The Semblance of Ethnic Equality: How Multiculturalism Masks its Enemies

A University of Melbourne Essay Assignment

Under the 3rd-Year Sociology subject "Social Differences & Inequalities"

Passed with High Distinction (H1)

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By Benjamin L., written during Semester 1, 2013

Tutor's comments (J. Flores):

This was a very interesting and well-researched essay. You show that you have a thorough understanding of the main issues addressed in this subject. This essay was addressing the complex question of multiculturalism and the reproduction of inequalities in a very sophisticated manner and it was well-structured up until the section 'Cognitive Roots of Discrimination' [cognitive psychology/categorisation/essentialism]. That part did not contribute to the question you had to answer, and while the rest of your essay uses social analyses, this section is unnecessary to your overall argument. It would have been better to engage more with Hage's ideas on tolerance, for example. This essay needs to be more about social factors and while psychology/cognitive makeup may be related, you should focus more on sociology for your research in relation to this subject. This was a very interesting read.

[Please read the author's acknowledgement of the special status of Indigenous Australians with regards to multicultural issues at the end of the essay]

INTRODUCTION

            Multiculturalism aspires towards an inclusive, egalitarian society (Levey, 2009). In Australia, multiculturalism recognises ethnic diversity and affirms the right to practice one’s culture within legal boundaries, along with a “reciprocal obligation” to respect the rights of others to do likewise (National Multicultural Advisory Council, 1999). These rights are bestowed upon individuals rather than ethnic groups (Carter, 2006) and avoids charges of essentialism where cultural groups are mistakenly perceived as internally homogenous (Squires, 2008).

            However, evidence suggests that the practice of cultural identification and racialisation recognises groups instead. Cultural identification involves placing others in ethnic groups or populations whom outsiders perceive as culturally and historically distinct (Smith, 1991). Racialisation is the process that identifies these groups based on their phenotypic appearance (‘race’), cultural practices, or other manifested signs of otherness that become associated with stigmatising stereotypes (Dunn et al., 2007).

            In practice, racialisations are grounded in concrete acts that translate disapproving attitudes into prejudicial ‘racist’ behaviours (ibid.). By applying the theoretical frameworks of new racism and aversive racism, this paper argues that multiculturalism facilitates the reproduction of symbolic and material inequalities along ethnic lines by creating the false impression that racism is confined to the past. Instead it is rooted in, but is not reducible to, our cognitive architecture.

New Racism & Patterns of Political Discourse

            Dunn et al. (2007) argues that while ‘old’ racism is based on biology, new racism rests on narrow constructions of ‘self’ and the ethnic ‘other’ where race merely serves as a metonymic marker of broader cultural difference. It constrains the ethnic others’ rights because their culture is deemed morally objectionable or incompatible with society as defined by a protagonist, who reinforces his/her cultural primacy by justifying grounded racialisations in three ways. Firstly, the self and other is placed into unequal hierarchies of inferiority and superiority. Secondly, forms of social exclusion (differentiations) are devised. Thirdly, these are based on inherentisms where racialised groups are assumed to have an inherent, stable, and homogenous core that develop into stereotypes which can be identified and criticized. Race only functions as an identifier of cultural difference. All three racialisations have been used to privilege the Anglo ethnic group over others.

            Up until WWII, the Australian island-continent was envisioned as an exclusively white, Anglo, British territory where non-white peoples, specifically Aboriginal and Asian, were undesirable elements to be removed (Ang, 2003). These discrepancies in racial desirability created an ethnic hierarchy with a White-Anglo apex and became institutionalized as the Immigration Restriction Act (1901) or White Australia policy (ibid.). It acted as a form of differentiation that sought to exclude non-Anglo immigrants and was implicitly premised upon inherentisms about ‘Aboriginal’, ‘Asian’, ‘Anglo’ or even ‘White’ ethnic categories that made them identifiable and distinguishable.

            In the 1970s, the government sought to remove racial discrimination from official policy and created a new multicultural definition of nationhood where no ethnic group had preeminence and Anglo-Australians stood alongside other ethnic groups (Moran, 2011). This officially removed the ethnic hierarchies and differentiations that characterized earlier policies but their underlying inherentisms went unaddressed and allowed conservatives to reinvent old forms of cultural inequality. John Howard, Australia’s second-longest serving Prime Minister (National Archives of Australia 2012), did not believe in cultural equality and held that Australia had a distinctively Anglo-Saxon culture which other migrants and cultures had to adapt to (Commonwealth of Australia, 2006). We can thus see that the same inherentisms surrounding the ‘Anglo’ ethnic group and, by extension, non-Anglo ones are rearticulated into a new hierarchy with an old Anglo apex.

            However, these new hierarchies are harder to criticise. Criticisms about symbolic ethnic inequalities can be defused with reference to the fact that immigrants are welcomed. Accusations of hierarchies are also discredited as Anglo ethnic culture is equated with a seemingly national and ethnically neutral ‘Australian’ culture in a multicultural age. In Hage’s (1988) terms, the Anglo group thus consolidates itself as the disinterested protector of the ‘national order’, even as it gives itself an elevated status

Racism without Intent: Aversive Racism & Inequality

            Multiculturalism can also exacerbate material inequalities by masking unconscious prejudicial acts. Ethnic discrimination is performatively produced (Bhabha, 1994) and only exist when individuals hold and act upon ideologies of ethno-racial prejudice (Luke & Carrington, 2000). Multiculturalism opposes such prejudice, but theorists of aversive racism argue that unconscious prejudicial and discriminatory behaviour can still exist despite conscious multicultural beliefs.

            Gaertner & Dovidio (2005) defines aversive racism as the presence of dissociated explicit and implicit attitudes about racial groups and their associated stereotypes. Aversive racists explicitly and consciously cherish egalitarian values and racial equality and will deny any accusations of racism. However, they simultaneously hold implicit and negative biases towards racial others. These implicit attitudes result in feelings of aversion when the racial other is physically or symbolically present and suggests that the other has been identified by signs of otherness and racialised into a an inherentism or stereotype (Dunn et al., 2007).

            Aversive racism is evident in ‘skill discounting’, where the qualifications of job applicants are discounted on the basis of implicit racist attitudes but justified on non-ethnic grounds (Shinnaoui & Narchal, 2010). Skill discounting has been well-documented in the recruitment and integration of foreign-trained doctors (Louis et al., 2010). The uncertainty about a doctor’s training in a given country encourages a stereotypical view of the doctor based on that country and, in Dunn et al.’s (2007) terms, discrimination against the doctor is implicitly motivated by racialisation but overtly justified with reference to his dubious training despite his/her professional recognition in Australia. This skill discounting may in turn affect the doctor’s prospects by limiting his patient base or his employer’s perception of his competence (Louis et al., 2007).

            Multiculturalism disguises aversive racism by implying that those who explicitly hold multicultural beliefs are not racist even though racism occurs despite such beliefs. It creates the false impression that overt racism is confined to Australia’s past (Carter, 2006) when it has only been replaced by aversive racism. This jeopardises migrants’ prospects and puts their economic and mental well-being at risk (Shinnaoui & Narchal, 2010). Seen this way, multiculturalism can blind us to newer, less obvious forms of racism that mask the reproduction of material inequalities along ethnic lines.

Blindsided: Inter-Minority Racism

            We have seen how racialisations and inherentisms underpin the reproduction of cultural and material inequalities. In Australia, this has historically occurred along majority-minority lines and most studies on ethnic prejudice worldwide have also limited their focus to this dimension (Weitzer, 1997). However, minorities can also engage in racialisations and inherentisms against both the majority (Perlmutter, 2002; Shelton, 2006) and other minorities (Kohatsu et al, 2011). They may also be employers, politicians, and other persons of power just as ‘white’ individuals are, and there is emerging evidence that the historical habit of viewing multiculturalism along white-nonwhite lines may obscure inter-minority prejudice and inequality.

            Barlow et al. (2010) found that self-identified Asian Australians who felt socially rejected by those of Aboriginal descent experienced more anxiety during inter-ethnic encounters (inter-group anxiety) and this led to implicit cultural prejudice towards Aboriginal Australians in general. Barlow et al. extrapolated that this would make Aboriginal individuals feel that Asian Australians rejected them, which would similarly induce intergroup anxiety and cultural prejudice against Asian Australians in general. This vicious cycle has implications for the reproduction of cultural and material inequality. Barlow et al.’s psychometric measures include items like “Many ethnic groups have come to Australia and worked their way up, and Aboriginal Australians should do the same without any special favour” (ibid. p. 809). Those who strongly identified as Asian Australian ranked high in such implicit measures and also disapproved of a national apology for the hardship inflicted upon Aboriginal communities throughout Australia’s history. However, some minorities are more disadvantaged than others (ibid.) and especially true with Aboriginal groups that have long suffered stolen lands, Stolen Generations, and Stolen Wages (Kidd, 2003). For example, the notion that Aborigines should better themselves without assistance is consistent with stereotypes that they are lazy, refuse work, and receive too much welfare leeching off others (Korff, 2012). These inherentisms then encourage racial discrimination in Aboriginal employment (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, 2012). The largely white-nonwhite focus of multicultural discourse in Australia can thus blind us to how such inter-minority prejudices may exacerbate the same cultural and material inequalities that multiculturalism aspires to prevent.[1]

The Cognitive Roots of Discrimination

            The common theme behind all the above is the pervasiveness of inherentisms in prejudice, how racialisations are used to place others into ethnic categories, and how these underpin various hierarchies and differentiations. The applicability of this process regardless of historical periods, multicultural beliefs, or minority status suggests that a more fundamental cognitive mechanism is at work: psychological essentialism.

            In presuming that ethnic categories have an inherent, stable, and homogenous core, inherentisms are psychological essentialisms – the belief that all members of a category share a common essence that causes their observable features (Prentice & Miller, 2007). These categories are mentally represented as natural and stable across time, have definitive boundaries separating it from other categories, are responsible for the category’s observable features, and category membership is involuntary and immutable. Ethnicity, along with race, gender, and physical disability, are especially susceptible to essentialisation (ibid.).

            According to Gil-White (2001) these types of categories are called “nature-kinds” and are analogous to how we categorise natural objects based on properties that suggest the presence of some fundamental essence common to all members of a category. If the object is perceived to possess the essence, this will be sufficient for category inclusion despite other variations in appearance. While the process of identifying someone correctly is probabilistic due to the manifold ways a person might appear and behave, the categories in which they are placed are clear-cut. Gil-White likens this to the story of the ugly duckling: the fabled ugly duckling was thought to be a duck based on the essence of descent from mother-duck, but this was later revised when the ugly-duckling was clearly a swan. The placing of the ugly duckling was probabilistic, but the categories of duck and swan were always clear.

            The prejudice-laden story of the ‘ugly duckling’ can be applied to ugly human histories. When selectively attend to one dimension of an object, the perceived difference between objects becomes exaggerated. Nosofsky’s (1986) study on categorization presents a situation where cognitive objects vary by colour, shape, and size. As shown in panel A of figure 1 below, the objects are semantically equidistant from one another as indicated by their connecting lines.

Figure 1. How selective attention influences stimulus similarity (Nosofsky, 1986)

In panel B, selectively attending to one dimension, colour, creates a category with an essence that exaggerates inter-categorical differences and intra-categorical homogeneity. Similarly, selectively focusing on a ‘colour’ dimension during social encounters exaggerates the difference between people’s skin colour, national colour, religious colour and so on. Furthermore, evidence suggests that essentialism is positively correlated with negative stereotypes in social categories across cultures and emerges early in childhood with minimal social input (Deeb et al., 2011). It is these cognitive essentialisms or inherentisms that underpin the racialisation process and the prejudicial hierarchies and differentiations that follow. Thus while multicultural themes of acceptance gain ‘anti-racist’ overtones through its opposition to rejection (Hage, 1988), racism is not dead in the catacombs of history. We carry its dormant progeny in our cognitive architecture where it cannot die, but only be made inert.

CONCLUSION

            In conclusion, multiculturalism facilitates the reproduction of symbolic and material inequalities along ethnic lines by creating the false impression that racism is confined to the past. Firstly, while political discourse after White Australia was characterised by multicultural aspirations, it was also interspersed with conservative articulations of Anglo cultural supremacy and the symbolic devaluation of other cultures. Conservatives like PM John Howard asserted the primacy of Anglo-Saxon culture as a national ‘Australian’ culture while official multiculturalism and ethnically-neutral immigration policies covered up a self-serving cultural ideology.

            Secondly, aversive racism has emerged at the micro-social level where essentialisms inform prejudicial behaviours that adversely affect ethnic others. As shown in skill discounting, adversive racism can negatively impact one’s right to an equality of opportunity. This unconscious form of racism suggests that multiculturalism must go beyond multicultural beliefs and performatively ‘walk the talk’.

            Thirdly, the historical emphasis on racism between the white majority and non-white minorities distracts us from the fact that it also exists between ethnic minorities. This has important implications on social equality as members of minority groups acquire managerial positions within the economy and the state where their beliefs actions have wide-ranging consequences. This area needs attention: Muslim and Arab groups are the least tolerated by members of all other ethnic groups (Dandy & Pe-Pua, 2010) and ‘Islamaphobia’ is on the rise in a post-9/11 world (Dunn et al., 2004).

            Finally, the essentialistic inherentisms that prejudice stems from is rooted in our cognitive architecture. The false impression that racism is long past distracts us from the fact that it lies dormant within us all. Multicultural beliefs and practices can never kill racism – it can only render it inert. Whether it is White Australia or ‘neo-white’ Anglo primacy, prejudice stems from the human predisposition to classify, identify, and essentialise. This may be what Australia needs to remember most as it attempts to forge a truly multicultural society where ethnicity is no barrier to equality.

References

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[1] The author wishes to acknowledge that Aboriginal communities may have deep spiritual ties to the land and that this may not be suitably respected by placing them as one-of-many ethnic groups under a multicultural arrangement. This is best explored by other, more specific studies.