“We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced” – Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
RACISM is an innate tribal response to otherness. It is a form of unconscious bias that exists to protect us and our loved ones from potential danger – from something unknown or unfamiliar. It is an ingrained human trait that has existed since the beginning of mankind. This may be an extremely controversial view and one I am very wary of 'putting out there', but it is a belief I have had all my life. Perhaps it is in part due to the fact that I grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era, when society was strictly segregated and most ordinary (by that I mean non-academic or politically engaged) people living through it accepted it as a necessary policy of the day, a way of containing two different cultures and allowing them to exist reasonably peacefully alongside one another. Many saw it as a natural manifestation of the Orwellian theory that all are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Racism, like all other forms of bias, stems from a sense of fear. A fear of not fully understanding, or being able to mentally process it sufficiently to comprehend all that is strange or 'other' for us. Think about human behaviour over past centuries towards people with disabilities. They are different to fully fit individuals. So because, historically, people didn't know how to deal with their conditions, most significantly, perhaps, because they didn't know whether their disabilities might somehow make them contagious, they were designated as potentially being a danger to the non-disabled. Xenophobia, homophobia (and other sexual biases), and even a bias such as ageism, therefore, originate simply from an unconscious fear of the unknown that resides deep in the psyche of all of us. Nazism and anti-Semitism are extreme prejudices that are strong enough to he termed 'hatred' and are outright dangerous. They are, arguably, more consciously calculated than those previously mentioned.
We are not born with biases. They are prejudices which through social conditioning have beenhistorically inbred in us by our parents or caregivers as part of our maturing process into adulthood. They are a means of self-protection. In its earliest manifestation this was a defence against possible physical harm, but over the centuries it has become protection against mental or emotional harm. In the last hundred and fifty years or so, particularly since literacy and, therefore, also greater intellectual awareness began reaching all sections of society, this harm has been deemed to come from the greater possession of knowledge.
As the French philosopher and social theorist, Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984) mentions throughout his work (see Sources below for instances), knowledge and power are interrelated and how they are used determines their efficacy (favourable or not). Biases frequently manifest themselves when people follow the actions or thinking of a single or a few individuals who use their learning to intentionally mislead or indoctrinate a willing majority. This, of course, is also a tactic which has, in the past, started wars and other forms of political dissent.
Back to racism, then. In one of his lectures at the Collège de France (1979 – 1980) Foucault explained that modern racism was first articulated as a discourse of social war in the 18th century. It grew during the second half of the 19th century to absorb many important impulses from psychiatry as a means to protect society against the abnormal. It was not until the 1930s that it was integrated by modern state apparatuses as a device of wielding political power.
That racism remains a contentious issue and a major source of injustice as we embark on the third decade of the 21st century is indicative of just how deeply it is buried in the human psyche and, therefore, how hard it is to eradicate it. The murder of the black American, George Floyd, at the hand of a white policeman is a tragedy for which no words are adequate. How much the protests in his name will alter human behaviour towards black people and those from other cultures than our own over the long term, when the mindset of society has been conditioned to resist equality for all since the beginning of time, remains to be seen. Let us hope that the Black Lives Matter Movement can bring about the change in attitude that is sorely needed and long overdue.
SOURCES
Foucault, M. (1991) Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan. New York & London: Vintage Books
Foucault, M. (1998) Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984), trans. R. Hurley. NewYork: Vintage Books
Foucault, M. (1990) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984), trans. R. Hurley. NewYork: Vintage Books
Foucault, M. (2001) Power: Essential Works of Foucault (Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984) trans. R. Hurley. NewYork: The New Press
Foucault, M. (2014) On The Government of the Living: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1979-1980), trans. Graham Burchell. New York & London: Palgrave Macmillan
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