There are various layers of discrimination in modern societies, and unequal treatment happens at different levels. There is the dominance of the elite and we have often heard of phrases such as ‘white-dominated establishment’ for instance.
Others say that there is a subtle hierarchy of racism that is ever present everywhere. The dominant establishment is most times at least painted as white, but the Japanese for instance are depicted as a dominant sub-stratum in pecking order.
In this hierarchy coloured people so called, and Africans, are shown often to be occupying the bottom tier. It’s all about how things are depicted in a given situation but what’s mentioned above are the common ways in which the hierarchy is ordered.
There shouldn’t be any hierarchy at all, but years of discrimination across societies has created what can be called an ‘unspoken hierarchy.’ It means in short that these things are never spoken about in polite society. But everyone knows that race hierarchies often operate and are allowed to operate despite the polite veneer.
Most times the subtler these hierarchies are and the more subterranean their nature, the better it is to those who want these dominant hierarchies to exist. But they don’t always exist in your face, so to speak. The perpetrators of these hierarchies are very often in fierce denial about their existence.
It’s not as if a problem if ignored would go away. It’s just that those who derive an advantage from these hierarchies are loathing to give up their power and their privilege. But in the modern world, overt racism is not considered passable.
Slavery, apartheid and so on are abhorrent. But that doesn’t mean that the same power-dynamics that created these abominations have ceased to exist.
If at all, these forces are stronger than ever. It means that the those who perpetrate these dominant structures have to carefully camouflage their racism.
APPARENT
So there has been an unwritten compact. It is that there shall be no overt racism and that overt expressions of racism would be frowned on, and even prosecuted as hate crimes.
Recently, for instance, a former Obama administration official occupying high office as an advisor was seen serially harassing a hot dog seller of Palestinian origin in New York.
It was done in broad daylight, and the racism was obvious because everything is recorded on video. Imagine that this was a person holding high office in a liberal administration led by an African American President?
The individual has been arrested and is presently being charged in a court of law, after being bailed out. So it is clear that overt shows of racism are abhorrent for the most part these days, even though hate crimes have increased in the West after fighting began between Israel and Hamas.
But this article is not about hate crimes. It is about the fact that racism that was hidden and kept subtle is now increasingly coming out in the open. There is no pretense being made that there are different sets of rules for different people.
What was clearly kept in the background however, is ironically now becoming more institutionalised. In some countries entire races are kept out of the social mainstream because there are laws against headgear and so on that these folk traditionally wear as a form of religious expression.
These religious expressions are being outlawed for no reason other than the fact that people who make the rules don’t like these forms of expression. It’s an institutionalised form of racism that says one set of rules apply to us, and a different set applies to others.
IMPUNITY
If some countries can pollute the air more than others, that’s a form of institutionalised racism too. But this sort of institutionalisation of racism goes on despite the fact that the veneer of politeness about racial discrimination is becoming more visible.
Though there are more arrests of overtly racist folk such as the former Obama administration official referred to, the institutionalised racism that goes on is in many ways much worse than being racist to a hot dog seller. But this institutional racism is becoming more pronounced and acquiring more impunity as well.
What are the safeguards against such racism? There are none, or none that is apparent at least. People rarely go on marches against institutionalised racism because very often that form of racial discrimination is the law, and it is difficult to protest against the law in general.
Meanwhile, far-right politicians who thrive on inflammatory rhetoric are being elected to power in many countries and recent examples are Argentina and the Netherlands.
Governments headed by these people are predicted to institutionalise racial discrimination in various ways and so it seems that institutionalised racism is on the march. On the other hand any moves that are palpably set against institutionalising equal treatment of races is getting short shrift.
The best example probably is in Australia. When an indigenous Voice in Parliament was proposed as a largely symbolic measure to reverse years of injustice against the aboriginal tribes, the move was shot down in a Referendum. Of course this was a public vote, and therefore it could be argued was very democratic.
But that does not detract from the fact that any move to institutionalise laws against discrimination do not usually succeed in a world in which laws to institutionalise racism are increasingly becoming more common. In other words then, the subtly and the veneer against racism is increasingly becoming threadbare in the modern setting.
What can be done about this trend? Awareness is probably the best way to approach it. People should be more aware that there is less leeway in most countries against the enactment of anti-discriminatory legislation and more leeway increasingly for laws that discriminate in not so subtle ways.
There is very little global outcry against this trend even in institutions such as the United Nations because these organisations are also run for the most part by those who have a stake in perpetuating the racially discriminatory structures that were described at the beginning of this article.
FROWNED
When there is more institutionalised racism the subtle forms of racism may seem even unnecessary for the perpetrators of racism.
When the Ukraine war began, there were several news anchors who thought they were being subtle in saying that Ukrainian refugees are wholesome and look like ‘your next door people’. Of course they were being overtly racist in saying this, and were rightly called out.
It is easy to call out such boorish outward acts of racism while institutionalising racism by law, and that is the paradox of modern forms of racism.
What is large and formal is becoming more oppressive, and what is relatively minor and is not institutionalised is self-righteously frowned upon.
Where would it all end? Would it create more forms of racial apartheid? Well, perhaps not identical to what happened in South Africa but new forms of racial apartheid could sometimes be more glaring, and sometimes be more subtle than what used to be experienced in South Africa before the triumph of the ANC.
As stated earlier, awareness is the first step in the fight against racism on the march. This article seeks to shed some light but it is not adequate and the world media should wake up, but more importantly the people of the world should put their hands up and mark their protest.
Australia’s experience shows that symbolic measures are not popular, and that there is still a very long way to go. Don’t be fooled by the outward self-righteous rhetoric that is seen in societies in which structured racism is rife.
The outward noises are a good way to camouflage the strengthening of structured and institutionalised racism and discriminatory practices.The existing organisations and lobby mechanisms have failed us. There has to be renewed awareness and a deeper appraisal of how the march of untrammeled racism all over the world can be obstructed.
