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The Racial State and Race Formation University of Vermont UVM ScholarWorks UVM College of Arts and Sciences College Honors Theses Undergraduate Theses 2021 The Racial State and Race Formation: A Comparative Case Study of the Use of Racial Narratives and Government Coercion for Racial Nation-State Building in Chile, China, and Myanmar McKenzie Imhoff Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/castheses Recommended Citation Imhoff, McKenzie, "The Racial State and Race Formation: A Comparative Case Study of the Use of Racial Narratives and Government Coercion for Racial Nation-State Building in Chile, China, and Myanmar" (2021). UVM College of Arts and Sciences College Honors Theses. 85. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/castheses/85 This Undergraduate Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Undergraduate Theses at UVM ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in UVM College of Arts and Sciences College Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of UVM ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Vermont Department of Sociology The Racial State and Race Formation: A Comparative Case Study of the Use of Racial Narratives and Government Coercion for Racial Nation-State Building in Chile, China, and Myanmar McKenzie Imhoff Thesis Advisor: Eleanor Miller Honors College Thesis April 2021 1 Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Eleanor Miller, for her support throughout the process of creating this thesis, as well as her ceaseless guidance throughout my time at the University of Vermont. It was her class Sophomore year, “Urban Inequities and Crime: The Wire,” that ignited a sociological passion within, and that marked the first college course which transformed my perceptions of this world. What a gift to have such a kind, intelligent, passionate professor and advisor in my life who not only substantially informed this work, but who also informs who I am daily. Gratitude overflows my being as I thank her for all of the opportunities she has given me, and all the insights she has taught me. My deepest thanks also go out to lawyer and social justice activist, Bryan Stevenson. Bryan, it was your book, “Just Mercy,” which inspired my pursuits for racial and social justice as I entered my freshman year of college. I never would have thought that your words would combine so perfectly with my educational and vocational experiences here in Vermont, informing not only the career I wish to pursue one day, but also the person I wish to be: a person of forgiveness, mercy, and humbleness. It is you who reminds me that “the true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.” Gratitude extends to the University of Vermont’s Sociology Department as a whole and each of my wonderful professors and advisors who have helped me see the world in terms of the structures and institutions that affect our bodies, opportunities, and material and social assets. It is through each of my classes in the department that I have been able to more clearly see the inequities my privileged body would elsewise ignore. Dr. Dale Jaffe, especially, thank you for introducing me to sociology freshman year, for introducing me to my best college friend, and for providing steadfast support through dogs and meetings throughout the years. I also wish to thank my extracurricular and professional opportunities in these past four years of Vermont. My most loving thanks goes out to the Peace and Justice Center of Burlington, who first kindled personal reflection on my racial identity and the racial injustice in our society. PJC, it is you who informed large portions of this thesis, and it is you who motivates my dedication to further pursue racial justice. I also thank Vermont Privateye and Attorney Jason Sawyer for introducing me to the legal system and giving me a real-life glimpse for how the system further ostracizes the poor, the traumatized, and the marginalized. Lastly, I would like to thank my family and friends who sat patiently at my side as I ferociously researched, and who, in this project and beyond, have taught me to never doubt myself nor my abilities. How lucky am I to have such selfless and ceaseless sources of love, and I especially thank you, Jane and Joe, for everything I have and am today. 2 “One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of “not racist.” The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism.” ― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist “Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.” ― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents "Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality." ― Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 3 Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………….5 Theoretical Contexts…………………………………………………………………………..6-13 i. The Formation of the Nation-State: Legitimacy Through Violence……………………………………………………………………….6-8 ii. Race as the Enemy Within…………………………………………………...8-11 iii. Government Coercion as means for Modern State Legitimacy………….…11-13 The Study…………………………………………………………………………................13-23 i. The Problem…………………………………………………………….13-15 ii. Choosing the Four Countries…………………………………………..15-21 iii. Research Methods……………………………………………………..21-23 Findings and Analysis………………………………………………………………... 23-203 i. Chapter One: The Racial State and Identity: Race and Racial Narratives for Nation-State Dominance and Authority…………………………………………...23-74 ii. Chapter Two: Peripheries of Vulnerability: Racial Minorities on Symbolic and Literal Fringes of Nation-State Territory and Identity…………………………74-123 iii. Chapter Three: The Global War on Terror: Rhetoric of Terrorism to Legitimize Racial Narratives and to Justify Government Coercion………………………123-159 iv. Chapter Four: Methods of Oppression: Government Coercion for the Enforcement of Racial Narratives and the Suppression of the Racialized Other …………………………………………………………………………159-203 Conclusion: Implications and Predictions of a Globally Racist Society…………………. 203-212 Appendix………………………………………………………………………………212-256 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………257-273 4 Abstract This is a study about what David Theo Goldberg (2002) describes as “the racial state”: a modern nation-state where rule and constructions of race are deeply intertwined (2002: 7). Racial difference, he posits, is one of the easiest and most potent ways a governing body in modern times can establish power, social order, and dominance (130). Racial projects are a robust form of establishing state formation and legitimacy as they create two intertwined identities: a national, racial state identity and personal identities who depend on the very racial narratives governing bodies create. Yet, such narratives do not gain support without arduous application. This study is also about coercion, symbolic and literal, and how governing bodies deploy violence as to enforce racial narratives and further establish legitimate governance. As Goldberg (2002) states, “Power is to the state and the state to power as blood is to the human body” (9). Guided by Goldberg’s (2002) theory, I set out to explore how the racial nation-state materializes across three distinct countries: China, Chile, and Myanmar. While highly distinct in many aspects, governing bodies in all are persecuting an indigenous, religious, or ethnic minority group and then are implementing racial narratives and government coercion to justify such suppression. Executing a secondary source, comparative analysis, I have focused on four themes I’ve made chapters—racial narratives, symbolic and real peripheries, rhetoric of terrorism, and methods of oppression—to argue that governing bodies in each of these three countries are coercively enforcing racial narratives as to achieve government legitimacy. I argue that type of government affects how racial narratives and government coercion manifest as well as threat of minority group separatism, but that ultimately, racial narratives are how governing bodies retain authority across all three countries. I conclude by predicting that a globally racist society is emerging in which methods of oppression and racial narratives are converging globally. 5 … Theoretical Context i. The Formation of the Nation-State: Legitimacy Through Violence Throughout history, the fundamental challenge of nation-states and governing bodies has been the creation of legitimacy. How does the nation-state gain civilian support and obedience, and justify its dominance to continue its rule? How does the state present itself as an objective and distant force, concerned for the best interests of the people, while inevitably imposing rules, norms, and regulations onto its polity? And how does the nation-state create unity when its formation relies on physical and metaphorical barriers of exclusion? Balibar (1991), summarizes: “The fundamental problem [of the nation-state] is to produce the people” (93). In his essay, “Politics as a Vocation”, sociologist Max Weber (2004) claims that the nation-state and their governing bodies are the only ones in society who have the
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