Face to Race

31    Such discursive constructions ("girls being girls") play an instrumental role in the continual maintenance and justification of white race privilege; conferring benefits to those who adhere to or can explain events in a manner consistent with white cultural norms (Frankenberg). Shetty was demonstrably on the outside of these norms from the onset, and was unable or unwilling to engage with the changing and arbitrary "rules" defining inclusion. Rather than acknowledging the subjective nature of white culture within the house, Shetty instead became positioned as the site of "difference," in comparison with the "normal" (white) ways of behaving that were deemed acceptable within the house. Clearly, white culture here was operating as an "unmarked and unnamed" (Frankenberg 1) category, against which Shetty's salient gendered and classed cultural differences were measured. Despite protestations of tolerance and impartiality, "whiteness" was constructed by the British girls as something desirable and somehow "naturally" better. As discussed by Van Dijk, and Anthias and Yuval-Davis, concurrent discursive constructions such as these work to deny the existence of racism, and thus suggest that any privilege granted to white people is therefore the result of "natural" superiority. In the case of the Big Brother house, this "natural" superiority literally referred to having white skin, along with conforming to various "white" cultural norms.

32    Following on from these findings, if we examine a statement made by Goody in her exit interview ("I know I said those things and they were nasty but I'm not a racist [. . .]. I don't judge people by the colour of their skin, [or] where they come from"), it could be suggested that people rarely recognise the ways in which racially discriminative discourses are entwined with their constructions of class, gender, culture and nationality when speaking about the "other." Even more difficult to recognise is the unearned ability to exercise privilege based on "cultural capital." As has been suggested by numerous other researchers, the only way that racial oppression can truly be overcome is for "white" or otherwise privileged people to increasingly recognise and acknowledge their own privileged status, as opposed to focusing only on the oppressed status of the "other". (McIntosh; Moreton-Robinson; Riggs & Choi)

33    While the wider implications of the denial of racism in the UK and in Western multicultural societies are beyond the scope of this paper, questions about the role that intersecting classed, raced and gendered identities play in the practice and maintenance of racist ideologies and institutions have undoubtedly been raised for further ongoing scrutiny. Most particularly, the analysis provided here demonstrates the way in which supposedly "past" historically racist and interlinked constructions of race, class and gender continue to find expression in a post-modern world, and continue to manifest in discriminatory and self-serving "white" perspectives and practices. It therefore seems that in order to truly make sense of particular experiences and subject locations, it is necessary to examine these as intersecting factors, working to produce unique subject positions within hierarchies of privilege and oppression.