Real cultural differences can anchor racial myths despite legitimate observation

Evidence

How can we avoid feeding culture clash, and re-installing European superiority, when we name and confront violent practices? Culture clash works so handily to secure racial myths precisely because there are cultural differences that everyone can point to. As Mosse noted, racial myths of Blacks and Jews in the European context that depend on the notion of cultural differences ‘proved so blinding because [they were] based partly on legitimate anthropology and partly upon the obvious differences between the majority Europeans and the Jewish and Black communities. Blacks did have a different skin color and a different culture; and while Jews had the same skin color, they at first did have a different language, dress, and appearance.’ Forced marriages and ‘honour killings’ are specific to certain communities, and we would need to pay attention to their cultural, material, political, and historical contexts even as we bear in mind comparable violence in European communities, for example, women killed by their husbands and boyfriends when they attempt to leave abusive relationships. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 317

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that forced marriages and honour killings are ‘specific to certain communities’ seems to grant ground to the culture-clash framing she criticizes — worth chasing how she resolves this tension later.
• XREF: Connects to the moral-panic literature (Cohen) and to my other reading on how legitimate observation gets recruited into stigmatization. — connects to: Racism is real while race itself is a myth — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 39