Face to Race

6    Discussions of "whiteness" have been usefully extended in the context of the United Kingdom to examine the ways in which the category "British" is deployed to warrant a sense of national belonging for particular groups of people, as claimed on the basis three different criteria: 1) British citizenship, 2) "racial" heritage and/or 3) shared cultural values. (Jacobson) Importantly, this research highlights that despite claims to the "cultural" location of "Britishness" as an identity, it is very much marked by a racialised logic wherein only particular groups of people (i.e., those seen as "white") are recognised as "authentic" British subjects. (ETHNOS Research and Consultancy; Jacobson) Furthermore, such constructions of belonging are generally deployed and maintained by those identified as white Britons. Thus, for example, we see use of the term "British" to refer to white British people (or at the very least those people who are accepted within this identity category), whilst a range of groups of people living throughout the UK are identified by "additive categories" (such as "British Pakistanis" or "British Muslims") (Jacobson). In much the same way as Frankenberg identified whiteness as an "unmarked and unnamed" (1) category, "Britishness" circulates as a racially unmarked category only for those who hold a sense of entitlement to the category itself. This sense of entitlement thus engenders a sense of righteous belonging in the face of British cultural diversity and a sense of ownership of British national space. This paper will later explore the way in which the claiming of a British identity allowed particular individuals within the Big Brother house to occupy and act from within a position of relative racial privilege.

Maintaining Racial Privilege

7    Racist practices and discourses typically function to maintain and justify existing relations whereby certain groups have power or dominance over other groups within society. Anthias and Yuval-Davis (viii) define racism as those "discourses and practices by which ethnic groups are inferiorized, excluded and subordinated." Accompanying the deployment of racism/race privilege through both discursive and institutional structures is the stereotypical construction of "otherness" that has come to define non-white, or culturally marginalised individuals. For some, "otherness" comes to evoke distrust and fear, whilst for those marked as "other," "otherness" means feeling "excluded, closed out, precluded, even disdained and scorned," at different times both invisible or overly conspicuous (Madrid 8).

8    Modern-day racism frequently involves what Frankenberg describes as "colour/power evasive" discourses, which present the view that all people are the same "under the skin" with equal chances of succeeding in life, but simultaneously imply that "any failure to achieve is therefore the fault of people of colour themselves" (14). Differences are relegated to specific cultural inferiorities, in contrast to what is implicitly (and at times explicitly) constructed as white cultural superiority. Ultimately, this discourse is as racially marginalising as more overt forms of racism based upon biological differences. Both of these discourses function to reify racial categories so they are again made to seem as though they reflect "real" or biological differences between people, rather than social differences which are the result of racialised power relations.

9    The strength of the colour/power evasiveness repertoire lies within the ability of those who are racially privileged to deny their privilege. The denial of racism allows racist behaviours to become acceptable and justified, working to legitimate white group dominance and superiority (Van Dijk). The claiming of a collective non-racist identity allows white people to deny that they are privileged on a racial basis, and furthermore puts forward the idea that any privilege granted to white people is earned and possibly the result of "natural" superiority (Anthias & Yuval-Davis). Similarly, certain aspects of "cultural capital" such as nationality (i.e. British ancestry), often presumed to be definitively indicated by white skin, are made to appear as something that cannot be achieved, but rather a birthright (Hage). Riggs and Augoustinos suggest that rather than focusing on the effects of racism alone, it is equally important to "focus [on] hegemonic practices/structures of racism, and their imbrication in the formation of white subjectivities" (462). In other words, rather than regarding race as a "natural" category in all facets of everyday life, it is necessary to understand how people construct intelligible identities for themselves within racial discourses, and how this leads to the reification of particular racial identities.

10    As such, it has increasingly come to the fore that racism must not only be regarded as related to racial identities, but also in relation to other forms of identification, such as gender and class. Ware, for example, investigated two racist events situated in England, and ultimately asks why racism comes to be represented almost exclusively by imagery of white, working-class, male violence, directed toward black, working-class males. Ware suggests that the absence of women and/or people of other classes within such depictions raises questions about the potential invisibility of racism beyond that reported to exist amongst working-class white men in the UK. By construing racism on such a one-dimensional level, the underlying historical and cultural contexts in which racism and white race privilege are situated are ignored, and white race privilege is reified and normalised. Accordingly, it is important to explore the ways in which racial identity constructions have historically evolved in their relationship to other identity constructions, in particular gender, before applying the discussed theoretical approaches to the events in the Big Brother house.