Sanitisation and Race: The Continued Purging of the Nation State
Theories of race science — race as a biological determinant of human difference — have left a seemingly unshakable imprint on global imaginaries. Fundamental to this thinking is race as a marker of deviance (McWhorter, 2005; Quine & Turda, 2016). Conceptions of race as deviance arose with the articulation of race with notions of human development — e.g. ‘civilised’ compared to ‘uncivilised’ populations — rendering whiteness as the norm and desirable, and requiring the control of degenerate, undesirable groups (McWhorter, 2005). Such racialisation and racism are central to nation-states and nation-building practices (Virdee, 2014), leading to actions by states and individuals, to protect ‘desired’ racial groups from those which threaten to ‘degrade’ their mythical purity and homogeneity. Such notions have come to the fore during the current pandemic, with the former President of the United States (U.S.), Donald Trump, repeatedly referring to Covid-19 as ‘the Chinese virus’. Rooted in colonialism, ‘fantasies and constructions of disease contamination and threats are central to the racist imagination’ (Race Reflections, 2020).
These ideologies of supposed racial difference constitute human relations in ever-changing webs of those who need to be defended, against those who supposedly debase and contaminate (Saini, 2020). Such relations are embedded within our systems of political representation, be they liberal democratic voting systems (Phillips, 1995) or elite knowledge making practices (Bhambra, Gebriel and Nişancıoğlu 2018), for example. These inherent racialised logics are made visible in incidents such as the UCL Galton conflict or the political gerrymandering practices in the U.S., thus contradicting the pervasive myth of the harmonious multi-ethnic nation-state. The paradox of the self-proclaimed anti-racist liberal nation-state in relation to its underlying racial logic raises imperative questions about the possibility for those considered racially ‘undesirable’ to make political claims within these systems of political representation.
We understand racialised sanitisation as a characteristic of the modern nation-state, which is a continuation of European Empire and imperial projects, and a marker of white supremacy (Mignolo, 2011). Moreover, thinking with several race critical theorists (for example, Goldberg, 2002), we conceptualise the nation-state as grounded in an exclusionary framework of enmity towards a racialised ‘other’ inside or outside its borders. These ontological foundations of the nation-state legitimize and enact projects of ‘cleansing’ which lie in the shadows of violent modernities and histories of eugenics. Such ‘cleansing’ is reflected in the biopolitical and necropolitical (see Mbembe, 2019; Foucault, 1997) features of the nation-state, for example, police brutality or structural racism visible through structural inequality, not least in health or education. Additionally, the ‘cleansing’ of the nation-state in the present flows from the histories of racial violence and genocide in a non-linear temporality which allows forms of genocide to be an ever-present possibility in the present and the future. Thus, when invoking ‘cleansing’ and ‘sanitisation’, we ultimately refer to the purging processes which the nationstate undertakes, continuously, visibly or subtly, through direct violence, through political inaction toward structural inequalities, and by not addressing historical wounds and inequalities, for example, through reparative justice.
Beyond claims of racial purity by groups with extreme racist ideologies, it can be difficult to see what relevance any notion of a political will to sanitise, purge or preserve from the undesirable ‘other’ may have in the current global climate that professes multi-racial solidarity. This is exacerbated by the shift in societal conversations to racism as individualised and the related illusion of a colourblind society (Bonilla-Silva, 2017; Goldberg, 2008). In contrast, individuals from historically (and currently) marginalised multi-ethnic groups (read, racialised groups) are demonstrably pulling together to expose structural racial injustice, to demand accountability and protest for change. For example, the international outcry in response to the murder of George Floyd, an African American man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on the 25th of May 2020, by a white American police officer has led to a surge in global resistance under the banner of Black Lives Matter (BLM), with participation from across racial groups. Integral to this, whiteness has apologetically prostrated itself, as exemplified by slick YouTube videos in which celebrities express remorse and allegiance to Black lives. However, the hypocrisy associated with this performative solidarity and an unwillingness to meaningfully address personal complicity with racist practices is palpable. In addition, the political will to sanitise is still evident, as whiteness and its fragility are forefronted in state responses to the BLM movement, and in claims of ‘all lives matter’ in public discourse.
Similarly, the Coronavirus pandemic has placed ethnicity (read, race) firmly in view. Claims that Covid-19 strikes indiscriminately have been brought to task as people of colour, for example, in the UK, have been shown to be at greater risk of being infected and dying from the virus. These statistical revelations have engendered a collective public outcry, including by leaders from across the political spectrum. However, these revelations have arguably brought ideas of biological race back into the public imagination (Walker, 2020). Rather than highlighting the increased likelihood of exposure of these groups to Covid-19 due to structural racism that affects their working and living conditions, the public discourse implies notions of ‘biological’ differences. In this manner, we are able to see passive elements of the purging of the nation’s ‘undesirable’ citizens, in large part through political-inaction, or Mbembe’s notion of the necropolitical — to ‘let die’ — through a refusal to address racialised historical inequalities in our current global climate of ‘routinised crisis’.
These events and their responses have risen to the top of the multifarious ways in which race continues to shape human relations. Yet, far from providing reassurance that fundamental change is imminent, experience shows that complacency is not an option, since ‘racial thinking’, and its subsequent manifestations, are able to shift and bend to ride any political storm or historical moment. As Malcolm X observed, ‘Racism is like a Cadillac. They bring out a new model every year’. Indeed, far from a future free of race, in which we bask in racial harmony, a cursory glance at social scientific research over recent decades alone hastily restores a sceptical stance. These texts paint a future laced with higher death rates along racial lines, the result, for example, of reduced access to quality health care, and heightened and ongoing police brutality. In these racial futures, nations declare states of exception to protect their polities from perceived threats. Legal protections are undermined and power wielded to preserve those viewed as ‘true’ recipients (Dragos, 2020). In fact, the future is very close at hand, if not already present.
The goal, therefore, is to discern the current nature of the ‘Cadillac’ — its contours, expressions, and victims. This includes its racialised discourses, ideologies and practices which, despite the current picture of a united front, ultimately work to reconstitute certain racialised groups as ‘undesirable’ and in need of purging from the body politic. These discourses also act to undermine claims to citizenship and human value, mediating the ways in which racialised groups are viewed by the wider public and legitimated power structures — ultimately muting their political voice. Statements such as ‘this is not our country’ in response to BLM demonstrations in the U.S. attests to this. The usage of ‘our’ sends a message about legitimate ‘ownership’ related to citizenry of the U.S. that ultimately requires the negation and destruction of blackness. Additionally, this short phrase can be used to undermine calls for change, relying on platitudes around liberal democracy and legitimate citizenry that distract from the fact that the nation-state is inherently racialised (Goldberg, 2002; Mills, 1997; Mondon & Winter, 2020). Thus, these seemingly supportive claims hinder the necessary systematic and systemic confrontation that needs to occur in order to adequately dismantle, disrupt, redistribute power, and compensate for historical injustice. We are thus left wondering, can political protest, particularly by the ‘undesirable’, subvert the nation-state as a racialised entity?
As a Collective, we are interested in further exploring ‘Sanitisation and race: the continued purging of the nation state’ in order to illuminate contemporary racial logics at a national and global scale, and providing insight into the complex and nuanced ways in which race continues to sift populations into categories of life or death (Foucault, 1997; Mbembe, 2019). In the coming year, we seek to explore the following questions:
- In what ways are processes of sanitisation and preservation at work in contexts which profess multi-ethnic solidarity, and how are racialised divisions still being constituted against these performances of solidarity?
- How are representations of, and possibilities for, political action embedded within wider racialised discourses of political legitimacy?
- Considering the ways in which political representation and related ideas of human value are mediated through masculine forms of power, how do constructs of gender and sexuality further mediate and legitimise or delegitimise political action?
- How can we create forms of political representation that re-imagine symbols of protest, such as taking the knee, so that they do not only challenge existing power imbalances, but also re-centre/reposition racialised communities as legitimate political actors?
- If we understand the nation-state as an inherently racialised entity, can political action oriented towards the state lift us out of our unequal foundational conditions?
- Given the wealth of scholarship demonstrating structural racism across and beyond borders, is justice even possible within the nation-state?
In asking these questions, we seek to centre processes and forces of political marginalisation as they are enacted and reproduced through systems of political representation. In so doing, we emphasise the need to reimagine and recast our existing models of representation and political action in order to take seriously the question of how we might move to a future that both contends with and transcends our eugenics-driven past and present. In other words, what are we to do with the “stubbornness of race” (Walker, 2020)?
References
Bhambra, G. K., Gebriel, D., & Nişancıoğlu, K. (Eds.). (2018). Decolonising the university. Pluto Press. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2017). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (5th Revised edition). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Dragos, S. (2020). Between ‘Death Worlds’ and Resistance: The Roma in Romania during the Covid-19 Crisis. Accessed online at: https://discoversociety.org/2020/05/26/between-death-worlds-and-resistance-the-romain-romania-during-the-covid-19-crisis/
Goldberg, D. (2002). The Racial State. Wiley-Blackwell. Foucault, M. (1997). Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France 1975- 1976 (A.Fontana & M. Bertani, Eds.; A. I. Davidson, Trans.). Picador.
Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Duke University Press.
McWhorter, L. (2005). Where do white people come from? A Foucaultian critique of whiteness studies. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 31(5–6), 533–556. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453705055488
Mignolo. (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke University Press.
Mills, C. (1997). The Racial Contract. Cornell University Press.
Mondon, A. & Winter, A. (2020). Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream. Verso Publishing.
Quine, M. S. & Turda, M. (2016). Historicizing Race. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Phillips, A. (1995). The politics of presence. Oxford University Press, USA.
Race Reflections (2020). Covid-19, Racism & Eugenics: PART 1. Accessed online at: https://racereflections.co.uk/covid-19-racism-and-eugenics-part-1/
Saini, A. (2020). Superior: The Return of Race Science. Fourth Estate. Virdee, S. (2014). Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider. Macmillan Education UK.
Walker, S. (2020). COVID-19 and the stubbornness of ‘race’. Accessed online at: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/ceid/2020/06/15/walker/?fbclid=IwAR1JfrCOqsqV9jFepBwEUH5r6 zZCr6REoeAYSQLfb8AuWl5mCZA7rWjfoOI
