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Elite Discourse and Racism 7 Elite Discourse and Racisni SAGE SERIES ON RACE AND ETHNIC RELATIONS Series Editor: JOHN H. STANFIELD II College of William and Mary This series is designed for scholars working in creative theoretical arcas related to race and ethnic relations. The series will publish books and collections of original articles that critically assess and expand upon race and ethnic relations issues from American and comparative points of view. SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD Robert Blauner William Liu Jomills H. Braddock II Stanford M. Lyman Scott Cummings Gary Marx Rutledge Dennis Robert Miles Leonard Dinnerstein Rebecca Morales Reynolds Farley Chester Pierce Joe Feagin Vicki L. Ruiz Barry Glassner Gary D. Sandefur Ruth S. Hamilton Diana Slaughter Dell Hymes C. Matthew Snipp James Jackson John Stone Roy Bryce Laporte Bruce Williams Paul Gordon Lauren Melvin D. Williams Volumes in this series include 1. Roger Waldinger, Howard Aldrich, Robin Ward, and Associates, ETHNIC ENTREPRENEURS: Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies 2. Philomena Essed, UNDERSTANDING EVERYDAY RACISM: An Interdisciplinary Theory 3. Samuel V. Duh, BLACKS AND AIDS: Causes and Origins 4. Steven J. Gold, REFUGEE COMMUNITIES: A Comparative Field Study 5. Mary E. Andereck, ETHNIC AWARENESS AND THE SCHOOL: An Ethnographic Study 6. Teun A. van Dijk, ELITE DISCOURSE AND RACISM 7. Rebecca Morales and Frank Bonilla, LATINOS IN A CHANGING U.S. ECONOMY: Comparative Perspectives on Growing Inequality Elite Discourse and Racism Teun A. van DI Sage Series on Race and Ethnic Relations volume 6 SAGE Publications International Educational and Prolessional Publisher Newbury Park London New Delhi Copyright © 1993 by Sage Publications, Inc. AH rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: SAGE Publications, Inc. 2455 Teller Road Newbury Park, California 91320 1 E-mail: [email protected] SAGE Publications Ltd. 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU United Kingdom SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd. M-32 Market Greater Kailash I New Delhi 110 048 India Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dijk, Teun Adrianus van, 1943- Elite discourse and racism / Teun A. van Dijk. p. cm.—(Sage series on race and ethnic relations ; v. 6) Includes bibliographical references and índex. ISBN 0-8039-5070-5.—ISBN 0-8039-5071-3 (pbk.) 1. Racism. 2. Elite (Social sciences). 3. Communication. 4. Racism in language. 5. Race relations. 6. Ethnic relations. I. Title. II. Series. HM291.D4962 1993 305.8—dc20 92-39455 CIP 99 00 01 02 03 9 8 7 6 5 4 Sage Production Editor: Judith L. Hunter Contents Foreword John H. Stanfield II vi i Preface ix 1. Introduction 1 2. Theoretical Framework 18 3. Political Discourse 49 4. Corporate Discourse 115 5. Academic Discourse 158 6. Educational Discourse 197 7. Media Discourse 241 8. Conclusions 283 Appendix 293 References 294 Author Index 307 Subject Index 313 About the Author 320 Foreword Usually class-based analyses of race and racism focus on European- descent working and middle classes. In chis path-breaking book, Teun van Dijk offers a fascinating analysis of elite racist discourse. The power of his analysis lies in its serendipity. What he has to say about the mundane ways in which Dutch entes structure and reproduce their whiteness and the inferior status of non-whites certainly can be applied with some modification to the elite origins of racism in other European- descent-dominated multiracial societies. Van Dijk's provocative analysis reminds us of the top -to-bottom origins of racism that often get ignored due to the ways in which entes are able to deflect cause and effect throught their privileged status and resources. His observations have much to offer not only scholars who have yet to explore how elites created and reproduce racial inequality but also raises a number of unexplored questions regarding how the racial inclinations of elites provide the paradigms of the racialism of the less powerful classes as well as for major institutional forms. In sum, Van Dijk's examination of ente racism reminds us, as in the case of his earlier Communicating Racism, of the need to understand how racialist discourse produces racialist class structures that deeply mark the strat- ification and social organizational character of race-centered industrial states. John H. Stanfield II Series Editor vii Preface This book provisionally concludes more than a decade of research into the relationship between discourse and racism. My earlier projects in this research program focused on the reproduction of racism through informal everyday conversations, textbooks, and the press. Some of these previous research results are analyzed here from a different perspective, namely, that of the role of the elites in the reproduction of ethnic dominance. My earlier book in Dutch on high school textbooks is here summarized in English for the first time. The present study extends this range of genres and issues by also paying attention to such other types of dite discourse as those of politicians, scholars, and corporate managers. II looks at how some Western parliaments debate on ethnic affairs and immigration, what academic sociology textbooks say about ethnic relations, and how personnel managers of large corpo- rations talk about minority hiring and Affirmative Action. As was the case for the earlier studies on discourse and racism, the approach of this study is multidisciplinary. Various arcas of discourse analysis are combined with ideas, theories, and concepts from social psychology and, especially in this book, from sociology, anthropology, and political science. To avoid superficial eclecticism, however, the unifying theoretical framework is a discourse analytical approach to the reproduction of racism. Such an approach is particularly well matched with the present focus on elite racism, because such racism is often enacted or legitimated by text and talk. Further, the definition of elites will be largely based on the assumption that contemporary elite power and influence are often discursive and are implemented by preferential access to and control over public discourse and its consequences for the ix x ELITE DISCOURSE AND RACISM manufacture of consensus. This is particularly the case for the symbolic elites, those who control the means of communication and who are engaged in the manufacturing of public opinion. Although our overall perspective, our multidisciplinary discourse approach, and our data are new, elite racism is as old as racism itself. Much earlier research has amply documented the role of white politi- cians, philosophers, historians, social scientists, psychologists, journal- ists, writers, the military, the clergy, managers, and other elites in the enactment, legitimation, and reproduction of racism through the ages. The appearance of this book 500 years after the "discovery" of the Americas by Columbus and his crew is a useful reminder of the histor- ical background and continuity of a worldwide system of military, economic, and cultural power of the white West over the Rest. This global dominance is not only firmly in place even today, but is also replicated in the local ethnic and racial dominance of white majorities over mostly non-European immigrants and other minorities within white-dominated countries. This study shows not only that ethnic dom- inance and racism are still a major problem of contemporary Western societies but also that elites continue to play a primary role in their reproduction. Unlike most other work on racism, it especially focuses on the more subtle discursive dimensions of modern elite racism. In that respect, the study may also serve as a source book of ideas, theories, and methods for the practical critique of various types of elite racism. This book addresses advanced students and scholars in most of the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, as well as all others interested in the problem of elites, discourse, and racism. Such a broad audience requires that I occasionally need to explain notions or principies that are already familiar to some of the readers. The discourse analyses in Chis book are intentionally very informal. Unlike some other, sometimes rather fashionable, contemporary studies on discourse in the humanities and social sciences, my work shuns the esoteric. I believe that especially for the study of an important social issue like racism, accessibility is a crucial criterion for adequate scholarly communication. The writing of this book has been an arduous enterprise if not, at times, an impossible task. The complexity of the theoretical framework, the vast historical literature on the many forms of elite racism in the past, the many elite domains involved, the large amounts of empirical data, and the difficulty in obtaining data either from or about the elites presented more than the usual challenge of scholarly research. A more or less complete and satisfactory account of contemporary elite racism Preface xi in Western countries would have required a whole series of mono- graphs. Therefore, in order to keep this study within reasonable propor- tions and to avoid overlap with other work on elite racism, I was obliged to focus on only a few types of elite racism in a few countries, and to do so mainly from a discourse analytical perspective, thereby neglect- ing numerous economic, social, political, and cultural aspects of mod- em racism. Thus, the vast debate on pseudo-scientific racism, for instance in biology and psychology, had to be briefly summarized in favor of an analysis of the much more subtle and moderate features of academic discourse about ethnic affairs. In general, I am interested in these subtle and seemingly respectabie forms of elite racism and in the building of the dominant ethnic consensus, that is, in what most of the elites refuse to call racism in the first place, rather than in the more overt and blatant manifestations of what they see as the real racism.
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