Everyday racism hurts
Racism is hiding in structures and everyday practices, writes Tuija Saresma from the Ģֱ.
A hundred years ago, researchers measured skulls and charted the IQs of people belonging to different racial groups. Classic, pseudo-scientific racism was an ideology that highlighted biological differences and fostered the idea that the existence of different human races is a scientific fact. In this line of thinking, belonging to a particular ethnic group or ”race” defined an individual’s qualities in a determinist fashion. This ”scientific”, genetic racism also included the notion of racial hierarchy, with the white race on the top.
More recent research has shown that there are no separate biological races. Racism has not disappeared, however. It just takes new forms.
Biological racism has been replaced by seemingly and superficially more acceptable cultural racism. It does not refer to people’s physical differences, but their inequality is explained by cultural differences. In cultural racism, people coming from a particular cultural sphere or belonging to a particular religion are considered to also have a particular stereotypic personal character.
Different cultures are ranked in hierarchical order, and once again, ”Western culture” is on the top of development.
Racism, be it genetic or cultural, can be very striking at times. Such striking forms are easy to condemn. More hidden racism that is nested in our thinking, values, and behavioural patterns is more insidious. We do not always recognise it ourselves, which also makes it more difficult to deal with.
Philomena Essed pays attention to microlevel racism that is manifested in everyday encounters, for example, as the avoidance, belittling, or discrimination of ”the other”. She reminds that everyday racism is essentially about taken-for-granted racializing thoughts and practices of daily life, which do not necessarily have any racist motives. If we ask from a Finn whose name is of foreign origin or whose skin colour deviates from the majority what this person’s actual home country is, we do not necessarily regard ourselves as racists. Everyday racism is not necessarily malevolent. Yet, it hurts.
Everyday racism, specifically, integrates structural racism – which is generated through legislation and based on the rules and operational models of different institutions such as schools – and individual persons’ everyday deeds into racist practices.
It is never only about the pathological behaviour of individual racists, but also about racism nested in the structures as well.
There are various kinds of racism, but none of the forms of racism is innocent or harmless. In racist thinking, whiteness is an unwritten norm. It is easy for white people to deny any racist experiences: Because they do not have any personal experiences like that, neither can they imagine how these can hurt.
Therefore, white people are not best qualified to define racism. What is racism in which context does not depend on the agentive intention but on the victim’s experience.
Tuija Saresma works as Senior Lecturer of Contemporary Culture in the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies. Her research deals with hate speech and polarisation. She was recently granted the JYU Award for Science Communication of the Year.
