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Abstract
Racial domination, like all forms of domination, works best when it becomes hegemonic, that is, when it accomplishes its goal without much fanfare. In this paper, based on the Ethnic and Racial Studies Annual Lecture I delivered in May 2011 in London, I argue there is something akin to a grammar – a racial grammar if you will – that structures cognition, vision, and even feelings on all sort of racial matters. This grammar normalizes the standards of white supremacy as the standards for all sort of social events and transactions. Thus, in the USA one can talk about HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities), but not about HWCUs (historically white colleges and universities) or one can refer to black movies and black TV shows but not label movies and TV shows white when in fact most are. I use a variety of data (e.g., abduction of children, school shootings, etc.) to illustrate how this grammar works and highlight what it helps to accomplish. I conclude that racial grammar is as important as all the visible practices and mechanisms of white supremacy and that we must fight its poisonous effects even if, like smog, we cannot see how it works clearly.
Notes
1. Readers interested in these references can find them in my page at Duke University (http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/Sociology/faculty/silva) or can email me a note at [email protected].
2. I am using the notion of grammar as theoretical inspiration, but not buying completely into the linguistic term. Hence, as I use it, racial grammar influences vision, emotion, and our sense of aesthetics in addition to the way we talk about and frame racial matters.
3. Some analysts see ‘racial domination’ as institutional racism plus interpersonal racism (see Desmond and Emirbayer 2009). My problem with this conceptualization is that it avoids the fundamental question of ‘racial interests’, that is, if there is racial domination, it must be because someone benefits from it. For my general critique of the institutional and interpersonal view on racism, see Bonilla-Silva 1997.
4. I do not subscribe to the strong stance on ‘hegemony’ as it implies that people are totally brainwashed and have no clue as to what is going on. This does not occur in terms of class domination (Scott Citation1990) and perhaps it is less so in terms of racial domination. Therefore, racial hegemony exists, but it is a never-ending process in need of constant revision to deal with the challenges the racially subaltern pose and to co-opt new ways of dealing with racial issues (e.g., multiculturalism, which was a challenge from people of colour to white supremacy, has been watered down to the point of that it is now advocated by almost everyone in the racial polity).
5. In developing the concept of racial grammar, I contemplated several other options. Initially I thought of using the notion of ‘racial unconscious’ (Sullivan Citation2006) but decided against it because of its intrinsic connection to sexuality and to Freud's ideas, things that were not central to what I was theoretically interested in capturing. I also explored Michel De Certeau and colleagues’ work on practices (1998) and Kenneth Burke's A Grammar of Motives (1969). De Certeau's work was helpful in driving home the importance of routine behaviour and everyday practices and Burke's book, although basically useless for my purposes, helped me to think about grammar and language. In searching for more theoretical inspiration on race, grammar, and language, I came across the important book by Caroline Knowles, Race and Social Analysis (2003), where I found the notion of ‘racial grammar’. Although I agree with much of what Knowles says in her book and use the same notion, my elaboration, as readers will see, is very different from hers. For Knowles (Citation2003, p. 18), racial grammar is ‘the social practices to which race/ethnicity give rise’. For me, racial grammar is the hidden racial ideological substratum or residue which like the oil in a car, allows the engine to operate somewhat smoothly in any racial order. This oil lubricates not just our race talk, but our race vision, racial cognition, and racial aesthetics and emotions. Without this oil, the car of race would run rough for a while and, ultimately, would cease to operate.
6. On this, the work of Raymond Williams is very useful. His classic essay, ‘Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory’, originally published in 1973 in New Left Review, is still among the best on this matter (see Higgins 2001). In that essay, Williams insisted not only on the necessity of having ‘a very complex account of hegemony’, but also on the importance of recognizing that no regime controls the totality of the cultural and ideological fields. Williams highlighted the existence of alternative senses, attitudes, and values (Higgins Citation2001, pp. 67–70).
7. Bodyweight is not the reason for poor health outcomes despite the tremendous amount of nonsense pushed by those who profit from the fat scare. See Campos (2004), particularly chapters 1 and 2 on the section titled ‘Fat Science’.
8. Although race is a ‘social construct’ and we are all of the same species – thus, we are all racially ‘mixed’, one can look at multiple (rather than single) genetic loci to determine the geographical ancestry of individuals. This ancestry, however, is not the same as the notion of ‘biological race’ or even ‘population groups’ as our genetic variation is small, trivial in terms of fundamental things, and not related in any way to things such as morality, intelligence, and the like. For a smart discussion on these matters, see Graves (2001).
9. An interesting discussion on this matter appears in Graves (Citation2006). Discussing BiDil, the so-called ‘race pill’ that presumably will lower hypertension for blacks, Graves points out the following: ‘BiDil may work for African American patients because they have greater oxidative damage in their cells, due to chronic stress. This would mean that the drug is acting on an environmentally induced difference, not a genetically based one. If the drug were used in Western Africa, where Africans face less racialized stress and a variety of environmental factors differ, we may not observe any “race-specific” effect’.
10. In the US, Broca's work was relayed to the population at large via height/weight tables developed by the insurance company METLIFE in the 1940s. The tables were used as guides for height/weight at which mortality is lowest and longevity highest. Albeit these tables have been adjusted over the years, they are still used by many people as ‘standards’ despite the growing medical advice that our main concern should be about general health and the focus on diet and exercise (see Lentini Citation1995).
11. A good book documenting the case of racism, imperialism, and science is Briggs (2002).
12. The most recent victimization survey shows that black women endure a rate of 23.3 per 100,000 compared to white women's rate of 16.7. See Table 6 in Bureau of Justice Statistics (2011).
13. This quote comes from an interview Professor Parks gave to CNN which aired on their Showbiz Tonight on 17 March 2006. See transcript at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0603/17/sbt.01.html
14. These days, post-colonial and post-modern analysts on media systems claim to have superseded ‘narrow’ cultural imperialism views on the media. This view is overstated given media conglomeration and the reorganization of empire through the ‘globalization’ project. For a more balanced approach, see Hardy (Citation2008).
15. This is a famous line from the Seinfeld sitcom from their episode entitled ‘The Soup Nazi’ which originally aired in 1995. This line has become part of the cultural repertoire of Americans and is used to signify that you do not deserve to get something. Needless to say, Seinfeld, like most TV shows in the US, was a white show.
16. Hollywood directors and producers follow the money, as well as the racial grammar, and do not cast too many minorities in their movies for fear that white audiences will not identify with the characters. For empirical validation of this perception, see Weaver (in press).
17. For a good critique of the representations of Asians in films, see Locke (Citation2009).
18. Debates on the racism of this movie abound on the internet. For a useful review of how Asian Americans are treated in American films, see chapter 6 in Benshoff (2009).
19. For a succinct analysis of racism, sexism, and colonialism in Tarzan's stories, see Newsinger (1986).
20. Avid TV watchers know that things seem to be changing and quite rapidly. In the last decade, it has become standard for almost all shows to have at least one minority character. And shows such as Glee, 30 Rock, The Office, and many others have several minority characters. However, all these shows are still white shows as the drama revolves around white characters, and their racial politics are not much better. For an examination of race matters in The Office, see Mayorga and Ashe (2011).
21. This belief that racism is an individual-level problem is normal among whites. Not surprisingly, ‘the producers and writers [who are overwhelmingly white, tell] stories that make sense to them from the position they occupy in society’ (Greco-Larson 2006, p. 14). Almost all TV shows and movies follow this pattern as presenting a structural or institutional rather than an individual-level view on racism, which would not attract the attention and interest of white audiences.
22. There is no systematic data on movies and the race of attendees. But the ‘target marketing of movies’ (Petty et al. 2003) and my inspection in cinemas when I go to so-called black, Latino, or Asian-themed movies, suggest audiences in these movies are overwhelmingly minority.
23. In almost every report on the disappearance of Kyron, he was described as ‘adorable’, despite his average looks.
24. I pause here to point out that we know that the significance of kidnappings by strangers, which are the cases most likely to be deemed ‘newsworthy’, is greatly inflated. Since the 1980s we know that stranger abduction cases are a small fraction of missing children cases and that the overwhelming majority are family abductions. An early paper on this was Joel Best's (1988) ‘Missing children, misleading statistics’.
25. Because of the disparities in coverage and the seeming disinterest of the authorities, people of colour have created their own organizations such as the Black and Missing Foundation, Inc. and Black and Missing But Not Forgotten.
26. I must point out that, in general terms, there is little violence in schools and that in urban areas, the safest place to be for minority youth is schools. For a robust study on school shootings, see Katherine S. Newman et al. (Citation2004).
27. The events in Columbine and other similar suburban schools seem to be explained by ‘organizational deviance’ (see Fox and Harding 2005).
28. Racial incidents abound in homecoming weekends in so-called integrated campuses. For example, in 2008 at Elon University in North Carolina, the festivities included a ‘Phoenix Phiesta’ and booklets with ‘pictures of sombreros, maracas, donkeys and what appears to be a mariachi burrito strumming a guitar’. The homecoming celebration included a ‘skit night’ and skits ‘were awarded extra points when they included a sombrero, a donkey and/or Enrique Iglesias’. See The Pendulum, ‘Homecoming theme is racially insensitive’ at http://www.elon.edu/pendulum/Story.aspx?id=1265.
29. This incident is addressed in Michael Gendall's ‘Protesters rally at Ed's Express’, available at http://badgerherald.com/news/2005/03/16/protesters_rally_at_.php .
30. On Lincoln's racial views and pragmatic reasons for signing the Emancipation Proclamation, see DuBois 2007.
31. Intercoder reliability is the widely used term for the extent to which independent coders evaluate a characteristic of a message or artefact and reach the same conclusion.
32. Professor Harris’ work ignores the twenty years of work that suggests ‘race talk’ in post-civil rights America is oblique and coded. Researchers have amply documented that most whites express their racial concerns in discussion on safety, taxes, crime, property values, schools, and the like. Accordingly, one has to be mindful of this when attempting to properly assess the ‘race effect’ on whites’ decisions about neighbourhoods. For a good survey-based analysis of whites’ decisions and views on neighbourhoods, see Zubrinsky-Charles (Citation2006).
33. I will address matters such as race and commercial representations (focusing on advertisement), race and post-racial politics (on the Obama phenomenon), race and adoptions, race and the criminal justice system, and race and citizenship.
34. The ‘Black is beautiful’ slogan emerged out of the 1960s liberation struggle of blacks in the United States and became a symbol for black liberation the world over.