‘ Race’, Racism and Cultural Identity Week 2 Lecture: Learning from Historical and Global Comparisons

Genocide in Rwanda in ,000 people murdered in 100 days Members of the Tutsi minority killed by members of the Hutu majority

Racial and ethnic divisions Shape life experiences and life chances Are constructs rooted in social, political and historical conditions Universal? Modern or anti- modern?

Two crucial questions How are why do people come to see others as similar or different? When, how and why do beliefs about similarity and difference come to take on a social significance?

Social scientists focus on The social and political processes of racialisation i.e. how groups are constituted. The ways in which ‘race thinking’ and racism operate as part of particular social formations.

Race and Modernity Slavery, colonialism and post- colonialism New forms of power; new problems and technologies of population management Managing the contradictions of the Enlightenment The role of science

Rudyard Kipling 1899 Take up the White Man’s burden- Send forth the best ye breed- Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild – Your new caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child.

The divisions of colonialism Franz Fanon – the dehumanisation of the native Edward Said – the dualism of the West and the Rest

Race and science Establishes idea that race has a biological reality Classification and ranking the world’s population Linking race to differences in character and capacity

Ota Benga A man put on exhibition in the Bronx Zoo (1906)

The Irish and the ‘Europeans’