The Global Hierarchy
Of Race
By Martin Jacques
Guardian/UK
20 September, 2003
I always
found race difficult to understand. It was never intuitive. And the
reason was simple. Like every other white person, I had never experienced
it myself: the meaning of color was something I had to learn. The turning
point was falling in love with my wife, an Indian-Malaysian, and her
coming to live in England. Then, over time, I came to see my own country
in a completely different way, through her eyes, her background. Color
is something white people never have to think about because for them
it is never a handicap, never a source of prejudice or discrimination,
but rather the opposite, a source of privilege. However liberal and
enlightened I tried to be, I still had a white outlook on the world.
My wife was the beginning of my education.
But it was not until
we went to live in Hong Kong that my view of the world, and the place
that race occupies within it, was to be utterly transformed. Rather
than seeing race through the prism of my own society, I learned to see
it globally. When we left these shores, it felt as if we were moving
closer to my wife's world: this was east Asia and she was Malaysian.
And she, unlike me, had the benefit of speaking Cantonese. So my expectation
was that she would feel more comfortable in this environment than I
would. I was wrong. As a white, I found myself treated with respect
and deference; my wife, notwithstanding her knowledge of the language
and her intimacy with Chinese culture, was the object of an in-your-face
racism.
In our 14 months
in Hong Kong, I learned some brutal lessons about racism. First, it
is not the preserve of whites. Every race displays racial prejudice,
is capable of racism, carries assumptions about its own virtue and superiority.
Each racism, furthermore, is subtly different, reflecting the specificity
of its own culture and history.
Second, there is
a global racial hierarchy that helps to shape the power and the prejudices
of each race. At the top of this hierarchy are whites. The reasons are
deep-rooted and profound. White societies have been the global top dogs
for half a millennium, ever since Chinese civilization went into decline.
With global hegemony, first with Europe and then the US, whites have
long commanded respect, as well as arousing fear and resentment, among
other races. Being white confers a privilege, a special kind of deference,
throughout the world, be it Kingston, Hong Kong, Delhi, Lagos - or even,
despite the way it is portrayed in Britain, Harare. Whites are the only
race that never suffers any kind of systemic racism anywhere in the
world. And the impact of white racism has been far more profound and
baneful than any other: it remains the only racism with global reach.
Being top of the
pile means that whites are peculiarly and uniquely insensitive to race
and racism, and the power relations this involves. We are invariably
the beneficiaries, never the victims. Even when well-meaning, we remain
strangely ignorant. The clout enjoyed by whites does not reside simply
in an abstraction - western societies - but in the skin of each and
every one of us. Whether we like it or not, in every corner of the planet
we enjoy an extraordinary personal power bestowed by our color It is
something we are largely oblivious of, and consequently take for granted,
irrespective of whether we are liberal or reactionary, backpackers,
tourists or expatriate businessmen.
The existence of
a de facto global racial hierarchy helps to shape the nature of racial
prejudice exhibited by other races. Whites are universally respected,
even when that respect is combined with strong resentment. A race generally
defers to those above it in the hierarchy and is contemptuous of those
below it. The Chinese - like the Japanese - widely consider themselves
to be number two in the pecking order and look down upon all other races
as inferior. Their respect for whites is also grudging - many Chinese
believe that western hegemony is, in effect, held on no more than prolonged
leasehold. Those below the Chinese and the Japanese in the hierarchy
are invariably people of color (both Chinese and Japanese often like
to see themselves as white, or nearly white). At the bottom of the pile,
virtually everywhere it would seem, are those of African descent, the
only exception in certain cases being the indigenous peoples.
This highlights
the centrality of color to the global hierarchy. Other factors serve
to define and reinforce a race's position in the hierarchy - levels
of development, civilizational values, history, religion, physical characteristics
and dress - but the most insistent and widespread is color The reason
is that color is instantly recognizable, it defines difference at the
glance of an eye. It also happens to have another effect. It makes the
global hierarchy seem like the natural order of things: you are born
with your color, it is something nobody can do anything about, it is
neither cultural nor social but physical in origin. In the era of globalization,
with mass migration and globalized cultural industries, color has become
the universal calling card of difference. In interwar Europe, the dominant
forms of racism were anti-semitism and racialized nationalisms, today
it is color: at a football match, it is blacks not Jews that get jeered,
even in eastern Europe.
Liberals like to
think that racism is a product of ignorance, of a lack of contact, and
that as human mobility increases, so racism will decline. This might
be described as the Benetton view of the world. And it does contain
a modicum of truth. Intermixing can foster greater understanding, but
not necessarily, as Burnley, Sri Lanka and Israel, in their very different
ways, all testify.
Hong Kong, compared
with China, is an open society, and has long been so, yet it has had
little or no effect in mollifying Chinese prejudice towards people of
darker skin. It is not that racism is immovable and intractable, but
that its roots are deep, its prejudices as old as humanity itself. The
origins of Chinese racism lie in the Middle Kingdom: the belief that
the Chinese are superior to other races - with the exception of whites
- is centuries, if not thousands of years, old. The disparaging attitude
among American whites towards blacks has its roots in slavery. Wishing
it wasn't true, denying it is true, will never change the reality. We
can only understand - and tackle racism - if we are honest about it.
And when it comes to race - more than any other issue - honesty is in
desperately short supply.
Race remains the
great taboo. Take the case of Hong Kong. A conspiracy of silence surrounded
race. As the British departed in 1997, amid much self-congratulation,
they breathed not a word about racism. Yet the latter was integral to
colonial rule, its leitmotif: colonialism, after all, is institutionalized
racism at its crudest and most base. The majority of Chinese, the object
of it, meanwhile, harbored an equally racist mentality towards people
of darker skin. Masters of their own home, they too are in denial of
their own racism. But that, in varying degrees, is true of racism not
only in Hong Kong but in every country in the world. You may remember
that, after the riots in Burnley in the summer of 2001, Tony Blair declared
that they were not a true reflection of the state of race relations
in Britain: of course, they were, even if the picture is less discouraging
in other aspects.
Racism everywhere
remains largely invisible and hugely under-estimated, the issue that
barely speaks its name. How can the Economist produce a 15,000-word
survey on migration, as it did last year, and hardly mention the word
racism? Why does virtually no one talk about the racism suffered by
the Williams sisters on the tennis circuit even though the evidence
is legion? Why are the deeply racist western attitudes towards Arabs
barely mentioned in the context of the occupation of Iraq, carefully
hidden behind talk of religion and civilizational values?
The dominant race
in a society, whether white or otherwise, rarely admits to its own racism.
Denial is near universal. The reasons are manifold. It has a huge vested
interest in its own privilege. It will often be oblivious to its own
prejudices. It will regard its racist attitudes as nothing more than
common sense, having the force and justification of nature. Only when
challenged by those on the receiving end is racism outed, and attitudes
begin to change. The reason why British society is less nakedly racist
than it used to be is that whites have been forced by people of color
to question age-old racist assumptions. Nations are never honest about
themselves: they are all in varying degrees of denial.
This is clearly
fundamental to understanding the way in which racism is underplayed
as a national and global issue. But there is another reason, which is
a specifically white problem. Because whites remain the overwhelmingly
dominant global race, perched in splendid isolation on top of the pile
even though they only represent 17% of the world's population, they
are overwhelmingly responsible for setting the global agenda, for determining
what is discussed and what is not. And the fact that whites have no
experience of racism, except as perpetrators, means that racism is constantly
underplayed by western institutions - by governments, by the media,
by corporations. Moreover, because whites have reigned globally supreme
for half a millennium, they, more than any other race, have left their
mark on the rest of humanity: they have a vested interest in denying
the extent and baneful effects of racism.
It was only two
years ago, you may remember, that the first-ever United Nations conference
on racism was held - against the fierce resistance of the US (and that
in the Clinton era). Nothing more eloquently testifies to the unwillingness
of western governments to engage in a global dialogue about the problem
of racism.
If racism is now
more widely recognized than it used to be, the situation is likely to
be transformed over the next few decades. As migration increases, as
the regime of denial is challenged, as subordinate races find the will
and confidence to challenge the dominant race, as understanding of racism
develops, as we become more aware of other racisms like that of the
Han Chinese, then the global prominence of racism is surely set to increase
dramatically.
It is rare to hear
a political leader speaking the discourse of color Robert Mugabe is
one, but he is tainted and discredited. The Malaysian prime minister,
Mahathir Mohamed, is articulate on the subject of white privilege and
the global hierarchy. The most striking example by a huge margin, though,
is Nelson Mandela. When it comes to color, his sacrifice is beyond compare
and his authority unimpeachable. And his message is always universal
- not confined to the interests of one race. It is he who has suggested
that western support for Israel has something to do with race. It is
he who has hinted that it is no accident that the authority of the UN
is under threat at a time when its secretary general is black. And yet
his voice is almost alone in a world where race oozes from every pore
of humanity. In a world where racism is becoming increasingly important,
we will need more such leaders. And invariably they will be people of
color: on this subject whites lack moral authority. I could only understand
the racism suffered by my wife through her words and experience. I never
felt it myself. The difference is utterly fundamental.
Martin Jacques is
a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. The death of his
wife, Harinder Veriah, in 2000 in a Hong Kong hospital triggered an
outcry which culminated in this summer's announcement by the Hong Kong
government that it would introduce anti-racist legislation for the first
time [email protected]
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