Race, Power and Social Action in Neighborhood Community Organizing: Reproducing and Resisting the Social Construction of the Other

Abstract

Scholars argue in favor of social action in community organizing to address the oppression experienced by racialized groups. This study examines how community organizing practice in one diverse neighborhood constructed race to understand the potential for social action. Using interview and observational data with 16 community organizers working in 1 diverse, low-income neighborhood in Québec, Canada, I examine the social construction of race through the lens of postcolonial theory and the writings of Michel Foucault. I argue that a discourse of neutrality existed among community organizers, which was tied to state policy and a colonial discourse embedded therein. The resulting disconnect between race and power in community organizing practice not only forecloses on social change efforts, it also extends a state-driven nation-building agenda into community. As the basis for an anticolonial approach to neighborhood community organizing, I juxtapose the discourse of neutrality in community organizing with strategies that recoupled race and power by drawing attention to efforts among community organizers that were antagonistic to the discourse.

Keywords:

• race
• community organizing
• social action
• neighborhood
• Foucault
• postcolonial theory
• anti-colonial
• Québec

Acknowledgments

I thank Dr. Donna Jeffrey and the reviewers for their feedback on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

¹Although nowhere is the term cultural communities given an explicit definition, the label cultural communities has been commonly used in Québec to refer to minority groups that are not White Francophone or White Anglophone (Bouchard & Taylor, 2008).