Facing racism: discomfort, innocence and the liberal peripheralisation of race in the Netherlands
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: In this paper, we argue in favour of an anthropological focus on the ‘doing’ of whiteness, which is necessary to understand how various, contrasting but interconnected articulations of whiteness come into being. We focus on two ethnographic vignettes that reveal the different structural positions, within a culturalised and racialised order, of the anthropologists developing them. The vignettes focus on liberal and progressive ‘middle‐class’ articulations of whiteness that often remain unrecognised and – especially – bathed in innocence, but that go to the heart of the contemporary European question. We take issue with the liberal peripheralisation of racism, a discursive practice that locates racism in the ‘white working class’ and symbolically exorcises it from the ‘moderate’, centrist core of Europe. Rather than truly facing racism, what seems at stake for many liberals and progressives is the self‐image of being well‐meaning ‘respectable’ and ‘good’ middle‐class people.
Source: Social Anthropology
Authors: Sinan Çankaya, Paul Mepschen
Institutions: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,500
OpenAlex ID: W2995692533