Arguing With Racists

By Charles Ponnuthurai Sarvan –APRIL 30, 2021

Dr. Charles Sarvan

Epigraph: “Unhappy the land that has no heroes.” “No, unhappy the land that needs heroes.”~  (Brecht)

Preface. St Augustine said he thinks he knows what time is but if someone were to ask him “What is time?”, he would find it difficult to answer. So it seems with the word “race”. We think we know its meaning and use the term with casual confidence. In literary theory, the Russian Formalists drew attention to the fact that language is the medium of literature, and one of the devices of literature was (through unusual use and collocation) to make strange the familiar and, therefore, draw attention. The terms “race” and “racism” need to be estranged and looked at because of their semantic shifts.

The attempt here is not to provide answers but to share some perspectives on race and racism: different perspectives at the expense of rigorous cohesion for which I apologise. I also admit I have filched bits and pieces from my earlier articles. Though set in motion by ‘How to Argue with a Racist’ by Adam Rutherford, someone who has “studied genetics all his adult life”, it’s not about Rutherford’s book. In passing, I wish Rutherford’s title had been, ‘How to discuss race with racists’. By “argue” it is implied that one side is utterly convinced of its position and seeks to defeat the others who are equally convinced of theirs. But to silence a person in argument doesn’t necessarily mean s/he has been convinced. Besides, as Darwin wrote, ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. May I say that by nature I dislike argument as much as I welcome frank discussion. Argument generates the heat of emotion but often not the light of understanding: argument, as one dictionary has it, means “the expression of opposite views, typically in a heated manner”. Argument can descend to, and end in, vulgar name-calling. The starting point for Socrates was that he didn’t know. This was not the doubt of a Hamlet leading to paralysis but an active questioning, probing, self-examination. Beginning in the late 1950s in what I had thought of as home (Ceylon), race and racism are not abstractions to me. What follows is about race in general though being written for a Sri Lankan readership, it draws on the Island. End of Preface.

The signifier “unicorn” refers to a non-existent animal. Similarly, the term “race” seems to be a signifier without a signified in the real world. But we are loose in our use of language. We speak of colonialism and colonies in instances where it was imperialism and imperial territories: Ceylon was not colonised, nor India.  We perpetuate the mistake of Columbus by speaking of “Indians”, rather than of “Native Americans”. We say “Happy birthday” rather than, more precisely, “Happy birth-anniversary”. We talk of “black” (non-white) people, and sometimes of “the white race”. In reality, there are neither “white” nor “black” people. The paper on which we write or type is white but not the people classified as “white”. Fielding suggested “pinko-grey” instead of white, while Boakye offers “pinkish beige”: see bibliography below. But the dominant West has chosen “white” (associated with cleanliness and purity) and the rest of the world has followed suit through docility or simple laziness. Similarly, there are no black people but shades of brown. But we have a penchant for sharp dichotomy: the guilty and the innocent, good and bad; black and white; 14 million Jews and the rest of the world of almost 8 billion gentiles etc. Shades in between, nuance and complexity are mentally taxing and troubling. “The first problem with being black is that it is literally not accurate.” No matter how dark my skin is, it is not black in hue (Boakye). But ‘Brown’ and ‘pinkish beige’ are not as neat and effective as ‘black’ and ‘white’. The connotations of black are almost invariably negative except, as Boakye notes when, with reference to expenditure and income, one speaks of being financially “in the black”. (Note: the opposite of black in this context is not white but red: to be “in the red”.) I recall that in Sinhala a word of endearment was “Sudhu”, applied even to someone dark-skinned: if I’m not mistaken, the term means “fair”. If someone felt ignored, he would teasingly ask: “Api kalu the?” “Are we black?” Implying, “Is that why you don’t treat me better?” Again, whether the expression has current currency, I don’t know. But Olive-skinned Romans looked down upon people we now consider white, and enslaved them. “In Australia I met many people that to me looked white and yet they swore they were blackfellas – as Aboriginal people often call themselves – and the intensity with which they spoke about their blackness let me know that they really had lived blackness in the harshest sense Australia could possibly muster. How could this occur that people that literally have a ‘white’ complexion (but Aboriginal features) came to be seen as black?” (Akala). Sri Lankan Christopher Rezel, writer and journalist now ensconced in Australia, commented in an email message to me: “being a 100% white Aboriginal makes no difference. First and foremost you are Aboriginal, irrespective of skin colour.” To the chagrin of those Sinhalese who cherish a belief they are Aryans, extreme white right-wing groups will reject them unceremoniously because “Aryan” means “white” to them. (The Nazis narrowed the term Aryan, and even excluded Russians and East Europeans who are very much ‘white’.) Often in the Western press, particularly in the USA and UK, “race” means a non-white skin-pigmentation. In an article written many years ago, titled ‘The term Racism and Discourse’, I suggested, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that a certain kind of racism be more accurately termed not “racism” but “Colourism”. For an instance of Asian “colourism” against Asians, see the personal and painful experience of Martin Jacques whose Indian-Malaysian wife died of neglect in a Chinese hospital in Hong Kong. (It’s argued that prior to the 1600s and the enslavement of Africans, white people saw themselves as belonging to a country rather than to a ‘race’. In simple terms, the enslaved were not Christian and, therefore, could be held in life-long servitude but as the slaves became Christian, another justification was needed, and it was found in whiteness. See, among others, Robert Baird, ‘The Invention of Whiteness’; also the essay by W E B Du Bois, 1868-1963, titled ‘The Souls of White Folk’.)

Though Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty idiosyncratically claimed: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean”, language is conventional rather than individual. So though I am careful to distinguish between colonialism and imperialism; though I refer to the autochthonous as “Native Americans” and not as “Indians”, I find myself writing about “black” and “white people”, sometimes with the added cautionary but clumsy phrase, “so called”: so-called white people. Another expedient is the phrase, “people of colour”, though not its opposite: colourless people.

Those who believe in race are unable to agree on the number of races presently existing: Rutherford estimates they range from just one (the human race) to about seventy. Shlomo Sand (2010. See, Sarvan, ‘Groundviews’, 07 March 2013) states that there is no biological basis for Jewishness, and that belief in a Jewish race is nothing but “racist pseudoscience”. Race is a social myth and not a scientific fact but “Zionist pedagogy produced generations who believed wholeheartedly in the ethnic uniqueness of their nation”. Shlomo Sand is Professor of History at Tel Aviv University and this book was first written in Hebrew for a Jewish readership. It’s as if a Sinhalese teaching at a Sri Lankan university were to publish a book – not in English but in the Sinhala language – questioning the fundamental assumptions of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism. (Professor Sand observes that in Sri Lanka identity contains a very distinctive blend of ethno-nationalism with traditional religion where religion becomes an instrument serving political ends: pages 285-6).  Permitting myself a digression, the popular (and legitimising) Sinhalese Buddhist belief is that they (like the Jews) are a chosen race because they and the Island were chosen by the Buddha and tasked with preserving Buddhism in its pristine purity. How this “purity” finds expression is debateable. The title of Professor Sand’s book (see bibliography below) is deliberately ambiguous: Jewishness is not natural and real but is an artificial invention. Another work by Professor Sand has the provocative title, ‘How I Stopped Being a Jew’. (Perhaps, the title should have been ‘Why I stopped being a Jew’.) Opposition to Zionist policy and practice, particularly against the Palestinians, is deliberately and incorrectly met as being racism, more precisely, as anti-Semitism. But there is no Semitic race (Sand). What prevails is but ethno-religious nationalism. Israel today is made ugly by “brutal racism” and a crying failure to take others into consideration (Sand, p. 76). Israel defines itself as a Jewish state but is unable to define who a Jew is: there is no Jewish DNA (Sand, 79).Professor Sand asserts that he can’t be free unless others are also free. “My own place is among those who try to discern and root out, or at least reduce, the excessive injustices of the here-and-now”.

Belief in race is troglodyte. All human beings “are of one and the same blood” (Karen and Barbara Fields). Genetically, women are far more different to men than black men are to white men (Rutherford). Individuals often share more genes with members of other races than with members of their own race, and so we should speak not of race but of “population groups” (Gavin Evans). But language being the invention and tool of human beings, I fear “population groups” will soon grow the negative connotative barnacles “race” has acquired at present.

Yet another synonym suggested for discredited ‘race’ is ‘ethnicity’. However, the latter term can testify to the resilience and mutability of racism, and the disguises it can adopt. Ethnicity is an aspect of relations between groups where at least one party sees itself as being culturally distinctive, if not unique. This sense of difference influences the perception and treatment of others. Though there are similarities and differences, the former are glossed over, and much made of difference. However, the boundary delimited by one cultural criterion – system of government, language, religion, social customs and practices – does not coincide with those established by other criteria. In short, “ethnicity” may be a Trojan horse bringing back disgraced racism. Ethnicity is a term to be used after careful thought. The term culture can now denote something essential, now something acquired; now something bounded, now something without boundaries; now something experienced, now something ascribed. Race as culture is only biological race in polite language. “Language is the source of misunderstandings” (Saint-Exupery) but language can also disguise and deceive. Finally, as with other terms bandied about, it’s a matter of defining terms and clarifying concepts. Take for example, the word “peace”: Is it peace for the conquerors only? Is peace merely the negative absence of overt war or the positive presence of harmony for all citizens which, in turn, is the product of elements such as justice and a sense of security? (Justice cannot be equated with Law because there can be unjust, discriminatory, laws.)

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