Reflection Theory of Cultural Racism

C. Reflection Theory of Cultural Racism

The movie script of Mississippi Burning by Alan Parker describes the Mississippian social life fulfilled by segregation, racial discrimination and etc. during 1964. Before discussing the movie the writer will discuses the theory of cultural racism. This theory used to analyze and explain about racism happened in the Mississippi Burning movie. It is important for the writer to give perspective more colorful. There is the essential difference between racist theory and racist practice. According to James M. Blaut racism most fundamentally is practice: the practice of discrimination, at all levels, from personal abuse to colonial oppression. Racism is a form of practice which has been tremendously important in European society for several hundred years, important in the sense that it is an essential part of the way the European capitalist system maintains itself. 25 Racist practice, like all practice, is cognized, rationalized, justified, by a theory, a belief system about the nature of reality and the behavior which is appropriate to this cognized reality. Since racism as practice, that is discrimination, is an essential part of the system, we should not be surprised to discover that it has been supported by a historical sequence of different theories, each consistent with the 25 See James M. Blaut, “The Theory of Cultural Racism,” in Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, Volume 23 1992, pp. 289. intellectual environment of a given era. Nor should we be surprised to find that the sequent theories are so different from one another that the racist theory of one epoch is in part a refutation of the racist theory of the preceding epoch. Blaut is not special one who gives comprehensive theory of cultural racism. It was already noted by W.E.B. DuBois, Africa American scholar, that in making the difference between races, it is not race that we think about, but culture: “…a common history, common laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striving together for certain ideals of life.” 26 But DuBois didn’t make culture comprehensively as theory used to explain racism. There were preceding intellectual and scholar offered the theory of racism. The dominant racist theory of the early nineteenth century was a biblical argument, grounded in religion; the dominant racist theory of the period from about 1850 to 1950 was a biological argument, grounded in natural science; the racist theory of today is mainly a historical argument, grounded in the idea of culture history or simply culture. Todays racism is cultural racism. For the purpose of the research, the writer only discusses the last three theory of cultural racism. The one and the second theory, the writer just explains it at glance. What make culture so important to explain racism it is due to that cultural racism substitutes the cultural category European for the racial category white. Samir Amin gives us understanding that we no longer have a superior race; we have, 26 W.E.B. DuBois, The Conservation of Races 1897, p. 21. quoted from http:www.bookrags.comwikiracism accessed on December, 25, 2008. instead, a superior culture. It is European culture, or Western culture, the West. 27 What counts is culture, not color. The term of Eurocentrism is as well as and ideology of Europeans that denote to their cultural superiority over the other culture. The rest of cultures absolutely nothing and this is not a new one. This notion existed in the beginning of the 19th century, where Europeans considered themselves to be superior because they are Christians and a Christian god must naturally favor His own followers, particularly those who worship Him according to the proper sacrament. He will take care of such matters as hereditary abilities, thus making it easier for His followers to thrive, multiply, progress, conquer the world. In a word: it was believed that the people of Europe, traditional Christendom, possess cultural superiority, biological superiority, even environmental superiority, but all of this flows from a supernatural cause. This was the theory which, in the period up to roughly the middle of the 19th century, underlay most racist practice. 28 But the end of the 19th century, the theological argument replaced by naturalistic arguments in most scholarly discourse. But it should not be thought that religious racism as theory had entirely disappeared. In many contexts thereafter, this theory was and still is used to justify racist practice in which people of one religion oppress people of another on grounds of this or some very similar, theory. 27 Samir Amin, “Eurocentrism,” in Monthly Review Press, 1989. This article quoted by James M. Blaut in Theory of Cultural Racism. 28 Blaut, “The Theory of Cultural Racism,” p. 290. It is important to note that even the theological argument considered as continuation basis for biological argument set for biological theory of racism. Religious racism had already established the causality by which God gives better heredity to Christians, and this argument could now be adapted to assert the genetic superiority of the so-called white race. The genetic superiority of the so-called white race was now believed in axiomatically by nearly all social theorists. Cultural superiority was mainly, though not entirely, considered to be an effect of racial superiority. Like the religious theory of racism, the genetic theory of racism is over and obsolete in scholarly communities discourse. As the growth of intellectual progress who give better comprehensive theory use the culture as the foundation of theory e.g., Boas, Radin, psychological theory e.g., Lewin, philosophies grounded in experience rather than the Cartesian-Kantian a priori e.g., Dewey, Whitehead, Mead. In addition, there are two reason why either theological or biological theory of racism out of mode. Firstly, the rise of egalitarian values, notably socialism, which counter attacked against theories of innate superiority and inferiority. Secondly, there is a very powerful one, was opposition to Nazism, which almost necessarily meant opposition to doctrines of biological superiority and inferiority. 29 Cultural racism, as a theory, needs to prove the superiority of Europeans, and needs to do so without recourse to the older arguments from religion and from 29 Blaut, “The Theory of Cultural Racism,” pp. 291. biology. How does it do this? According to Blaut what we need is by recourse to history - by constructing a characteristic theory of cultural and intellectual history. 30 The claim is simply made that nearly all of the important cultural innovations which historically generate cultural progress occurred first in Europe, then, later, diffused to the non-European peoples. 31 Therefore, at each moment in history Europeans are more advanced than non- Europeans in overall cultural development though not necessarily in each particular culture trait, and they are more progressive than non-Europeans. This is asserted as a great bundle of apparently empirical facts about invention and innovation, not only of material and technological traits but of political and social traits like the state, the market, the family. The tellers of this tale saturate history with European inventions, European progressiveness, and European progress. This massive package of supposedly empirical, factual statements was woven together by means of a modern form of the 19th-century theory of Eurocentric diffusionism. 32 This theory evolved as a justification and rationalization for classical colonialism. It asserted, in essence, the following propositions about the world as a whole and throughout all of history. 1 The world has a permanent center, or core, and a permanent periphery. The center is Greater Europe, that is, the continent of 30 Ibid, p. 293. James M. Blaut, Fourteen Ninety-Two, in Political Geography Quarterly, 1992, vol. 11, no. 3. 32 James M. Blaut, “Diffusionism: A Uniformitarian Critique,” in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1977, p. 33. Europe plus, for ancient times, the Bible Lands and, for modern times, the countries of European settlement overseas. The core sector, Greater Europe, is naturally inventive, innovative, and progressive. 2 The periphery, the non-European world, naturally remains traditional, culturally sluggish or stagnant. 3 The basic reason why Europe is progressive, innovative, etc. is some quality of mind or spirit, some rationality, peculiar to Europeans. 4 Progress occurs in the periphery as a result of the diffusion, the outward spread, of new and innovative traits from the core to the periphery. Modern diffusionism therefore describes a world in which Europeans have always been the most progressive people, and non-Europeans are backward, and permanently the recipients of progressive ideas, things, and people from Europe. It follows that progress for the periphery, today as always in the past, must consist of the continued diffusion of European rationality and institutions, European culture and control. The periphery, today, includes the Third World, along with Third World minorities embedded in the European-dominated countries like the United States, in ghettos, reservations, prisons, migrant-labor camps. All American whites are the origin of European white who theologically puritan; biologically superior race and culturally more progressive than color people such Africa America, native people, Hispanic people, Asians, Arabic and etc., This belief culminated in their consciousness as well as practices. That is why cultural theory of racism gives us more advantage to see racism comprehensively.

CHAPTER III RESEARCH FINDINGS