There’s a way of talking about race and racism that is really bothering me. It’s when people will interchange racial identity and skin colour, and figure racism as discriminating against someone based on the colour of their skin. Racism certainly and prominently involves discrimination based on skin colour, but that is very far from the whole story, and skin tone certainly doesn’t govern identity.
It seems to me that this is partly (largely?) seeping into the discourse I’m hearing from the United States, where it’s really evident how racism has been structured and reinforced around skin tone, with, for black people in particular, lighter being “better” and associated with better treatment and status. In Australia, until a few decades ago, if you were light and Aboriginal, it was a good excuse for you to be taken away from your family, and now you’re told that you’re too inauthentic and disconnected and urban and “white” to be Aboriginal. Skin tone and racism don’t function in the same way in all contexts and amongst all groups.
Racism is of course based on the idea that there are discernable physical differences between so-called racial groups, and that those that are associated with non-white groups are inferior. Historically, this has included things like skull shape, various facial features, figure, and so forth, as well as skin colour. Skin colour has and continues to be a major feature which is falsely used to set up supposedly inherent racial differences, but it hasn’t inevitably been so. A couple of centuries ago in England, Irish people and some African peoples were thought to be of the same “racial type,” and they had skin colours about as different as it gets.
In this historical moment and in a lot of contexts, skin colour is a prominent feature to which racism is attached. Not only, however, do not all people of colour have dark skin, or consistent skin tone across their particular grouping, but all the plastic surgery and denigrating of noses and rear ends and such should tell you that ideas of good and bad supposed racial characteristics go far, far beyond skin. And it goes far beyond bodies, too. We racially code people based on their names, accent, language use, dress, food, cultural practices and so forth.
The other thing is that not only do people within racial categories often have vastly different skin colours, but the imagined baseline for different groups can be quite similar. It’s not a clearcut thing, and you can’t point to the colour of one’s skin as holding a static set of significances.
That’s my main problem with this model of or shorthand for racism: it’s essentialist. It puts race right back in as an essential attribute of bodies rather than a malleable attribute of a bigoted society. Racism isn’t literally based on the colour of skin, even where skin colour is the focus of racism: it’s based on the attributes assigned to that skin and body, cultural and intellectual and physical and more. Racism is about inferences and context as well as bodies.
What narrowing race down to skin colour alone does is to allow understandings of racism to get narrowed down. It opens up the potential for racists to say, okay, something I just said or did had nothing to do with literal skin colour, so how can it be racist? It pins race down to the individual body rather than the institutional problem. If instances of racism are based on the colour of your skin, they’re about how someone else reads you in a given moment rather than that plus the rest of your presentation, your life, your family, your ethnic/racial history, your experiences in the world, and your relationships with the people around you and institutions over a lifetime. It uncomplicates understandings of what is a very complicated issue, which just makes it easier to ride right over the bulk of how racism functions and has functioned.
Race isn’t just about skin colour, and so neither is racism.
I agree that definitely racism is not only about skin colour, it isn’t even necessary about ethnicity at all (hello, Holocaust!). I think, though, that a lot of people say skin colour and mean other characteristics as well (like hair structure), which I think might be because for instance when we say black people or people of colour, the words we are using refer to skin colour, although we mean more. And, there is also this thing of passing – if someone can pass as white, even if zie doesn’t identify as such, zie doesn’t experience the same negative consequences visibly black (or other poc) experience.
a lot of people say skin colour and mean other characteristics as well
For sure, and it’s misleading and incorrect shorthand.
if someone can pass as white, even if zie doesn’t identify as such, zie doesn’t experience the same negative consequences visibly black (or other poc) experience
Definitely. I didn’t really talk about this in the post, but what this shorthand does is entirely erase the identity and racist experiences of people who pass as white – which, of course, is a contextual and not inevitable thing, based on other people’s perceptions rather than one’s skin or other physical features. Rather than bringing passing into the conversation and talking about varied experiences of being racialised and racism, the skin colour shorthand totally flies over all this.
“if someone can pass as white, even if zie doesn’t identify as such, zie doesn’t experience the same negative consequences visibly black (or other poc) experience”
I can’t remember exactly who it was, but some prominent Aboriginal writer has said she (who is pale like her mother) was treated as a white child at school, until they saw her Aboriginal father one day. Then she had to stay in the segregated part of the school playground with the other Aboriginal children. Now, she is one of the people that Andrew Bolt claims are too white to be Aboriginal. So she cops it from all sides. Only one example, but I bet she’s not the only one. So perhaps not always the same negative consequences, but certainly negative consequences of their own.
@ Mindy
Yeah, sure, for instace if you have a “exotic” name you are probably less likely to be employed, even if you can pass as white. I just meant that in some situations you are at an advantage compared to visible poc, for instance considering the all-to-common being stopped by police because of driving while black or walking down the street while black. So this is not to say that people who aren’t visibly of colour are not discriminated against and marginalized, but more to say that you can have certain sorts of white privilege even if you don’t identify as white, because people have to know more about you than simply how you look.
I’ve had many threads about that in the past, notably the invisible identities series, and I’d like this thread to be on topic, so I’ll just reply to this and then let’s get back on it. Again, it’s routinely more difficult to be in the world while inevitably being as a POC, and visibility is definitely an important factor, but I’m reluctant to locate it with particular bodies rather than with how those bodies are read in a given moment. POC who can pass or may be passed will often talk about passing privilege rather than white privilege, which as you can imagine can be contentious and a gut-punching term for some of us to have applied to us, particularly those who don’t have light skin or other supposed white features as a result of white ancestry.
Sorry, I didn’t know that term! I’ll try to use it from now on. I kind of thought that this was what your post was about, but I guess that was more my interpretation, so I’ll be quiet now ;) And thanks for the link, I’ll be sure to read that.
Not to worry, plenty of light/passing POC will talk about themselves as having a kind of white privilege, it just personally makes me feel ill. No need to be quiet. I guess I’ve just talked about how light/passing POC interact with invisibility so much in the past I thought, well, why not write about how focussing entirely on literal skin colour does a disservice to all POC.
Pingback: Interesting Stuff About The Colour Of Human Skin | Lynley Stace
I go by the books when it comes to racism.
Race – a group of persons related by common descent or heredity.
Racism – hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
I tend to go by those standards and I think people of any race can be victims of racism.
Have you heard of racism = prejudice + power, Ashley?
Chally, yes I am aware of the idea.
Pingback: White people don’t have a monopoly on genetic variation « Zero at the Bone