Race and Racism - Part 1

    History and society is developed so much around the injustices of race and racism that I, to this day, can not help to feel moved from those who were brave enough to stand up against it. I recently fell into a story of Barack Obama revisiting the site of the Selma, Alabama march on its 50th anniversary, honoring those that were apart of the march. To know there were men and women "doing something about it", makes me really wonder about my own character in today's seemingly inactive society. We can never fully know what social issues are truly hurting our society, and for a society that talks a bigger game than it walks, one can see how inactivity leads to normalcy. Even if we were to realize there was something really wrong, would we do something about it? Would we stand up and march, or sit in and protest? I distinguish between race and racism because there is and has been so much pain and anguish caused from the injustices of this social construct that this pain and anguish truly deserves its own historical heading. While there has been much racism stemming from our own American soil, we must often also remember that it extends far from just  an issue on U.S soil. Racism exists everywhere because greed and exploitation exists everywhere.

    British legislation regarding immigration control in 1948-1968 was passed to regulate economic stability by regulating foreign labor numbers, a task that would inadvertently include racial antagonism within its economic conflicts. Historians, such as M.D.A Freeman and Sarah Spencer, have written on the basis of British immigration control through the lens of Marxian radical thought and look to understand the foundation of immigration control “in terms of the material conditions of society.” Historians, like Lydia Lindsey, follow this ideology of immigration control through the analysis of class struggle and its racial ties, describing race as being synonymous with class because of the society’s class structure. Paul Gilroy extends the topic into the realm of culture in his critique of capitalism and its involuntary involvement in the formation of an expressive culture, one that finds significance today. Other historians have built off of this ideology but have analyzed its effects upon the society through different modes of history. For example, Randall Hansen describes the politics behind the legislation process of the time and the racist sentiment that would be intertwined in the intricate fibers of society, economy, and politics. Kaveri Qureshi comments on the social effects of immigration legislation through a transnational approach in his more in-depth ethnography of chronic illness, more generally bodily deterioration, really highlighting the idea that racism has linked to certain people living less.

    I have read about Jim Crow laws and the abhorrent racism that was so prevalent in U.S history, but know I have only barely scratched the surface of understanding. I didn't even think about Britain, and the racism that exists there, or in every other country. I want to write more but I know I have to read more to know more. Sucks that I will never know enough.

Sources

Freeman, M.D.A, and Sarah Spencer. “Immigraton Control, Black Workers and the Economy.” British Journal of Law and Society 6/1 (1979): 53-81.

Gilroy, Paul. “There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack”: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Hansen, Randall. “The Kenyan Asians, British Politics and the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1968.” Historical Journal 42/3 (1999): 809-834.

Lindsey, Lydia. “The Split-Labor Phenomenon: Its Impact on West Indian Workers as a Marginal Working Class in Birmingham, England, 1948-1962.” Journal of Negro History 78/2 (1993): 83-109.

Qureshi, Kaveri. “Pakistani Labor Migration and Masculinity: Industrial Working Life, The Body, and Transnationalism.” Global Networks 12/4 (2012): 485-504.