ABSTRACT
Racism has dogged Western countries for centuries. It has proved extremely adaptable in meeting new circumstances and being incorporated into attempts aimed at dismantling it. Thus, legislative changes, anti-racism awareness training, affirmative action programmes, have all failed to eradicate it. Indeed, in the current controversies, affirmative action programmes have become the centrepiece of a backlash against anti-racist initiatives and been accused of promoting ‘reverse discrimination’ which penalises white men. This article explores some of the issues involved in the debates over affirmative action and concludes that more needs to be done if the collective grievances of people who have been wronged historically are to be fully addressed.
Countering racial discrimination in Europe has been on the agenda for some time. In recent periods, a number of different policy initiatives have been instigated to deal with the problem. These have ranged from societal-level measures such as specific forms of legislation aimed at making certain types of behaviours unlawful, to individual programmes aimed at increasing personal awareness. In addition, both black and white anti-racists have launched various social movements which have sought to eliminate it, for example, Rock Against Racism, SOS-Racisme. 1 On a continental level, the European Union named 1997 as European Year Against Racism in an effort aimed at raising a broader political commitment to racial equality. Yet, despite efforts to oppose it, widespread racial discrimination persists throughout Europe (Cheles et al. 1991; Bjorgo and Witte 1993).
Though racism has been evident in Europe for centuries, the forms it takes have constantly adapted to changing circumstances and acquired new34 dimensions. The more recent racist discourses have been directed against approximately 18 million legal inhabitants of Europe without European Union (EU) nationality and an unknown number of others who have not entered the continent through legal means. Most of this target group has Third World origins. Even if legally domiciled, these people have few, if any, social, economic and political rights in most European countries. They are usually found at the lower rungs of the labour hierarchy, undertaking jobs that white European nationals do not want at low rates of pay. These people form part of a large socially invisible group of people who are marginalised and excluded from having access to society’s resources and its decision-making structures.
They are at the receiving end of racism, particularly the virulent forms articulated by Far Right organisations. By racism, I refer to a set of racialised power relations which are based on the belief in the inherent superiority of one ‘race’ over (an)other(s) and thereby its right to dominate (Lorde 1984: 115). Not all people who are currently targeted by racists in Europe have black skin colour. Some are white, for example, people of Germanic ethnicity who hail from the former Eastern Europe in Germany, Irish people in Britain, Southern Italians or meridionale as they are disparagingly called, in Italy (Bossi 1992), Algerian nationals in France and those who originate in the former Yugoslavia. Some, like the first three categories are also EU nationals and are additional to the numbers cited above. Some others have had Arabic ancestors, as in the case of people from North Africa in France and Italy and those from the Middle East in France. Others hail from Turkey, and reside mainly in Germany (Walraff 1991) and the Netherlands. These last three groups are linked together by their Islamic faith, more than their ethnicity, a factor they share with white Muslims from the former Yugoslavia. Islamophobia has become the latest expression of cultural racism in Europe and targets those following Koranic lifestyles.
Thus, contemporary racist discourse focuses on cultural attributes which differentiate the targeted groups more than the biological features which formed the crux of earlier forms of racist discourse (Barker 1981), particularly that which became known as ‘scientific racism’ (Adas 1989). Although currently associated with discussions around people of African descent (Hernstein and Murray 1996), ‘scientific racism’ was initially aimed more against people of the ‘Caucasian race’ which it subdivided into Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean, than it was those of African origins (D’Souza 1995). It thereby created a racialised hierarchy of skin colour amongst the ‘white race’ that cast as inferior those who had darker skin tones. ‘Race’ and racism are, therefore, social constructs aimed at creating, re-creating, enforcing and re-enforcing relations of domination which racialise the personal and collective identities of people. That is, they make explicit those 35dimensions of life which matter for the purposes of asserting the racial superiority of the dominant ethnic group.
Despite their shared plight, the diversity contained within these racialised groups makes it difficult to plan a common policy or set of policies which will address their need to be fully accepted as an integral part of the body politic with as much a right to be admitted into civil society and call on social resources as any one else living in Europe.
Moreover, their exclusion from civil society has been punctuated with overt acts of hostility and physical violence carried out against them. Since the 1980s, violence against those who are racially discriminated against has increased dramatically (La Rose 1991; Bjorgo and Witte 1993). These have varied from the horrific murders of Turkish families carried out by neo-Nazi right-wing extremists in Germany to the ‘Terroni a casa’ epithets telling Southern Italians to leave Northern Italy or else!
These attacks have been paralleled by the increasing electoral popularity of extremist right-wing parties and the mainstreaming of many of their ideas, particularly with regards to immigration controls, throughout Europe. The immigration debate provides the respectable face of racist ideologies on the continent today. This discourse has been conducted primarily in terms which seek to belittle and dehumanise those seeking entry so that their unacceptability can be expressed as a need to reduce their numbers for the purposes of retaining ‘harmonious race relations’. This line of reasoning has the advantage of shifting the debate on to those seeking entry, be they (im)migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, rather than upon the necessity of the receiving country to tackle manifestations of racism within its own borders. This treatment has also encompassed people of similar ethnic origins or characteristics who are already resident in Europe and turned them into objects for attack. So, for example, British blacks born and raised in England complain that they are subjected to unwarranted police harassment despite being part of the law-abiding segment of the population (Gordon 1984). As long as this mentality persists, the issue of how to develop truly multicultural societies cannot be properly addressed. Yet, finding a way of resolving these tensions in anti-racist directions is a crucial matter for European nation-states to address as they prepare to leave the twentieth century behind. The importance of effectively countering racism becomes even more urgent given the globalising tendencies of the current phase of capitalism and its capacity to homogenise diverse cultures by incorporating them into its ambit despite wishes to the contrary expressed by those adhering to lifestyles organised along different lines.
Racism is a problem that impacts on social work as well as the broader society in which the profession is located. In this chapter I examine some of the issues that racism poses for a social work profession that is developing36within the context of globalisation. In the course of doing so, I focus on the policy of ‘affirmative action’ as a way of dealing with the problems engendered by the various aspects of racial discrimination.
