Abstract
Keywords
The story of racial equality seems to be guided by different affective rhythms. While the golden sixties, with civil rights movement in the United States and the process of decolonization in the Global south, have been marked by a period of hope and optimism about the advances and possibilities of liberal democracies, with some occasional bumps on the road (such as the economic crisis of 1974 or the recession throughout the eighties), the last fifteen years have put an end to this. Global warming, the war on terror, the economic crisis of 2008 and the electoral successes of far right and populist parties seem to announce an age of the great catastrophes (Stengers 2009b). This equally applies for the quest of racial justice. The idea that we live in a post-racial society, if it ever were credible, has been definitively buried and replaced by the question how we can come to terms with the racial structures of our societies and no longer look the other way.
This is one of the central themes that informs Nasar Meer’s important book The Cruel optimism of Racial Justice (2022). The title of his book evokes Laurent Berlant’s pathbreaking concept, who developed it to attend to the continued commitment to late-capitalism’s promises despite its devastating effects. She describes cruel optimism “as a relation of attachment to compromised conditions of possibility whose realization is discovered either to be impossible, sheer fantasy or too possible and toxic”. It is an attachment to something that threatens one’s own well-being, because, as she continues: “the subjects who have x in their lives might not well endure the loss of their object/scene of desire, even though its presence threatens their well-being because whatever the content of the attachment is, the continuity of its form provides something of the continuity of the subject’s sense to what it means to keep on living on and to look forward to being in the world” (2011: 24). It is the well-known mechanism of heavy student loans for one’s education, even though the prospect of finding a job with a proper remuneration is slim; or taking on a mortgage that is too big to live up to the ideal of being a property owner. Giving up on the devastating neo-liberal and late-capitalist fantasies of success is more intolerable for one’s self-understanding, she contends, than keeping an affective investment in it. For the force of this cruel optimism lies in the belief in the redemptive power of capitalism. In the continued trust that it represents the ultimate road to happiness, self-fulfillment, and love.
Drawing on Berlant’s proposition, Meer’s book is an attempt to account for the devastating contours of liberal democracy’s promise of racial justice. By adopting what he describes as a “systemic approach” which surveys different social domains, he seeks to establish that equity and equality remain not only dead letter when reviewing decades of equal opportunity policies, but that upholding this very same promise and faith in the liberal system is what keeps the inequality alive. Drawing on W.E.B. Dubois and Charles Mills, he attends particularly to how white ignorance and the persistent disavowal and even mainstreaming of white supremacy operate as the mechanisms through which structural inequalities are maintained. And this is documented across different chapters addressing the limits of the national imaginaries, the omnipresence of institutional racism, the continued precarity of ethnic and racial minorities at the face of the pandemic or the ways in which the refugee question is mapped onto internal and external racial borders. Rather than viewing these as exceptions to the rule, Meer urges us to see them as systemic traits of liberal democracies, and to put an end to the cruel optimism that they will be overcome if we only keep the faith.
The color of cruel optimism
Meer seeks in his book to shatter the liberal myth that things are going in the “right direction” through an impressive arsenal of facts and figures. The focus thereby lies on the institutional reproduction of social inequality and the bureaucratic stagnation that allows for it. In addressing this question, Meer largely attends to white ignorance and moral indifference towards racial justice as an important factor in this institutional stagnation. His book therefore concludes with a call, addressed mostly to the people who self-identify as white, to take on the problem of Whiteness and how it enables the perpetual reproduction of these injustices (2022: 128). They, more than racial minorities, are the main beneficiaries of Whiteness. Attending to whiteness in its various manifestations has become an important theme in the anti-racist field, and contributions like those of Mills (2007) and Wekker (2016) have been pivotal in addressing and recognizing how racialized regimes of representation and reproduction are maintained. Yet to fully understand the perpetuation of these inequalities over time, it is essential to adopt a more dynamic view which attends to their complex reproduction which involve both racialized and non-racialized actors. as well as their contestation. Whereas Meer insists that he does not seek to reproduce a “totalizing approach” on racial inequality which “forecloses agency, minimizes resistance and refusal, or collapses racial minorities into mere objects of racist social systems” (2022: 128), the complex social dynamics that inform this reality are not at the heart of this analysis. This runs the risk of painting a static picture, wherein who counts as white seems to be predetermined and fixed over time rather than viewing it as differential distribution of privilege and precarity which is tied to a particular political economy (Aouragh 2019). Yet one of the ways in which racial inequality can perpetually reproduce itself is through its capacity to be morphed, to change “colors” and “cultures” and engage into new forms of alliances and assemblages around what lifeform is deemed worthy of protection.
I would like to draw upon one example from France to illustrate my point. After the murder of Samuel Paty in 2020, the French state launched an impressive and important series of repressive administrative actions that targeted various Muslim organizations. Mosques were forced to sign a declaration where they restated their loyalty to the principles of laïcité and several Muslim organizations were dissolved, amongst them the well-known organization Collectif contre l’Islamofobie (CCIF). This organization, which was created in the early 2000 to monitor acts of racism and discrimination against Muslims in French public life, has been instrumental in putting the language of Islamophobia on the political and civic agenda. Yet in the recent developments, addressing the problem of Islamophobia or institutional racism has become a ground for disqualification and even criminalization of various initiatives by Muslims (Bechrouri 2022; Talpin 2022). The structuring role of Islamophobia in the organization of the French state has been the subject of several studies. Many scholars have documented how the exclusion of Algerian Muslims as inassimilable in the French colonies found its contemporary articulation in the continuous suspicion and polemics around Muslims in the French postcolonial state (Davidson, 2012, Hajjat and Mohammed, 2013). Yet the contemporary manifestation of Islamophobia in France and the Francophone sphere, cannot be considered fully without equally addressing the structuring role of certain Muslim actors in this process. Amongst them many prominent public figures, who may or may not self-identify as secular (laïque), and who are united in their commitment or even “war” on what they view as a resurgence of “political Islam” or “Islamism”. This commitment against political Islam manifests itself materially through a fervent opposition to the headscarf (hijab) in public life (which is considered as a token of Islamism), and the ardent support of a more repressive take against “Islamism” and heightened surveillance on Muslim public life. In those vary instances, the supporters of such a hard/er line will even lament a too naïve and passive attitude vis-à-vis what they view as a silent Islamist takeover. 1
France is no exception, however, here. Ever since the election of Barack Obama as the president of the United States, several analysts have importantly challenged the assumed homology between racial justice and enhanced diversity in positions of power (Goldberg 2015). In the UK, home secretary Priti Patel has been pushing for a more restrictive immigration law and facilitated the revocation of the British citizenship for holders of a dual citizenship. And in the Netherlands, figures like Ayaan Hirsi Ali have been key in normalizing islamophobia in the conversation on diversity and multiculturalism (Dabashi 2011; De Leeuw and Van Wichelen 2005). Rather than solely viewing them as racial minorities that have been “co-opted” into a system of racial inequality designed by “whites”, it is essential to consider how race is essentially shaped through what Alexander Weheliye describes as a complex assemblage or socio-political process that discipline humans into “full humans, not yet humans and non-humans” (2014: 4). It invites us to examine the different (human and non-human) technologies of evaluation and hierarchization of “human life” and the role ethnic minorities equally may play in this process. The cruel optimism of racial justice lies thus, and maybe, not solely in the observation that racial equality hasn’t been achieved, but more importantly in the confidence that an enhanced visible presence of people of color into positions of power would translate into racial justice.
What stories do we tell?
The cruel optimism Meer challenges draws on the Leibnizian postulate that we live in the best of all possible world, and which is narrated along a linear progressive teleological spectrum. Evoking Benjamin’s Angel of history, Meer challenges this account by attending to the destructive powers of such an optimistic view (2022: 110-111). The optimism Meer critiques is that of a secularized view of Christian redemption, where a happy-ever-after operates as a structuring thread and affect. Yet this overt reliance on Berlant’s concept overlooks the competing affective rhythms that equally structure and guide the contemporary conversation on multiculturalism and diversity, or race, and which I would describe as a diversity pessimism. In the context of Europe, the latter appears in two variations. The first one can be tied with a regressive and conservative discourse on migration, and which expresses itself through the repeated and well-known chorus that multiculturalism has “failed” and that (unregulated) migration represents a problem or a “threat” to social life. This is an old hymn, at least as old as the 19th century racial theories which warned that racial intermixing would turn into social and cultural degeneration (Stoler 2002). In its most extreme form, it today finds its translation in the well-known motive of the “great replacement” which considers migrants, and Muslims in particular, as an existential threat for the cultural integrity of the continent and the “white race” (Bracke and Hernandez Aguilar 2020). Yet there is another variation of this pessimist take, and which can be found in a very different political corner, namely from ethnic and racial minorities themselves. Afro-pessimism is probably one of the more well-known and newest iterations of this turn (Bilge 2020; Wekker 2021). 2 While Meer doesn’t explicitly engage with this body of scholarship, the approach and perspective he proposes does recall a similar kind of rhetoric and analytical gesture. In my further reflection, I am particularly interested in the latter iteration of this pessimism, as it is equally committed to a broader telos of racial justice as the progressive narration of optimism.
Rather than treating them distinct stories, it is interesting to consider how the motive of optimism and pessimism rely on a shared engagement with a liberal story on racial justice and progress. While the optimists insist on the potential of progress and seek to highlight the potential of a further advancement, the pessimists, on the other hand, appear as disenchanted: they may have believed in this promise of racial justice, but have concluded that they are ultimately self-defeating. Both accounts, however, seem to rely on a shared commitment with racial progress as it is framed and confined to a liberal and European/Western treatment of the question. Stories of social (im)mobility are narrated through liberal indicators of self-advancement, and the bordering of asylum and migration is confined to that of Europe or the West. Yet can we imagine a way out of this apparent impasse of (cruel) optimism or devastating pessimism? Could we seize this as an opportunity to address the question of racial justice differently, one which has moved away from a perpetual commitment to progress as defined in and through Europe? For the stories we tell matter. They open a window on the worlds in front of us and invite us to consider different and complex ways in which humans (and other-than-humans) inhabit this world and our challenging times. In the concluding chapter of his book, Meer addresses this question explicitly, as he argues that one possible way out is to imagine “a different present as well as future”, while referring to the “rich and engaging tradition within one branch of history that explores what are called ‘subjunctive conditionals’, the alternative histories that might have occurred had other things been different” (2022: 125). While he opens this possibility, it remains largely underexplored. This seems partially to be tied with a desire to avoid repeating the “compulsion to optimism” or a happy ending that might distract us from what seems to be at the core of this book: a call upon those who are on the beneficiary end of white supremacy to take ownership of these structural inequality. This move is understandable and important, and very much echoes with how I have approached the subject consistently. It is interesting to note how we seem to treat this option as a possibility, yet consistently subsume it to the urgency to capture the (ugly) reality as it is. As social scientists, we have been trained to capture contradictions and inconsistencies of the dominant storytelling.
Yet allowing for other stories to emerge doesn’t necessarily imply conceding to the optimism of neoliberal capitalism. It entails challenging its imaginative force. For instance, rather than taking the question of structural equality as central point of inquiry (and address whether it has been achieved or not), redirecting our attention to solidarity and community making would probably allow for a different story. One through which we could explore the creative and pathbreaking itineraries among subjugated communities, offer an insight into the rich intellectual traditions, aesthetic expressions or explore new routes of migration, away from Europe (Fadil et al. 2021). It is significant to note how recent scholarship on climate change and the Anthropocene (Haraway 2016; Stengers 2009b) or Black life (Hartman 2019) have been committed to telling a different story. Enabling this possibility of an otherwise seems to appear to curb the imaginative force of capitalism and Eurocentrism that only knows two outcomes: co-optation or execution/destruction. Telling these other stories is however vital. It allows us to keep open a spectrum of possibilities in the here and now as well as in the past. We can find them, for instance, in slam poetry, hip-hop or comedy that already narrate a different Europe. Or in the distinct infrastructures of community making among ethnic and religious minorities, that offer a different logic of redistribution and social advancement. While these examples will not undo the racist violence, islamophobia, or white supremacy, they manifest what I want to describe as a will for racial justice, in the sense of William James (Stengers 2009a). In the pragmatic philosophical tradition of James, will is not so much understood as an expression of one’s autonomy (as in the Kantian tradition), but rather entails a commitment to leaving open the possibilities of what is and what might be. 3 For ideas are not devoid of consequences, always inform the way we relate to our environment. Whereas racial fatigue and pessimism might form one iteration of this trajectory, so is determination and hope – as Meer also notes. Attending to this will for racial justice, and telling these stories, is essential to empirically honor and support this permanent and complex pursuit for justice and dignity.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
