Racism is Back

To say that “racism is back” might give the wrong impression that it ever went away. It has always been lurking in the shadows and influencing attitudes and behaviour. But it is back now in the sense that there is an unashamed assertion of white supremacy guiding public policy in some of the world’s most powerful countries.

This might explain why I was asked to speak about “whiteness” when the Council for World Mission gathered its African member churches to meet in Blantyre last week. As one of very few white faces in the hall, I felt a little self-conscious to be speaking about this topic. The more so since white people have often been reluctant to see their own racial identity as part of the problem.

As Jean-Paul Sartre once observed, “For three thousand years, the white man has enjoyed the privilege of seeing without being seen.” It is therefore uncomfortable when attention focuses on the white community and it is suggested that there might be a problem about the way in which their identity is constructed.

Could the silver lining in the current brazen assertion of white supremacy be that it will reveal the forces that have all along been at work in subtle and hidden ways? There is no scientific basis for categorizing people according to race. All along it has simply been a power play by a minority community seeking to justify and maintain its dominant position. We will not have a just and inclusive world until this ideology is exposed and abandoned.

In particular, the claim to normativity that drove the colonial enterprise and, to a great extent, the contemporaneous missionary movement, needs to be deconstructed. It brought a culture of erasure to many parts of the world as whiteness asserted its supremacy. This has been alienating and demoralizing for many. Far from a reassertion of white supremacy being needed, it is high time that this destructive ideology is consigned to history.