I doubt that is the case TF because it would be politically incorrect over here to discriminate against members of society on the grounds of colour. Since Black Police Officers (quite rightly in my view) have their voice, the question arises "should white ones" also. I (logically) should say "yes", but - under current "political correctness" must say "no". Now that strikes me as duplicitous, illogical and ridiculous. But the important question (for me) is this: is my inbuilt wish for racial equality here making me appear to be "racist"?
It is a serious issue
It is a serious issue, and you've touched upon a difficult point: is it not ironic to attempt to abolish racism (i.e. the judgment of people based on their race or skin colour) by means of an organisation which identifies people by their race/skin colour?
However, I think the appropriate question is not 'Why don't we have a White Police Association?' but 'Why do we accept a Black Police Association?'
For myself, I'm happy with the answer that we need the latter only because and until the historical inequalities have been addressed, but I do think that one question those involved in 'identity politics' always need to ask themselves is: To what extent do we accept 'tribal' self-identification by minority groups as an end in itself, and to what extent is it a means to an opposite end (viz., the dissolution of those same identity barriers)?
I was going to let this drop for fear of being misunderstood, but it's too important to me.
I don't understand why Turfan says this isn't about identity. That's not a rhetorical 'I don't understand' which really means 'I understand perfectly well but I want to disagree'; I'm genuinely curious to know whether I'm missing a trick in believing that there are some self-evident paradoxes inherent when people acknowledge a particular way of grouping themselves in order to seek equal treatment (i.e., treatment that
does not observe those same grouping criteria).
You can't just say: 'A black person does not deny his or her identity'; that begs the question of why 'black' should be any more of an identity than 'tall' or 'smoker' or 'bald'. I'm not saying there isn't an obvious answer: black is an identity on the basis of which people group together to fight discrimination for the very good reason that it's an identity on which others have grouped them together in order to enact discrimination. But does it have any more
raison d'etre than that? Are we seeking an end to the division of people into groups X and Y, or are we happy to retain such groupings as long as we can ensure equal treatment for members of both groups?
These are issues I've thought about a lot in relation to the gay rights movement, and I apologise if my thinking isn't clear when I try to transfer it across to the issue of race, but I think there must be parallels (as well as instructive differences, of course, not least the fact that whether one identifies as gay, and also whether other people are aware of that, is more fluid, and arguably less of a biological given, than one's race). What I'm trying to say is that I think there's room for an intelligent debate about whether a group like the Black Police Association is trying to move beyond issues of race, or beyond issues of discrimination based on race, and the two might be related but they also to some extent might be seen to pull in different directions.
Here's something I wrote on another board a few months ago, which I thought through quite carefully at the time and which I still stand by (although it seemed to get slightly misunderstood over there as well, much to my disappointment and frustration):
qt is right to point out the historical contingency of "gay = oppressed", and it's true that one of the things that gets theorists of gay rights most tied up in knots (certainly in the Anglo-American world) is the tension between pushing for visibility on the one hand and arguing against various manifestations of essentialism on the other. This tension is intrinsic to the whole idea of identity politics, in my view, and applies equally to LGBT, feminist and anti-racist movements, all of which are caught - and sometimes torn - between fighting for equality as sameness and equality as the acceptance of difference.
Often, it seems that discriminatory essentialism is to be condemned not in favour of a world without stereotypes but only in favour of a celebration of (still 'essentially' conceived) differences. The subsumption of individual differences (not all gay men are the same) under the aegis of "look at us, we're gay and it's OK" is not the least danger of this, but is characteristic of the thinking of oppressed groups as they begin to fight for civil rights, and might be considered a price worth paying, in the short term at least.
What I think is too easy to discount is how important identity can feel, even if it is historically contingent. I've grown up in an environment largely free from direct discrimination. I don't have equal civil rights to a heterosexual person but I'm not reminded of that every day, and I'm able on the whole to live my life in what feels like a way I've chosen and am happy with. Nonetheless, my identity as a gay man is crucially important to me, in a way I can't quite explain (and which sits oddly with my intellectual understanding of the history of sexuality).
As for essentialism, well, it's a difficult one - our knowledge of history as well as our awareness of other cultures should make us as wary of positive stereotypes as we are of negative ones, but while it's important to leave room for gay men (or gay women, or straight women) who don't conform to the stereotypes, it's also true that plenty do. The stereotypes don't come from nowhere; what we need may be a more subtly-inflected understanding of how historical contingency produces specific cultural manifestations of identity, rather than a rejection of the idea of common traits tout court.
