112 - Structural Racism and Trends in the Global ... - The ICHRP

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een argued that the globalised market economy produces ‘winners’ and ‘losers,’ and that the losers are frequently members of certain ethnic groups whose particular vulnerability results from a past history of discrimination, oppression and exploitation. Structural racism works through subtle mechanisms that are frequently not intended and often denied. For example, the old adage that blacks are the last to be hired and the first to be fired is difficult to prove but exists in the personal life experience of millions of people. Is there a ‘glass ceiling’ in corporate employment structures that discriminates on racial, ethnic, religious or gender grounds? Again, personal experience proves it, but corporate statements deny it exists at all. Despite legislation to the contrary, discrimination in housing is a widespread practice in many countries, as it is in educational services. Even in societies that are nominally democratic and racism-free the myth of ‘colour-blindness’ is often shown to be false in daily life. Inter-personal discrimination on ethnic or racial grounds operates on an informal daily basis and affects the life-chances of millions of individuals in the economic, political and social fields. 15 STRUCTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM 24. In the globalised economy many jobs have disappeared from industrial heartlands, as transnational corporations transfer labour-intensive manufacturing to low-wage countries, creating a new underclass of unemployed, and often unemployable, people. Is it a coincidence that the new jobless urban poor (at least in the United States, the world’s premier economic power-house) tend to be the residents of inner-city ghetto neighbourhoods (a code word for Blacks and Latinos, usually), and that the new workers who physically produce much of the world’s consumer goods are the inhabitants of the first world’s former colonies, that is, the ‘underdeveloped’ countries of what used to be called the Third World? The ILO as well as numerous concerned human rights organisation are waging a world campaign against virtual slave labour and dire working conditions in many of the Third World’s sweatshops, whereas the new jobless urban poor in the metropolitan countries find that their welfare and social security benefits are eroding because in the globalised economy the welfare state (and the state in general) has beaten a furtive if ignominious retreat from earlier ideals of social responsibility and the collective good. 16 25. These processes can arguably be described as structural racism, to the extent that they produce a pervasive pattern of discrimination and disadvantage for specific ethnic and racial groups, the socially excluded, a pattern that is hard to break for any individual caught up in it, and which can only be interrupted by concerted governmental and international action. As state intervention at the national level to change this globalised economic structure is less than likely under current neo-liberal ideological hegemony, international organisations bear a particular responsibility. 17 26. Needless to say, not all scholars agree with the concept of institutional or structural racism. Racial or ethnic groups that are included in the concept of ‘disadvantaged poor’ (a term often used in the US) may not necessarily be victims of some kind of structural ‘invisible hand’ that 15 See Jonathan Kozol. 1991. Savage Inequalities. Children in America’s Schools New York: Crown. On social exclusion and racism, see Michel Wievorka. 1996. “Racisme et exclusion”, in Serge Paugam (ed.), L’exclusion. L’état des savoirs. Paris: Editions de la Découverte 16 On the loss of power of states in the new world economy, see Susan Strange. 1996. The Retreat of the State. The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 17 On the new urban poor see W.J. Wilson. 1997. When Work Disappears. The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Vintage. On the concept of the “underclass” and its relation to the issue of race see other works by W.J. Wilson as well as Lydia Morris. 1994. Dangerous Classes. The Underclass and Social Citizenship. London: Routledge. On the workings of the global economy and how it affects labour markets, at least in the highly developed countries, see Stanley Aronowitz & William DiFazio. 1994. The Jobless Future. Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Also: Jeremy Rifkin. 1995. The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labour Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons 8
throws and keeps them at the bottom of the social hierarchy but, according to some observers, they have only themselves to blame for their plight. They are said to possess cultural values that prevent them from improving their condition and to lack other value orientations, which might help them to extricate themselves from their lot. Thus, instead of ‘racist’ economic structures and institutions, the blame falls on the victims and their ‘culture.’ Whereas the former approach would argue that racism must be attacked at the structural and institutional levels, the latter approach prompts individuals to pick up their lives and pull themselves up. Moreover, the argument is often turned around and those who would propose compensatory actions to offset the unequal consequences of structural racism are accused of wanting to perpetuate racial and ethnic inequalities, and of being ‘racists’ themselves! 18 27. No one would deny nowadays that much contemporary racism has its roots in Western colonialism, the first truly global economic system. We are now witnessing racism as a postcolonial narrative which has difficulty in throwing off these roots, and frequently presents itself as an argument for ‘nationhood,’ ‘national identity’ and nationalism. Whereas the earlier racist discourse was needed as an ideological crutch for colonial domination and exploitation, in the post-colonial situation it offers arguments of support to patriotism and nationalism, even as the classic modern concept of the nation is being rapidly torn apart by the forces of globalisation on the one hand and the emergence of sub-national identities on the other. 19 28. The process of globalisation has other implications as well, and these refer to changes in the environment and the perception thereof. The Rio environmental summit of 1992 called attention to some of the major problems long addressed by specialists and environmental organisations: global warming, deforestation and desertification, the threats to biodiversity, the poisoning of the biosphere, the disposal of toxic wastes, the uses of international marine resources, the ‘commons’ of the arctic regions etc. The crux of this problematique is that many of the more threatening and dangerous changes in the environment are taking place in the developing countries, where the world’s vast poverty-ridden majorities are trying to eke out a living. Many are the reasons for this: growing population pressures, lack of adequate environmental legislation, governmental priority on growth rather than on sustainable development, lack of public awareness and information, as well as the absence, very often, of adequate democratic processes of popular participation whereby concerned citizens might make an impact on policy. However, an even more important factor than the ones just mentioned are the policies of transnational corporations which have systematically transferred to the Third World numerous activities of their production chains which they can ill afford or are actually impeded from carrying out in the industrial countries in which they usually have their corporate headquarters. Some of these activities, particularly related to the use of chemicals and the disposal of industrial wastes, may have long-term deleterious effects on the health and survival of local populations: whether it is massive lumbering of tropical forests, extractive activities (oil and mining) that poison water supplies and soils, chemical spraying of vast agricultural plantations, or the unsafe disposal of industrial wastes in toxic dumps without consideration of local conditions etc., all of which must be passively endured by populations that are unable to defend themselves due to the power of economic interests and corrupt governments. It is no coincidence, again, that many of these populations are the ‘subordinate races’ of the former colonial empires or the indigenous and tribal peoples (to which we turn below). Thus, it is possible to speak not only rhetorically of ‘environmental racism,’ a growing problem that emerges in the process of globalisation. Naturally, national states should be the first to defend their environments, but they are not always up to the task. At the 18 Jim Sleeper. 1997. Liberal Racism. How Fixating on Race Subverts the American Dream. New York: Penguin Books. For a similar argument regarding Mexicans in the US, see Linda Chavez. 1991. Out of the Barrio. Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation. New York: Basic Books. For a thorough and erudite analysis of the complexities of “antiracism” see Pierre-André Taguieff. 1995. Les fins de l’antiracisme. Paris: Editions Michalon 19 See Paul Gilroy. 1987. ‘There ain’t no Black in the Union Jack’. The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 9
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