Raking the Field of the Discourse of Racism

Abstract

In order to disavow our social life of a set of social relations as destructive as racism, it is necessary to comprehend it in its full complexity. It is little wonder, then, that racism is yet so much a feature of contemporary social experience. The prevailing accounts of racism institutionalized by the mainstream academic perspectives have created an object corresponding only in part to the wide range of racism's manifestations in our daily experience. Racism has been defined widely as an irrational group prejudice asserting superiority or inferiority of members of races on unwarranted groups of physical or mythical properties, such as skin color, blood, and so forth. Consider, however, the following spreading examples: Charles, a white Englishman, votes to end West Indian immigration because he finds his neighborhood transforming culturally from one of privacy, chamber music and bacon 'n eggs to that of public steel drum music, Jamaican food and natty dreadlocks. Similarly, Friedrich, a white German, votes to end migrant labor because he watched his turf changing from one of Wagner and schnitzel to belly dancing, shish kebab and Turkish delight. Both are clearly racist in their relevant beliefs and acts here. But no prejudgment need be made by them about some a priori group