New Racism

In our society being a racist is unacceptable. Now, this statement may be scoffed at by those who think that we're deeply embedded in the systems of white supremacy and who are complicit in the destruction and annihilation of black and brown bodies that are being consumed by the white cis-normative heterosexist capitalist patriarchy, but how else is one to explain the swiftness with which the accused get cast to the flames?

In my previous post I had mentioned 'anti-white bigotry'. I had done so to comment on a feature of 'hoax hate crimes' as well as other incidents, such as the Covington Catholics kids' debacle and/or the Jussie Smollet nonsense, that have involved scapegoating of white persons based on a prejudicial view of white people as racists.

I'm not getting into those issues again, as I want to focus on the word 'racism' and how I think it has been re-defined in a power-play by black feminists, critical race theorists, and other progressive thinkers and disciplines to subordinate legitimate voices from the dominant culture to their language and ideology.

Up until rather recently, the meaning of 'racism' was a term with a familiar definition: 'prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior'.

Central to the concept of racism, is the concept of 'race' which states that the larger human species can be divided into a number of smaller groups that are sufficiently distinct from one another: these are races.

Our race concept typically involves several criteria and is something like the following:

Races reflect (i) some type of biological foundation which generates discrete groupings wherein all and only all members of the group share a set of biological characteristics. This biological foundation is (ii) inherited from generation to generation, and (iii) it generates phenotypic expressions such as skin colour, hair, eye shape, et cetera. The characteristics generated by this biological foundation are (iv) identifiable by observers such that an individual can be identified with their racial grouping, and (v) this racial grouping has a genealogy can be traced to a race's geographical origin (Africa, Asia, Europe, or the Americas).

'Race', then, is a concept that describes and divides humans into racial groups (such as above), racism is the belief that one's race is superior while others are inferior in some way or other, and a racist is a person who believes a race concept (such as above), holds that their race is superior to others and discriminates against members of other races based on that concept.

So what's the problem? This seems simple enough. Well, nowadays, this definition of racism has been exploded by myriad academic disciplines to encompass an array of loosely connected phenomenon. No longer is 'racism' discrimination against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior, now 'racism' is an outgrowth of the functioning of social structures and one's position in them. This I'll call 'new racism', though it is colloquially known though the slogan of 'prejudice plus power'.

'New racism' spins the traditional definition of racism on its head. In it, 'racism' is thus defined as something like, 'the routine generation of norms and practices that confer material and/or cultural advantages on a dominant racial group whilst producing adverse outcomes for the mariginalised racial group(s)'. So, no longer is racism the prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior, but rather it is racial and social superiority that is the result of prejudice, discrimination or antagonism suffered by racial minorities - belief need not be a part of it, and one need not willfully participate in the prejudice or antagonism.

From this perspective, while members of ethnic/racial minorities may be prejudiced against members of the dominant culture, as well as towards members of other races, they lack the political and economic power to actively oppress them, and therefore are not practicing 'racism'. (This fits right in with the current zeitgeist's obsession with 'punching up' vs. 'punching down'.)

One problem with this concept is the asymmetry: members of a disadvantaged racial group cannot be racist against member of a privileged racial group - or, in North America and Europe, we're told non-white people cannot be racist against white people. They can be prejudiced against white people, they may even discriminate against white people but since they do not hold a position of power and privilege in their society, they cannot be racist against white people since white people hold the position of power in society. This hardly seems fair and accurate since there are numerous examples of white people being victims of racist attacks - most infamous being the Chicago kidnapping and torture affair. There are also examples of inter-minority racism, and there is the phenomenon wherein minorities create intense racist attitudes and behaviours towards their oppressors in order to cope with their disadvantaged position. So, in short, though whites and non-whites alike have racial prejudices, and both may actively discriminate against members of other races based on these prejudices, it is the dominant position in society that is held by whites that automatically makes their prejudices racist. In fact, this story was spun by some right-wing pundits as being related to Black Lives Matter (BLM) - the social justice activist movement for reform and/or abolition of law enforcement and incarceration. By doing so, they enabled BLM activists and their representatives in the media to pivot away from the black people engaging in a clearly racist act, and to focus on the smear campaign against them. By taking BLM to be representative of all black people or to have these black people representative of BLM and smearing it without any credible evidence we were treated with articles arguing that black people, as a group, were the real victims of a handicapped white guy getting tortured by four black people. Total trash.

That aside, from what I can tell, this 'new racism' can be applied to the behaviour of nation states and their criminal justice systems. It can be used to describe unconscious bias and overt acts of bigotry; gentrification is racist, and white flight, also. White people speaking for people of colour, as well as being silent may also be seen as racist, after all, 'white silence is violence', or so the placards tell us. Refusing loans via red-lining was racist, and giving out too many loans via sub-prime lending was also racist. Denying  one's 'whiteness' or having any pride in it: both, racist. Even denying that one is a racist is, in fact, racist. These can all be construed as racist, but the one thing it cannot be applied to is any action made by a non-white person.

Now, one could say that this is a rather parochial understanding of what's being said by the advocates of new racism, after all, there are numerous countries that have no white people and exhibit their own forms of racial discrimination. White people are not needed for there to be racism. Surely there is truth to this, but this new racism is almost never used in these contexts. New racism is mobilised almost exclusively to describe disparate interactions between white people and non-white people: from genocide to colonialism to hiring practices to under-representation in sport to unconscious bias. It's racism all the way down.

Another problem is assignment: how does one become racist? If racism is 'prejudice plus power', then how much power is needed to make prejudices become racist? If we all have racial prejudices, but only some of us have the power required to transmogrify our prejudices into racism, then wouldn't the acquisition of more and more power by people of colour make them more and more likely to become racist? By adding 'power' to the 'prejudice plus power' equation, one would be making racists. But perhaps this is nothing to worry about, since such people wouldn’t be racists. They certainly wouldn’t think of themselves as racists, and any benefit they confer to their group wouldn’t be done at the expense of others. Such a thing certainly wouldn't happen intentionally... Ah, but forgive the sarcasm, and digression.

Additionally, is racism a choice? As stated previously, prejudice and power are individually necessary and jointly sufficient elements of racism, but power, as it is being spoken of in this context, isn't a matter of individual choice. White people don't choose to be born white; to be born into a system that apparently privileges them. To be charitable to the new racist thinkers: being born into privilege (power) is something that just happens. But this hardly makes any sense. A white guy, in Appalachia, who is suffering from a meth addiction is hardly in a position of power or privilege, and yet that person could very well be racist. Perhaps one could interrogate his drug supply and find that it is linked to the war on drugs or something...

To my mind, the racist-making property is vague at best, and strikes me as fairly occult. Like intersectionality - the so-called comprehensive theory of oppression that states that individuals exist in a social matrix wherein vectors of oppression and privilege intersect within individuals who contain numerous identities which, themselves, are products of and/or beneficiaries of those oppressive systems - in short, the theory that states that intersectional identities intersect -  new racism operates in a realm of magic wherein thinking something tightly corresponds with consequences in the world. Hence their rabid focus on speech and beliefs.

Finally, I will close up with what I think is so dishonest about 'new racism': it's that the definition of racism has been switched from a more individualistic and intentional model to a institutional and abstract model without adequately shifting the connotation of 'racism'.

It is a manipulation to use a term like 'racism' or 'white supremacy' which is charged with visceral images of lynchings, eugenics, the Holocaust, the genocide of the indigenous North American tribes, cross burning, swastikas, police brutality, and all sorts of other sordid events when, in fact, one is talking about 'unconscious bias' and 'microaggressions'. 

This, however, is what is being banked on by the users of the term; they're piggybacking on that long chain of racist acts and allowing them to colour the perception of the term. They're smuggling in the weight of past racism alongside the clarity of historical knowledge to make their claims have impact, and control conversation and behaviour.

So, it is not that people are more racist now than in previous years, but rather activists and progressive thinkers are weaponising the language of racism in order to effectively label opponents as 'racists'.

As stated at the outset: being a racist is unacceptable in our society. What better way to turn opponents into pariahs than to scapegoat them as racists?

Are 'Hoax Hate Crimes' Hate Crimes?

Though the legal definition of 'hate crime' may differ across jurisdictions, the common core is 'a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin, et cetera' (National Institute of Justice, USA).

More specifically, a hate crime is an independent criminal offense such as assault, theft, vandalism, et cetera that is: 

• Motivated by bias/hate/prejudice, and;
• Caused/explained by bias/hate/prejudice

It involves:

• A discriminatory selection of victims, and,
• Expressions of bias/hate/prejudice towards the victim's group

And has the intended effect of either:

• Causing/risking additional harm of a particular sort, and/or
• Causing a certain harm/have a certain effect more generally (i.  e. incite fear).

Alongside deliberate offences of this nature, there has been a storied history of racial hoax crimes that involved either:

1. Someone fabricating a crime and blaming it on another person because of that person's race/ethnicity or,
2. Someone committing an actual crime and blaming it on someone because of their race/ethnicity.

In these cases, the intent is to divert investigative attention to an innocent person by means of scapegoating someone based on  racial stereotypes. Historically these hoaxes were often used by white people against black people, and commonly used rape as the crime. These cases ended up perpetuating and amplifying the stereotype of the 'black rapist'.

What I'm interested in is a type of hoax crime that differs slightly from the above descriptions. These other hoax crimes I will call 'hoax hate crimes'.

In a hoax hate crime, a member of a ostensibly disadvantaged group fabricates a crime wherein they are the victim of an attack motivated by malice towards their identity as a member of their disadvantaged group. Such hoax hate crimes are a combination between the hate crime and the racial hoax, but the 'victim' in these cases has fabricated a crime committed against them and/or their community, and the real victim would the be the person who is blamed for the fake crime. So, the true offense committed by a hoax hate crime is the fabrication of a fake crime as well as the framing of an innocent person based on that person's perceived racial stereotypes.

There have been numerous examples of these hoax hate crimes in recent years - particularly in the so-called Trump era that has been said to have ushered in a new atmosphere of racism and bigotry that has 'emboldened' bigots to commit crimes that they would have wanted to commit but couldn't under previous administrations.

Examples of hoax hate crimes involve vandalisation of property with hateful slogans or symbols, claims of physical attack and/or verbal assault, death threats, and even church arson. These hoaxes have been seen all over the place from college campuses and the US Air Force, and committed by everyone from poor people to celebrities.

The reasons for perpetrating such a hoax are numerous: 

1. Gains in social capital from victim status, 
2. Monetary gain (GoFundMe campaigns are almost a dead give-away), 
3. Enflaming racial/societal tensions, and/or;
4. Attempt to distract from one's own misconduct.

In these cases of hoax hate crimes, the crime that is fabricated is often one wherein a racist symbol or action is made against a person of colour. The perpetrator is often said to be a Trump supporter and is almost always a white man, and that makes the person a white nationalist in the eyes of the media. There are exceptions, but the trend is apparent.

It is apparent that perpetrators of hoax hate crimes are attempting to take advantage of the charged political climate and the anti-Trump bias in the media and culture at large. 

So, let us take the now-infamous hoax hate case involving Jussie Smollet. 

To reiterate his case: Smollet first received a threatening letter with a stick-figure of a man hanging from a tree alongside the words 'You will die black ni**er.' The letter was also laced with a white powder that was later determined to be Tylenol. About a week later, Smollet was walking home from a Subway at night when he was jumped by two assailants who tied a 'rope' around his neck, poured bleach on him and yelled racist and homophobic epithets whilst exclaiming 'this is MAGA [Make America Great Again] country!'. Smollet reported this to the police and maintained that his story was true in interviews only to have the investigation come back around to him and find him to be suspect in fabricating the crime.  

Before being found out, Smollet was interviewed and he insisted on the racial, homophobic, and political nature of the attack. 

So, when we look at the hate crime criteria and apply them to this case what do we get? Taking the 'victim' to refer to the framed individual(s) and their identity, and the crime (the 'it') being the framing of an innocent person(s) based on race:

Was it:

• Motivated by bias/hate/prejudice? Yes.
• Caused/explained by bias/hate/prejudice? Yes, partly. There have been reports of fame-seeking/money.

Was there:

• A discriminatory selection of 'victims'? Yes.
• Expressions of bias/hate/prejudice towards the victim's group? Yes, partly.

Was it intended to:

• Cause/risk additional harm of a particular sort? Unsure. 
• Cause a certain harm/have a certain effect more generally? Unsure.

This case is slightly complicated since Smollet never came out stated that his attackers were black, white, et cetera, but the dots were connected and the media and social media went off with the narrative of two white men wearing MAGA hats. The event was made 'racially charged' as people jumped the gun and made their assumptions about the assailants. That should tell us something about the climate we find ourselves in as we had this even called a 'modern-day lynching' by prominent politicians and media personnel. 

That said, why do I say 'yes' in some cases? I answer in the affirmative because there is a clear prejudice at play in the selection of the identity of the alleged perpetrators in the hoax hate crime. There is this prejudice towards white people, particularly white Trump supporters, that holds that they are hateful of people of colour and are more likely to commit violence against them or harass. There is this idea that racism runs deeply within society: it's entrenched white supremacy, colonialism, and racial violence that has been tempered by civil rights struggles but still remains alive, if dormant, in a particular group of people: white people; particularly right-wing/conservative white people. Such a climate could incentivise people of colour to fake a hate crime against them because they think that the idea of a white person attacking a person of colour is believable. This is analogous to white people committing racial hoaxes against black men, for instance, because they think it is believable. To differentiate these examples on the basis of past racial injustices holds little water, and only seems to shed light on the psychology of a perpetrator of a hoax hate crime. 

To believe that a member of such-and-such a group is more likely to commit such-and-such an offense and to use that stereotype to frame them for an offense they didn't commit is prejudicial in the extreme and should be condemned and punished. 

What we often have in hoax hate crimes are unfounded rumours or false allegations against white people who are scapegoated for actions committed by the 'victim' of the crime. This is firmly couched in what can only be called 'anti-white bigotry'. [This is too much to get into, here, and will be a subject of a future post.] 

The problem for the hoax hate crime perpetrators as well as the media and politicians that are all-too-often jump on the bandwagon to decry society as racist is that their demand for racism isn't being met by the supply. And so people have to make stuff up. 

So to the question: are hoax hate crimes, themselves, hate crimes? Why did I answer 'somewhat' or 'unsure' to some criteria?

Well, hoax hate crimes are crimes - at the very least false reporting in most jurisdictions is a criminal offense - and they are directed at a particular group of people, but the malice present in hate crimes seems to be absent in the hoax hate crime. There is certainly a prejudice at play, or even just a belief in the efficacy of that prejudice that can be taken advantage of in the scapegoating, but there doesn't seem to be that intentional curdled malevolence that is apparent in hate crimes, proper.

Unlike many in the social justice crowd: intent does matter. Intentionally attacking someone who you believe is inferior, is a very serous matter, and watering down such things in order to cast a larger net to catch one's apparent enemies is unjustified. Intentionally framing an innocent person for a crime you think others will believe they committed because of racial stereotypes is also serious, and should be denounced and punished.

So, hoax hate crimes are not necessarily hate crimes, though perhaps they could be. Perhaps a hoax hate crime that was made to deliberately stoke up racial tension is a candidate. After all, Blood Libels against Jews would surely count, and analogous scenarios could count, also. If a Jew faked a Blood Libel and blamed a gentile because he's a gentile, and for the purpose of stoking tensions, then perhaps that could be a decent candidate for consideration. 

Even though hoax hate crimes are not as serious as actual hate crimes of course, they are not trivial either as they're motivated by prejudice and can spark unrest or ruin reputations all on the basis of racial/group stereotypes and discrimination.

Now, there are problems with the idea of a hate crime anyway, and perhaps if we could include hoax hate crimes within the rubric of hate crimes proper, we could have further criticism against the notion of hate crimes, themselves, but nonetheless I think we should want the methodology for such categorisations to pass the Goldilocks test: we don't want it to be 'too hot' (include obviously bad examples), or 'too cold' (exclude obviously appropriate examples). If it fails, so be it.

Could a hoax hate crime be seen as 'aggravating' in sentencing? Perhaps. It is an intentional misleading of the pursuit of justice, and it is the intentional scapegoating of a member of a group because of their group identity and stereotypical beliefs about that group. It ought to be taken more seriously and perpetrators ought to receive more ire from the public.

These are not to be considered victimless crimes. They are opportunistic manipulations of racial division enabled by racial disdain and cynicism. The only way to figure that out is to take the time to investigate. 

Let cooler heads prevail, and others roll.

Foucault's Concept of Governmentality

Initially formulated in Security, Territory, and Population, Michel Foucault's notion of 'governmentality' was enriched and deepened in Society must be Defended and The Birth of Biopolitics. This concept of governmentality encompasses the goals, techniques and procedures which are designed to govern the conduct of both individuals and populations at every level, and not just at the administrative or political level, and it coincides with the centralisation and increased government power which produces 'rituals of truth' from which emerge 'regimes of truth'.

Governmentality operates in and through 'discursive fields' which are characterised by a shared vocabulary, organisational techniques based on a shared understanding of ethical principles and their explanatory logic. These develop various modalities of speaking the truth (knowledge) - who can speak the truth and how in the discursive systems. 

Within these systems certain people are deemed as 'authorities', and they are designated as authorised 'truth-speakers'. Areas in which certain people can speak, and about what or whom are constructed and clarified. As a result, practices rooted in 'truths' are created, ie. the methods of shaping the behaviour of others. At his most concise, Foucault defines governmentality as 'conduct of conducts'.

Governmentality is enacted by governments. This may seem redundant, however, it must be made clear that by 'government' Foucault does not only mean the political or administrative apparatus of the state. For Foucault, 'government' is what structures the possible field of action of others. So, there is the government of children, the government of families, communities, populations, the sick, etc.

Whereas governmentality is the set of goals and objectives, techniques and procedures, government is the  method  through which  these  aims are to be  achieved. Foucault calls this the  'disposal' of things: an arrangement  of things through which certain ends can be achieved. These things, however, are not  just objects, but rather they  are a complex amalgamation of people and things; that is, people in relation to  objects and events in  the world. 

Government is utilized to make adjustments in the relationships between people and things by enforcing laws but  it could  also  do  so  by  adjusting  taxation,  prescribing standards for education, by building an infrastructure  as well as by directing moral and religious education.

This development of governmentality does not convey a new theory as much as a new perspective and illustrates a change in Foucault's analysis of power. By introducing governmentality, Foucault shows that there is another way to view power: for if there are different ways to govern, then there are different ways in which individuals and populations become governable. This leads to a more subtle understanding of the operations of power in societies. It allows for seemingly distinct nodes of power relations to be coalesced into a constellation forming the power system in a society.

For instance, let us take the post-16th century disintegration of monarchical power. In this case, even though the absolute power of the monarch was gone, one sees that there still is government. This is to a large extent internalised by people, but there is also surveillance and reinforcement for conforming to the rules. Here we have a shift in governmentality that was made possible by the creation of specific (expert or professional) 'knowledges' as well as the construction of experts, institutions and disciplines (e.g., medicine, psychology, psychiatry) so that individuals who we think of as experts can claim the knowledge necessary to command the power of governmentality.

In his analysis of 'governmentality', Foucault stresses again that it would be an error to understand institutions such as the state as being essentially oppressive and power should not only be thought of in terms of hierarchical, top-down power of the state, as stressed in his earlier works, but also to include the forms of social control in disciplinary institutions, such as schools, hospitals, psychiatric institutions, et cetera, as well as the forms of knowledge produced therein. Power, then,  can manifest itself positively by producing knowledge and certain discourses that get internalised by individuals and guide the behaviour of populations.

This leads to more efficient forms of social control, as knowledge enables individuals to govern themselves. This development constructs a tripartite division of power: i) Juridical, ii) Disciplinary and iii) Bio-political power - which will be explored in the near future.