Reproduction of Race and Racial Ideologies

“This is a White Country’”: The Racial Ideology of the
Western Nations of the World-System
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, TexasA&M University
In this paper I argue that the racial ideology of the Western nations of the worldsystem
has converged over the past twenty years. This new ideology or, as many analysts
call it, the “new racism,” includes: (1) the notion of cultural rather than biological difference,
(2) the abstract and decontextualized use of the discourse of liberalism and individualism
to rationalize racial inequality, and (3) a celebration of nationalism that at
times acquires an ethnonational character. I contend that this ideological convergence reflects
the histories of racial imperialism of all these countries, the fact that they have all
developed real-although different-racial structures that award systemic rewards to
their “White” citizens, and the significant presence of the “Other” (Black, Arab, Turk,
aboriginal people, etc.) in their midst. I use the cases of Germany, France, the
Netherlands, and New Zealand to illustrate my point.
A specter is haunting Europe as well as other Western nations,’ and this
time, unlike in 1848, it is not the specter of communism. This time around it is
the ghost of an old Western tradition, the tradition of racism that, as Mam once
said about past collective history, “weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the
li~ing.”In~ the words of Fernand Braudel, “It is an old problem, and it is still
with us. It is the problem of otherness, that is, the feeling that a foreign presence
is other, a challenge to one’s own self and identity” (Braudel 1990, p. 208). This
problem of otherness affects today all Western nations and is signified in many
ways. Newspaper reports in various Western nations refer to immigrants of color
as “hordes,” “strangers,” “aliens,” and “1 ’invasion pacifique” (Layton-Henry
1994; Withol de Wenden 1991). In nations with historical racial minorities, such
as the United States, New Zealand, Canada, England, and even South Africa,
Whites characterize targeted programs to assist racial minorities as “reverse discrimination”
or, in the case of the Netherlands, as “positive discrimination”
(Cashmore 1987; Schutte 1995; Ter Wal, Verdan, and Westerbreek 1995). Racist
violence is on the rise in the United States, Germany, France, England the
Netherlands, and even Western nations usually perceived as tolerant, such as
Spain and Italy (Calvo-Buezas 1993; Witte 1996). Politicians of all hues routinely
make inflammatory racial comments. For instance, in Germany Chancellor
Helmut Schmidt said after his 1980 re-election that although the integration of
immigrants was very important, “It’s not easy for Germans who live in an apart-
Sociological Inquiv, Vol. 70, No. 2, Spring 2000, 188-214
02000 by the University of Texas Press, PO. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819