At the risk of being gratuitously provocative, it occurs to me that the phrase “people of color” might be pernicious and misleading. Given that the suggestion will probably inspire ire among some readers, I make it tentatively. (Contrary to some academics, I regard pugilistic exchange at workshops and on blogs not as a sign of intellectual toughness but only as a symptom of over-compensating machismo. Real philosophers — Socrates, for instance — never play the tough guy with their opponents: they leave the eristic stuff for sophists like Thrasymachus).
So take what follows in the spirit intended — as an effort to speculate rather than pick a fight.
Here’s the news event that inspires my worry: Recent reports of South Africans’ lynching, raping, and mudering foreigners — mostly Zimbabweans but also Mozambicans and others — in Johannesburg and Cape Town. There is nothing surprising about xenophobia when unemployment and crime are both high, as they are in South Africa. But, combined with Mbeki’s bizarre refusal to condemn Mugabe’s incipient theft of an election in Zimbabwe, this outbreak of violence suggests to me that the concept of “people of color” is a concept used by elites to create a racialized elite unity that has very little purchase among the laity. Mbeki’s loyalty to Mugabe is based, it is often said, on the desire to maintain unity among former freedom fighters (and perhaps reenforce Mbeki’s own claims to govern as a veteran of a liberation struggle). But this desire has not inspired any real sense of trans-African unity: It has become instead merely a talking point to keep a corrupt leader in power.
Generalizing from this observation, it occurs to me that “people of color” is what Vonnegut called a “granfalloon” — a category that is intended to, but in reality does not, inspire real unity among the people to whom it applies. (Vonnegut uses the example of “Hoosier” to illustrate his term). Elites use the term — in defiance of reality among non-elites — to create a sense of racialized unity against a common enemy, in the manner of Carl Schmitt’s “concept of the political.” (There can be no “people of color” without some “colorless people”: “Tell me who your enemy is, and I will tell you who you are,” as Schmitt would say).
The problem with a concept of racialized unity is that, among non-elites, the concept tends to fracture on more parochial lines. Just as there is no trans-African unity among ordinary Zimbabweans and South Africans, despite Mbeki’s rhetoric about a common anti-Imperialist struggle, there also is no political unity among ordinary African-Americans, ordinary Mexican-Americans, ordinary Korean-Americans, etc., despite elite rhetoric about a racial coalition composed of “people of color.” Instead, these groups often have racialized unities of their own, defined by mutual hostility towards each other (most famously, perhaps, in the strife between Korean shopkeepers and their mostly Black customers in Los Angeles).
Hannah Arendt once denounced the notion of the “Third World” as an empty concept. She was roundly criticized — but, as usual, turned out to be correct. I think that the concept of “people of color” is equally empty — and, to the extent that it encourages race thinking among the laity, much more pernicious. Purchasing cheap camaraderie with the notion of racialized unity might be playing with fire: It may be that, having encouraged “people of color” to think of themselves as a political group against “the colorless,” it is hard to put on the brakes when sub-grouping of POC — Blacks, Mexican-Americans, etc — define themselves as political entities against their putative allies.
Whether there is such a trickle-down effect from elite racialized rhetoric to lay belief, I do not know. But such an effect seems non-trivially possible and, if present, unequivocally harmful. Hence, my worry about POC talk.
Posted by Rick Hills on May 23, 2008 at 10:06 AM
Comments
Real philosophers — Socrates, for instance — never play the tough guy with their opponents: they leave the eristic stuff for sophists like Thrasymachus).
Maybe true; but on the other hand, Socrates was incredibly annoying.
My goodness, Rick, my shredding of your bad arguments really seems to have gotten to you…. [J]udging from your responses, I infer you have acknowledged that you didn’t really have a serious argument against those protesting Schlafly. [etc. etc.]
Oy vey.
Posted by: Bruce Boyden | May 23, 2008 12:20:36 PM
My goodness, Rick, my shredding of your bad arguments really seems to have gotten to you judging from your first parenthetical. I’ll be sure to let Jerry Fodor and Kim Sterelny know what you think of them! Socrates was himself a kind of sophist (though not in Plato’s presentation, to be sure), and there is a reason that those he harasses in the dialogues periodically threaten to punch him in the nose! But seriously, judging from your responses, I infer you have acknowledged that you didn’t really have a serious argument against those protesting Schlafly. And I’m quite sure no one will protest your Mom’s honorary degree. I hope you enjoy that occasion!
Sophistically yours, Brian
Posted by: Brian | May 23, 2008 11:43:29 AM
As I said, I have no evidence: Just an intuition that having Mbeki frame politics so overwhelmingly in terms of Black-white struggle makes it easy for South Africans to think “racially” in terms of SA-Zimbabwe struggle.
As for what’s wrong with racial politics, just think of race and nation as both having to do with “natality” in Arendt’s term: the condition of one’s lineage and birth. Engaging people on such basic terms of their identity, as opposed to their shifting interests, might tend to lead to a politics of hate-filled, unyielding, uncompromising struggle to the death. Say, the sort of politics in which you think it natural to douse your enemy with gasoline and set him on fire (as reported in the news item cited).
Of course, like other assertions about the effect of culture on politics (compare claims about religious division on politics), this claim about racialized politics is merely an empirical hypothesis.
— it just seems plausible to me that
Posted by: Rick Hills | May 23, 2008 11:27:48 AM
I have to agree with Jason W. on this one, in spite of your disclaimer at the beginning of the post and your attempts to compare your thoughts to that of a “real philosopher” I must say that the description of “people of color” as pernicious with the thin support you offer comes off as gratuitously provocative. I’m not sure I have come across any person, including my “lay” family, that finds the use of the term pernicious. Empty, perhaps, as my experience growing up and returning to Los Angeles frequently shows that there is quite a bit of tension within this “people of color” umbrella. But the claim that it is somehow pernicious, doesn’t make any sense to me. Its not as if use of “people of color” somehow increases thinking in racialized terms (assuming that there is something wrong with thinking in racialized terms) any more than the use of the terms or identification of people as African-American, Mexican-American, Asian-American or whatnot. I guess the only way around the “perniciousness” as you describe it is to call ourselves “Americans” and try to denude ourselves of our racial identity.
Posted by: B.R. | May 23, 2008 11:24:42 AM
I’m with you as far as you’re saying that “people of color” attempts to create unity where there is none. Where I lose you is where you say that there are actual pernicious effects of this, as opposed to merely saying “Well, our attempt at unity didn’t work.” Are you claiming that people think in a more racialized manner because of the usage by elites of “people of color”?
If so, then there are two questions: (1) What evidence? (2) What’s wrong with thinking in racial terms?
Posted by: Jason W. | May 23, 2008 11:09:27 AM