Quick Notes on Meghji, A. (2022). The
Racialised Social System. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Dave Harris
[Quick notes only because much of it seemed
derived from the work of Bonna- Silva — for
example this bit —,
itself heavily based on Hall, with some
added bits on 'interaction orders']. I have just
added bits that seem to be slightly distinctive.
The main new bit seems to be that after the first
waves of racial equality stuff -- Race Relations
Acts and the end of legal discrimination and
segregation, a period ensued that white folks took
to be the end of racism, a new kind of
colourblindness. When confronted with persisting
evidence (some of it the fatuous stuff on
microaggressions) they took this as reverse
racism, attacks on white folks. Meghji also sees
the anxieties about immigrants as the same old
racism, about POC not about new claimants arriving
to jump the queue for resources, whatever colour
they were, or, in the case of Brexit, foreign
governments having control over UK domestic
legislation. a democratic deficit. Hence, to the
extent that Trump and Brexit were anti-immigrant,
they were racist.
He is good to remind us of the variations in the
tents for the various XCrits though -- his own
emphasis is on intersectionality and
colourblindness as above]
Summarising the history of the development of CRT,
the legal perspective sees racial discrimination
as '"the misguided conduct of particular actors"'
(7) rather than an issue of social legal
structures, and this meant that apart from
anything else antidiscrimination laws could
legitimise racial discrimination, for example to
argue that integration in one area could produce
discrimination in another. Eventually this led to
an argument that the legal system was itself
articulated in wider processes. Nevertheless,
there was an absence of theory.
Crenshaw also pointed to this absence by
suggesting that CRT should be better seen as a
verb, some active process. This led to the famous
tenets. [The only thing really added is emphasis —
racism is ordinary because it arises from social
arrangements not individual bigotry (10). The
second tenet points to important purposes being
solved as a counter to challenge race neutrality.
The third tenet is rendered as racism being
products of social thoughts and relations rather
than objective or fixed — these categories can be
manipulated reconstituted, a process 'itself
embedded in power relations' ranging from defining
black Americans as property through the
legalisation of various nationalities as racial
groups. Tenet four is not so hesitant about
intersectionality but regards it as 'one of its
foundational concepts' (11), beginning with
Crenshaw and the famous case that there was no
category for black women, and concluding that
'intersectionality features as one of its defining
concepts' (12). Nevertheless the final tenet is
that there is a '"unique voice of colour"', which
means that POC can communicate matters that
'"whites are unlikely to know"' (citing Delgado
and Stefancic). M connects this with auto
ethnography and autobiography. The tenets
apparently show that there is a conceptual
foundation to contrast to that in legal studies,
and that this came into education through
Ladson-Billings and Tate and then spread into
other areas, through qualitative studies. It
became common to use the five tenets to do so.]
The theoretical components have still been
criticised. There is a circularity because there
is no independent social science evidence for a
voice of colour. Even Crenshaw sees CRT as a
knowledge project rather than a completed social
theory, as does Collins, who points to a lack of
coherent integration. There may be a shared ethos
but no architecture.
Enter Bonilla-Silva (and Omi and Winant), and the
claim that an adequate theory will help adequate
politics and material change. Hall is cited in
defence — 'practical social theory' for M (19). It
can also connect up the empirical work, without
falling into empiricism, of course — Bourdieu
appears here to discourage meta theorising. Meghji
proposes micro, meso and macro dimensions of
racism.
There is also a need to consider 'epistemic
justice' (18) in order to counter the idea that
only elites produce theory, that theory is
legitimate and universal whereas other groups
produce merely thought. This challenges Western
social theory and challenges the devaluation of
work based on race.
There is a need to develop a 'racialised social
system approach' drawn from CRT work in law and
education, and the work of Bonilla-Silva — racism
is structural, it provides material and symbolic
benefits to white people, it is far more than
individual prejudice, it has a material base which
is reproduced at different levels [so micro,meso
and macro instead of epic]. There is a process of
racialization [which does involve epic in
Bonnila-Silva], and this results in the
construction of race, a distinct racial hierarchy,
and a subsequent unequal distribution of
resources. It also explains why racial hierarchies
are reproduced. There are definite racial
interests, which might involve white workers
siding with white capitalists because they receive
a 'psychological benefit'; 'racial ideology' for
example in meritocratic or naturalistic accounts
for black failure; racial grammar which leads to
colourblind accounts, where whiteness is
universalised and made invisible; racialised
emotions which generate group membership — Trump
and the group identity of white people; racialised
interaction orders where there are unwritten rules
for interaction between different races, for
example in Jim Crow or current conventions like
advising black people not to run through an
affluent neighbourhood; racialised organisations
including workplaces schools and universities
which magnify racial dominance and structure
whiteness as a credential or property. All this is
based on Bonnila-Silva and somebody called Ray
[note that Hall's
analysis is much more Marxist and departs from
this implicit functionalism and universalism, and
talks about complex articulations between these
different elements]
CRT has expanded to consider other societies like
South Asian indigenous Americans and their various
–Crits have challenged 'methodological
nationalism. .. and '"American parochialism"' (24)
[but not leading to the complexity of structure in
dominance?]. However none of this developed
properly sociological interests, possibly because
European racial equality legislation follows
American notions of citizenship, or colourblind
definitions. BritCrit tended focus on the
education system and 'again took no notice of the
racialised social system approach', focusing on
the classic tenets of CRT.
He denies any attempt to universalise racial
social systems approaches and tries just to
demonstrate its usefulness.
Chapter 1 the racialised social system in
social space: racial interests and contestation
Apparently there was a structural functionalist
input through somebody called Cox in the mid-20th
century who developed the notion of structural
racism, arguing that ideas about racial
superiority were rooted in the social system. He
called for a complete overthrow of the social
system. Bonnila-Silva agrees that race is an
epiphenomenal system of racial domination not a
static thing, based on social practices and
processes that produce racial inequality, and he
looks at society as a totality [using the epic
model, at least in 1997]. Meghji says this
explains racism in specific areas as a part of a
total structure which is different from earlier
theories including earlier sociological theories
which focused on things like education and the
law, and it explains things like [convergence],
and the construction of new forms of racism in
interaction. It focuses attention on the state
like O and W [which apparently draws on Gramsci
and the idea of hegemonic power over racial
minorities]. Meghji proposes that we understand
these different theories as maps of different
usefulness — eg O and W if we want to just focus
on the state, a more general racialised social
system approach if we are interested in nonstate
organisations [Gramsci light then]
We can take Bourdieu on social space, divided by
various active hierarchies based on capital and
its distribution and following processes of
differentiation. However 'we don't necessarily
want to embrace Bourdieu's theory of capital(s)'
(33) but can [somehow] stick with his notion of
social space as a matter of unequal distributions
of resources and see it as a structure of
different social positions and agents. This makes
it 'resonate' with Bonnila-Silva and explains
psychological rewards accruing to racial groups.
Race can be a central marker. Bourdieu and
Bonnila-Silva both say that 'inequality is built
into the game' (34)
Bourdieu argues that social space is relational,
involves contestations by groups who have
different interests, moving beyond substantialism,
so that race class and gender were not
essentialist properties [referring to Bourdieu on social space
here]. Races are also relations and can only be
recognised as a matter of position or social
construction, without any meaning in isolation.
Meghji draws upon Dubois to make a more
conventional point that everything good seems to
be labelled as white and everything bad is brown
or black, organised in some sort of static binary.
He says this is rooted in colonialism and
enslavement [a sort of Fanon light]. A biological
essentialism replaced a theological one to
legitimise this racial binary, and it is found
even in people like Darwin and scientific
racialism, and some of this obviously still
persists. For Meghji it is still 'a global
phenomenon' (37) although it is still found in
'geopolitically specific regions and… Social
systems' [although this seems to be a matter of
applying locally these universal categories — the
example is Haiti which was binarised after
colonisation, while Mexico was so mixed that the
constitution banned the use of race as a category
altogether]. So Bourdieu is right to think of
racialization as something that needs to be done,
a matter of contestation, and Bonnila-Silva seems
to agree that it is a struggle to reproduce the
social order [but not in the same way as
Bourdieu].
This is contrasted to earlier views in sociology
like the Chicago School which stressed contact,
conflicts and eventual accommodation and
assimilation, taking race as a given and denying
the reproduction of race [much of this critique
apparently is carried by Cox]. Instead,
racial contestation is a constant struggle between
differently racialised groups over unequally
distributed resources and their consequent
symbolic classifications. It is about reproducing
and contesting the social order. These are
embedded in specific social systems, so there are
differences say between Brazil and the USA [with
some examples of different ways to resist police
violence, or to gain full recognition for
indigenous people].
Then the idea of racial interests (45F). [This is
where the slip starts] There are struggles and
contestation is between different groups because
they have different interests, and this is
Bourdieu's point. Bonnila-Silva also says racism
has material foundation [2019 this time] because
whites receive tangible benefits — apparently
racial interests are the sole reason for
racialised social systems, he thinks. It is
certainly not just a legacy of the past [2015 this
time, stressing '"the manifold wages of
whiteness"']. Apparently whites form a social
collectivity to develop their interest, not just
elite whites either. Meghji sees this as 'a CRT
notion' (46).
'Racial realism' seems to mean the same as
convergence of interests in Bell's work. Whites
retain their advantage during policy transitions
ostensibly advancing racial progress. This
happened in the USA South Africa and the UK. It's
particularly clear with elites, but other groups
benefit as well — for example the British
restriction of black and brown immigration 'was
very much to appease white workers' (49), and the
black codes in the US 'enabled white workers to
maintain economic status'.
Dominant racial groups receive 'both material and
psychological benefits — '"the wages of
whiteness"' (49) [originally Dubois]. He meant
psychological benefit and referred to '"a vertical
fissure, a complete separation of classes by race
cutting square across the economic layers… Racial
folklore grounded on centuries of instinct, habit
and thought"' (50), a sense of superiority arising
from a symbolic classification that enabled white
people to think at least they were not black. This
underlay Jim Crow segregation. Poor whites were
appeased. White workers' psychological superiority
stopped them making coalitions with black workers
and this obviously helps reproduce economic
relations. Sivanandan apparently agreed, and said
trade unionists maintain symbolic superiority over
black immigrants and workers, while racism
relegated black comrades to the bottom of society
and made them an underclass (51), confining '"the
black worker to areas of work which he himself
does not wish to do"'. [Still not a vertical
division though]
The usual objection is that this attributes
privilege to quite different social groups and
makes all white people oppressors, whereas they
are really split by class, gender, sexuality and
others, and there are different types of whiteness
[references page 52]. However there can still be
an overall collectivity and general interest
despite these differences, especially if we take
Crenshaw in arguing race is not itself a singular
social phenomenon, and investigate it as 'a
practical social theory'. [Two arguments here --
close to Gillborn
on 'primacy' as empirical and a matter of
commitment?]Then, taking whiteness as a social
connectivity helps us see that:
Historical examples like Jim Crow or post-war
Britain, or white Australia to restrict
immigration become clear. Whites can be mobilised
in particular political conjunctures as in early
suffragette movements or 'political campaigns like
Powellite Thatcherism and Reaganism in the 1980s,
or, more recently, in the Trump and Brexit
elections of 2016' (53). We are talking here about
an explanatory claim and practical social
theorising, and 'empirical research shows that the
concept is a convincing way of thinking about
social reality… A hypothesis that needs to be
constantly put to the trial of research'.
So racialised social systems are contradictory.
There is contestation between racialised groups,
an ongoing struggle, and racialised groups have
differing interests. Whites are at the top so
their shared interests 'tend to be able to
outmanoeuvre any contestations', resulting in
stability, 'racial realism' (54).
[I am still unconvinced about how White interests
materialise — seemingly only from political
campaigning, the rhetoric of Powell or Trump. Is
there a real material interest in opposing
immigration from black or brown people or not? If
there are real material interests behind the
movements of white people to oppose immigration,
are there real material interests behind black
resistance to compete for white jobs? The whole
discussion suggests having positive material
interest via Bourdieu, and may be Hall, then has
to resort to ideological interests only].
Chapter 2 Racial ideologies and racialised
emotions: seeing, thinking and feeling race
We need to link with the micro-workings of
everyday life through racial ideologies and
emotions. In this ways CRT will bridge agency and
social structure. We might start with Marxist
ideology as false consciousness, deception and
class propaganda (through Hall) and the stuff in
the German Ideology. However, we need to
focus on perception rather than deception, via
Bonnila-Silva [2017], the way in which race is
explained and justified or challenged. We are
focusing here on '"components that include frames,
narratives, symbols, stereotypes, discursive
styles, and a particular vocabulary [citing
Doane])57). A constellation framework, 'a
precursor rather than a barricade to knowledge. We
can follow Hall to avoid notions of distortion and
accept that ideologies have '"something true about
them"' — quoting the Great Moving Right Show,
2017], and help actors understand their social
world. [Denied below re Trump and Brexit though
Herer (p.55) Hall is used to rebuke the separation
of the working class into those who have achieved
'seen "true "reality' consciousness and mere
'"dupes" who live in a bliss of ignorance' -- but
that is what Meghji does below] .Thatcherism is
the example, where white people believe the
immigrants were taking their jobs 'not because it
was true' (58) but because rising unemployment and
insecurity made this argument appealing [but it
was partly true] so Hall talks about mental
frameworks languages categories imagery is which
makes sense of and renders intelligible the way
society works, and also refers to articulation as
shaping social practices — this time quoting Hall
1996 in Morley and Chen: Stuart Hall critical
dialogues and cultural studies].
It follows that racial ideologies are not just
myths which can be counted with logical reason but
they are related to racial structures themselves.
However racial structures need ideologies. Let's
turn to Bonilla-Silva on colourblind ideology. —
The belief that we've gone beyond racial
divisions. This is popular. It helps some groups
interpret evidence of racial inequality, by
recasting Black students as unacademic, for
example, or housing segregation as people
gathering together because they like each other,
or blacks being more predisposed to criminality.
Such ideologies can also be flexible. For example
in France there is formal equality, but a study
found that this did not stop stigmatisation of
racial groups through apparently nonracial
language — referring to Arab-descent groups as
'urban' for example. Bonnila-Silva also looks at
the way in which pieces of evidence everyday
experience are incorporated to construct
'"storylines" of colourblind ideology' (60. These
are '"fable -like… Impersonal generic arguments
with little narrative content… Storytellers and
their audiences share a representational world
that makes these stories seem factual…
Strengthening their collective understanding"'
[just like counter stories]. One common story
points to those ethnic minorities who have
experienced upward mobility confirming that those
who have not have only themselves to blame
[sometimes combined with some stuff about other
minority groups manage it. ]
Bonnila-Silva also implies emotional elements like
resentment and anger and unfairness and these are
key mechanisms to reproduce ideologies at the
micro level. They are socially engendered and
produce '"an emotional subjectivity"' fitting
people to their locations. They can be negative or
positive, ranging from fear and hatred, to
positive emotions of joy and pride. They help
generate group subjectivities as well [with aquote
from Randall Collins of all people] — this covers
the formation of antiracist groups and the
development of racial consciousness as well as
white people developing whiteness and articulating
themselves as a social group: one example is the
development of a white consciousness movement in
Australia (63). Emotions can produce 'an epistemic
skeleton for racial ideologies' as in Williams's
notion of a structure of feeling — we feel things
before we think them and thinking can emerge from
feeling as a key component of rationality.
Islamophobia in France is the example here, and
there are other cases in New Zealand. Dubois
refers to emotional responses to violent racism in
the USA, affecting the racially subdominant as
well. These emotions are not ranked equally — so
the 'trope of the angry black woman' in the USA
has been used to deny domestic abuse cases.
Overall 'there is a hierarchy of emotional
rationality which helps naturalise the racial
order'. In the UK, Thatcher mentioned swamping
which justified rising white violence, and Trump
mentioned support for good people of both sides in
a racial riot.
Bolsanaro, Trump and Brexit are further examples
[oh dear]. These are simply continuations with
racial ideologies and emotions of the past. Trump
and Brexit both deployed 'colourblind ideology',
and drew upon ideologies that whites were becoming
victims of racial injustice — we had moved beyond
racism and so any perceived preferential treatment
given to racialized minorities was antiwhite.
Trump's campaign was anticipated by a book showing
how White people were experiencing growing levels
of deprivation and blaming low standards on
queue-jumping black Americans and immigrants,
while suffering being stigmatised as rednecks.
Trump drew more symbolic boundaries promising to
protect blue collar white people from invasion,
even building a wall.
British discourses to leave the EU were based on
arguing that open borders had privileged
racialised outsiders, migrants [drawing upon
Virdee and McGeever 2018 Racism, Crisis, Brexit.
Ethnic and Racial Studies 41 (10): 1802 – 19]
Farage's speech argued that open migration had
suppressed wages, and Boris Johnson said that open
borders had marginalised British workers [he might
have been right]. Brexit would redistribute value
back to victimised white families and this was
strengthened after the Referendum by claims to
rebuild Britain 'this valued residents of the
(almost exclusively white) towns that voted in
high numbers to leave the EU' (67). May 'simply
bolstered the already ascendant post racial
ideology that "ordinary" white folks were the new
Black' (68, a whole 'legitimacy of post racialism
and emotions of victimhood'.
The media apparently reinforced these narratives,
and there were claims that Brexit voters were not
racist [some work quoted on page 68 — press
reports]. Trump's electoral success is similarly
justified by support from the white working class,
the alienated, and similar themes. Brazil is post
racist because of a substantial mixture between
the different racialised groups, which ignores
'the racially subdominant struggle to comprehend
their marginality through the lens of racism' (69)
— Bolsanaro's initiative to integrate indigenous
people and Afro Brazilians seemed based on the
assumption that indigenous people were not
Brazilian in the first place.
It is 'too predictable to say that the racialised
social system approach adopts a circular argument,
whereby individuals shape structures and
structures also shape individuals' (70). Instead,
critical analysis of both levels is needed.
Emotions are a kind of social glue and the
skeletons for racial ideology [that seems to
include racist ideologies like colourblindness
here because Trump and Bolsanaro are both credited
with connecting with 'whites' feelings of
devaluation and nonrecognition', although
ideologies also help them to 'rationalise their
position'. Overall, Meghji prefers the view that
'ideas and emotions have material effects', so the
macro micro problem is not really a problem —
structural racism has micro-components, and there
is an interplay between the levels which he will
pursue in the next chapter [only because it is an
overall coordinating belief system]
Chapter 3 Theorising the racialised interaction
order
We start with Goffman and the homology between
macro social organisation and everyday
interactions because interactions are situated in
wider social relations and hierarchies, the result
of enabling conventions, ground rules, 'the
distribution of interactional rights and
risks'(73), and interaction order. This leads to
different interactional rights and issues of
transgression as with the Rosa Parks case, because
interactions are also policed. An earlier black
president of the ASA (Frazier) also raised these
issues in connection with the concept of '"race
contact"' (75), relating to the issue of
assimilation of black Americans. He pointed to
continuing segregation even post bellum, driven by
commercial and financial interests, and levels of
white violence directed at black bourgeoisie who
were attempting to desegregate. More informally,
black kids were often taught to get along with
whites by using techniques like lying and clowning
and other kinds of deception. It follows that the
dominant racial group will 'construct the
distribution of interactional rights and risks'
(76) and this enables a crucial additional link to
be added to CRT.
We can distinguish interaction orders that limit
interactions and those that more widely make race
through controlling images. Limiting interactions
are common, and are found in colonial regimes, for
example banning public gatherings of black people,
or the British 'imposition of a caste system in
India' (77), referring to Patel (202!) (77]
[he insists that the British imposed it, related
specifically to race and blood purity and that it
only 'supposedly retained a basis in religion'].
It also imposed a caste system elsewhere. Then
there was Jim Crow and apartheid [but what
preceded it — see Hall
1980]. Jim Crow had an echo in subsequent
legislation which followed the principle of
separate but equal, which often took the form of
black codes, extra requirements put upon black
people such as proof of employment, particular
prohibitions like possessing a firearm, to be
contrasted with special liberties for white
people, such as the legality of lynching in
certain circumstances (80).
[Dubois does a lot of work here] these and other
sanctions defined a black person, showing 'the
making of race' (81), how race has meaning by
virtue of these social practices, the racialised
interaction orders engender and reproduce race.
Fanon shows this to in his Black Skin, White
Masks when he describes an interaction when
a kid points him out as a Negro. Similarly the
British Empire not only declared indigenous
Americans as savages but enacted this through
attempting to civilise them. Germans defined Jews
as a threat to the state and then legitimised this
[what a polite way to put it.]
[Then a massive slip!!] 'Following this line of
thinking', we get some micro-aggressions, every
day racism, 'everyday acts of racial "othering"'.
These are not necessarily acts perpetrated by
individuals but the product of '"racialised
mechanisms" within institutions that help reafirm
white supremacy' (83) the example of an everyday
conversation is one. This shows how we bridge
macro and micro inequalities. Bonilla Silva also
shows this link and talks about racial actions
more broadly. They may not be deliberate acts of
bigotry but rather more routine behaviours, but
they all have structural implications for the
making of race, as serious as buying houses or
selecting schools.
[There is a similar argument about every day
racism by Essed (1991) Understanding Every day
Racism: An Interdisciplinary Approach.
Sage]. Bonilla Silva [2021] refers to racial
actions as deliberate acts of bigotry, but also
routine behaviours such as buying houses or
selecting schools, and argues that these make
whiteness itself.
We can illustrate the impact of controlling images
by recalling an episode where a black Harvard
professor was arrested entering his own home after
being suspected of being a burglar. Here, an image
had deployed an ideological collective
representation of race, race had been
'interpellated' (84). PH Collins also has referred
to stereotypes especially of black women, the
controlling image of the black mammy used to
justify cuts to social services, and the
'"emotional gymnastics"' that POC have to perform
to avoid being labelled — not exercising in public
in order to avoid being stereotyped as a burglar
or criminal, not shopping with hands in their
pockets, not behaving ambiguously with a white
spouse (85), 'The phenomenological awareness that
you can, at any moment, be interpellated into a
racial schema' where a single interaction makes
race stick to you, what Anderson calls '"N*****
moments"'.
For Bonilla Silva, this is a collective process
involving everybody and we can understand
whiteness itself through the notion of 'white
habitus', something that conditions and creates
whites racial tastes perceptions feelings and
emotions, as well as their views. This also
emerges from interactions with other whites and
non-interactions with other POC. In 2021 it's
argued that this can be created by segregated
interactional spaces that are not necessarily
intentionally racist, various '"white spaces" like
neighbourhoods, schools, social clubs, high
cultural institutions, art galleries or concert
halls and elite educational institutions. In
Brazil there are gated housing communities and
social clubs. This helps white people misrepresent
whiteness as something '"unraced and universal"'
(87) [his major new point], a racial
solidarity and a strong white identity, this white
habitus reinforces whiteness and legitimated
segregation as not racist, merely living with
people like yourself, segregation seems proper and
legitimate. It has been the basis for '"white
talk"' in South Africa — apartheid was a matter of
relative safety and calm, while post apartheid
society features antiwhite racism. The key element
here is that the 'creation of interactional spaces
gives rise to ideas', group thinking. We need to
study interactions in the racialised social
system, to see how racial structures get
reproduced.
Chapter 4 Meso racial structures and racialised
organisations
The middle level or meso is crucial as an
autonomous organisational space worthy of analysis
in its own right [referring to some 'school of
analytical sociologists' — note 1 page 140].
Apparently explanatories are revealed there, once
one opens the black boxes, actual linkages, to
fill out vague causal models. It is not enough to
show how ideology links with social structures —
we need to see how it actually directs human
action. Again the example is mostly colourblind
racism].
We need to study racialised organisations which
shape both policies upward and individual
prejudices downward. They are structures
themselves, 'schemas connected to resources' (93)
that is '"generalisable procedures"' which
reproduce social life, '"fundamental tools of
thought"'. They include things like rules of
etiquette, categories, metaphors [sounds very much
like Bourdieu]. They are generalisable and can fit
many situations. Jim Crow is an example, a schema
of segregation which can be generalised,
legitimated by legal institutions and also shaping
individual prejudice.
Examples include actual industries [which made me
think of the old stuff on class images of society
and the connection with workplaces, as in Bulmer.
Indeed, this is one of several sets of
transmission mechanisms as I have called them, or
what conventional sociology would calls
socialisation mechanisms. Meghji chooses work and
as we shall see sport, but not the other obvious
examples — family, school, media]. In the US
healthcare industry there were different levels of
the organisational hierarchy related to
micro-perceptions of racial discrimination —
doctors explained racial discrimination along the
lines of access to medical school and school
rankings, technicians referred to interpersonal
interactions, prejudiced supervisors, nurses
understood discrimination as a combination of
both, and organisational mechanisms were probably
responsible, since doctors' authority limited the
amount of interpersonal prejudice that they
actually faced, while technicians closer to the
bottom did not see decisions involved in the
hiring and setting of norms. Another example
concerns the Brazilian sugarcane industry, where
mills in Brazil feature white owners of land
overseeing black labourers and the economic logic
still reflects slavery as do the organisational
norms, with command structures reflecting
racialised habits which make them appear natural
and logical in terms of organisations and the way
they manage risk in particular. Again this is
masked by 'so-called colourblind racism' [it just
looks technical and organisationally logical, and
apparently white male directors argue that manual
labour is good for black workers because it
provides employment for them]. There is a clear
connection to racial ideology at the macro level.
CRT ought to do more of this meso analysis, to
flesh out what it has already argued with
colonisation. Organisational hierarchies are a
more specific example of it, how agency is
expressed or constrained in contemporary
societies.
We can see this also in sport and soccer.
Commentary used to be quite clearly racist
referring to black players in terms of their
physical characteristics [citing a study as late
as 2020 referring to the FIFA World Cup of 2018,
charting amounts of praise of white players
learned abilities compared with black players
physicality (98)]. There are similarities in
American football [2021 study here]. This
commentary is 'reminiscent' (99) of stereotypes
found in slavery about black people and manual
labour, or Darwin's view about the lesser mental
abilities of black people. Again they show that
organisations also produce racialization with
macro and micro implications. There is a link with
education and the idea that black pupils are
pushed into sport [a reference here to
Rollock and strategies for surviving racism
2021 Peabody Journal of Education 96
(2)]. There is also a reference to racial abuse
from spectators in the stadium and on social
media.
There is work on mundane workplaces and their
constraints on work you are allowed to do, how you
should dress, 'perform certain emotions, speak in
particular ways' (101). [sounds like Meghan
Markle] Black professionals for example are still
sectioned into particular jobs, often segregated
in the US to deal with other black people, often
appearing in social services, often doing emotion
work or emotional gymnastics, as in studies of
elite law schools and pilot training, where they
had to 'avoid being seen as "too emotional"', not
react to micro-aggressions. There are specific
'racial tasks', backed by expectations on how
black people should work — lead diversity training
for example, try to avoid stereotyping, not be
overtly sexual, especially with the way they wear
their hair, not raise their voices, occupy space
in particular ways, be 'especially amicable'
(103).
This links to movements up and down hierarchies.
There is occupational segregation shown by
statistical data (104) in both the USA and UK
where very senior positions are mostly white.
There is also unequal distribution of symbolic
capital, with references to Bourdieu, 'esteem,
recognition, value and influence' (105), which
might reflect the ability to 'diffuse one's ideas
across the total field'. We see this in the
cultural industries, where POC are often
pigeonholed, managed by a white elite. This is
obvious with the distribution of Oscars and Golden
Globes where it has led to considerable protest,
or the pigeonholing of POC in particular
segregated markets, including book markets and
television programmes — as apparently has been
rationalised by deliberate attempts to predict
markets before commissioning pieces of work by
assuming that writers of colour are writing
similar things, a kind of race monitoring
involving essential identities. There have been
similar criticisms of art in Britain (107)
involving black only exhibitions being seen as
quarantined and pigeonholed. Back to Bonilla Silva
and racial grammar and the way they racialise,
attributing race, or just normality, usually
whiteness. Critics often racialise, describing
diverse works as black, or picking out particular
imagery as typical and thus rationalising it.
There is further work on whether films and TV
stereotype racial minorities like Muslims — one
study found that most stereotyped Muslims (110).
There is a link back to Said.
Conclusion: What is critical about CRT
It is common to try to find exceptions which will
fortify the whole argument, or at least to extend
the arguments to new examples. For example the
first wave of CRT theorists were asked what about
education, and early Bonilla Silva was criticised
for being too structural and avoiding the issue of
agency, and this is how interest in the meso level
rose too.
No theories are universally complete, but they can
still be useful, as Marxism shows, and CRT
similarly has limitations but it can still be
creatively used for further thinking. What about
global racial reality, for example early problems
arose with defining racialised social systems in
terms of societies, whether this meant states, or
just Western nationstates, losing sight of global
interlinkages, globalised trade systems and
codependencies, even borrowings of racist ideas,
as the Nazis did from British colonial tactics.
There's been a tendency for racialised social
systems approaches to offer comparative rather
than relational approaches, to focus on white
countries, even with Bonilla Silva [2007 this
time], stressing differences between white
countries rather than seeing them as articulations
'of the same world system of white supremacy' as
did say, Dubois (115). We may need to sketch out
global critical race theory as a result, and maybe
find another level in which the mechanisms and
social systems are embedded in global systems,
although this also runs the risk of avoiding
historical specifics and starting points [and
would seriously contradict Hall 1980].
You would have to operate at the global and the
local level. India had 'its own clearly
articulated racial hierarchy based on the
principle of Hindu nationalism' (117) [quite a
different emphasis on what he had before then?]
and a racial hierarchy 'by virtue of the
continuities of colonial power relations on the
international scale'. We could use the focus on
organisations developed at the meso level to study
global organisations such as the United Nations or
the World Bank or IMF, if we wanted to. This shows
the flexibility of the system approach, which
follows when you think with CRT tenets adapting
and refining them — 'PlethoraCrit' (118),
following the spread to study various racially
minorities groups [described 118F.] These are
quite interesting, for example TribalCrit reworks
central tenets of CRT, replacing the premise that
racism is endemic with the notion that
colonisation is endemic. Brit correct apparently
developed a notion of '"WhiteWorld"' the
'"socially constructed and constantly reinforced
power of White identifications, norms and
interests"' — the reference is to Rollock,
Gillborn Vincent et al. (2015) The
Colour of Class — the book
that is, which again apparently argues that white
supremacy is not marginal or extremist but
integral to the social and political formation, a
diffuse system not a 'reactionary political
disposition'(120)]
CRT is not the same as general race theory,
however. He has developed it through the
racialised social systems approach, working
through the three levels, drawing upon the whole
conceptual repertoire. It is not the same as state
centred approaches only, nor systemic racism
theory focusing just on elite whites. His approach
follows from Patricia Hill Collins (2019) where
she talks about critical knowledge projects,
beginning with resistance of oppressed peoples,
'epistemic arms in the struggle for social
justice' (122), simultaneously critiquing dominant
social structures and dominant epistemologies and
frameworks 'even within the Academy', where is
often found the strongest critics. CRT is happy to
retain its outsider status as a result on the
periphery of academia, and is glad to preserve the
links between academia and the outside world,
leading it to challenge the conventional notion of
epistemology. This explains the hostility to it.
We need CRT particularly now with the rise of
Donald Trump and the pushback seeking to ban CRT.
It has never been defined particularly well. It is
more reactionary moves against critical thinking
and has been generalised. It is more an expression
of 'white rage' (124). As such, it fits analysis
of racialised emotions and how they are linked to
analyses of colour blindness and the fear of
possibilities presented by critical knowledge. We
need a broader understanding of racism than the
usual legal one. To take a current example
air pollution is usually seen as having no agency
which makes it difficult to challenge, but it is
unequally distributed in racial terms, and is an
example of racialised inequality. CRT helps us
think about these matters and see them as not
coincidental.
There is currently an 'era of "white
reconstruction"' (127), partly as a reaction to
BLM, including the adoption by white liberals of a
reading program about racism and antiracism.
DiAngelo on white fragility was popular, but this
still maintains a view of racism as prejudice
which can be educated away. DiAngelo herself has
made a career out of running workshops on white
fragility. She sees white people as getting too
fragile or sensitive and thus becoming racist,
whereas Meghji sees this 'as a symptom rather than
a cause of racism' (127 the result of decades of
colourblind ideology.
Colourblind ideology is the problem and has even
affected Martin Luther King and others who see
antiracism as making sure everyone gets along
together, increasing representation, which is
often a way of concealing inequalities, soothing
people with black presidents or black police
chiefs, ethnically diverse cabinets in the UK —
'the "racism is prejudice" approach in disguise'
(128).
There is even a debate about which racism ought to
take priority, for example whether anti-Semitism
somehow trumps Islamophobia in the UK. Meghji's
racialised social system approach shows that 'all
these forms of racism are inherently connected'
(129), and separating out different racisms is
both conceptually and historically flawed. There
is one racialised social system producing
necessary relations between the positions,
exploitation and supremacy, even though ideologies
are articulated differently in different parts. We
should analyse 'interconnections rather than
bifurcations' (130). We do this because we want to
dismantle racism and thus we need to know what
racism is, a social system how it reproduces
itself and what its effects are different levels.
CRT seeks 'a world without race' where there is no
racial exploitation and superiority, but people
will benefit from the racial order 'unfortunately
for humankind' [so it some universal human
tendency?] (131).
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