Colouring IR: How does Race matter?

Question 1

How can IR’s concept of anarchy be seen as problematic in regards to race?

Answer 1

The concept of anarchy devoid of cultural or hierarchical assumptions is amnesia to race and imperialism and its effects on the international system. It can be labelled of a ‘norm without noticing’ or a persistent blindness.

To view the international order as truly anarchical ignores the factors of slavery, colonisation… that make the playing field far from level.

Question 2

What type of IR scholars have used race as a lens to view the international system?

Answer 2

Postcolonial scholars have used race as a lens to view European imperialism and its modern day consequences.

Question 3

Why is a return to the question of race important for IR?

Answer 3

Its a way to move beyond the profoundly Eurocentric histories underpinning many of the concepts in IR theory.

It is also needed to increase the attention on silences and blindspots that have marked IR’s development over the past century.

Question 4

What is race?

Answer 4

Socially constructed and contested concept which reifies categories of people on the basis of shared phenotypic traits which society has deemed important. Categories of race are not fixed and change across both culture and time.

“Race matters because of the power society gives us” (LS) - what race people are thought to be is a significant determinant of social outcomes.

Question 5

What is racism?

Answer 5

The belief in, practice and policy of domination based on the specious concept of race… It is not simply bigotry or prejudice, but beliefs, practices and policies reflective of and supportive of and supported by institutional power, primarily state power”

But not one definition of racism…

Question 6

How can racism be viewed as an ideology?

Answer 6

Racism can be described as an ideology which ranges from raw biological, religious and cultural absurdities to elaborate pseudo-intellectual projects masquerading as a social science. Du Bois calls this “race fiction”.

Question 7

What is scientific racism?

Answer 7

The pseudo-scientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism in the case of craniometry and eugenics (where in the case of the latter, selective breeding is encouraged) - heavily utilised by Nazi Germany in the 1930s, but not confined to them, with scientific racism widely practised across Europe and America at the end of the 19th and start of the 20thC.

Question 8

Who is the ‘father of eugenics’?

Answer 8

Francis Galton

He said…

-Civilisation diminishes “the rigour of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.”

-”The aim of eugenics is to represent each class or sect by its best specimens”

-”The science of improving stock… to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had”

Question 9

What was Hitler’s main idea about race?

Answer 9

There is a master race that should be kept pure and not intermingle with inferior ones.

Hitler’s racial ideology stemmed from what he called “the basic principle of the blood.” This meant that the blood of every person and every race contained the soul of a person and likewise the soul of his race, the Volk. Hitler believed that the Aryan race, to which all “true” Germans belonged, was the race whose blood (soul) was of the highest degree.

Question 10

Who was the scholar that fought to get the world too speak about race and racism at the start of the 20thC?

Answer 10

W.E.B. Du Bois.

To him race and racism were some of the most important factors in world politics.

Question 11

What was Du Bois’ idea of democratic despotism?

Answer 11

An ongoing brutal domination masked in the disguise and discourse of democracy.

He notes, “It is this paradox which allows in America the most rapid advance of democracy to go hand-in-hand in its very centres with increased aristocracy and hatred toward darker races

Question 12

What are the three processes that have historically underlain the unequal global order we find ourselves in?

Answer 12

-Theft of land
-Violence
-Slavery

Question 13

What ids our key question about the relationship between racism and IR theory?

Answer 13

How far and in what kinds of ways does racism inform the major paradigms of IR theory?

Question 14

How does the racism of political theorists affect our view of the relationship between IR and race?

Answer 14

It demonstrates that racism is institutionalised into the discipline.

-Kant demonstrated racism on many occasions (called black people irrational)
-Hobbes too (saw native Americans as savages)
-Churchill referred to the Anglo-Saxon race as higher grade, banned interracial boxing, said black people were less efficient than whites…

Question 15

Can the notion of ‘views of their time’ be used to exonerate the racism of thinkers of the past?

Answer 15

No. Especially not with the example of Churchill.

Even Churchill’s contemporaries found his views on race shocking - especially in regards to his management of the Bengal famine.

Question 16

Is race a ‘perspective’ in IR?

Answer 16

No. It is a central organising feature of world politics.

Question 17

What are some examples of racism/racialisation in IR in the past century?

Answer 17

-NATO was influenced by anti-Asian sentiment (i.e. collective security but ignored Asian states who were vulnerable to Russian aggression)
-During the Cold War, racism and anti-communism can be seen as two sides of the same coin in many instances
-In recent and contemporary times, the ‘War on Terror’ is deeply racialised - i.e. Islamophobic and targeting brown Muslims from the Global South

Question 18

What is the relationship between realism, liberalism and constructivism, and race?

Answer 18

They are built on raced and racist intellectual foundations.

They are nested in discourses that centre and favour Europe and the West (Eurocentric and imperialist) - these pit “developed” against “undeveloped” (use of terms developed, developing, development…), “modern’’ against “primitive”, “civilised” against “uncivilised” (their very explanation of subjugation and exploitation around the globe is racist?)

These limit the field’s ability to answer important questions about core concepts, like anarchy and hierarchy - these are raced

Question 19

Is constructivism best placed of the big 3 theories to tackle racism in IR?

Answer 19

Yes. Constructivism is the one that challenges key concepts in the field most.

They argue that anarchy, security, and other concerns are socially constructed based on shared ideas, histories and experience

Yet, with few exceptions, constructivists rarely acknowledge how race shapes shared ideas, histories and experience that undergird these concepts!!

Question 20

Why are the concerns of realists and idealists with anarchy racist?

Answer 20

They are grounded in racist discourse that is concerned with the obligations of superior peoples to impose order on the anarchic domains of inferior peoples (to stop spill over of chaos from the inferior people into the formers territories).

Question 21

Why are the concerns of realists and idealists with power racist?

Answer 21

Similarly, the realist and idealist concern with power was grounded in a racist discourse concerned largely with the power of whites to control the tropics, subjugate its people, steal its resources and superimpose themselves through colonial administration.

Question 22

What propositions does the Democratic Peace Theory make? What’s wrong with them?

Answer 22

Democracies are less likely to go to war than non-democracies, and democracies are less likely to go to war with each other.

But, Britain has been to war more times in the past 100 years than the US and Russia combined. Furthermore, democratising states in the Middle East and N Africa have experienced more internal conflicts than their less-democratic peers… yet, the West uses the DPT to justify invading less democratic, less white, countries.

The DPT assumes Western democracy is a superior form of political organisation - but that may not fully be the case.

Question 23

Were foundational texts of IR in the 1800s and early 1900s racist?

Answer 23

Yes. They invoked race as the linchpin holding together colonial administration and war. They also used the binary of ‘civilised’ and ‘savage’ to justify colonialism.

IR originally developed to preserve and extend white hegemony - or supremacy.

Question 24

How is IR’s state system related to race?

Answer 24

Non-European nations did not voluntarily adopt European understandings of statehood and sovereignty, as IR scholars often mythologise…

Europe, justified by Westphalia, divided the world between the modern ‘civilised’ states and conquered those which they did not think belonged in the international system

The current state system has its roots in the Eurocentric 1648 ToWestphalia without accounting for the rest of the world.

Question 25

Overall, has IR ignored race?

Answer 25

Yes. It has engaged in the a ‘norm without noticing’ in regards to race.

Mainstream IR has neglected race in theorising, in historical explanation, and in prescription, and marginalised race as “other perspectives.” When IR scholars do engage with race, it is often in discussions of outwardly raced issues such as colonialism.

How IR is taught also perpetuates the elision of race. IR courses and journals are still dominated by white men and is guided by Eurocentrism, women, non white people, and issues of race and racism are displaced in course syllabi.

Question 26

What is the racial element of Frank’s dependency model?

Answer 26

Developed (mostly white, former colonial, countries) control the development of periphery (mostly non-white, colonised, countries) which rely on them as a result of international history.

Question 27

What is the argument that colonialism is not always terrible?

Answer 27

Colonialism had benefits because it provided basic infrastructure in regards to transport and communications, and in India the BE built Universities, an educated middle class, etc…

Question 28

How is the UN Security Council’s organisation arguably racist?

Answer 28

5 sitting members: USA, UK, France, Russia and China. All are White Christian majority (except for China).

No representation for major powers in other continents (e.g. Nigeria, Indonesia…) larger than the UK and France who are in the position as a result of colonial legacy. The council makes decisions on conflicts which are often in non-White regions.

Question 29

What is an example of a Western country refusing to enable a level playing field for non-Western countries?

Answer 29

USA refusing to agree to the Kyoto protocol on emissions - West has benefited from historically uncontrolled emissions to get to their current economic state - should be some scope for more recently industrialised countries to catch up?