Insidious Racism: Collective Frames of Reference, Perceptions of History
Palang Latif Yegane
Racism begins when people are no longer seen as individuals but are interpreted as supposed embodiments of a collective entity. It invokes a supposed equality within a community constructed on the basis of solidarity, in which the individual disappears and exists only as part of a collective.
The social, cultural, and individual characteristics of other groups are categorically devalued in comparison to one’s own normative systems of order and, because of their differences, are generally portrayed as “relatively meaningless ways of life” by comparison. Racialized groups are constructed as monolithic “ethnic systems” or closed social groups, to which a unified will, common interests, and defined goals are attributed.
Individuality is negated “from the outside” and replaced by collective attributions. This is a process that, naturally, also takes place within most human communities. As a result, the individual finds themselves caught between two spheres of social expectations: either “from within,” the pressure to conform within their traditional social circles, or “from without,” the complete equation with an ethnic-social structure classified as “inferior.”
Throughout this entire process, a particular narrative of world history is declared to be the only valid one. Other experiences, memories, and perspectives are systematically hierarchized, devalued, or even meticulously erased from the discourse.
The assumption that anti-Semitism alone has given rise to a specific ideological framework of hatred can lead to losing sight of the structural mechanisms of narrative construction and devaluation inherent in other forms of racism or racisms. This creates the danger of [continually] normalizing racist patterns or reducing them to supposedly merely superficial characteristics.
In fact, racist ideologies regularly operate on the notion that physical characteristics are an expression of a supposed inner nature: In anti-Semitism, this manifests itself in a historically specific way—for example, in the construction of a supposedly hidden, dangerous nature that was also visualized iconographically and through propaganda. At the same time, the same fundamental mechanism can be found in other forms of racism: physical characteristics are therewith repeatedly attributed moral, intellectual, or character traits, and these are imbued with social and political significance.
In all cases, physical characteristics and “appearance” are elevated to the status of a supposed “indicator of inner qualities.” Based on appearance and “readability”—and the accompanying racist codification—conclusions are drawn about a person’s nature, morality, character, or social value, while one’s own physical and cultural characteristics are simultaneously presented as an expression of a superior or more civilized norm; and this, in turn, is done in the context of conformity (issues of acceptance and agreement) and broad groups (demographic affiliation).
People are no longer perceived primarily as individuals. The classification of their appearance and their attributed group membership is considered sufficient proof of a supposedly fixed character or an unchanging identity, each of which is to be understood, within one’s own hierarchical thinking, as existing on a supposedly “more primitive” level.
It is precisely this particular approach of essentialization that is one of the fundamental mechanisms of racist thinking, and there is no way out of it—for that to happen, our understanding of history would presumably have to change first, and the chances of that happening are rather slim given the prevailing grand narratives.
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