Belligerent shyness in post-racial talk

Blog post by Sudip Sen, University of Portsmouth, UK

In my Identities article, ‘Belligerent shyness and puzzlement: a discursive analysis of ‘not racism’ and the post-racial on UK phone-in radio’, I investigate ‘the talk about the talk’ about racism –  including when that talk is about how we shouldn’t talk about it. In particular, I analyze commercial phone-in radio calls in the UK, where speakers seek to minimize or deny the relevance of racism, and find that there is a persistence of performed shyness and puzzlement.

Shy people are usually not belligerent, and people genuinely puzzled by something are not usually quite so adamant about their answer. So, what is going on here? The speakers’ ‘shy’ and indirect utterances emphasize their view that they cannot speak anymore, and their puzzlement and shock frames racism as exceptional. In other words, these small public performances, rehearsed and repeated, are (re)generative of a post-racial discourse.  

Like all media, phone-in radio does not simply discuss something ‘out there’ in the world – it is a part of and shapes that world in particular ways. It also has a ubiquitous quality. Even if you are not tuning in, you might overhear phone-in radio in a car or salon, or it might pop up in a social media feed, as the latest caller is canonized or destroyed for kicks and clicks.
​
Underpinning these discursive performances of denial is an assumption that our societies have moved beyond race, or that real racism is elsewhere. This post-racial fiction is commodified and nurtured. After all, if we agreed about what racism is, and that it is in fact present and accounted for, there would be less to talk about. 

Taking inspiration from the theorization of race as a practice and technology, I ask what racism debates are doing in this strange, performative world of phone-in radio. My article grounds theories of the ‘debatability of racism’ and the circulation of ‘Not Racism™’ in everyday examples from this relatively neglected medium, and identifies mechanisms by which racism is allowed to thrive in those very moments in which it is denied.

The modest hope for this article is that, the next time you hear someone performing their shock as a preamble to minimization, insisting that you concede that racism is not as bad as it was, or complaining that they cannot speak anymore, you are reminded to ask them exactly what it is that they really need and want to say. My guess is that they won’t tell you, at least not directly.

This is what I mean when I say the ‘talk about the talk’ about race: conversations move toward others’ stifling preoccupation with race. A belligerence emerges as callers make noise about being ‘cowed into silence’. As I say in my recommended story pairing for my article, Dave was sick of all ‘this carry-on, carrying on about the immigrants he was carrying on about’.  Of course, there are many other features to this kind of post-racial chat, and it moves fast, but my article provides an analysis of the dynamics of some post-racial ‘carry-on’. I hope you enjoy it, but not too much.   

---

Image credit​: Author's own.

---

Read the Identities article:
​Sen, Sudip. (2024). Belligerent shyness and puzzlement: a discursive analysis of ‘not racism’ and the post-racial on UK phone-in radio. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2024.2409513   OPEN ACCESS

Read further in Identities:

Contesting racism: how do the black middle-class use cultural consumption for anti-racism?

Racism without ‘race’: colorblindness, blackness and everyday racism in contemporary Germany
​
Invoking racism in the public sphere: Two takes on national self‐criticism