Is there a connection between sexism and racism? What role, if any, should the women's movement play in the fight against racism? Questions such as these will be among the issues taken up at the National Organisation of Women Students Australia (NOWSA) conference, being held at Macquarie University in Sydney July 11-15. SUJATHA FERNANDES provides a contribution to the discussion.
Racism has an economic function: it justifies the exploitation of a part of society on the basis of physical difference. This was obviously its role in connection with slavery in the United States. After slavery was abolished, the capitalist ruling class in the US still had a material interest in perpetuating racism, which maintains a layer of the working class whose super-exploitation boosts profits both directly and by putting a downward pressure on the wages of all workers.
In Australia the Aboriginal population experiences institutionalised racism. Aborigines are the poorest section of the population, systematically denied access to education, employment and welfare. They make up an alarmingly high proportion of those in prison and under custodial care; they are targeted by the police and justice system, the most common "offences" being non-payment of fines, drunkenness, vagrancy and social security fraud.
Institutionalised racism against Aboriginal people is part of the history of white Australia. Its function is to protect specific material interests, namely those of the capitalist class, who benefit from the appropriation and mining of the land stolen from the original inhabitants. Unlike black Americans and Maoris, Aboriginal people were initially excluded from the labour force. Later, although openly discriminatory laws were changed, racism remained to keep Aborigines deprived and excluded.
Migrants in Australia often experience racism, but in a form different from that against Aborigines. For a number of historical reasons, migrants are not a homogenous group. They do not constitute a single super-exploited layer in society.
The 1950s influx of migrants from southern Europe, Turkey and Lebanon provided the capitalist class with a cheap labour force at a time of large-scale infrastructure development and expansion of industry.
By the 1970s, the migration pattern had changed, with many arriving from war-torn countries in South-East Asia. In both periods, this exploited labour force did not lead to the creation of a permanent under-class of migrants in the way that US capital created a black under-class. This was because the exploitation of migrants was not based primarily on physical differences, but, rather on their lack of English.
While Vietnamese refugees can be found in sweatshops and on factory floors along with migrants from eastern Europe, non-English speaking migrants tend to be concentrated in the lowest-paid jobs; English speaking migrants are more commonly located in the higher paying professions.
The cultural and linguistic barriers that provide the basis for the super-exploitation of migrants are overcome through the generations. Institutional barriers do not prevent second and third generation migrants, who have acquired language skills, from entering professions. The children of migrants, in other words, are native-born Australians. Aborigines, despite their tens of thousands of years in Australia, were not even legally citizens until the 1967 referendum.
Racial prejudice against migrants of colour does not of course always provide a direct and immediate material benefit to someone. On arrival in Australia, many Indians and Japanese do not join the super-exploited layers of the work force, yet they may still face some discrimination. Some interpret this prejudice as the product of another individual's ignorance. But such "personal" prejudice is a by-product of the institutionalised racism that serves material interests.
If we are serious about fighting racism, we have to be willing to challenge the ruling class which uses it to divide people who have common interests.
Similarly, in tackling sexism, we have to challenge the same system, which creates and perpetrates the structured inequality between men and women. The historical exclusion of women from education, the lack of publicly funded child-care facilities, which forces women to stay at home, and the systematic underpayment of women are examples of how discrimination against women is structured into the system. By defining woman's primary role as housewife and mother, capitalism profits enormously from women's unpaid social labour.
Thus sexism, like racism, has a material base in the drive of capital to make super-profits. We need independent women's and anti-racist movements to challenge and change this situation.
When women have organised themselves independently of the major political parties, they have been very successful in winning changes. Pressure from the second wave of the women's movement in the 1970s forced governments to introduce a range of legal reforms relating to women's wages, access to education and better employment opportunities.
The Jobs For Women campaign which recently won its 14-year anti-discrimination battle against BHP shows that women organising in defence of their interests is essential for change.
People of colour also have to organise together in anti-racism movements to bring about change. The mass black liberation movement in the US played a major role in raising consciousness about, and opposition to, racism. In Australia, Aboriginal people have been able to win reforms through their organisation in land rights and other movements.
Focusing on personal prejudice within small groups, such as feminist collectives, does nothing to alter the power relations of society. Mass movements which challenge the structures and institutions of racism are the most effective way of breaking down the root cause of personal prejudice. It is only in this context that consciousness raising can occur on a large scale: people change their attitudes through action, not through being told how racist they are.
Today, in the absence of anti-racist and women's movements, academic postmodernist theories have influenced much thinking about sexism and racism, persuading many people that mass action is irrelevant to political strategy.
Postmodernists argue that the whole concept of a unified mass movement is "phallic" and "problematic". They say that solidarity and sisterhood are just another way of using "discourse" to "mask power relations", and that because women come from such different class and racial backgrounds there can be no solidarity.
We need to reject romanticised ideas that seek to present all women as equally oppressed. However, we will not be able to defeat sexism and racism unless we do unite in a mass way to fight back. Sisterhood, as an expression of political solidarity, is something we can unite around.
While the strength of the women's movement comes from its autonomy, this does not mean that it can fight sexism in isolation from other progressive movements. The strength of each movement for human liberation comes from other movements which also challenge the common enemy. This is the important connection between the women's, the anti-racist and the workers' movements.