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Thinking Race, Thinking Development

Author: S White
Date: 2002
Size: 13 pages (142 KB)

Summary

Talking about race in development is like breaking a taboo: Development is determinedly colour blind. This article from Third World Quarterly challenges the dominant stance on development. It argues that the silence on race masks and marks its centrality to the development project.

The politics of race in development deserves consideration. Race is a socio-historical construct which operates both as an aspect of identity and as an organising principle of social structure. Development is increasingly identified as a project of Western capitalism. It cannot be separated from the wider context of western-inspired global capitalism and the geopolitical interests of dominant states.

There are striking continuities between development and colonialism. There are three critical dimensions of development which need to be interrogated: Its material outcomes, its techniques of transformation and its mode of knowing. There are three basic paradigms for understanding race. The conservative position is essentialist: difference is written on to the body. The liberal position denies difference and claims to be colour blind. The third position is the radical self-assertion of difference. These paradigms illustrate some important points:

The meaning of race is contested.
People slip easily between paradigms. They selectively employ a range of discourses.
Understandings of race are political. They arise from and imply different political positions and are used to bring about particular distributive outcomes.

Following Michael Omi and Howard Winant's work on the United States, development is understood as a process of racial formation. Racial formation arises through a vast web of racial projects which link the meaning of racial, ethnic and national identities to material entitlements. Racial projects are not necessarily racist. Racism should be judged according to the kind of meaning attributed to race and the outcomes in terms of structures of domination. Important guidelines for the study of race in development include:

Meanings of race are diverse and contested.
Colour-blindness does not exist outside of the domain of race, but is a distinctive approach to it. It is the official racial paradigm in the contemporary West and amongst development agencies.
The challenge is to trace the implicit racial character of colour-blind development discourse and practice. To do this, it is necessary to uncover the ways that race is embedded within the techniques of transformation and the modes of knowing. It also means analysing the material outcomes of the development project in a way that takes ethnic, racial and national difference into account.
Regarding development as made up of racial projects demonstrates the need for a more inclusive approach to social difference because race is actively constituted in and through development intervention. Other dimensions of social difference, such as gender, age and class are closely related.
It is vital to avoid essentialism.
Race is a lens through which to approach power and poverty, it should not screen out other dimensions of injustice.

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Source: White, S., 2002, 'Thinking Race, Thinking Development', Third World Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 407-419