The Americanisation of Anti-Racism? Global Power and Hegemony in Ethnic Equity

Abstract

Following recent debate on US influence on anti-racism around the world, this article offers a critical assessment of how anti-racism is being shaped and disseminated. It is argued that the US-Americanisation of anti-racism is autonomous of US political will or action and has a complex and contingent relationship with neo-liberal globalisation. After considering how these themes suggest a revision in Gramscian perspectives on hegemony, the paper illustrates them by reference to the World Bank's advocacy of cultural pluralism in Latin America. It is argued that this ethnic equity project is articulated and ‘sold’ as a form of counter-authority, a form that employs and deploys the USA as a model of the modern nation.

Keywords:

• Anti-Racism
• Racialisation
• Neo-Liberalism
• Transnationalism
• US-Americanisation
• World Bank

Notes

1. One reflection of US hegemony is that the noun ‘America’ is often used as if it was synonymous with the USA. No common practice has yet emerged on how to replace the verb or the collective noun derived from this usage. ‘US-Americanise’ and ‘US-Americans’ are the most straightforward solutions to these two difficulties.

2. This article adopts the broad definition of anti-racism as pertaining to ideologies and practices that affirm and seek to enable the equality of races and ethnic groups (see Bonnett 2000).

3. For some commentators, both US-American and Brazilian, it appears that the assertion of ‘race relations’, more specifically Black and indigenous racial identity, is an inevitable and positive development for Brazilian society (Bowser 1995; Twine 1998; Warren 2001). However, others, such as Livio Sansone (2004), argue that this logic absorbs Brazil into a US-American ‘race relations’ paradigm which denies the originality and potential of anti-racism in Brazil. Pointing to the widespread support in Brazil for anti-racism within and alongside a class-based analysis of life opportunities, Sansone calls for an ‘anti-racism without ethnicity’.

4. The World Bank's connections with the USA are most clearly seen through the Bank being based in Washington and through the convention that the US government chooses the Bank's President. The US has the most powerful voice in both the IMF and the World Bank, in 2003 wielding 17.1 and 16.4 per cent of voting rights in each institution respectively. This percentage effectively gives the US power of veto. Since the remaining voting power is allocated, in large part, to allies of the US (OECD having 63.6 and 61.6 per cent of the vote in the IMF and World Bank respectively, and the G8 nations 48.2 and 45.7 per cent respectively (New Internationalist 2004), US control is assured.

5. The ‘Afro-Latino Resolution’ (House Resolution 47), introduced by Congressional representatives Charles Rangel and John Conyers in February 2003, asserts that ‘US funding to Latin American countries should come with a provision recognising the direct economic and social conditions of Afro-Latins’ (Carrillo 2004). The assumptions that ‘Afro-Latin’ identity should become more racially conscious and US-Americanised and that the USA provides a more advanced, fully-evolved, model of ‘race relations’ than is apparent in Latin America, are made clear by Rangel and Mischa Thompson who drafted the resolution: ‘Identity movements take a long time … race politics take a long time’, notes Thompson (cited by Carrillo 2004); ‘Countries like Brazil are just getting affirmative action’, says Rangel, adding ‘Globalisation and free trade are inevitably bringing our communities closer together’ (cited by Carrillo 2004).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alastair Bonnett

Alastair Bonnett is Professor of Social Geography at the University of Newcastle