Formalization of Racism and Disidentification
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Sivanandan’s Race, class and the state: the Black experience in Britain is a comprehensive historic account of the British government’s effort to receive cheap labour while ensuring commonwealth citizens were not integrated as equals in British society. After world war 2, Britain had a labour shortage which led them to accept refugees and immigrants from their commonwealth countries in Asia and the Caribbean. This was the beginning of British exploitation of brown and black immigrants for cheap labour. These immigrants were given low wages for tough jobs (often in textiles, engineering, and transport) as white people were favoured for better, higher-paid jobs. Landlords took advantage of the surplus of immigrants in the cities and overcharged them, leading immigrants to resort to living in tight spaces and terrible conditions. This is what created slums or ghettos in the British cities populated by South Asian and Caribbean migrant workers. The cycle of poverty within these ghettos often exacerbated racism. The initial policies and attitudes for migrant workers developed systemic racism in Britain alongside the direct, often violent, individual racism against British people of colour. For example, buying a home was made virtually impossible for them as the banks would charge extremely high interest rates and would sometimes even outright deny applications based on race. Additionally, the race riots of 1958 were a turning point in this history. After white working-class teenagers attacked six West Indian men, racial tensions in Britain forced the government to act. The government began a slow, palliative campaign of mitigating social tension while ensuring their capital interests were preserved. After the race riots, the government altered their citizenship laws and slowed down immigration. Commonwealth workers in Britain were no longer given citizenship, but contract, temporary residency. In the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, there was a voucher system that preferred commonwealth workers with special skills (skilled often a guise for wealthy as again, the British government’s main concern was their economy over all else). This formalized systemic racism as national law for viewing commonwealth citizens as temporary labour instead of as equals. Likewise, acts like the 1968 UK Immigration Act and the 1971 Act mitigated some social and racial unrest while limiting the freedoms and rights of migrant workers. By never addressing the root problem of inequality that these first migrant workers faced in Britain, one can see the modern day effects and ineffectiveness of modern day initiatives to mitigate racial unrest.
In Vivek Bald’s Bengali Harlem, he notes there was a South Asian migrant presence in the Americas in 1904, when Sikh agricultural workers were working in the Pacific Northwest. In 1907, violent attacks against Indian workers in Washington and mass expulsions from their homes and jobs led the American government to pass various anti-immigration legislation. Where Britain was perhaps more covert in their racist laws, the United States was aggressive and disdainful to oppress and ban Indian migrant workers. Congress was concerned about working-class Indian migrants. This forced activists Mubarek Ali Khan and J. J. Singh to appeal to congress and restrict their vouching to just upper-class Indian migrants when they were fighting for land, immigration, and naturalization rights for Indian migrants. This is interesting when contemplating the origins of the model minority narrative. It is also fascinating to learn how historic Indian presence in America is and how they have added to the nation’s cultural fabric. Especially the Indian seamen and Bengali peddlers who came to the US in the 1880’s. On the other hand, learning about the conditions that immigrant workers had to face is disheartening especially when considering they were only working overseas due to colonization, and the industrialization and mechanization of agriculture that their colonizers caused, disrupting their traditional ways of life.
There is a helplessness that festers when we do not get control of our own narratives. It can affect our mental health. It is a loss, so one may feel grief. Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks eloquates this well noting racism is an emotional affair; it is irrational and can drive one crazy, “for a man whose only weapon is reason there is nothing more neurotic than contact with unreason” (Fanon, 89). I feel frustration and the fight to be heard in both Kendrick’s and Maimouna’s songs. Like Munez’s concept of disidentification, they are rejecting the impositions placed on them about their identity. Maimouna rejects the world’s ideas about her race by repeatedly urging the listener to let her tell her story. Growing up, Maimouna faced racial insecurities for her hair texture while her parents were black nationalists and affirmed Maimouna’s appearance. She was also insecure for not appearing like her indigenous grandmother. She reclaims her narrative by giving personal details about her upbringing—being the one to to tell her story.
Racism is a profound tragic experience. Fanon’s essay is written very poetically which emphasizes this profound impact. He says, “I sit down at the fire and I become aware of my uniform. I had not seen it. It is indeed ugly. I stop there, for who can tell me what beauty is?” (Fanon, 86). This is radical disidentification to me: the first step in unlearning is to question. Descartes’ idea of “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am” illustrates this concept and highlights the importance of doubt. Questioning for the first time feels life-changing. Fanon brings forth two ways in which identity is formed for the person of colour. The first is a corporeal schema that is done individually with first-hand interaction with the world and the second is a historic-racial schema which is given to you by the world’s preconceptions about your identity based on race, gender, sexuality, etc. Finding self-love and rediscovering your identity from a corporeal schema is only accessible through questioning. I remember when I was 15 and became first aware of my third self—as Fanon puts it— the epiphany that I do not need to cater to other’s perceptions of me based on my gender and race changed my life. I also quickly realized that unlearning and finding myself outside of the historic-racial and gender schema will be a perpetual pursuit.
