Handbook of Black Studies PDF

Sage Reference Handbook of Black Studies For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website. A free-to-view version of this content is available by clicking on this link, which includes an easy-to-navigate-and-se...

Sage Reference Handbook of Black Studies For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website. A free-to-view version of this content is available by clicking on this link, which includes an easy-to-navigate-and-search-entry, and may also include videos, embedded datasets, downloadable datasets, interactive questions, audio content, and downloadable tables and resources. Author: George J. Sefa Dei Pub. Date: 2010 Product: Sage Reference DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412982696 Keywords: antiracism theory, racism, race, oppression, responsibility (politics), antiracist education, race and racism Disciplines: Race & Ethnicity, Race, Ethnicity & Migration, Black Studies, Sociology Access Date: July 8, 2024 Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks Online ISBN: 9781412982696 © 2010 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. Antiracism: Theorizing in the Context of Perils and Desires George J.Sefa Dei We are seeing unprecedented change in our world today. The complexity and intensity of change, not to mention the ensuing contentions, contradictions, and ambiguities that arise as we try to make sense of these changes, demand that we all think seriously about our practice wherever we are located. We must take every opportunity to pursue antiracism—both in words (discourse) and in deed (action). Antiracism highlights the material and experiential realities of minoritized peoples in their dealings with dominant society. Today, we are confronted with the continuing denial of the significance of difference (such as race, class, gender) in academic discourses, in progressive politics, and in understanding the world at large. As numerous writers have noted, race is an unsettling issue for most of us. Many will gladly avoid any critical discussion of race and racism. The denial of race is insidious when one thinks of the fact that race and difference provide the context for power and domination in society. In this brief account of antiracist theory and practice, I will limit my remarks to some general comments on theoretical and methodological considerations for critical antiracist practice. Theorizing Antiracism I define antiracism education as an action-oriented educational practice to address racism and the related forms of social oppression struck along the lines of gender, class, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, language, and religion. Critical antiracism goes beyond the often sterile and worn-out debates concerning “what race really means,” whether scientifically or politically, to highlight the centrality of race in understanding social oppres- sion. In working with the centrality of race, I recognize that the term race is hotly contested. Some authors, in fact, place quotation marks around the term to signify its roots in now defunct “scientific”/biological notions. Al- though I accept that race is socially constructed, I refuse to hold the view that failing to put quotation marks around the word would be to invoke its problematic meaning as genetically determined biological difference. I am much more concerned with the decidedly more problematic use of this practice to delegitimize discus- Handbook of Black Studies Page 2 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. sions of race and racism—as though eradicating reference to race in our speech would similarly eradicate racism from our experience. I maintain that we can reject the notion that racial designations have fixed mean- ing, and acknowledge their relationship to social power imbalances, without feeling a need to place quotation marks around each of the terms whenever they are employed. Many of the terms we employ in social science are hotly contested.1 Oftentimes, we ascribe dominant, fixed, and reified understandings to these terms. Yet those who insist on quotation marks around the word race do not similarly insist on quotation marks around, as an example, the word culture. Race cannot be singled out! Critical antiracist work and discourse do not (re)produce race and racism as some charge, but they must account for and oppose the very real race-based power dynamics that already affect the lives of too many. Whereas working with racial designations calls for conceptual and analytical clarity (although not precision), antiracist practice is aware of the limits of subjecting the concept of race to neat theoretical discussions that serve simply to reify racist preconceptions. Such discussions serve both to discredit the claims of those who have been victimized or punished on the basis of their race and to minimize the importance of letting knowl- edge propel social action. Although definitions of boundaries and parameters are significant, it is equally im- portant to note discursive shifts and manipulations that negate race and, thus, allow those with racial privilege to claim innocence and perpetuate the racial status quo. Antiracism works with the complexities of difference and continually challenges the totalizing pretensions of racial and racist discourses. We cannot discuss race and racial identities in fragments, stripped of their com- plexities and historical specificities.2 Given the relational aspects of difference, antiracism must necessarily touch on the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, and other forms of difference. This position has been neatly articulated by a number of critical scholars, notably Black feminist theorists. After all, there are internal complexities to our racial designations. Thus, antiracism should always explore the ways ethnic dis- tinctions can be subsumed under the racial umbrella. But the current infatuation with the complexities of dif- ference must not obscure or deny the saliency of race in antiracist discourse and practice.3 A theory of antiracism is therefore also anchored in the claim that there are situational and contextual varia- tions in intensities of oppressions and that, depending on where a subject finds herself or himself, a particular identity, although related to other identities, becomes very prominent. Race, in that it is often plainly marked on the body, is one aspect of identity that assumes a stubborn saliency. This concept, then, is foundational in critical antiracism theory. Handbook of Black Studies Page 3 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. The notion of the “saliency of race” subverts the tendency to replace race with ethnicity in antiracist work. Saliency is not about privileging one form of identity over another (such as over class or gender). Antiracism understands the interlocking of racial oppression with other axes of oppression, such as class, gender, sexu- ality, language, and culture. However, the notion of the saliency of race is intended to acknowledge skin color as a significant form of difference with respect to societal power distributions. It heralds the severity of these issues for those bodies marked by perceived physical differences. Saliency affirms the necessity of a politics of recognition in antiracist practice. The politics of antiracism requires that we speak of the centrality of race in anti-oppression work that calls itself “antiracist.” Antiracism makes local, regional, national, and international connections to create an awareness of the glob- alization of racism. The experiences of racism, colonialism, and imperialism have been manifested on local, regional, and international scales so that oppression is simultaneously localizing, regionalizing, and interna- tionalizing. Operationalizing Antiracism This theoretical discussion, then, leads to the question, “What does it entail to both ‘name’ and ‘complicate’ race in antiracist practice?” Obviously, and as I have alluded to above, there is the problem of racial categories and designations that are seen as fixed and unchanging. Fixed categories must be troubled as a necessary part of any intellectual exercise purporting to be antiracist. However, this troubling must not undercut the claims of those who speak of race as punishment and as a powerful social currency. Given the existence of such discourses of denial, a key challenge for antiracism is to be able to signal and decipher the hidden race dynamic in discursive practices where it exists but is not named. Thus, the theoretical tools and concepts for the study and understanding of race must enable us to expose the power hierarchies in social relations struc- tured along race and difference—that is, to understand how colonial/colonizing relationships are maintained, how merit badges are awarded, and how the practice of inferiorizing groups gains and maintains currency in society. Critical antiracist practice upholds the notion of “embodied knowledge”—that is, the claim that knowledge is associated with bodies and resides in cultural memory, that we must link identity with knowledge production. Racial subjects are produced in daily practice. This is important to understand to counter misguided method- ological cautions relating to assigning knowledge to particular identities. These cautions would suggest that Handbook of Black Studies Page 4 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. research is compromised where there is identity overlap between researcher and researched.4 In other words, such relations can and do facilitate the knowledge-creation process. Thus, in direct opposition to the cautions, the notion of embodied knowledge questions assigning discursive authority and authorial control to researchers claiming to be experts but who have no embodied connection to knowledge or to the particular experiences that produce the knowledge they seek to understand. Antiracism examines how different voices come to count differently and affirms the important place of marginalized and subjugated standpoints in an- tiracist work. Antiracist workers must eschew the tendency to look merely at the ways difference is acknowledged while failing to interrogate ways of meaningfully responding to difference. Our subject positions and locations speak to questions of power, privilege, subordination and resistance, and the collective quest for solidarity in anti- oppression work and can mask some underlying tensions, ambivalences, and ambiguities, particularly when there is a denial of power and privilege. To this end, we cannot separate the politics of difference from the politics of race, thus allowing dominant bodies to deny and refuse to interrogate White privilege and power. For antiracism, the challenge is to be able to shift social relations from being “colonial” to being “anticolonial.” For members of dominant groups, this entails an awareness of how identity is significant in marking them for privilege. For minoritized groups, it entails an awareness of how the politics of identity is anchored in social resistance, which may require a shift away from a conventional narrative that re-inserts the subject's/commu- nity's marginality—that is, a victim narrative. Furthermore, because of our multiple subject positions, we are differentially implicated in questions of oppression and social justice. An antiracist worker, then, cannot fail to cast an equally important gaze on the site(s) from which he or she oppresses as on the site(s) in which he or she is oppressed. Antiracist Philosophy Antiracism involves the search for reciprocity—that is, the search for knowledge, the production of text, and the disseminating of knowledge to the end of engaging in political action in the service of humanity. An an- tiracism philosophy stresses that race matters both on its own terms and as an integral part of any critical theoretical discourse about humanity and social relations. It is therefore imperative for antiracist work to chal- lenge the glee of the Right concerning “the irrelevance of race,” the gloom of the Left about the possibilities of race discourse in progressive politics, and the postmodern despair about the politics of essentializing race. Handbook of Black Studies Page 5 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. The entry point for antiracist work is within one's personal experience, history, and social practice. The subject is a creative agent with an active and resistant voice. Thus, minoritized groups have discursive power. Critical antiracism must work with the understanding that the “subaltern” think, speak, and desire. Both the privileged and minoritized have working and embodied knowledges. To deny this or to think otherwise is anti-intellectual. However, understanding the self also results in an affirmation of a politics of community responsibility. The power of the “I” (as the lone subject), the product of liberal individualism, is insidiously harmful to develop- ing community. To enact a politics of responsibility, one needs to be fully grounded in how the self becomes conscious of its existence within a collective. The initial process in the exercise of self-consciousness and a politics of affirmation involves acknowledging the powerful synergy of body, mind, and spirit. In antiracist work, this means seeing equity work as a form of spirituality. As such, equity work is not forced but, rather, flows through actions and thoughts. It is marked by genuineness and sincerity. Antiracism is more than a theory and a discourse. It also involves action and allowing knowledge to induce political work. Given the interconnections of body and soul, the worth of a social theory must be measured both in terms of its philosophical grounding, as well as the theory's ability to offer a social and political correc- tive. In other words, a key principle of antiracism is overcoming the theory-practice dichotomy, resulting in a praxis that both guides and insists on political action. Race must be understood, theorized, and acted on. Unfortunately, for many of us, our hearts are not open to envisage and act for change. We have not taken seriously the fact that to make change calls for enormous personal and collective sacrifice, commitment, and resources. There are risks and consequences of pursuing antiracist work. These risks involve the emotional toll and resulting spirit wounds of coming to grips with stories of pain and anger and the stress of having to deal with attacks on one's credibility. Antiracist work occupies itself with assisting minoritized communities to become empowered and empowering, spiritually affirmed and affirming, and with healing “spirit injury.” The key question, then, is not, “Who can do antiracist work?” It is, rather, the question of whether we are prepared to face the risks and consequences that come with such work. Antiracism is about the search for equitable human conversation—a respectful dialogue among social groups. Antiracism holds that community is about relationship)s with others, about how to negotiate with and relate to each other, and about how the community is a collective. Handbook of Black Studies Page 6 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. Asking New Questions Imposed by a New Disciplinary Perspective There are emerging questions that antiracist workers must deal with. Antiracist educators must address the public disquiet and scepticism about antiracist practice and its efficacy in bringing about changes in schooling. For example, our schools are “communities of difference.” How, then, do we, as antiracist educators, ensure that our schools respond to the multiple needs and concerns of a diverse body politic? How do we create schools where all students are valued, feel a sense of belonging, and have access to instruction that is re- sponsive to the needs of diverse learners? To ensure that all students develop a sense of entitlement and connectedness to their schools, there must be a proactive attempt to respond to the needs of all students. It is also important for an educator to know that the needs of students extend beyond the material to emotional, social, and psychological concerns. Schools have a responsibility to help students make sense of their iden- tities, to build the confidence of all students, and to minimize the effects of social constraints that would have students confirm low educational expectations based on their identities. Thus, the contemporary challenge for antiracism education is to incorporate such diverse needs into critical educational practice. Antiracism, therefore, means learning about the experience of living with a racialized identity and under- standing how students' lived experiences in and out of school implicate youth engagement and disengage- ment from school. Antiracism uncovers how race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, physical ability, power, and difference influence, and are influenced by, schooling processes. Antiracism concerns itself with how the processes of teaching, learning, and educational administration combine to produce schooling success and failures for different bodies. Antiracism opines that addressing questions of power, equity, and social differ- ence is essential to enhancing learning outcomes and the provision of social opportunities for all youth. Educators must start with what people already know and then search for ways to situate the local cultural resource knowledges into the official curriculum. As antiracist educators, we have a unique place in the cur- rent climate of school advocacy because of the power that critical antiracism education offers us to imagine schools afresh. If we realize that the shape the future itself should take is being hotly contested in schools, union halls, and community forums, then antiracism has to be part of that debate. Antiracist educators have unprecedented opportunities to influence many minds and to share and engage different (dominant, privi- leged, subjugated, subordinated, and minoritized) perspectives. The environments in which we work offer ad- Handbook of Black Studies Page 7 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. vantages and opportunities that depend on our subject positions and politics. We can work, even with the differential allocation of space and resources, to further the cause of youth education. It all comes down to a question of whether an antiracist educator wants to see current challenges as obstacles or as opportunities and openings to make change happen. This is not a simplistic assertion. I would argue that the failures and resistances of the 1990s can and must provide a springboard and impetus to rethink antiracist education in the 21st century. Antiracist education must take a broader view than that which makes education only that which occurs in schools and other formal institutions of learning. Education is more than schooling. It also, and even primarily, involves the varied options, strategies, and ways through which we come to know our world and act within it. Learning happens at multiple sites, which include schools but also include families, workplaces, neighbor- hoods, broadcast and independent media, the legal system, museums, religious institutions, theaters, and galleries among other sites. Within these multiple sites of learning, antiracist education entails drawing on the intersections of social difference in order to understand the complexities of social inequality. Antiracism poses broad questions surrounding the social organization of learning, such as those concerning what it is to be a person in contemporary society and the relation of this “curriculum,” garnered from the many sites of learning, to the reproduction of the knowledge that shapes and transforms the social and political world. Antiracism must investigate the harmonies and contradictions with respect to what is learned across these multiple sites and consider the far-reaching implications of these for the fundamental issues of identity formation, human possibility, equity, and the pursuit of social justice and fairness. For example, antiracism understands that ex- cellence and equity are complementary, not oppositional, terms and that the quality of learning environments and the scholarship produced therein increase tremendously with the recognition that equity measures are excellence/ excellent measures. Antiracism critiques conventional schooling by interrogating the way schools produce, validate, and privilege certain forms of knowledge while devaluing and delegitimizing other knowledges, histories, and experiences. Critical antiracist practice challenges the dominant interests involved in processes of producing knowledge and exposes and opposes how such knowledges become hegemonic and are disseminated both internally and globally. But as others have noted, the notion of “hegemony” is not limited to the frame of Western knowl- edges and epistemologies. Therefore, hegemony becomes a useful notion for understanding the relationship between multiple social values and complex realities. Thus, through an antiracist prism, we may undertake a more rigorous examination of the (in)adequacy of dominant discourses and epistemologies for understanding the realities of people who may be different from oneself, positioned as they are in oppressive and oppressed Handbook of Black Studies Page 8 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. positions in contexts of asymmetrical power relations among social groups. In other words, antiracism in- volves a search for epistemological diversity in the understanding of the complexity of oppressions given the incompleteness of discourse and political practice. Critical antiracist work requires a broad redefinition of antiracism. This means looking at racism in its myriad of forms and connecting racism with other forms of oppression. But as I have already noted, this practice must yet be a critical stance that helps us to also address the saliency of specific forms of oppression. History and contexts are significant to teaching about race and racism. Educators must equip students to understand the historical genesis and political trajectories of race and difference—the historical specificities of racist practices as well as how racisms become institutionalized and normalized in different societies. For the classroom teacher, one's personal experience, history, and understanding of teaching practice serve as an entry point for antiracist work. Again, considering the synergy of body, mind, and spirit that allows one to see equity work as a form of spirituality and recognizing that the self (and thus the students) are creative agents with active and resistant voices, educators must engage with antiracist knowledge in ways that al- low us to move forward in new and creative ways reflective of our own local knowledges, subject positions, histories, and experiences. The antiracist educator, particularly the White antiracist educator, must work with the knowledge that society treats people differently based on race and that the society's racialized common sense makes it such that dominant groups are able to understand this practice in ways that do not require the use of the label “racist.”5 It is important to note that not all Whites are indicted here as racists. However, there needs to be a recognition of how one is helped or hindered by a racist system. Starting with the self means that the White antiracist educator must acknowledge his or her dominance and privilege and assist other Whites to see the privilege that accrues to them by virtue of their White identities. On Accountability and Transparency Antiracism teachings must move beyond the bland politics of inclusion to holding leaders accountable. This is the only way for educators to establish legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of a local populace. To be accountable is also to be relevant, and it is here that the ways of producing relevant antiracist knowledge be- come imperative. There is a powerful role for antiracist research in the promotion of educational change. The importance of researching difference and oppression is generally acknowledged by most antiracist workers. However, today we see a move for more “evidence-based research.” Although I do not ask for antiracism to Handbook of Black Studies Page 9 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. insert itself in this problematic debate that presents evidence as “objective” and legitimated knowledge, it is imperative that antiracism define parameters of critical research that will make a difference in people's lives. The false split between basic and applied research and the myth of the disinterested, noninvested knower or researcher continues to be exposed by critical antiracism work. Antiracist educators need to make clear the policy-related aspects of our work in an effort to realize material changes. We must not only identify un- derresearched areas and turn our gaze into domination studies, we must also highlight what it takes to bring change. Rather than focus all our energies on the fight to get institutions to support critical work and cutting- edge research, antiracism must strengthen local peoples' capacity to undertake their own research—research that will shift the gaze from the failures to learning from strategies of resistance and lauding the success cas- es. Conclusion The key question for an antiracist praxis asks whether we will use antiracist knowledge to challenge the mas- querading of dominant knowledge as universal knowledge. A particular challenge today is breaking away from the mold of parasitic and colonizing relations to one of affirming the rights and responsibility of each member of the community. Such a challenge involves negating discourses, whatever their source, that either refuse or paralyze our efforts to name, challenge, and resist racism. To assist society in dealing with these issues, educators cannot extend a helping hand from a distance. We must assist all people to “come to voice,” to challenge the normalized order of things, and in particular, to challenge the constitution of dominance in Western knowledge production. Antiracism education necessitates that we connect identity with knowledge production and that we learn from the diverse knowledges produced by our different bodies. The prevailing notions of “reason,” “normalcy,” and “truth” are essential to the structur- ing of asymmetrical power relations, not only in education but also throughout Western society. These notions must be ruptured by a well-conceived and potent antiracism theory and practice. Notes 1. R. Bhavnani (2001), in the book Rethinking Interventions in Racism, makes a similar point in noting that Handbook of Black Studies Page 10 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. many terms, such as Black, White, racial, ethnic minorities, culture, and cultural difference, are contested. 2. In fact, Stephen May (1999), writing on “Critical Multiculturalism and Cultural Difference: Avoiding Essen- tialism,” has asked us to challenge the postmodern and postcolo-nial assumption that “closed borders were there to begin with” (p. 23). Closed spaces are themselves constructed spaces. 3. Race is part of our identities and must be acknowledged as such. For as Charles Taylor (1994), in his ex- cellent piece “The Politics of Recognition” rightly observes, the nonrecognition of identity is as oppressive as the misrecognition of identity. 4. Michael Hanchard's (2000) research on “Racism, Eroticism and the Paradoxes of a U.S. Black Researcher in Brazil” is informative when he notes in speaking about antiracist research that an affinity between re- searcher and subject matter must be seen as a research opportunity rather than a liability. 5. Borrowing from Frances Henry and Carol Tator (1994, pp. 1–14), an antiracist would ask, “How do some Whites perpetuate racism and employ a powerful racist ideology without ever feeling that they have aban- doned liberal democratic ideals of social justice for all?” References Bhavnani, R. (2001). Rethinking interventions in racism. London: Trentham Books. Hanchard, M. (2000). Racism, eroticism and the paradoxes of a U.S. Black researcher in Brazil. In F. W. Twine & J. Warren (Eds.), Racing research, researching race: Methodological dilemmas in critical race studies (pp. 165–185). New York: New York University Press. Henry, F., Tator, C.The ideology of racism: “Democratic racism.” Canadian Ethnic Studies26(2) (1994). 1–14. May, S. (1999). Critical multiculturalism and cultural difference: Avoiding essentialism. In S. May (Ed.), Critical multiculturalism: Rethinking multicultural and antiracist education. London: Falmer. Taylor, C. (1994). The politics of recognition. In A. Guttman (Ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Handbook of Black Studies Page 11 of 12 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. antiracism theory racism race oppression responsibility (politics) antiracist education race and racism https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412982696 Handbook of Black Studies Page 12 of 12