SAANZ Presentation 2018 New Zealand

1. Race, Racism and Racists:
An Epistemological Critique
Hamish Robertson, PhD
Joanne Travaglia, PhD
Centre for Health Services Management
University of Technology Sydney

2. Contents
• Background
• The non-science of ‘race’
• Racism as belief not knowledge
• Inverting the causal chain
• Racists as believers
• Unknowing
• The role of the academy
• Conclusion

3. Background

4. Belief Over Knowledge –
Some Inherited Tropes
• Nature versus culture – idealisation and abstraction
• Civilisation versus savagery (see every imperial/colonial society going)
• Nature versus nurture (thank you Francis Galton)
• Eugenics and (not versus) genetics (forget the post-war propaganda)
• The normal versus the pathological (medicine to society – class, race, gender,
disability etc.)
• The normal and the deviant (for a social science variation on a theme)
• Subjective versus objective (see Daston and Gallison)
• Quantitative versus qualitative
- the role of dichotomous pairings in social thought
- social determinism’s pervasive influence

5. The non-science of
‘race’
• Several hundred years of ‘refinement’ including scientific racism in the 19th century,
hereditary thinking in the 19th and 20th centuries and genetics since Crick and Watson
etc.
• Medicine heavily involved in the production of ‘race’ and racial categorisation, this
includes the social sciences (psychology, physical anthropology etc.)
• These ideology-as-science phenomena persist into the present and seem unwilling to
disappear (‘warrior gene’ etc. etc.)
• Yet genetics and bio-sciences more broadly indicate no biological basis for most
‘races’, racial taxonomies etc.
• Population genetics is not the same thing as biological race at all (however ‘played’)
• No basis in science for the beliefs associated with ‘race’ and racial attributions (e.g. IQ,
problematic in itself – Stanford-Binet especially so)

6. Racism as belief not knowledge
• If race is not a legitimate product of science then what is it - besides the more obvious
socio-political opportunism – and why does it persist?
• Reframed – if not an ontological phenomenon then perhaps an epistemic one – know
on the basis of belief not scientific evidence
• If a prevalent epistemic domain (lots of reproduction), unsupported by science, then
perhaps ‘belief’ and its associated features are its defining characteristic
• Inversion of causal chain an additional factor – emphasis on race(s) and not on racism
as a driving socio-political dimension
• Therefore racism is not so much a belief in the superiority of one race over another (as
commonly assumed) but the belief in race as real…

7. Inverting the causal chain
• We can observe then that of race does not exist at a biological level but the
consequences of racism clearly do, therefore we can propose an inversion of the
causal chain (relationship between category (re)production and the causal process)
• Research using racialised language perpetuates racism because it does its primary
work – reinforcing racialised thinking through the naturalisation of categories designed
to produce and reproduce a racist worldview
• Racialised thinking serves the process of reproducing the social worldview that racism
as a socio-political system requires – regardless of intentionality of the part of the
‘believer’ (I’m not a racist because…)
• Race becomes ’real’ or has ontological consequences and effects because the belief
system is reproduced at multiple levels and beliefs are largely unquestioned – many a
product of social science thinking and systemic reinforcement

8. Racists as believers
• So - racists can be characterised as people who believe in race, regardless of the
evidence – in addition, the science is negated by a wide array of enduring social and
political arrangements
• If a racist is a ‘believer’ then we can reinstate the causal chain and negate claims to
personal virtue and vice in social science and wider social arguments and posturing
• Anyone who believes in the ontological reality of race is, ipso facto, a racist
• Now the hard part begins…how do we negate pervasive forms of false knowledge
based in ideological systems?
• And if we can do this we are really on to something!

9. Unknowing
• This becomes an issue less of individual confrontation – a slow way to change
anything at all – and more a socially mediated process of un-knowing
• Neuroscience, knowledge and belief (both useful and problematic)
• All perceptual information is affectively loaded…Feldman Barrett’s work
• How ‘reasoned’ is knowledge acquired/mediated via the amygdala?
• Does this explain (some of) the deep emotional attachment to very bad ideas?
• How do the social sciences contribute to ‘unknowing’ racism and its associated
constructs? – race, racial categories, their application in research etc.

10. The dubious role of the academy
• Many social (and other) sciences continue to produce racist (and sexist, ableist etc.)
knowledge i.e. they act as though ‘races’ are real without an associated and sufficient
critique (psychology etc.)
• Many social scientists produce ‘knowledge’ or more accurately ‘beliefs-framed-as-
knowledge’ using racist discourse (‘race’ is fundamental to racist discourse)
• This pattern is variable but sustained within and across the history of the university as
a public and private institution – the epistemic authority of the academy matters in this
context
• Anti-racist discourse means unpacking the language of race and not reifying it for
continued consumption – with all of the effects that it has
• This is not merely semantics but an authorised form of power through knowledge
• Individual ‘preferences’ (I’m not a racist but I’m happy to benefit from a racist society
etc.) are neither a critique nor a sufficient response on the part of the academy
• Or we can assume the contemporary university has not changed much…

11. This still matters…

12. Conclusion – Looking Ahead
• Small data already set the scene including lack of critical analysis of data methods and
‘proof’ – social ideology built into statistical reasoning and applications from early
development
• Datafication of social prejudices in AI and related big data phenomena an expanding
area of research and contestation (criminology, education etc.)
• Big data responses and critiques are adding weight to this discussion at a rapid pace –
one positive aspect
• Unpacking an assumed knowledge base and associated beliefs (tropes) will be a
necessary part of this mix
• Social science not of race but of racism as systemic power underpinned by epistemic
authority, violence and injustice (Fricker etc.)
• The academy gets to make a choice and not to pretend all views are equally legitimate
• This should be interesting to observe…