Race thinking covertly persists in ‘values’ discourse about the war on terror

Evidence

Race thinking is a structure of thought that divides up the world between the deserving and the undeserving according to descent. As Irene Silverblatt has suggested, race thinking encapsulates a much broader phenomenon than racism, since it refers to ‘any mode of construing and engaging social hierarchies through the lens of descent.’ Race thinking enables us to understand ‘how a relatively innocent category (like color) could become virulent, how politically defined characteristics (like nationality) could so easily become inheritable traits.’ In our context, race thinking reveals itself in the phrase ‘Canadian values’ or ‘American values,’ uttered so sanctimoniously by prime ministers and presidents when they articulate what is being defended in the ‘war on terror.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 37

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Arendt’s race thinking as distinct from racism: hierarchy read through descent.
• SEED: Article angle: how liberal ‘values talk’ in Western nations is a repackaged racial hierarchy claiming innate capacity for rational self-governance.
• XREF: Connects to Goldberg’s four features of race thinking and to imperial climate-determinism claims (Kipling’s ‘climate puts iron in bones’). — connects to: Fighting-‘them-there’ war logic is race war in denial relying on racial discounting — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1855; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”