Keeping Their Distance: The Cultural Production and Reproduction of 'Racist Non-Racism'

Abstract

This is the second of a two-part analysis of the conceptualisation of culture, 'race' and ethnicity. Part one, 'Establishing Difference: Culture, 'Race', Ethnicity and the Production of Ideology' appeared in the July issue of this journaL Following on from that discussion which focused on the ideological aspects of racism, this article considers the mechanics of discrimination - the areas of articulation between ideas and actions. Crucial sites of access to the social systems of advanced capitalist societies are identified ('points of entry'), where bureaucratised settings have the potential to rigidify cultural differences. By these means, forms of oppression based upon cultural criteria can come to resemble those based upon 'racial' criteria. Modes of social relations which utilise these criteria are discussed and related within a non-functionalist model of social reproduction.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Althusser, L. (1970), 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses', in L Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays , London, NLB, 121-73.

Bernstein, B. (1977), Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 3. Toward a theory of educational transmission, 2nd edn, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Blauner, R. (1972), Racial Oppression in America, New York, Harper and Row.

Bourdieu, P. and J. Passeron (1977), Reproduction in Education Society and Culture , London, Sage.

Bowles, S. and H. Gintis (1976), Schooling in Capitalist America, Basic Books.

Brown, K.M. (1982), 'Opportunities Which Never Knock The Operation of'Racist Non-Racism' in the Careers Service', M.PhiL Thesis, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies University of Birmingham, UK.

Brown, K.M. (1985), 'Turning a blind-eye: racial oppression and the unintended consequences of White Non-Racism', Sociological Review, November, 669-89.

Brown, K.M. (1986), 'Establishing Difference: Culture, 'Race', Ethnicity and the Production of Ideology', Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 22, 2, 175-86.

Careers Advisors' Handbook (1981/ 2), London, New Opportunity Press .

10.

Castles, S. and G. Kosack (1973), Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe, London, Oxford University Press for Institute of Race Relations.

11.

Gramsci, A. (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks , Hoare and Nowell Smith (eds), London, Lawrence and Wishart.

12.

Henderson, J. and V. Karn (1984), 'Race and the Allocation of Urban Resources: The Case of Public Housing in Britain.' Urban Studies , 21, 2, 115-28.

13.

Hirst, P.Q. (1976), 'Althusser and the Theory ofIdeology', Economy and Society, 5,4,385-412.

14.

Hoggart, R. (1957), The Uses of Literacy, London, Chatto and Windus.

15.

Kovel, L. (1970), White Racism; A Psycho-History, New York, Pantheon Books.

16.

Lawrence, E. (1982), 'In the abundance of water the fool is thirsty: sociology and black "pathology" ', in CCCS The Empire Strikes Back, 95-142.

17.

Lee, T. ( 1977), 'Choice and Constraints in the Housing Market: The Case of One-parent Families in Tasmania,' Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 13,1, 41-6.

18.

Lewis, O. (1976), La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty — San Juan and New York, London , Secker and Warburg.

19.

Merton, R. (1967), 'Discrimination and the American Creed', in P.I. Rose, (ed.), The Study of Society, New York, Random House. 480-98.

20.

Mouffe, C. (1979), 'Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci', in C. Mouffe, (ed.), Gramsci and Marxist Theory, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 168-204.

21.

Parker, J. and K. Dugmore (1976), Colour and the Allocation of GLC Housing , London, GLC Research Report 21.

22.

Smith, D.J. (1974), Racial Disadvantage in Employment, London, PEP.

23.

Smith, D.J. (1977), Racial Disadvantage in Britain, Harmondsworth, Penguin.

24.

Tabb, W. (1971), 'Capitalism, Colonialism and Racism', Review of Radical Political Economics, 13, Summer.

25.

van den Berghe, P.L. (1967), Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective , New York, Wiley.

26.

Wellman, D. (1977), Portraits of White Racism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

27.

Westergaard, J. and H. Resler (1975), Class in Capitalist Society: A Study of Contemporary Britain, London, Heinemann .

28.

Willis, P.E. (1979), Learning to Labour, Saxon.

29.

Willis, P.E. (1981), 'Cultural Production is Different from Cultural Reproduction', Interchange, 12, 2-3, 48-67.