Reports from Abroad: An Interview with Dr. Anya Topolski on race and racism in Europe

Anya Topolski is an associate professor in ethics and political philosophy at the Radboud University Nijmegen.  She obtained her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the KU Leuven (2008), for which she was awarded the Auschwitz Foundation Stichting Prize, with a focus on the political thought of Hannah Arendt and the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas and contemporary Jewish thought. Her current research is in the field of critical philosophy of race and focuses on the race-religion intersection in Europe. Her research project “The Race-Religion Constellation” (2017-2022) includes three Ph.D. students and two post-doctoral researchers.

Gloria Wekker (Emeritus Professor of Gender and Ethnicity at Utrecht University), in her book White Innocence (2016), laments a general silence on topics of race and racism in Europe. Wekker states that when Europeans think of race and racism they tend to place it either somewhere else (mainly in the U.S. or in South Africa) or in the past (World War II). Five years after the publication of the book, do you think Wekker’s analysis is still true?

To a certain extent, yes, it is still very much accurate. In fact, some very recent analyses of racism – Alena Lentin’s book Why Race Still Matters (2020) is a great example – are consistent with Wekker’s argument. Racism is still deemed to belong to the past, and the Shoah is still being used as an excuse not to talk about race and racism. Europeans act as if they had learnt their lesson and are immune from making the same mistake again. Yet, compared to five years ago, when White Innocence was first published, I think that Europeans are now slightly more willing to talk about race. BLM helped a lot. But not sure how long it will last. People still feel rather uncomfortable when one utters the word “race” in their mother tongue. For example, if you say the word “ras” in Dutch or German you will still see a bodily reaction of discomfort in your interlocutors. People will tend – even if not consciously – either to switch to other terms, like ethnicity or cultural diversity, or to use the word in its English translation, as if they wanted to distance themselves from what the word represents.

Another element that shows how much silence there still is in Europe, not only among the general public but also among academics, on race and racism is that Gloria Wekker was able to publish White Innocence in English before she was able to publish it in Dutch, although the book clearly focuses on the Dutch context. In fact, the English version was published in 2016, while the Dutch one only last year. This shows the difference between the possibility of talking about race and racism in Europe and in the U.S.

Do you think that in the U.S. there is more openness about such topics, academically and not-academically speaking?

I believe so. But it might also be a “grass is greener on the other side” kind of scenario. Indeed, not all American scholars are willing to talk about race or to hear what critical philosophers of race have to say about it. Yet, in the U.S., Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a field and it is discussed in many disciplines. There is even a journal dedicated to philosophical discussions on race and racism, Critical Philosophy of Race published by Penn State University Press. In Europe this is unthinkable. There is a lot of research going on but it never gets called “research on race and racism”. Rather, it is always put off to be research on ethnicity or migration or cultural diversity or integration. Both Wekker and Philomena Essed, author of Understanding Everyday Racism (1991), were academic pariahs because they wanted to study racism in Europe. This gives you an idea of the Dutch context – but I think we can generalize it to the European context in general – that is very different from the American one.

How do you think that a European contribution to critical philosophy of race should look like? 

I think that if we look at the research on racism in the U.S. – and I would appreciate any feedback from American scholars on this – we will see that what connects all the different strands is Du Bois’ notion of the color line. There are exceptions, of course, many of which come from religion or theology scholars, like J. Kameron Carter and Willie James Jennings, or Black studies, like Sylvia Wynter. Yet, what marks racism in Europe is religion, a term that we should not associate with what we normally mean by it. Religion here is a historicized and deconstructed notion. In my article on the race-religion constellation (2018), I conceptualize religion by starting from the Christian concept of “true religion” (vera religio) and develop its relation to community formation and questions of inclusion/exclusion in Europe.  In this vein, “religion” can function as a category of hierarchically organizing societies and states as well as a norm designed for Christianity that is often (mis)applied to other “religions”.

It is important to point out that this is not an either-or kind of situation. Rather, the color line and religion very much intersect with each other. For example, in the medieval and early modern period, Muslims and Jews were depicted as black subjects, religious-racial groups were coded along the color line. Hence, what we see in Europe is an intersection between the color line and religion. Therefore, I believe that the focus of a European contribution should be on how the categories of race and religion co-constitute each other, on how religion marked European racism in the past and how it continues to do so in the present, for example in relation to antisemitism, islamophobia and antizyganism.

One of the most thought-provoking elements of Wekker and Essed’s books is that these scholars show how racism pops up in everyday life. How is that we fail to notice this phenomenon?

That is right. It is definitely one of the merits of Essed and Wekker’s works that they show how the dehumanizing practices that characterize racism affect certain groups of people in their everyday lives, and how these practices build upon each other. People fail to acknowledge this phenomenon because our societies seem to be under the spell of a sort of split mechanism, which George M. Fredrickson described very well in Racism. A Short History (2015) – a book that I recommend as an historical introduction to the topic. Europeans are willing to talk about racism only when it involves huge, genocidal events (Shoah, apartheid…) but not when it involves their everyday practices. Maybe this mechanism will sound familiar to American scholars too. People are more willing to talk about slavery than about the brute force of the police. Yet, we must recognize that everyday racism is extremely dehumanizing even if not genocidal.

In your paper “The Race-Religion Constellation” (2018) you claim that racism is “an institutionalized system with a wide-range of exclusionary practices that constantly changes forms and adapts itself” (p.59). What are the new adaptations of racism?

When I look at the forms of racism that characterize Europe today what I see are different kinds of antisemitism (cultural, religious, biological) and different forms of islamophobia, which in the 19th century was much more focused on sexuality while nowadays is focused on terrorism.

Then, there is antizyganism the most forgotten form of racism in Europe, which is very problematic starting from its very definition because there is no appropriate term to define and include all the Roma. There is a tragic lack of research about Roma peoples. Their histories of enslavement, (forced) migration, and (forced) conversions/assimilation are often disregarded, which is evidence of a European form of “epistemicide”, a term introduced by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and extensively discussed by Ramón Grosfoguel. This epistemicide includes, among other things, the entanglement of “religion” with antizyganism. While at present, Roma are not classified as belonging to a religious minority – as many identify as Christian – this was not always the case in European history. The seeds of antizyganism – like those of antisemitism and islamophobia – are to be found in medieval Christian Europe, a period in which Roma and other non-Christians were discursively and materially excluded. Moreover, a commonly held position, at least from the 18th century onwards, was that the Romani people were originally an Indian nomadic people forced to flee, and settled in Europe around the 19th century. What is clear is that Roma, like Jews and Arabs, were orientalized and excluded from European nation-states.

In the Netherlands, the recent elections have been a painful confirmation of how racism is still present. Would you agree with this?

Absolutely. Between the 15^th and the 17^th of March, general elections were held in the Netherlands. For the fourth time, Mark Rutte (VVD, People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, center-right and conservative-liberal party) has been re-elected. What is really heartbreaking about the elections’ results is that it feels like a betrayal. In January 2021, the government fell because there was systematic evidence of structural racism on the level of the taxes. For years, the government has used the taxes to discriminate against racialized communities. When the childcare subsidies scandal was exposed and Rutte and his cabinet resigned, it seemed like there would be a political change in the next elections. Yet, less than two months later, Rutte was re-elected. Everything seems forgiven. He even got more votes.

What I think is particularly worrying about it is that in these months, especially after the BLM protests, there has been a lot of discussion about race, racism and police violence. It seems that regardless of how much we talk about this, nothing changes from a political point of view.

I also thought and hoped that BLM changed things, and – I want to hold on to some hope here – in some ways it has. The European Commission has recently approved the EU Anti-Racism Action Plan 2020-2025 to step up action against racism. The plan was mostly shadow written by ENAR (European Network Against Racism), which is an amazing organization that does a terrific job. I do think BLM made a difference in certain areas. BLM helped pass this plan that prior to it would have been hugely amended, but, unfortunately, we do not see this in how people vote yet, and this must be incredibly painful especially for racialized communities.

Recently, the French government has announced that it would launch an investigation into academic research that feeds “Islamo-leftism.” Is it not worrisome that the government invades the academic space so explicitly?

Something similar to what is happening in France happened in the Netherlands too. In 2019, Thierry Baudet (leader of the FvD, Forum for Democracy, far right and populist party) has announced an inquiry into the “influence of left-wing ideology in education”, and instituted a snitch-line where students who thought that left-wing ideology was being taught to them should report their teachers to him. It is worrisome but, at the same time, these strategies are responses to a second wave of antiracist activism that is happening outside and inside academia. It is clear that there is a small but visible movement within university towards decolonization. Yet, there is not just one way of decolonizing academia. Rather, decolonization is a spectrum of possibilities. The most conservative form of decolonization simply means to acknowledge that there are multiple stories for one history and that, up until now, European universities have told only one story pretending it was universal. The far right tends to make a false caricature of some aspects of more radical (but very much just) calls for decolonization, mix them with more conservative forms, and condemn decolonization as a whole.

What is so threatening about this movement towards decolonization to the point of launching an investigation?

I think the far right is threatened mainly by the fact that when multiple truths, multiple stories, and multiple perspectives start to be part of the education system, people will realize that the system we have built is a very unjust one, based on something that is not the truth. The far right wants to hold on to a certain idea of truth that benefits only a specific group of people. When we start to teach history in its diversity, the unjust system we have built will collapse.

Why the focus on Islam? And why is Islamophobia not recognized as a form of racism?

Europeans like to think they have truly learned from their past crimes. Politically, Jews and LGBTQ+ communities cannot easily be attacked anymore. When far right parties are attacked, they strategically use these communities to show how progressive and inclusive their parties are. It is a taboo to be anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-Jews but being anti-Muslim is still totally acceptable.

Islamophobia is not acknowledged as a form of racism because, according to even mainstream parties, being Muslim is a choice. You can decide whether to be Muslim or not, or so they say. This is problematic on two levels. First, it is absurd to ask – or to be asked – to make such a choice in order not to be discriminated against. Second, conversion is a false option. Even after conversion, people experience racism. This is also true with regard to the Roma. When Roma were forced to immigrate/flee to Europe, starting approximately in the 11^th century, they were massively enslaved. Christians, according to the Church law, could not enslave other Christians. This motivated many Roma to convert to Christianity, as an escape from perpetual enslavement. However, conversion was not enough for them to be included. Since then, they have been forced into ghettos, evicted, murdered, and subjected to ethnical cleansing. Nowadays, if we look at the numbers when it comes to employment, housing and education opportunities, we can still see that Roma are not included. The same is true for Muslims. Nothing Muslims do will make them white enough or secularized enough to be included. Conversion, and the liberal notion of an individual choice, is a false option. What is very important for us – as scholars – is to acknowledge that no matter how Muslims are defined they will always be marked as different. That is racism.

One of the biggest lies that Europeans tell themselves is that Islamophobia is nothing like antisemitism because antisemitism was only biological and it did not have a cultural component. However, scholars know that before the biological form of racism there was a cultural form of racism, and before that other forms. Racism is not just a biological phenomenon. Racism is connected to culture, language, religion, the state, and history. If, on the one hand, its multifaceted nature makes racism difficult to study, on the other hand, it makes it a compelling, urgent and unavoidable topic both inside and outside academia.

“Reports from Abroad” is designed to give readers a glimpse of philosophical research being carried out outside the United States. Future posts might include reports of conferences and symposia, short essays, and book reviews. We hope that this section of the APA blog will attract contributions from other parts of the world and from other philosophical areas. We’d love to hear from you and to read about your ideas, which you can share with us through our call for posts and our submission form.