Critical race theory and inequality in the labour market

Racial stratification in Ireland

Ebun Joseph

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526134417
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book presents racial stratification as the underlying system that accounts for the differential in outcomes in the labour market. It employs critical race theory to discuss the operation, research, maintenance and impact of racial stratification. Making innovative use of a stratification framework to expose the pervasiveness of racial inequality, this book teaches readers how to use critical race theory to investigate the racial hierarchy and develop a race consciousness. Using Ireland as a case study, Ebun Joseph examines how migrants navigate the labour market and respond to their marginality.Representing the first study to examine inequality, racism and discrimination in the labour market from a racial stratification perspective, this book offers scholars a method to conduct empirical study of racial stratification across different countries without an over reliance on secondary data. While based on a study of Ireland, Joseph's theoretical approach and insight into migrant perspectives will appeal to readers interested in social justice, diversity and inclusion, race and ethnicity, and critical whiteness and migration.

1

Race: the unmarked marker in racialised hierarchical social systems

Race is constructed for the purpose of maintaining a racial hierarchy. Race does not exist as a neutral attribute of each individual. Race exists as a signifier of group and individual social status. Race is real in its social consequences. If race existed only on its condition of being believed, its life would have ceased long ago. (Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva, 2008: 335–336)

Race is a socil construct that has been utilised in separating people into groups for positive or negative treatment. The way it impacts on a group will depend on where group members are located on the strata. The effect can include limiting or granting group members access to esteem, status, power and resources. We might, then, erroneously think that race is the problem; to this I say no. The real problem is what race is used for: the creation and maintaining of a racial hierarchy where some – more specifically, Blacks – are at the bottom and some – Whites – are at the top. This arrangement of people on strata based on their race in very simple terms is racial stratification and it affects all groups differently. For Blacks and non-White groups at the bottom of the racial strata, racial stratification is a site of oppression, while for non-Blacks or White groups, it is a site of domination. Racial stratification is only possible because race is possible, because races exist.

Let me start my travels with race by giving you a glimpse through a personal story of my first realisation living as a person of migrant descent in the white world – an experience I have titled, ‘… For a black person’. Before I arrived in Ireland, my country of naturalisation, I was just a person – a female person. I experienced the world as a human being, as a woman. So among those who looked like me, neither race nor my ‘race’ was ever an issue. From the day I arrived in Ireland, I became a social construct. I became my race and my intersectionality. I became my skin colour, the gross domestic product (GDP) of my nationality of descent. I became a Black woman. No one sought my consent. As I arrived at the state’s borders, these categories were already existent and I was expected to fit into them. They would go on to mark my experiences, rights and access to resources. My education became embodied in my Black[ness], such that when I performed well, I would hear, ‘that’s quite good’ as if I just surprised them. I often wondered about the silent comparison and the source; good for who or what? …, I would think, as I waited, silently urging them to say more. … Would they say it? … for a Black person? You speak really well, for … a Black person. You’ve achieved a whole lot … for a Black person. I quickly came to the realisation that I was simply my race.

Not everyone understands the angst Black people have about the way race is defined and employed both historically and in contemporary times – and the impact it has on their being, in their everyday lives. This is because of the ambivalence of Whites who though they know that race is an issue; their race is not an issue. The little piece from my lived world is the experience of every person of migrant descent in one shape or form of the other who crosses the borders into the Western world.

The central themes in this chapter include the way race is employed as a means of categorisation to determine access to resources; and whiteness and how it selectively privileges groups. The chapter introduces readers to the everyday performance of white supremacy as the underlying system of white privilege. In this regard, whiteness is counterposed as privilege against whiteness as dominance as the locus of understanding the effect of whiteness and the resulting marginalisation and subjugation of Blacks and non-Whites. The chapter ends by defining some key terms for understanding racial stratification.

The contentious nature of race

The concept of race is not static but has been employed in various ways, making it open to contestation. Its use, particularly in human categorisation at individual and group levels, raises significant questions about race relations and race dynamics. While statisticians may employ race as a category in the collection of data and in providing services to the public, it becomes problematic when we consider who categorises people, the power dynamics involved, and the meaning(s) associated with the categories in terms of where, how and with whom individuals are categorised. All of these have implications, for example if a person is categorised as EU or non-EU; from the Third World, developing or developed world. More recently, development studies have used the term ‘global North’ and ‘South’. Other pertinent concerns include the arrangement of the categories, if flat – signalling racial equality, or top-down – signifying a hierarchical ranking; the status, privileges or negative judgements attached to each category, and the challenges they present to the categorised person when exercising their agency, all of which make the concept of race an ongoing concern. In social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), mobility within and between groups plays a vital role in group conflict, and attempts to answer such questions have been the basis of different schools of thought. Race has also been problematic in relation to whether it should be acknowledged or not. Some scholars argue that researching and referring to race reifies it. Those who ignore the concept have been accused of being colour-blind.

The complexity of race is evident from the myriad ways in which it has been conceptualised, though the various positions seem plausible. A major line of contestation, however, has been on how races are formed. Some claim race is an illusion, some see it as an ideology, others take an essentialist view and see it as biological, and yet more see it as socially constructed. The concept of race emerged in the European languages in the fifteenth century, where it was used to emphasise nobility and superiority of some groups, while at the same time depicting the inferiority of the other (Omi and Winant, 1994; Cornell and Hartmann, 1998). Race has been applied as a category imposed by others who use it as a foundation for oppression and discrimination, including the promotion of slavery in America and apartheid in South Africa. Across Europe today, race is one of the main determinants of socio-economic outcomes and the mobility of people across geographical borders particularly as we consider the 2016 refugee crisis. Race has also been conceptualised and applied by craniologists like Samuel Morton, who claimed to be able to determine the inferiority of others by their skull size, and eugenicists who believed in good genes and sustained discriminatory acts like racial segregation, forced sterilisations and genocides. A little over twenty years ago, the authors of the controversial book, The Bell Curve claimed that genes and the environment accounted for racial differences in intelligence in the human population (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994). However, it has since been argued (King, 1981) that the biological existence of race is an ideological concept loaded with questionable scientific value. Race operates as a social construct that has material impacts and outcomes. It functions as a category that implicitly and explicitly assigns values, status and positioning on the social, racial and economic hierarchy. Race is not simply about an individual outcome but a group/collective outcome. It is not personal but structural.

Race creates a hierarchy – a racial hierarchy; one that was established as natural within the social fabric of Western powers and now global systems. One of the most contentious uses of the concept of race is that it orders racial groupings, whereby Africans are inserted at the bottom and Europeans at the top (Zuberi and Bashi, 1997). The incongruence in such hierarchical systems that insists on categorising the human race on the basis of difference is made obvious by Todorov (2000), who cautions that such a belief in the superiority of one group over another may imply the possession of unique and integrated value structures, or serve as an evaluative framework for making generic judgements. Todorov’s concerns are worthy of note, as to reasonably compare and decide if one race is better or superior to the other, there is a need for racial groups to exhibit a certain level of sameness to be comparable. Extant evidence also shows that race is commonly applied to distinguish, classify, tag and pigeonhole groups through the application of a scale of values that is markedly ethnocentric, with the racialist’s own race usually positioned at the top of the hierarchy (Todorov, 2000).

Individuals take various perspectives on race, and scholars have attempted to categorise such positions. Moschel (2011), for example, uses the label ‘racial scepticists’ to describe those who maintain that races do not exist at all. Such people or organisations will simply eliminate race from political and normal everyday usage and life. For Crenshaw (2000), the appellation ‘racial constructionists’ can be used to describe those who believe that races do not naturally exist but are in some ways socially defined. While some of these believe that talking about race should be eliminated, CRT theorists see race as part of the real world and the use of the term should be continued as an effective strategy to combat racism. Todorov (2000: 66) noted a third category, the ‘racialists’ – individuals who, while not satisfied that races differ, recognise racial superiority. Racialists exhibit ambivalence, and simultaneously believe that people are different while judging them based on a set of rules that indicate sameness.

Traditionally, race is a comparatively simple idea that is applied to certain outward signs of ‘social visibility’ such as physiognomy (Myrdal, 2000: 96). The literature suggests that race also derives from racial systems, or ways of classifying people, usually by judging how closely their phenotype fits with the somatic norm imagery of what the different races ‘look’ like (Zuberi and Bashi, 1997: 669). This ability to categorise the other implies a power dynamic where ‘Whites categorise Negros’ Myrdal (2000: 96). This point is illuminated by Fanon (2000: 257), who contends that ‘as long as the Black man is among his own, he will have no occasion, except in minor internal conflicts to experience his being through others’. He thus insists that in the discourse of race, being black is usually viewed in relation to being white, and because of the racial positioning of Black people in the global hierarchy they become the racial ‘other’. Goldberg (2000: 156) makes a similar claim that hegemony wielded through race does not take effect in isolation but through contact with others. Consequently, he adds, people adjudged as the racial ‘other’ are sacrificed at the altar of an idealised and superior category, stripped of personhood and disregarded in matters of social benefits and political (self-) representation. The Negro, in essence, is given two frames of reference within which to place himself (Fanon, 2000: 257–258).

Undeniably, race is a social fact that shapes the concept of identity and collective representation organising social experience (Winant, 2004). It is for this reason that race is widely employed to socially define and categorise individuals based on their physical characteristics that are not predetermined by biological facts (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998). But the concept of race has morphed and become even more pejorative in its use to separate people into groups, such as Europeans and others (Spickard, 1992). The taxonomy of race operates in a way whereby the dominant groups exercise the power to stipulate the status and place of the less powerful, thus maintaining their own power, status and authority (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998). Such classifications usually involve a power relation with racial designations that imply some kind of inferiority. The positioning of White Europeans at the top of the pinnacle, where they were seen as naturally superior to all other ‘races’ in virtually every aspect, was vital for the imperialist expansion in all parts of the world, including the inception and practice of slavery. Without it, Song (2007: 3768) argues, ‘it would not have been possible to subordinate and dehumanise conquered peoples’. Therefore, how race is employed for the inferiorisation and superiorisation of groups makes it continuously problematic and contentious.

While there is consensus among race theorists today that race is a socially constructed category, its influence does not seem to have lessened. One’s race is thus an objective reality, a sort of agent that dictates the position of the individual on the hierarchy; determines and influences the individual’s life chances and outcomes, and even affects the individual’s relationships with others. It is not only in the contemporary United States that the way race is practised is an objective fact where ‘one simply is one’s race’ (Winant, 2000: 185) but also in contemporary Europe. Race is a very real social classification that has cultural ramifications as well as enforcing a definite social order (Omi and Winant, 1994). In this sense, race operates as a matter of both social structure and cultural representation that indicates difference and constructs inequality. The negative implications of race still prevail by its ability to disadvantage some groups while privileging others. What is evident from this trend is the continuous devising of new justifications to institute racial difference to promote the superiority of one group over the other, more specifically, Whites over Blacks to enact white supremacy. It would indeed appear, as Zuberi (2011) argues, that the move from eugenic to cultural arguments on race seems only to be a move from one type of essentialist perspective to another – the biological evolutionary to the cultural perspective of European superiority which came to replace the biological justifications of race. Thus, despite anti-discrimination laws and equal opportunity policies, racial inequality in the labour market persists.

The ‘post-racial’ discourse, particularly after the election of the first Black president of the United States of America, is that researching and centring race is discouraged by some who claim it reifies it. Contrary to Crouch’s (1996) predictions in his essay ‘Race is over’, there is a continued preoccupation with physical characteristics as the central indicator of race which societies have used to create racial stratification – an ascribed ranking in society which can affect a person’s opportunities, status and access to resources. Empirical data show that race still matters in modern states, particularly in view of the festering dissatisfaction with migrants within the EU. In a 2007 survey of forty-seven nations, nearly half (46 per cent) of the UK respondents named race relations and immigration among the most important issues facing Britain, ranking it ahead of education and placing it almost at par with crime (Transatlantic Trends, 2010). A similar poll in Ireland in 2009 found that 72 per cent of people wanted to see a reduction in the number of non-Irish immigrants living in Ireland (O’Brien, 2009). Race, as has been argued, is always an issue (Dyer, 2000). Through immigration debates, race has been central in all political spheres in the Western world, from the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, his fight to build a steel wall costing billions o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Race: the unmarked marker in racialised hierarchical social systems
• 2 Migration, whiteness and Irish racism
• 3 Evidence of racial stratification in Ireland: comparing the labour market outcomes of Spanish, Polish and Nigerian migrants
• 4 A framework for exposing racial stratification: theory and methodology
• 5 Knowing your place: racial stratification as a ‘default’ starting position
• 6 Intersecting stratifiers: how migrants change their place on the labour supply chain
• 7 Minority agency, experiences and reconstructed identities: how migrants negotiate racially stratifying systems
• 8 Policing the racial order through the group favouritism continuum
• Conclusion: towards a critical race theory of the labour market
• Bibliography
• Index