American Multiculturalism, French Universalism, Antiblackness, and the French Headscarf Ban
From the United States’ foundations, colonialism’s oppressive policies have been the legitimating factors of the nation’s authority. “The history of colonialism in North America, the expropriation of Indian lands and resources, parallels the history of U.S.-Indian relations in education...health and social services.” The United States was established upon the crushed psyches (and bodies) of Indigenous-Americans. In accordance to an assimilationist and universalist framework, school was forced upon indigenous youth to re-socialize them so that resistance to complete colonization would be less likely to come about. When it did come about, bodily harm would be utilized to keep the colonized in check. In the 16th century, mission-schools were established for the physical and psychological domination of the various indigenous nations that inhabited what is now the continental United States. All indigenous nations (re-named ‘tribes’) were distinct, with varying histories and ways of life. The unique identities of indigenous peoples were muddled together and eradicated so that a white notion of the friendly/compliant and/or hostile/savage native subject could be constructed in their places. Not surprisingly, the territories of the non-continental United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, have histories of indigenous colonization, displacement, and death as well. Indigenous peoples were told that “a bilateral arrangement” was to be established, when in the 1830s “court decisions...enabled the United States to subordinate Indian nations.” Such determinations of what was deemed law were the means by which U.S. colonizers could create some authority to begin a full destruction of the land and people. In the later 19th century, continued use of education as a tool of colonization was in full effect: “During the years of the boarding school system, Indian children were kidnapped from their communities by the military and taken to far away places where they were punished for being ‘Indian,’ for speaking their native languages, or for practicing their cultural traditions. In these schools, infamous schoolmasters...used Indian youth as factory and farm labor to pay for their upkeep.” Once indigenous people were made docile through death and re-education, “bewilderers” (race-scientists and law-makers) began to create models of supposed biological pathology that used a false science called Craniology to claim the inferiority of Indigenous-Americans and African-Americans. The forces behind the re-education of indigenous groups began an attack that used ‘biological’ determinations of non-whites to compare all minority groups to irrational animals. False historians made claims that there were barely ever any indigenous peoples in the Americas. This was despite the large and diverse nations of ethnically unique Indigenous-Americans who first inhabited what is now the United States, mass numbers of whom were displaced and killed by European disease and weapons. This created a system of pseudoscience to support myths that allowed for the colonial government to further segregate and confine Indigenous-Americans, sending them to reservations in the name of inferiority and labor. “Increasingly sophisticated versions of Eurocentrism assist in smoothing the transition from traditional colonialism to Third World neocolonialism.” In Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon explains that in “capitalist countries a multitude of moral teachers, counselors and ‘bewilderers’ separate the exploited from those in power...[while in]...colonial countries...the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action...advise [the native] by means of rifle butts...not to budge.” The American imperialism that exists in post-civil rights United States is a hybrid of the two. Capitalism was raised in America by colonialism to create today’s environment in which corporations and laws work together to administer physical discipline and psychological manipulation. The work done during the civil rights movement is used as a scapegoat by ideology-makers who claim that now everyone has ‘equal opportunity’ (phrases like this have been used to take place of critical analyses of racism). Claims of equal opportunity for all groups mask the “growing balkanization...[and] racial conflict ...[witnessed in] schools...workplaces, neighborhoods, ...and political parties.” Conservative and liberal politicians are apart of a “para-academic domain” that directs critical conversation away from racial experience “by neutralizing (re-depoliticizing) identity through normalizing practices. “As liberal discourse converts political identity into essentialized private interest, disciplinary power converts interest into normativized social identity manageable by regulatory schemes.” Essentially, state-manufactured markets use stereotypes to shape target-markets, and the state uses stereotypes to “[configure]... disciplinary subject[s]” within certain groups. “The idea that white racial identification could be a handicap” is used in a present day “backlash...discerned against the institutionalization of civil rights reforms.” Such talk is formulated and used by ideologues whose “white racial nationalism” is at risk. Historical structural racism (and sexualized racism) is thus ignored so that new myths can be manufactured to serve post-colonial interests. Multiculturalism is a term that attempts “to represent challenges to the persisting problem of racism,” but has failed to address the structural issue that, without colonialism and slavery, ‘democratic‘ America (politics ironically controlled not by “We the people,” but by interest groups backed by money from powerful corporations) would not have thrived. Multiculturalism does for existing structures of power today what traditional colonialism did for early capitalism during its fledgling stages in the U.S.: by hiding the forces of power behind a syntactical smoke-screen. In the “1970s, multiculturalism was a grassroots attempt at community based racial reconstruction through that vital local institution, the neighborhood public school.” Activists wanted to use the space of the public school to continue civil rights dialogue during a time of governmental backlash responding to the civil rights movement. Language born in activism, though, was twisted into “something named identity politics to suggest the limited usefulness of a discussion of identity.” (My emphasis added.) Dialogue initiated by well-meaning activists was hijacked before further necessary discussion could take place on a deeper level. “The absence of a clear post-civil rights understanding of race has meant that issues of racial equality and racial identity have been vulnerable to re-articulation from the right.” What began as a neighborhood collaboration to keep discussion of race on the table was turned into an ideological tool used to represent political correctness in a supposedly ‘color-blind‘ era to prevent discussion around race. Avoidance of issues practical to race were ignored in order to mend the identities and representations of white men who could not bear the marring of their reputations (well, the reputations of their ancestors by way of a few hundred years) as dictatorial rapists. This stems from pockets of white offense taken at the historical documentation of black sexual exploitation and abuse during and after slavery, such information compiled by black feminists, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians. White supremacy needed a rebuttal. “The culture [part of] multiculturalism [shifted] attention from racialization to culture...[making] racism more difficult to acknowledge and control” and it was thus “normalized in [a way] that [lent itself] to static and conservative politics.” Ideology that claimed that culture was an inherent part of race narrowed representations of people of color, simultaneously reenforcing the biological notions of race it claimed to be attempting to challenge. The mainstreaming of images, dialogue, and other representations of people of color were used to legitimate and prop up white hegemony
Year of publication: |
2013
|
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Authors: | Sharafi, Brynne |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Frankreich | France | Interkulturelle Beziehungen | Cross-cultural relations | Hochschule | Higher education institution |
Saved in:
freely available
Extent: | 1 Online-Ressource (22 p) |
---|---|
Type of publication: | Book / Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Notes: | Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments November 4, 2013 erstellt |
Other identifiers: | 10.2139/ssrn.2349499 [DOI] |
Source: | ECONIS - Online Catalogue of the ZBW |
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014152132
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