White Racism

Joel Kovel1970 / 1984

Key Ideas

• Types of Racismdominative aversive

metaracism

• Fantasies of Racedominative: power, sex, aggression

( phallic / Oedipal )

aversive: contamination & avoidance( anal )

Race in American Culture

• Until World War II:Helped unify white society ( dominative & aversive racism )

• Post-World War II:Became de-stabilizing of social

order ( gov’t opposition metaracism )

Dominative Racism

“A racism of direct, physical oppression and sexual obsession, belongs to the Old South, especially in the years following slavery…”

Aversive Racism

“The racism of coldness and the fantasy of dirt, belongs to the bourgeois life, proper, being that form of racism characteristic of the North, stable urban zones of segregation, and suburbs.”

Metaracism

“the racism of technocracy, i.e., one without psychological mediation as such, in which racist oppression is carried out directly through economic and technocratic means…

“...racist oppression occurs today through the seemingly automatic laws of the economic system.”

Metaracism

“...the real object of contemporary racism: the workless black underclass, created by structural economic injustice, cut off from their bourgeoisiefied fellows, and set adrift among family disorganization, wretched educational opportunities, dwindling public services of all kinds and decaying urban enclaves.”

Metaracism “That these circumstances would lead to a marked rise in criminalization is inevitable. And this becomes the signifier of their role in the racist order.... the black underclass is in a highly strategic location, right at the center of our cities (as against the white poor, who are largely scattered over the countryside), and becomes a permanent affright to the order of things.”

Metaracism

“...the psychological or prejudicial part of racism is one of its most modifiable features...”

Fantasies of Race

“Projection” hypothesis:

Repressed / ego-dystonic qualities projected onto out-group

Fantasies of Race

“The racist relation is one in which the white self is created out of the violation of the black self, through its inclusion and degradation. Racism degrades the Other to constitute the dominant self, and its social order.…”

Fantasies of Race

“The Other is assigned some part of the dominant self which is unbearable yet desired; and this alienated part comes to define his or her existence.”

Fantasies of Race

“The Other is not recognized for him/her self, but as the repository of some split-off element of the dominant self. In other words, white racism is for whites. Blacks are made to disappear as persons in its course.”

Racist Fantasies

“Whatever a white man experiences as bad in himself… whatever is forbidden and horrifying in human nature, may be designated as black and projected onto a man whose dark skin and oppressed past fit him to receive the symbol.”

“Projection Theory”

Argument for Inevitability of Racism

• Elemental splitting of “I” from Otherness.( parts of Self become “ego-dystonic” )

• In-group hostility displaced outward onto out-group “scapegoats.”

• Ego-dystonic elements of Self projected onto scapegoats.

Kovel’s Rebuttal

• “Primary alienation” doesn’t inevitably lead to scapegoating.

• Racially-based domination leads to elaboration of primary alienation into “secondary alienation”

= racist fantasy structure

Fantasies & Racist Fantasies

• Primary symbols black = evil sexuality earth fecundity

white = good nurturance purity sterility

• Secondary Symbolsblack people = evil

white people = good

Types of Racism & Fantasies

• Bigot / Dominative racist: acts out race hatred

• Aversive racist: believes in white superiority, but conscience repudiates prejudice; does not act

• Metaracist: no prejudice but “unconsicous persistence of mass fantasies”

Bigot / Dominative Racist

• Authoritarian:-- seeks to dominate in compensation for being dominated

-- seeks to punish deviance (especially sexual desires) rigidly repressed in self

• Phallic-Oedipal fantasies-- rape fantasy core of Southern culture

Aversive Racist

• Themes of dirt, pollution, and avoidance

• Anal / contamination fantasy core of Northern segregation

Meta-Racism

• Little or no overt prejudice

• Often desire to overcome prejudices

• Persistence of stereotypes created by institutional racism

– Lazy & violent under-class

Kovel -- evaluation

• Important ideas: types of racism & fantasies of race

• Neither precise nor fully coherent

• Over-simplifies

Kovel -- evaluation• Need psychodynamic theory of

race fantasies to explain construction of White self.

• Psychodynamic theory helps explain individual prejudice, but not racism in society.

• Metaracism crucial to explaining “ambivalent” prejudice prevalent today