um... are you sure about that?

" Race as a category is undergoing a subtle but vitally important shift. By the end of the 21st century, most Americans will realise that race is a social construct, of little meaning or utility in and of itself.

...

The process of globalisation will also cause Americans to see their similarities and ignore their dimishing racial differences. The cultural values shared between a black American and a white American will be far more compelling than the racial similarities that one shares with a Nigerian and the other with a Croat.

...

Many cultural differences between white and black Americans remain. Yet through the internet, television, trade, and travel, the ties that bind Americans and distinguish us from other cultures and nations will be emphasised. "

Running on Race, Jeremy D. Mayer

Oh dear, Jeremy. I don't even know where to begin.

You're right, that's not true. I have a fair idea.

Running on Race is a close and detailed study of the issue of 'race' in American presidential election campaigns 1960-2001. Mayer's work is useful in framing what has clearly been a central and important issue in these election campaigns over the past decades; the election-by-election approach draws clear comparisons and highlights the continuities in the way this issue was mobilised, approached or avoided by different candidates.

Mayer anticipates that it might sound "hopelessly naive" to predict that white privilege, and the colour line that made it possible, will fade over the next century, thus diminishing in importance as an electoral issue.

What I think he misses is that, if anything, a lot of the forces he sees as being 'unifying' are actually working to fragment societies and people. Perhaps he would think I've got an overly pessimistic view of the influence of race, ethnicisim, nationalism, religion and the emotive power of these various issues.

But where Mayer sees hope for unification in globalisation - where the internet, trade and travel will overcome more local differences to show Americans what they have in common - I feel as through his universalism overlooks the structures of power that run throughout these global forces.

For those who feel alientated from these broad global processes, who feel threatened by international terrorism, economically insecure due to the decline of the working class as labour movements react to the global market, whose sense of personal and collective identity is challenged by appeals to cosmopolitanism... it is in these spaces that the longing for close, bounded definitions of identity and community resides, and that the strengthening of these bounded identities - apparent in the resurgence of ultranationalisms, the rise of religious affiliation and religious fundamentalism, the growth of US patriotism after 9/11 - finds its base.

I think it is in this context we need to understand racism and its continuing potency - something I don't think is going away, however much intellectuals and public commentators and politicians would like to tell us it is. The essentialising viewpoint that relies on ideas of biological 'race' (or culture or ethnicity) to distinguish between us and them affords a powerful way to be able to easily answer the questions: where do I belong? where can I feel safe? who belongs here with me, and who doesn't?

I think, when we underestimate people's fundamental need to belong, we fail to see why these forms of identity formation might continue to be powerful. As Etienne Balibar points out, racism is not simply an error or a form of 'false consciousness', and we shouldn't only think about it in this way, as through we can simply 'educate' people away from thinking wrongly. Racism offers a way to think about the world and answer questions about it and our place in it. Combined with ideas of national identity, familial identity, class identity [which Mayer sees as possibly replacing race as a central election issue], personal identity and so , racism is simply one of a suite of ideas that contributes to the basic human need to know who we are and where we belong.

But this doesn't mean it is any less important, or that it's going away any time soon - especially in electoral politics, where the competition for who will speak for the nation, and who is able to include themselves in the national 'we', is even more urgent.