewish racial characteristics with responsibility for such a relentless assault on the volkisch mode of life and standards of human worth. Elimination of the Jews was hence presented as a synonym of the rejection of modern order.This fact suggests an essentially pre-modern character of racism; its natural affinity, so to speak, with anti-modern emotions and its selective fitness as a vehicle for such emotions. On the other hand, however, as a conception of the world, and even more importantly as an effective instrument of political practice, racism is unthinkable without the advancement of modern science, modern technology and modern forms of state power. As such, racism is strictly a modern product. Modernity made racism possible. It also created a demand for racism; an era that declared achievement to be the only measure of human worth needed a theory of ascription to redeem M O D ER N I T Y, R A C I S M , E X T ER M I N AT I O N 213 boundary-drawing and boundary-guarding concerns under new conditions which made boundarycrossing easier than ever before. Racism, in short, is a thoroughly modern weapon used in the conduct of pre-modern, or at least not exclusively modern, struggles. From heterophobia to racism Most commonly (though wrongly), racism is understood as a variety of inter-group resentment or prejudice. Sometimes racism is set apart from other sentiments or beliefs of the wider class by its emotional intensity; at other times, it is set apart by reference to hereditary, biological and extracultural attributes which, unlike the non-racist variants of group animosity, it normally contains. In some cases writers about racism point out the scientific pretensions that other, non-racist yet similarly negative stereotypes of foreign groups, do not usually possess.Whatever the feature chosen, however, the habit of analysing and interpreting racism in the framework of a larger category of prejudice is seldom breached. As racism gains in saliency among contemporary forms of intergroup resentment, and alone among them manifests a pronounced affinity with the scientific spirit of the age, a reverse interpretive tendency becomes ever more prominent; a tendency to extend the notion of racism so as to embrace all varieties of resentment. All kinds of group prejudice are then interpreted as so many expressions of innate, natural racist predispositions. One can probably afford not to be too excited by such an exchange of places and view it, philosophically, as just a question of the definitions, which can, after all, be chosen or rejected at will. On a closer scrutiny, however, complacency appears ill-advised. Indeed, if all intergroup dislike and animosity are forms of racism, and if the tendency to keep strangers at a distance and resent their proximity has been amply documented by historical and ethnological research as a well-nigh universal and perpetual attribute of human groupings, then there is nothing essentially and radically novel about the racism that has acquired such a prominence in our time; just a rehearsal of the old scenario, though admittedly staged with somewhat updated dialogues. In particular, the intimate link of racism with other aspects of modern life is either denied outright or left out of focus. In his recent impressively erudite study of prejudice,1 Pierre-AndréTaguieff writes synonimically of racism and heterophobia (resentment of the different). Both appear, he avers,‘on three levels’, or in three forms distinguished by the rising level of sophistication.The ‘primary racism’ is in his view universal. It is a natural reaction to the presence of an unknown stranger, to any form of human life that is foreign and puzzling. Invariably, the first response to strangeness is antipathy, which more often than not leads to aggressiveness. Universality goes hand-in-hand with spontaneity. The primary racism needs no inspiring or fomenting; nor does it need a theory to legitimize the elemental hatred – though it can be, on occasion, deliberately beefed up and deployed as an instrument of political mobilization.2 At such a time it can be lifted to another level of complexity and turn into a ‘secondary’ or (rationalized) racism.This transformation happens when a theory is supplied (and internalized) that provides logical foundations for resentment.The repelling Other is represented as ill-willed or 214 Z Y G M UNT B AUM A N ‘objectively’ harmful – in either case threatening to the well-being of the resenting group. For instance, the resented category can be depicted as conspiring with the forces of evil in the form construed by the resenting group’s religion, or it can be portrayed as an unscrupulous economic rival; the choice of the semantic field in which ‘harmfulness’ of the resented Other is theorized is presumably dictated by the current focus of social relevance, conflicts and divisions. Xenophobia, or more particularly ethnocentrism (both coming into their own in the age of rampant nationalism, when one of the most closely defended lines of division is argued in terms of shared history, tradition and culture), is a most common contemporary case of ‘secondary racism’. Finally, the ‘tertiary’, or mystifactory, racism, which presupposes the two ‘lower’ levels, is distinguished by the deployment of a quasi-biological argument. In the form in which it has been constructed and interpreted by Taguieff, the tri-partite classification seems logically flawed; if the secondary racism is already characterized by the theorizing of primary resentment, there seems to be no good reason for setting aside just one of the many possible ideologies that can (and are) used for this purpose as a distinctive feature of a ‘higher-level’ racism.The third-level racism looks much like a unit in the second-level set. Perhaps Taguieff could defend his classification against this charge were he, instead of separating biological theories because of the supposedly ‘mystifactory’ nature (one can argue without end about the degree of mystification in all the rest of the second-level racist theories), pointing to the tendency of biological argument to emphasize the irreversibility and incurability of the damaging ‘otherness’ of the Other. One could indeed point out that – in our age of artificiality of the social order, of the putative omnipotence of education and, more generally, of social engineering – biology in general, and heredity in particular, stand in public consciousness for the area still off-limits for cultural manipulation; something we do not know yet how to tinker with and to mould and reshape according to our will.Taguieff, however, insists that the modern biological–scientific form of racism does not appear ‘different in nature, operation and function, from traditional discourses of disqualifying exclusion’,3 and focuses instead on the degree of ‘deliric paranoia’ or extreme ‘speculativess’ as on distinctive features of the ‘tertiary racism’. I suggest, on the contrary, that it is precisely the nature, function and the mode of operation of racism that sharply differ from heterophobia – that diffuse (and sentimental rather than practical) unease, discomfort, or anxiety that people normally experience whenever they are confronted with such ‘human ingredients’ of their situation as they do not fully understand, cannot communicate with easily and cannot expect to behave in a routine, familiar way. Heterophobia seems to be a focused manifestation of a still wider phenomenon of anxiety aroused by the feeling that one has no control over the situation, and that thus one can neither influence its development, nor foresee the consequences of one’s action. Heterophobia may appear as either a realistic or an irrealistic objectification of such anxiety – but it is likely that the anxiety in question always seeks an object on which to anchor, and that consequently heterophobia is a fairly common phenomenon at all times and more common still in an age of modernity, when occasions for the ‘no control’ experience become more frequent, and their interpretation in terms of the obtrusive interference by an alien human group becomes more plausible. M O D ER N I T Y, R A C I S M , E X T ER M I N AT I O N 215 I suggest as well that, so described, heterophobia ought to be analytically distinguished from contestant enmity, a more specific antagonism generated by the human practices of identity-seeking and boundarydrawing. In the latter case, sentiments of antipathy and resentment seem more like emotional appendages to the activity of separation; separation itself demands an activity, an effort, a sustained action.The alien of the first case, however, is not merely a too-close-for-comfort, yet clearly separate category of people easy to spot and keep at a required distance, but a collection of people whose ‘collectiveness’ is not obvious or generally recognized; its collectiveness may be even contested and is often concealed or denied by the members of the alien category.The alien in this case threatens to penetrate the native group and fuse with it – if preventive measures are not set out and vigilantly observed.The alien, therefore, threatens the unity and the identity of the alien group, not so much by confounding its control over a territory or its freedom to act in the familiar way, but by blurring the boundary of the territory itself and effacing the difference between the familiar (right) and the alien (wrong) way of life.This is the ‘enemy in our midst’ case – one that triggers a vehement boundarydrawing bustle, which in its turn generates a thick fall-out of antagonism and hatred to those found or suspected guilty of double loyalty and sitting astride the barricade. Racism differs from both heterophobia and contestant enmity.The difference lies neither in the intensity of sentiments nor in the type of argument used to rationalize it. Racism stands apart by a practice of which it is a part and which it rationalizes: a practice that combines strategies of architecture and gardening with that of medicine – in the service of the construction of an artificial social order,through cutting out the elements of the present reality that neither fit the visualized perfect reality, nor can be changed so that they do. In a world that boasts the unprecedented ability to improve human conditions by reorganizing human affairs on a rational basis, racism manifests the conviction that a certain category of human beings cannot be incorporated into the rational order, whatever the effort. In a world notable for the continuous rolling back of the limits to scientific, technological and cultural manipulation, racism proclaims that certain blemishes of a certain category of people cannot be removed or rectified – that they remain beyond the boundaries of reforming practices, and will do so for ever. In a world proclaiming the formidable capacity of training and cultural conversion, racism sets apart a certain category of people that cannot be reached (and thus cannot be effectively cultivated) by argument or any other training tools, and hence must remain perpetually alien. To summarize: in the modern world distinguished by its ambition to self-control and self-administration racism declares a certain category of people endemically and hopelessly resistant to control and immune to all efforts at amelioration.To use the medical metaphor; one can train and shape ‘healthy’ parts of the body, but not cancerous growth.The latter can be ‘improved’ only by being destroyed. The consequence is that racism is inevitably associated with the strategy of estrangement. If conditions allow, racism demands that the offending category ought to be removed beyond the territory occupied by the group it offends. If such conditions are absent, racism requires that the offending category is physically exterminated. Expulsion and destruction are two mutually exchangeable methods of estrangement. 216 Z Y G M UNT B AUM A N Of the Jews, Alfred Rosenberg wrote:‘Zunz calls Judaism the whim of [the Jewish] soul. Now the Jew cannot break loose from this “whim” even if he is baptized ten times over, and the necessary result of this influence will always be the same: lifelessness, anti-Christianity and materialism.’4What is true about religious influence applies to all the other cultural interventions. Jews are beyond repair. Only a physical distance, or a break of communication, or fencing them off, or annihilation, may render them harmless. Racism as a form of social engineering Racism comes into its own only in the context of a design of the perfect society and intention to implement the design through planned and consistent effort. In the case of the Holocaust, the design was the thousand-year Reich – the kingdom of the liberated German Spirit. It was that kingdom which had no room for anything but the German Spirit. It had no room for the Jews, as the Jews could not be spiritually converted and embrace the Geist of the German Volk. This spiritual inability was articulated as the attribute of heredity or blood – substances which at that time at least embodied the other side of culture, the territory that culture could not dream of cultivating, a wilderness that would be never turned into the object of gardening. (The prospects of genetic engineering were not as yet seriously entertained.) The Nazi revolution was an exercise in social engineering on a grandiose scale. ‘Racial stock’ was the key link in the chain of engineering measures. In the collection of official plaidoyers of Nazi policy, published in English on Ribbentrop’s initiative for the purposes of international propaganda and for this reason expressed in a carefully tempered and cautious language, Dr Arthur Gütt, the Head of the National Hygiene Department in the Ministry of Interior, described as the major task of the Nazi rule ‘an active policy consistently aiming at the preservation of racial health’, and explained the strategy such policy had necessarily to involve: ‘If we facilitate the propagation of healthy stock by systematic selection and by elimination of the unhealthy elements, we shall be able to improve the physical standards not, perhaps, of the present generation, but of those who will succeed us.’ Gütt had no doubt that the selection-cum-elimination such a policy envisaged ‘go along the lines universally adopted in conformity with the researches of Koch, Lister, Pasteur, and other celebrated scientists’5 and thus constituted a logical extension – indeed, a culmination – of the advancement of modern science. Dr Walter Gross, the Head of the Bureau for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare, spelled out the practicalities of the racial policy: reversing the current trend of ‘declining birth-rate among the fitter inhabitants and unrestrained propagation among the hereditary unfit, the mentally deficient, imbeciles and hereditary criminals, etc.’6 As he writes for an international audience unlikely to applaud the determination of the Nazis, unencumbered as they were by things so irrational as public opinion or political pluralism, to see the accomplishment of modern science and technology to their logical end, Gross does not venture beyond the necessity to sterilize the hereditary unfit. The reality of racial policy was, however, much more gruesome. Contrary to Gütt’s suggestion, the Nazi leaders saw no reason to restrict their concerns to ‘those who will succeed us’. As the M O D ER N I T Y, R A C I S M , E X T ER M I N AT I O N 217 resources allowed, they set about to improve the present generation.The royal road to this goal led through the forceful removal of unwertes Leben. Every vehicle would do to secure progress along this road. Depending on circumstances, references were made to ‘elimination’,‘ridding’,‘evacuation’, or ‘reduction’ (read ‘extermination’). Following Hitler’s command of 1 September 1939, centres had been created in Brandenburg, Hadamar, Sonnenstein and Eichberg, which hid under a double lie: they called themselves, in hushed conversations between the initiated,‘euthanasia institutes’, while for the wider consumption they used still more deceitful and misleading names of a Charitable Foundation for ‘Institutional Care’ or the ‘the Transport of the Sick’ – or even the bland ‘T4’ code (from 4 Tiergartenstrasse, Berlin, where the co-ordinating office of the whole killing operation was located).7 When the command had to be rescinded on 28 August 1941 as the result of an outcry raised by a number of prominent luminaries of the Church, the principle of ‘actively managing the population trends’ was in no way abandoned. Its focus, together with the gassing technologies that the euthanasia campaign had helped to develop, was merely shifted to a different target: the Jews. And to different places, like Sobibór or Chelmno. Unwertes Leben remained the target all along. For the Nazi designers of the perfect society, the project they pursued and were determined to implement through social engineering split human life into worthy and unworthy; the first to be lovingly cultivated and given Lebensraum, the other to be ‘distanced’, or – if the distancing proved unfeasible – exterminated.Those simply alien were not the objects of strictly racial policy: to them, old and tested strategies traditionally associated with contestant enmity could be applied: the aliens ought to be kept beyond closely guarded borders. Those bodily and mentally handicapped made a more difficult case and called for a new, original policy: they could not be evicted or fenced off as they did not rightfully belong to any of the ‘other races’, but they were unworthy to enter the thousand-year Reich either.The Jews offered an essentially similar case. They were not a race like the others; they were an anti-race, a race to undermine and poison all other races, to sap not just the identity of any race in particular, but the racial order itself. (Remember the Jews as the ‘non-national nation’, the incurable enemy of the nation-based order as such.)With approval and relish, Rosenberg quotedWeiniger’s self-deprecatory verdict on the Jews as ‘an invisible cohesive web of slime fungus (plasmodium), existing since time immemorial and spread over the entire earth’.8 Thus the separation of the Jews could only be a half-measure, a station on the road to the ultimate goal.The matter could not possibly end with the cleansing of Germany of the Jews. Even residing far from the German borders, the Jews would continue to erode and disintegrate the natural logic of the universe. Having ordered his troops to fight for the supremacy of the German race, Hitler believed that the war he kindled was waged in the name of all races, a service rendered to racially organized humankind. In this conception of social engineering as a scientifically founded work aimed at the institution of a new, and better, order (a work which necessarily entails the containment, or preferably elimination, of any disruptive factors), racism was indeed resonant with the world-view and practice of modernity. And this, at least, in two vital respects. 218 Z Y G M UNT B AUM A N First, with the Enlightenment came the enthronement of the new deity, that of Nature, together with the legitimation of science as its only orthodox cult, and of scientists as its prophets and priests. Everything, in principle, had been opened to objective inquiry; everything could, in principle, be known – reliably and truly.Truth, goodness and beauty, that which is and that which ought to be, had all become legitimate objects of systematic, precise observation. In turn, they could legitimize themselves only through objective knowledge which would result from such observation. In George L. Mosse’s summary of his most convincingly documented history of racism, ‘it is impossible to separate the inquiries of the Enlightenment philosophies into nature from their examination of morality and human character . . . [From] the outset . . . natural science and the moral and aesthetic ideals of the ancient joined hands.’ In the form in which it was moulded by the Enlightenment, scientific activity was marked by an ‘attempt to determine man’s exact place in nature through observation, measurements, and comparisons between groups of men and animals’ and ‘belief in the unity of body and mind’.The latter ‘was supposed to express itself in a tangible, physical way, which could be measured and observed’.9 Phrenology (the art of reading the character from the measurements of the skull) and physiognomy (the art of reading the character from facial features) captured most fully the confidence, strategy and ambition of the new scientific age. Human temperament, character, intelligence, aesthetic talents, even political inclinations, were seen as determined by Nature; in what way exactly, one could find out through diligent observation and comparison of the visible, material ‘substratum’ of even the most elusive or concealed spiritual attributes. Material sources of sensual impressions were so many clues to Nature’s secrets; signs to be read, records written down in a code which science must crack. What was left to racism was merely to postulate a systematic, and genetically reproduced distribution of such material attributes of human organism as bore responsibility for characterological, moral, aesthetic or political traits. Even this job, however, had already been done for them by respectable and justly respected pioneers of science, seldom if ever listed among the luminaries of racism. Observing sine ira et studio the reality as they found it, they could hardly miss the tangible, material, indubitably ‘objective’ superiority that the West enjoyed over the rest of the inhabited world.Thus the father of scientific taxonomy, Linnaeus, recorded the division between the residents of Europe and inhabitants of Africa with the same scrupulous precision as that which he applied while describing the difference between Crustacea and fishes. He could not, and he did not, describe the white race otherwise than ‘as inventive, full of ingenuity, orderly, and governed by laws . . . By contrast the Negroes were endowed with all the negative qualities which made them a counterfoil for the superior race: they were regarded as lazy, devious, and unable to govern themselves.’10 The father of ‘scientific racism’, Gobineau, did not have to exercise much inventiveness to describe the black race as of little intelligence, yet of overdeveloped sensuality and hence a crude, terrifying power (just as the mob on the loose), and the white race as in love with freedom, honour and everything spiritual.11 In 1938,Walter Frank described the persecution of Jews as the saga of ‘German scholarship in a struggle against World Jewry’. From the very first day of the Nazi rule, scientific institutes, run by M O D ER N I T Y, R A C I S M , E X T ER M I N AT I O N 219 distinguished university professors of biology, history and political science, had been set up to investigate ‘the Jewish question’ according to the ‘international standards of advanced science’. Reichinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands, Institut zum Studium der Judenfrage, Institut zur Erforschung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben, and the notorious Rosenberg’s Institut zur Enforschung der Judenfrage were just a few of the many scientific centres that tackled theoretical and practical issues of‘Jewish policy’ as an application of scholarly methodology, and never were they short of qualified staff with academically certified credentials. According to a typical rationale of their activity, the whole cultural life for decades has been more or less under the influence of biological thinking, as it was begun particularly around the middle of the last century, by the teachings of Darwin, Mendel and Galton and afterwards has been advanced by the studies of Plötz, Schallmayer, Correns, deVries,Tschermak, Baur, Rüdin, Fischer, Lenz and others . . . It was recognized that the natural laws discovered for plants and animals ought also be valid for man . . .12 Second – from the Enlightenment on, the modern world was distinguished by its activist, engineering attitude toward nature and toward itself. Science was not to be conducted for its own sake; it was seen as, first and foremost, an instrument of awesome power allowing its holder to improve on reality, to re-shape it according to human plans and designs, and to assist it in its drive to self-perfection. Gardening and medicine supplied the archetypes of constructive stance, while normality, health, or sanitation offered the archmetaphors for human tasks and strategies in the management of human affairs. Human existence and cohabitation became objects of planning and administration; like garden vegetation or a living organism they could not be left to their own devices, lest should they be infested by weeds or overwhelmed by cancerous tissues. Gardening and medicine are functionally distinct forms of the same activity of separating and setting apart useful elements destined to live and thrive, from harmful and morbid ones, which ought to be exterminated. [. . .] From repellence to extermination ‘Christian theology never advocated extermination of the Jews’, writes George L. Mosse,‘but rather their exclusion from society as living witnesses to deicide.The pogroms were secondary to isolating Jews in ghettos.’13 ‘A crime’, Hannah Arendt asserts, ‘is met with punishment; a vice can only be exterminated.’14 Only in its modern, ‘scientific’, racist form, the age-long repellence of the Jews has been articulated as an exercise in sanitation; only with the modern reincarnation of Jew-hatred have the Jews been charged with an ineradicable vice, with an immanent flaw which cannot be separated from its carriers. Before that, the Jews were sinners; like all sinners, they were bound to suffer for their sins, in an earthly or other-worldly purgatory – to repent and, possibly, to earn redemption.Their suffering 220 Z Y G M UNT B AUM A N was to be seen so that the consequences of sin and the need for repentance are seen. No such benefit can possibly be derived from watching vice, even if complete with its punishment. (If in doubt, consult Mary Whitehouse.) Cancer, vermin or weed cannot repent.They have not sinned, they just lived according to their nature.There is nothing to punish them for. By the nature of their evil, they have to be exterminated. Alone with himself, in his diary, Joseph Goebbels spelled this out with the same clarity we previously noted in the abstract historiosophy of Rosenberg: ‘There is no hope of leading the Jews back into the fold of civilized humanity by exceptional punishments. They will forever remain Jews, just as we are forever members of the Aryan race.’15 Unlike the ‘philosopher’ Rosenberg, Goebbels was, however, a minister in a government wielding an awesome and unchallenged power; a government, moreover, which – thanks to the achievements of modern civilization – could conceive of the possibility of life without cancer, vermin or weeds, and had at its disposal material resources to make such a possibility into a reality. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to arrive at the idea of extermination of a whole people without race imagery; that is, without a vision of endemic and fatal defect which is in principle incurable and, in addition, is capable of self-propagation unless checked. It is also difficult, and probably impossible, to arrive at such an idea without the entrenched practice of medicine (both of medicine proper, aimed at the individual human body, and of its numerous allegorical applications), with its model of health and normality, strategy of separation and technique of surgery. It is particularly difficult, and well-nigh impossible, to conceive of such an idea separately from the engineering approach to society, the belief in artificiality of social order, institution of expertise and the practice of scientific management of human setting and interaction. For these reasons, the exterminatory version of anti-Semitism ought to be seen as a thoroughly modern phenomenon; that is, something which could occur only in an advanced state of modernity. These were not, however, the only links between exterminatory designs and the developments rightly associated with modern civilization. Racism, even when coupled with the technological predisposition of the modern mind, would hardly suffice to accomplish the feat of the Holocaust.To do that, it would have had to be capable of securing the passage from theory to practice – and this would probably mean energizing, by sheer mobilizing power of ideas, enough human agents to cope with the scale of the task, and sustaining their dedication to the job for as long as the task would require. By ideological training, propaganda or brainwashing, racism would have to imbue masses of non-Jews with the hatred and repugnance of Jews so intense as to trigger a violent action against the Jews whenever and wherever they are met. According to the widely shared opinion of the historians, this did not happen. In spite of the enormous resources devoted by the Nazi regime to racist propaganda, the concentrated effort of Nazi education, and the real threat of terror against resistance to racist practices, the popular acceptance of the racist programme (and particularly of its ultimate logical consequences) stopped well short of the level an emotion-led extermination would require. As if further proof was needed, this fact demonstrates once again the absence of continuity or natural progression between heterophobia or contestant enmity and racism. Those Nazi leaders who hoped to capitalize on the diffuse resentment of the Jews to M O D ER N I T Y, R A C I S M , E X T ER M I N AT I O N 221 obtain popular support for the racist policy of extermination were soon forced to realize their mistake. Yet even if (an unlikely case, indeed) the racist creed was more successful, and volunteers for lynching and throat-cutting were many times more numerous, mob violence should strike us as a remarkably inefficient, blatantly pre-modern form of social engineering or of the thoroughly modern project of racial hygiene. Indeed, as Sabini and Silver have convincingly put it, the most successful – widespread and materially effective – episode of mass anti-Jewish violence in Germany, the infamous Kristallnacht, was a pogrom, an instrument of terror . . . typical of the long-standing tradition of European anti-Semitism not the new Nazi order, not the systematic extermination of European Jewry. Mob violence is a primitive, ineffective technique of extermination. It is an effective method of territorizing a population, keeping people in their place, perhaps even of forcing some to abandon their religious or political convictions, but these were never Hitler’s aims with regard to the Jews: he meant to destroy them.16 There was not enough ‘mob’ to be violent; the sight of murder and destruction put off as many as it inspired, while the overwhelming majority preferred to close their eyes and plug their ears, but first of all to gag their mouths. Mass destruction was accompanied not by the uproar of emotions, but the dead silence of unconcern. It was not public rejoicing, but public indifference which ‘became a reinforcing strand in the noose inexorably tightening around hundreds of thousands of necks.’17 Racism is a policy first, ideology second. Like all politics, it needs organization, managers and experts. Like all policies, it requires for its implementation a division of labour and an effective isolation of the task from the disorganizing effect of improvization and spontaneity. It demands that the specialists are left undisturbed and free to proceed with their task. Not that indifference itself was indifferent; it surely was not, as far as the success of the Final Solution was concerned. It was the paralysis of that public which failed to turn into a mob, a paralysis achieved by the fascination and fear emanating from the display of power, which permitted the deadly logic of problemsolving to take its course unhampered. In Lawrence Stoke’s words,‘The failure when the regime first set insecurely in power to protest its inhumane measures made prevention of their logical culmination all but impossible, however unwanted and disapproved this undoubtedly was.’18 The spread and the depth of heterophobia was apparently sufficient for the German public not to protest against violence, even if the majority did not like it and remained immune to racist indoctrination. Of the latter fact the Nazis found numerous occasions to convince themselves. In her impeccably balanced account of German attitudes Sarah Gordon quotes an official Nazi report which vividly expressed Nazi disappointment with public responses to the Kristallnacht: One knows that anti-Semitism in Germany today is essentially confined to the party and its organizations, and that there is a certain group in the population who have not the 222 Z Y G M UNT B AUM A N slightest understanding for anti-Semitism and in whom every possibility of empathy is lacking. In the days after Kristallnacht these people ran immediately to Jewish businesses . . . This is to a great extent because we are, to be sure, an anti-Semitic people, an antiSemitic state, but nevertheless in all manifestations of life in the state and people antiSemitism is as good as unexpressed . . . There are still groups of Spiessern among the German people who talk about the poor Jews and who have no understanding for the anti-Semitic attitudes of the German people and who interceded for Jews at every opportunity. It should not be that only the leadership and party are anti-Semitic.19 Dislike of violence – particularly of such violence as could be seen and was meant to be seen – coincided, however, with a much more sympathetic attitude towards administrative measures taken against Jews. A great number of Germans welcomed an energetic and vociferously advertised action aimed at the segregation, separation, and disempowering of the Jews – those traditional expressions and instruments of heterophobia or contestant enmity. In addition, many Germans welcomed the measures portrayed as the punishment of the Jew (as long as one could pretend that the punished was indeed the conceptual Jew) as an imaginary (yet plausible) solution to quite real (if subconscious) anxieties and fears of displacement and insecurity.Whatever the reasons of their satisfaction, they seemed to be radically different from those implied by the Streicher-style exhortations to violence as an all-too-realistic way of repaying imaginary economic or sexual crimes. From the point of view of those who designed and commanded the mass murder of the Jews, Jews were to die not because they were resented (or at least not primarily for this reason); they were seen as deserving death (and resented for that reason) because they stood between this one imperfect and tension-ridden reality and the hoped-for world of tranquil happiness. [. . .] the disappearance of the Jews was instrumental in bringing about the world of perfection.The absence of Jews was precisely the difference between that world and the imperfect world here and now. Examining neutral and critical sources in addition to official reports, Gordon has documented a widespread and growing approval of ‘ordinary Germans’ for the exclusion of Jews from positions of power, wealth and influence.20The gradual disappearance of Jews from public life was either applauded or studiously overlooked. Unwillingness of the public to partake personally of the persecution of the Jews was, in short, combined with the readiness to go along with, or at least not to interfere with, the action of the State. ‘If most Germans were not fanatical or “paranoid” anti-Semites, they were “mild”, “latent”, or passive anti-Semites, for whom the Jews had become a “depersonalized”, abstract, and alien entity beyond human empathy and the “Jewish Question” a legitimate subject of state policy deserving solution.’21 These considerations demonstrate once more the paramount importance of the other, operational rather than ideological, link between the exterminatory form of antisemitism and modernity.The idea of extermination, discontinuous with the traditional heterophobia and dependent for that reason on M O D ER N I T Y, R A C I S M , E X T ER M I N AT I O N 223 the two implacably modern phenomena of racist theory and the medical-therapeutic syndrome, provided the first link. But the modern idea needed also suitably modern means of implementation. It found such means in modern bureaucracy. The only adequate solution to problems posited by the racist world-view is a total and uncompromising isolation of the pathogenic and infectious race – the source of disease and contamination – through its complete spatial separation or physical destruction. By its nature, this is a daunting task, unthinkable unless in conjunction with the availability of huge resources, means of their mobilization and planned distribution, skills of splitting the overall task into a great number of partial and specialized functions and skills to co-ordinate their performance. In short, the task is inconceivable without modern bureaucracy.To be effective, modern exterminatory antisemitism had to be married to modern bureaucracy. And in Germany it was. In his famous Wandsee briefing, Heydrich spoke of the ‘approval’ or ‘authorization’ of the RSHA Jewish policy by the Führer.22 Faced with the problems arising from the idea and the purpose this idea determined (Hitler himself preferred to speak of ‘prophecy’ rather than of a purpose or a task), the bureaucratic organization called Reichsicherheithauptamt set about designing proper practical solutions. It went about it the way all bureaucracies do: counting costs and measuring them against available resources, and then trying to determine the optimal combination. Heydrich underlined the need to accumulate practical experience, stressed the graduality of the process, and the provisional character of each step, confined by as-yetlimited practical know-how; RSHA was actively to seek the best solution.The Führer expressed his romantic vision of the world cleansed of the terminally diseased race.The rest was the matter of a not at all romantic, coolly rational bureaucratic process. The murderous compound was made of a typically modern ambition of social design and engineering, mixed with the typically modern concentration of power, resources and managerial skills. In Gordon’s terse and unforgettable phrase,‘when the millions of Jewish and other victims pondered their own imminent deaths and wondered “why must I die, since I have done nothing to deserve it?” probably the simplest answer would have been that power was totally concentrated in one man, and that man happened to hate their “race”.’23 The man’s hatred and the concentrated power did not have to meet. (Indeed, no satisfactory theory has been offered to date which proves that antisemitism is functionally indispensable for a totalitarian regime; or, vice versa, that the presence of antisemitism in its modern, racialist, form, inevitably results in such a regime. Klaus von Beyme has found in his recent study that, for instance, Spanish falangists took particular pride in the absence of a single antisemitic remark in all the writings of Antonio Primo de Rivera, while even such a ‘classical’ Fascist as Franco’s brotherin-law Serrano Suñer declared racism in general as a heresy for a good Catholic. French neo-Fascist Maurice Bardech stated that the persecution of the Jews was Hitler’s greatest error and remained hors du contrat fasciste.24) But they did. And they may meet again. 224 Z Y G M UNT B AUM A N Looking ahead The story of modern antisemitism – in both its heterophobic and in its modern, racist, forms – is unfinished, as is the history of modernity in general and the modern state in particular. Modernization processes seem to move in our days away from Europe.Though some sort of boundary-defining device seemed to be necessary in the passage modern, ‘garden-type’ culture, as well as during the most traumatic dislocations in societies undergoing the modernizing change, the selection of Jews for the role of such a device was in all probability dictated by the particular vicissitudes of European history. The connection between Judeophobia and European modernity was historical – and, one may say, historically unique. On the other hand, we know only too well that cultural stimuli travel relatively freely, if also unaccompanied by structural conditions closely related to them in their place of origin. Stereotype of the Jew as an order-disturbing force, as an incongruous cluster of oppositions that saps all identities and threatens all efforts at self-determination, has been long ago sedimented in the highly authoritative European culture and is available for export and import transaction, like everything else in that culture which is widely recognized as superior and trustworthy.This stereotype, like so many other culturally framed concepts and items before, can be adopted as a vehicle in the solution of local problems even if historical experience of which it was born has been locally missing; even if (or perhaps particularly if) societies which adopt it have had no previous first-hand knowledge of the Jews. It has been recently noted that antisemitism survived the populations it had been ostensibly targeted against. In countries where the Jews have all but disappeared, antisemitism (as sentiment, of course, married now to practices related primarily to other targets than the Jews) continues unabated. Even more remarkable is the dissociation between the acceptance of anti-Jewish sentiments and any other national, religious or racial prejudices, with which it was thought to be closely correlated. Neither are the antisemitic feelings related today to group or individual idiosyncracies, and particularly to anxiety-generating unresolved problems, acute uncertainty etc. Bernd Martin, who explored the Austrian case of ‘antisemitism without Jews’ has coined the term cultural sedimentation to account for a relatively new phenomenon: certain (usually morbid or otherwise unprepossessing or shameful) human features or behavioural patterns have come to be defined in popular consciousness as Jewish. In the absence of practical tests of such conjunction, the negative cultural definition and the antipathy to the features to which it refers feed and reinforce each other.25 To many other cases of contemporary antisemitism, however, the explanation in terms of ‘cultural sedimentation’ does not fit. In our global village, news travels fast and wide, and culture has long become a game without frontiers. Rather than a product of cultural sedimentation, contemporary antisemitism seems to be subject to the processes of cultural diffusion, today much more intense than at any time in the past. Like other objects of such diffusion, antisemitism, while retaining affinity with its original form, is on the way transformed – sharpened or enriched – to adapt to the problems and needs of its new home. Of such problems and needs there is no shortage in the times of ‘uneven development’ of modernity with its attendant tensions and traumas. Judeophobic stereotype offers a M O D ER N I T Y, R A C I S M , E X T ER M I N AT I O N 225 ready-made intelligibility to the otherwise puzzling and frightening dislocations and previously unexperienced forms of suffering. For instance, in Japan it has become in recent years increasingly popular as a universal key to the understanding of unanticipated obstacles in the path of economic expansion; the activity of world Jewry is proposed as the explanation of events so diverse as the overvaluation of the yen and the alleged threat of fall-out in the case of another Czernobyl-style nuclear mishap followed by another Soviet cover-up.26 One variety of antisemitic stereotype that travels easily is described in length by Norman Cohn as the image of the Jews as an international conspiracy set on ruining all local powers, decomposing all local cultures and traditions, and uniting the world under Jewish domination.This is, to be sure, the most vituperative and potentially lethal form of antisemitism; it was under the auspices of this stereotype that extermination of the Jews was attempted by the Nazis. It seems that in the contemporary world the multi-faceted imagery of Jewry, once drawing inspiration from multiple dimensions of ‘Jewish incongruity’, tends to be tapered down to just one fairly straightforward attribute: that of a supra-national elite, of invisible power behind all visible powers, of a hidden manager of allegedly spontaneous and uncontrollable, but usually unfortunate and baffling turns of fate. The now dominant form of antisemitism is a product of theory, not of elementary experience; it is supported by the process of teaching and learning, not by intellectually unprocessed responses to the context of daily interaction. At the beginning of this century by far the most widespread variant of antisemitism in the affluent countries of Western Europe was one aimed at impoverished and strikingly alien masses of Jewish immigrants; it arose from the unmediated experience of the native lower classes, which were alone in touch with the strange and bizarre foreigners and which responded to their disconcerting and destabilizing presence with mistrust and suspicion.Their feelings were seldom shared by the elites, who had no direct experience of interaction with Yiddish-speaking newcomers and for whom the immigrants were not essentially distinct from the rest of the unruly, culturally depressed and potentially dangerous lower classes. As long as it remained unprocessed by a theory which only middle-class or upper-class intellectuals could offer, the elemental heterophobia of the masses stayed (to paraphrase the famous adage of Lenin) at the level of ‘trade-union consciousness’; it could hardly be lifted from there as long as reference was made only to the lowlevel experience of intercourse with the Jewish poor. It could be generalized into a platform for mass unrest simply by adding up individual anxieties and presenting private troubles as shared problems (as it has been in the case of Mosley’s British Movement, aimed above all against London’s East End, or the present-day British National Front, aimed at the likes of Leicester and Notting Hill, and the French, targeted at Marseilles). It could advance as far as the demand to ‘send the aliens back where they came from’.Yet there was no road leading from such heterophobia or even boundary-drawing anxiety of the masses, in a way a ‘private affair’ of the lower classes, to sophisticated antisemitic theories of universal ambitions, like this of a deadly race or the ‘world conspiracy’.To capture popular imagination, such theories must refer to facts normally inaccessible and unknown to the masses and certainly not located within the realm of their daily and unmediated experience. 226 Z Y G M UNT B AUM A N Our previous analysis has brought us, however, to the conclusion that the true role of the sophisticated, theoretical forms of antisemitism lay not so much in its capacity to foment the antagonist practices of the masses, as in its unique link with the social-engineering designs and ambitions of the modern state (or, more precisely, the extreme and radical variants of such ambitions). On the evidence of the present trends towards withdrawal of theWestern state from direct management of many areas of previously controlled social life, and towards a pluralism-generating, market-led structure of social life, it seems unlikely that a racist form of antisemitism may be again used by a Western state as an instrument of a large-scale social-engineering project. For a foreseeable future, to be more precise; the post-modern, consumer-oriented and market-centred condition of mostWestern societies seems to be founded on a brittle basis of an exceptional economic superiority, which for the time being secures an inordinately large share of world resources but which is not bound to last forever. One can assume that situations calling for a direct take-over of social management by the state may well happen in some not too distant future – and then the well-entrenched and well-tested racist perspective may again come handy. In the meantime, the non-racist, less dramatic versions of Judeophobia may be on numerous less radical occasions deployed as means of political propaganda and mobilization. With the Jews moving today massively towards the upper-middle classes, and hence out of reach of the direct experience of the masses, group antagonisms arising from freshly fomented concerns with boundary-drawing and boundary-maintenance tend to focus today in mostWestern countries on immigrant workers.There are political forces eager to capitalize on such concerns.They often use a language developed by modern racism to argue in favour of segregation and physical separation: a slogan successfully used by the Nazis on their road to power as a means of gaining the support of the combative enmity of the masses for their own racist intentions. In all countries that attracted in the time of post-war economic reconstruction large numbers of immigrant workers, the popular press and the populistically-inclined politicians supply innumerable examples of the new uses to which racist language is currently put. Gérard Fuchs, as well as Pierre Jouve and Ali Magoudi,27 have recently published large collections and convincing analyses of these uses. One can read of Le Figaro magazine of 26 October 1985 dedicated to the question ‘Will we still be French in thirty years?’ or of prime minister Jacques Chirac speaking in one breath of his government’s determination to fight with great firmness for the strengthening of personal security and of the identity of the French national community. The British reader, to be sure, has no need to look to French authors in the search for quasi-racist, segregationist language in the service of the mobilization of popular heterophobia and boundary fears. However abominable they are, and however spacious is the reservoir of potential violence they contain, heterophobia and boundary-contest anxieties do not result – directly or indirectly – in genocide. Confusing heterophobia with racism and the Holocaust-like organized crime is misleading and also potentially harmful, as it diverts scrutiny from the genuine causes of the disaster, which are rooted in some aspects of modern mentality and modern social organization, rather than in timeless reactions to the strangers or even M O D ER N I T Y, R A C I S M , E X T ER M I N AT I O N 227 in less universal, yet fairly ubiquitous identity conflicts. In the initiation and perpetuation of the Holocaust, traditional heterophobia played but an auxiliary role.The truly indispensable factors lay elsewhere, and bore at the utmost a merely historical relation to more familiar forms of group resentment. The possibility of the Holocaust was rooted in certain universal features of modern civilization: its implementation on the other hand, was connected with a specific and not at all universal relationship between state and society. [. . .] Notes and references 1 Cf. Pierre-André Taguieffe, La force du préjugé: essai sur le racism et ses doubles (Parish: La Decouverte, 2 Taguieff, La force du préjugé, pp. 69–70. Albert Memmi, Le racisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1982) maintains 1988). that ‘racism, not anti-racism, is truly universal’ (p. 157), and explains the mystery of its alleged universality by reference to another mystery: the instinctive fear invariably inspired by all difference. One does not understand the different, which by the same token turns into the unknown and the unknown is a source of terror. In Memmi’s view, the horror of the unknown ‘stems from the history of our species, in the course of which the unknown was the source of danger’ (p. 208). It is suggested therefore that the putative universality of racism is a product of species learning. Having thus acquired a pre-cultural foundation, it is essentially immune to the impact of individual training. 3 Taguieff, La force du préjugé, p. 91. 4 Alfred Rosenberg, SelectedWritings (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 196. 5 Arthur Gütt, ‘Population Policy’, in Germany Speaks (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1938), pp. 35– 6 Walter Gross, ‘National Socialist Racial Thought’, in Germany Speaks, p. 68. 7 Cf. Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 23–5. 8 Alfred Rosenberg (ed.), Dietrich Eckart: Ein Vermächtnis (Munich, Frz. Eher, 1928). Quoted after 9 George. L. Mosse, Toward a Final Solution: A History of European Racism (London, J. M. Dent & Son, 52. George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture: A Documentary History (New York: Schocken Books, 1981), p. 77. 1978), p. 2. 10 Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, p. 20. 11 Cf. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, p. 53. 12 Max Wienreich, Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People (New York: Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1946), pp. 56, 33. 13 Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, p. 134. 14 Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1962), p. 87. 15 Diary of Joseph Goebbels, in Survivors,Victims, and Perpetrators: Essays on the Nazi Holocaust, ed. Joel E. 16 John R. Sabini & Maury Silver, ‘Destroying the Innocent with a Clear Conscience: A Sociopsychology 17 Richard Grünberger, A Social History of the Third Reich (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1971), p. Dinsdale (Washington: Hemisphere Publishing Company, 1980), p. 311. of the Holocaust’, in Survivors,Victims, and the Perpetrators, p. 329. 460. 228 Z Y G M UNT B AUM A N 18 Lawrence Stokes, ‘The German People and the Destruction of the European Jewry’, Central European 19 Quoted after Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and the ‘Jewish Question’ (Princeton: Princeton University History, no. 2 (1973), pp. 167–91. Press, 1984), pp. 159–60. 20 Cf. Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and the ‘Jewish Question’, p. 171. 21 Christopher R. Browning, Fateful Months (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), p. 106. 22 Le dossier Eichmann et la solution finale de la question juive (Paris: Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, 1960), pp. 52–3. 23 Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and the ‘Jewish Question’, p. 316. 24 Klaus von Beyme, Right-Wing Extremism inWestern Europe (London: Frank Cass, 1988), p. 5. In a recent study Michael Balfour surveyed conditions and motives which prompted various strata of German Weimar society to offer enthusiastic, mild or lukewarm support to the Nazi thrust for power, or at least refrain from active resistance. Many reasons are listed, general as well as specific to a given section of the population. The direct appeal of Nazi antisemitism figures prominently, however, in only one case (of the educated part of the obere Mittelstand, who felt threatened by the ‘disproportionate competition’ of the Jews), and even in this case merely as one of many factors found attractive, or at least worth trying, in the Nazi programme of the social revolution. Cf. Withstanding Hitler in Germany 1933–45 (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 10–28. 25 Cf. Bernd Martin, ‘Antisemitism before and after Holocaust’, in Jews, Antisemitism and Culture in Vienna, ed. Ivor Oxaal (London: Michael Pollak and Gerhard Botz, 1987). 26 Jewish Chronicle, 15 July 1988, p. 2. 27 Cf. Gérard Fuchs, Ils resteront: le défi de l’immigration (Paris: Syros, 1987); Pierre Jouve & Ali Magoudi, Les dits et les non-dits de Jean-Marie Le Pen: enquéte et psychanalyse (Paris: La Decouverte, 1988). Chapter 17 Sander L. Gilman ARE JEWS WHITE? Or, The History of the Nose Job [. . .] T H E P E R S O N A L C O L U M N S I N the Washingtonian, the local city magazine in Washington, D.C., are filled with announcements of individuals “in search of ” mates (“in search of ” is the rubric under which these advertisements are grouped).These advertisements are peppered with various codes so well known that they are never really explained: “DWM [DivorcedWhite Male] just recently arrived from Boston seeks a non-smoking, financially secure 40+ who loves to laugh” . . . or “SJF [Jewish Single Female], KathleenTurner type, with a zest for life in search of S/DJM . . . for a passionate relationship.” Recently, I was struck by a notice which began “DW(J)F [DivorcedWhite (Jewish) Female] – young, 41, Ph.D., professional, no kids . . . seeks S/D/WWM, exceptional mind, heart & soul . . .”1 What fascinated me were the brackets: advertisements for “Jews” or for “African Americans” or for “Whites” made it clear that individuals were interested in choosing their sexual partners from certain designated groups within American society. But the brackets implied that here was a woman who was both “White” and “Jewish.” Given the racial politics of post-civil rights America, where do the Jews fit in? It made me ask the question, which the woman who placed the personals advertisement clearly was addressing: are Jews white? and what does “white” mean in this context? Or, to present this question in a slightly less polemical manner, how has the question of racial identity shaped Jewish identity in the Diaspora? I am not addressing what the religious, ethnic, or cultural definition of the Jew is either from within or without Judaism or the Jewish community – but how the category of race present within Western, scientific, and popular culture, has shaped Jewish self-perception. My question is not merely an “academic” one – rather I am interested in how the representation of the Jewish body is shaped and, in turn, shapes the sense of Jewish identity. My point of departure is the view of Mary Douglas: 230 SANDER L. GILMAN The human body is always treated as an image of society and . . . there can be no natural way of considering the body that does not involve at the same time a social dimension. Interest in its apertures depends on the preoccupation with social exits and entrances, escape routes and invasions. If there is no concern to preserve social boundaries, I would not expect to find concern with bodily boundaries.2 Where and how a society defines the body reflects how those in society define themselves. This is especially true in terms of the “scientific” or pseudo-scientific categories such as race which have had such an extraordinary importance in shaping how we all understand ourselves and each other. From the conclusion of the nineteenth century, the idea of “race” has been given a positive as well as a negative quality. We belong to a race and our biology defines us, is as true a statement for many groups, as is the opposite: you belong to a race and your biology limits you. Race is a constructed category of social organization as much as it is a reflection of some aspects of biological reality. Racial identity has been a powerful force in shaping how we, at the close of the twentieth century, understand ourselves – often in spite of ourselves. Beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing to the present, there has been an important cultural response to the idea of race, one which has stressed the uniqueness of the individual over the uniformity of the group.AsTheodosius Dobzhansky noted in 1967: “Every person has a genotype and a life history different from any other person, be that person a member of his family, clan, race, or mankind. Beyond the universal rights of all human beings (which may be a typological notion!), a person ought to be evaluated on his own merits.”3 Dobzhansky and many scientists of the 1960s dismissed “race” as a category of scientific evaluation, arguing that whenever it had been included over the course of history, horrible abuses had resulted.4 At the same time, withinWestern, specifically American culture of the 1960s, there was also a transvaluation of the concept of “race.” “Black” was “beautiful,” and “roots” were to be celebrated, not denied.The view was that seeing oneself as being a part of a “race” was a strengthening factor. We at the close of the twentieth century have, however, not suddenly become callous to the negative potential of the concept of “race.” Given its abuse in the Shoah5 as well as in neo-colonial policies throughout the world,6 it is clear that a great deal of sensitivity must be used in employing the very idea of “race.” In reversing the idea of “race,” we have not eliminated its negative implications, we have only masked them. For it is also clear that the meanings associated with “race” impacts on those included within these constructed categories. It forms them and shapes them. And this can be a seemingly positive or a clearly negative response.There is no question that there are “real,” i.e., shared genetic distinctions within and between groups. But the rhetoric of what this shared distinction comes to mean for the general culture and for the “group” so defined becomes central to any understanding of the implications of race. Where I would like to begin is with that advertisement in the Washingtonian and with the question which the bracketed (J) posed: are Jews white? To begin to answer that question we must trace the debate about the skin color of the Jews, for skin colour remains one of the most salient A R E J E WE W H I T E ? 231 markers for the construction of race in theWest over time.The general consensus of the ethnological literature of the late nineteenth century was that the Jews were “black” or, at least, “swarthy.” This view had a long history in European science. As early as 1691 François-Maximilien Misson, whose ideas influenced Bufon’s Natural History, argued against the notion that Jews were black: ’Tis also a vulgar error that the Jews are all black; for this is only true of the Portuguese Jews, who marrying always among one another, beget Children like themselves, and consequently the Swarthiness of their Complexion is entail’d upon their whole Race, even in the Northern Regions. But the Jews who are originally of Germany, those, for example, I have seen at Prague, are not blacker than the rest of their Countrymen.7 But this was a minority position. For the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientist the “blackness” of the Jew was not only a mark of racial inferiority, but also an indicator of the diseased nature of the Jew.The “liberal” Bavarian writer Johan Pezzl, who travelled to Vienna in the 1780s, described the typicalViennese Jew of his time: There are about five hundred Jews in Vienna. Their sole and eternal occupation is to counterfeit, salvage, trade in coins, and cheat Christians, Turks, heathens, indeed themselves. . . .This is only the beggarly filth from Canaan which can only be exceeded in filth, uncleanliness, stench, disgust, poverty, dishonesty, pushiness and other things by the trash of the twelve tribes from Galicia. Excluding the Indian fakirs, there is no category of supposed human beings which comes closer to the Orang-Utan than does a Polish Jew. . . . Covered from foot to head in filth, dirt and rags, covered in a type of black sack . . . their necks exposed, the color of a Black, their faces covered up to the eyes with a beard, which would have given the High Priest in theTemple chills, the hair turned and knotted as if they all suffered from the “plica polonica.”8 The image of theViennese Jew is that of the Eastern Jew, suffering from the diseases of the East, such as the Judenkratze, the fabled skin and hair disease also attributed to the Poles under the designation of the “plica polonica.”9 The Jews’ disease is written on the skin. It is the appearance, the skin color, the external manifestation of the Jew which marks the Jew as different. There is no question for a non-Jewish visitor to Vienna upon first seeing the Jew that the Jew suffers from Jewishness. The internal, moral state of the Jew, the Jew’s very psychology, is reflected in the diseased exterior of the Jew. As mentioned earlier, “plica polonica” is a real dermatologic syndrome. It results from living in filth and poverty. But it was also associated with the unhygienic nature of the Jew and, by the midnineteenth century, with the Jew’s special relationship to the most frightening disease of the period, syphilis.10 For the non-Jew seeing the Jew it mirrored popular assumptions about the Jew’s inherent, essential nature. Pezzl’s contemporary, Joseph Rohrer, stressed the “disgusting skin diseases” of the 232 SANDER L. GILMAN Jew as a sign of the group’s general infirmity.11 And the essential Jew for Pezzl is the Galician Jew, the Jew from the Eastern reaches of the Hapsburg Empire.12 (This late eighteenth-century view of the meaning of the Jew’s skin color was not only held by non-Jews.The Enlightenment Jewish physician Elcan Isaac Wolf saw this “black yellow” skin color as a pathognomonic sign of the diseased Jew.13) Following the humoral theory of the times, James Cowles Pritchard (1808) commented on the Jews’ “choleric and melancholic temperaments, so that they have in general a shade of complexion somewhat darker than that of the English people . . .”14 Nineteenth-century anthropology as early as the work of Claudius Buchana commented on the “inferiority” of the “black” Jews of India.15 By the midcentury, being black, being Jewish, being diseased, and being “ugly” come to be inexorably linked.All races, according to the ethnology of the day, were described in terms of aesthetics, as either “ugly” or “beautiful.”16 African blacks, especially the Hottentot, as I have shown elsewhere, became the epitome of the “ugly” race.17 And being ugly, as I have also argued, was not merely a matter of aesthetics but was a clear sign of pathology, of disease. Being black was not beautiful. Indeed, the blackness of the African, like the blackness of the Jew, was believed to mark a padiological change in the skin, the result of congenital syphilis. (And, as we shall see, syphilis was given the responsibility for the form of the nose.) One bore the signs of one’s diseased status on one’s anatomy, and by extension, in one’s psyche. And all of these signs pointed to the Jews being a member of the “ugly” races of mankind, rather than the “beautiful” races. In being denied any association with the beautiful and the erotic, the Jew’s body was denigrated.18 Within the racial science of the nineteenth century, being “black” came to signify that the Jews had crossed racial boundaries. The boundaries of race were one of the most powerful social and political divisions evolved in the science of the period.That the Jews, rather than being considered the purest race, are because of their endogenous marriages, an impure race, and therefore, a potentially diseased one. That this impurity is written on their physiognomy. According to Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Jews are a “mongrel” (rather than a healthy “mixed”) race, who interbred with Africans during the period of the Alexandrian exile.19 They are “a mongrel race which always retains this mongrel character.” Jews had “hybridized” with blacks in Alexandrian exile.They are, in an ironic review of Chamberlain’s work by Nathan Birnbaum, the Viennese-Jewish activist who coined the word “Zionist,” a “bastard” race, the origin of which was caused by their incestuousness, their sexual selectivity.20 Jews bear the sign of the black, “the African character of the Jew, his muzzle-shaped mouth and face removing him from certain other races . . .,” as Robert Knox noted at mid century.21 The physiognomy of the Jew which is like that of the black “. . . the contour is convex; the eyes long and fine, the outer angles running towards the temples; the brow and nose apt to form a single convex line; the nose comparatively narrow at the base, the eyes consequently approaching each other; lips very full, mouth projecting, chin small, and the whole physiognomy, when swarthy, as it often is, has an African look.”22 It is, therefore, not only the color of the skin which enables the scientist to see the Jew as black, but also the associated anatomical signs, such as the shape of the nose.The Jews were A R E J E WE W H I T E ? 233 quite literally seen as black. Adam Gurowski, a Polish noble, “took every light-colored mulatto for a Jew” when he first arrived in the United States in the 1850s.23 [. . .] Jews look different, they have a different appearance, and this appearance has pathognomonic significance. Skin color marked the Jew as both different and diseased. For the Jewish scientist, such as Sigmund Freud, these “minor differences in people who are otherwise alike . . . form the basis of feelings of strangeness and hostility between them.”24 This is what Freud clinically labeled as the “narcissism of minor differences.” But are these differences “minor” either from the perspective of those labeling or those labeled? In reducing this sense of the basis of difference between “people who are otherwise alike,” Freud was not only drawing on the Enlightenment claim of the universality of human rights, but also on the Christian underpinnings of these claims. For this “narcissism” fights “successfully against feelings of fellowship and overpower[s] the commandment that all men should love one another.” It is the Christian claim to universal brotherly love that Freud was employing in arguing that the differences between himself, his body, and the body of the Aryan, are trivial. Freud comprehended the special place that the Jew played in the demonic universe of the Aryan psyche. But he marginalized this role as to the question of the Jew’s function “as an agent of economic discharge . . . in the world of the Aryan ideal” rather than as one of the central aspects in the science of his time.25 What Freud was masking was that Jews are not merely the fantasy capitalists of the paranoid delusions of the anti-Semites, they also mirror within their own sense of selves the image of their own difference. By the close of the nineteenth century, the “reality” of the physical difference of the Jew as a central marker of race had come more and more into question. Antithetical theories, such as those of Friedrich Ratzel, began to argue that skin color was a reflex of geography, and could and did shift when a people moved from one part of the globe to another. Building on earlier work by the President of Princeton University at the close of the eighteenth century, Samuel Stanhope Smith (1787), the Jews came to be seen as the adaptive people par excellence. “In Britain and Germany they are fair, brown in France and in Turkey, swarthy in Portugal and Spain, olive in Syria and Chaldea, tawny or copper-coloured in Arabia and Egypt.”26 William Lawrence commented in 1823 that “their colour is everywhere modified by the situation they occupy.”27 The questionability of skin color as the marker of Jewish difference joined with other qualities which made the Jew visible. By the latter half of the nineteenth century,Western European Jews had become indistinguishable from otherWestern Europeans in matters of language, dress, occupation, location of their dwellings and the cut of their hair. Indeed, if Rudolf Virchow’s extensive study of over 10,000 German schoolchildren published in 1886 was accurate, they were also indistinguishable in terms of skin, hair, and eye color from the greater masses of those who lived in Germany.28 Virchow’s statistics sought to show that wherever a greater percentage of the overall population had lighter skin or bluer eyes or blonder hair there was a greater percentage of Jews also had lighter skin or bluer eyes or blonder hair. But although Virchow attempted to provide a rationale for the sense of Jewish acculturation, he still assumed that Jews were a separate and distinct racial category. George Mosse 234 SANDER L. GILMAN has commented, “the separateness of Jewish schoolchildren, approved by Virchow, says something about the course of Jewish emancipation in Germany. However, rationalized, the survey must have made Jewish schoolchildren conscious of their minority status and their supposedly different origins.”29 Nonetheless, even though they were labeled as different, Jews came to parallel the scale of types found elsewhere in European society. A parallel shift in the perception of the Jewish body can be found during the twentieth century in the United States. It is not merely that second- and third-generation descendants of Eastern European Jewish immigrants do not “look” like their grandparents; but they “look” American. The writer and director Philip Dunne commented on the process of physical acculturation of Jews in Southern California during the twentieth century: You could even see the physical change in the family in the second generation – not resembling the first generation at all. Of course, this is true all across the country, but it is particularly noticeable in people who come out of very poor families. . . . One dear friend and colleague of mine was a product of a Lower East Side slum. He was desperately poor. And he grew up a rickety, tiny man who had obviously suffered as a child. At school, he told me, the goyim would scream at him. Growing up in California, his two sons were tall, tanned, and blond. Both excelled academically and in athletics. One became a military officer, the other a physicist. They were California kids. Not only American but Californian.30 But the more Jews in Germany and Austria at the fin de siècle looked like their non-Jewish contemporaries, the more they sensed themselves as different and were so considered.As the AngloJewish social scientist Joseph Jacobs noted, “it is some quality which stamps their features as distinctly Jewish.This is confirmed by the interesting fact that Jews who mix much with the outer world seem to lose their Jewish quality. This was the case with Karl Marx . . .”31 And yet, as we know, it was precisely those Jews who were the most assimilated, who were passing, who feared that their visibility as Jews could come to the fore. It was they who most feared being seen as bearing that disease, Jewishness, which Heinrich Heine, said the Jews brought from Egypt. In the 1920s, JacobWassermann chronicled the ambivalence of the German Jews towards their own bodies, their own difference. Wassermann articulates this difference within the terms of the biology of race. He writes that: “I have known many Jews who have languished with longing for the fair-haired and blue-eyed individual.They knelt before him, burned incense before him, believed his every word; every blink of his eye was heroic; and when he spoke of his native soil, when he beat his Aryan breast, they broke into a hysterical shriek of triumph.”32 Their response,Wassermann argues, is to feel disgust for their own body, which even when it is identical in all respects to the body of the Aryan remains different: “I was once greatly diverted by a young Viennese Jew, elegant, full of suppressed ambition, rather melancholy, something of an artist, and something of a charlatan. Providence itself had given him fair hair and blue eyes; but lo, he had no confi dence in his fair hair and A R E J E WE W H I T E ? 235 blue eyes: in his heart of hearts he felt that they were spurious.”33 The Jew’s experience of his or her own body was so deeply impacted by anti-Semitic rhetoric that even when that body met the expectations for perfection in the community in which the Jew lived, the Jew experienced his or her body as flawed, diseased.34 If only one could change those aspects of the body which marked one as Jewish! But nothing, not acculturation, not baptism, could wipe away the taint of race. No matter how they changed, they still remained diseased Jews. And this was marked on their physiognomy. Moses Hess, the German–Jewish revolutionary and political theorist commented, in his Rome and Jerusalem (1862) that “even baptism will not redeem the German Jew from the nightmare of German Jewhatred.The Germans hate less the religion of the Jews than their race, less their peculiar beliefs than their peculiar noses. . . . Jewish noses cannot be reformed, nor black, curly, Jewish hair be turned through baptism or combing into smooth hair.The Jewish race is a primal one, which had reproduced itself in its integrity despite climactic influences. . . .The Jewish type is indestructible:”35 The theme of the Jew’s immutability was directly tied to arguments about the permanence of the negative features of the Jewish race. On one count, Hess seemed to be wrong – the external appearance of the Jew did seem to be shifting. His skin seemed to be getting whiter, at least in his own estimation, though it could never get white enough. Jews, at least inWestern Europe, no longer suffered from the disgusting skin diseases of poverty which had once marked their skin. But on another count, Hess was right.The Jew’s nose could not be “reformed.” Interrelated with the meaning of skin was the meaning of the Jew’s physiognomy, especially the Jew’s nose. And it was also associated with the Jew’s nature. George Jabet, writing as EdenWarwick, in his Notes on Noses (1848) characterized the “Jewish, or Hawknose,” as “very convex, and preserves its convexity like a bow, throughout the whole length from the eyes to the tip. It is thin and sharp.” Shape also carried here a specific meaning: “It indicates considerable Shrewdness in worldly matters; a deep insight into character, and facility of turning that insight to profitable account.”36 Physicians, drawing on such analogies, speculated that the difference of the Jew’s language, the very mirror of his psyche, was the result of the form of the his nose.Thus Bernhard Blechmann’s rationale for the Mauscheln of the Jews, their inability to speak with other than a Jewish intonation, is that the “muscles, which are used for speaking and laughing are used inherently different from those of Christians and that this use can be traced . . . to the great difference in their nose and chin.”37 The nose becomes one of the central loci of difference in seeing the Jew. [. . .] Notes and references 1 Washingtonian 26, 4 (January 1991), p. 196. 2 Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), p. 70. 3 Theodosius Dobzhansky, “On Types, Genotypes, and the Genetic Diversity in Populations,” in J.N. Spuhler, ed., Genetic Diversity and Human Behavior (Chicago: Aldine, 1967), p. 12. 236 4 SANDER L. GILMAN See for example, Peter A. Bochnik, Die mächtigen Diener: Die Medizin und die Entwicklung von Frauenfeindlichkeit und Antisemitismus in der europäischen Geschichte (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1985). 5 Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986). 6 See Oliver Ransford, “Bid the Sickness Cease”: Disease in the History of Black Africa (London: John Murray, 1983). 7 François-Maximilien Misson, A New Voyage to Italy, 2 vols. (London: R. Bonwicke, 1714), 2: 139. 8 Johan Pezzl, Skizze vonWien: Ein Kultur- und Sittenbild aus der josephinischen Zeit, ed. Gustav Gugitz and 9 On the meaning of this disease in the medical literature of the period see the following dissertations Anton Scholssar (Graz: Leykam-Verlag, 1923), pp. 107–8. on the topic: Michael Scheiba, Dissertatio inauguralis medica, sistens quaedam plicae pathologica: Germ. Juden-Zopff, Polon. Koltun: quam . . . in Academia Albertina pro gradu doctoris . . . subjiciet defensurus Michael Scheiba . . . (Regiomonti: Litteris Reusnerianis, 1739) and Hieronymus Ludolf, Dissertatio inauguralis medica de plica, vom Juden-Zopff . . . (Erfordiae: Typis Groschianis, 1724) 10 Harry Friedenwald, The Jews and Medicine: Essays. 2 vols. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944), 2: 531. 11 Joseph Rohrer, Versuch über die jüdischen Bewohner der östereichischen Monarchie (Vienna: n.p., 1804), p. 26.The debate about the special tendency of the Jews for skin disease, especially “plica polonica,” goes on well into the twentieth century. See Richard Weinberg, “Zur Pathologie der Juden,” Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden 1 (1905): 10–11. 12 Wolfgang Häusler, Das galizische Judentum in der Habsburgermonarchie im Lichte der zeitgenössischen Publizistik und Reiseliteratur von 1772–1848 (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1979). On the status of the debates about the pathology of the Jews in the East after 1919 see Voprosy biologii i patologii evreev (Leningrad: State Publishing House, 1926). 13 Elcan Isaac Wolf, Von den Krankheiten der Juden (Mannheim: C.F. Schwan, 1777), p. 12. 14 James Cowles Pritchard, Researches into the Physical History of Man (Chicago:The University of Chicago 15 Claudius Buchanan, Christian Researches in Asia, with Notices of the Translation of the Scriptures into the Press, 1973), p. 186. Oriental Languages Boston: Samuel T. Armstrong, 1811), p. 169. On the background to these questions see George W. Stocking, Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: The Free Press, 1987). 16 Léon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, trans. Edmund Howard (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 155–82. 17 Sander L. Gilman, On Blackness without Blacks: Essays on the Image of the Black in Germany, Yale AfroAmerican Studies (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982). 18 See Cheryl Herr, “The Erotics of Irishness,” Critical Inquiry 17 (1990): 1–34. 19 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Lees, 2 vols. (London: 20 Nathan Birnbaum, “Uber Houston Stewart Chamberlain,” in his Ausgewählte Schriften zur jüdischen Frage 21 Robert Knox, The Races of Men: A Fragment (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850), p. 134. John Lane/The Bodley Head, 1913), 1: 389. (Czernowitz: Verlag der Buchhandlung Dr. Birnbaum & Dr. Kohut, 1910), 2: 201. A R E J E WE W H I T E ? 237 22 Knox, Races of Men, p. 133. 23 Adam G. De Gurowski, America and Europe (New York: D. Appleton, 1857), p. 177. 24 Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans, J. Strachey, A. Freud, A. Strachey, and A. Tyson, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth, 1955–74), 11: 199; 18: 101; 21: 114. 25 ibid. 21: 120. 26 Samuel Stanhope Smith, An Essay on the Causes of theVariety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species 27 William Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man (London: James Smith, 28 Rudolf Virchow, “Gesamtbericht über die Farbe der Haut, der Haare und der Augen der Schulkinder in 29 George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York: Howard Fertig, 30 Cited from an interview by Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New 31 “Types,” The Jewish Encyclopedia. 12 vols (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1906), 12: 295. (Cambridge: MASS: The Belknap Press, 1965), p. 42. 1823), p. 468. Deutschland,” Archiv für Anthropologie 16 (1886): 275–475. 1975), pp. 90–91. York: Crown, 1988), pp. 242–42. 32 Wassermann, My Life, p. 156 33 Wassermann, My Life, p. 156. 34 On the cultural background for this concept see Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto:The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation 1770–1870 (Cambridge, MASS: Harvard University Press, 1973) and Rainer Erb and Werner Bergmann, Die Nachtseite der Judenemanzipation: Der Widerstand gegen die Integration der Juden in Deutschland 1780–1860 (Berlin: Metropol. 1989). 35 Moses Hess, Rom und Jerusalem. 2nd ed. (Leipzig: M. W. Kaufmann, 1899), Brief IV. Cited in the translation from Paul Lawrence Rose, Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant toWagner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 323. 36 Eden Warwick, Notes on Noses (1848: London: Richard Bentley, 1864), p. 11. On the general question of the representation of the physiognomy of the Jew in mid-nineteenth-century culture see Mary Cowling, The Artist as Anthropologist:The Representation of Type and Character inVictorian Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 118–19, 332–33. 37 Bernhard Blechmann, Ein Beitrag zur Anthropologie der Juden (Dorpat: Wilhelm Just, 1882), p. 11. Chapter 18 Matthew F. Jacobson LOOKING JEWISH, SEEING JEWS W H E N J O H A N N B L U M E N B A C H sat down to delineate The NaturalVarieties of Man in 1775, he lighted upon the “racial face” of the Jews as the most powerful example of “the unadulterated countenance of nations.”The principle of stable racial types was illustrated “above all [by] the nation of the Jews, who, under every climate, remain the same as far as the fundamental configuration of face goes, remarkable for a racial character almost universal, which can be distinguished at the first glance even by those little skilled in physiognomy.”1 The racial character of Jewishness in the New World ebbed and flowed over time.The saga of Jewishness-as-difference in North America properly begins as early as 1654, when Peter Stuyvesant wrote to the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company that Christian settlers in New Amsterdam had “deemed it useful to require [Jews] in a friendly way to depart.” Stuyvesant went on to pray “that the deceitful race – such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ – be not allowed further to infect and trouble this new colony.”2 In the early republic Jewishness was most often taken up as a matter not of racial difference marked by physicality, but of religious difference marked by a stubborn and benighted failure to see Truth. Jews were “un-Christian,” as in the laws limiting the right of office-holding in Maryland; they were “infidels” in more heated rhetoric.Then, like other non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants who entered under the terms of the 1790 naturalization law, Jews were increasingly seen as a racial group (in their case as Orientals, Semites, or Hebrews) in the mid to late nineteenth century – particularly as the demographics of immigration tilted away from German and other West European Jews, and toward theYiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe. Finally, again like other non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants, Jews gradually became Caucasians over the course of the twentieth century. Thus anti-Semitism and the racial odyssey of Jews in the United States are neither wholly divisible from nor wholly dependent upon the history of whiteness and its vicissitudes in American LOOKING JEWISH, SEEING JEWS 239 political culture. When Henry James writes, “There were thousands of little chairs and almost as many little Jews; and there was music in the open rotunda, over which Jews wagged their big noses,” it is useful to know that he is drawing upon a long European tradition of anti-Jewish imagery buttressed by arrangements of institutional power and political custom. It is also useful to know, however, that James’s sensibilities could be as easily unsettled by a gang of Italian “ditchers” or a variety of other immigrant arrivals. After a visit to “the terrible little Ellis Island” in 1906, James ventured that the sight would bring “a new chill in [the] heart” of any long-standing American, as if he had “seen a ghost in his supposedly safe old house.” American natives, he wrote, had been reduced to a state of “unsettled possession” of their own country; and it was not the Jew alone, but the “inconceivable alien” in general, who had him so worried.3 Yet as with Irish immigrants, who came ashore already carrying the cultural and political baggage of Saxon oppression, the Jews’ version of becoming Caucasian cannot be understood apart from their particular history of special sorrows in the ghettos of Eastern Europe, apart from the deep history of anti-Semitism inWestern culture, apart from anti-Semitic stereotypes that date back well before the European arrival on North American shores, or apart, finally and most obviously, from the historic cataclysm of the Holocaust. [. . .] Like Irishness, Italianness, Greekness, and other probationary whitenesses, visible Jewishness in American culture between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries represented a complex process of social value become perception: social and political meanings attached to Jewishness generate a kind of physiognomical surveillance that renders Jewishness itself discernible as a particular pattern of physical traits (skin color, nose shape, hair color and texture, and the like – what Blumenbach called “the fundamental configuration of face.”The visible markers may then be interpreted as outer signs of an essential, immutable, inner moral–intellectual character; and that character, in its turn – attested to by physical “difference” – is summoned up to explain the social value attached to Jewishness in the first place. The circuit is ineluctable. Race is social value become perception; Jewishness seen is social value naturalized and so enforced. This is not to say that people all “really” look alike; rather, it is to argue that those physical differences which register in the consciousness as “difference” are keyed to particular social and historical circumstances. (We might all agree that Daniel Patrick Moynihan “looks Irish,” for instance; but unlike our predecessors, we at the turn of the twenty-first century are not likely to note his Irishness first thing.) Thus a writer defending the “better” Jews (what a later generation would tellingly call “white Jews”) in the North American Review in 1891 could collapse the distinction between behavior and physicality, arguing that “among cultured Jews the racial features are generally less strongly defined.” (When Jews are of the “better” type, that is, the observing eye need not scout their Jewishness.)4 That same year, meanwhile, in TheWitch of Prague, the novelist Marion Crawford could thoroughly fuse physicality and inner character in his portrait of Jewish evil. In the Jewish quarter one encountered throngs of gowned men, crooked, bearded, filthy, vulture-eyed . . . hook-nosed and loose-lipped, grasping fat purses, in lean fingers, shaking greasy curls that straggled out 240 M AT T H E W F. J A C O B S O N under caps of greasy fur, glancing to the left and right with quick, gleaming looks that pierced the gloom like fitful flashes of lightening . . . a writhing mass of humanity, intoxicated by the smell of gold, mad for its possession, half hysteric with fear of losing it, timid, yet dangerous, poisoned to the core by the sweet sting of money, terrible in intelligence, vile in heart, contemptible in body, irresistible in the unity of their greed – the Jews of Prague.5 Not, indeed, have conceptions of a racial Jewishness necessarily been confined to negative depictions.The point is a critical one. [. . .]Yiddish writers like Abraham Cahan and MorrisWinchevsky were as quick as their non-Jewish contemporaries to assign a distinctly racial integrity to Jewishness and Jews. Racial perceptions of Jewishness are not simply a subject for the annals of anti-Semitism, in other words; nor does racial ascription necessarily denote a negative assessment of a given group in every case. Among the secularized Jews of the haskala, or Jewish enlightenment, responses to “the Jewish Question” (such as Zionism, or bundistYiddish socialism) rested solidly upon racial notions of a unified Jewish “peoplehood.” In the sciences, too, it was not only the virulent Madison Grants and the Lothrop Stoddards, but Jewish scientists like Maurice Fishberg and Joseph Jacobs, who advanced the scholarly idea of Jewish racial purity.6 (Nor, for that matter, were Jewish versions of Jewish racial difference in every instance positive, either: as the American Hebrew remarked in response to the immigrant waves from further east in Europe [1894], the acculturated German Jew “is closer to the christian sentiment around him than to the Judaism of these miserable darkened Hebrews.”)7 Thus the history of racial Jewishness is not merely the history of anti-Semitism; it encompasses the ways in which both Jews and non-Jews have construed Jewishness – and the ways in which they have seen it – over time. It encompasses not only arguments, like Madison Grant’s, that “the mixture of a European and a Jew is a Jew,” or the view of Jews as “mud people” – the progenitors of all nonwhites – which circulates in far right theology in the 1990s.8 It also comprises the race pride of a MorrisWinchevsky or a Leon Kobrin, and the social forces under whose influence such conceptions of peoplehood have largely given way. By 1950 Ludwig Lewisohn could assert that “no sane man regards Jewish characteristics as ‘racial.’”9 And yet as late as the 1970s Raphael Patai would still be trying to dispel “the myth of the Jewish race”; and later still Philip Roth would be wincing at the “nasty superstitions” attached to racial Jewishness. A few remarks on the strategy of the present inquiry are in order.The definition of “Jewishness” under investigation here is quite narrow. Surely religion and culture can figure prominently in the ascription of Jewishness by Jews or non-Jews, anti-Semites or philo-Semites.This discussion does not seek to exhaust Jewishness in all of its dimensions or in its full range of possibilities; rather, it investigates strictly ethnoracial conceptions and perceptions of Jewishness (answers to the question, is Jewishness a parcel of biological, heritable traits?). Such conceptions, and the inevitable debates over them, have been central to some Jews themselves as they pondered their common destiny irrespective of religious devotion, and to non-Jews wrestling with questions of immigration, inter LOOKING JEWISH, SEEING JEWS 241 group relations, and the smooth functioning of the polity. I begin by sketching the emergence of a visible, physical – biological – Jewishness in common American understanding during the period preceding the mid-twentieth century.This history loosely parallels the chronology laid out for whiteness in general [. . .], although in the case of Jews World War II will present a sharper turning point than 1924 in the final transformation toward Caucasian whiteness.The investigation ends, then, with a close reading of Arthur Miller’s Focus (1945), a sustained inquiry into the properties of Jewishness rendered at precisely that post-Nazi moment – like Gentleman’s Agreement – when “racial” Jewishness was still alive, yet a newly intolerable, conception. “Are Jews white?” asks Sander Gilman. The question gets at the fundamental instability of Jewishness as racial difference, but so does its wording fundamentally misstate the contours of whiteness in American political culture.10 From 1790 onward Jews were indeed “white” by the most significant measures of that appellation: they could enter the country and become naturalized citizens. Given the shades of meaning attaching to various racial classifications, given the nuances involved as whiteness slips off toward Semitic or Hebrew and back again toward Caucasian, the question is not are they white, nor even how white are they, but how have they been both white and Other? What have been the historical terms of their probationary whiteness? [. . .] The idea of a unique Jewish physicality or Jewish “blood” was not new to nineteenth-century America.As James Shapiro has recently argued, theology heavily influenced early modern conceptions of both racial and national difference in Europe, and so the alien Jew figures prominently in European discussion as early as the sixteenth century. In 1590 AndrewWillet argued that “Jews have never been grafted onto the stock of other people.” In 1604 the Spaniard Prudencio de Sandoval combined a proto-racialist argument of hereditary Jewish evil with a kind of racialism-by-association with the other Other, the Negro: “Who can deny that in the descendants of the Jews there persists and endures the evil inclination of their ancient ingratitude and lack of understanding, just as in Negroes [there persists] the inseparability of their blackness?” Such ideas evidently crossed the Atlantic early on in the settlement of the NewWorld, assuming even more directly racialist overtones in Increase Mather’s comments on the “blood” of nations and the purity of the Jews in 1669: The providence of God hath suffered other nations to have their blood mixed very much, as you know it is with our own nation: there is a mixture of British, Roman, Saxon, Danish, [and] Norman blood. But as for the body of the Jewish nation, it is far otherwise. Let an English family live in Spain for five or six hundred years successively, and they will become Spaniards. But though a Jewish family live in Spain a thousand years, they do not degenerate into Spaniards (for the most part).11 Until the second half of the nineteenth century, however, it was generally not their “blood” but their religion that marked the Jews as a people apart.The Jew was the perpetual “Historical Outsider,” in Frederic Jaher’s phrase, whose perceived difference derived above all from “Christian hostility.”The 242 M AT T H E W F. J A C O B S O N Jew’s difference was primarily cast in terms of the “infidel” or the “blasphemer” (one Jacob Lambrozo was indicted in Maryland for denouncing Jesus as a “necromancer,” for example), and discussion was occasionally infused with a dose of long-standing European rumor (such as the twelfth-century “blood libel” that Jews needed Christian blood for certain holiday fêtes) or stereotypes of Jews as well-poisoners and usurers. Although the popular view of Jews was “amply negative” in the colonies, by Jaher’s account, it was far better there than in Europe; and their status was characterized by a general state of toleration disrupted only by occasional anti-Semitic outbursts, as when the NewYork Assembly disfranchised them in 1737, or when Savannah freeholders resisted the expansion of a Jewish cemetery in 1770.12 These religiously grounded ideas about the Jewish alien could occasionally take on a racialist cast in the new nation, just as they had in early modern Europe. In a rabid denunciation of the Jacobin propensities of the Democratic Society in 1795, for instance, one Federalist publisher asserted that the democrats would be “easily known by their physiognomy”; they seem to be “of the tribe of Shylock: they have that leering underlook and malicious grin.”13 But generally Jews remained “free [though unchristian] white persons” in the early republic, and the overt depictions of the Jew as a racial Other rose sharply only in the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly in the decades after what John Higham has called “a mild flurry of ideological anti-Semitism” during the CivilWar. Now it was not only that Jews could be known in their greed (or their Jacobinism or their infidelism or their treachery) by their physiognomy, but that their physiognomy itself was significant – denoting, as it did, their essential unassimilability to the republic. Only now did the “Israelitish nose” stand for something in and of itself – not greed, or usury, or infidelism, or well-poisoning, but simply “difference.” Only now was the dark Jew equated with “mongrelization,” that catch-all term for “unfitness” in American political culture.14 Thus a century after Johann Blumenbach introduced as scientific fact the remarkable stability of the Jews when it came to “the fundamental configuration of face,” the New York Sun offered this vernacular explanation of “why the Jews are kept apart” (1893): Other races of men lose their identity by migration and by intermarrying with different peoples, with the result that their peculiar characteristics and physiognomies are lost in the mess. The Jewish face and character remain the same as they were in the days of PHARAOH. Everybody can distinguish the Jewish features in the most ancient carvings and representations, for they are the same as those seen at this day. Usually a Jew is recognizable as such by sight. In whatever country he is, his race is always conspicuous . . . After a few generations other immigrants to this country lose their race identity and become Americans only. Generally the Jews retain theirs undiminished, so that it is observable by all men.15 Others, as we have seen, strongly contested the blithe assertion that “other immigrants to this country lose their race identity,” but the Sun was nonetheless expressing a point of impressive consensus on the unassimilability of the Jews. LOOKING JEWISH, SEEING JEWS 243 This intensifying perception of a distinctly racial Jewishness coincided with two entangling developments between the 1850s and the early twentieth century: the rise of the racial sciences, and the rise of what John Higham has called “discriminatory” (as opposed to “ideological”) anti-Semitism.16 Popular accounts of the racial Otherness of Jews, that is, at once framed, and were framed by, a scientific discourse of race on the one hand, and a set of social practices (including hiring and admissions patterns, and the barring of Jews from certain Saratoga resorts) on the other.This coincidence of scientific racialism, discriminatory practice, and the popular expression of racial Jewishness attests to the centrality of race as an organizer of American social life. It also attests to the similarity between the Jewish odyssey from white to Hebrew and, say, the Irish odyssey from white to Celt. Despite its capacity to absorb and adapt unique, long-standing anti-Semitic notions of Jewish greed and the like, the racial ideology encompassing Jewishness in the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century did set Jews on a social trajectory similar to that traveled by many other probationary “white persons.”The full texture of anti-Semitism in this country thus combined strains of an international phenomenon of Jew-hatred with the mutability of American whiteness.17 The rise of races and phenotypes in scientific discourse, as described earlier, was a creature of the age of European expansionism and exploration. Non-European races were “discovered” and became “known” through the technologies of conquest; then scientific accounts of these races, in their turn, justified and explained colonial domination and slavery. But Jews received a fair amount of attention even in this context, in part because of the mutual accommodations of scientific and religious understandings of genesis (or Genesis) and “difference,” and in part because, as somewhat anomalous Europeans, Jews put stress upon the ideas of consanguinity and race which undergirded emergent European nationalisms. Just as the alien Jew raised questions as to who could or could not be truly “English” in Shakespeare’s England, so romantic nationalisms of the nineteenth century had to come to terms with the anomalous Jew in an effort to theorize and police the “imagined community” of the nation. As one scholar puts it, science itself was “often either motivated by or soon annexed to political causes.”18 Just as the plunder of exploration and slavery formed the context within which Africans became “known” toWestern science, so Jewish emancipation, debates over citizenship, and the emergence of modern nationalism formed the context within which science comprehended “the Jewish race.”Were “Jewish traits” properly attributed to social isolation, environment, or immutable character? Could Jews be compatriots of non-Jews? Could they be redeemed as Europeans? Thus from the outset scientific writings on Jews in Europe tended to focus upon questions of assimilation, most often emphasizing the race’s stubborn immutability – which is to say, its unassimilability. As Gobineau wrote in his essay Sur l’Inégalité des Races Humaines, the “Jewish type” has remained much the same over the centuries; “the modifications it has undergone . . . have never been enough, in any country or latitude, to change the general character of the race.The warlike Rechabites of the Arabian desert, the peaceful Portuguese, French, German and Polish Jews – they all look alike . . .The Semitic face looks exactly the same as it appears on the Egyptian paintings of three or four thousand years ago.”19 The Jews may be incorporated, but they will forever be Jews. In Races of Man 244 M AT T H E W F. J A C O B S O N (1950), Robert Knox similarly noted Jews’ essential physicality, leaving little doubt as to the further question of racial merit: Brow marked with furrows or prominent points of bone, or with both; high cheekbones; a sloping and disproportioned chin; and elongated, projecting mouth, which at the angles threatens every moment to reach the temples; a large, massive, club-shaped, hooked nose, three or four times larger than suits the face – these are features which stamp the African character of the Jew, his muzzle-shaped mouth and face removing him from certain other races . . .Thus it is that the Jewish face never can [be], and never is, perfectly beautiful.20 The presumed immutability of the Jews became a staple of American science by mid-century as well, even though slavery and the question of Negro citizenship still dominated racial discussion. In Types of Mankind (1855) Josiah Nott remarked that the “well-marked Israelitish features are never beheld out of that race”; “The complexion may be bleached or tanned . . . but the Jewish features stand unalterably through all climates.” In Natural History of the Human Races (1869) John Jeffries, too, argued that “the Jews have preserved their family type unimpaired; and though they number over five million souls, each individual retains the full impress of his primitive typical ancestors”.21 And of course we have already seen where these “observations” on Jewish racial integrity tended in the age of eugenics. In this connection the British scholar Joseph Jacobs deserves special attention. A Jew himself, Jacobs was, as he announced in the preface to Studies in Jewish Statistics (1891), “inclined to support the long-standing belief in the substantial purity of the Jewish race.”22 For Jacobs, according to the historian John Efron, Jewish race science represented “a new form of Jewish self-defense” and his own work a new genre of political resistance, “the scientific apologia.” But if aimed toward the redemption, rather than the renunciation, of racial Jewishness, Jacobs’s work rests upon the same logic of “difference” as the most virulent of his anti-Semitic contemporaries. Indeed, it is in Jacobs’s work perhaps above all that we glimpse the depth of “difference” associated with Jewish racial identity in this period. “Even more in Jewesses than in Jews,” he wrote, “we can see that cast of face in which the racial so dominates the individual that whereas of other countenances we say, ‘That is a kind, a sad, a cruel, or a tender face,’ of this our first thought is, ‘That is a Jewish face.’ . . . Even the negroes of Surinam, when they see a European and a Jew approaching, do not say, ‘Here are two whites,’ but, ‘Here is a white and a Jew.’”23 Just as earlier scientific approaches to the righteousness of slavery (the work of Josiah Nott and John Van Evrie, for instance) had seized upon the degeneracy of the “mulatto” as proof of the unbridgeable divide separating black from white, so Jacobs went into great detail on the “infertility of mixed marriages” between Jews and non-Jews, on the basis of statistics kept in Prussia and Bavaria between 1875 and 1881. The variance in fecundity, according to Jacobs, was an average of 4.41 children for Jewish–Jewish marriages to 1.65 for Jewish–Gentile marriages in Prussia; and 4.7 to 1.1 LOOKING JEWISH, SEEING JEWS 245 in Bavaria. He also charted various physical characteristics of Jews and non-Jews in different regions, including the color of eyes, hair, and skin. (Only 65.4 percent of Austrian Jews had “white” skin, he found, as compared with more than 80 percent of the Gentiles.)24 Like conceptions of Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, orTeutonic racial character, scientific observations on the Hebrew passed from the rarified discourse of ethnological journals into the American vernacular and the American visual lexicon of race as well. Racial depiction did not necessarily entail a negative judgment; racially accented declarations of philo-Semitism were common enough.William Cullen Bryant lamented that Edwin Booth’s rendering of Shylock, for instance, failed to do justice to “the grandeurs of the Jewish race.” He later sang of “the wonderful working of the soul of the Hebrew.”25 James Russell Lowell, in an ambivalent twist, couched highly sympathetic remarks on Jewishness in a language of physicality and character, but also drew upon the common, anti-Semitic imagery of his day. “All share in government of the world was denied for centuries to perhaps the ablest, certainly the most tenacious, race that ever lived in it,” he wrote compassionately in “Democracy” (1884), “. . . a race in which ability seems as natural and hereditary as the curve of their noses . . .We drove them into a corner, but they had their revenge . . .They made their corner the counter and banking house of the world, and thence they rule it and us with the ignoble scepter of finance.”26 Lowell’s respect for “perhaps the ablest” race is the basis for an indictment of Christian political conduct, and particularly its lamentable exclusions. Even if blame lies at the doorstep of Christians, however, the Jewish “revenge” Lowell envisions taps the popular currents of nineteenth-century anti-Semitism. [. . .] In The Ambivalent Image, her study of Jews in American cultural imagery, Louise Mayo has amassed an invaluable compendium of racial figures of Jewishness across time. Although Mayo’s project did not entail theorizing the relationship between racial Jewishness and the American social order, her work supports the trajectory of Anglo-Saxondom and its Others sketched out above. Racial depictions of Jews would become most urgent, of course, as immigration figures climbed in the decades following Russia’s May Laws of 1881. Nonetheless, as Mayo has so nicely laid bare in her cultural excavations, Hebrews appeared as a counterpoint to Anglo-Saxons in American cultural representation long before actual Hebrews began to disembark in huge numbers at Castle Garden and Ellis Island toward the end of the century. This seems part of the reflex toward an Anglosupremacist exclusivity beginning in the 1840s.Thus in the cosmos of American popular literature, for instance, George Lippard could remark in Quaker City (1844), “Jew was written on his face as though he had fallen asleep for three thousand years at the building of theTemple”; in Peter Hamilton Meyers’s The Miser’s Heir (1854) a certain character’s “features . . . proclaim him a Jew”; and in J. Richter Jones’s Quaker Soldier (1866), a Jew is characterized by the “hereditary habits of his race.”27 By the early twentieth century a Jewish group could organize a grassroots boycott of certain NewYork theaters, protesting their “scurrilous and debasing impersonations of the Hebrew type.” Judge Hugo Pam, the leader of the boycott, argued that the theater was fostering “race prejudice” because so many theater goers “get their impressions of the race from the stage Jew.” (Significantly, this group took its cue from Irish activists, who, Pam said, had succeeded in eliminating “stage lampoons of the Celtic race” from popular theater.)28 246 M AT T H E W F. J A C O B S O N Racial depictions of Jewishness circulated not only in cultural productions themselves, but also in cultural commentary, as when Harper’sWeekly reported that the audience of theYiddish theater was “remarkably strange in appearance to an Anglo-Saxon,” or when Bookman reviewed Abraham Cahan’s Yekl as a penetrating look at theYidish immigrant’s “racial weakness.” William Dean Howells, too, discussed Cahan’s novella in racial terms, identifying Cahan as a “Hebrew” and his ghetto sketches as “so foreign to our race and civilization.”29 Wherever “difference” was cast as race, certainly, the weight of the culture in general tended most often toward negative depiction. Nativist discussion of immigration restriction in the 1890s and the eugenics movement of the earlier twentieth century, of course, states Jewish difference most boldly. Sounding the familiar chord of race and republicanism, Henry Cabot Lodge warned that Jews “lack the nobler abilities which enable a people to rule and administer and to display that social efficiency in war, peace, and government without which all else is vain.”The Illustrated American was blunter still, crying in 1894 that “the inroad of the hungry Semitic barbarian is a positive calamity.” In a piece on immigration and anarchism, the NewYork Times, too, lamented the arrival of “unwashed, ignorant, unkempt, childish semi-savages,” and remarked upon the “hatchet-faced, sallow, rat-eyed young men of the Russian Jewish colony.” In response to Franz Boas’s innovative argument that in fact no biological chasm did separate new immigrants from America’s “old stock,” Lothrop Stoddard dismissed his views as “the desperate attempt of a Jew to pass himself off as ‘white.’”30 Franz Boas’s argument notwithstanding, increasingly in the years after the Russian May Laws and the pogroms of 1881, Jews, too, embraced race as a basis for unity. This was particularly true among some Zionists and freethinkers for whom religion had ceased meaningfully to explain their ties to the “folk.”The “Jewish Question” as it was posed during the period of pogroms in the East and the Dreyfus Affair in the West generated new secular and political notions of Jewish peoplehood in response. It was in this period, for instance, that Joseph Jacobs began his forays into Jewish race science in Europe. And, as John Efron has amply documented, the racial individuality of the Jews as a people was of particular interest within the budding Zionist movement.Aron Sandler’s Anthropologie und Zionismus (1904), for instance, mobilized the scientific language of a distinct racial genius in order to press the necessity of a Jewish territory where that genius could properly take root and develop.31 Indeed, a much longer tradition entwined Jewish nationalism with Jewish racialism.The protoZionist Moses Hess, in Rome and Jerusalem (1862), had flatly announced that “Jewish noses cannot be reformed, nor black, curly, Jewish hair be turned through baptism or combing into smooth hair.The Jewish race is a primal one, which had reproduced itself in its integrity despite climatic influences . . . The Jewish type is indestructible.”32 The American proto-Zionist Emma Lazarus, too, wrote in Epistle to the Hebrews (1887) that Judaism was emphatically both a race and a religion. She rhapsodized over the Jews’ “fusion of Oriental genius with Occidental enterprise and energy,” “the fire of our Oriental blood,” and “the deeper lights and shadows of [Jews’] Oriental temperament.” She lamented that Jews in America tended to be condemned “as a race” for failings of a single individual. At once demonstrating her own commitment to racialism, yet marking the extent to which race was a LOOKING JEWISH, SEEING JEWS 247 contested concept, she lamented the Jews’ lack of unanimity on their own racial status: “A race whose members are recognized at a glance, whatever be their color, complexion, costume or language, yet who dispute the cardinal fact as to whether they are a race, cannot easily be brought into unanimity upon more doubtful propositions,” she sighed.33 In the 1890s and early 1900s immigrant writers in the United States like Abraham Cahan, Leon Kobrin, Abraham Liessen [AbrahamWald], and Bernard Gorin also lighted upon race both as a way of understanding their own secular Jewishness and as a way of couching their (socialist) appeals to theYiddish masses. And even as late as the 1920s and 1930s a literature of Jewish assimilation toyed with race in its exploration of Jewish destiny in the New World.34 What of today and of America?” asked Ludwig Lewisohn. “Were the Jews Germans? Are they Americans? . . . I am not talking about citizenship and passports or external loyalties.What are the inner facts?”35 The IslandWithin (1928), an immigrant saga tracing several generations of a German–Jewish family from Germany in the mid-nineteenth century to the United States in the early twentieth, is Lewisohn’s exploration of precisely these “inner facts.” “How was it,” the novel’s young hero, Arthur, wants to know, “that, before they went to school, always and always, as far back as the awakening of consciousness, the children knew that they were Jews? . . .There was in the house no visible symbol of religion and of race.”What does Jewishness consist in? What is its basis, especially in the crucible of a transnational history in which questions of national belonging are so vexed? Arthur vows to understand. Along the way in this ethnoracial Bildungsroman, he takes up anthropology and studies the “variableness of racial types” (but later discovers, to his distaste, that his professor rather undemocratically believes in “fixed qualitative racial differences,” and so he searches elsewhere). A neighbor, Mrs. Goldman, provides a simple formula: “Jews always have been Jews and they always will be.” The tautology actually foreshadows Arthur’s own resolution at the end of the novel.36 Throughout the quest, race is central both to Arthur’s crisis and to its resolution; for him it becomes a measure of his own alienation. He first registers the degree of his assimilation when he discovers that his own father “looks Jewish” to him: “His father’s profile under the hat, pale and unwontedly sorrowful, looked immemorially Jewish . . .Arthur realized instantly that this perception of his was itself an un-Jewish one and showed how he had grown up to view his very parents slightly from without and how, indeed, in all thoughts and discussions, he treated the Jews as objects of his discourse.” Some two hundred pages later, after a good deal of soul-searching and after many tortured conversations on the subject of Jewishness, Arthur discovers and reclaims his own “island within” – his own immutable, unshakable Jewishness. “You didn’t know you were going to resurrect the Jew in you?” asks his Gentile wife, Elizabeth. He responds, “You’re quite right . . . But really I didn’t even have to resurrect the Jew. I just put away a pretense.”Thus eternal Jewishness (what a generation of Yiddish speakers had called dos pintele yid, “the quintessence of the Jew”), if racially ambiguous, does have distinctly racial connotations. “It’s kind of an argument, isn’t it, against mixed marriages?” asks Elizabeth. “I’m afraid it is.”37 248 M AT T H E W F. J A C O B S O N In I Am aWoman – and a Jew (1926), Leah Morton [Elizabeth Stern], too, recounted her marriage to a non-Jew, her foray into the world of social work, her secularization, and her eventual re-embrace of Jewishness (if not exactly of Judaism), all in the terms of her relationship to the “race.” The authenticity of this narrative has recently been questioned; but it is nonetheless significant that this public embrace of her Jewish identity – however real or imagined – is cast in the thoroughly racial terms of the period’s public discourse of Jewishness as difference.38 Of New York’s Bohemia, she wrote, “They were frankly Jewish. They had Jewish names, Jewish faces and the psychology of the Jew.” Upon her first taste of public life in the settlement house movement, Leah came to realize that “here, in this office, I was not a girl representing a race. I was not a Jewish maiden responsible to a race, as at home.”This fairly conveys Morion’s own version of that Jewish immutability so stressed by writers from Knox and Gobineau to Jacobs and Cahan. “Was there a Jewish ‘race’?” she asks. “Scientists were taking sides, saying, yes, or no, as they decided.What did it matter to us who were Jews? There was a Jewish people, something that belonged to us,” in Moreton’s estimation, finally comes through when she discovers and embraces “all that we, who are Jews,‘part Jews’ or ‘all Jews’ share.”This is Morion’s version of the “island within”: “We Jews are alike.We have the same insensities, the sensitiveness, poetry, bitterness, sorrow, the same humor, the same memories.The memories are not those we can bring forth from our minds: they are centuries old and are written in our features, in the cells of our brain.”39 This, then, was the vision of difference that the blackface of an Al Jolson or an Eddie Cantor sought to efface. The Jazz Singer marks the beginning of the drift by which American Jews became racial Caucasians and illustrates Frantz Fanon’s contention that, when it comes to race-hatred or race-acceptance, “one has only not to be a nigger.”40 As with all racial transformations, the next leg of the Jews’ odyssey – the cultural trek from Hebrew to Caucasian – would be a gradual affair, glacial rather than catastrophic. A new paradigm was in ascendance in the 1920s and after; perhaps nothing demonstrates so well the power of that paradigm in redefining Jews as the odd, archaic ring that so much of the material in the foregoing pages now has.Whether it is Leah Morton writing proudly of the features and the brain cells of the eternal Jew, or Lothrop Stoddard commenting upon the slim prospects of Franz Boas’s passing himself off as “white,” these commentators from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth were clearly speaking from a racial consciousness not our own. [. . .] Jews did not disappear from racial view overnight in the mid-1920s, nor had racial Jewishness vanished completely even by the 1940s. An Atlantic Monthly piece entitled “The Jewish Problem in America” (1941) could still assert that the Jew had become European “only in residence; by nature he did not become an Occidental; he could not possibly have done so.” Comparing Jews to another problematic “Oriental” group, Armenians, this writer went on to wonder “whether [differences] can be faded out by association, miscegenation, or other means of composition.”41When Nazi policy began to make news in the 1930s and early 1940s, too, headlines in journals like the Baltimore Sun and the Detroit Free Press revealed the extent to which Americans and Germans shared a common lexicon of racial Jewishness: American papers unself-consciously reported upon the Nazis’ “steps to solve [the] LOOKING JEWISH, SEEING JEWS 249 race problem,” “laws restricting [the] rights of Hebrews,” and the “persecution of members of the Jewish race.” Hearst papers remarked upon the “extermination of an ancient and cultured race,” while the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Chronicle and News commented upon Jews’ inability to assimilate with “any other race.”42 World War II and the revelations of the horrors of Nazi Germany were in fact part of what catapulted American Hebrews into the community of Caucasians in the mid-twentieth century.[. . .] The feverish and self-conscious revision of “the Jewish race” was at the very heart of the scientific project to rethink the “race concept” in general – the racial devastation in Germany, that is, was largely responsible for the mid-century ascendance of “ethnicity.” Changes wrought in the U.S. social order by the war itself and by the early ColdWar, too, helped to speed the alchemy by which Hebrews became Caucasian. From A. Phillip Randolph’s threatened march onWashington, to African-Americans’ campaign for DoubleVictory, to the major parties’ civil rights planks in 1944 and the rise of the Dixiecrats in 1948, the steady but certain ascendance of Jim Crow as the pressing political issue of the day brought the ineluctable logic of the South’s white– black binary into play with new force in national life. Postwar prosperity and postindustrial shifts in the economy, too, tended to disperse Jews geographically, either to outlying suburbs or toward sunbelt cities like Los Angeles and Miami – in either case, to places where whiteness itself eclipsed Jewishness in racial salience. As scholars like Deborah Dash Moore and Karen Brodkin Sacks have written, Jews became simply “white or Anglo” in the regional racial schemes of the sunbelt; and racially tilted policies like the GI Bill of Rights and the Federal Housing Authority’s “whites only” approach to suburban housing loans re-created Jews in their new regime of racial homogenization. Nikhil Singh has rightly called the postwar suburban boom a case of “state sponsored apartheid;” its hardening of race along exclusive and unforgiving lines of color held tremendous portent for Jews and other white races.43 And finally, ironically, if racialism had historically been an important component of Zionism, the establishment of a Jewish state ultimately had the opposite effect of whitening the Jews in cultural representations of all sorts: America’s client state in the Middle East became, of ideological necessity and by the imperatives of American nationalism, a white client state.This revision was popularized not only in mainstream journalism, but in Technicolor extravaganzas on Middle Eastern history like The Ten Commandments and Exodus.44 [. . .] Notes and references 1 Johann Fredrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Varieties of Mankind [1775, 1795] (New York: Bergman, 1969), p. 234. 2 In Morris U. Schapps,. ed., A Documentary History of Jews in the United States, 1654–1875 (New York: Schoken, 1950, 1971), pp. 1–2. 3 Henry James, “Glasses,” Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1896, p. 145; William Boelhower, Through a Glass Darkly: Ethnic Semiosis in American Literature (New York: Oxford, 1987), pp. 17–40, 21; Henry James, 250 M AT T H E W F. J A C O B S O N The American Scene [1906] (n.l.: Library of America, 1993), pp. 425–427. See also Karen Brodkin Sacks, “How Did Jews BecomeWhite Folks?” in Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek, eds, Race (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994), pp. 79–85. 4 North American Review, 152 (1891), p. 128. On “white Jews” see Louis Binstock, “Fire-Words,” Common Ground, Winter 1947, pp. 83–84, and Laura Z. Hobson, Gentleman’s Agreement (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947), pp. 154–155. 5 F. Marion Crawford, TheWitch of Prague (1891) (London: Sphere Books, 1974), p. 186. 6 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Special Sorrows:The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 102–105, and ” ‘The Quintessence of the Jew’: Polemics of Nationalism and Peoplehood in Turn-of-the-Century Yiddish Fiction,” in Werner Sollors and Marc Schell, eds, Multilingual America (New York: New York University Press, forthcoming); John Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). 7 Hasia Diner, In the Almost Promsied Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915–1935 [1977] (Baltimore: Johns 8 Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race: or,The Racial Basis of European History (NewYork: Scribners, Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 8–9. 1916), pp. 15–16: James William Gibson, Warrior Dreams:Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), p. 72. 9 Ludwig Lewisohn, The American Jew: Character and Destiny (New York: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1950), p. 10 Sander Gillman, The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, 1991), chapter 7; Sacks, “How Did Jews 11 James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 36, 168, 23. Become White Folks?” 169, 170; see pp. 167–193 on early modern English conceptions of nationality and the Jewish alien. 12 Frederic Cople Jaber, A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness: The Origins and Rise of Anti-Semitism in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 17, 82, 87–88, 106, 112. For Jaher’s view of the Christian roots of the Jew as “Historical Outsider,” see pp. 17–81 passim. 13 Jaher, Scapegoat, p. 133. 14 Ibid., pp. 222, 232; on the worsening image, see pp. 170–241; on the proto-racialism of older stereotypes, see pp. 192–194. John Higham, Send These to Me: Immigrants in Urban America [1975] (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), p. 123. Jeffrey Melnick notes an interesting swing in American discourse between the Jew as “mongrel” and the Jew as racially “pure” – both are bad. A Right to Sing the Blues (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming). 15 New York Sun, April 24, 1893, p. 6. 16 Higham, Send These to Me, pp. 117–152. On Jews and the racial sciences see Robert Singerman, “The Jew as Racial Alien: The Genetic Component of American Anti-Semitism,” in David Gerber, ed., Anti-Semitism in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 103–128, and below. 17 John Higham, “Ideological Anti-Semitism in the Gilded Age,” and “The Rise of Social Discrimination,” in Send These to Me, pp. 95–116, 117–152. On “status panic” and American anti-Semitism, see p. 141. 18 Efron, Defenders, p. 63. LOOKING JEWISH, SEEING JEWS 19 251 Michael Bediss, ed., Arthur Comte de Gobineau, Selected Political Writings (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 102: William Stanton, The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes towards Race in America, 1815–59 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 147–148: George Stocking, ed., Bones, Bodies, Behavior: Essays on Biological Anthropology (Madison: University of Winconsin Press, 1988); Thomas Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America (New York: Schocken, 1963). 20 Quoted in Efron, Defenders, p. 51. 21 Josiah Nott, Types of Mankind (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1855), pp. 117, 118; John P. Jeffries, Natural History of the Human Races (New York: Edward O. Jenkins, 1869), p. 123. 22 Joseph Jacobs, Studies in Jewish Statistics, Social,Vital, and Anthropometric (London: D. Nutt, 1891), p. 23 Ibid., p. xxviii; Efron, Defenders, pp. 58–90, 59. 24 Jacobs, Jewish Statistics, pp. v, xiv; Efron, Defenders, pp. 79–80; Maurice Fishberg, The Jews: A Study of xxx. Race and Environment (n.l.: Walter Scott, 1911); Sander Gilman, The Case of Sigmund Freud: Medicine and Identity at the Fin de Siècle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 11–68; Sander Gilman, Freud, Race, and Gender (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 12–48. 25 Quoted in Louise Mayo, The Ambivalent Image: Nineteenth-Century America’s Perception of the Jew (Rutherford: 26 James Russell Lowell, “Democracy” [1884], in Essays, Poems, and Letters (New York: Odyssey Press, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988), p. 77. 1948), p. 153. 27 Mayo, Ambivalent Image, pp. 44, 53, 54. 28 New York Times, April 25, 1913, p. 3. 29 Mayo, Ambivalent Image, pp. 75–76, 154; Howells quoted in Bernard Richards, “Abraham Cahan Cast in a New Role,” in Cahan, Yekl, the Imported Bridegroom, and Other Stories (NewYork: Dover, 1970), p. vii. 30 Mayo, Ambivalent Image, pp. 58, 156, 172; Stoddard quoted in Michael Rogin, Blackface,White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 89. The Dillingham Commission was uncharacteristically sanguine regarding Jews’ prospects for assimilation in 1911, asserting that “the Jews of to-day are more truly European than Asiatic or Semitic.” Nonetheless, the report did note that “Israelites” were “preserving their own individuality to a marked degree.” Reports of the Immigration Commission: Dictionary of Races and peoples (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911), pp. 73, 74. 31 Efron, Defenders, pp. 123–174. 32 Quoted in Gilman, The Jew’s Body, p. 179. 33 Emma Lazarus, An Epistle to the Hebrews [1887] (NewYork: Jewish Historical Society, 1987), pp. 9, 20, 21, 78, 80. 34 Jacobson, Special Sorrows, pp. 97–111; Melnick, A Right to Sing the Blues. 35 Ludwig Lewisohn, The IslandWithin (New York: Modern Library, 1928), p. 43. 36 Ibid., pp. 103–104, 146, 154–155, 168. 37 Ibid., pp. 148, 346. 38 Laura Browder, “I Am a Woman – And a Jew: Ethnic Imposter Autobiography and the Creation of Immigrant Identity,” paper delivered at the ASA annual conference, Kansas City, November 1, 1996. 252 39 M AT T H E W F. J A C O B S O N Leah Morton [Elizabeth Stern], I Am aWoman – And A Jew [1926] (NewYork: Markus Wiener, 1986), pp. 347, 62, 193, 360. The text also contains racialized references to Irish and Polish immigrants and to Nordic natives, pp. 175, 245, 299. 40 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin,White Masks [1952] (New York: Grove Wiedenfeld, 1967), p. 115. 41 Albert Nock, “The Jewish Problem in America” Atlantic Monthly, July 1941, p. 69 (emphasis added). In rebuttal, see Marie Syrkin, “How Not to Solve the ‘Jewish Problem,’” Common Ground, Autumn 1941, p. 77. 42 Deborah Lipstadt, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (New York: Free Press, 1986), pp. 59–60, 88, 93, 157. See also Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between theWorldWars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), chapter 6; Stefan Kuhl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford, 1994). 43 Deborah Dash Moore, To The Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L.A. (New York: Free Press, 1994), p. 55; Sacks, “How Did Jews Become White Folks?” pp. 86–98; Rogin, Blackface, White Noise, p. 265; Nikhil Pal Singh, “‘Race’ and Nation in the American Century: A Genealogy of Color and Democracy” (Ph.D. diss.,Yale University, 1995), Douglass Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 51–54. 44 Moore, Golden Cities, pp. 227–261; Alan Nadel, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age (Durham: Duke University press, 1995), pp. 90–116. On the racial dynamics of American involvement in the Middle East, see also Soheir A. Morsy, “Beyond the Honorary ‘White’ Classification of Egyptians: Societal Identity in Historical Context,” in Gregory and Senjak, Race, pp. 175–198. PART FOUR Colonialism, race and the other INTRODUCTION T H E R O L E O F C O L O N I A L I S M and its associated institutions in shaping contemporary ideas about race and racism has been an underlying concern in some of the more historical literature in this field. For example the connection between scientific racism and imperialism and colonialism has been explored is some detail by a number of scholars. But in recent years the growth of interest in postcolonial theory, particularly in the fields of literary theory and cultural studies, has brought about a new interest in the role that race played in structuring social relationships in colonial societies. The various extracts in this part are all in one way or another concerned with various aspects of this question. The first extract is from the work of Frantz Fanon, which has exerted an influence on theoretical debates about race and colonialism for over four decades now. Indeed ‘The Fact of Blackness’ is one of the most referenced texts in this area and has been interpreted in a variety of ways. An underlying theme in Fanon’s work is that colonialism represented a relationship of domination and subordination, the oppression of one racialised group by another and the production of racialised meanings about both the ‘coloniser’ and the ‘colonised’. Fanon is particularly concerned with the ways in which colonial institutions and the ideologies associated with them constructed ideas about race through representations of ‘blackness’, the ‘negro’, the ‘native’ and other notions. Perhaps more importantly he is also concerned with the ways in which the colonised ‘Others’ saw themselves and their position within colonial societies and the struggle against colonialism. A number of the other extracts in this part engage in one way or another with Fanon’s work, although they often have a more specific focus on particular expressions of colonial discourse. The next two extracts by Lola Young and Anne 254 C O L O N I A L I S M , R A C E A N D T H E OT H ER McClintock are a case in point. Both are concerned with cultural mechanisms for the expression of colonial ideas and values. Young’s concern is with the question of representations of race, gender and sexuality in the cinema, and she bases much of her argument on a detailed analysis of particular films. But from a broad conceptual angle she is also concerned with questions that were at the heart of Fanon’s account of the colonial situation. What is particularly interesting about Young’s account, however, is that she seeks to use the analysis of ‘imperial culture’ as represented in films as a way of framing the changing ideas about race as well as gender and sexuality. The extract from Anne McClintock’s work explores some of the same territory as Young, though her focus in this extract is on the narratives of Henry Rider Haggard, a British colonial administrator and writer. McClintock’s focus on a nuanced textual analysis of Haggard’s writings reflects the influence of literary theory in this field and the attempt to utilise an analysis of texts to uncover the workings of colonial and postcolonial discourses. Whatever the merits of the shift towards textual analysis that has become evident in recent years, part of the strength of McClintock’s account is precisely the result of the attention to the representations of race, gender and sexuality that underpin the work of writers such as Haggard. Taking Haggard’s classic King Solomon’s Mines as her main point of reference she attempts to show how key themes in his work linked up to wider fears about race and degeneration in both Britain and the colonies. The next extract from Chandra Talpade Mohanty is closely linked to arguments that have been going on within feminist scholarship for the past two decades, and it should thus be read in conjunction with the extracts in Part Five as well as the other extracts in this part. Mohanty’s critical account of Western feminist discourses focuses particularly on what she sees as the lacunae of feminist theorising in relation to questions about race and colonialism. At a broader level she suggests that there is a need to broaden the boundaries of feminist scholarship in order to allow for a fuller understanding of the important differences that exist in the ways women in the West are positioned as compared to women in other parts of the globe. Underlying Mohanty’s argument is a concern to explore the continuities and discontinuities between the experiences of different groups of women, and to highlight the relevance of class in shaping other patterns of inequality. The contributions of both Young and McClintock have already touched upon the issue of the question of sexuality in the colonial situation. The extract by Ann Stoler takes this argument a step further by exploring in some detail the interrelationship between ‘sexual affronts’ and ‘racial frontiers’ in colonial South East Asia. Stoler’s analysis is particularly focused on the interweaving of sexual desire for the ‘Other’ with the fear of ‘race mixing’ and its consequences that characterised colonial situations. Drawing on her research in relation to the Dutch East Indies she highlights the ways in which both sexual and racial boundaries were used to construct images of both ‘Europeans’ and the colonial ‘Others’. But she also insists on the need to look closely at the ways in which the colonial administrations needed to set up complex institutional mechanisms to police these boundaries. C O L O N I A L I S M , R A C E A N D T H E OT H ER 255 The final voice in this part is that of Homi Bhabha, whose work has done much to popularise the study of race within the emerging field of postcolonial studies. Bhabha’s work is deeply influenced, somewhat idiosyncratically, by the work of both Fanon and by the conceptual framework of Michel Foucault. His work has become an important influence on the development of postcolonial theory. In this particular extract Bhabha focuses on the relationship between race, time and modernity. Starting his account with a discussion of Fanon’s work he moves on to discuss the ways in which questions of race and identity have been reconfigured by wider processes of social and cultural change which are dislocating the central structures and processes of modern societies and undermining the frameworks which gave individuals stable anchorage in the social world. This in turn links up with a recurrent theme in this reader as a whole, namely the question of how modern societies deal with ‘difference’. 256 C O L O N I A L I S M , R A C E A N D T H E OT H ER KEY QUESTIONS • • • • • • How can Frantz Fanon’s essay on ‘The Fact of Blackness’ be used to analyse the development of racism in colonial societies? In what ways were racial ideas and institutions an integral element of the colonial situation? What are the implications of Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s critical analysis of Western feminist discourses for an analysis of racism? Explore the implications of Ann Stoler’s argument that colonialism involved the construction of both racial and sexual boundaries. Examine Homi Bhabha’s argument that postcolonial writing involves a critical dialogue within and beyond the limits of modernity. Discuss the ways in which Anne McClintock’s essay on ‘The White Family of Man’ illustrates the interface between race, gender and sexuality in structuring colonialism. Chapter 19 Frantz Fanon THE FACT OF BLACKNESS Translated by Charles Lam Markmann “ D I R T Y N I G G E R ! ” )) Or simply, “Look, a Negro!” I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects. Sealed into that crushing objecthood, I turned beseechingly to others. Their attention was a liberation, running over my body suddenly abraded into nonbeing, endowing me once more with an agility that I had thought lost, and by taking me out of the world, restoring me to it. But just as I reached the other side, I stumbled, and the movements, the attitudes, the glances of the other fixed me there, in the sense in which a chemical solution is fixed by a dye. I was indignant; I demanded an explanation. Nothing happened. I burst apart. Now the fragments have been put together again by another self. As long as the black man is among his own, he will have no occasion, except in minor internal conflicts, to experience his being through others.There is of course the moment of “being for others,” of which Hegel speaks, but every ontology is made unattainable in a colonized and civilized society. It would seem that this fact has not been given sufficient attention by those who have discussed the question. In the Weltanschauung of a colonized people there is an impurity, a flaw that outlaws any ontological explanation. Someone may object that this is the case with every individual, but such an objection merely conceals a basic problem. Ontology – once it is finally admitted as leaving existence by the wayside does not permit us to understand the being of the black man. For not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man. Some critics will take it on themselves to remind us that this proposition has a converse. I say that this is false.The black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man. Overnight the Negro has been given two 258 F R A NT Z FA N O N frames of reference within which he has had to place himself. His metaphysics, or, less pretentiously, his customs and the sources on which they were based, were wiped out because they were in conflict with a civilization that he did not know and that imposed itself on him. The black man among his own in the twentieth century does not know at what moment his inferiority comes into being through the other. Of course I have talked about the black problem with friends, or, more rarely, with American Negroes.Together we protested, we asserted the equality of all men in the world. In the Antilles there was also that little gulf that exists among the almost-white, the mulatto, and the nigger. But I was satisfied with an intellectual understanding of these differences. It was not really dramatic. And then . . . And then the occasion arose when I had to meet the white man’s eyes. An unfamiliar weight burdened me.The real world challenged my claims. In the white world the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness. The body is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty. I know that if I want to smoke, I shall have to reach out my right arm and take the pack of cigarettes lying at the other end of the table.The matches, however, are in the drawer on the left, and I shall have to lean back slightly. And all these movements are made not out of habit but out of implicit knowledge. A slow composition of my self as a body in the middle of a spatial and temporal world – such seems to be the schema. It does not impose itself on me; it is, rather, a definitive structuring of the self and of the world – definitive because it creates a real dialectic between my body and the world. For several years certain laboratories have been trying to produce a serum for “denegrification”; with all the earnestness in the world, laboratories have sterilized their test tubes, checked their scales, and embarked on researches that might make it possible for the miserable Negro to whiten himself and thus to throw off the burden of that corporeal malediction. Below the corporeal scheme I had sketched a historico-racial schema.The elements that I used had been provided for me not by “residual sensations and perceptions primarily of a tactile, vestibular, kinesthetic, and visual character,”1 but by the other, the white man, who had woven me out of a thousand details, anecdotes, stories. I thought that what I had in hand was to construct a physiological self, to balance space, to localize sensations, and here I was called on for more. “Look, a Negro!” It was an external stimulus that flicked over me as I passed by. I made a tight smile. “Look, a Negro!” It was true. It amused me. “Look, a Negro!”The circle was drawing a bit tighter. I made no secret of my amusement. “Mama, see the Negro! I’m frightened!” Frightened! Frightened!” Now they were beginning to be afraid of me. I made up my mind to laugh myself to tears, but laughter had become impossible. I could no longer laugh, because I already knew that there were legends, stories, history, and above all historicity, which I had learned about from Jaspers. Then, assailed at various points, the corporeal schema crumbled, its place taken by a racial epidermal schema. In the train it was no longer a question of being aware of my body in the third person but in a triple person. In the train I was given T H E FA C T O F B L A C K NE S S 259 not one but two, three places. I had already stopped being amused. It was not that I was finding febrile coordinates in the world. I existed triply: I occupied space. I moved toward the other . . . and the evanescent other, hostile but not opaque, transparent, not there, disappeared. Nausea. . . . I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors. I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics; and I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetichism, racial defects, slaveships, and above all else, above all: “Sho’ good eatin’.” On that day, completely dislocated, unable to be abroad with the other, the white man, who unmercifully imprisoned me, I took myself far off from my own presence, far indeed, and made myself an object.What else could it be for me but an amputation, an excision, a hemorrhage that spattered my whole body with black blood? But I did not want this revision, this thematization. All I wanted was to be a man among other men. I wanted to come lithe and young into a world that was ours and to help to build it together. But I rejected all immunization of the emotions. I wanted to be a man, nothing but a man. Some identified me with ancestors of mine who had been enslaved or lynched: I decided to accept this. It was on the universal level of the intellect that I understood this inner kinship – I was the grandson of slaves in exactly the same way in which President Lebrun was the grandson of tax-paying, hardworking peasants. In the main, the panic soon vanished. In America, Negroes are segregated. In South America, Negroes are whipped in the streets, and Negro strikers are cut down by machine-guns. In West Africa, the Negro is an animal. And there beside me, my neighbor in the university, who was born in Algeria, told me: “As long as the Arab is treated like a man, no solution is possible.” “Understand, my dear boy, color prejudice is something I find utterly foreign. . . . But of course, come in, sir, there is no color prejudice among us. . . . Quite, the Negro is a man like ourselves. . . . It is not because he is black that he is less intelligent than we are. . . . I had a Senegalese buddy in the army who was really clever. . . . Where am I to be classified? Or if you prefer, tucked away? “A Martinican, a native of ‘our’ old colonies.” Where shall I hide? “Look at the nigger! . . . Mama, a Negro! . . . Hell, he’s getting mad. . . .Take no notice, sir, he does not know that you are as civilized as we. . . .” My body was given back to me sprawled out, distorted, recolored, clad in mourning in that white winter day. The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is mean, the Negro is ugly; look, a nigger, it’s cold, the nigger is shivering, the nigger is shivering because he is cold, the little boy is trembling because he is afraid of the nigger, the nigger is shivering with cold, that cold that goes through your bones, the handsome little boy is trembling because he thinks that the nigger is quivering with rage, the little white boy throws himself into his mother’s arms: Mama, the nigger’s going to eat me up. All round me the white man, above the sky tears at its navel, the earth rasps under my feet, and there is a white song, a white song. All this whiteness that burns me. . . . 260 F R A NT Z FA N O N I sit down at the fire and I become aware of my uniform. I had not seen it. It is indeed ugly. I stop there, for who can tell me what beauty is? Where shall I find shelter from now on? I felt an easily identifiable flood mounting out of the countless facets of my being. I was about to be angry.The fire was long since out, and once more the nigger was trembling. “Look how handsome that Negro is! . . .” “Kiss the handsome Negro’s ass, madame!” Shame flooded her face.At last I was set free from my rumination.At the same time I accomplished two things: I identified my enemies and I made a scene. A grand slam. Now one would be able to laugh. The field of battle having been marked out, I entered the lists. What? While I was forgetting, forgiving, and wanting only to love, my message was flung back in my fact like a slap.The white world, the only honorable one, barred me from all participation. A man was expected to behave like a man. I was expected to behave like a black man – or at least like a nigger. I shouted a greeting to the world and the world slashed away my joy. I was told to stay within bounds, to go back where I belonged. They would see, then! I had warned them, anyway. Slavery? It was no longer even mentioned, that unpleasant memory. My supposed inferiority? A hoax that it was better to laugh at. I forgot it all, but only on condition that the world not protect itself against me any longer. I had incisors to test. I was sure they were strong. And besides . . . What! When it was I who had every reason to hate, to despise, I was rejected? When I should have been begged, implored, I was denied the slightest recognition? I resolved, since it was impossible for me to get away from an inborn complex to assert myself as a BLACK MAN. Since the other hesitated to recognize me, there remained only one solution: to make myself known. In Anti-Semite and Jew (p. 95), Sartre says: “They [the Jews] have allowed themselves to be poisoned by the stereotype that others have of them, and they live in fear that their acts will correspond to this stereotype. . . .We may say that their conduct is perpetually overdetermined from the inside.” All the same, the Jew can be unknown in his Jewishness. He is not wholly what he is. One hopes, one waits. His actions, his behavior are the final determinant. He is a white man, and, apart from some rather debatable characteristics, he can sometimes go unnoticed. He belongs to the race of those who since the beginning of time have never known cannibalism.What an idea, to eat one’s father! Simple enough, one has only not to be a nigger. Granted, the Jews are harassed – what am I thinking of?They are hunted down, exterminated, cremated. But these are little family quarrels.The Jew is disliked from the moment he is tracked down. But in my case everything takes on a new guise, I am given no chance. I am overdetermined from without. I am the slave not of the “idea” that others have of me but of my own appearance. I move slowly in the world, accustomed now to seek no longer for upheaval. I progress by crawling. And already I am being dissected under white eyes, the only real eyes. I am fixed. Having T H E FA C T O F B L A C K NE S S 261 adjusted their microtomes, they objectively cut away slices of my reality. I am laid bare. I feel, I see in those white faces that it is not a new man who has come in, but a new kind of man, a new genus.Why it’s a Negro! I slip into corners, and my long antennae pick up the catch-phrases strewn over the surface of things – nigger underwear smells of nigger – nigger teeth are white – nigger feet are big – the nigger’s barrel chest – I slip into corners, I remain silent, I strive for anonymity, for invisibility. Look, I will accept the lot, as long as no one notices me! “Oh, I want you to meet my black friend. . . . Aimé Césaire, a black man and a university graduate. . . . Marian Anderson, the finest of Negro singers. . . . Dr. Cobb, who invented white blood, is a Negro. . . . Here, say hello to my friend from Martinique (be careful, he’s extremely sensitive). . . .” Shame, Shame and self-contempt. Nausea.When people like me, they tell me it is in spite of my color.When they dislike me, they point out that it is not because of my color. Either way, I am locked into the infernal circle. I turn away from these inspectors of the Ark before the Flood and I attach myself to my brothers, Negroes like myself.To my horror, they too reject me.They are almost white. And besides they are about to marry white women. They will have children faintly tinged with brown. Who knows, perhaps little by little. . . . I had been dreaming. “I want you to understand, sir, I am one of the best friends the Negro has in Lyon.” The evidence was there, unalterable. My blackness was there, dark and unarguable. And it tormented me, pursued me, disturbed me, angered me. Negroes are savages, brutes, illiterates. But in my own case I knew that these statements were false. There was a myth of the Negro that had to be destroyed at all costs. The time had long since passed when a Negro priest was an occasion for wonder.We had physicians, professors, statesmen. Yes, but something out of the ordinary still clung to such cases. “We have a Senegalese history teacher. He is quite bright. . . . Our doctor is colored. He is very gentle.” It was always the Negro teacher, the Negro doctor; brittle as I was becoming, I shivered at the slightest pretext. I knew, for instance, that if the physician made a mistake it would be the end of him and of all those who came after him.What could one expect, after all, from a Negro physician? As long as everything went well, he was praised to the skies, but look out, no nonsense, under any conditions! The black physician can never be sure how close he is to disgrace. I tell you, I was walled in: No exception was made for my refined manners, or my knowledge of literature, or my understanding of the quantum theory. I requested, I demanded explanations. Gently, in the tone that one uses with a child, they introduced me to the existence of a certain view that was held by certain people, but, I was always told, “We must hope that it will very soon disappear.”What was it? Color prejudice. It [colour prejudice] is nothing more than the unreasoning hatred of one race for another, the contempt of the stronger and richer peoples for those whom they consider inferior to 262 F R A NT Z FA N O N themselves, and the bitter resentment of those who are kept in subjection and are so frequently insulted. As colour is the most obvious outward manifestation of race it has been made the criterion by which men are judged, irrespective of their social or educational attainments.The light-skinned races have come to despise all those of a darker colour, and the dark-skinned peoples will no longer accept without protest the inferior position to which they have been relegated.2 I had read it rightly. It was hate; I was hated, despised, detested, not by the neighbor across the street or my cousin on my mother’s side, but by an entire race. I was up against something unreasoned. The psychoanalysts say that nothing is more traumatizing for the young child than his encounters with what is rational. I would personally say that for a man whose only weapon is reason there is nothing more neurotic than contact with unreason. I felt knife blades open within me. I resolved to defend myself.As a good tactician, I intended to rationalize the world and to show the white man that he was mistaken. In the Jew, Jean-Paul Sartre says, there is a sort of impassioned imperialism of reason: for he wishes not only to convince others that he is right; his goal is to persuade them that there is an absolute and unconditioned value to rationalism. He feels himself to be a missionary of the universal; against the universality of the Catholic religion, from which he is excluded, he asserts the “catholicity” of the rational, an instrument by which to attain to the truth and establish a spiritual bond among men.3 And, the author adds, though there may be Jews who have made intuition the basic category of their philosophy, their intuition has no resemblance to the Pascalian subtlety of spirit, and it is this latter – based on a thousand imperceptible perceptions – which to the Jew seems his worst enemy. As for Bergson, his philosophy offers the curious appearance of an anti-intellectualist doctrine constructed entirely by the most rational and most critical of intelligences. It is through argument that he establishes the existence of pure duration, of philosophic intuition; and that very intuition which discovers duration or life, is itself universal, since anyone may practice it, and it leads towards the universal, since its objects can be named and conceived.4 With enthusiasm I set to cataloguing and probing my surroundings. As times changed, one had seen the Catholic religion at first justify and then condemn slavery and prejudices. But by referring everything to the idea of the dignity of man, one had ripped prejudice to shreds.After much reluctance, the scientists had conceded that the Negro was a human being; in vivo and in vitro the Negro had been T H E FA C T O F B L A C K NE S S 263 proved analogous to the white man: the same morphology, the same histology. Reason was confident of victory on every level. I put all the parts back together. But I had to change my tune. That victory played cat and mouse; it made a fool of me. As the other put it, when I was present, it was not; when it was there, I was no longer. In the abstract there was agreement:The Negro is a human being.That is to say, amended the less firmly convinced, that like us he has his heart on the left side. But on certain points the white man remained intractable. Under no conditions did he wish any intimacy between the races, for it is a truism that “crossings between widely different races can lower the physical and mental level. . . . Until we have a more definite knowledge of the effect of racecrossings we shall certainly do best to avoid crossings between widely different races.”5 For my own part, I would certainly know how to react. And in one sense, if I were asked for a definition of myself, I would say that I am one who waits; I investigate my surroundings, I interpret everything in terms of what I discover, I become sensitive. In the first chapter of the history that the others have compiled for me, the foundation of cannibalism has been made eminently plain in order that I may not lose sight of it. My chromosomes were supposed to have a few thicker or thinner genes representing cannibalism. In addition to the sexlinked, the scholars had now discovered the racial-linked.6 What a shameful science! But I understand this “psychological mechanism.” For it is a matter of common knowledge that the mechanism is only psychological.Two centuries ago I was lost to humanity, I was a slave forever. And then came men who said that it all had gone on far too long. My tenaciousness did the rest; I was saved from the civilizing deluge. I have gone forward. Too late. Everything is anticipated, thought out, demonstrated, made the most of. My trembling hands take hold of nothing; the vein has been mined out. Too late! But once again I want to understand. Since the time when someone first mourned the fact that he had arrived too late and everything had been said, a nostalgia for the past has seemed to persist. Is this that lost original paradise of which Otto Rank speaks? How many such men, apparently rooted to the womb of the world, have devoted their lives to studying the Delphic oracles or exhausted themselves in attempts to plot the wanderings of Ulysses! The pan-spiritualists seek to prove the existence of a soul in animals by using this argument: A dog lies down on the grave of his master and starves to death there.We had to wait for Janet to demonstrate that the aforesaid dog, in contrast to man, simply lacked the capacity to liquidate the past.We speak of the glory of Greece, Artaud says; but, he adds, if modern man can no longer understand the Choephoroi of Aeschylus, it is Aeschylus who is to blame. It is tradition to which the anti-Semites turn in order to ground the validity of their “point of view.” It is tradition, it is that long historical past, it is that blood relation between Pascal and Descartes, that is invoked when the Jew is told, “There is no possibility of your finding a place in society.” Not long ago, one of those good Frenchmen said in a train where I was sitting: “Just let the real French virtues keep going and the race is safe. Now more than ever, national union must be made a reality. Let’s have an end of internal strife! Let’s face up to the foreigners (here he turned toward my corner) no matter who they are.” 264 F R A NT Z FA N O N It must be said in his defense that he stank of cheap wine; if he had been capable of it, he would have told me that my emancipated-slave blood could not possibly be stirred by the name ofVillon or Taine. An outrage! The Jew and I: Since I was not satisfied to be racialized, by a lucky turn of fate I was humanized. I joined the Jew, my brother in misery. An outrage! At first thought it may seem strange that the anti-Semite’s outlook should be related to that of the Negro-phobe. It was my philosophy professor, a native of the Antilles, who recalled the fact to me one day: “Whenever you hear anyone abuse the Jews, pay attention, because he is talking about you.” And I found that he was universally right – by which I meant that I was answerable in my body and in my heart for what was done to my brother. Later I realized that he meant, quite simply, an antiSemite is inevitably anti-Negro. [ . . . ] From time to time one would like to stop.To state reality is a wearing task. But, when one has taken it into one’s head to try to express existence, one runs the risk of finding only the nonexistent.What is certain is that, at the very moment when I was trying to grasp my own being, Sartre, who remained The Other, gave me a name and thus shattered my last illusion. While I was saying to him: “My negritude is neither a tower nor a cathedral, it thrusts into the red flesh of the sun, it thrusts into the burning flesh of the sky, it hollows through the dense dismay of its own pillar of patience . . .” while I was shouting that, in the paroxysm of my being and my fury, he was reminding me that my blackness was only a minor term. In all truth, in all truth I tell you, my shoulders slipped out of the framework of the world, my feet could no longer feel the touch of the ground.Without a Negro past, without a Negro future, it was impossible for me to live my Negrohood. Not yet white, no longer wholly black, I was damned. Jean-Paul Sartre had forgotten that the Negro suffers in his body quite differently from the white man.7 Between the white man and me the connection was irrevocably one of transcendence.8 But the constancy of my love had been forgotten. I defined myself as an absolute intensity of beginning. So I took up my negritude, and with tears in my eyes I put its machinery together again. What had been broken to pieces was rebuilt, reconstructed by the intuitive lianas of my hands. My cry grew more violent: I am a Negro, I am a Negro, I am a Negro. . . . And there was my poor brother – living out his neurosis to the extreme and finding himself paralyzed: THE NEGRO: LIZZIE: THE NEGRO: LIZZIE: THE NEGRO: I can’t, ma’am. Why not? I can’t shoot white folks. Really! That would bother them, wouldn’t it? They’re white folks, ma’am. T H E FA C T O F B L A C K NE S S LIZZIE: 265 So what? Maybe they got a right to bleed you like a pig just because they’re white? THE NEGRO: But they’re white folks. A feeling of inferiority? No, a feeling of nonexistence. Sin is Negro as virtue is white. All those white men in a group, guns in their hands, cannot be wrong. I am guilty. I do not know of what, but I know that I am no good. THE NEGRO: That’s how it goes, ma’am. That’s how it always goes with white folks. LIZZIE: You too?You feel guilty? THE NEGRO: Yes, ma’am.9 It is Bigger Thomas he is afraid, he is terribly afraid. He is afraid, but of what is he afraid? Of himself. No one knows yet who he is, but he knows that fear will fill the world when the world finds out. And when the world knows, the world always expects something of the Negro. He is afraid lest the world know, he is afraid of the fear that the world would feel if the world knew. Like that old woman on her knees who begged me to tie her to her bed: “I just know, Doctor: Any minute that thing will take hold of me.” “What thing?” “The wanting to kill myself.Tie me down, I’m afraid.” In the end, Bigger Thomas acts.To put an end to his tension, he acts, he responds to the world’s anticipation.10 So it is with the character in If He Hollers Let Him Go – who does precisely what he did not want to do. That big blonde who was always in his way, weak, sensual, offered, open, fearing (desiring) rape, became his mistress in the end. The Negro is a toy in the white man’s hands; so, in order to shatter the hellish cycle, he explodes. I cannot go to a film without seeing myself. I wait for me. In the interval, just before the film starts, I wait for me. The people in the theater are watching me, examining me, waiting for me. A Negro groom is going to appear. My heart makes my head swim. The crippled veteran of the Pacific war says to my brother, “Resign yourself to your color the way I got used to my stump; we’re both victims.”12 Nevertheless with all my strength I refuse to accept that amputation. I feel in myself a soul as immense as the world, truly a soul as deep as the deepest of rivers, my chest has the power to expand without limit. I am a master and I am advised to adopt the humility of the cripple. Yesterday, awakening to the world, I saw the sky turn upon itself utterly and wholly. I wanted to rise, but the disemboweled silence fell back upon me, its wings paralyzed. Without responsibility, straddling Nothingness and Infinity, I began to weep. 266 F R A NT Z FA N O N Notes 1 Jean Lhermitte, L’Image de notre corps (Paris, Nouvelle Revue critique, 1939), p. 17. 2 Sir Alan Burns, Colour Prejudice (London, Allen and Unwin, 1948), p. 16. 3 Anti-Semite and Jew (New York, Grove Press, 1960), pp. 112–13. 4 Ibid., p. 115. 5 Jon Alfred Mjoen, “Harmonic and Disharmonic Race-crossings,”The Second International Congress of 6 In English in the original. (Translator’s note.) 7 Though Sartre’s speculations on the existence of The Other may be correct (to the extent, we must Eugenics (1921), Eugenics in Race and State, vol. II, p. 60, quoted in Sir Alan Burns, op. cit., p. 120. remember, to which Being and Nothingness describes an alienated consciousness), their application to a black consciousness proves fallacious. That is because the white man is not only The Other but also the master, whether real or imaginary. 8 In the sense in which the word is used by Jean Wahl in Existence humaine et transcendance) (Neuchâtel, La Baconnière, 1944). 9 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Respectful Prostitute, in Three Plays (New York, Knopf, 1949), pp. 189, 191. Originally, La Putain respectueuse (Paris, Gallimard, 1947). See also Home of the Brave, a film by Mark Robson. 10 Richard Wright, Native Son (New York, Harper, 1940). 11 By Chester Himes (Garden City, Doubleday, 1945). 12 Home of the Brave. Chapter 20 Lola Young IMPERIAL CULTURE The primitive, the savage and white civilization 1 [. . .] I N T H I S C H A P T E R I W I L L examine how racialized discourses manifested themselves in texts, in terms of ideologies of superiority and inferiority and where they connected with beliefs about femininity and masculinity, and sexuality. Critical analyses of orientalist, colonialist and primitivist discourses will be considered in terms of their applicability to imperialist texts. I will analyse specific representations of Otherness in some literary instances of the late nineteenth century, suggesting how these images were subsequently consolidated and constituted in the cinema. This chapter marks the beginning of the analysis of specific films which are of interest because of the ways in which they engage with racial and sexual issues. I am not concerned here with films that have an aggressive imperialist vision since in many respects these tend to be less interesting in terms of tensions and contradictions within the text.The British archetype of this kind of jingoistic, compulsively xenophobic film is probably Sanders of the River (1935). Films such as The Song of Freedom (1936) and Men ofTwoWorlds (1946) are more engrossing as they slide between an aggressive objectification of black African subjects, marking them as an ignorant, ‘primitive’ undifferentiated mass, and an acknowledgement that specific individuals can be redeemed by being properly schooled in the moral and cultural values of western Europe. Another point of interest is that both The Song of Freedom and Men of TwoWorlds show the black protagonists living and working in England at some stage and it is possible to see their interaction with white English people in terms of class as well as ‘race’. In Sanders of the River (1935), Rhodes of Africa (1936) and other similar dramas, all the ‘natives’ are safely contained in Africa and the virtues of colonialism unequivocally extolled.Another reason for including The Song of Freedom and for devoting a chapter to imperialism and British cinema is that doing so 268 L O L A YO UN G provides a context for the discussions in later chapters about the kinds of representations against which black film-makers in particular have reacted. [. . .] Analysing colonial discourse There have been a number of critiques of the discourses of Orientalism, primitivism and colonialism which have been helpful in identifying the role of ideology and discourse in the constitution of the colonized Other. A persistent critic of the way in which ‘knowledge’ and western European supremacist ideologies have constructed the Other and informed European culture, has been Edward Said (Said, 1985 and 1993). Although specifically referring to the way in which the notion of the Orient is a product of the western European imperial imagination, Said’s theses in Orientalism can be usefully extended to a discussion of the way in which other cultures have been figured, although it is also necessary to bear in mind the specificities of the particular examples being discussed (Said, 1985). Said analyses Orientalism as an attempt to contain and control the Otherness of the Orient. Said refers to a discourse of Orientalism, a set of terms, ideas and ways of constructing and thinking about the subject. Orientalism may be seen as preparing the way for colonialism discursively, ideologically and rhetorically. Both Orientalism and colonialism denied subject peoples’ human agency and resistance and constructed explanatory models to account for the alterity of those subjects. Similarly, much literary production during the late nineteenth century is replete with examples of ‘knowledge’ about the character of Africans based on white supremacist attitudes towards ‘race’. In particular the notion of atavism – the belief that the ‘primitive’ people of Africa constituted an earlier stage of human development – often recurs: all the references to primeval swamps, to primitive rituals, the colonial subjects’ perceived deficiency of language, intellect and culture attest to this belief.The texts are saturated with metaphors of ‘darkness’ infused with the presupposition of the positive associations of whiteness, light and so on, and negative attributes of blackness, dirtiness, ignorance, evil and so on.2 The cultural (Christian) mission was, then, to introduce ‘civilization’ to the ‘primitive’ Other. Similar tropes are evident in the films of the 1930s such as Sanders of the River (1935), The Song of Freedom (1936), King Solomon’s Mines (1937), The Drum (1938) and The Four Feathers (1939), and indeed, later in Men of TwoWorlds (1947) and Simba (1955). MariannaTorgovnick uses the idea of primitivism to identify and explicate a primitivist discourse in which the judgements of white Europeans about the intelligence, rationality and sexual practices of those deemed Other, are not acknowledged to be ideologically formed but are taken as categorical statements about the ‘primitive’ world (Torgovnick, 1990: 8).3 Such convictions are abundant in the literature and cinema of imperialism.The necessity for Europeans of defining the primitive,Torgovnick argues, may be considered as an attempt to define the qualities and boundaries of white identity; an exploration of the self without problematizing the normalization of whiteness and its equation with civilization. In specific instances, such as in the case of women, and in the case of the masses – frequently characterized as a teeming, primeval horde – some white people are attributed the qualities of IMP ER I A L C U LT UR E 269 ‘primitiveness’ thus becoming an internal Other.There are a number of instances when white women are positioned in ways analogous to the way in which black people – and working class people – are positioned albeit with variations in the woman’s relative hierarchical status, and depending on her class and the degree of her heterosexual attraction.Torgovnick acknowledges this when she observes: gender issues always inhabit Western versions of the primitive. Sooner or later those familiar tropes for primitives become the tropes conventionally used for women. Global politics, the dance of colonizer and colonized, becomes sexual politics, the dance of male and female. (Torgovnick, 1990: 17) Torgovnick’s analysis conceptualizes these two issues – of primitivist discourse and patriarchal discourse – as parallel, linear developments and this does not allow for an analysis of the intersections and discontinuities. I argue that these discourses sometimes converge, and sometimes overlap in the cinematic examples which follow. Furthermore, in Torgovnick’s examples there is little sense of the historical role of scientific and historiographical discourses in providing the ‘objective proof’ for the development of ideas about the relative statuses of black/white and male/female which I argue is crucial to an understanding of the potency and persistence of ideologies of racial and gender difference, and sexuality.4 As has been discussed [. . .], both Homi Bhabha and Edward Said in their accounts of colonialist and Orientalist discourses see the construction of stereotypes as crucial to the imperialist hegemonic project. Elaborating on Said’s critique of the European ‘archive’ of knowledge, Bhabha asserts that colonial discourse is: a form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is always ‘in place’, already known, and something that must be anxiously repeated . . . as if the essential duplicity of the Asiatic or the bestial sexual licence of the African that needs no proof, can never really, in discourse, be proved. (Bhabha, 1983: 18) The necessity for vacillation is occasioned because the discourse attempts to fix and stabilise that which is not static.The desire for scientism, exemplified in the valorization of systematic categorization based on empiricism, inevitably produces some instances which refuse to be contained by the conceptual boundaries established. In these cases either the lines of demarcation have to be reordered or the exceptions denied, and this is why stereotypes are protean rather than stable. Although a good deal of what is expressed with regard to racial differences is contradictory there is ‘a rigorous subconscious logic’ which: defines the relations between the covert and overt policies and between the material and discursive practices of colonialism.The ideological functions of colonialist fiction . . . must be understood . . . in terms of the exigencies of domestic – that is, European and 270 L O L A YO UN G colonialist politics and culture; and the function of racial difference, of the fixation on and fetishization of native savagery and evil, must be mapped in terms of these exigencies and ideological imperatives. (JanMohamed, 1985: 62–63) For this fetishization and demonization to cohere and ‘make sense’, there had to be in place a systematic oppositional differentiation in all spheres, made between colonizer and colonized: that such a dichotomous relationship existed was not often challenged by the middle of the nineteenth century, even amongst those who had opposed slavery. Once such notions enter the popular domain and hence discourse and ideology, then they are, to all intents and purposes ‘reality’, since The work of ideology is to present the position of the subject as fixed and unchangeable, an element in a given system of differences which is human nature and the world of human experience, and to show possible action as an endless repetition of “normal”, familiar action. (Belsey 1980: 90) The conventional practices of colonial/imperial cinematic realist representations attributed fixed, inferior characteristics to black people, basing such characterizations on an archive of ‘knowledge’ about the African character, and, arguably, the cumulative effect of such images was to limit informed public debate and to justify policies regarding colonial rule. It is important to remember that the beginnings of cinema coincided with the peak of colonial expansion towards the end of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries. Imperialist growth and policies had to be sustained and the emergent mass medium of the cinema offered the opportunity to promote and consolidate colonial policy overseas. It should also be noted, as Ella Shohat points out, that: Western cinema not only inherited and disseminated colonial discourse, but also created a system of domination through monopolistic control of film distribution and exhibition in much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. (Shohat 1991:45) Masculine, feminine During the peak period of colonial expansion, a number of fictional works emerged that were fantasized depictions of Africa and its people which served as an exotic background against which white men could act out and test the prescribed masculine qualities such as courage, tenacity and self-control. These narratives are characterized by their vision of a robust, bourgeois, homosocial masculinity. Newspapers, popular entertainment, postcards and comics in the first decade of the twentieth century constantly reinforced the idea of war as glamorous, character-building and fascinating: an activity which occurred in far-off exotic places, away from what was seen as the stifling confinement IMP ER I A L C U LT UR E 271 of domesticity.These images and fantasies were inextricably linked to conceptualizations of masculinity, and the idea of what constitutes masculinity was a key site for confrontations springing from racial conflict, since in racially stratified societies, the notion of masculinity is not only determined by its being in opposition to femininity but by its racial specificity. Ideas about masculinity, as is the case with other socially constructed categories, are in a continual state of flux and specific to historical time and place, although this is not always recognized to be the case. Particular ideas about what constitutes ‘manliness’ in terms of physical and athletic prowess became dominant in the late nineteenth century through public concern about British men’s physical weakness at a time of expanding imperial conquests and the demand for the defence of existing colonies (Bristow, 1991; Roper and Tosh, 1991: 19). There was also a crisis of masculinity which arose because of the success of the bourgeois vision of domestic life. Crucial to this lifestyle was the man’s duty to provide moral and religious support, and the adoption of an ideology of hard work and thrift. In the bourgeois household, the home was the domain of the economically dependent wife whilst the rough world of industrial capitalism and work was the province of the male.The home was thus associated with the feminine since that was where the woman could exercise what power she did have.The bourgeois feminine world was that of domesticity, physical weakness, emotional displays, and masculinity was the antithesis of these characteristics. White women – both middle and working class – and black people are again both implicated here as both were characterized as being dependent on others, and as being defined only through their oppositional relationship to white middle class men.5 Although during the nineteenth century black and working class women were expected to carry out arduous physical labour, white middle class women were assigned a position of physical delicacy and fragility and were placed on a pedestal of sexual unattainability. The idealization of white female sexual purity and the valorization of ‘masculine’ attributes such as courage, autonomous action and independence served to privilege the celebration of essentialized characteristics of masculinity and femininity. Whilst it is the case that white middle class women were used and abused, they also colluded in shoring up the structures of supremacy and domination, supporting both class and racial stratification [. . .] The desire to look on and control the female body had limited acceptability in regard to white women: with the institutionalization of black people’s inferior status, no such inhibitions existed in regard to the bodies of African women. [. . .] During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the black female body was subjected to rigorous scientific examination and her naked body placed on public display, the vast majority of such investigatory work being carried out, of course, by white male doctors and scientists. However, even into the twentieth century, the story was different when it came to white women who wished to exercise their privileged racial status through the right to look as is made clear in the following passage from a popular magazine, Titbits, 21 July, 1917: Some years ago we used to have large bodies of natives sent from Africa on military service or in some travelling show, and it was a revelation of horror and disgust to behold 272 L O L A YO UN G the manner in which English women would flock to see these men, whilst to watch them fawning upon these black creatures and fondling them and embracing them, as I have seen dozens of times, was a scandal and a disgrace to English womanhood. How then is it possible to maintain as the one stern creed in the policy of the Empire the eternal supremacy of white over black? (quoted in Henriques, 1974:141) Here the links between bestiality and sexuality, the gendering of the criteria by which sexual impropriety is judged, femininity, and the putative effects of transgressive sexual relations on the imperial project and white supremacy are decisively articulated. [. . .] Black femininity [. . .] An analysis of representations of black femininity in the genre of colonial and imperial literary adventures and their cinematic successors needs to take account of the African women’s metaphoric status which has arisen from the intersection of these discourses on gender,‘race’ and sexuality.6 The literary texts are of note, not just because of the recurring metaphors and themes, but because several important films of the 1930s such as King Solomon’s Mines (1937), The Four Feathers (1939) and Sanders of the River (1935) were based on these novels. In imperial literature regarding the terrain, there is much talk of ‘penetration’,‘conquering the interior’ and so on. Africa is characterized as feminine with all the contradictory connotations of passivity, uncontrollability, desire and danger and indicating the extent to which colonial metaphors are gendered. An indicator of the elision of African landscapes and the (forbidden) desire for (black) feminity is embedded in Freud’s use of the term,‘dark continent’. The seduction and conquest of the African woman became a metaphor for the conquest of Africa itself. A powerful erotic symbolism linked a woman’s femininity so strongly to the attraction of the land that they became one single idea, and to both were attributed the same irresistible, deadly charm. (Nicholas Monti, quoted in Doane, 1991: 213) The feminization of the landscape points to a fascination with, and desire for, African women which cannot be made explicit or elaborated due to its transgressive nature: thus the desire may only be articulated through displacement.A prime example of this figurative displacement occurs in H. Rider Haggard’s novel King Solomon’s Mines (1885). From the perspective of the imperial ‘I/eye’ of his hero, Alan Quatermain, Haggard gives a detailed description of the African landscape which likens the mountainous panorama to a woman’s breasts: . . . I attempt to describe that extraordinary grandeur and beauty of that sight, language seems to fail me. I am impotent even at its memory. Before us rose two enormous IMP ER I A L C U LT UR E 273 mountains . . .These mountains . . . are shaped after the fashion of a woman’s breasts, and at times the mists and shadows beneath them take the form of a recumbent woman veiled mysteriously in sleep. Their bases swell gently from the plain, looking at that distance perfectly round and smooth; and on top of each is a vast hillock covered with snow, exactly corresponding to the nipple on the female breast. (Haggard, 1979: 56–57) Significantly, Quatermain, white hero and narrator of the novel, on recalling the beauty of the sight of that landscape admits to being cast back into the pre-symbolic realm without language, rendered speechless and impotent ‘even at its memory’ (Bristow, 1991: 127).The loss of the accoutrements of civilization and culture is figured through sexual impotence: these fears are the continual fears of the oppressor.Those African ‘breasts’ recall the dependency of infant on mother and as a consequence, the anger experienced at being separated from her, the primary love-object, and it is the enforced recognition of difference which produces ‘impotence’. That the sight of these ‘breasts’, the female’s visible signifiers of sexual difference and maternity, should generate such powerlessness and be effected through Africa is indicative of the anxieties being displaced onto the land and onto black women. If white men’s fear of white women is based on the ‘uncontrollable’ sexual arousal instigated by them, then since African women have been frequently described as hypersexual and are phenotypically marked as inherently and immutably different, the anxieties instigated by sexual difference are exacerbated. In the case of both females and males, the contention that blacks are oversexed is historically linked to and ‘proven’ by alleged anatomical excesses in one form or another.Whether or not there was or is any empirical evidence to support or deny such beliefs is irrelevant: it is the fact that such notions were, and still are, considered meaningful, are still perpetuated either directly or indirectly, and are still the subject of many ribald jokes, that is the significant issue. At the same time as functioning as a contrast through which the white European male could conceive of himself as fearless, active, independent, in control, virile and so on, the African woman also represented a double negation of that heroic self, being not-male, not-white. Freud’s epistemology, as Shohat argues:‘assumes the (white) male as the bearer of knowledge, who can penetrate woman and text, while she, as a remote region, will let herself be explored until truth is uncovered’ (Shohat, 1991: 58).The question is, the truth about whom?Through the sexualization of the feminized African landscape, lying passively on its (her) back displaying naked splendour and availability (for penetration and conquest), the white male unconscious can indulge itself in fantasizing about his assault on, his merging with the forbidden object of fascination and desire. But there is fear embedded in that desire, hence the necessity for denial. Although black women were seen as ‘not-male’, neither were they seen as women in the same sense that white women were. Since slavery, African females had been seen as at once women – inasmuch as they were sexualized, reproductive and subordinate – and not-women, that is not pure, 274 L O L A YO UN G not feminine, not fragile but strong and sexually knowing and available.Thus an implicit contrast was established between white (middle class) and black women and this generated the complex set of relations under colonialism [. . .] This in itself posed a number of problems for white men in their actual and fictional imperial adventures. Given the firmly established ideas about the inferiority of black people, it was unacceptable for white men on their travels across Africa to admit openly to engaging in interracial sexual activity. Referring to Edgar Wallace’s eponymous hero, from the novel, Sanders of the River, Jeffrey Richards notes: Not surprisingly he [Sanders] is unshakeably opposed to miscegenation.When a succession of young officers become enamoured of the beautiful M’Lino he sends them home declaring: ‘Monkey tricks of that sort are good enough for the Belgian Congo and for Togoland but they aren’t good enough for this little strip of wilderness.’ (Richards, 1973: 31) Again, there is the linking of simian imagery with black people and sexual activity, and the often repeated assertion that the colonialism practised by other European powers was immoral and brutal as opposed to Britain’s ‘benign’, paternalistic version.7 The European, as JanMohamed argues, has a choice when confronted with what she or he imagines as an unfathomable, alien Otherness. Hypothetically, she or he: has the option of responding to the Other in terms of identity or difference. If he assumes that he and the Other are essentially identical, then he would tend to ignore the significant divergences and to judge the Other according to his own cultural values. If, on the other hand, he assumes the Other is irremediably different, then he would have little incentive to adopt the viewpoint of that alterity: he would again turn to the security of his own perspective. Genuine and thorough comprehension of Otherness is possible only if the self can somehow negate or at least severely bracket the values, assumptions, and ideology of his culture. (JanMohamed, 1985: 64–65) First though, white people have to recognize the‘values, assumptions and ideology’ and to acknowledge the extent to which Otherness is a construction arising from those assumptions and beliefs. JanMohamed’s argument is here locked into its own binarism, as he posits two alternatives and imputes a stability and cohesion in colonial and primitivist discourses which is illusory as has been argued by Homi Bhabha. Neither is it clear just what constitutes a significant difference or how singular a cultural perspective might be. Nonetheless, such an analysis recognizes the contradictions inherent in the colonialists’ hazardous psychic positioning.Violation of the Other, whether literally, IMP ER I A L C U LT UR E 275 metaphorically, or representationally, must of necessity also be an act of cultural masochism since the Other is necessarily a part of the self constructed in and through difference. This establishment of the other as other is promoted by the initial drive to establish selfidentity by identifying with the other. Negating others, denigrating them, becomes in part, thus, also self-negation and self-effacement. (Goldberg, 1993: 60) This assertion regarding self-effacement should not be understood as a relinquishing of power, rather it comes as a result of possessing and naturalizing relations of power. As the embodiment of an ‘archive’ of fantasies, ‘primitives’, ‘orientals’ and colonized black people have been expected to behave in particular ways and obliged to occupy particular positions in films.The power to define the Other – a power derived from economic and political dominance – is clearly demonstrated in the construction of the colonial subject represented in the literature and cinema of Empire: African men were at once feared and admired, being the objects of feelings of repulsion and veneration.White masculine cultural superiority is signified through the comparisons of weaponry (the ‘savage’ with the spear versus the gentleman with the revolver being a contest of phallic symbols), intelligence and courage. In these texts white masculinity is constantly revered, femininity excluded and derided and racism is naturalized. The ambivalence that was structured into the consciousness of so many fictional adventurer heroes in Africa during that period finds expression in the recognition of the Africans’‘beauty’ and the incongruity of their ‘evil’. Rarely are Africans portrayed as individuated human beings.The primitive, homogeneous mass is emblematic of the Manichean confrontation between Self and Other; a scene often re-enacted in the cinema and literature of Empire.8 The testing of white masculinity was explicitly represented through combat with the savage Other: more covertly (though there are exceptions to which I will refer later) white masculinity was concerned with establishing white male virility within a heterosexual context, and the feminine metaphors used to describe Africa, including the controlling trope of the ‘dark continent’ itself indicate the repression of the feminine. Part of the explanation for the repression of the sexual element lies with the fact that: the whole genre bears the distinct imprint of the public school. The virtues and characteristics of the Imperial archetype are the virtues and characteristics bred into him by his public school.The male camaraderie and the subordinate role of women reflects the all-male environment of the public schools. (Richards, 1973: 220) It would seem that the flight from the feminine and the domestic must be absolute: and with white women absent, homosexuality unspeakable and interracial heterosexual relations unthinkable, what 276 L O L A YO UN G is the white male hero to do in terms of sexual expression but circumscribe the field of sexual activity and sublimate sexual thoughts? The cinema of empire During the late 1920s, Britain’s Colonial Office decided to exploit the propaganda qualities of film as it set out to explore how best to capitalize on cinema’s potential for disseminating imperial ideology. By the 1920s North American cinema was already dominant.There was concern that some of the images of white people could be interpreted as deriding European or British culture and that steps should be taken to counter this. For example, the films of Charlie Chaplin were immensely popular but much of his work involved the humiliation of respectable male figures, men of authority and propriety such as clergymen and policemen, and eventually such texts were censored for screenings in the colonies (Smyth 1983: 129–143). In the USA during the 1920s the Hays Office codes ensured sexual propriety by establishing a code of conduct for film-makers which severely limited, in particular, the sexual content of films.The North American Production Code of the Motion Picture Producers and Directors of America, Inc. (1930–1934) made its policy on the representation of interracial sex explicit: ‘Miscegenation (sex relation between the white and black races) is forbidden’ (quoted in Shohat, 1991: 66). Also subject to censorship were any representations of white women behaving seductively (Smyth, 1983). In Kenya and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where there were substantial white populations, viewing was racially segregated and censorship practised until at least the late 1940s according to whether the black population or white people were the intended audience.9 Although there were significant numbers of black people in Britain during the early part of the twentieth century, in the 1930s Otherness was almost always located ‘out there’ geographically, in adventure films such as King Solomon’s Mines (1937), The Drum (1938) and The Four Feathers (1939). Africa was still conceptualized as belonging to prehistory, its peoples supposedly uncivilized. In colonialist adventure films and literature, it is often the case that Africa’s primeval existence is figured through the lush vegetative landscape, and edenic vistas.The strange animals and the strange people are seen as one entity, one powerful evocation of an exoticism impossible to find within the confines of Europe. However, although the primitive and the exotic were depicted as being in a location far removed from Britain, the texts in the imperial adventure genre served to confirm white European notions of cultural superiority and are thus, essentially parochial and introspective, telling us about how whiteness imagined itself rather than about these Other cultures. An illustration of this ‘speaking of self’ in the guise of discussing the Other occurred when European men encountered tribal kinship structures based on polyandry and polygyny: they viewed these familial practices as expressions of an allegedly excessive black sexuality which was to be both tamed and exploited. That such polygamous practices exemplified a supposed black male sexual potency which was both feared and envied is still evidenced in Sanders of the River (1935), where ‘Sandy the strong, Sandy IMP ER I A L C U LT UR E 277 the wise’ (Leslie Banks) dissuades ten young ‘African’ women who all wish to marry Bosambo (Paul Robeson in a revealing animal print loincloth) by proclaiming that Bosambo is already married to five older women, stronger than any of them. In fact Bosambo is not married to anyone but Sanders’ role at this point is to actively control the potential reproduction of his favourite ‘native’ – an ex-convict – by introducing him to the concept of a monogamous heterosexual relationship. [. . .] Different worlds It would be misleading to suggest that Britain’s hegemonic colonial practices met with or maintained uniform success or to assume that all black African opposition was located in Africa. Although the black population of Britain was still relatively small during the 1930s, there were a number of politically active people who saw the issue of black equality in this country as inextricable from questions of colonial policy. This activity led to the establishment of a number of organizations opposed to colonialism and racism. Pan-African sentiment grew whilst white people’s participation in these political struggles was increasingly felt to be unacceptable: building on the connections between people of the African diaspora was considered to be the most effective way of organizing campaigns against oppression. Barbara Bush has noted that: In their efforts to improve race relations white liberals worked from a middle-class perspective, and thus to them “racial equality” usually implied equality for cultured, Europeanized blacks such as Paul Robeson and Harold Moody. (Bush, 1981: 47) Paul Robeson is a complex figure in terms of what he signified for both black and white audiences, and he did what he could to challenge supremacist ideologies in the film industry and wider society. He had the advantages of being both articulate and clever, and conforming to the conventional role of black male as performer and sporting personality, and – in the British context – of being from the USA.11 African–American actors have often been preferred over British-based black people in a number of British films, a practice which still goes on today and which signals a degree of exoticism attributed to the black Other from ‘elsewhere’ which accrues in a limited way to the black Other within.12 Paul Robeson starred in The Song of Freedom (1936) with Elizabeth Welch, another African– American singer who lived in Britain.The film’s opening sequence, beginning as it does with a mass of running, clamouring, African ‘natives’ – whose threatening, uncivilized demeanour is diminished by the angle of the shot which sees them running away from the camera – immediately draws the audience into the perspective of the explorer seeking to discover the Otherness of Africa.The legend, ‘AFRICA’ appears as the scene dissolves into a classic mountain/sea/landscape shot of a tropical island. Again, a caption appears in order to anchor the meaning of the visuals:‘The island of Casanga, 278 L O L A YO UN G off the west coast – in the year 1700 AD.The island had not yet attracted the attention of the slave traders on the mainland’ we are told but ‘its people suffered as fierce an oppression under their hereditary Queen Zinga – tyrant, despot, mistress of cruelty.’This last phrase may be indicative of a disaffection with female heads of state and matrilinearity and is significant if only because so few of the films set in Africa feature autonomous women. However to claim Queen Zinga as a powerful woman is to ignore the derisory treatment her character is given and the sadistic overtones of her ‘mistress of cruelty’ label. Queen Zinga is played as a woman with a face fixed in a grimace, matted hair and an oiled body indicating a perpetual sweatiness. Zinga – wearing animal pelts, shells and beads – is flanked by further representations of primitiveness: tribal iconography consisting of archetypal primitive‘African’ statues and two men whose bodies merge with the statues. In the face of the violent irrational matriarch, the men are reduced to ciphers. Zinga’s men are passive male bodies, echoing the stance of the statues through both their physical positions and the way that they hold their shields. The interplay here between sexual and racial difference is marked.There is an appeal to white patriarchy: note that women who rule are insane megalomaniacs and to wield power is unnatural for them. Power strips women of their femininity – Zinga’s gender is initially ambiguous and men under matriarchy lack dignity, losing their ability to act autonomously. This early sequence introduces us to a mad, cruel primitive African woman who is the opposite of most cinematic images of white femininity. In relation to her physical appearance and demeanour, the white male audience is interpellated as superior through their rationality, their intellect and the physical attraction of ‘their’ women.The primitivization of Zinga does not invite white women to identify with her or to be identified with her. The process of cinematic identification of viewing subjects with characters and situations in the film is, however, a complex one and it should be acknowledged that identity may be characterized as fragmented with only an illusory coherence (Ellis, 1988: 43). It is not possible to assert that black people always or exclusively identify with black characters, although one can posit that black audiences viewing this type of film may experience a range of feelings which might vary according to context. Fanon felt that, through representation: The Negro is a toy in the white man’s hands . . . I cannot go to a film without seeing myself. I wait for me. In the interval, just before the film starts, I wait for me.The people in the theater are watching me, examining me, waiting for me. (Fanon, 1986: 140) He then painfully reconstructs the sense of embarrassment and internalized self hatred which may entrap the black viewer of such texts: a viewer fixed by the gaze of the film-maker and white members of the audience. Fanon is explicit about the different effects that films such as Tarzan may have on black people, depending on the viewing context: IMP ER I A L C U LT UR E 279 In the Antilles, the young Negro identifies himself de facto withTarzan against the Negroes. This is much more difficult for him in a European theater, for the rest of the audience, which is white, automatically identifies him with the savages on the screen. (Fanon, 1986: 152–153) Paul Robeson is close to the ‘noble savage’ archetype in The Song of Freedom. His popularity as a singer is extensively brought into play in the film. His ability to sing is naturalized, reiterating the notion that all black people are able to sing spontaneously, without training: this ‘natural’ ability is then used as a crucial marker for his racially defined and differentiated subjectivity. John Zinga/Paul Robeson is both a ‘natural’ singer and a natural worker – he is, in this narrative, after all, of royal descent and thus not so feckless and unreliable as the average black male. Perhaps this royal lineage is intended to account for his resilience, as, in spite of being conceived during the Middle Passage, into slavery – which according to the film was not an unpleasant experience – Zinga manages to make his way to England. Zinga’s naturalness is contrasted with the white upper class people who disembark from the ship in the docks where he is employed: they are remote from the world of physical labour which is going on around them. One of these passengers is an opera director, Gabriel Donozetti; his status as a foreign Other, albeit ‘white’ is established through his feminization: that is to say that arm and hand movements associated with ‘feminine’ gestures are deployed to signify both his exoticism and his distance from the experience of manual labour. Donozetti is a purveyor of opera, the exemplary cultural form of the privileged classes. Part of what is interesting about this film is the fact that John Zinga’s class allegiance is to the dockers with whom he works.The narrative posits a somewhat utopian vision of racial harmony in England where racism is clearly not an issue but where divisions based on social class are immutable and natural. ‘Race’ does, however, intrude on this cosy scenario on an unconscious level. For example, Zinga’s nobility and royal lineage serve to make him only on a par with white workers, rather than according him the privileges of upper middle class English society. His entrée into the upper echelons of English society is made possible by his voice rather than by his birth and is strictly limited. African–American film historian Donald Bogle describes John and Ruth Zinga as living ‘a rather arch domestic life . . . who together are almost too wholesome and bourgeois to be true’ (Bogle, 1988: 197). In her gingham dress the character of Ruth certainly looks as though she is designed to fit in with the minimum of visual disruption but their social status is rather that of the respectable, socially aspirant working class rather than the middle class. John Zinga yearns to travel to Africa, even though he has no idea of his ancestry and it is posited that such a yearning is inbred. Richard Dyer suggests that this aspect of Robeson’s characterization which surfaces in his other films too, may be an unconscious expression of the problematic relationship between African– Americans and Africa.13 I think it has as much to do with white people’s (sometimes unconscious) desire to see Africans returned to their ‘natural’ habitat; that is, Africa.The fact of black people being out of place here is emphasized by their isolation and the focus on their discomfiture in white English society. 280 L O L A YO UN G Bogle’s short commentary on The Song of Freedom is not able to be developed due to the encyclopedic nature of his book: it is beyond the scope of his work to attempt to account for some of the more interesting and contradictory aspects of the text. For example in the first domestic scene we see, John Zinga looks longingly at a poster depicting an ‘African’ landscape.This poster is in a pivotal location above the fireplace and the association here between home–hearth–heart is made clear as it becomes the focus of the audience’s gaze, of Ruth’s gaze and, of course, of Zinga’s gaze. The caption on the poster encourages the reader to ‘Go where there’s sunshine! Christmas and NewYear tours to South Africa’: standing in front of this image is the ubiquitous archetypal African statue.The juxtaposition of these divergent representations of Africanness potentially establish a tension between the Zingas’ English working-class lifestyle and what are held to be their cultural and racial origins. Ruth mildly castigates John for his desire to be in Africa by interrupting his fantasies with ‘you’re happy here: the people are kind’ to which John responds with ‘oh they’re grand people . . . somewhere down there are our people Ruth and I’ve got a feeling they’re grand people too.The people we belong to. Funny . . . that [white] fellow didn’t want to go . . . natural – he’s leaving his people to go out among strangers: he’ll be out of place – lonely maybe. However hard I try, I always feel the same here.’Thus John Zinga makes explicit the ‘unnaturalness’ of black people in England whilst pointing to the reluctance of the white traveller as confirmation of the notion that people should remain with ‘their own people’. It does not appear to matter how friendly or decent the host society is, these attempts at crossing the racial divide are bound to fail.Why Zinga should aspire to travel to South Africa is not established. It seems that the poster might be appropriate in a white working class home where South Africa would represent an opportunity to improve their social standing, and perhaps it is there in order to indicate the extent of Zinga’s assimilation. It may perhaps also indicate that South Africa was considered an appropriate political system under which black people should work: clearly delineated statuses for black and white, systematic and inflexible ordering and categorization and supporting legislation were already in place by the 1930s. [. . .] People from different worlds Men of TwoWorlds does not have the presence of a star persona such as Paul Robeson but ten years after The Song of Freedom, it is still foregrounding similar issues and themes. Interestingly, the title Men ofTwo Worlds resonates with more recent descriptions of young black people in Britain as being ‘trapped between two cultures’ [. . .] This time the black male protagonist is named Kisenga – which sounds similar to Casanga, the island in The Song of Freedom – and he is a concert pianist rather than an opera singer but still firmly located within the realms of high rather than the emergent popular culture. Kisenga’s music is a hybrid of traditional ‘African’ and classical European music, signifying that Kisenga is Europeanized but retains, as he puts it,‘the thousand years of Africa in his blood.’ He decides to go to Africa to help ‘his’ people plagued by the tsetse fly which causes sleeping sickness. IMP ER I A L C U LT UR E 281 Again the ignorance and primitivism of the ‘African native’ is embodied in the figure of the manipulative witch doctor who will not allow his fellow villagers to take the medicine prescribed by Doctor Munroe (Phyllis Calvert), the white female doctor. As is the case in The Song of Freedom, the principal evil of the witch doctor’s rule is seen as his rejection of European values and his abhorrence of white people’s presence in Africa. A rationale for refusing to move away from the infestation is not attributed to this ‘primitive’ tribal community: they merely act, they do not think.This reinforces white European assumptions about rational motivation being absent amongst ‘primitive’ people. In contrast to the childlike Africans, the archetypal figure of the District Commissioner, Randall (Eric Portman), is the voice of Europe masculine reason, trying to get the Litu – Kisenga’s people – to move to a place which is not infested with tsetse flies. When the community, influenced by the ‘witch doctor’ reject European medicine it is seen as evidence of their irrationality and they thus forfeit any claim to be thought of as autonomous human beings.This is a similar justification for domination to that proposed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Another point to note is how, just as in the earlier imperial literature described above,‘natives’ are depicted as a primeval, undifferentiated horde.This colonialist tendency is identified by Albert Memmi as a strategy of depersonalization named by him as ‘the mark of the plural.’ Memmi, talking in general terms, notes:‘The colonized is never characterized in an individual manner; he is only to drown in an anonymous collectivity (“They are this.” “They are all the same.”)’ (Memmi, 1990: 151). In Sanders of the River (1935), The Song of Freedom (1936), Men of TwoWorlds (1947) and Simba (1955), only the quiescent or Europeanized Africans are allowed the privilege of individual subjectivity and the limits of this autonomy are strictly defined. Men of Two Worlds has the characteristics of a film which was a tired attempt to revitalize and sustain the myth of benevolent British paternal colonial rule when it was already clear that the British Empire had little life left in it. However, there is a point of interest to which I would draw attention: Phyllis Calvert’s performance as the doctor. Her disgust at the sight and proximity of the black people in the film is almost palpable. Her whole body seems to be infused with a nervous tension that manifests itself in the way she speaks, moves and relates to the other actors. She refuses to engage in eye contact with Kisenga and on occasion acts as though he does not exist, talking and looking through or past him. She barely acknowledges his presence and ensures that their bodies are never close enough to make contact even when they pass each other in narrow spaces.The extent to which Calvert’s demeanour is intended to be a trait of her character is not clear. It could be that this hypertense performance is attributable to the repression of sexuality which informs the film and the taboos regarding interracial relationships between black men and white women which were even more marked then than they are today. Made in 1955 Simba, represents yet another reworking of these themes of the black African male who is educated and has taken on in some clearly signalled sense western European culture. Here though, British fear regarding the increasingly vociferous demands for autonomy, and colonial subjects’ 282 L O L A YO UN G rebellion against the experience of subordination is manifested in what Dyer calls ‘the rigid binarism, with white standing for modernity, reason, order, stability, and black standing for backwardness, irrationality, chaos and violence’ (Dyer, 1988: 49).The role of the bad Other is displaced from the witch doctor and intensified in relation to the Mau-Mau in Simba. This text is a late entry into the colonial adventure canon, coming as it did towards the end of British colonial rule in Africa. It does not engage with the black presence in England and may be seen as representing the terror of the imminent end of Empire and the assumption of white supremacy. Conclusion It was necessary to conceptualize and depict the colonial Other as an infantile, sexually licentious savage in order to justify continued economic exploitation, surveillance and the ruthless wielding of power. Bhabha sees the attribution of such qualities as perverse contradictions: The black is both savage (cannibal) and yet the most obedient and dignified of servants (the bearer of food); he is the embodiment of rampant sexuality and yet innocent as a child; he is mystical, primitive, simpleminded and yet the most worldly and accomplished liar, and manipulator of social forces. In each case what is being dramatised is a separation – between races, cultures, histories, within histories – a separation between before and after that repeats obsessively the mythical moment of disjunction. (Bhabha, 1983: 34) Attributing cannibalism to savage Others serves at once as justification for taming those savages, as a confirmation of white European supremacy and as a screen onto which to project guilty repression of the knowledge that it is the white oppressor who behaves in a cannibalistic manner. The act of cannibalism also functions as a useful metaphor for colonial exploitation [. . .]There is also in evidence in these anxious repetitions of colonial tropes, the fear of being re-absorbed into the dark, articulated as a fear of the dark or being swallowed, or ingested by the Other. In order to exercise ‘mastery’ over that ‘darkness’, to pre-empt the retaliation that they guiltily fear will be enacted against them, acts of violation are perpetrated, such as rapine penetration, and genocide. The notion of British colonialism as a global civilizing mission is explicit in Sanders of the River (1935), The Song of Freedom (1936), and Men ofTwoWorlds (1946), and reflects the narcissism embedded in colonial and neo-colonial fantasies. The central character of the white male is represented as whole, unified and coherent, a perception constantly in danger of disruption through the mirrorimage of the black Other. Embedded in the psyche is the ‘knowledge’ that difference – specifically racial and sexual difference – subverts and disrupts the notion of cohesion and order and this anxiety needs to be constantly mollified.These films served as comforting narratives for a nation which, used to assuming spiritual, cultural and political superiority, was traumatised by the Indian ‘mutiny’ and the subsequent fear of further destabilizing uprisings and acts of resistance.Through cinema – and IMP ER I A L C U LT UR E 283 literature – the old self-assurance could be re-asserted with the likes of ‘Sandy the strong, Sandy the wise’ able to rule over devoted black subjects, in spite of being vastly outnumbered. Five years before Simba was made, Basil Dearden’s Pool of London was released.This film indicates a significant break with the colonial adventure genre since no direct link is made between the black male character and Africa. Although he works on a ship which necessitates him spending long periods away from London, his presence is not specifically marked as unnatural or out of place. However, attempts to date a white woman are thwarted in order to avoid any controversy. Significant numbers of black settlers from Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean came to Britain after the Second WorldWar and it is to these groups that film-makers who wished to explore racial difference turned in the latter part of the 1950s. Exoticism and Otherness no longer had to be sought ‘out there’ – indeed, could not now be with the imminent demise of this phase of colonialism – since the Other was actually ‘here’. This marks the moment where the numbers of black people became imbued with more significance than they had been before. Although represented as living in Britain, in The Song of Freedom (1936), The ProudValley (1939) and Men ofTwoWorlds (1946), black people posed little threat because one way or another they did not settle in or reproduce in Britain.The numbers of black people involved outside of well-established communities in Cardiff, Bristol and Liverpool were perceived as insignificant.The narratives dealt with such problems as did arise by removing the source – in these three examples the African men – through death or repatriation.Vast numbers of Africans in Africa were not so problematic since one efficient District Commissioner could control them all with the assistance of a compliant ‘native’ chief. The term ‘racial problem’ – previously associated with the racial traumas of South Africa and the USA – took on a whole new dimension in the 1950s when black people started to settle across Britain and themes relating to sexuality which had previously been studiously avoided became issues demanding attention. Notes 1 Raymond Williams notes the ambiguities and uncertainties which have accrued to the term ‘imperialism’. In the late nineteenth century, imperialism was usually defined as ‘primarily a political system in which colonies are governed from an imperial centre’ (Williams, 1988: 159). However, imperialism also has a set of meanings where the emphasis is on the economic rather than the political, thus the term connotes ‘an economic system of external investment and the penetration and control of markets and sources of raw materials’ (ibid.: 159–160). In the context of this book, the emphasis is on the former meaning, rather than the latter. There are several variations on this genre of film and literature: of particular note is the representation of the Indian sub-continent and its peoples. This is, however, outside the scope of this book. 2 However, these texts should not be thought of as ideologically homogeneous tracts as there is often evidence of contradictory feelings about the Empire and the demands it made, particularly on young 284 L O L A YO UN G men: see Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1989) for example which is, broadly speaking, antiimperialist but suffused with imperial rhetoric. In his concluding chapter, Joseph Bristow (1991) discusses some of the ambivalences in writing of the late nineteenth century. For debates conducted amongst Victorians, see Christine Bolt (1971); for an informative account of Conrad’s stance on imperialism as evidenced in his writings, see Benita Parry (1983); for an introduction to, and references for the role of the Pan-African movement in the 1920s and 1930, see Peter Fryer (1984), and Walter Rodney (1988); a leading Pan-Africanist who came to Britain whose work is relevant here is George Padmore, (1936). 3 Torgovnick’s use of ‘we’ and ‘they’ is problematic since it serves to reinforce the Euro-American dominant cultural status in determining who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’. Torgovnick attempts to justify it thus: The ‘we’ as I use it in this section basically denotes the ‘we’ that imagines a primitive ‘them’, a cultural ‘we’ . . . I use the we strategically, to prevent myself and my reader from backing away, too easily, from the systems of us/them thinking that structure all discourse about the civilized and the primitive . . . But at times . . . that ‘we’ is intended to produce a sense of discomfort or misfit. The ‘we’ is necessary to expose a shared illusion: the illusion of a representative primitive ‘them’ as opposed to a monolithic unified, powerful ‘us’. (Torgovnick, 1990: 6) Unfortunately, the effect of using that ‘we’ is to consolidate white European dominance as the extent to which her desire to make ‘us’ feel uncomfortable will be experienced as helpful by those who have always felt excluded from the academic ‘we’ is questionable. 4 For a cogent analysis of the metaphoric status of this comparison between black people and women, see Nancy Leys Stepan (1990: 38–57). 5 For more on the formation and consolidation of ideas about masculinity and dependency in theVictorian era, see Catherine Hall (1992). 6 A substantial body of critical work which engages with gender and racial relations, the realm of the psyche and the material aspects of British colonialist and imperialist cinema has not been established, However, much productive analytical work has been carried out on nineteenth century literature. For more detailed analysis in this subject area, see Brian Street (1975); Benita Parry (1983); Patrick Brantlinger (1988); Joseph Bristow (1991). For work on cultural forms other than literature, see John Mackenzie (1984), and for an exploration of the links between white English public school life, masculinity and the literature and films of Empire, see Jeffrey Richards (1973). 7 Both the association of animal imagery with black women and the inferior model of colonization offered by the Belgians are evident in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1989: 80). 8 These ideas about the massed ‘native’ Other were also the mainstay of the Western genre of North American cinema where the confrontation would be between Native American and Euro-American. 9 For examples of some of the films affected by censorship in Kenya and Northern Rhodesia in the 1940s, see Rosaleen Smyth (1983: 346, note 28). IMP ER I A L C U LT UR E 285 10 Harold Moody was founder of the League of Coloured People in 1931. 11 For an examination of Paul Robeson’s cross-over appeal, see Richard Dyer (1986). 12 For example, in the casting of African–American Denzil Washington as a former black soldier from London in For Queen and Country (1988) and similarly, Forrest Whittaker in The Crying Game (1992). 13 See Dyer (1986). Interestingly, in a biography of Robeson, it is claimed that he felt that The Song of Freedom was the ‘first true one he has done about that continent [Africa]’ (Foner, 1978: 31). References Belsey, C. (1980) Critical Practice, London: Methuen. Bhabha, H. K. (1983) ‘The Other Question . . .’ in Screen, volume 24, number 6, November/December: 18–36. Bogle, D. (1988) Blacks in American Films and Television: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, New York: Simon and Schuster Inc. Bolt, C. (1971) Victorian Attitudes to Race, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Brantlinger, P. (1988) Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, Ithaca: Cornell University. Bristow, J. (1991) Empire Boys: Adventures in a Man’s World, London: HarperCollins Academic. Bush, B. (1981) ‘Blacks in Britain: the 1930s’ in History Today, September. Conrad, J. (1989) Heart of Darkness, London: Penguin, (originally published in 1902). Doane, M. A. (1991) Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis, New York: Routledge. Dyer, R. (1988) ‘White’ in Screen: The Last ‘Special Issue’ on Race?’ volume 29, number 4, Autumn: 44–65. Ellis, J. (1988) Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television,Video, London: Routledge. Fanon, F. (1986) Black Skin, White Masks, (translated by Charles Lam Markmann), London: Pluto Press, (originally published in 1952). Foner, P. S. (1978) Paul Robeson Speaks:Writings, Speeches, Interviews: 1918–1974, London: Quartet. Fryer, P. (1984) Staying Power:The History of Black People in Britain, London: Pluto Press. Goldberg, D. T. (1993) Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Haggard, H. R. (1979) King Solomon’s Mines, London: Octopus Books, (originally published in 1885). Hall, C. (1992) White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History, Cambridge: Polity Press. Henriques, F. (1974) Children of Caliban: Miscegenation, London: Seeker and Warburg. JanMohamed, A. R. (1985) ‘The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature’ in Critical Enquiry, number 12, Autumn: 59–87. MacKenzie, J. (1984) Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of Public Opinion, 1880–1960 . Manchester: Manchester University Press. Memmi, A. (1990) The Colonizer and the Colonized, (translated by Howard Greenfield), London: Earthscan Publications, (originally published in 1957). 286 L O L A YO UN G Padmore, George (1936) Africa: How Britain Rules Africa, London: Wishart Books. Parry, B. (1983) Conrad and Imperialism: Ideological Boundaries and Visionary Frontiers, London: Macmillan. Richards, J. (1973) Visions ofYesterday, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. Rodney, W. (1988) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, London: Bogle L’Ouverture Publications. Roper, M. and Tosh, J. (eds) (1991) Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain Since 1800, London: Routledge. Said, E. W. (1985) Orientalism, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Said, E. W. (1993) Culture and Imperialism, London: Chatto and Windus. Shohat, E. (1991) ‘Gender and the Culture of Empire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema’ in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, volume 13: 45–84. Smyth, R. (1983) ‘Movies and Mandarins: the Official Film and British Colonial Africa’ in J. Curran, and V. Porter (eds) British Cinema History, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson: 129–43. Stepan, N.L. (1990) ‘Race and Gender: the Role of Analogy in Science’ in D. T. Goldberg (ed.) Anatomy of Racism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Torgovnick, M. (1990) Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Williams, R. (1988) Keywords: AVocabulary of Culture and Society, London: Fontana. Chapter 21 Anne McClintock THE WHITE FAMILY OF MAN Colonial discourse and the reinvention of patriarchy U N T I L T H E 1 8 6 0 S S O U T H A F R I C A was, from the imperial point of view, a far-flung outpost of scant allure. In 1867, however, an Afrikaner child chanced upon the first South African diamond. The discovery of the diamond fields at once drew “this most stagnant of colonial regions” into the eddies of modern imperial capitalism and “a land that had seen boat-load after boat-load of emigrants for New Zealand and Australia pass it unheeding by now saw men tumbling on to its wharves and hurrying up country to the mines.”1 Among these new arrivals was Henry Rider Haggard, an obscure youth of nineteen, who, after a few years of unremarkable service in the colonial administration, returned to Britain to become the most spectacularly successful novelist of his time.2 In 1885, a few months after the carving up of Africa among the “lords of humankind” at Berlin, Haggard published King Solomon’s Mines, instantly and easily outselling all his contemporaries.3 She appeared soon after, in 1887, to a riotous fanfare of applause. Almost overnight, this obscure youth had become an author of unparalleled commercial success and renown.4 King Solomon’s Mines was intimately concerned with events in South Africa following the discovery of diamonds and then gold: specifically, the reordering of women’s sexuality and work in the African homestead and the diversion of black male labor into the mines. The story illuminates not only relations between the imperial metropolis and the colonies but also the refashioning of gender relations in South Africa, as a nascent capitalism penetrated the region and disrupted already contested power relations within the homesteads. Despite recent recognition that some of the crucial conflicts in the nineteenth century took place over the African homestead economy, for the most part the story of women’s work and women’s resistance has been shunted to the sidings of history. Because women were the chief farmers, they were the primary producers of life, labor and food in the precolonial era. 288 A NNE M c C L I NTO C K Their work was thus the single most valuable resource in the country, apart from the land itself.Yet we know very little about how precolonial societies were able to subordinate women’s work and as little about the changes wrought on these societies by colonial conquest and the penetration of merchant and mining capital. Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines offers an unusual glimpse into some of the fundamental dynamics of that contest. The novel was in large part an attempt to negotiate contradictions in the colonial effort to discipline female sexuality and labor, both in the European metropolis and in the colonies. The conflicts between male and female generative power and between domesticity and imperialism, were not only the obsessive themes of Haggard’s work but also a dominant preoccupation of his time. Much of the fascination of Haggard’s writing for maleVictorians was that he played out his phantasms of patriarchal power in the arena of empire, and thus evoked the unbidden relation between male middle- and upper-middle-class power in the metropolis and control of black female labor in the colonies. In this way, King Solomon’s Mines becomes more than a Victorian curiosity; instead it brings to light some of the fundamental contradictions of the imperial project as well as African attempts to resist it. [. . .] The regeneration of the family of man: an imperial narrative Although Haggard was mediocre and disinherited in Britain, once he stepped onto South African soil, he rose immediately into the most exclusive white elite of the country. His appointment to the colonial administration was nothing more glamorous than housekeeper to the largely male family of white bureaucrats in Pietermaritsburg, Natal. But as general factotum to Sir Henry Bulwer, tasked with handling the “champagne and sherry policy” of Natal’s brass-band and cavalry administration, his prestige and self-esteem were enormously enhanced.5 Standing discreetly at the elbow of the paramount white authority in Natal, he was a far cry from the hapless dolt at Scoones. Indeed, a local newspaper announced the new arrival in Cape Town of a “Mr.Waggart.” Haggard’s regenerative arrival in South Africa is illuminating in this respect, for the turnabout in his career rehearses a critical moment in late maleVictorian culture: the transition, that Said identifies, from filiation to affiliation. Haggard’s redemption in the colonial service vividly rehearses this transition from failed filiation within the feudal family manor – essentially a failure of class reproduction – to affiliation with the colonial bureaucracy.Through affiliation with the colonial administration, he was quite explicitly compensated for his loss of place in the landed, patriarchal family and was, moreover, provided with a surrogate father in the form of Theophilus Shepstone, Natal’s Administrator of Native Affairs. Haggard was in this respect representative of a specific moment in imperial culture, in which the nearly anachronistic authority of the vanishing feudal family, invested in its sanctioned rituals of rank and subordination, was displaced onto the colonies and reinvented within the new order of the colonial administration. This displacement gives rise to a paradox. One witnesses in the colonies a strange shadow-effect of the state of the family in Britain. George Orwell once acidly described the British ruling class as “a T H E W H I T E FA M I LY O F M A N 289 family with the wrong members in control.” Drawing on the by now well-established figure of organic degeneration, he had a vision of Britain ruled over by a decrepit family of “irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.”Yet, as Williams notes, what Orwell regretted was not so much the existence of a ruling family but rather its decay of ability.The image of the family as the model of social order has so powerful a hold over Orwell’s imagination that he could not yet dispense with it in favor of a notion such as class, and he could express his unease only in terms of biological decay. At the same time, for Orwell, a family ruled by irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts was a pathological family, for the father was nowhere to be seen. It did not seem noteworthy, either to Orwell or toWilliams, that the image also admits no mother. Here an important relation makes itself felt. Orwell saw the social group from which he came, the great service families, “pushed down in importance by the growth of the centralized bureaucracy and by the monopoly trading companies.”7 The failure of the idea of filiation within the great landed and service families stemmed in part from the growth of the imperial bureaucracy, which not only usurped the social function of the service families, displacing administrative power beyond the network of the family but also seriously undermined the image of the patriarchal paterfamilias as ultimate originary power.Yet if the growth of the bureaucracy unseated the patriarch as the image of centralized and individual male power, one witnesses in the colonies the reinvention of the tradition of fatherhood, displaced onto the colonial bureaucracy as a surrogate, restored authority. In other words, the figure of the paterfamilias was most vigorously embraced in the colonies at just that moment when it was withering in the European metropolis.The colony became the last opportunity for restoring the political authority of fatherhood, and it is therefore not surprising that one finds its most intense expressions in the colonial administration, the very place that threatened it. Nor is it surprising that the reinvention of the patriarch in the colonies took on a pathological form. Patriarchal regeneration: King Solomon’s Mines Allan Quartermain – gentleman, hunter, trader, fighter and miner (named, not accidentally, after a father surrogate who had befriended Haggard as a youth) – began to write “the strangest story” that he knows for prophylactic reasons, as an act of biological hygiene. A confounded lion having mauled his leg, he is laid up in Durban in some pain and is unable to get about.Writing the book will relieve some of the frustration of his impotence – it will return him to health and manhood. Further, he will send it to his son, who is studying to be a doctor at a London hospital and is therefore obliged to spend a good deal of his time cutting up dead bodies. Quartermain intends his imperial adventure to breathe “a little life into things” for his boy, Harry, who will as a result be better fitted to pursue the technology of sanitation, the task of national hygiene, the restoration of the race.The book will thus be a threefold narrative of imperial recuperation, embracing three realms and moving from one to the other in a certain privileged order: from the physical body of the white patriarch restored in the colonies to the familial bond with the son/doctor in Britain to the national body politic. At the same 290 A NNE M c C L I NTO C K time, the narrative reveals that the attempted regeneration of lateVictorian Britain depended on the reordering of labor in the colonies; in this case, the attempted reconstruction of the Zulu nation through control of female reproductive and labor power. The task of paterfamilial restoration that motivates the narration of the journey to King Solomon’s Mines finds its analog in the motivation for the fictional journey itself. Quartermain, Captain Good and Sir Henry Curtis set out for King Solomon’s Mines primarily to find Sir Henry’s younger brother, Neville. Left without a profession or a penny when his father died intestate, Neville quarreled with Sir Henry and set off for South Africa in search of a fortune – a small mimicry of the flight of many of the distressed gentry to the colonies. At the end of the novel Neville is found in the wilderness, clad in ragged skins, his beard grown wild, his leg crushed in an accident – a living incarnation of the degeneration and wounded manhood thought to imperil the white race when abandoned too long in the racial “wilderness.” Thus at both the level of the telling of the story and of the story told, the narrative is initiated through a double crisis of male succession and is completed with the regeneration of ruptured family bonds, promising therewith the continuity, however tenuous, of the landed patriarch. Yet as it happens, Haggard’s family romance of fathers, sons and brothers regenerating each other through the imperial adventure is premised on the reordering of another family: the succession of the Kukuana royal family.This reordering requires the death of the “witch-mother” Gagool. Only with her death is female control over generation aborted and the “legitimate” king restored, presided over by the regenerated white “fathers,” who will carry away the diamonds to restore the landed gentry in Britain. [. . .] In King Solomon’s Mines we find two theories of human racial development. Both are intimately dependent on each other and both are elaborated within the metaphor of the family. On one hand, the narrative presents the historical decline from white (“Egyptian”) fatherhood to a primordial black degeneracy incarnated in the black mother. On the other hand, the narrative presents the story of the familial progress of humanity from degenerate native “child” to adult white father. Haggard shared the popular notion that civilization as embodied by colonials was hazardous to the African, who, “by intellect and by nature . . . is some five centuries behind. . . . Civilization, it would seem, when applied to black races, produces effects diametrically opposite to those we are accustomed to in white nations: it debases before it can elevate.” Most crucially, the dynamic principle that animates the hierarchy of racial and gender degeneration, transforming a static depiction of debasement into a narrative of historical progress, is the principle of imperial conquest. Feminizing the “Empty Lands” The journey to King Solomon’s mines is a genesis of racial and sexual order.The journey to origins, as Pierre Macherey points out is “not a way of showing the absolute or beginning but a way of determining the genesis of order, of succession.”8 Donna Haraway has observed that the colonial T H E W H I T E FA M I LY O F M A N 291 safari was a kind of traveling minisociety, an icon of the whole enterprise of imperialism fully expressive of its racial and sexual division of labor.9 It is therefore fitting that Quartermain’s party consists of three white gentlemen; a Zulu “gentleman” (“kesbla” [sic] or “ringed man”), who nevertheless lags in development some five hundred years behind the whites; three Zulu “boys,” still in a state of native “childhood” in relation to the whites; and the racially degenerate “Hottentot,”Ventvogel.Thus we set out with the Family of Man in place, fully expressive of fixed divisions of class and race, with the female entirely repressed – a fitting racial hierarchy with which to reinvent the genesis of the species. True to the trope of anachronistic space, the journey into the interior is, like almost all colonial journeys, figured as a journey forward in space but backward in time. As the men progress, they enter the dangerous zones of racial degeneration. Entering the fever lands and the place of the tsetse fly, the men leave their sick animals and proceed on foot. On the edge of the burning desert that stretches between them and Solomon’s blue mountains, they cross into the borderlands of pathology. Stepping into the desert, they step into the zone of prehistory.Their journey across the untenanted plain traces an evolutionary regression from adult virility into a primordial landscape of sun and thirst inhospitable to all except insect life. True to the narrative of recapitulation that underlies the journey, the men slowly slough off their manhood. The sun sucks their blood from them; they stagger like infants unable to walk and escape death only by digging a womb-hole in the earth in which they bury themselves. Notably, Ventvogel here enters his proper racial element. “Being a Hottentot,” and therefore untouched by the sun, his “wild-bred” instincts awaken and he sniffs the air “like an old Impala ram.” Uttering gutteral exclamations, he runs about and smells out the “pan bad water” (39). Again in keeping with the narrative of recapitulation, adult racial degeneration to the primitive state of the “Hottentot” is accompanied by sexual degeneration to the “female” condition, and both states are attended by linguistic degeneration to an infantile state of preverbal impotence.As we know from the map, the “pan bad water” represents the corrupted female head. At this point, just over the perilous threshold of race, the place of prehistory merges with the place of the female.The landscape becomes suddenly feminized – the sky blushes like a girl, the moon waxes wan and at the very moment that Ventvogel smells the bad water, the men lay eyes for the first time on Sheba’s Breasts. Here, the prescribed narrative of racial, sexual and linguistic degeneracy confirms itself. At the sight of the mountains “shaped exactly like a woman’s breasts,” their snowy peaks “exactly corresponding to the nipple on the female breast,” Quartermain plunges into the condition of reduced manhood and linguistic degeneration characteristic of the “Hottentot” female state. He “cannot describe” what he saw: “Language seems to fail me. . . .To describe the grandeur of the whole view is beyond my powers” (38, 39).This crisis of representation is a ritualistic moment in the colonial narrative whereby the colonized land rises up in all its unrepresentability, threatening to unman the intruder: “I am impotent even before its memory.”Yet this is a subterfuge, a pretense of the same order as writing “cannibals” on the colonial map, for Quartermain contains the eruptive power of the black female by inscribing her into the narrative of racial degeneracy. 292 A NNE M c C L I NTO C K As the men leave the plains of prehistory and scale Sheba’s Breasts,Ventvogel’s racial debility begins to tell. “Like most Hottentots” he cannot take the cold and freezes to death in the cave on Sheba’s nipple, proving himself unfit to accompany the other men on their journey to the restoration of the paternal origin. At the same time, his death discloses a prior historical failing. In the cave where Ventvogel dies, they find, in fetal position, the frozen skeletal remains of the Portuguese trader, Jose da Silvestre.These remains are a memento of the racial and class unfitness of the first wave of colonial intruders in these parts and thereby a historical affirmation of the superior evolutionary fitness of the English gentry over the Portuguese trader.To inscribe this liminal moment of succession into history. Quartermain takes up da Silvestre’s “rude pen,” the “cleft-bone” signifying mastery and possession: “It is before me as I write – sometimes I sign my name with it” (45). Standing aloft on Sheba’s Breasts, the men re-enter history. Monarchs of all they survey, their proprietary act of seeing inscribes itself on the land.10 Leaving Ventvogel and the tongueless zone of prehistory, they re-enter language. Nevertheless, this moment is not a moment of origin but rather the beginning of a historical return and regression, for the journey has already been made. As Macherey has observed, the colonial journey “cannot be an exploration in the strict sense of the word but only discovery, retrieval of a knowledge already complete.”11 The landscape before them is not originary – it cannot find its principle of order within itself. “The landscape lay before us like a map,” written over with European history.The mountain peaks are “Alplike”, Solomon’s Road looks at first like “a sort of Roman road,” then like Saint Gothard’s in Switzerland.The landscape is not, properly speaking, African, because it is already the subject of conquest. One of the tunnels through which the men pass is carved in ancient statuary, one “exceedingly beautiful” representing a whole battle-scene with a convoy of captives being marched off in the distance. Thus, “the journey . . . is disclosed as having ineluctably happened before. . . . To explore is to follow, that is to say, to cover once again, under new conditions, a road already actually travelled. . . .The conquest is only possible because it has already been accomplished.”12 Macherey’s observations are important because if the narrative of origins is, more properly speaking, the genesis of an order and a hierarchy and if the order the white men intend to impose is that of colonization and the primary stages of the primitive stages of the primitive accumulation of capital, then their conquest finds its legitimacy only by virtue of the fact that the conquest had already taken place at a previous moment in history. King Solomon, whom Haggard regarded as white, had already proved his titular right to the treasure of the mines, had already carved his road over the land. All that had to be accomplished to succeed to the treasure was a demonstration of family resemblance. A poetics of blood inheritance had to be written whereby the white gentlemen could succeed as rightful heirs to the riches. [. . .] T H E W H I T E FA M I LY O F M A N 293 Inventing traditions: white fathers and black kings Natal, where Haggard found himself in 1875, was one of the most unpromising of British colonies. Lacking any vital raw materials for export and lying hundreds of miles from the markets of Cape Town, it was poor, isolated and vulnerable. During the early years of the nineteenth century, the area had seen much turbulence and distress as local chiefdoms rivaled each other for land and power under the pressure of narrowing environmental resources. Between 1816 and 1828, the Zulu leader Shaka had fashioned from the upheavals a formidable military kingdom that drew into its orbit many smaller clans, destroying or scattering the rest in a great chain effect of disruption (the mfecane).The small bands of fierce Boer nomads, pushed into this cleared buffer zone in the 1830s. The British, however, had been granted land on the coast by Shaka and bristled at the prospect of Port Natal falling into the hostile hands of theVoortrekkers.They hastily summoned troops from the Cape and snatched Natal from the Boers in 1843. Nevertheless, the British were reluctant to lose the Boers themselves, for they needed denser settlement to counter the potentially overwhelming presence of the Zulus in Zululand which hemmed them in to the north (the principle source, with Zimbabwe, of Haggard’s Kukuanaland).The British offered the Boers huge farms over the heads of the indigenous Africans, but many Boers preferred to trek inland once more, becoming absentee owners or selling their land to speculators. Huge areas of land in Natal were left fallow and untended, yet closed to settlement. This was the paradox that plagued Natal’s white farmers: a shortage of land in a vast country of thousands of acres and a shortage of labor in a land with a population of thousands of Africans. After the discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1884 the paradox deepened as black labor left for the mineral fields and better wages of the interior. Haggard, in 1882, in his first published writing, Cetywayo and HisWhite Neighbours, called this paradox “the unsolved riddle of the future, the Native Question.”13 It is this riddle that King Solomon’s Mines attempts to resolve, revealing in the process that the problems of land and labor are rooted in the fundamental question of who was to control the women’s labor – an issue fought out at a number of levels: between black women and men within the Zulu homestead, among black men and between white colonists and black men. Many elements of the Zulu family drama are present in King Solomon’s Mines. In 1856 a crisis had broken out over the rightful heir of the Zulu king, Mpande, a struggle that prefigured the crisis of male succession reenacted in the novel. As in Haggard’s tale, the blood rivalry between Mpande’s sons, Cetshwayo and Mbulazi, climaxed in a battle in 1856: an eyewitness account of the actual battle provided Haggard with many of the details he used for the battle scene in the novel. Haggard’s depiction of the degenerate usurper king,Twala, is resonant of racist images of Cetshwayo as a gorillalike monster in the popular illustrated papers. In both the novel and its historical counterpart, moreover, white men interfere in the crisis of male inheritance and arrogate to themselves the powers of white patria potestas. This gives them the authority to inaugurate what they believe will be a subservient black monarch, on terms favorable to the colonial state. In the historical case, Cetshwayo emerged as victor and Shepstone visited the Zulu court to confer official blessings on him in 1861. However, instead of the adulatory welcome he confidently 294 A NNE M c C L I NTO C K expected, Shepstone, like Haggard’s heroes, only narrowly avoided death. Nevertheless, the parties were reconciled and in September 1873 Shepstone proceeded to enact a pompous ceremony of monarchical recognition that he alone took seriously. Cetshwayo was proclaimed king with a great deal of pomp and ritual invented by Shepstone for the occasion. Shepstone saw himself grandly “standing in the place of Cetshwayo’s father and so representing the nation” and enunciated four articles that he regarded as necessary for putting an end to “the continual slaughter that darkens the history of Natal.”These articles are strikingly similar to the articles of control Haggard’s heroes would demand in King Solomon’s Mines. Shepstone clearly felt he had been instituted as nominal founding father of the Zulu nation, and he and Haggard made a good deal of rhetorical fuss of his new status as father of the Zulus. The coronation was not simply Shepstone’s whimsy, however, but was a symptomatic replica of the invented traditions of monarchical inauguration that colonials were enacting all over British Africa. In what Terence Ranger has called “the invented tradition of the ‘Imperial Monarchy’ “the colonists – lacking, as they did, a single body of legitimating ritual – offered Africans a fantastic mummery of tinsel and velvet royalty that bore scant resemblance to the political reality of the British monarchy.14 In Britain the monarch had shrunk to a ceremonial figurehead. The centers of political power lay elsewhere, on the desks of industrial magnates, in the corridors of parliament, in the shipyards and mills. In the African colonies, however, the figure of the king rose to its feet and walked abroad again. The anachronistic ideology of the imperial monarchy became a widespread administrative cult, full of invention and pretense, of which Shepstone’s coronation of Cetshwayo (like Haggard’s coronation of Umbopa) were symptomatic. Ranger calls “the ‘theology’ of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent monarchy . . . almost the sole ingredient of imperial ideology as it was represented to the Africans.”15 He thereby neglects, however, what was arguably the most authoritative and influential of all invented rituals in the colonies: the patriarch, or landed paterfamilias. Most significant in political impact, moreover, was the newly invented hierarchy between the white “father” and the black king. In colonial documents, for example, Shepstone is referred to with ritualistic insistence as the “father-figure” of Natal. Sir Henry Bulwer called him “one of the Colonies’ earliest fathers – the very Nestor of the Colony.”16 Shepstone was generally referred to by black people (no doubt obliging his fantasy) as “Somtsewu,” which, as Jeff Guy says, “notwithstanding much speculation on its meaning along the lines of ‘mighty hunter’ . . . is a word of Sesotho origin meaning ‘Father of Whiteness’.”17 Haggard, like Shepstone himself, understood the name to carry the entirely unfounded implication that the Zulus regarded Shepstone as the originary potentate of the black people themselves: Shepstone is “par excellence their great white chief and ‘father’.” In a message to Lobengula, chief of the Ndebele, Shepstone announced portentously: “The Lieutenant Governor of Natal is looked upon as the Father of all.”18 Shepstone took the title of father and everything that sprang from it in terms of political authority very seriously indeed, not only as a title but as a political and administrative practice that had serious consequences for the history of South Africa. One example from many can suffice. In the T H E W H I T E FA M I LY O F M A N 295 1850s he and Bishop Colenso of Natal, before their famous squabble, hatched a megalomaniacal plot to solve the “native question” by founding a Black Kingdom (like Kukuanaland) south of Natal, over which they would rule autocratically as founding patriarchs – each embodying, respectively, the absolute powers of “Father of the Church” and “Father of the state.” In a letter to members of the Church of England, Colenso claimed he was called “Sokuleleka” (“Father of Raising Up”) and “Sobantu” (“Father of the People”). Not to be outdone, Shepstone would be “Father of Whiteness.” Both men thus arrogated to themselves, as Haggard’s heroes do, all powers of male generation and succession. Their roles would be nothing less than the generators of civilization and the regenerators of the ancient Family of Man. Shepstone manipulated the invented traditions of fathers and kings, mimicking allegiance to certain customs of Zulu chieftainship, while retaining for himself the superior status of father – the same solution to conflicting patriarchies that Haggard’s tale rehearses.Thus Shepstone drew on an ideology of divine fatherhood, as preordained and natural, the founding source of all authority.The black king, on the other hand, was his symbolic reproduction, mortal, invested with authority only by virtue of his mimicry of the originary power of the father. For these reasons, I suggest, the reinvention of fathers and kings in South Africa can be seen as a central attempt to mediate a number of contradictions: between the imperial bureaucracy and the declining landed gentry in Britain; between the colonial ruling patriarchy and the indigenous patriarchies of precapitalist polities; and last but most significantly, between women and men of all races. Here we come across the final and most important dynamic underlying both Haggard’s tale and the emergent economy of the colonial state. The invention of idleness Shepstone’s policy was based on an intimate sense of the precarious balance of power in Natal and Zululand. He knew that the frail colony could ill afford to antagonize the Zulus and that it lacked the military muscle and the finances to forcibly drive black men off their lands and into wage labor. As the missionary Henry Callaway asked ruefully, “How are 8,000 widely scattered whites to compel 200,000 coloureds to labor, against their will?”19 Out of this riddle rose the exceptionally vituperative discourse on the degenerate “idleness” of the blacks. Of all the stigmata of degeneration invented by the settlers to mark themselves from the Africans, the most tirelessly invoked was idleness: the same stigma of racial un worth that Haggard saw as marking the Kukuana’s degeneration and loss of title to the diamonds. It is scarcely possible to read any travel account, settler memoir or ethnographic document without coming across a chorus of complaints about the sloth, idleness, indolence or torpor of the natives, who, the colonists claimed, preferred scheming and fighting, lazing and wanton lasciviousness to industry.Typical is Captain Ludlow’s remark on visiting the Umvoti Mission Station: “The father of the family leant on his hoe in his mielie garden, lazily smoking his pipe. . . . It is amusing to watch one of them pretending to work.”20 Haggard saw the racial hatred of whites rooted in this stubborn 296 A NNE M c C L I NTO C K abstraction of African labor: “The average white man . . . detests the Kaffir and looks on him as a lazy good-for-nothing, who ought to work for him and will not work for him.”21 The idea of idleness was neither descriptively accurate of the laboring black farmers nor new.The settlers brought with them to South Africa the remnants of a three-hundred-year-old British discourse that associated poverty with sloth. Beginning in the sixteenth century in Britain, an intricate discourse on idleness had emerged, not only to draw distinctions between laboring classes but also to sanction and enforce social discipline, to legitimize land plunder and to alter habits of labor. After 1575, the unemployed or unruly poor, for example, were no longer banished beyond the city walls but were dragooned into “houses of correction” where they were treated as a resource to meet the needs of the growing manufacturies. Walling up discontent and fettering the desperate during the crises of unemployment, the houses of confinement, often attached to manufacturies and providing them with labor, also taught new habits and forms of industry. It appears that many of the inmates of the houses of correction were women, suggesting that the houses were threshold institutions, mediating the gradual transfer of productive labor from the family to the factory. The discourse on idleness is, more properly speaking, a discourse on work – used to distinguish between desirable and undesirable labor. Pressure to work was, more accurately, pressure to alter traditional habits of work. During the land revolution and the war on the cottages of the eighteenth century, Official Board of Agriculture reports of the time praised the land enclosures for robbing the lower orders of economic independence, thereby forcing laborers to work every day of the year. At the same time, the discourse on idleness is also a register of labor resistance, a resistance then lambasted as torpor and sloth. Colonists borrowed and patched from British discourses and couched their complaints in the same images of degeneracy, massing animal menace and irrationality familiar to European descriptions of the dangerous urban underclasses.The missionary Aldin Grout wrote to James Kitchenham: “They see our tools and our work but seldom ask a question about these or express a wish to do the other.” Lady Barker opined: “It is a new and revolutionary idea to a Kaffir that he should do any work at all.” James Bryce agreed: “The male Kaffir is a lazy fellow who likes talking and sleeping better than continuous physical exertion and the difficulty of inducing him to work is the chief difficulty that European mine-owners in South Africa complain of.” But the African pastoralists differed markedly from the uprooted and immiserated British proletariat with which the settlers were familiar.The Africans still enjoyed a measure of self-sufficiency and were, on the whole, better farmers than the white interlopers.22 As Slater notes, “many whites in fact came to depend upon African agricultural produce for their very subsistence.”23 Settler fortunes were constantly imperiled by the self-sufficiency of the black farmers. Complaints about black sloth were as often complaints about different habits of labor. If black people entered into wage relations for whites, it was often reluctantly or briefly, to earn money, buy guns or cattle, then to return home. Thus the discourse on idleness was not a monolithic discourse imposed on a hapless people. Rather it was a realm of contestation, marked with the stubborn refusal of Africans to alter their customs of work as well as by conflicts within the white communities. T H E W H I T E FA M I LY O F M A N 297 Most importantly, I suggest, the assault on African work habits was at its root an assault on polygyny and the women farmers: the fundamental dynamic underlying both King Solomon’s Mines and the native policy of Natal.The question, bitterly contested for decades, was who was to benefit from women’s labor. Marriage maidens and mines One need not look far to see that the root of the problem of black labor lay in women’s role in production.When Froude visited Natal, he noted grimly: “The government won’t make the Kaffirs work.”Then at once he came upon the cause of the problem. Male “indolence,” he saw, was rooted regrettably but inevitably in the “detestable systems of polygamy and female slavery.” My host talks much and rather bitterly on the Nigger question. If the Kafir would work, he would treble his profits. . . . It is an intricate problem. Here in Natal are nearly 400,000 natives. . . .They are allowed as much land as they want for their locations.They are polygamists and treat their women as slaves, while they themselves are idle or worse.24 Missionaries and colonists voiced their repugnance for polygyny in moral tones, placing it firmly within the discourse of racial degeneration.The practice of polygyny was seen to mark African men, as Haggard had marked KingTwala, as wallowing in the depths of sexual abandon: the “African sin.” Yet colonial documents readily reveal that the assault on polygyny was an assault on African habits of labor that withheld from the resentful farmers the work of black men and women.The excess labor that a black man controlled through his wives was seen as a direct and deadly threat to the profits of the settlers.As Governor Pine complained: “How can an Englishman with one pair of hands compete with a native with five to twenty slave wives?”25 Likewise, Haggard’s knowledge of women’s productive power animates his fear of Gagool in King Solomon’s Mines. Black women in Natal become the ground over which white men fought black men for control of their land and labor. As Guy has shown, precapitalist societies in southern Africa depended on the control of labor power, rather than the control of products. The fundamental unit of Zulu society was the homestead (umuzi, imizi), in which a single male (ummumzana) held authority over his wife or wives, their children, livestock, gardens and grazing lands. Each homestead was more or less independent, with women growing food on land held in trust for the chief of the clan. Each wife worked her own fields, living with her children in a separate house that took its name from her. A strict gendered division of labor prevailed, as women did most of the agricultural and domestic work – hoeing, planting, gathering and tending the crops, building and tending the houses, making implements and clothes, taking care of the daily cooking and the houses, as well as the bearing and raising of the children.The men broke the ground in the first stages, made some of the implements and tended the cattle. In short, the homestead was based on the systematic exploitation of women’s labor and the transformation of that labor into male social and political power. 298 A NNE M c C L I NTO C K The symbolic means for transforming woman’s work into male power was the ukulobolo, or marriage exchange. A new homestead was formed when a man was given permission to leave the royal barracks, or his father’s homestead and marry a wife from a different clan.The marriage was formalized by the transfer of lobolo from the new husband to the wife’s father, usually in the form of cattle. Colonialists berated this system as base and commercial: but it was, rather, a ceremonial exchange that guaranteed the transfer of a woman’s labor and sexuality. If she did not produce children or the work expected, the cattle could be reduced in number, or returned and the marriage dissolved. At the same time, the cattle could be retained if the new husband was seen to ill-treat his wife. Nevertheless, the society was not egalitarian and most of the homesteads had only one or two wives. Power in the form of cattle and wives was gathered in the upper reaches of the chiefly lineages, and chiefs distributed power back down the social hierarchy by controlling the distribution of cattle and wives to their sons and loyal supporters. Labolo was thus a symbolic, rather than a commercial, exchange whereby women’s labor power was embodied in movable herds of cattle and exchanged among men across time and space. At the same time, it is of the greatest significance that women’s work freed men to fight in the Zulu army.The relation between women’s labour and the Zulu fighting force is crucial.Women in the family homesteads provided a surplus of food for themselves and for the men in the barracks. The unequal distribution of women allowed male power to be hierarchically ranked within an arena of male competition for the basic resource of labor power.Thus whoever controlled the regulation of marriage controlled the power base of the economy.The dominant class was men over the marriageable age, the subordinate class women and children. Guy calls this “a fundamental cleavage so deep it can usefully be called one of class,” but the fundamental division was gender, for a male child could leave the subordinate class at a certain age when he entered into marriage with a woman, that is, into a gendered division of labor in which he exploited his wife’s labor power. In Cetywayo, Haggard devoted a good deal of space to polygyny, which he recognized as lying at the heart of Zulu power. In a metaphor that nicely expressed the relation between matrimonial and military power, he advised: “Deprive them of their troops of servants in the shape of wives and thus force them to betake themselves to honest labor like the rest of mankind.”26 Tampering with the circulation of women was thus tantamount to severing the jugular vein of male Zulu power. Indeed, this approach was precisely Shepstone’s policy. In the face of the bitter ire of the farmersettlers, Shepstone doggedly pursued a policy of segregation, administration and compromise. In the reserves, wretchedly apportioned as they were, blacks were allowed to retain access to land under “customary law” (as were the Kukuanas in Haggard’s tale). The communal household was to be retained, since black resistance to changes in polygyny proved too tenacious. But the family would be gradually modified by diverting the profits of female labor out of the homestead into the colonial treasury in the form of hut and marriage taxes. Knowing that an outright ban on polygyny was impractical, both Shepstone and Haggard favored a hut tax.The hut tax was, in fact, a tax on wives and thus the surest means of driving African T H E W H I T E FA M I LY O F M A N 299 men into wage labor. By legislating control of the rates of the hut taxes over the years, the Shepstone administration tried to take control of the traffic in women’s work out of black men’s hands, while driving these men into work on the white farms and mines. This put an administrative fetter on polygyny even as it turned the women’s labor power into a sizable source of revenue for the dwindling treasury.The tax on women’s labor would in fact become the principle source of revenue for the state. Significantly, what this fact reveals is that there was no objection to exploiting marriage and women’s work as a commercial transaction as long as white men and not black men benefited from it. At the same time, to administer this gradual process of cultural attrition, ductile chiefs would be appointed to supervise and implement the process. However, in 1876 the situation abruptly changed. The discovery of diamonds marked a new imperial initiative in southern Africa as Lord Carnarvon, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, hatched a scheme to confederate South Africa. Shepstone was given the responsibility of annexing the Transvaal and it was Haggard himself who raised the British flag over a reluctant Boer republic in 1876.The annexation shattered the uneasy balance between the Boers, Natal and the Zulus and set in train a series of events that led inexorably to the invasion of Zululand. Both Shepstone and Haggard deplored the invasion on the practical grounds that it was untimely and doomed to disaster. They remained convinced that the surest way to control the labor and land of South Africa was by segregation, indirect rule through selected chiefs, and the regulated diversion of labor from the reserves into the state economy. Indeed, Haggard’s fanatical tale is faithful to Shepstone’s political blueprint for Zululand – Kukuanaland would remain territorially separate but in effect a “black colony” of Natal, while a compliant black leader who accepted the racial patrimony of the whites would be installed.True to Shepstone’s segregationist policy, white men would not be allowed to settle there. At the same time, true to Haggard’s own class loyalties – though not to the outcome of history – the booty from the mines would be placed in the hands of the landed gentry, not in the hands of the mining capitalists. Finally, the labor of black women is hidden from history, rendered as invisible as Gagool crushed beneath the rock. In this way, King Solomon’s Mines figures the reinvention of white imperial patriarchy through a legitimizing racial and gender politics. It asserts a white patriarch in control of a subservient black king, who grants white racial superiority and entitlement to the diamonds. It reorganizes production and reproduction within the black family by usurping the chiefs control of the lives and labor of women. At the same time, it violently negates the African women’s sexual and labor power. Indeed, the Victorian obsession with treasure troves and treasure maps is a vivid example of commodity fetishism – the disavowal of the origins of money in labor. Finding treasure implies that gold and diamonds are there simply to be discovered, thereby denying the work of digging them out of the earth and thus the contested right to ownership. In the treasure fetish, money is seen to breed itself – just as in Haggard’s tale the men give birth to themselves in the mine-womb. Thus the narrative of phallic regeneracy is assured by the control of women in the arena of empire.The plundering of the land and the minerals is given legitimacy through the erasure of the 300 A NNE M c C L I NTO C K mother and the reinvention of white patriarchy within the organic embrace of the regenerated Family of Man. It is only fitting, therefore that Haggard was himself enabled (by the fantastically approving British reception of his tale of phallic and racial regeneration) to buy the landed estate from which he had been disinherited. Notes and references 1 C. W. De Kiewet, A History of South Africa: Social and Economic (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), p. 119. 2 Haggard was in South Africa from 1875 to 1881. In 1876 he personally raised the British flag over a 3 Henry Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines (London: Signet, 1965). All further references to this disgruntled Transvaal. edition are cited in the text by page number. 4 King Solomon’s Mines was reprinted four times in the first three months, sold 31,000 copies in the first year and has never been out of print since its publication. She, too, was an instant bestseller and has been translated into over twenty languages and made into numerous films and plays as well as an opera. It too has not been out of print in Britain in the last century. Ella Shohat discusses film versions of both novels in “Gender and the Culture of Empire:Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 13, 1–3 (Spring 1991): 45–84. 5 Henry Rider Haggard, Days of My Life (London: Longmans Green and Co., 1926), p. 36. 6 George Orwell, in S. Orwell and I. Angus eds, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 11 (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1968), p. 67. 7 Raymond Williams, George Orwell: A Collection of Critical Essays (Engelwood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 8 Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 265. 9 Donna Haraway, PrivateVisions: Gender, Race and Nature in theWorld of Modern Science (London: Routledge, 1975), p. 20. 1989), p. 52. 10 See Mary Louise Pratt’s fine analysis of this trope in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation 11 Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production, p. 183. 12 Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production, p. 183. 13 Haggard, Cetywayo and HisWhite Neighbours (London:Trubner and Co., 1882), p. 281. See also Jeff Guy, (New York: Routledge, 1992). The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1982); and H. Slater, “The Changing Pattern of Economic Relations in Rural Natal, 1838–1914,” in Shula Marks and A. Atmore, eds, Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa (London: Longmans, 1980). 14 Terence Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). See also David Cannadine, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual:The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention T H E W H I T E FA M I LY O F M A N 301 of Tradition,’ 1820–1977,” in Hobsbawm and Ranger. For an excellent explo ration of the invention of Zulu tradition, see Shula Marks, The Ambiguities of Dependence: Class, Nationalism and the State in Twentieth Century Natal (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986). 15 Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, p. 212. 16 Quoted by Ruth E. Gordon, Shepstone:The Role of the Family in the History of South Africa, 1820–1890 (Cape Town: Balkema, 1968), p. 309. 17 Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, p. 51 (n). 18 Haggard, Days of My Life, p. 9. 19 Henry Callaway, A Memoir, ed. M. S. Benham (London: 1896), p. 88. 20 W. R. Ludlow, Zululand and Cetywayo (London: Simpkin, Marshal, 1882), p. 18. 21 Haggard, Cetywayo, p. 57. 22 Patrick Harries, “Plantations, Passes and Proletarians: Labor and the Colonial State in Nineteenth 23 H. Slater, The Changing Patterns, p. 156. 24 Froude, Short Studies, p. 370–71. 25 Quoted in H. J. Simons. African Women: Their Legal Status in South Africa (Evanston: Northwestern 26 Haggard, Cetywayo, p. 52. Century Natal,” Journal of Southern African Studies 13, 2, 375. University Press, 1968), p. 21. Chapter 22 Chandra Talpade Mohanty UNDER WESTERN EYES Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses1 A N Y D I S C U S S I O N O F T H E I N T E L L E C T U A L and political construction of “third world feminisms” must address itself to two simultaneous projects: the internal critique of hegemonic “Western” feminisms, and the formulation of autonomous, geographically, historically, and culturally grounded feminist concerns and strategies. The first project is one of deconstructing and dismantling; the second, one of building and constructing.While these projects appear to be contradictory, the one working negatively and the other positively, unless these two tasks are addressed simultaneously “third world” feminisms run the risk of marginalization or ghettoization from both mainstream (right and left) andWestern feminist discourses. It is to the first project that I address myself.What I wish to analyze is specifically the production of the “third world woman” as a singular monolithic subject in some recent (Western) feminist texts. The definition of colonization I wish to invoke