International law is a disguise for the new global color line that attempts to articulate racial patterns of management onto marginalized bodies – it doesn’t deter conflict, it incites it

Robert Knox PhD, “Race, Racialization, and Rivalry in the International Legal Order”, Chapter 10 in Race and Racism in International Relations, Routledge, Pages 186-189, 2015

While arguing that this basic logic is what gives rise to the general phenomenon of racism, Fanon was also keen to understand the way in which specific material configurations gave rise to distinctive forms of racism. For Fanon, if racism was part of a broader system of imperialist exploitation, then changes in this system would also result in changing forms of racism (1967, 32). In his account, with the development of more complex forms of capitalist exploitation, racism moved from a crude, biological determinism, to a more subtle form of cultural racism, since the exploitation of which racism is an articulation becomes increasingly covert:

Progressively, however, the evolution of techniques of production, the industrialization, limited though it is, of the subjugated countries, impose a new attitude upon the occupant. The complexity of the means of production, the evolution of economic relations inevitably involving the evolution of ideologies, unbalance the system. Vulgar racism in its biological form corresponds to the period of crude exploitation of man’s arms and legs. The perfecting of the means of production inevitably brings about the camouflage of the techniques by which man is exploited, hence the forms of racism. (Fanon 1967, 35)

Thus, while Fanon did – to some degree – subscribe to a ‘binary’ understanding of racism, he nonetheless attempted to explain its changing forms by reference to the transformations in material conditions. While this does provide the foundation of what a materialist account of race’s role in international law might be, it does not yet provide a sufficient explanation for how we might understand the role of inter-imperialist rivalry.

The particular understanding evinced by Fanon is obviously one which has undergirded a number of materialist accounts of race. Indeed the very idea of a ‘global colour line’ is premised upon such an account, since it concerns ‘how far differences of race, which show themselves chiefly in the color of the skin and the texture of the hair, are … the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing [in] … the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization’ (Du Bois 1970, 258–9). However, such accounts fail to deal both with the explicit racialisation of imperial rivals that takes place in legal terms and with how the racialisation of the exploited is driven by this rivalry.

Despite some rhetorical declarations to the contrary, one ought not to overstate the degree to which these authors actually hold to a ‘Manichean’ or binary vision of racialisation, in which the only division is between ‘White’ and ‘not-White’. Fanon, for example also argued that racialisation also involves stratification. In a process that Fanon dubs the ‘racial distribution of guilt’, he argued that a key move of imperial powers is to differentiate between the various oppressed and exploited minorities, so as to co-opt them and set them against one another. Hence, the Arab is told the Jew exploits him, the Jew is told he is better than the Arabs, the Negro is told he is the best soldier in the Empire, and so on (Fanon 2008, 103). In this way racial ‘inferiors’ are subject to further ‘sub-divisions’ and hierarchies, with relative levels of privilege and entitlement flowing according to these sub-divisions. This enables oppressed populations to be better managed and for their resistance and antagonism to the existing order to be diverted and channelled.

This understanding of the role of race as stratifying the oppressed and exploited is one which has also driven a number of materialist explanations of the domestic role of racism. Materialist scholars of labour and race, such as David Roediger, have stressed the role that racial discourse has played as a ‘strategy of rule’ through constituting a certain part of the working class as racially privileged – attracting a series of economic, political and ideological benefits – and therefore enabling them to divide and manage labour (Roediger 2008; Roediger and Esch 2012).

What these analyses point to is that on top of a fundamental division thrown up by imperialist exploitation, processes of racialisation are shaped by a number of ‘tactical’ and ‘conjunctural’ imperatives. While managing particular antagonisms is one important aspect of these, it is not difficult to see how rivalries with other powers also enter into the picture. Roediger, for instance, notes that in seventeenthcentury America ‘[m]ercantile goals combined with security concerns to encourage continued distinctions between Indian tribes and individuals … not as an undifferentiated race’ (2008, 21). Here, a vital element determining the racialisation of ‘Indians’, was the desire to secure exclusive trading rights and undercut rival powers. This, then, explains how inter-imperialist rivalry might be able to enter into a materialist account of racialisation. Equally, once this concern with rivalry is brought into the issue of stratification more broadly, we can ask why racialisation might not function directly to stratify potential rivals?

One can imagine explanations for why this was not taken up by ‘Third World’ Marxist theorists of race. At the time in which they were writing, the ‘Third World’ was in the midst of a generalised uprising against the colonial and neo-colonial powers. In this struggle they were frequently aided by the USSR and the other Soviet bloc countries, which they understood to be in some sense non-capitalist. In these conditions, it is unsurprising that inter-imperialist rivalry does not feature heavily, although there was some acknowledgment of the differences between various imperial powers (Fanon 1963, 79) because much of the imperialist world was unified against them, and so not warring amongst itself.

Yet in the period that followed, the changing material conditions gave rise to a new configuration in which the ‘Third World’ became an entirely different political actor – either disempowered or de-radicalised. At the same time, importance has shifted to the actions of the United States and its contestation by European states, Russia and China. Thus if, with Fanon, we expect racial forms to change in line with material conditions, we can argue the following: racialisation is directly generated – in part – by imperialist exploitation, positing a Manichean division in which the oppressed and exploited are seen – and treated as – inferior to their oppressors and exploiters. Yet within this Manichean division there are also further ‘sub-divisions’ in which the racially ‘inferior’ are themselves sub-divided into degrees of greater on lesser inferiority. It is in this way that race becomes linked to the management of social antagonism.

At the same time, the material structure of imperialism also creates intense rivalries. The dual tendencies within capitalist imperialism of territorialisation (Anievas 2008, 201) and the intensification of international competition serve as an important material condition for the generation of racial discourses. This basic material drive is fundamental in conditioning the forms that the racialisation of the peripheries takes, with imperial powers attempting to assert different forms of racialisation so as to tactically undercut their rivals in addition to tactically stratifying the oppressed.

At the same time, this international competition directly throws up discourses of racialisation against rival imperialist states. Such discourses have been – in one way or another – a relatively common feature of life under capitalism, particularly in periods of increased economic and military competition or periods of crisis. However, these are much weaker forms than those generated through exploitation, liable to shift at a given moment and are much more amenable to tactical deployment. Given international law’s close connection to processes of imperialism, this is reflected in the racial patterns that international law embodies and articulates.

Conclusion

The ultimate conclusion of this chapter is that we must understand the ‘global colour line’ in more complex ways. It is not simply a ‘line’ which divides black from white, or civilised from uncivilised. While there is a basic, fundamental racialised division, founded on the differentiation between the advanced imperialist powers and the peripheral formations, this itself shifts according to a whole series of conjunctural and tactical imperatives. At the same time, there are a number of other lines which intersect with it, as imperial powers attempt to stratify their rivals, without ever putting them on the other side of the more foundational colour line. Understanding this complex picture is key to understanding how to navigate contemporary imperialism. Failing to take this into account can lead to an overly simplified picture in which opposition to the US is seen as always and automatically ‘anti-imperialist’.

This becomes even more important in the context of international law’s intimate relationship with these racialised processes. This chapter has attempted to show that international law plays an absolutely key role in instantiating the racialised relations of imperialism, with rivalry being a key part of this process. A corollary of this is that one must be extremely suspicious of those claiming to uphold the UN as against US unilateralism. This has been a very strong tendency among the left, widely considered. As this article has argued, even the most ‘normal’ and ‘uncontroversial’ multilateral interventions remain racialised and imperialist (Miéville 2008).

Thus, as Akbar Rasulov has argued, one should understand much of the opposition to the US ‘unilateralism’ as the equivalent of a kind of feudal socialism. Other powers attempt to re-assert their own position in the imperial order through clinging to international law in a manner analogous to the feudal aristocracy rebuking the bourgeoisie (Rasulov 2010, 466). In these circumstances one cannot simply counterpose the imperialist, unilateral and racialised uses of force by the US to the UN Charter regime. To do so is to miss the way in which these oppositions are playing out a contested process of inter-imperialist rivalry. Any anti-imperialist project must instead take aim at the material relations of imperialism and their complex racial articulation, a project that must go beyond the mere assertion of legality.