On categories
Having spent the last few days dropping actors into racial categories, I thought it would be the perfect time to share this quote from Ali Rattansi's Racism: A Very Short Introduction:
"Common-sense racial classifications - and here we encounter the second paradox - receive unintended sustenance from census classifications and anti-discrimination legislation. The paradox, of course, is that census classifications and other government surveys in Britain, the US and elsewhere use categories such as white, black, mixed, Asian, and so forth partly so that the possible effects of racial discrimination can be monitored... And laws against racial discrimination have to define who can be accepted as belonging to a 'race' to qualify for protection and redress against unfair discrimination. But enacting 'race' relations legislation and setting up agencies with titles like The Commission for Racial Equality, as we have done in Britain, has had disastrous consequences. In combination with census classifications, they harden crude racial frames of reference by institutionalizing and embedding them in everyday public and private discourse and common sense." (p 171)
In short, in recognising discrimination based on race, we risk legitimising the whole dodgy idea of race. (And by attacking the dodgy idea of race, we risk dismissing the reality of racism in real peoples' lives. Egad!)
Here's one challenge to our "common sense" ideas about race: why isn't Martha cheered as the first Middle Eastern companion?
"Common-sense racial classifications - and here we encounter the second paradox - receive unintended sustenance from census classifications and anti-discrimination legislation. The paradox, of course, is that census classifications and other government surveys in Britain, the US and elsewhere use categories such as white, black, mixed, Asian, and so forth partly so that the possible effects of racial discrimination can be monitored... And laws against racial discrimination have to define who can be accepted as belonging to a 'race' to qualify for protection and redress against unfair discrimination. But enacting 'race' relations legislation and setting up agencies with titles like The Commission for Racial Equality, as we have done in Britain, has had disastrous consequences. In combination with census classifications, they harden crude racial frames of reference by institutionalizing and embedding them in everyday public and private discourse and common sense." (p 171)
In short, in recognising discrimination based on race, we risk legitimising the whole dodgy idea of race. (And by attacking the dodgy idea of race, we risk dismissing the reality of racism in real peoples' lives. Egad!)
Here's one challenge to our "common sense" ideas about race: why isn't Martha cheered as the first Middle Eastern companion?