Discourses of “Democratic Racism“ in the Talk of South Asian Canadian Women
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite societal norms of tolerance and diversity, covert “democratic” racism (Henry and Tator 2006) flourishes in Canada on individual and systemic levels. Democratic racism, an ideology that allows the coexistence of both egalitarian values and racist attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours, is often expressed by the dominant group through powerful discourses that shape the social reality for many minority individuals. However, racist discourses, such as blaming the target of racism and denying that racism exists, are often manifested very subtly. In this article, we use democratic racism as a framework to investigate the multiple ways in which our participants — South Asian Canadian women — described their experiences of racism. A discourse analysis of participants’ talk revealed that they used various rhetorical strategies and discursive devices to avoid attributing negative experiences as racism. Surprisingly, we found that the same discourses used by the dominant group to dismiss and erase racism are available to, and are also utilized by, members of visible minority groups. We conclude by discussing possible reasons why participants in the study might deny racism. We also note the societal implication of such denial: racism becomes invisible, both to the perpetrators and the targets, and systemic inequalities and injustices remain unchallenged. Malgré les normes sociétales de tolérance et de diversité. un racisme «démocratique» sous-jacent (Henry and Tator 2006) fleurit au Canada à deux niveaux : individuel et systémique. Idéologie qui permet la coexistence à la fois de valeurs d’égalité et d’attitudes, de croyances et de comportements raciaux, il imprègne souvent un discours drastique tenu par le groupe dominant et qui altère la réalité sociale vécue par nombre de personnes minoritaires. Le racisme, cependant, se manifeste souvent de manière très subtile, par exemple en blâmant sa cible et en niant sa propre existence. Dans cet article, sa forme démocratique nous sert de cadre pour enquêter sur les multiples façons dont nos participantes — des Canadiennes sud-asiatiques — décrivent leur expérience dans ce domaine. Une analyse discursive de leurs propos révèle qu’elles se servent de stratégies rhétoriques et de moyens d’expression variés pour éviter d’attribuer au racisme des expériences négatives. Nous avons étonnamment découvert que le discours employé par les membres de groupes de minorités visibles était le même que celui dont se sert le groupe dominant pour démentir et gommer son racisme. Nous concluons en analysant les raisons possibles qui porteraient les participantes à cette étude à un tel déni. Nous en notons aussi les implications sociétales : le racisme devient invisible, et pour les auteurs, et pour leurs cibles; par ailleurs, aucune contestation ne remet en question les inégalités et les injustices systémiques.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.046 | 0.024 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".