Face to Race

by Melissa Wright, University of Adelaide, Australia

1    The need to focus on what Anderson & Collins describe as "simultaneous and intersecting systems of relationship and meaning" (xiii) is an important aspect of the critical study of racism. Hook and other researchers within the area of critical psychology continue to suggest that locating racism as solely the product of a range of rhetorical devices fails to capture the complex and varying ways in which racism is enacted and how it impacts upon people – whether that be to oppress some or to privilege others. (Fine) One method for attempting to address issues of racism has been through a focus upon racial privilege, a concept that has been central to recent work in the field of critical race and whiteness studies. (Frankenberg; McIntosh; Moreton-Robinson; Riggs & Choi; Tannoch-Bland) As well as examining instances of racist ideologies, this approach has been instrumental in the deconstruction of underlying historical contingencies seen as responsible for taken-for-granted social systems and structures which simultaneously privilege "whiteness" and normalize or justify racist practices.

2    It has also been suggested that an integrated view of racism that focuses on its complex relationship with hierarchies of gender and class, and other such identity constructions, is vital to understanding the differing ways in which racist structures and discourses perpetuate inequalities and resulting positions of relative oppression and privilege. (Hoagland; Schloesser) Hage suggests that rather than ignoring the complex ways in which whiteness, if viewed as cultural capital, is variously distributed amongst a range of identity positions (i.e. gender, class, sexuality and ability), it is important to examine the differing investments that people will hold in whiteness as a dominant cultural signifier. "Whiteness," from this understanding, is thus not solely the property of those identified as having white skin – it circulates as a form of cultural capital that while indeed primarily privileging those men identified as white, middle-class, heterosexual and able-bodied, nonetheless accords considerable privilege to a much wider range of individuals on the basis of their willingness, desire, or otherwise to appropriate particular social norms that serve to enshrine whiteness. As such is it important to examine how certain dominant perspectives of the world which are enshrined in social institutions regulate how we understand ourselves and the people we relate to. Burman in particular directs our attention to the way intersectional raced, classed and gendered discourses may be deployed in the service of nation and citizenship in a manner which primarily works to privilege "whiteness."

3    This paper adopts the approach outlined above to examine the workings of race privilege in the recent 2007 series of Celebrity Big Brother in the United Kingdom; a series which was wrought with controversy over allegations of racist bullying by former Big Brother contestant Jade Goody and two other British female housemates towards their fellow housemate, Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty. The key focus at hand is an examination of the privileged position of the three British women that investigates the manifestation of racism through the complex intersectionality of race and gender. More specifically, this paper will examine the ways in which particular rhetorical devices were deployed to justify the privileged position held by these three women, and the denial of this privileged position through an ongoing construction of "girls being girls." However, it is first necessary to elaborate more clearly the particular theoretical approaches to understanding race privilege and enactments of racism, and the contemporary intersection of identity categories adopted within this paper.

"Whiteness" and race privilege

4    Researchers are increasingly acknowledging the importance of addressing the underlying and resultant positions of relative privilege and oppression that acts of racism directly correspond to. Frankenberg is one such theorist who draws attention to the structural advantage, or racial privilege, which is linked to "whiteness" as an identity position. As indicated in the introduction, whilst "whiteness" is typically taken as referring to people identified as "white-skinned", an understanding of whiteness as "cultural capital" extends our focus to the benefits that a wide range of people not directly identified by the category "white" may be said to accrue. Thus, as Frankenberg aptly summarises: whiteness is "an economic and political category maintained over time by a changing set of exclusionary practices" (11). Frankenberg also argues that whiteness is often defined by what it is not, and thus defined in relation to the boundaries which mark cultural groups as "racial others."

5    The unearned and unacknowledged racial privilege which is routinely awarded to those most able to identify and present as "white," both on the basis of skin colour and other forms of "cultural capital," is unearned and unacknowledged largely because it is continuously constructed (both structurally and discursively) as a normal and natural facet of societal functioning. In part, this is due to the way in which whiteness is typically regarded as racially neutral, or objective, and is by and large treated as the norm to which other cultures are compared and measured against. (Moreton-Robinson) As such, the role that white race privilege plays in the shaping of white people's identities and life experiences is largely unacknowledged both in the public sphere and in academia. (Frankenberg)