Looking White People in the Eye

Razack, Shrene. (1998). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Razack criticizes that postcolonial discourse of cultural difference makes power relations invisible and keeps dominant cultural norms, white supremacy, in place by culturalizing social domination, in other words, replacing the domination of race, gender, and class with the language of culture. Thus, in the case of sexual violence involving Aboriginal women and immigrant women, both victims and attackers are often “culturalized, that is, understood as cultural and frozen in time, rather than as dynamic, historical, and social” (p. 19). Looking at sexual violence and the process of refugee determination, Razack asserts that women’s realities should be understood within the structures of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.

Chapter 3. What is to Be Gained by Looking White People in the Eye? Race in Sexual Violence Cases

Razack states that culture talk is a double-edged sword, as “it packages difference as inferiority and obscures both gender-based and racial domination, yet cultural considerations are important for contexualizing oppressed groups’ claims for justice, for improving their access to services, and for requiring dominant groups to examine the invisible cultural advantages they enjoy” (p. 58).

Problems, however, arise from the fact is culture is often uttered as an unchangeable set of values and customs autonomous from historical and social contexts. Razack writes, “culture is taken to mean values, beliefs, knowledge, and customs that exist in a timeless and unchangeable vacuum outside of patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and colonialism” (p. 58). Thus she calls attention to sexism interlocked with racism.

Razack contests that white society preempts racism and sexism by replacing the discoursesof racism and sexism with culture. Calling this process culturalization, Razack states:

In its modern form, overt racism, which rests on the notion of biologically based inferiority, coexists with a more covert practice of domination encoded in the assumption of cultural or acquired inferiority. This ‘culturalization of racism,’ whereby Black inferiority is attributed to ‘cultural deficiency, social inadequacy, and technological underdevelopment,’ thrives in a social climate that is officially pluralist. (p. 60)

Razack also points out the culturalization of sexism, writing that cultural consideration are used to defend male sexual violence offenders while also being used to intensify prejudices against minority, in particular Aboriginal, women. In this regard, Razack pays attention to the tendency that women of color distance themselves from the culturalization of violence, as seen in the statement, ‘No culture condones violence’ included in the report of the Coalition of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of British Colombia.

Observing cross-cultural sensitivity training, Razack contests that such training is of little use unless it is pursued in the context of the greater empowerment of the subordinate group.

Chapter 4. Policing the Borders of Nation: The Imperial Gaze in Gender Persecution Cases (88-129)

Razack states that the guideline released by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board in 1993 that recognized domestic violence as a form of persecution and legalized petitions of asylum based on gender-related persecution is one of the most remarkable achievement in Canadian legal history and the first guideline in the world to address gender-related persecution.

As Razack argues, a problem with this asylum structure, , is sexism interlocked with colonialsim, that is, the West "knows what is best for the Other" (p. 92). Thus Razack argues that refugees are viewed to the West as a mess that the Third World created and that the West must clean up. Women seeking asylum are seen also within this context. Razack states:

The successful asylum seeker must cast herself as c cultural Other, that is, as someone fleeing from a more primitive culture. That is to say, it is through various orientalist and imperialist lenses that women's gender-based persecution becomes visible in the West. Without the imperial or colonial component, claims of gender persecution are less likely to succeed and asylum is denied. (pp. 92-93)