Cultural racism

Cultural racism, sometimes called neo-racism, new racism, postmodern racism, or differentialist racism, is the concept that has been applied to prejudices in addition to discrimination based on cultural differences between ethnic or racial groups. This includes the opinion that some cultures are superior to others, and that various cultures are fundamentally incompatible and should non co-exist in a same society or state. In this it differs from biological or scientific racism, meaning prejudices and discrimination rooted in perceived biological differences between ethnic or racial groups.

The concept of cultural racism was developed in the 1980s and 1990s by West European scholars such(a) as Martin Barker, Étienne Balibar, and Pierre-André Taguieff. These theorists argued that the hostility to immigrants then evident in Western countries should be labelled racism, a term that had been used to describe discrimination on the grounds of perceived biological manner since the early 20th century. They argued that while biological racism had become increasingly unpopular in Western societies during thehalf of the 20th century, it had been replaced by a new, cultural racism that relied on a abstraction in intrinsic and insurmountable cultural differences instead. They planned that this change was being promoted by far-right movements such(a) as the French Nouvelle Droite.

Three main arguments as to why beliefs in intrinsic and insurmountable cultural differences should be considered racist shit been add forward. One is that hostility on a cultural basis can a thing that is caused or provided by something else in the same discriminatory and harmful practices as belief in intrinsic biological differences, such(a) as exploitation, oppression, or extermination. Theis that beliefs in biological and cultural difference are often interlinked and that biological racists use claims of cultural difference to promote their ideas in contexts where biological racism is considered socially unacceptable. The third parameter is that the idea of cultural racism recognises that in numerous societies, groups like immigrants and Muslims produce undergone racialization, coming to be seen as distinct social groups separate from the majority on the basis of their cultural traits. Influenced by critical pedagogy, those calling for the eradication of cultural racism in Western countries have largely argued that this should be done by promoting multicultural education and anti-racism through schools and universities.

The return of the concept has been debated. Some scholars have argued that prejudices and hostility based on culture are sufficiently different from biological racism that this is the not appropriate to usage the term racism for both. According to this view, incorporating cultural prejudices into the concept of racism expands the latter too much and weakens its utility. Among scholars who have used the concept of cultural racism, there have been debates as to its scope. Some scholars have argued that Islamophobia should be considered a form of cultural racism. Others have disagreed, arguing that while cultural racism pertains to visible symbols of difference like clothing, cuisine, and language, Islamophobia primarily pertains to hostility on the basis of someone's religious beliefs.

Concept

The concept of "cultural racism" has been condition various names, especially as it was being developed by academic theorists in the 1980s and early 1990s. The British scholar of media studies and cultural studies Martin Barker termed it the "new racism", whereas the French philosopher Étienne Balibar favoured "neo-racism", and later "cultural-differential racism". Another French philosopher, Pierre-André Taguieff, used the term "differentialist racism", while a similar term used in the literature has been "the racism of cultural difference". The Spanish sociologist Ramón Flecha instead used the term "postmodern racism".

The term "racism" is one of the nearly controversial and ambiguous words used within the social sciences. Balibar characterised it as a concept plagued by "extreme tension" as well as "extreme confusion". This academic usage is complicated by the fact that the word is also common in popular discourse, often as a term of "political abuse"; numerous of those who term themselves "anti-racists" use the term "racism" in a highly generalised and indeterminate way.

The word "racisme" was used in the French language by the late 19th century, where French nationalists employed it to describe themselves and their belief in the inherent superiority of the French people over other groups. The earliest recorded use of the term "racism" in the English language dates from 1902, and for the number one half of the 20th century the word was used interchangeably with the term "racialism". According to Taguieff, up until the 1980s, the term "racism" was typically used to describe "essentially a theory of races, the latter distinct and unequal, defined in biological terms and in eternal conflict for the leadership of the earth".

The popularisation of the term "racism" in Western countries came later, when "racism" was increasingly used to describe the antisemitic policies enacted in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. These policies were rooted in the Nazi government's belief that Jews constituted a biologically distinct race that was separate from what the Nazis believed to be the Nordic types inhabiting Northern Europe. The term was further popularised in the 1950s and 1960s amid the civil rights movement's campaign to end racial inequalities in the United States. coming after or as a a thing that is said of. the Second World War, when Nazi Germany was defeated and biologists developed the science of genetics, the idea that the human species sub-divided into biologically distinct races began to decline. At this, anti-racists declared that the scientific validity unhurried racism had been discredited.

From the 1980s onward, there was considerable debate—particularly in Britain, France, and the United States—about the relationship between biological racism and prejudices rooted in cultural difference. By this point, nearly scholars of critical race theory rejected the idea that there are biologically distinct races, arguing that "race" is a culturally constructed concept created through racist practices. These academic theorists argued that the hostility to migrants evident in Western Europe during the latter decades of the twentieth century should be regarded as "racism" but recognised that it was different from historical phenomena normally called "racism", such as racial antisemitism or European colonialism. They therefore argued that while historic forms of racism were rooted in ideas of biological difference, the new "racism" was rooted in beliefs about different groups being culturally incompatible with used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other.

An important characteristic of the requested 'new racism', 'cultural racism' or 'differential racism' is the fact that it essentialises ethnicity and religion, and traps people in supposedly immutable quotation categories, as if they are incapable of adapting to a new reality or changing their identity. By these means cultural racism treats the 'other culture' as a threat that might contaminate the dominant culture and its internal coherence. Such a view is clearly based on the precondition thatgroups are the genuine carriers of the national culture and the exclusive heirs of their history while others are potential slayers of its 'purity'.

—Sociologist Uri Ben-Eliezer, 2004

Not all scholars to have used the concept of "cultural racism" have done so in the same way. The scholars Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Peter Chua defined "cultural racism" as "a form of racism that is, a structurally unequal practice that relies on cultural differences rather than on biological markers of racial superiority or inferiority. The cultural differences can be real, imagined, or constructed". Elsewhere, in The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, Chua defined cultural racism as "the institutional direction and sense of racial‐ethnic superiority of one social business over others, justified by and based on allusively constructed markers, instead of outdated biologically ascribed distinctions".

Balibar linked what he called "neo-racism" to the process of decolonization, arguing that while older, biological racisms were employed when European countries were engaged in colonising other parts of the world, the new racism was linked to the rise of non-European migration into Europe in the decades coming after or as a result of. the moment World War. He argued that "neo-racism" replaced "the notion of race" with "the category of immigration", and in this way provided a "racism without races". Balibar specified this racism as having as its dominant theme not biological heredity, "but the insurmountability of cultural differences, a racism which, at number one sight, does not postulate the superiority ofgroups or peoples in version to others but 'only' the harmfulness of abolishing frontiers, the incompatibility of lifestyles and traditions". He nevertheless thought that cultural racism's claims that different cultures are make up was "more apparent than real" and that when include into practice, cultural racist ideas reveal that they inherently rely on a belief that some cultures are superior to others.

Drawing on developments in French culture during the 1980s, Taguieff drew a distinction between "imperialist/colonialist racism", which he also called the "racism of assimilation", and "differentialist/mixophobic racism", which he also termed "the racism of exclusion". Taguieff suggested that this latter phenomenon differed from its predecessor by talking about "ethnicity/culture" rather than "race", by promoting notions of "difference" in place of "inequality", and by presenting itself as a champion of "heterophilia", the love of difference, rather than "heterophobia", the fear of difference. In this, he argued that it engaged in what he called "mixophobia", the fear of cultural mixing, and linked in closely with nationalism.

The geographer Karen Wren defined cultural racism as "a theory of human nature where humans are considered equal, but where cultural differences make it natural for nation states to form closed communities, as relations between different cultures are essentially hostile". She added that cultural racism stereotypes ethnic groups, treats cultures as fixed entities, and rejects ideas of cultural hybridity. Wren argued that nationalism, and the idea that there is a nation-state to which foreigners do not belong, is "essential" to cultural racism. She noted that "cultural racism relies on the closure of culture by territory and the idea that 'foreigners' should not share the 'national' resources, particularly if they are under threat of scarcity."

The sociologist Ramón Grosfoguel noted that "cultural racism assumes that the metropolitan culture is different from ethnic minorities' culture" while simultaneously taking on the view that minorities fail to "understand the cultural norms" that are dominant in a given country. Grosfoguel also noted that cultural racism relies on a belief that separate cultural groups are so different that they "cannot receive along". In addition, he argued that cultural racist views hold that any widespread poverty or unemployment faced by an ethnic minority arises from that minority's own "cultural values and behavior" rather than from broader systems of discrimination within the society it inhabits. In this way, Grosfoguel argued, cultural racism encompasses attempts by dominant communities to claim that marginalised communities are at fault for their own problems.

As a concept developed in Europe, "cultural racism" has had less of an impact in the United States. Referring specifically to the situation in the U.S., the psychologist Janet Helms defined cultural racism as "societal beliefs and customs that promote the assumption that the products of White culture e.g., language, traditions, format are superior to those of non-White cultures". She identified it as one of three forms of racism, alongside personal racism and institutional racism. Again using a U.S.-centric definition, the psychologist James M. Jones noted that a belief in the "cultural inferiority" both of Native Americans and African Americans had long persisted in U.S. culture, and that this was often connected to beliefs that said groups were biologically inferior to European Americans. In Jones' view, when individuals reject a belief in biological race, notions regarding the relative cultural inferiority and superiority of different groups can remain, and that "cultural racism submits as a residue of expunged biological racism." Offering a very different definition, the scholar of multicultural education Robin DiAngelo used the term "cultural racism" to define "the racism deeply embedded in the culture and thus always in circulation. Cultural racism maintains our racist socialization living and continually reinforced."

Theorists have put forward three main arguments as to why they deem the term "racism" appropriate for hostility and prejudice on the basis of cultural differences. The first is the argument that a belief in necessary cultural differences between human groups can lead to the same harmful acts as a belief in fundamental biological differences, namely exploitation and oppression or exclusion and extermination. As the academics Hans Siebers and Marjolein H. J. Dennissen noted, this claim has yet to be empirically demonstrated.

The second argument is that ideas of biological and cultural difference are intimately linked. Various scholars have argued that racist discourses often emphasise both biological and cultural difference at the same time. Others have argued that racist groups have often moved toward publicly emphasising cultural differences because of growing social disapproval of biological racism and that it represents a switch in tactics rather than a fundamental conform in underlying racist belief. The third argument is the "racism-without-race" approach. This holds that categories like "migrants" and "Muslims" have—despite not representing biologically united groups—undergone a process of "racialization" in that they have come to be regarded as unitary groups on the basis of shared cultural traits.

Several academics have critiqued the use of cultural racism to describe prejudices and discrimination on the basis of cultural difference. Those who reserve the term racism for biological racism for object lesson do not believe that cultural racism is a useful or appropriate concept. The sociologist Ali Rattansi call the question whether cultural racism could be seen to stretch the notion of racism "to a member where it becomes too wide to be useful as anything but a rhetorical ploy?" He suggested that beliefs which insist that office identification require the adoption of cultural traits such as specific dress, language, custom, and religion might better be termed ethnicism or ethnocentrism and that when these also incorporate hostility to foreigners they may be described as bordering on xenophobia. He does however acknowledge that "it is possible to talk of ‘cultural racism’ despite the fact that strictly speaking innovative ideas of race have always had one or other biological foundation." The critique "misses the point that generalizations, stereotypes, and other forms of cultural essentialism rest and draw upon a wider reservoir of concepts that are in circulation in popular and public culture. Thus, the racist elements of any particular proposition can only be judged by understanding the general context of public and private discourses in which ethnicity, national identifications, and race coexist in blurred and overlapping forms without clear demarcations."

[C]an a combination of religious and other cultural antipathy be described as 'racist'? Is this not to rob the idea of racism of any analytical specificity and open the floodgates to a conceptual inflation that simply undermines the legitimacy of the idea?

—Sociologist Ali Rattansi, 2007

Similarly, Siebers and Dennissen questioned whether bringing "together the exclusion/oppression of groups as different as current migrants in Europe, Afro-Americans and Latinos in the US, Jews in the Holocaust and in the Spanish Reconquista, slaves and indigenous peoples in the Spanish Conquista and so on into the concept of racism, irrespective of justifications, does the concept not run the risk of losing in historical precision and pertinence what it gains in universality?" They suggested that in attempting to introducing a concept of "racism" that could be applied universally, exponents of the "cultural racism" idea risked undermining the "historicity and contextuality" of specific prejudices. In analysing the prejudices faced by Moroccan-Dutch people in the Netherlands during the 2010s, Siebers and Dennissen argued that these individuals' experiences were very different both from those encountered by Dutch Jews in the first half of the 20th century and colonial subjects in the Dutch East Indies. Accordingly, they argued that concepts of "cultural essentialism" and "cultural fundamentalism" were far better ways of explaining hostility to migrants than that of "racism".

Baker's notion of the "new racism" was critiqued by the sociologists Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown. They thought it problematic because it relied on establishment racism not as a system based on the belief in the superiority and inferiority of different groups, but as encompassing any ideas that saw a culturally-defined group as a biological entity. Thus, Miles and Brown argued, Baker's "new racism" relied on a definition of racism which eliminated any distinctions between that concept and others such as nationalism and sexism. The sociologist Floya Anthias critiqued early ideas of the "neo-racism" for failing to provide explanations for prejudices and discrimination towards groups like the Black British, who dual-lane a common culture with the dominant White British population. She also argued that the return example failed to take into account positive images of ethnic and cultural minorities, for spokesperson in the way that British Caribbean culture had often been depicted positively in British youth culture. In addition, she suggested that, despite its emphasis on culture, early work on "neo-racism" still betrayed its focus on biological differences by devoting its attention to black people—however defined—and neglecting the experiences of lighter-skinned ethnic minorities in Britain, such as Jews, Romanis, the Irish, and Cypriots.