Multicultural tolerance can mask racism as respect for culture

Evidence

In that moment, the enemy was ethnicity. The enemy had to be what we called “multiculturalism.” Because multiculturalism was precisely what I called previously “the exotic.” The exotica of difference. Nobody would talk about racism, but they were perfectly prepared to have “International Evenings,” when we would all come and cook our native dishes, sing our own native songs, and appear in our own native costume. It is true that some people, some ethnic minorities in Britain, do have indigenous, very beautiful indigenous forms of dress. I didn’t. I had to rummage in the dressing-up box to find mine. I have been deracinated for four hundred years. The last thing I am going to do is dress up in some native Jamaican costume and appear in the spectacle of multiculturalism. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 245 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

No race here. No imagination of the racial because the terms are deadened, taken away. And so no conceivable recognition of the marks of its effects, let alone of the effects themselves. Buried. But buried alive. Tolerance expresses these denials directly. Acknowledging begrudged presence as desire of willed absence. The refusal of equality – of standing, of access, of outcome – in the name of an ecumenical largesse, a hostile generosity. Tolerance is always expressed towards the tolerated, as I have argued elsewhere, from the tolerating agent’s position of power. I have the power and position to tolerate you. I am active; you the tolerated passive, powerless to affect me in my tolerating save to get under my skin, make me even less accepting of your distinction. My social power to tolerate turns on all those like me likewise disposed towards you. Terminating angels. Race disappears into the seams of sociality, invisibly holding the social fabric together even as it tears apart. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 835 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Because what is acceptable and normal in one context may be unacceptable in another, it is important to untangle the psychological process of negative feelings toward a person or group (prejudice) from whether or not these feelings are generally sanctioned (social norms). Many researchers define prejudice as unjustified negative attitudes toward social groups or their members. Similarly, Allport (1954/1979) defined prejudice as “thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant,” and ethnic prejudice as “an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization” (p. 9; see also Eagly & Diekman, ch. 2 this volume). The problem is that what is commonly perceived to be “justified” or “warranted” depends primarily on the cultural rules about the acceptability of prejudice (see Crandall & Martinez, 1996). In practice, “justifiable” is a very flexible, norm-sensitive standard (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003). What appears justified to some people does not to others. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1903 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nonwhite Americans can perpetuate white-supremacist cultural frameworks — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 168; Sympathetic multicultural portrayals can still legitimate racist policies — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 374; Even anti-racist Orientalists held fixed cultural essences for the racialized (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Multiculturalism reduces difference to exotic spectacle while evading racism #corroborates (0.93) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 245
• Tolerance is a power-laden denial that masks racial inequality #corroborates (0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 835
• Whether prejudice counts as justified depends on local cultural norms. #complicates (0.72) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1903