Racialization and the Colonial Architecture: Othering and the Order of Things

Abstract

Steve Martinot argues that racism is the system and racialization “The process through which white society has constructed and co-opted differences in bodily characteristics and made them modes of hierarchical social categorizations” (180). Over half a century ago, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was so concerned about the genesis and consequence of the “process” that it issued a statement on race. Reeling from World War II, the global community saw the urgent need to put in place mechanisms for promoting global peace. The establishment of UNESCO in 1945 was aimed specifically at promoting a culture of peace. Convinced that racism and racial inequality were a root cause of the war, the authors of the UNESCO constitution (1945) condemned “the doctrine of the inequality of men and races” in the constitution's preamble. Responding to a resolution adopted by the United Nations Social and Economic Council at its sixth session in 1948, UNESCO gathered a group of experts (anthropologists and sociologists) from almost all continents (Africa was the exception) to develop for dissemination a statement on race that was based on scientific facts. The committee released a “Statement on Race” on 18 July 1950 which concludes that “there is no proof that the groups of mankind differ in their innate mental characteristics, whether in respect of intelligence or temperament [and] the scientific evidence indicates that the range of mental capacities in all ethnic groups is much the same” (9). The statement also asserted that the “biological fact of race and the myth of ‘race’ should be distinguished. For all practical and social purposes ‘race’ is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth” (8). The committee affirmed the universality of the “brotherhood of man” and suggested that race as a concept be replaced by “ethnic” (6). Criticism of the statement was swift and vehement. The controversy prompted UNESCO to empanel another committee to produce a second statement the following year. Over the years, other organizations, such as the American Sociological Association and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, have issued their own statements on race.