The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society

330 Pages·1996·38.995 MB·English

by  Kenan Malik (auth.)

The Meaning of Race
The Meaning of Race
Race, History and Culture in
Western Society
Kenan Malik
MACMILLAN
© Kenan Malik 1996
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
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claims for damages.
First published 1996 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills; Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-62858-4 ISBN 978-1-349-24770-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24770-7
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 Beyond the Liberal Hour 9
The Unmaking of Consensus 11
The Making of Consensus 13
The Meaning of the 'Liberal Hour' in Britain 19
Immigration and Assimilation in French Political Debate 26
Race and the Collapse of Consensus 29
2 The Social Limits to Equality 38
Race and the Enlightenment 39
Human Nature and Human Difference in Enlightenment
Discourse 43
Equality and Social Conflict 55
Equality, Slavery and Private Property 61
The Social Limits to Equality 68
3 The Making of a Discourse of Race 71
Romanticism, Particularism and Race 73
Race in the Post-Enlightenment World 79
From Romantic Reaction to Scientific Racism 84
Race and Class in Victorian England 91
4 Race in the Age of Democracy 101
The Fear of the Masses 104
Degeneration and Racial Planning 109
Race, Imperialism and Democracy 114
Race, Science and Politics 119
Race and the Nazi Experience 123
5 Race, Culture and Nationhood 128
'What is a Nation?' 130
Race, Culture and Nation 133
v
vi Contents
Culture as a Homologue of Race 140
From 'Many Men' to 'Many Worlds' 144
6 From Biological Hierarchy to Cultural Diversity 149
Franz Boas and the Remaking of the Culture Concept 150
The Ambiguity of the Culture Concept 156
Antihumanism and the Culture Concept 160
Levi-Strauss and the Celebration of Inequality 163
The Meaning of Multiculturalism 169
7 Cultural Wars 178
Immigration, Assimilation and National History 183
Islam, Enlightenment and Citizenship 193
Elitism and the Underclass 198
The Bifurcated World 209
8 Universalism, Humanism and the Discourse of Race 217
The West and its 'Others' 220
Orientalism and Ahistoricism 227
Discourse, Power and Knowledge 230
Humanism, Colonialism and the Holocaust 236
Appearance, Essence and Equality 247
9 Equality and Emancipation 260
From the 'Right to be Equal' to the 'Right to be Different' 261
Transcending 'Race' 265
Notes and References 270
Bibliography 292
Index 304
Acknowledgements
All books are, to some extent at least, collective efforts. This is probably
more true of this book than of most. The Meaning of Race is the product of
almost a decade of discussion and debate with friends and colleagues,
most of whom it would be impossibe to name in an acknowledgement
such as this. I would like to thank in particular Frank Furedi, James
Heartfield and Naseema Khan for their generosity with both their time
and their ideas. Marek Kohn read early drafts of this book even as he was
working on his own, The Race Gallery. Steve Jones, Robin Cohen and
Parekh Ahmed all provided valuable comments on various chapters.
Richard Ings was of great assistance with the French material. My thanks
to them all.
Throughout the book I have borrowed freely from the work of various
authors - Robert Miles' critique of the race relations paradigm, Maxim
Silverman's analysis of race in French political discourse, Robin Black
burn's study of slavery, Eric Hobsbawm's history of nineteenth-century
nationalism, Douglas Lorrimer's examination of race and class in Victo
rian England, Daniel Pick's investigation of the idea of degeneration,
George Stocking's unearthing of the history of anthropology, Tzvetan
Todorov's discussion of the relationship between universalism and par
ticularism, Aijaz Ahmad's dissection of poststructuralism. Few of these
authors- perhaps none of them- will agree with all my arguments in
this book. I hope, however, that they will find in The Meaning of Race a
useful addition to the discussion and debate around many of these
themes.
Frances Arnold and Catherine Gray, my editors at the publishers, pro
vided support and encouragement throughout the project.
Finally my thanks go to Kate Lowe, without whose loving companion
ship the writing of this book would have seemed so much more of a
burden.
KENAN MALIK
Every effort has been made to contact all copyright-holders, but if any
have been inadvertently omitted the publishers will be pleased to make
the necessary arrangement at the earliest opportunity.
vii
Introduction
'All is race. There is no other truth.' So claimed Benjamin Disraeli in his
novel Tancred or The New Crusade. In the late Victorian era race indeed did
seem to be all. 'Scientific racism' claimed to have an explanation for
everything from the cause of criminality to the nature of Britain's special
destiny, from the origins of 'savage' people in Africa and Asia to the
temper of class relations in Europe. Race explained the character of
individuals, the structure of social communities and the fate of human
societies.
Nearly a century later, the American historian Oscar Handlin, in his
book Race and Nationality in American Life, was moved to ask 'What
happened to race?'. Well might he have been perplexed. For more than a
hundred years the racial make-up of the American nation had seemed of
cardinal importance. Scientists, politicians, journalists-all had fiercely
debated the impact of immigration on American 'racial stock', disputed
the 'inferiority' or 'superiority' of different 'ethnic' groups and argued
over the possibility of different 'races' being able to assimilate into a
single nation. Yet in the 1950s, when Handlin was writing, historians,
sociologists, biologists, even anthropologists seemed to have abandoned
the concept of race. The experience of fascism and the Holocaust had
drawn a dark veil over the once all-important debate. The term 'racism'
entered the popular language for the first time in the interwar years;
its increasingly widespread usage in the postwar period reflected
the general moral distaste for defining, and discriminating between,
people according to their biological attributes. In the postwar years,
in intellectual and political discussion, the issue of race seemed to be
taboo.
Today, both Disraeli and Handlin might find evidence for their respec
tive views. Race seems to be both everywhere and nowhere. On the one
hand there still exists a general abhorrence about discriminating be
tween people according to their race. From the near-universal condem
nation of 'ethnic cleansing' to the widespread support for legislation
against racial discrimination, 'racism' is still regarded as a dirty word.
Certainly only those on the fringes of society hold that one race is
superior or inferior to another. And yet race seems to shape so much
of our lives today. We continually categorise people according to their
'race'-Afro-Caribbean, white, Jewish. Discussions of culture, history or
art often seem to centre around race - 'Asian culture', 'black history',
'African art'. Everything from criminality to the entrepreneurial spirit is
1
2 The Meaning of Race
given a racial connotation-witness the stereotypes of 'black muggers' or
'Asian shopkeepers'. Social policy on issues from adoption to education
is discussed in relation to its impact on race. And race has become the
central feature of contemporary political debate: from immigration pa
nics to controversies over multicultural education, from debates about
affirmative action to fears about the rise of fascism.
Western society seems to be repelled by the consequence of racial
thinking yet forced to accept its importance. It is like someone who goes
to watch a horror film. They know they will have to cover their eyes half
way through, yet are drawn regardless to the cinema. The aim of this
book is to explore the ambiguous and ambivalent relationship of West
ern society to the idea of 'race' both by examining its social meaning and
by reconstructing its historical development.
One of the striking aspects of the study of race is that everyone 'knows'
what a 'race' is, but no one can quite define it. Walter Bagehot's observa
tion about a nation-'We know what it is when you do not ask us, but we
cannot very quickly explain or define it'1 - applies equally to race. This
is true even of those who consider themselves specialists in the field.
'Geneticists believe that anthropologists have decided what a race is.
Ethnologists assume that their classifications embody principles which
genetic science has proved to be correct. Politicians believe their
prejudices have the sanction of genetic laws and the findings of physical
anthropology to sustain them.'2 So wrote Lancelot Hogben, a leading
opponent of scientific racism in the years before the Second World War.
Hogben's sardonic observation seems equally apposite half a century
later.
In popular language, 'race' is usually synonymous with 'colour'.
We casually speak of Africans (or Afro-Caribbeans) as one race, Asians
as another, Europeans or 'whites' as a third. Virtually everyone can
distinguish between the physical characteristics of the major racial
groups. Many even believe they can tell the difference between a Jew
and a Gentile, or an Englishman and an Italian, by physical appearance
alone. This universal ability to distinguish between different human
groups has given credence to the idea that races possess an objective
reality.
This popular idea of race is buttressed by academic and political argu
ments. Much academic study continues to use the concept of race as both
an analytical tool and an explanatory determinant. The paradigm of
'race relations' has been central to the academic study of race, particular
ly in Britain and the USA. When sociologists explain certain conflicts in
society in terms of 'race relations' they suggest that it is the existence of
Introduction 3
different races in society that give rise to those conflicts. Even those who
reject the race relations paradigm, from a radical or Marxist point of
view, persist in using the idea of race in a manner that imputes to it an
objective existence. In recent years the arguments of writers such as
Robert Miles, who reject entirely the use of race as a sociological ca
tegory, have gained ground. Nevertheless, traditional arguments about
race dominate academic discourse.3
Despite this widespread usage of the term race, however, there has
been precious little attempt to define the concept. In the absence of a
clear definition, the concept of race in academic discourse has acquired
by default the everyday meaning of the word. As Robert Miles has
pointed out, while most academic writers 'deny that they are using the
idea of "race" as if it referred to a biological hierarchy of fundamentally
different groups of people', nevertheless 'the manner of their use of the
notion commonly implies an acceptance of the existence of biological
differences between human beings, differences which express the exist
ence of distinct, self-reproducing groups'.4
The concept of 'race relations' is also a central feature of politics
and law in many Western countries. British law, for instance, defines
a 'race' or 'racial group' as 'a group of persons defined by reference
to colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins'. Further, as
Michael Banton notes, Britain's three Race Relations Acts suggest
that 'each individual could be assigned to a race, and that relations
between persons of different race were necessarily different from rela
tions between persons of the same race.'5 But this, as Miles points out, is
a tautological argument: 'The definition is (necessarily) circular: a "race"
is a group of people defined by "their race": this formulation assumes
and legitimates as a reality that each human being "belongs" to a
"race"'. 6
In fact the legal definition of 'colour, race, nationality or ethnic or
national origins', as accepted by both the House of Lords and the Court
of Appeal in Britain, is based on the public definitions of these terms. In
other words in legal and political, as in academic, discourse the concept
of race is borrowed from everyday perceptions of differences and sub
sequently acts to legitimate as true the very definition on which it was
based in the first place. This collapsing of perception and understanding
can be seriously misleading. The sun appears to set and the moon ap
pears to rise at night; we know that in reality neither actually happens.
In the same way, the appearance that all human beings can be cate
gorised by 'race' might seem seductively tangible but has no objective
basis. Humanity is not like a Dulux colour chart with everyone falling
into discrete categories, each with a unique name and character. Human
beings are composed of a constellation of characteristics, physical and
mental, which shade into each other. This point was recognised nearly