Black banker, white banker: philosophies of the global colour line

Abstract Critical study of the 'global colour line' usually begins by observing similarities between the colonial–colonized relationship on the one hand, and the developed–developing relationship on the other. Despite the dramatic historical changes in human equality over time, both relationships are sometimes qualified with reference to race and racism. This article reflects on these continuities and changes via two debates in the philosophy of race: the 'onto-semantic' and the 'normative'. Each of these debates, I argue, can help international relations (IR) better understand the complex social meanings and political transformations of the global colour line. After I have made a case for the use of categories of racialization and racialized identity over the category 'race', I suggest that IR theorists, too, should pay more critical attention to the burgeoning literatures on racial habits and racial cognition. Notes 1 The transcript of the press conference is unavailable on the usual Brazilian and British government websites. The translation comes from The Guardian (Watt Citation2009), but also see the video on UOL Notícias (Andrade Citation2009). This article has benefited from presentation at the British International Studies Association/International Studies Association (BISA/ISA) Edinburgh in 2012, as well as from the written comments by Duncan Bell, Shoshana Magnet and Robert Vitalis. 2 For a recent sample of this literature, see Batur-Vanderlippe and Feagin (Citation1999), Lake and Reynolds (Citation2008), Marable and Agard-Jones (Citation2008), and Razack and colleagues (Citation2010). On the life of Du Bois' colour line metaphor, see Irwin (Citation2010). The goal of this article obviates the current academic practice of emphasizing the constructedness of race by tagging single or double scare quotes onto the word at all times. 3 Hardimon (Citation2003). JL Austin was among the first to argue that philosophers ought to pay attention to ordinary language. Arguably, his speech act theory was a study of things that can be done in different contexts with ordinary words in general conversation. Compare Austin (Citation1961 [1950], 123–154) and Wheadey (Citation1969). 4 The term comes from Charles W Mills (Citation1997), but this problématique arguably goes back to the likes of Du Bois, Eric Voegelin, Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon. 5 For effective overviews of key personalities and events that made these ideas possible and pertinent bibliographies, see, inter alia, Bernasconi (Citation2001), Blum (Citation2002) and Zack (Citation2002). 6 In this context, 'colour' referred not only to skin tone, but also to facial and other bodily features that were understood to be naturally constituted in a specific part of the world. Philosophers like to qualify racialism as 'thick racialism', 'biobehavioral essentialism' and 'racial naturalism' (Mallon Citation2006; Blum Citation2002; Zack Citation2002). 7 Dillon and Neal (2011). Also see Brah (Citation2005, especially 76–84), Elden (Citation2002), Rattansi (Citation2005) and Rose (Citation2007, 162–163). Whether Foucault was as interested in the global colour line as in racialized divisions drawn in Europe remains a matter of some debate. 8 Dissimilarities are typically established between the gene pools of the most geographically divergent peoples and they almost never harmonize with races that currently exist in public policies or practices (Marks Citation2008, 25, 30–31; Zack Citation2002, 69). The term 'breeding populations' comes from Glasgow (Citation2009, 4), whilst Mallon and others have used terms 'racial population naturalism' or 'thin racialism' (Mallon 2004, 647–657; 2006, 542–543). Note that 'genetics' and 'genomics' are often used interchangeably, but that the former refers to the more established practice of molecular analysis, while the latter relates to the more recent techniques for analysing entire genomes. 9 Feldman and Lewontin (Citation2008). Also see Foster (Citation2009, 357–259), Glasgow (Citation2009, 97–108), Mallon (Citation2006, 543), Marks (Citation2008) and Rose (Citation2007, 155–171). 10 The idea can be variously traced to Arnold Toynbee, Arthur Keith and Frantz Fanon (Barot and Bird Citation2001; Murji and Solomos Citation2005). 11 See, for example, Agathangelou and Ling (Citation2009), Darby and Paolini (Citation1994), Doty (Citation1996), Shilliam (Citation2012) and the collections edited by Gruffydd Jones (Citation2006) and Long and Schmidt (2005). Vitalis' new book project, The End of Empire in American Political Science, considers even earlier 'broadly constructivist' viewpoints on race and racism in the writings of Ralph Bunche, Alain Locke, and other members of the 'Howard School of International Relations'. 12 With respect to epistemology, which I put aside in this article for the reasons of space, critical realists are relativists in the sense that they rely on both correspondence and coherence theories of truth, while at once positing that truth claims are subject to rational judgments. For the most recent review and discussion of critical realism in IR, see Joseph and Wight (Citation2010). 13 Materialists are scepticial that race is symbolic 'all the way down'. See, for example, Gruffydd Jones (Citation2008) and relevant contributions in Brown and colleagues (Citation2002). 14 A fact that has led some psychiatrists to suggest that (extreme) racism is a treatable mental disorder (Poussaint Citation2002). 15 For this claim, see, especially, Isaac (Citation2004) and Memmi (Citation2000), but also consider an assessment of race in the medieval period in Frederickson (2002) and Foucault (Citation2003). 16 I cannot describe this literature further here, but see Hook (2007), Kelly and colleagues (Citation2010) and Machery and Faucher (Citation2005). For IR perspectives on the rapprochement between constructivism and psychology, see Shannon and Kowert (Citation2011). 17 On the theorizations of the unconscious dimensions of racism within the framework of Foucauldian power, see, inter alia, Brah (Citation2005), Hook (2007) and Rose (1998). 18 In the popular Johnson–Lakoff model of the political mind, for example, all shared meanings are embodied in the sense that they are produced in the human brain, which is at once evolved and situated in the social world. A research question that arises from this perspective is how mental constructs like metaphors, schemas and frames influence the quotidian patterns of ethnoracial mobilization. See, especially, Lakoff (2009, chapter 9).

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