S0W 3222 Working Across Difference

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S0W 3222Working Across Difference

• Lecture Three
• Working Across Race and Racism

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Challenging Oppressive Beliefs

• When thinking and talking about difference, human
  beings are prone to making inappropriate
  assumptions, to holding negative beliefs and to
  using stereotypes.
• A common notion within anti - oppressive
  discourse is that of challenging oppressive
  beliefs.
• What does it mean to challenge oppressive
  beliefs?
• The dictionary may not be of much help, where to
  challenge is to accuse, to charge, to reproach,
  to object or to call to account.
• Is challenging more of a process, that starts
  with drawing to the attention of?
• Should a person who is talking about a group in
  an oppressive way be challenged?
• If so, how should such challenging be done?

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Effective Challenging
Thompson, 1998 p.217 states that, crude,
unskilled or poorly thought-through forms of
challenge can do more harm than good by creating
unnecessary tensions and defensiveness. If
challenging is to be an effective part of an
emancipatory strategy, it needs to be elegant
challenging. (Thompson, 1998 p.217)
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Sensitive Challenging

• be tactful and constructive, rather than a
  personal attack
• avoid cornering people and allow them to save
  face
• pay attention to the appropriate time and place
  a carefully chosen moment can be much more
  influential than an immediate challenge
• Dont be punitive the aim is to promote
  equality and not to create unnecessary tensions
  and hostilities
• acknowledge explicitly or implicitly the
  vulnerability of the challenger to similar bad
  practice
• be undertaken in a genuine spirit of compassion
  and a commitment to social justice, rather than
  in one of taking the moral high ground.
• (Thompson, 1998 p.217)

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Use of the term race

• Different people use the term race in different
  ways.
• We will be using the term race in a restricted
  way to denote an idea constructed within racist
  theory that there are different races of human
  being.
• Racism centres on the mistaken belief that the
  human race can be divided into distinct
  biological groups called races, which vary in
  ability and aptitude.
• An anti-essentialist, anti-racist position is
  that there is only one race, the human race, and
  that any biological differences between groups of
  human beings are surface features - not deep
  features.

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Definition of Racism
The definition of racism is a problematic and
contested area. One definition is A set of
beliefs and practices that identifies a group of
people on the basis of some physical or supposed
biological feature or attribute And. The
attribution to the group so identified of
negatively evaluated characteristics
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Racist Beliefs

• the human race can be divided into a number of
  distinct biological groups (races),
• there are deep as opposed to surface
  differences between these different races,
• the different races can be compared with each
  other in terms of superiority and inferiority,
• all members of a "racial group" can be blanketed
  together without distinction between different
  ethnic groups,
• people with non-white colour of skin are regarded
  as inferior to people with white colour of skin.

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The Endurance of the Concept of Race
Despite being subject to much criticism and being
exposed as lacking any substance the use of the
term race endures. "No matter how often the
concept is exposed as vacuous, 'race' still acts
as an apparently ineradicable marker of social
difference" (Brah, 1992 p126) Brah, A. (1992)
'Difference, Diversity and Differentiation' in
Donald J. and Rattani A. (eds) 'Race', Culture
and Difference (London Sage/Open University)
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Black as a Positive Political Identity
The African-Caribbean and South Asian people
who migrated to Britain in the port-war period
found themselves occupying a broadly similar
structural position within British society - as
workers performing predominantly unskilled or
semi-skilled jobs on the lowest rungs of the
economy. Their 'non-whiteness' was a common
referent within the racism confronting them.
..." "The term 'black' was adopted by the
emerging coalitions amongst African-Caribbean and
South Asian organisations and activists in the
late 1960s and 1970s. They were influenced by
the way the Black Power movement in the USA,
which had turned the concept of Black on its
head, divested it of its pejorative connotations
in radicalised discourses, and transformed it
into a confident expression of an assertive group
identity. ..." (Brah, 1992 p127)
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The Political Use of Black in the British
Context
One criticism is that the political use of the
term "Black specifically refers to the
historical experiences of black Americans of
sub-Saharan African descent. When used in
relation to South Asians the concept is emptied
of its cultural meaning. Many British South
Asians do not define themselves as black, and
many British African-Caribbeans do not recognise
them as such. Brahs counter arguments are Its
political meaning does not deny the cultural
differences between African, Caribbean and South
Asian people. Brah (1992 p129) found that South
Asians will frequently describe themselves as
'kale' (black) when discussing issues of racism.
The whole social being of South Asian and
African-Caribbean peoples is not constituted only
by their experience of racism indeed they have
many other identifications based on, for example,
religion, language and political
affiliation. Black activism had aimed to
generate solidarity it had not necessarily
assumed that all members of the diverse black
communities inevitably identify with the
concept." (Brah, 1992 p129)
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Social construction of White an invisible
category (1)
Dyer states that as long as race is something
only applied to non-white people, as long as
white people are not racially seen and named,
they/we function as a human norm. Other people
are raced, we are just people. There is no
more powerful position than that of being just
human. (Dyer, 1997 p. 1) Bonnett writes "how
obvious is it that this book has been written be
a white person? I have left it until now to
admit. Many readers will, no doubt, 'have worked
it out' some time ago. But how could that have
been done? And what exactly am I confessing to?
Whiteness is, after all, a peculiar identity. It
appears to be both everywhere and nowhere.
Largely undiscussed, absent. As Judith Levine
(1994, p. 11) notes, whiteness is 'the standard
against which the Other is inferior, like the
moon from a moving car - it remains ever the
same, untouchable, yet right outside the
window'." (Bonnett, 2000 138)
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Social construction of white as an invisible
category (2)
"The focus of the new area of race scholarship
known as white studies' is upon the racialisation
process that produces whiteness. The political
problematic of writers and activists within this,
mainly North American group, is how this process
may be simultaneously identified and challenged."
(Bonnett, 2000 139) "The editors of Race Traitor
explain their project in the following terms
'Two points define the position of Race Traitor,
first that the "white race" in not a natural but
historical category second, that what was
historically constructed can be undone' (Allen,
1994, p. 108)" (Bonnett, 2000 140)
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The Reconstruction of Race Categories
The reconstruction of what is to be 'black The
reconstruction of 'black' into a positive
political identity. The reconstruction of what
is to be 'white White (European descent)
people becoming aware of the construction of
whiteness as a superior category in relation to
non-white peoples of the world and its
deconstruction and intermediate reconstruction
into being equal but different, until
white-on-black racism is eradicated.
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Issues when white social workers work with black
clients

• Will black clients think all white social workers
  are racist no matter how non-racist and
  anti-racist they are?
• Will racism creep in despite my best efforts?
• In the context of racism can white and black
  people work together on an equal basis and
  effectively communicate with each other?
• How can I avoid coming over as patronising when
  endeavouring to understand the situation from a
  black perspective?

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Anti racism for white practitioners

• confront your internalised racism that you will
  have learnt by virtue of being brought up within
  a culture imbued with racism,
• monitor your own practice and practice knowledge
  in relation to the potential for racism to either
  creep in or be endemic,
• work within your agencies to counteract any
  racism that has been institutionalised within
  policies, procedures and established ways of
  doing things,
• recognise and be sensitive to black people having
  a different ethnicity to white people and to
  other black people of a different ethnicity,
• recognise and counteract the dominance of white
  culture and white ways of looking at things and
  value other perspectives including black
  perspectives,
• be sensitive to and take into account the fact
  that black people can experience racism on a day
  to day basis and be proactive in endeavouring to
  counteract this racism.
• (OSullivan, 1999 p. 120)

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Issues for Black Social Workers Working with
White Clients

• If subjected to racism by white clients, will I
  be supported by agency management and colleagues?
  
• Will I feel disempowered by covert racism from
  colleagues and managers?
• Will I be subjected to racial abuse from white
  clients?
• Will I be discriminated against by my agency?
• Will white clients request a white social worker?

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Anti Racism for Black Practitioners

• critically reflect on your own beliefs about
  white people, including stereotypes of white
  people
• learn ways to respond to white clients who make
  racist comments that includes gaining the support
  of colleagues and agency management
• work with black and white colleagues to
  counteract any racism that has been
  institutionalised within agency policies,
  procedures and established ways of doing things
• recognise and be sensitive to ethnicity and ways
  of life of all clients whether black or white
• recognise the dominance of white culture and
  white ways of looking at things and value other
  perspectives including black perspectives.

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Working Across Race

• I have argued that
• Ideas of there being different races of human
  being has been constructed within racism.
• Racism constructs different skin colours as
  signifying membership of distinct racial groups
  with particular characteristics.
• Social workers may reject the ideas of racism but
  they still work within a society in which overt
  and covert racism still exists.
• When white and black people have contact with
  each other, as clients and social workers, it is
  in the context of a society in which racism
  exists.
• It is for this reason that social workers,
  whatever their colour of skin, need to take into
  account the potential impact that racism can have
  on their attempts to communicate with clients of
  a different skin colour.