ethnicity and the geographical variation in the usage of both terms. Third, defining ethnicity as ‘voluntary’ and as ‘superficial’ is not consonant with lived experience. To refer to two of the examples introduced in the boxes earlier: Yazidis and the Uighurs are both routinely identified as ethnic groups but the idea that being Yazidi or being Uighur is a free ‘choice’ or ‘superficial’ is absurd. The weight of tradition, the bonds of descent and language, and the prejudices of the wider society in which these minorities exist – which often turn on naturalizations insisting that Yazidis and the Uighurs are inherently different – make ‘opting out’ not just difficult but almost impossible.
There is another, more practical, matter to consider. For how racism is defined is not simply a question of academic debate. It reflects wider social and political shifts. The widespread adoption of definitions of racism that incorporate ethnic discrimination provides compelling evidence that the meaning of racism has been expanded. For example, a European Union statement from 2008 states that ‘Offences concerning racism and xenophobia’ include the following: ‘publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin’.65 Today the inclusion of ethnicity in official definitions of racism is so common as to go unremarked, even when it appears to sit uneasily with other designations. Thus, for example, in the UN’s International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, ‘racial discrimination’ (a term which it often treats as synonymous with racism), is defined as
any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.66
Despite the problematic implication that ‘national or ethnic origins’ are subcategories of the ‘racial’, here is further evidence of the entanglement of ethnicity and racism in public policy discourse. Elsewhere the same Committee has been even more explicit on the need to ‘expand the definition of racism to include incitement on account of ethnic origin, country of origin, and religious affiliation’.67
A lack of conceptual interrogation may be the reason why, without explanation, ‘race’ and, sometimes, ‘colour’ are nearly always listed before ‘ethnic’ or ‘ethnic origin’ in many official statements. The demographic designations commonly used in the UK – ‘BME’ (Black and Minority Ethnic) and ‘BAME’ (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) – provide another example of this practice. The suspicion that ethnicity has been tagged on is also raised in UNESCO’s definition of racism: ‘Racism is a theory of races hierarchy which argues that the superior race should be preserved and should dominate the others. Racism can also be an unfair attitude towards another ethnic group.’68 Relegating ethnicity to an ‘also’ category sidesteps a major challenge. For the implications of acknowledging ethnicity in this debate are substantial. One way of showing this is by looking at how governments deploy ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in population censuses. A survey by Morning – sampling census forms from 141 countries between 1995 and 2004 – concluded that the United States ‘is one of a small number of nations to enumerate by “race”’ and is ‘virtually alone in treating “race” and “ethnicity” as different types of identity’.69 Only 15 per cent of the censuses Morning looked at asked for respondents’ race. She also discovered that ‘usage of race is found almost entirely in the former slaveholding societies of the Western Hemisphere and their territories’. By contrast ethnicity was made use of in ‘every world region’, often combined with terms that reflect regional forms of identification.70
If we limit the study of racism to places where the language of race is to the fore or dominant, we will be studying a small part of the world. Yet expanding racism to engage ethnicity is not unproblematic. Ethnicity is a complex category and includes a range of identities and attributes that may fall outside of the processes of naturalization, hierarchy, and discrimination that indicate the presence of racism. Thus, for example, although language is an ethnic marker, differentiation between, or even conflict between, language groups does not necessarily indicate the presence of racism. The most linguistically diverse and, hence, most culturally diverse countries in the world are in Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia. By this measure, Western nations are relatively monocultural. Yet, although language use can and has been subject to processes of naturalization, hierarchy, and discrimination, the fact that social division is experienced and enacted in and through language division does not necessarily lend itself to the creation of the kind of behaviours and ideas typical of racism. What this tells us is that extending racism to include essentializing and exclusionary forms of ethnic discrimination is not the same as giving the term ‘racism’ unlimited range to include any and all forms of ethnic demarcation or enmity.
Finally, it is necessary to acknowledge that the identification of what is and what is not racist, and of how many people have been the victims of racism,71 are sites of political struggle. The stakes are high: to identify any practice, ideology, or institution, or, indeed, any individual, as racist is to delegitimize it (or them) and identify it (or them) as worthy of opprobrium and intervention. Throughout this book we will be encountering the efforts of different marginalized groups to have ‘their oppression’ recognized as a form of racism. One of these struggles has been waged by some of the leaders of the Indian Dalit movement. The Indian government and some leading Indian scholars dispute that this ‘untouchable’ sub-caste are the victims of racism, but many Dalit activists have tried to convince the international community otherwise (see Chapter 3). Another prominent example is the debate about the relationship between Zionism and racism. In 1975, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 declared ‘that Zionism is a form of racism’. This Resolution was interpreted by many Israeli politicians as a severe challenge to the legitimacy of Israel. Identifying Zionism as racism was a political win for the Resolution’s main backers (Palestine, many Arab states, and the USSR) and a loss for Israel and its principal ally, the USA. The Cold War context helps, in part, explain why the US government was adamant that this definition of racism would not stand. The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Moynihan, responded: ‘The lie is that Zionism is a form of racism. The overwhelmingly clear truth is that it is not.’72 This position later won out and in 1991 the Resolution was revoked by the UN General Assembly. The story of whether Zionism is ‘officially’ to be called racist or not is far from over and has its own, unique, history. Like the Dalit campaign, it is illustrative of a more general point: that the word ‘racism’ is a site of political conflict that is often intense and bitter.
Racism is Not Just Black and White
White racism against Black people has been uniquely widespread, long-lasting, and violent. It enabled practices of race slavery and race segregation of unsurpassed scale and cruelty. This helps explain why, even though racism is rarely defined only in terms of White racism against Black people, this is often what people think of when they think of racism. This focus is reflected in academic debate. Thus Spickard writes that ‘most scholars of race treat the encounter between Blacks and Whites in the United States as if it were the master narrative of race’, adding that there ‘is an abiding fixation on the idea that race is something limited to, or generated from, the relationships between Black and White, and something found mainly in the United States’.73 Since race and racism are so often conflated, it follows that discussion of racism is also framed in Black and White terms. Moreover, because people outside of the USA look to the USA for ideas and ways of framing racism and anti-racism, this binary has an international impact. In recent years the Black Lives Matter movement, although rooted in US politics and history, has sparked a range of activisms across the world, with a variety of marginalized groups taking inspiration from the simple assertion that their lives, too, should matter. This phenomenon can be seen from Palestine to Japan. It has had a significant impact in West Papua,
