0:01
Good evening. This is
Radio Free Beszel.
0:04
I am Alphonse. Tonight:
Racecraft.
0:08
Race is invisible. It's
not the color of
0:11
somebody's skin. If it
were, we wouldn't
0:14
much care about it any more
than we care about
0:16
the color of clothes that
they wear. But race is
0:19
something deeper. It is
an invisible quality
0:22
that we imagine is within
people - something
0:24
about personality, or character,
or intellect, or
0:28
something else - and skin
color is just a sign,
0:31
an indicator of that inner
quality. And that
0:34
invisible imagined inner quality
has been taken to
0:38
explain things in the world.
Things like poverty,
0:42
inequality and crime.
But it is imaginary.
0:46
It's imaginary because we
don't actually have a
0:48
mechanism. We don't have
something within people
0:51
that we know causes, in
a sense, race. We as
0:54
human beings often think
that invisible things
0:57
are the most important
ones of all - more
0:59
important than the things
that we can see:
1:02
gods, for example, or spirits.
People who are
1:05
religious believe that God
is the most important
1:09
thing of all - but we can't
see him. People who
1:12
are or were animists believe
that in rocks and
1:15
trees there are invisible
entities. The problem we
1:18
have is that the material
world lacks in meaning.
1:22
We have physical explanations
for physical
1:24
causes. We know why when
you drop something
1:26
it falls. But we can't explain
why good things
1:29
or bad things happen to people.
We can't explain
1:32
what the purpose of life
is. And to find that, we
1:34
layer the material world
with an invisible world.
1:38
And that invisible world
explains much.
1:41
It explains why there
is inequality,
1:43
poverty and crime, in
the case of race.
1:46
It explains why bad things
or misfortune
1:49
happens to people in the
case of witchcraft,
1:51
which I explained in
a previous episode.
1:54
It explains that we
are coherent beings
1:56
with pasts and futures
and personalities.
1:59
It explains why we
have relationships
2:00
with other people,
because of love.
2:03
Fundamentally, as creatures
of meaning and
2:06
narrative, we live in an unseen
world. And race is
2:09
one of those unseen things.
But the thing is that
2:12
race is not only invisible,
but it's imaginary. It
2:15
has no seat in the body. There
is no organ that we
2:18
can point to and say that
causes race. We do have
2:21
statistical correlations.
We can find correlations
2:25
between race and various
phenomena in the world:
2:28
but that doesn't mean that
there's something
2:30
inside somebody that we
call race that causes
2:33
those correlations. Correlation
is not causation.
2:37
But in fact race does exist.
If it didn't exist,
2:41
black men wouldn't have
to fear being beaten
2:43
by police in America more
than white men do.
2:46
The thing is, however, that
race is not inside
2:49
people. It's outside. It's
a social construction
2:52
we created, as I described
in the previous
2:55
episode, through assorted
social practices and
2:57
interactions. We create
it when government
3:00
census forms ask you
to record your race.
3:03
We create it when news
articles describe the
3:05
races of people or scientific
articles give race.
3:09
But there's a sleight of
hand that happens. And
3:12
here I go to the title of
the episode, Racecraft,
3:15
which is a book, in fact,
by a pair of sisters -
3:18
Afro-American scholars Karen
and Barbara Fields.
3:21
They say, quote, "disguised
as race,
3:24
racism becomes something
Afro-Americans are
3:28
rather than something racists
do." In other words,
3:32
racism is, in part, practices
that locate race as
3:37
a quality within the individual
rather than
3:39
something that's constructed
by the society.
3:43
Now one of the arguments
of contemporary
3:46
anti-racism is that although
race is socially
3:48
constructed, through being
socially constructed
3:51
it becomes real. Black people
within the United
3:54
States share an experience
of racism, and
3:57
this experience unifies
them - it gives
4:00
them a single quality
that they all share
4:02
- and that through that,
race becomes real.
4:06
But there's something else
the anti-racists claim.
4:09
Because the question is,
how is it that all these
4:11
black people have this
unified experience?
4:14
What is it that makes
them all the same?
4:16
Why is it that there's
racism in the society?
4:19
Where does that come from?
The social justice
4:21
answer, the anti-racist answer,
is that it comes
4:24
from white people - it
comes from whiteness.
4:28
But that simply relocates
the invisible quality
4:31
from one group of people
to another. And that
4:34
quality too must be socially
constructed - unless
4:36
we are to find some organ
within people that
4:39
makes them white. And that
whiteness explains
4:41
things in the same way
that blackness does.
4:45
Where in the past blackness
would be taken to
4:48
explain inequality, now
whiteness is. It's the
4:50
exact same story as before,
and it's performing
4:54
the same function. When we
look at the world and
4:57
we want to find explanations
for why things
4:59
happen, particularly bad
things, exactly as
5:02
I explained in my episode
on witchcraft, we don't
5:05
want to say that it happened
because of things. We
5:08
don't want to say it happen
because of chance,
5:09
and we don't want to say
it happen because of
5:11
complex systems. We want
to have somebody to
5:14
blame. And racism does
that. Blackness does
5:17
that. Whiteness does that.
But that doesn't mean
5:21
that blackness and whiteness
are real. They are
5:24
real as concepts that have
been come up with,
5:27
but they don't actually
reside within people.
5:31
And yet we know exactly where
they come from. We
5:33
can see them being constructed,
just as we can see
5:36
other social constructions
being constructed: in
5:39
the census forms, in the
academic papers, in the
5:42
journalism, in thousands
of things that Americans
5:45
live with day in and day
out from a young age on
5:48
that make race seem like
a natural quality
5:50
in the world that
was always there.
5:53
For outsiders this can seem
somewhat absurd. I'm
5:56
not American, and it's only
recently in life that
5:59
I've really come to accept
that a lot of Americans
6:02
think that race is real in
the sense of being an
6:04
innate quality. As someone
who didn't grow up
6:06
with it that just seems
obviously to be false.
6:11
There's a misunderstanding
about what
6:12
it's meant to say that
one is colourblind.
6:15
It doesn't mean that one does
not see skin colour.
6:18
It means that one does
not see that invisible
6:20
quality of race that is supposed
to be within and
6:24
innate in every person.
The Fields sisters say,
6:27
"the first principle in racism
is belief in race."
6:31
To be colourblind is to
not believe in race.
6:36
Racism is not like race.
We can see racism.
6:38
We see when a black man
is beaten by police.
6:42
Racism is real acts. Racism
is real things that happen.
6:46
Relocating it into an
invisible quality
6:48
of individuals, as the
Fields sisters say,
6:51
erases those actions.
But what social
6:53
justice and anti-racism
have done
6:56
is to take racism as well
and turn it from actions
7:00
into states of consciousness.
Racism now becomes
7:04
something that's invisible
inside people that
7:06
needs to be eradicated,
rather than something
7:09
that's constructed in the
world through processes
7:12
that we can see and that
we can engage. With this
7:15
approach - treating whiteness
and blackness as
7:18
if within people, treating
racism as if it's an
7:21
invisible quality and ignoring
the practices
7:25
- all of this sidelines
the actual practices
7:28
and activities that construct
all of these
7:30
things. The reason that
race and racism persist
7:33
is that we reconstruct them
with every generation.
7:38
This is Alphonse for
Radio Free Beszel.
7:41
www.bessel.com. Good night.
