Racism: Who benefits?
Racism is a huge issue. It has been centuries in the making, and it is so inter-woven in the fabric of society that a collection of articles isn’t going to revolutionise anything. But it will provide you with a level of understanding, for you to confidently challenge situations that you feel are not ok, and to create open dialogue about how racism shows up in your work, your home and your life.
What is racism?
Most people believe that racism is simply a case of not liking Black or Brown people (racial prejudice), saying offensive things, or belonging to certain racist groups or organisation. And yes. These things are racist. But words and actions of this manner are not the entirety of racism.
Racism is about power.
It’s about centuries of specifically crafted and constructed systems, societies, institutions, and beliefs that uphold the dominance of whiteness and everyone else as “other”, in order to protect that power.
It’s about dehumanising people to the point that they can be considered nameless, unimportant, or as numbers to be reported on but nothing more. Reduced to the point that their lives carry less weight than a hashtag that can be forgotten in the next news cycle.
I appreciate that a lot of us will be ashamed of our lack of knowledge, I was too, and I’m still learning. And I don’t want to start laying more shame on top by calling us out on this – but we do have to acknowledge that if racism is created by and for the protection of whiteness, it can’t possibly be dismantled without the involvement and action of white people.
So, to understand more about what racism is, we first need to understand how it came to be so interwoven in the fabric of our societies.
Where did racism come from?
The first thing we need to know, is that race is a societal construct. But that I mean the categorisation of people by their “race” was introduced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by philosophers, anthropologists, and naturalists.
In the seventeenth century philosophers, such as Hobbs and Locke, created their own theories of enlightenment, reshaping English society through the lens of reason, rather than religion. Unfortunately, at that time in England when these “rational” approaches were being concluded, they were being done only by the great thinkers of this time, who were incidentally all wealthy, white men. So, it comes as no surprise, that when the image of what was considered most powerful and valuable at that time was created, it was… a wealthy, white man.
Now, these great thinkers were highly influential, and it stands to reason that their ideas were shared far and wide among their peers, who, as wealthy white men in other countries, could absolutely see the logic in their thinking. And before long their ideas became widely accepted as the way to do things, and therefore this became the benchmark in which most western societies were being built upon.
Now if we fast forward a bit to the eighteenth century, we can find another white man, naturalist Carl Linnaeus doing his thing as a botanist, zoologist and physician. Linnaeus had a passion for creating classifications for all kinds of flora and fauna around the world. Oh, and he also decided to classify people too. You see, in 1735 when Linnaeus published his book Systema Naturae, in which he coined the terms “homo” and “homo sapien” he also divided humans into 4 “varieties”:
Europaeus albus/Homo europaeus (people from Europe)
Americanus rubescens/Homo americanus (people from the Americas)
Asiaticus fuscus/Homo asiaticus (people from Asia)
Africanus niger/Homo africanus (people from Africa)
Why is this a big deal? Well, because Linnaeus based these classifications on physical characteristics such as skin colour and hair colour, and perceived behaviours.
For example:
Homo europaeus were those with “plenty of yellow hair; blue eyes” and were “light, wise, inventors.”
Homo americanus were those with “straight, black, and thick hair, gaping nostrils, beardless chin” and “unyielding, cheerful, and free” behaviour.
Homo asiaticus were those with “blackish hair, dark eyes” and were “stern, haughty, and greedy.”
Homo africanus were those with “dark hair, with many twisting braids, silky skin, flat nose, swollen lips” and were “sly, sluggish, neglectful.”
Already we can see the problem here.
Essentially Linnaeus informed his peers (who, if we remember, were all white Europeans too) that Europeans were smart and better than everyone else, which they of course were delighted to hear. While Black people were labelled lazy and not to be trusted. Essentially, his concepts and classifications of human behaviour paved the way for pseudoscientific ideas about human biological diversity, which as we know had horrific consequences.
It also made it possible for colonisers, enslavers and so-called traders to use their power and wealth to subjugate other countries for their own gain. Because after all, these people were not as wise, trustworthy or important as they were.
Ok, but that was almost 300 years ago Katie, that’s not how it is now…
Well, yes it was, and we’d like to think that was true. But many of the racialised stereotypes from Linnaeus’s classifications still exist today – that’s the impact of 100’s of years of bias and prejudice for you! And when we consider the systems and structures created by the likes of Hobbs and Locke, they still very much influence the systems and structures of society today (think mass incarceration, racial profiling, and wage inequality for starters). This is why people are continuing to talk about the impact of patriarchy, capitalism and white supremacy (and I’ll talk more specifically about these in future articles).
Not convinced? Then I’d like to explore where you were in 2020 when everyone else was talking about Black Lives Matter?
And if the answer to this is thinking that “All lives matter” then I‘d like to direct you to my article “What white people need to understand about racism” where I challenge the defensive statements we can make when it comes to our whiteness, and encourage you to learn more about your own contribution to upholding racism.
But in brief: When we can understand what racism is and that it permeates all of our lives, we can begin to centre the experiences of Black people, and recognise that, yes, all lives do matter, but all lives can’t matter, until Black lives matter too.
And if you still feel uncomfortable with the statement Black Lives Matter, or why it’s important , ask yourself, “if achieving equity for someone else upsets me, how is it that I was benefitting from their oppression?”
Remember:
· Racism is about power, structures, and systems that serve to protect the interests of wealthy white men
· Racism is a societal construct
· There is no such thing as reverse racism
· Proximity to Blackness does not equal an absence of racism
· White people must listen to and centre the experiences of people of colour if we are to understand how to disengage from racist behaviour
Knowing all of this, how do you feel about your relationship with racism now?
I appreciate that racism is a triggering and difficult topic for many white people, so I welcome any comments or further discussion that you may want to have. Understanding how power presents itself in society, and how it is distributed and protected is squarely at the heart of becoming a true ally. If you’re struggling with any of this, and are committed to becoming a better ally, I am always here to talk about it.