The primary problem of US macrosocial conflict needs to be understood in
terms of the concept of "race". This is awkward theoretically because (1)
the concept of race is pretty meaningless in scientific terms, especially
in the biological terms of its general 19th-20th century usage, but (2)
the terms in which most Americans perceive, think, and respond to human
diversity within US society derive from the notion of "race". So "race" has
a cultural and semiotic and political reality in the US that is pretty much
solely a historical artifact and the product of now discredited ideologies.
On the other hand, Americans have now been taught that is it somewhat
shameful to admit that you think in terms of race, especially think
anything bad about someone in relation to their race. This rather
conveniently fits with the fact that most of those with significant social
power in the US do not want issues of race publicly discussed, because
doing so tends to lead to a coupling of strong emotional feelings with
issues of social justice, and that is extremely dangerous for the status quo.
So race is more or less a taboo subject in the US, but at the same time it
is the basic principle in terms of which the society covertly operates.
This is not to say that gender and class are not also important principles,
but they are less unique to the US situation, and they seem to give the
impression that while people unconsciously act on and are influenced by
them, they do not carry the same violent emotional feelings as race. Racial
issues in the US are matters of hatred barely disguised, and of violence
barely suppressed. I think this is difficult for people in other countries
to quite understand. US attitudes among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics (and
to a lesser degree Asians) -- all very arbitrary ideological categories,
not corresponding to culture, language, genetics, or anything so nearly
rational -- are perhaps a bit like European attitudes of anti-semitism or
attitudes towards Romany people ("gypsies"), and of course European culture
in the 19th century evolved racial theories about African and Asian
people's as part of the legitimation of colonial exploitation and violence,
...
but I think that the notion of race was transformed uniquely in the US as a
result of the slavery experience (on both sides), and its longterm
historical consequences ... race never mattered as an ideological category
within domestic European societies nearly to the extent that it did in the
US, nor was it ever as completely polarized into White vs. Black. Only in
South Africa, perhaps, is there a parallel situation, though I am sure that
the nature of "race" as a category there is also unique. I believe that
Hispanics is the US, because many of them have substantial African or
Native American ancestry, became assimilated to the Black vs. White racial
paradigm in the US, adding a third term, so that the semiotic cuts are
something like "White" vs. [Black], then [Black] subdivided into "Black"
[ie. African-American and similar] vs. "Hispanic". I remember being quite
puzzled when I first came to New York from Chicago and heard Puerto Ricans
referred to as 'blacks'.
there is a slight sense today in the US that we passed the nadir of race
relations in the late 60s and early 70s and that things are a bit better
today ... this may be true in terms of overt expression of racial hatred,
esp. by whites against blacks, but it would be rather hard to establish
such a claim in any objective terms ... I think it is more or less a
concealment rather than an improvement.
All this being said, one has to realize that Diversity in the US always
really means racial diversity; it is in fact a code-word or disguise for
Race Difference. To make the disguise more effective, diversity as a term
has been broadened to include all difference, from gays to the physically
handicapped, as well as all language and culture differences. In the
academy, because "culture" is now the primary concept for thinking about
social difference (and we are much in need of more radical and exhaustive
critiques of the concept of "culture" which is probably much too weak and
old to carry this burden that is placed on it today, esp. in the US),
"cultural diversity" has become an acceptable deflection from the more
basic issue, again in the US context, of "race difference", or to be more
candid, "race hatred".
The term and the explicit notion of "race" have gone somewhat underground,
may even be fading back into the social unconscious of many White people,
but if you formulate, as an observer, what the grounds appear to be for the
still quite strong emotional antipathies of "White" people to "Blacks",
"Hispanics", and (real but less intense) "Asians" in the US, it is very
hard to justify any other basis than what was formerly made to seem
self-evident as race. What Americans have learned to perceive, even if not
aware of all its dimensions, as "race" is a unique cultural category,
perfused with feelings and valuations. It may superficially seem like what,
perhaps, a Swede perceives as "race", but is, I believe, quite
significantly different (and more important). Once we realize that there is
no natural kind in reality to which a notion of race could correspond, we
begin to see that its very arbitrariness admits of infinite social (dys-)
functionality and historical specificity.
Most Americans do not want to face the race hatred issue directly and
publicly, because we know that it is capable of destroying our society and
we are afraid of it, esp. "Whites" are afraid of this. We had a very narrow
miss of disaster thirty years ago, and all the root causes and feelings are
still present. Dominant American culture is a bit ridiculously optimistic,
as I think most non-US observers agree; we are hoping that if we ignore the
race issue, and deal only with its safer symptomatics (language prejudice,
culture prejudice, economic oppression, etc.), that time will be on our
side. Liberal White leaders and intellectuals mainly think that the problem
comes from dumb, uneducated working class Whites, who will eventually be
educated and cajoled and economically bribed into toleration and maybe
eventually color-blindness. Conservative White power-brokers believe that
the race problem arises because Blacks and Hispanics really are inferior
sorts of human beings, and that we must be careful in pretending that they
are equal in fact; we must pretend so to preserve social stability, but the
quality of US society will be eroded to the extent that we actually act on
this peace-keeping mythology. But almost no one will come right out and say
what they really believe. It is a comedy of horrors.
jay.
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JAY L. LEMKE
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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