(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

More on writing about races and cultures not one's own: We worry about it too., a terrific posting by Black writer nojojojo about how every writer can fall into the stereotypes. "This stuff gets in all of us. It's like a perpetual infection; we have to constantly watch for the symptoms and repeatedly innoculate ourselves against it, lest it flare up and devour our souls."

I've probably posted this before, but here it is again: an online extract from Cultural Etiquette: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned. I discovered this firm but gentle little book (probably in Lambda Rising) in the nineties, and it was a real eye-opener for me. It's worth tracking down a second-hand copy online.

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

And on a group level, no individual ethnic group has that much power over another much in a social democratic state that repudiates racial discrimination as policy, rather the Government has power over all, in a manner formally restricted from distinguishing by ethnicity.

'Power over' isn't the real issue, especially now we legally attempt to restrict discrimination based on race. 'Power to' is the big issue — power to obtain education, wealth, and opportunity, power to enforce their legal rights. In this, Arabic Australians have as much power as any Australian ethnic group with a reasonably high percentage of recent immigrants, which is to say not as much as white Australians, but still vastly more than most Indigenous Australians, particularly those in remote communities.

And if there are different levels of the ability to pursue wealth and other forms of privilege, and in ability to enforce legal rights, soon enough that starts to grant power over, because the rich and powerful always have some level of power over the poor and disempowered.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Sorry if I seem thick, but I'm not following your thinking at all! First you seem to be saying that, given the law, no ethnic/racial group can have much power over another group; then you point out that some groups do have more power and that this translates into power over other groups. You mention the access of individuals to wealth, education, legal resources, etc, but what about institutions, such as politics, the courts, and the media? Are you objecting to the concept itself of "insitutional racism"?

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

(an earlier reply got eaten by a crash, unfortunately, so this shorter but hopefully more succinct one will have to substitute)

I don't have any issue with the concept itself of institutional racism. I am merely saying that in a political environment where racial discrimination per se is de jure forbidden (such as most Australian institutions), institutional racism generally doesn't take the form of straight out acts of discrimination, but instead mostly take the form of amplification and maintenance of privilege. So I think asking 'what power does this ethnic group have other another?' is not as useful a question as 'what advantage does this system give to those it privileges?' -- looking for overt exercise of power by one ethnic group over another will tend to downplay the extent of institutional racism.

Universities, for example, don't grade on race, and it is often explicitly forbidden for race to be considered as a factor -- but it sure is easier to get a good grade if you have a nice middle class secondary education, a shared cultural context with the majority of staff and students, a solid grasp of the (dead white males dominated) Western canon, self-confidence in front of groups of other students, a native speakers fluent grasp of Engish, etc. And thus, the position of the privileged is maintained for another generation (and note, only some of those advantages have any direct correlation to race).. The only power of one group over another that is needed for institutional racism is the power of the privileged to keep grabbing the good stuff for themselves -- and the sneaky part is that privilege is defined in a way that isn't, for the most part, directly dependent on race, but happens to have a very high, and occasionally clearly causal, correlation to it (such as familiarity with the Western canon) (though of course whiteness is not the only privilege, classism etc are also at work).

what about institutions, such as politics, the courts, and the media?
Such institutions make a good illustration of what I am talking about, in that it is possible for a non-white person to make it to the top levels of such institutions, yet it is still far easier for a white person to do so, and privilege is thus amplified and maintained while avoiding actual explicit discrimination. Chinese Australians, for example, have been recently elected to federal Cabinet and to Lord Mayor of a major city, so you would have to say that White Australians do not have the power to deny Chinese Australians high political office -- but yet institutional racism still generally amplifies and maintains white privilege in the political system, and makes it easier to white people to do so.

That was my point -- institutional racism can, and in Australia largely does, exist in an atmosphere in which formal racial discrimination is de jure forbidden.