Joshua Krueger #3042188
CRS/IDS 4910 – Conflict and the Construction of the
Other
Richard McCutcheon; November 14, 2011
Think Piece #8: Racist Identity
I have heard the
myths before. They go something like this: Out in the world there are people
who wish to do us harm for some unnatural reason. We must defend ourselves from
these people, for though we have never seen them, we know that their savagery
and fierceness will overtake us if we do not prepare. We keep our standing
forces strong, not only so that we may repel them from our own house, but so
that we may protect others who are besieged by them. In this day and age, our
duty includes the responsibility to go overseas to save docile populations from
leaders born of their own flesh and blood. To perform this honourable mission
we need strong men; men who understand that war always requires a tensioned
balance between what is right and what is necessary. We need men who are
willing to endure the necessary stresses of war, even if it commits them to permanent
damage. It is through these men, whose experience can never be understood, that
proud nations like Canada uphold their burdens for worldwide democracy and
freedom.
I do not believe these tempting
and totalizing myths and neither does Sherene H. Razack. His presentation of
the Somalia Affair shows a different world were all people are actually
believed to be equal, rather than starting with “the argument that the natives
will understand little else but force.”[1]
Razack shows the self-promoting racism deep within a Canadian psyche that wants
to see itself as a good country. This racism is perverse because it is not a
direct intention, but merely the un-thought conclusion to culturally assumed
givens: Canadians are nice, Canadians are pleasantly naïve and Canadians want
to help. Since we tightly hold onto these qualities, we also catch the savagery
and racism that is necessary. Our virtues “achieve coherence only if we stand
outside history and within a racial story of civilized and savage peoples.”[2]
What other reason would there be to bring soldiers half way around the world if
they did not carry with them the light of civilization – to be shared
selflessly. In order “for Western subjects to feel whole and to understand
their presence in that space as necessary and justified, Black savagery had to
exist.”[3]
Fortunately, it is not even a problem if that savagery has to be baited with
food and water,[4]
because “the home front never understands what life is like in the colonies.”[5]
This narrative of native savagery is so strong that not even the example of
Botswanan soldiers[6] or
the parallel case of Yugoslavia[7]
is enough to dislodge it.
In this way, racism becomes a
by-product of identity. Most Canadians are not heartless, but all of them were
asked by the official Inquiry to understand themselves as the true victims of
the Somalia affair,[8]
rather than the dead Somalians or their families. This epistemological categorization
and systematic denial of Somanians as true persons is so pervasive that even
within the Inquiry only professionalized and external sources of knowledge –
treating the Somalians as objects of study – was allowed; Somalians were denied
the ability to speak for themselves under the justification that their
knowledge would be ‘emotional.’ This is not a new problem and one that cannot
be wished away. The same logic maintained the holocaust. We cannot respect or
relate to people who only need our help just as we cannot stop the killing of a
destined inferior race. Each form of totalitarianism trains the mind until it
becomes impossible to think – morally or critically – outside its confines.
This point is maybe best proven by the fact that it takes a person of colour,
marginalized outside the dominant identity, to deconstruct the racist assumptions
of Canada’s peacekeeping and national myths.
[1] Sherene H. Razack, Dark
Threats & White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping, and the New
Imperialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 39.
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