Do white people have an ethnic identity?
Politicians in liberal democratic states in Europe, the United States and Canada have often
prided themselves for passing legislation to eliminate racism. Many white American liberals in the 1990s, argues Patricia Williams, believe that such legislation has all but eliminated racism, and that only an ignorant and violent fringe continues to purport values of racial superiority.
Racism, however, she argues, is still alive and well, albeit in a different form. Instead
of asserting superiority and committing overtly nasty acts against people of colour, a form of
racism that was easy to define and against which it was easy to organise opposition, she contends that many white people today treat people with darker genetic-based complexions as
objects of curiosity, beings to engage for entertainment or to demonstrate open-mindedness and multicultural ethic, but not really equal people. This kind of racism, Williams argues, still has the effect of preserving social stratification, only it does so in a more sanitised and subtle manner.
Moreover, she contends, white people generally do not want to talk about racism. Discussions
suggesting that racial inequalities continue to rank people along a hierarchy do not fit
conveniently into conceptions that post-industrial societies have become multicultural. By refusing to engage in such discussions, Williams argues, white people deny the existence of real experiences which black people cannot avoid. The problem, she suggests, arises from an absence of a sense of white ethnicity. White people, she contends, see ethnicity as something that applies to other groups. Whites do define themselves as members of religious, language and cultural groups, but, she contends, they do not share experiences based on their race, and thus lack a sense of white issues. Perhaps this absence of ethnicity may reflect white guilt for past racism, or perhaps it may reflect an absence of shared experiences held by most white people on account of their race. If whites cannot see their own ethnicity, she suggests, then they cannot fully appreciate the ethnic issues faced by other groups. She does contend that a colourblind society, one in which race would make no difference in people’s experience of life, is possible, but she also contends that contemporary American and perhaps other post-industrial societies are a very long way away from colour-blindness.
Source
Aubhai-Brown, Yasmin. ‘Home truths in black and white’. The Independent (Section 2, 27
January 1997): 2.
Discussion questions
1. Do white Europeans have a sense of ethnic identity, or do you agree with Patricia Williams’s argument that whites have no sense of ethnicity?
2. Is a colour-blind society possible or desirable?
3. Do you agree that a new, subtle racism plagues Europe?
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