Race, Ideology, and Depoliticization (Pt 1)

 

Introduction

Race is still undeniably a structuring force in the United States.  Nearly every measure of resource distribution (wealth, income, housing, food, etc) and social problems (alcoholism, violence, etc) show stark divisions along racial lines: see my earlier post on healing divisions. The US faces these problems despite the liberal narrative of progress that dominates American culture. The rhetoric of multiculturalism, now often phrased as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” has permeated corporations, schools, and government. These sites are traditional ideological state apparatuses- the locations where ideology is forged as common sense to gain cultural hegemony. Yet, despite this colorblind approach, racial polarization is as apparent as any point in recent history. By some measures, society is more racially segregated and unequal than in the past.  These stark inequities stand in direct opposition to the principles of equality, liberty, and justice that define American exceptionalism.

How do these contradictions persist? I will show that this is the role of ideology: to provide the cultural and social support necessary to continue the hierarchical relationships of the status quo.  It does so by naturalizing and normalizing the structures that sustain racial exclusion. To unpack the relationship between ideology, race, and depoliticization, I will begin by outlining the contours of status quo racial ideology, which relies on colorblindness- whether conservative or liberal, colorblind racial ideology forms the backdrop of mainstream thinking on race.  Then, I will unpack the consequences of this ideology; namely, its depoliticizing outlook on race, one that deflects race’s dialectic relationship with material structures and instead emphasizes the interpersonal, ideational components of racism.  Depoliticization is the purpose of current ideology on race, serving to naturalize, historicize, and eternalize social structures organized along a racial hierarchy by presenting this stratification as a product of normal, rational, common sense.  

Colorblind Ideology and Race

Despite the increased rhetoric of racial consciousness in American culture, current ideological configurations of race rely on a colorblind approach: the belief that race should not be taken into account and/or noticed as an explicit component in social structures. There are two noticeable ways that colorblind racism commonly manifests; first, as something we have already achieved.  The sentiment here is that, for the most part, society no longer uses race as a factor in excluding individuals from accessing resources.  For many Americans, electing Obama was seen as a post-racial achievement, wherein the merits and quality of action of the individual, not their racial identity, are what determines inclusion or exclusion from a given social structure. This is, in my opinion, the most articulated and common explanation of how colorblind ideology operates in the United States. It is so common that even criticisms that acknowledge the role of structural and systemic racism ultimately present aspirational color-blindness as the solution to systemic racism.

Many believe that, as a culture, we are moving beyond these simplistic understandings of race.  There is much more mainstream acknowledgment of the existence of systemic racism and anti-blackness in media and government. Politicians, including President Biden, openly acknowledge the existence of systemic racism. There is also more explicit recognition that race is something to be embraced, not denied, as relevant in understanding the socio-economic organization of the US. While these are commonly presented as counters to the dominant colorblind approach to race, on a deeper level they are emblematic of the same way of thinking.  I call this aspirational, as opposed to achieved, colorblind racism.  This is the belief that, through multicultural DEI, we can live in a society where race is acknowledged, and may even be a factor in determining inclusion, but is no longer influential in determining exclusion. The solutions to racism also present a stark contradiction:  while the source of the problem is correctly articulated as systemic or structural racism, the path forward is almost always about liberal, interpersonal interventions to get people to “counter their bias” or “center the narratives of others” without changing the mechanisms of power that enforce racial hierarchies. 

What unites these two strands of colorblindness is their basis in liberalism, which centers the abstract, universal subject in its orientation toward values.  Freedom, liberty, and equality are concepts abstracted from the specificity of form- regardless of the material structures that shape the subject, the subject is conceived as experiencing freedom in a vacuum. As a result, the choices of the individual are the primary metric for understanding the emergence of and solution to any social phenomena.  Racism becomes a matter of these individual choices- the choice to exclude, the choice to use harmful rhetoric, etc. By placing the agency of the individual at the center of our political analysis, any understanding of the structural dynamics (here, the unquestioned, common sense assumptions that make up ideology) is displaced. The centering of individualism at the core of liberalism presents the decision to “see race” as an individual choice, which directly reinforces a belief in race as made up of biological phenotypes (a biological, not social, conception).  The individual can choose not to see race because it is an arbitrary biological construct.  This creates another contradiction at the core of liberal colorblind ideology:  in one instance, race is an arbitrary biological construct; on the other, the acknowledgement of structural racism demands a conception of racism that extends beyond the biological and into the social.  The trap is that the call to aspire to a colorblind society may acknowledge that racism is structural, but its transcendence still relies on educating the liberal individual to accept colorblindness.  Even the invocation of racial difference is unironically asserted in service to a colorblind racial ideology.  Let’s take a current central issue in racism: police brutality. 

One difference between liberal and conservative rhetoric on race is the acknowledgement of systemic or structural racism.  While there are some conservatives who will admit that structural racism is real, it’s been embraced as part of establishment rhetoric for liberals.  Joe Biden, a primary architect of mass incarceration in America, has frequently invoked the existence of structural racism.  This was openly used as liberal rhetoric back in 2016.  We even had the spectacle of the elders (literally, old) of the democratic party kneeling in Kente cloths as an act of racial solidarity in the Spring of 2020.  Unfortunately, the contradictions continue to emerge at the level of solution. Liberal democrats have become openly hostile to calls to defund the police, even blaming BLM for democratic losses in the 2020 elections. Joe Biden has actually called to increase funding for the police, specifically focusing on things like community policing and implicit bias training.  These are fundamentally disjointed diagnoses.  The rhetoric claims that there is an understanding that structural racism is real, but the solutions presented are focused on educating individuals to ascend beyond their racial biases to the plane of colorblind racial ideology. While racism is invoked as a structural or systemic issue, analysis inevitably shifts back to the focus on the individual (or collection of individuals or, my favorite, the absurd belief that racism resides in the GOP but is somehow apart from the democratic party).

Idealism, Materialism, and Race

This ahistorical reading of race, which simultaneously places race as embedded in societal structures while only ever isolating the level of the individual for solutions, takes us back to a crucial point in the formation of ideological studies after Marx: the difference between materialism and idealism.  Prior to Marx, much intellectual thinking invested in idealism:  the belief that ideas are generated in the mind, then willed into existence physically.  We think something, then we go out and make it happen.  Makes sense.  Marx flipped this by instead centering materialism as the driving force for change.  Marx recognized that, no matter how many ideas one may have, the material conditions surrounding the individual do much to constrain their judgement, possibilities, and aspirations.  Even the types of ideas one may think about can ultimately be constrained by material realities.  Examples like the education system in the United States make it difficult to claim that there is some neutral vacuum out of which ideas are generated.  The emphasis on idealism is also part of the liberal project- change does not derive from the collective, structuring principles that organize and distribute power in society.  Instead, change is about individuals making choices.

It is not difficult to extend this thinking into the arena of race and racism, as I have made the connections between the liberal frame and colorblind racism above. A critical reading of depoliticization, ideology, and their purpose under capitalism requires the centering of materialism.  Ideology emerges as a culture and “idea based” apparatus that can ensure continuity in order to support and supplement the material base of social relations that organize and distribute power. Race, despite what liberal ideology tells us, is not merely an idea in the mind that is then enacted.  Race has a material component.  Historically, it is found and embedded in societal structures.  There were individuals who did not foster interpersonal racist sentiments, or personally own slaves, who still benefited from and were bound up in a set of institutions that radically exclude non-whites from participation. It is vital to recognize this, as it requires our analysis to focus on what groups benefit materially from the production of race, and stoking of racial divisions.

Race, as a socially constructed project to hierarchically distribute power, is tied to colonialism and imperialism.  The production of races was necessary to create the ideological justifications for the brutal exploitation of labor and resource extraction necessary to increase the profits of material gains of Western countries.  This is an ongoing process, though its form is less a direct military intervention and more an international community that seeks to enforce economic and legal “norms” on the global South. The production of race as an idea is, from its creation, tied to the material interests and needs of affluent European, but this relationship is not one-sided; it is dialectical.

The Comfort of Colorblind Racial Ideology

While the origin of race as an idea emerged from material interests, its dispersal and use can be constrained, but not contained, at the level of the material divisions between races.  There is also the function of race as a way to generate psychological benefits that keep people buying into colorblind racial ideology.  And, like any good ideology, colorblindness serves as an empty vessel, allowing individuals with supposedly opposing perspectives to buy into the same concept. These psychological benefits satiate conservatives by allowing them to invest in colorblindness as a way to generate scapegoats for the economic and political inequalities they experience.  It is the explicit articulation of political demands along racial lines that is the true problem, leading to a twisted inversion where it is anti-racism that is discriminatory toward white people, or that anti-racism itself is a form of racism because it rejects colorblindness.  That line of thinking is only possible if one buys into colorblind ideology, wherein we must ascend beyond racial demands in order to usher in equal civil rights. The structure of institutions that disproportionately benefit white people is reconfigured as a neutral terrain where individuals make choices and have agency. The result is that any political project that seeks to fundamentally redistribute power within those institutions must be framed as the cause of, not solution to, racism. 

Liberals are satiated through the personal moral cleansing that aspirational colorblind racial ideology provides.  Individuals can reassure themselves that they are woke, empathetic, and fundamentally “not part of the problem” because they acknowledge the existence of systemic or structural racism, while at the same time never having to support and sustain the kind of solutions that would actually change the structure of society (which could threaten their advantages re: the distribution of power). Liberals can be comforted in enjoying the benefits of structural racism while denying they are complicit contributors.  They get to have their cake and eat it, too. 

Of course, the segments of society that most benefit from status quo hierarchies- corporations, the professional class, the wealthy, politicians- benefit from the psychological aspects of colorblind racial ideology.  First, the use of racial issues can invest political energy into these issues along purely cultural lines, leading to fantastic claims that because there are biracial couples ontelevision commercials, it is proof of racial advancement of society. These cultural issues are no doubt part of the dynamic of race, and should have a place in public discourse, but are almost always done cynically as a way to avoid political investment in fundamental changes that would materially benefit racial minorities. Centering materialism in this situation reveals the laughable nature of some liberal examples of racial progress:  does anyone believe that increasing biracial couples on TV has materially advanced the causes of the black community?  That increased representation changes the material interests of the parties that benefit from racism? Or that it would be more impactful than, say, providing universal health care? Politically, what is at stake over cultural representation?  In the end, very little. 

The second benefit for the professional elite is related to the first, in that colorblindness can become a marketing or branding opportunity for corporations and NGOs.  I am writing this piece during Black History Month, when every major corporation in America reminds us that they support the cause!  Of course, there is no explanation of how this can be compatible with the unequal pay, unequal hiring of minorities, and exploitation of non-white labor both within and without the United States. Spotify can produce a commercial showing how important black history is to music while at the same time grossly under-compensating black artists for their work; Raytheon can advertise the importance of diversity while its business model relies on the expansive use of the military on non-white populations; energy companies can run commercials promoting diversity in STEM fields while the horrific effects of energy extraction disproportionately brutalize communities of color. The effect of depoliticization comes full circle here.  Colorblindness, by shifting racism into a matter of individual choices (even the individual choice to believe that racism exists), allows the connection between a culture of racial exclusion and the material exploitation and inequality that continues to generated it to be severed. 

The Crucial Role of Ideology in Maintaining Racial Hierarchy

This is why ideology is so important.  Even creating proportionate representation in all aspects of culture- the correct number of minorities in control of our cultural and political institutions- would do nothing to end the exploitation and inequality facing millions.  Even in a best-case scenario, misery would be proportionately dispersed, but never eliminated. Ideology serves the key function of allowing us to understand and interpret race and the contradictions in our values that racism reveals, all while leaving the material base of the structures that motivate racism and generate inequality in-tact.

Without an ideological support structure, racism would be an untenable project- it would surely exist, and maybe even among groups like nation-states, but it would mostly be the purview of specific individuals with malintent, and fluid in the face of ongoing political concerns.  It is the concerted, structural, consistent racial disparities we see that prove there must be a structure in place to enforce and encourage these hierarchies.  While political realities may change the form of racism (from overt to colorblind), the consistency of the material divisions between race is proof of the continuing role structural racism plays in the US.

The examples above highlight how colorblindness is a useful tool in maintaining hierarchically organized societies through its generation of whiteness as a form of property and a normalized position of superiority, while attributing responsibility for this as the result of compartmentalized, individual choices.  Ideology depoliticizes and, by creating coherence in our world view through the covering up of contradictory ideas, values, and structures, conditions us to accept the violent enforcement of racial hierarchy while espousing liberal ideas of freedom, choice, and liberty.

I have consistently used the phrases structural or systemic racism, and that language has also become more ascendent in political discourse.  While liberal rhetoric misappropriates these terms, they are fundamentally connected to ideology, which I have consistently highlighted as made up of our common-sense understandings of the world around us.  Our very belief in what is logical, rational, or necessary in a given situation or structure is ideology.  This displacement of the structural in favor of the individual is a form of depoliticization that masks the stark lines of power that create and maintain racists institutions. 

Analyses of structural racism demand the same focus on the common sense, every day, taken-for-granted assumptions that individuals make inside these social structures.  For example, many organizations struggle to recruit meaningfully diverse staff.  While the view in the aggregate reveals racial disparity and bias, the individual choices made by people with agency over hiring decisions do not openly value or take race into account.  There is no obvious discrimination going on, but when asked what standards the organization values, they may answer:  an ivy-league education, a post-graduate degree, or extensive management experience.  These are all seen as logical, rational choices in the organizational structure; choices that have no racial bias.  Unpacking those decision criteria- ivy league, management, etc- shows that they are achievements not frequently available to minority candidates because of the distribution of power, resources, and access.  While there is no intention to benefit one race over another, the rationality of choices made within the parameters of the organization stack up to create an advantage for one group over another. 

This dynamic can even operate within the individual, where the members of management that make hiring decisions have no obvious or overt bias, but have been conditioned over time to value attributes of whiteness.  Maybe it’s no more complicated than familiarity- individuals with authority grow up in certain social and economic circles, and are more comfortable interacting within those circles.  This is part of the processes of normalization and naturalization- over time it is not an explicit racial bias, but the acceptance of values that are constructed and enacted by a predominantly white population, that perpetuates racial bias, discrimination, and exclusion.  Unpacking ideology and depoliticization is vital to understanding how the structures in “structural racism” come to operate on a level outside the exceptional, overt, apparent mechanisms of exclusion.

Conclusion

I will continue to return to examinations of racism, ideology, and depoliticization in the future.  The key takeaway here is that, like other spheres of life, race is only understood through an ideology whose purpose is to maintain, not eliminate, hierarchical relationships.  Even if colorblindness where to achieve its highest aims, the result would be an economic and political system built on unending exploitation, but one which distributes that exploitation proportionately for each race.  Colorblind ideology serves an explicit purpose, namely to depoliticize race, presenting it as a series of problems/causes/solutions related to the individual choices people make, but never presented as a problem that requires fundamental changes in the way power is organized and distributed in the US.  It papers over contradictions, while presenting itself as an empty container wherein competing political perspectives all feel comfortable:  the conservative can use colorblindness to accuse anti-racists of racism; the liberal can use it to reaffirm their own moral standing while doing nothing to reconfigure the accumulation of power that allows the individual to benefit from racism; the corporation can use it as a brand identity and, if necessary, as a cultural wedge to distract individuals from demanding lasting, structural change.  In future posts, I will build on these concepts to show how idealistic focus on cultural or symbolic representation are fundamentally constrained by the material structures and institutions that hierarchically distribute power to the few over the many.  Until there is a reckoning with these contradictions, even as liberal rhetoric increasingly acknowledges structural racism, there will be a change in the form of racism, with remarkable continuity in its outcomes.