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theloobrush · 4 years

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Racism by degrees

Racism is the unfair treatment of a person by reason only or partially of their skin colour or ethnicity. I know racism exists. From the age of 8 to 13 I was frequently bullied and called a ‘P*ki’, and even a ‘N*gger’ at school because I was just a little bit browner than my peers, These upsetting experiences were also bizarre to me because I am not from an ethnic minority. The different ethnicity was simply assumed from my skin colour.

To my mind if we talk about racism, and more especially if we are serious about wanting to fix it, we need to provide evidence in terms of concrete incidences: actions, words, behaviour, rules, policies and laws that need changing. I am very concerned that among social theorists, racism has become ‘abstracted’ and divorced from actual happenings, even economic and social context. Anti-racism has become the servant of ideology, in particular the Cultural Marxism that pervades academia. This ideology wants to generate social conflict between alleged oppressors and oppressed in order to realise utopia via revolution. Signs of this ideology are the presentation of racism as a kind of vaguely explained taint or miasma, using fuzzy, ambiguous, nebulous or incoherent concepts such as ‘systemic racism’, ‘institutional racism’ and ‘white privilege’. These notions go far beyond pinpointing wrong doing. They all have in common the ascribing to a social group or body a ‘collective guilt’ seemingly without the need to prove individual guilt in the present or even prove any particular organisational structures or policies are causally having a bad effect. But if accusations of racism are not attached to actual acts of racism, what we have created is a free floating mirage, floating free from any facts. This worldview is as dangerous as the denial that racism exists.

But if you believe there is something that is meant by ‘systemic’ or ‘institutional’ racism, then I’m going to help you out by demonstrating what you are (probably) referring to is a type of underlying subjective mindset. Except this is a mindset shared, to some degree, by most human beings. I could call this the ‘pre-racist’ mindset, but this ‘pre-racism’ isn’t inevitably morally bad or invidious. Nor does this pre-racism necessarily lead to actual racism. This pre-racist mindset is as old as the hills and better referred to as Xenophobia. Literally, the ‘fear’ of the outsider. While Xenophobia has come to mean the ‘hate or dislike’ of the outsider I have no doubt the Greeks were right first time. A natural anxiety may be the reason we have a ‘problem’ with outsiders at all.

So my argument is Racism is rooted in our xenophobic attitudes to others who are not part of our group. In a somewhat different context Scottish historian Neil Oliver pointed out that ‘Human beings have been tribal since the dawn of our species,and before. Chimpanzees are tribal. Gorillas are tribal.’* It shouldn’t be at all surprising that the presence of newcomers might at the very least create reactions within the tribe. On the positive side, newcomers also often bring new things of value that change the community for the better. Barely any human progress would have occurred if human tribes had been shut off entirely from outside influences.

I believe there is such a thing as a human social ecology, and communities have a natural equilibrium developed over generations that we identify as ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’. This is an equilibrium that can be destabilized for good or ill (usually both) by any significant change. One such is the mass movement of one people in a short period (say one or two generations) whether by colonization or by migration to an area populated by an existing indigenous people. I believe the mass movement of peoples inevitably produce some measure of social - tribal - conflict. The greater the difference in values, the greater the flashpoints. Anyone who cares about social peace must acknowledge that celebrating multiculturalism is backing a huge social experiment with uncertain outcome and where liberal optimism is flying in the face of much historical experience. The issue is not that one culture is ‘superior’ to another - we’d need some independent objective measure to argue otherwise - it is simply that two different cultures of equal objective value and merit, must clash.

I must reiterate. Racism is a bad thing. Why should anyone be treated less well than another person by reason of something that is out of their control like their colour or ethnic heritage? I didn’t want that for myself, so I should not want you to suffer that experience either. We all want to live in a society where each person is equal under the law, equally protected by (and from) the forces of law and order, and all get a fair opportunity for success without artificial barriers, presumptions and prejudice getting in their way. And if this isn’t important to you, remember that we are all members of some minority or other.

It would be equally unwise to not admit xenophobia, if not actual racism, comes very naturally and starts off in the most subtle, and entirely innocent forms. From birth, and without any particular plan or assumptions, we extend our lives beyond our social circle but gravitate to those of similar interests. There is nobody on earth who is so open they care equally for every human being. And even if we felt that way, establishing bonds of trust - the lubricant of social life - with those who are culturally very different to us, is not easy. Familiarity, shared expectations and shared social customs and behaviours, and especially shared language, greatly lessen our social anxiety.

Racism will occur when very different populations of people are pushed together, especially if the resources we all need are scarce or under pressure. A rapid increase in cultural heterogeneity in a community is not some unalloyed good because the instinctual social bonds that bind us will surely be weakened, at least in the short term. An altruistic, God like love of diversity and difference for its own sake requires a form of sophisticated thinking that competes with our base instincts. Instincts which more often than not are behaviour adaptations that once aided our survival.

Here is my take on the types, or better, degrees of xenophobia. Remember behaviours don’t automatically follow, if they do, they may give rise to both stronger group identity and in-group social bonds as well as the unfair behaviour toward outsiders. I have used pejorative descriptions to show extremes of the the mindset - which is informed more by emotion than reason- are not ‘good’ for social peace. Yes, Xenophobia is natural, but so is death and disease which we try to avoid. These mindsets involve objectively unreasonable and illogical prejudices until we have made the effort to get to know someone from an outsider group. And then, even if 10, 50 or 99% of an outsider group, does seem to fit some preconceived negative stereotype, this does not mean everyone from the outsider group is like that. We might be missing out on a beautiful, mutually beneficial relationship.

The Base Level. Innocent ‘casual’ Xenophobia.

Unconscious group bias - the apparently universal tendency to prefer those most similar and like ourselves and to be less naturally trusting of outsiders and newcomers. We give people like ourselves the benefit of the doubt; we tend to empathise more. We’d rather ignore outsiders, we prefer to have people like ourselves around us; we are ignorant of the history or culture of the outsider; the outsider’s manners and behaviour are strange, alien and most especially, unpredictable. The latter unpredictability may feed our anxiety in interactions.

Prick Level Xenophobia

Our bias means we cold shoulder outsiders; we now prefer to have our own group around and we are likely to be conscious of our exclusively. We uncritically accept stereotypes of the other group. We distrust the outsider group to a significant degree. We are highly suspicious of them, but we make no effort to befriend them or learn about them. We are starting to build a negative narrative about the other group or our relationship to them.

Wanker Level Xenophobia

We now believe our group is superior to another, outsider, group. Our success is explained in terms of our group's alleged unique and innate characteristics which just ‘are’. Attitudes to outsiders can range from the patronizing, mockery and condescension to justifying less favourable treatment in terms of our greater ‘desert’. Usually the sense of superiority includes a judgement of intellectual or moral superiority: our group are good, the best or better; that other group are worse or simply bad. We quickly see only the negative, we ignore the positive in outsiders. Along with our sense of superiority is the desire to preserve that superiority or dominance.

Arsehole Level Xenophobia

Without good evidence we conclude an entire outsider group are a physical threat; we are now stirred to action, our reasoning is increasingly clouded by the emotions of fear and anger. Or less dramatically, the outsider group may be perceived as an obstacle to our personal prosperity, a barrier to advancement or simply undermining our way of life by replacing their culture with their own. We see them as in collective competition against ‘our’ people for scare resources (housing, jobs, public services), moreover we believe this is ‘unfair’ competition produced by certain benefits or alleged privileges that have been inappropriately bestowed upon them.

Coda

Lots of experiences in our lives soften or harden (reinforce) the xenophobic tendencies that presumably develop sometime during childhood, as we acquire a sense of ourselves and our place in the world.

Sadly, in the summer of 2020 a significant section of the population is drifting toward arsehole levels of xenophobia. And my controversial final comment is this: no race or colour is immune from a proliferation of xenophobic pricks, wankers and arseholes.

Athlete’s Footnotes

*Neil Oliver on TalkRadio. See https://youtu.be/rWLde0uO6u8

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