Racialized Group Identities (Focus on Japanese in Hawai`i and Afrikaners)

Racial identity construction establishes a line which separates “us” from “them” by creating boundaries and assigning meaning to those boundaries and the people described by them. These boundaries and meanings can be asserted internally, by the group, or they may be assigned externally, by outsiders. They are created over time and are influenced by a mixture of historical, political, social and cultural factors which each affect identity construction by varying degrees and in different ways. Due to the influence of these factors, identity construction is an ongoing process; boundaries and meanings shift and change in light of new information, policies, norms and cultural ideals (Cornell and Hartmann, 2007). In this post I will explain the importance of these historical, political, social and cultural factors to the development of racialized group identities by focusing on the racial identity formation of Japanese in Hawai`i and Afrikaners in South Africa. I will highlight the critical arenas in which construction occurred and use the examples to illustrate the importance of history to the creation of racial identity formation.

Racial identities are, in part, the products of interactions between social actors, and although construction may occur anywhere within the social realm, there are six arenas in which these interactions are critical to formation: politics, labor markets, residential space, social institutions, culture and daily experience (Cornell and Hartmann, 2007:170).  It is within these arenas that boundaries are created, defined, defended and broken down; it is also where meaning is ascribed, asserted and internalized—most often within several arenas at once.  It can be difficult to isolate the effect of one arena from another as they are often linked and overlap, as will be illustrated within the example of the Japanese in Hawai`i.

In order to discuss the construction of a group racial identity for Japanese Americans in Hawai`i, one must have an understanding of the history of the islands. The children of these white missionaries began sugar plantations, which would create a white oligarchy and change the racial and ethnic make-up of the islands forever. Due to the introduction of European diseases Native Hawaiians were unable to supply a large enough labor force, so plantation owners used their economic wealth and political power to bring in laborers from China, Japan and other Asian countries. Plantation owners segregated their housing by ethnic group because each group was given different wages and there was fear that these groups would unite and demand equal wages. In order to distinguish the various ethnic groups from one another, they instated a system of differently shaped identification badges (Kinzer, 2006; Okamura, 2008; Miyares, 2008).  Through their use of segregation and classification, plantation owners created two boundaries; the first was racial, between the Asian plantation workers and the white plantation owners which was reinforced by a large power differential, it drew a firm line between “us” and “them” (Cornell and Hartmann, 2007).  The second boundary was along ethnic lines and was reinforced by residential space; because ethnic groups were segregated in ethnically dense housing it reinforced ethnic divisions despite the small power differential between the groups (Cornell and Hartmann, 2007)

The first two generations of Asian laborers on the plantation maintained separate social institutions (often promoted by the plantation owners), such as houses of worship and very small amounts of outmarriage. By the third generation this began to change, the small power differential between the laborers resulted in the formation of a laborer culture, or “local” culture—although it would not totally erase the ethnic boundaries that had been established through segregation (Cornell and Hartman, 2007; Miyares, 2008). What resulted from this “local” awareness was a stronger understanding of the laborers’ position and status within the larger culture of Hawai`i, as well as the challenges and discrimination they faced (Cornell and Hartman, 2007).

By 1905 the Japanese population, with their large numbers (159,000 arrived between 1868 and 1907) had become had become competition for the resident white population (Okamura, 2000; Takaki, 1982). This resulted in an anti-Japanese sentiment that took hold of the islands in the early 1900s and remained in effect through World War II.  In the 1930s the question of “The Japanese Problem” was raised and concerns over Japanese loyalties flamed anti-Japanese sentiment.  This discrimination became part of the daily experience of the Japanese, reinforcing the boundary between not just powerful whites, but also other “local” groups (Cornell and Hartmann, 2007). Although there was discussion of deporting or interning Japanese Americans during World War II, the citizenry of Hawai`i was not behind the movement, and many local Japanese even enlisted and served overseas.

When they returned Japanese veterans refused to remain second-class citizens as their parents were. These veterans were largely responsible for the “Democratic Revolution” of 1954 when the Democratic Party gained control of both houses of the territorial legislature from the Republican white oligarchy for the first time since their overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy (Okamura, 2000). It was this entry into politics which ultimately paved their path to the middle class by placing decreasing the power differential between whites and the Japanese. Japanese Americans did not join the middle class en masse until the 1970s. Currently, Japanese, along with Chinese and Koreans are at the top of the SES ladder. These groups have a high rate of intermarriage and intermarriage with whites, their boundaries being blurred by the now small power differential between them.

 Through this discussion of identity formation one is able to identify how construction occurred within the critical areas and how these arenas have continued to influence formation. It is also possible to see how these arenas overlap in their affect on racial identity formation, such as the labor markets and residential space. It was not any arena in particular which formed Japanese racial identity, but rather the combination. This is also evident in Afrikaner identity.

The history of the Afrikaners begins with the colonization of the southern tip of South Africa , the Cape of Good Hope, by Dutch, German and French settlers who described themselves as “Boers”. These colonizers began to move inland in an attempt to expand, interacting with assorted African people and in the process created a racial boundary between themselves and Africans; a strong sense of “us” versus “them” (Cornell and Hartman, 2007).  One aspect which was central to this boundary was a judgment of worth—the idea that Europeans were “fundamentally different from” and superior to Africans, the Boers often enslaved Africans as well (Cornell and Hartman, 2007:137).

After the British gained control of the Cape and the political arena in 1806 they began to reorganize Boer political and social institutions. They forced schools to teach English rather than Afrikaans and used English proficiency tests to exclude the Boer population for full civic participation, which reinforced the boundaries between the English and Boer/Afrikaner groups. Animosity between the groups was furthered by the ideological divide between the British’s liberal policies toward black Africans and the racist ideology of the Boer/Afrikaners. These cultural and ideological differences would ultimately lead to exodus of 12,000 Afrikaners from the Cape seeking a life outside of British rule (Cornell and Hartman, 2007).

            This migration resulted in two violent interactions, the Battle of Blood and The Boer War, both of which contributed for the formation of the Republic of South Africa (Cornell and Hartman, 2007). Another result of The Boer War was a more unified and nationalistic Afrikaner racial identity and in 1948 the National Party was voted in, giving Afrikaners political power which they used to enact apartheid. Apartheid was a rigid government enforced system of racial separation based on the racial boundaries created by the Boer/Afrikaner colonizers and supported by their white supremacist ideology. It established segregated residential spaces, social institutions and maintained boundaries through maintained of a large power differential (Cornell and Hartman, 2007).  

            The fall of Apartheid has found the power differential has shifted. Although in a color based system one would think that the boundaries between whites in South Africa would have blended, but this has not been the case. The English still hold the majority economic wealth which allowed them to maintain power, while Afrikaners, now competing in a more integrated job market, have found the power differential to be increasing in comparison to other whites and decreasing in comparison to Africans, Coloreds and Indians (Cornell and Hartman, 2007).

            By viewing racial formation through a historical lens it is possible to see how combinations of critical arenas are involved in the construction of a group racial identity; allowing one to see exactly how multidimensional identity formation is. Although racial identity construction of Japanese in Hawai`i and Afrikaners in South Africa occurs within the same critical arenas of politics, labor markets, residential space, social institutions, culture and daily experience, one is able to see how the formation of the two groups has been distinct to each.

REFERENCES

Cornell, Stephen and Douglas Hartmann. 2007. Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press.
Kinzer, Stephen. 2006. Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawai`i to Iraq. New York: Times Books.
Miyares, I. 2008. “EXPRESSING LOCAL CULTURE IN HAWAI`I.” Geographical Review. 98(4), 513-531. 
Okamura, J. 1994. “Why There Are No Asian-Americans in Hawai`i: The Continuing Significance of Local Identity.” Social Process in Hawaii. 35:161-178. 
_____. 2000. “Race Relations in Hawai`i during World War II: The Non-internment of Japanese Americans.” Amerasia Journal. 26(2):117-141 
______. 2008. "Ethnicity and Inequality in Hawai'i." Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 
Takaki, Ronald. 1982. “An Entering Wedge: The origins of the sugar plantation and a multi-ethnic working class in Hawaii.” Labor History. 23(1):32-46.

The Relationship Between Whiteness, Citizenship, Racial Categories and Shifting Racial Discourse

             Whiteness has been synonymous with citizenship (if not legally, then in popular thought) in European colonized countries, like the U.S., South Africa and Brazil, since their inception. In the United States full civil, political and social citizenship has largely been restricted to free white men, denying the rights and protections of citizenship to white women, both free and enslaved blacks, Native Americans and aliens (Glenn, 2002). Across the globe, the Union of South Africa was formed and “founded on the premise that Africans would be denied voting rights in all but the Cape Colony,” connecting whiteness and citizenship for generations to come(Goodman, 2004:146).  In this post I will explain how whiteness has been inextricably tied to citizenship, both formal and substantive, through racial categorization. I will also discuss how shifting racial discourse affects the way societies view race which in turn affects racial categorization, whiteness and access to citizenship.

            Just as whiteness has been formed in opposition to non-whites, citizenship has been created in opposition non-citizens—both are social constructions which are fluid and shift to protect the rights and privilege of those in power (Glenn, 2002; Dalmage, 2011). In European colonized countries like the United States, South Africa and Brazil, whites formed new colonizer governments which would establish rights for themselves over those of the indigenous people, and create a claim on land, resources and labor (Glenn, 2002). Although all three began as colonies of a monarchy, each eventually established themselves as independent nations, consisting of citizens rather than subjects (Glenn, 2002).  Citizenship means that you have “full membership in the community in which one lives,” providing certain rights for the citizen in exchange for certain duties (Glenn, 2002:19).

            According to T.H. Marshall, citizenship has three types of rights: civil, political and social (Glenn, 2002). Civil rights are “the rights necessary for individual freedom,” which include freedom of religion, speech and thought, as well as the right to justice, to own property and the form contracts (Glenn, 2002:19). Political rights are the rights necessary to participate in the governance of the community, this includes the right to vote or exercise political power (Glenn, 2002).  Finally, social citizenship or the ability to have one’s basic needs met, this includes the right to some degree of economic security, ability to participate in society and to “live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society” (Glenn, 2002:19; Dalmage, 2011). Full citizenship is the ability to participate in all three of these rights. This makes social citizenship vital to being a full citizen because it is what allows individuals to turn formal rights into substantive rights—meaning without social citizenship, the ability to provide for yourself and your family and the ability to participate in social life, one is unable to exercise their other rights (Glenn, 2002).

            Substantive access to citizenship has often been curtailed by using racial categorization to control access to social rights either implicitly or explicitly. Racial categorization is more than just sorting individuals by shared phenotypes like skin color, hair texture or facial features; it is about creating systems of privilege and denial. Race is socially constructed, meaning that phenotype has no significance in itself, only what society attributes to it; therefore it is not fixed and can change according to the popular beliefs and discourse at the time. In the U.S. black Americans have explicitly been excluded from citizenship based on their race, as well as implicitly through Jim Crow and mass incarceration (Waquant, 2005; Alexander, 2010).        Although blacks were granted civil and political citizenship in 1870, after being deemed subhuman and incapable of citizenship during slavery, Jim Crow effectively barred them from social citizenship—many were unable to vote due to restrictive poll taxes, reading tests and violence (Glenn, 2002; Alexander, 2010). Today many African Americans are barred from full citizenship by state laws which limit the social rights of formerly incarcerated by supporting restrictive employment laws and rescinding the ability of those convicted of a felony to vote (Alexander, 2010). These restrictions are not explicitly based on race, but African Americans are disproportionately affected due to the denial of privilege based on race. The fluidity of racial categories can be seen in census categories (Nobles, 2004).

            Census categories themselves are a form of racial discourse (Nobles, 2004). The U.S. census enumerates by race, while the Brazilian census enumerates by color—both reflect political and popular ideas about race and the construction of difference (Nobles, 2004). Although their beliefs were grounded in the idea of white supremacy, both countries took different tactics to support it. Brazil promoted the idea that through intermarriage indigenous people, descendents of African slaves and European colonizers would meld into one white race—therefore color was more important to account for (Nobles, 2004). The U.S. took this approach when dealing with Native Americans, but when it came to other racial groups the prime tactic was exclusion (Nobles, 2004). The U.S. denied citizenship to non-whites, used miscegenation laws, exclusionary immigration policies,  and reconstructed ideas about familial lineage in order to exclude people of color from citizenship—because of this the identification of race was important (Pascoe,1996; Nagel, 2003; Nobles, 2004).

            If one takes the U.S. census as an example it is possible to see how popular ideas about race have been reflected in the census, which in turn affect government policy (Noble, 2004).  There were eighteen changes to the twenty censuses that occurred between 1790 and 2000 (Noble, 2004). One example is  how polygenists lobbied congress for, and received, the inclusion of the term “mulatto” in the 1850 census in order to support their claim that the offspring of two different races, black and white, would be infertile (Nobles, 2004; Dalmage, 2011). This both reflected one “scientific” approach to race at the time and had an influence on the way race was discussed in society. According to the “one-drop rule” which had dominated popular thought prior, and deemed anyone with “one-drop” of “black blood” black, the term “mulatto” differentiated between levels of blackness.

            Racial discourse is not only restricted to the census. It is also seen within policy. After the Civil Rights Amendment was passed in 1964 racial discourse began to move away from overt racism and the census was needed to identify whether historical inequalities were being addressed in a meaningful way through the group rights won by activists (Dalmage, 2011). As the U.S. moved into the 70s and 80s, neoliberalism began to take hold of policy, including a movement away from group rights and towards individual rights and racial discourse began to shift to colorblind ideology. Colorblind ideology states that society is beyond race and to have truly fair society we must omit race from our policies, including efforts to address historical inequality (Dalmage, 2011). Now right wing activists are asking if we even need to enumerate race in the census. Colorblind ideology works to defend white privilege by limiting citizenship through the family ethic and the idea of the deserving poor (Glenn, 2002; Dalmage, 2011).

            Colorblind ideology is informed by the neoliberal idea of personal responsibility. Everyone is responsible for their own lives and choices and no attention is paid to the circumstances under which you were born. The historical lack of access to citizenship and privilege blacks have had is discounted and instead there is a focus on “bad choices.”  Common arguments for larger amounts of black poverty are connected to ideas about the family ethic, what “good citizens” strive for: women who are chase and bound to the private sphere (home) and men who are breadwinners and bound to public space. Many African Americans do not fit into this ethic because due to the historical inequalities women have been forced to leave the home to work and men are often incarcerated, ironically often times for participating in the underground economy to provide for their families (Dalmage, 2011). Meanwhile white ethnics are used as a defense of neoliberal ideas and the family ethic. They are held up as people who have been discriminated against and through “hard work” have raised themselves up by their bootstraps and accomplished what blacks could not (Guglielmo, 2003; Maly, etal., 2010).  Of course, the fact that they were not denied citizenship for near 200 years is neatly forgotten.

            It is not difficult to see the myriad of ways that whiteness has been tied to citizenship. People of color have been explicitly denied citizenship based on their race and commonly held popular and scientifically held beliefs that they were inferior to whites. They have also been denied citizenship implicitly through racist policies like Jim Crow and the Rockafeller drug laws which have targeted African Americans, as well as through miscegenation laws and exclusionary immigration policies (Pascoe, 1996; Nagel, 2003; Alexander, 2010). One only has to look at current policy, like Arizona’s S.B. 1070, which allows police officers to ask anyone who looks illegal for their U.S. identification. If not in law, in popular thought to be American is to be white.
 REFERENCES

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow. New York: The New Press.

Dalmage, Heather. 2011. Lecture Notes, Global Whiteness, Roosevelt University. February 2011- March 2011.

Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2002. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor.

Guglielmo, Thomas. 2003. White on Arrial: Italians, Race, Color and Power in Chicago, 1890-1849. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hale, Grace. 1998. Making Whiteness. NY. Vintage Books

Maly, Michael, Heather Dalmage and Nancy Michaels. 2010. “The End of an Idyllic World: Race Memory, and the Construction of White Powerlessness.”

Nagel, Joane. 2003. Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nobels, Melissa. 2004. “Racial Categorization and Censuses.” In Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Language in National Censuses. Edited by David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pascoe, Peggy. 1996. “iscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of “Race” in Twentieth-Century America.”  The Journal of American History.83(1):44-69.

Waquant, Loïc. 2005. “Deadly Symbiosis.” Boston Review.

Zaal, Frederick Noel. 2008. “The Ambivalence of Authority and Secret Lives of Tears: Transracial Child Placements and the Historical Developments of South African Law.” Journal of Southern African Studies. 18(2):372-404.

"System D" and the Lack of Sociological Discourse in Popular Media.

Business Insider (BI) published the article "Forget China, 'System D' Is the World's Second Largest Economy", on the worldwide black market, or secondary economy, now dubbed "System D". I am always surprised (although I know I should not be) at how these stories never seem to address the "why" of the secondary economy. The article, and infographic below, frames the discussion through lost tax revenues and "black market entrepreneurs" who have higher profit margins than those in the legitimate economy.

What stories like this fail to look at is why the secondary economy exists. Yes, there are those who are driven by the prospect of high profit margins and are willing to take on the risk associated with large scale black market operations in order to obtain them, but I have no doubt that the majority (of people, not money) do not fall into this category. I think the larger issue is that those who work in the secondary economy  do so to support themselves and their families, because for one reason or another they are not able to within the primary economy. They may be barred by poverty, lack of education, lack of resources, former incarceration, racism, sexism, religious oppression or just plain prejudice.

When we look at countries with the largest black markets (see Shadow Economies all Over the World: New Estimates from 162 Countries from 1991-2007 an updated version of the IMF paper linked to in the article), we see corrupt and poor governments, with even poorer populations. We also see a concentration of brown and black peoples in most of these countries--which historically means countries and peoples who have been mined for resources and left to fend for themselves with alien cultures foist upon them.

If we look at the U.S. and who participates in the secondary economy we see, again, largely black and brown bodies who are barred from participation in the primary economy. We can look at several sociological papers and books written by Waquant, Pitts, Wilson.... and so on which point out that participation in the secondary economy is not usually by choice. Institutional racism has concentrated blacks and other minorities in certain geographic areas and then systematically denied those areas public services such as access to public transit, competitive schools, road repairs, etc. The private sector abandoned these areas as well, despite a real demand in the market for services. These things work in concert to bar involvement in the primary economy and, as if this is not enough, when caught participating in the secondary economy  these individuals are incarcerated. Incarceration, besides the abuse and emotional toll, means that one is further barred from participation in the workforce. It is no wonder the mass incarceration is considered the New Jim Crow.

As I read the comments on the BI article many point to high taxes and the "welfare state" as a reason for the secondary economy, I would have to argue the opposite. It because these governments do not provide basic services to these communities that secondary economy flourishes. The smallest secondary economies exist in countries with higher tax rates. Although I do not have the numbers to back myself up here, I am also willing to bet that the secondary economy in those countries, the U.S. included, are peopled by those segments of the population which fall through the cracks and are not provided their basic needs.

At the end of the day I suppose I am just thankful for my sociological education, that I can supplement popular media claims with sociological research and look at the "why." I just wish that as a society we tried to take a more holistic view of our problems and culture. Hopefully we will get there.