Relationship Between Cultue & Racism

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CULTURE AND RACISM

Frantz Fanon does not define racism in the ordinary terms that many Americans used to. Within Western culture, especially within the last fifty years, racism is often described as scapegoating, or blaming those of another ethnicity or culture for social problems. Or even assigning certain genetic traits to those in these cultures, traits that could belong to anyone at anytime. Fanon discusses racism in terms of "cultural relativity," stating that racism is the eventual result of one culture, and its institutions breaking apart and assimilating another culture (Fanon, 1967, p. 367). Fanon wanted to point out what he saw as the effects of larger cultures and their institutions on other cultures. He called these effects "the most visible...crudest element of a given structure," or, racism (Fanon, 1967, p. 367).

When Fannon discusses colonial powers, he attempts to show the amount of the political and economic power that a culture can have. The imposition of the more powerful colonial culture, is the destruction of those smaller and less powerful cultural enclaves that don't fit the stronger accepted mold. The rule of authority, whatever the authority happens to be, and the institutions that accept that authority, tend to control how someone's culture will be accepted or rejected. Fanon describes this exercise of power as generally being destructive:

Expropriation, spoilation, raids, objective

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ith the idea that any culture at some point can be thoughtless enough to assimilate whatever it does not recognize as useful (Fanon. 1967, p. 367). This is the way that Fanon defines racism. In many ways, it seems that the only culture without Fanon's cultural racism, would be an isolated culture where technology and population never rise very high. Other Effects of Cultural Racism In a frightening manner, Fanon describes the changes that cultures go through if they unlucky enough to be absorbed. First, he says, scientific arguments are brought forth by the aggressors to prove the inferiority of the conquered culture. No proof exists to show that the oppressed group has anything other than surface differences with the majority, but doubts remain. The "inferior race" denies the differences between the two races in the most self-destructive way it can by adopting the doctrines, theories, attitudes and convictions of the oppressors. Fanon seems to be saying that absorbed peoples must assume that some aspect of their racial or cultural make-up has caused them to fail. In other words, the victims blame themselves for their misfortune (Beatty & Johnson, 1995). At this point, Fanon concludes that a kind of cultural space that must be

Category: Psychology - R