by Izeth Hussain
I wish my enemies will go to Hell,
Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel!
It was written by Hilaire Belloc, a devout Roman Catholic who in the first half of the last century wrote some of the best light verse of his time, for which he is assured of classic status. Before providing another example of his genius, I must say something of the significance of the Christmas/New Year festive season. During it the Westernised Sri Lankans seek self-renewal in the cities, while others seek it during the Sinhala/Tamil New Year by returning to their roots in their natal villages and small towns. Both are mistaken, according to a French saying which goes, “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.” Here is Belloc’s illustration of the point:-
The accursed power which stands
on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne
and Bridge)
Broke - and Democracy resumed
her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women
and Champagne).
What is Racism? - At a recent literary meeting in Peradeniya an English female was loudly accused of racism, because according to some she had objected to the wrong use of Sinhala by a local poet. The accusation does seem to be a shocking non-sequitur. But I wasn’t there, and I cannot be sure because in verbal communication so much depends not just on what is said but on the tone in which it is said and on body language. So, she could well have betrayed racist attitudes. I am referring to that episode because it highlights a Sri Lankan need for a proper understanding of what is meant by racism. This seems to be all the more necessary now because the term ‘racism’, which at one time was hardly used in connection with our ethnic problem, now seems to be passing into mainstream discourse on the subject.
The question of what is racism is a very broad subject which cannot possibly be covered in all its ramifications in this brief note. Here I will merely set out what I understand by racism, hoping that it will elicit broad assent. The starting point is the paradox that today we have racism without race. On the one hand it is widely accepted that there is no such thing as race, certainly that there is no pure race, and on the other that there is such a thing as racism. The explanation is that attitudes and practices associated with racism in the past continue to flourish today.
Genetically superior
However, the notion that some peoples are genetically superior to others continues to have its adherents. In the sixties the iconoclastic psychologist H.J.Eyesenck was roughed up by London University students for carrying out studies on genetic differences in intelligence, and today too such studies provoke strong disapproval. Today the overwhelming consensus is that the differences between peoples are cultural, in the anthropological sense of ‘way of life’, which have nothing to do with genes.
A crucial distinction has to be made between ethnocentrism and racism. Practically all ethnic groups have a propensity to over-value themselves. Claude Levi-Strauss wrote that all ethnic groups, even one relatively lost in the Matto Grosso jungle, tend to believe that its way of life incarnates all that is best in human life. But that ethnocentrism does not necessarily entail hostility towards other groups, and a compulsion to treat others as inferior, which are hallmarks of racism. I would broadly define, or rather describe, the characteristics of racism in the following way. Firstly the racist has an essentialist habit of mind, a tendency to see all the members of a group as sharing certain characteristics. Secondly, he sees those characteristics as permanent or semi-permanent, changing if at all only in the course of centuries. Thirdly, he sees those characteristics as making the other group inferior or threatening. Consequently the racist shows something like a compulsion to discriminate against, exclude, or even kill the other.
I believe that in judging who is and who is not a racist we should eschew thinking in terms of binary opposites, with racists at one end and anti-racists at the other. We should rather think of them as occupying intermediate positions in a continuous spectrum because while racists are racist not all are equally racist, and likewise in the case of anti-racists. I believe that in dealing with the problem of racism we should not simplify it by demonizing the racists. I will provide a few examples to show what I have in mind. According to a recent report Churchill regarded Hinduism as a “beastly religion” and Hindus as a “beastly people”, which suffices to convict him of racism. According to another recent report Britain and its wartime allies had enough food to have averted the Bengal famine, but that was not possible because of Churchill’s opposition. If that case is proved, Churchill would be ranked among the worst racist criminals of all time. But he could also be great-hearted about the Indians, as shown by the fact that after meeting Nehru for the first time he bemoaned the fact that a human being of that quality had spent a total of seventeen years in prison under British imperialism. Churchill is supposed to have wept on that occasion.
Kissinger and Nixon
Kissinger, according to Seymour Hirsch’s book on him, had an absolutely sickening contempt for the African blacks, but K’s memoirs shows that he admired Sadat According to another recent report, Nixon thought that the Irish get mean when they drink, the Italians don’t have their heads screwed on right, the Jews are very aggressive, abrasive and obnoxious, and have a need to compensate for an inferiority complex. Nixon held that all peoples have their traits, which I believe is true, so that it becomes arguable that Nixon may have been mistaken in holding those views but not that he was necessarily racist.
But he held that the American blacks who were coming along nicely would take five hundred years to really come through - and that certainly shows the essentialising habit of mind that is typical of the racist. However, Nixon admired the Chinese at a time when both super-powers were obsessed by the Yellow Peril.
All the persons I have mentioned here were guilty of racism. The point I want to emphasize is that they were certainly not at the same end of the racist spectrum as the genocidal Hitler gang. The kind of distinctions I am making in this note is necessary for a proper understanding of racism in Sri Lanka.
Hopkins - The point of contention at the literary meeting to which I alluded above was about going against linguistic norms for the creative purposes of literature. Reading the articles about that meeting brought to my mind a superb example of the creative wrenching of syntax in the Hopkins poem Peace:
When will you ever, Peace,
wild wood dove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end,
and under be my boughs?
My former guru, Ludowycke, used to enthuse over the inversion of “under be” instead of “be under” because it made a rich resonance possible. That reading sufficed me as a youth, but now it seems to me that the resonance of “under be” is functional because it conveys a sense of strength in the dove which is not the usual tame creature but a wild one. That is apposite because Hopkins was writing not of a relaxed peace, but of a strenuous creative one, a peace that is won after a struggle against an inner turbulence. Here is the end of the poem:
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, He comes to brood and sit.
I have found the poem fascinating for its use of ‘the language of paradox’, and also fortifying because in Sri Lanka we have to struggle against both an inner and an outer turbulence.
 Greetings - Having gone through another festive season, and now having to face r...){kind=link}
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