Tim Stanley, Thinking about Racisms

1. Tim Stanley, Thinking about Racisms Racisms and Antiracisms

2. What I want to do today • Suggest a different way of thinking about racism. • Present a typology for analyzing racisms and developing antiracisms. • Link this to everyday teaching practices, with specific examples of what you can do. • Do all of this before the next class.

3. An Apology and General Comment • I am a historian • So I can talk at great length about obscure things • Use historical examples: esp. re Chinese in Canada • I started as a math/physics person • So I tend to pick on math/science teaching in my examples. • What I am talking about applies to teaching in all areas: • We all teach the same students • Racism can be expressed in Physicsas much as in PE • What and how we teach shapes how racism is experienced. • Although I am talking about racisms, much of what I am saying also applies to sexism, ableism and homophobia.

4. The Old Way • Racism is seen as prejudice • Due to ignorance/errors in thinking • Irrational fear of strangers • Seen as individual • Seen as about “bad” people.

5. The New Way Racisms are EXCLUSIONS

6. EXCLUSIONS OF A PARTICULAR KIND • Exclusions that involve racialization • Exclusions that are organized, i.e., made by people • Exclusions that have significant negative consequences for the excluded.

7. EXAMPLE 1: Name-Calling • You are teaching your class and you hear a student call someone a racist name. • What do you do? • Take a minute to discuss this

8. Name-Calling as Prejudice • “Don’t let that hurt you.” • Focus on Offender • Try to get him/her to change his/her ways • Seen as individual/family problem

9. Name-Calling as Exclusion This is an act of violence 1) Stop it 2) Support/comfort the victim 3) Deal with effects which go beyond the immediate parties, i.e., tip of the iceberg, set of larger issues 4) Ask yourself: Do I exclude these effects from my understanding?

10. What Research Shows • E.G., ManjuVarma-Joshi, Cynthia J. Baker and Connie Tanaka, “Names Will Never Hurt Me,” Harvard Educational Review, Summer 2004: 175-208. • In New Brunswick • Racist exclusion starts with Name Calling • Inadequate response from teachers and administrators • Escalates to disengagement in school • Pattern of lack of school success for African Canadian and First Nations students.

11. Challenging Racist Name Calling • Ms. Sorg

12. EXAMPLE 2: Taken-for-granted Categories in Official Curricula • Too many First Nations, Inuit and Métis students, and students of colour disengage from school • Formal curriculum is about racialized Europeans. • Even curriculum in use is often Euro-centric

13. E.g.: Gr. 8 History Curriculum • Big Idea: “Not all Canadians enjoyed the same rights and privileges in the new nation” • .A1.2 assess the impact that differences in legal status and in the distribution of rights and privileges had on various groups and individuals in Canada between 1850 and 1890 (e.g., with reference to land ownership in Prince Edward Island, …, restrictions on Chinese immigration, the rights and legal status of “status Indians” on reserves, the privileged lifestyle of industrialists in contrast to the lives of workers in their factories, discrimination facing African Canadians) • A1.3 analyse some of the actions taken by various groups and/or individuals in Canada between 1850 and 1890 to improve their lives (e.g., lifestyle changes among Métis facing increasing agricultural settlement in the West; alliances among First Nations during negotiations with the federal government . . .

14. So What’s Wrong? • Apparently inclusive, • But the language used creates the idea that there are First Nations people and then there are Canadians? • It fails to capture First Nations experiences in Canada? • Curriculum does not teach about 99.5% of the world and its peoples

15. First Nations, Inuit and Métis People • Neutral language “lifestyle changes” for people of the plains: • By 1890, the people of the plains had • 1) suppressed by military force • 2) forced to take treaty • 3) placed on reserves and not allowed to leave • 4) deliberately starved by the federal government • In Queensland, Aus., they talk about European “invasion” and “genocide”. In Ontario, we talk about “lifestyle changes.”

16. So What? If racism is prejudice, This is no big deal. If racism is exclusion, This is racism. If we understand this as exclusion, Then we can create inclusions

17. Example 3: Who Hangs Out with Whom? • At lunch, all the Snaidanacs, sit together. • Is this a problem?

18. If Racism in Prejudice • Maybe • Are others prejudiced against Snaidanacs? Or are Snaidanacs prejudiced? • But if they are not, it is not • By then, you know those Snaidanacs. They are so cliquish! • Or maybe we need to better understand Snaidanac culture and what leads them to sit together?

19. If Racism in Exclusion • This is a prima facie example of exclusion that needs to be checked out. • All things being equal, people should mix it up. There is no natural attraction of Snaidanacs for Snaidanacs. • If this is happening in the lunch room, it is happening elsewhere in the school.

20. What Research Shows • Carl James, “Negotiating School: Marginalized Students’ Participation in Their Education Process,” Race, Racialization and Antiracism in Canada and Beyond, 17-36 • GTA School. Highly Inclusive. Apparently Multicultural. • Marginalized students occupy the hallways • Teachers, especially women teachers, intimidated • Staff do not ask why this is the only place in the school that the students feel welcome.

21. SUMMING UP • Understanding racisms as exclusions draws attention to processes of creating inclusions. • It also means that racism is NOT about intentions • Rather racism is about effects

22. A note about INTENTIONS • Racismis not about good people and bad people. • Good people can do racistthings and bad people can do antiracistones. • People experienceracismdifferentlybecause of how itlocatesthemsocially • Racism in the head • Racism in the world

23. 5 Myths about Racism in Canada • There is no racism in Canada! • Onlybad people are racist. • Racismis about individuals. • Difference causes racism. • Children/young people are innocent of racism.

24. CONDITIONSFOR RACISMS (AND ANTIRACISMS) • RACISMS • RACIALIZATION • EXCLUSION • CONSEQUENCES

25. CONDITION ONE:RACISMS • Different Racisms • Each with its own history • Each often takes different forms • Each has different effects • One may be more important in a particular context • Racisms have no fixed essence

26. CONDITION TWO: RACIALIZATION • The signification of real or imagined difference based on phenotype or alleged cultural characteristics. • Always relational, one group is racialized in relation to another • Always absolute, i.e., in one group or the other.

27. A Great Resource for Understanding Racialization. • American Anthropological Association, Race: Are we so different? Project, http://www.understandingrace.org • Racism signifies difference, difference does not cause racism.

28. An Example • “John is the Black guy in the corner” • Always a racialization: It signifies Blackness. • Blackness is constituted in relation to another unnamed category, whiteness. • However, although a racialization it is not necessarily racist.

29. CONDITION THREE: EXCLUSIONS • Exclusions organized around racializations • They are purposive. • Exclusions can be institutional, symbolic, discursive, economic, territorial, political or even from life itself. • If someone excluded, someone else included. • They are matter of fact: Excluded or not

30. The Black Guy in the Corner • “John is the Black Guy in the Corner” starts to become racist if it creates or enacts an exclusion. • The corner is the only place “Black guys” are allows to be. • John is the only person in the corner. (Why is everything else that he is not being signified?) • You know that John does not consider himself “Black” in which case you are imposing a meaning on him and excluding his

31. CONDITION FOUR: NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES • Racisms have significant (“non-trivial”) negative consequences for the excluded.

32. The Black Guy on the Corner • The final proof is • Ask John • You need to at least engage with his meanings • You need to understand how he sees your statement • N.B., to pretend that you do no see John’s Blackness can be racist.

33. Another Example: Who said this? • “Chinese eccentricities, Chinese immorality, Asiatic principles” are “abhorrent to the Aryan race and Aryan principles.” • “[The] Aryan races will not wholesomely amalgamate with the Africans or the Asiatics.” and that “the cross of those races, like the cross of the dog and the fox, is not successful; it cannot be, and never will be.” • If the Chinese are allowed in Canada, “We would have a mongrel race ... [and] the Aryan character of the future of British America should be destroyed.”

34. This Man

35. Sir John A. MacDonald • During Debate of the 1885 Electoral Franchise Act • Took the right to vote away from anyone who was “a person of Mongolian or Chinese race” • Fixing the idea of so-called “Chinese” as not “Canadian” • Chinese Canadians only get the right to vote in 1947 • Status First Nations in 1960.

36. What was Sir John doing? • By disenfranchising Chinese and First Nations, he was organizing racialization into an exclusion that had direct negative consequences on the excluded. • Between 1885 and 1960, every community in Canada had two classes of citizen: • those who could vote and those who couldn’t because of their “race”. • The term for such a political system is “white supremacy”

37. Consequences for Chinese Canadians • 62 years denied right to vote • Made Immigration Head Tax and Exclusion possible • Profound Gender Imbalance until the 1986 Census • Continue to be seen as “alien” in Canada.

38. Can Asians be Canadian?

39. Consequences Still Lived by People in Ottawa • http://www.livesofthefamily.com - Lives of the Family • http://www.chinesecanadian.ubc.ca • http://wherearethechildren.ca/en/stories/.

40. Summing Up Racisms are organizedracialized exclusions that have negative consequences for the racialized and excluded.

41. IMPLICATIONS • Exclusions are the heart of racism • They are matter of fact, one is either included or one is not. • Exclusion is about the effects of our actions not about our intentions. • Thinking of racisms as exclusions opens up multiple possibilities.

42. How to Put this into Operation: Antiracisms • Each condition for racism, becomes a condition for antiracism. • If there are racisms, there are antiracisms, • If racisms involve racialization, exclusion and consequences, antiracisms challenge racializations, create inclusion and mitigate consequences.

43. Condition one: Antiracisms • Antiracism is anything that opposes a racism. • Just as racisms have no essential form, so do antiracisms • Just as there are different racisms, there are different antiracisms.

44. Implications: Antiracisms • No one antiracist strategy or intervention can address all racisms • Even if one racism has been challenged (e.g., antisemitism), it does not mean that others have (e.g., Islamophobia).

45. WHAT THIS MEANS IN SCHOOLS? 1) No one technique or set of techniques can address all racisms or all of their forms 2) Strategies dealing with racisms require constant reassessment  

46. Condition Two: ChallengingRacialized Binaries • Antiracisms affirm that people live between and across essentialized boundaries • Antiracisms challenge the idea that race is natural • Antiracisms look for ways of affirming difference without essentializing it.

47. Implications: Challenging Binaries • It is not about replacing bad representations with good ones, it is about making them uninhabitable. • Admit/name racist injuries without reimposing racist categories. • Recognize racializing acts and disrupt them. (E.G., do all Snaidanacs really hate hockey?)

48. WHAT THIS MEAN IN SCHOOLS? • Talk about “racialized black” or racialized white” or “people who are subject to racist oppression”. Don’t talk about “Blacks,” “Whites”, etc. • Beware hidden racializations, e.g., “Canadians” in contrast to “Asians” or “Immigrants”

49. Schools (cont.) 3) Challenge racializing statements, i.e., those that suggest that all members of a group have the same characteristics, instead suggest, “many,” “most,” “the one’s I know.” 4) Teach your students to do this too

50. Condition Three: Organizing DeracializedInclusions • Antiracisms do not pretend that differences do not exist, or treat everyone equally (as opposed to equitably). • Antiracisms make privilege uncomfortable • Antiracims are about politics, about organizing against racist exclusions • Antiracisms understand which bodies are placed where and how, whether in institutional, spatial or cultural spaces.