The most terrible thing for researchers working on racial (or “post-racial”) societies when this kind of event occurs, the victory of an explicitly racist party in elections (as was the case with Trump’s victory in the United States or in France today), is that it somehow feeds the thesis that racism, even when massive or explicit, is basically just the individual behavior of “bad” citizens, “bad apples”, who have not internalized the dogma according to which, in contemporary liberal democracies, “racism no longer exists” – or is only an exceptional epiphenomenon, a personal failing (this rather muddy recourse to “individual psychology” is perfectly in keeping, It’s worth noting that this rather slimy recourse to “individual psychology” fits in perfectly with neoliberal hyper-individualist anthropology, which, by reducing problems to the individual or the subject, naturalizes the explanation, and makes it possible to avoid tackling them from a systemic or structural point of view.
A few remarks on this subject, taken from Critical Racial Studies (notably David Theo Goldberg)
https://outsiderland.com/danahilliot/les-effets-du-regime-postracial/
https://outsiderland.com/danahilliot/une-declaration-de-guerre-raciale/
This easily overlooks three (at least) “structural” aspects of racism in liberal societies.
1. Radical racial policies in Europe (and not only in Europe, but also in the U.S.), which, as far as I know, were not introduced by far-right governments, but by liberal democrats (and sometimes even leftists, or with their support). In particular, they are reflected in the consensus around the construction of Fortress Europe, which is supposed to keep out undesirable migrants, sorting out those who will come to feed the labor market (usually under exploitative conditions) from those who will be rejected. Geographically, these borders sometimes extend far into Western Europe (to the far east of Turkey, for example, and soon perhaps to Rwanda), but also into the very heart of European cities, in what can be described as enclaves of lawlessness or zones of exception (detention centers, for example, migrant camps in Calais, etc.).
2. The way in which racism permeates institutions (not just the police, but in fact all institutions, schools, healthcare, the administration as a whole). There’s a whole literature on this, which goes far beyond the coercion exerted by police forces on racialized people, but, more “daily” and more “normally”, in the form of impediments, obstacles, complications in dealing with administrations: these brakes on mobility are to be set against the fantasies of absolute fluidity and ease of existence which, on the contrary, mark the lives of affluent whites in smart cities or gentrified urban areas. Public investment flows often benefit privileged white populations, to the detriment of poor and/or racialized populations. The accumulation of disadvantages, particularly economic, for racialized people, adds to the difficulties they face, most of the time “unwittingly”. Among hundreds of references, I refer you to Nasar Meer’s excellent book – The Cruel Optimism of Racial Justice(2022, Policy Press).
3. Even more profoundly, we forget – and this forgetfulness is not only not new, but also makes possible the claim to “post-raciality”, and the “astonishment” when racism comes to the fore politically – we forget the racial history on which the European nation-states are founded. This history undoubtedly began around the 18th century, and is embodied in slavery and colonial treatment, and within globalized capitalism. Whiteness”, as the English call it (something like the privilege associated with being “recognized as white”, which cannot necessarily be reduced to the hues of skin color), is constituted precisely by the real and symbolic oppression of an other, rejected as undesirable or threatening (a population that varies throughout history), not quite human, to whom specific treatment must be reserved. Basically, and this is the thesis that I and many others regularly uphold, white supremacism is not the whim of extremists, but lies at the heart of the construction of European identities.