🎓 Christoph Burgmer im Gespräch mit Teun A. van Dijk (geb. 1943). Der niederländische Sprachwissenschaftler Teun A. van Dijk lehrte an der Universität Amsterdam und an der Universität Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Sein empirischer Forschungsgegenstand sind Elite- und Alltagsrassismus. Er gehört zusammen mit Siegried Jäger (1937-2020) vom Duisburger Institut für Sprach-und Sozialforschung (DISS) zu den Pionieren der Diskursanalyse. Seit den 80er jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts entwickelten sie Analysemethoden, um sowohl versteckten Alltagsrassismus im Zusammenspiel mit Eliterassismus von unter anderem Politikern sicht- und messbar machen zu können. In diesem Gespräch wird u.a. der Frage nachgegangen, welchen Einfluss rassistische Äußerungen durch Eliten in Medien und Parteien auf die Gesellschaft haben. 🎓 Christoph Burgmer in conversation with Teun A. van Dijk (born 1943). Dutch linguist Teun A. van Dijk taught at the University of Amsterdam and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. His empirical research focuses on elite and everyday racism. Together with Siegried Jäger (1937-2020) from the Duisburg Institute for Language and Social Research (DISS), he is one of the pioneers of discourse analysis. Since the 1980s, they have developed analytical methods to make hidden everyday racism visible and measurable in conjunction with elite racism, including that of politicians. This conversation explores, among other things, the influence that racist statements by elites in the media and political parties have on society. 🎓 Christoph Burgmer en conversación con Teun A. van Dijk (nacido en 1943). El lingüista neerlandés Teun A. van Dijk impartió clases en la Universidad de Ámsterdam y en la Universidad Pompeu Fabra de Barcelona. Su investigación empírica se centra en el racismo de élite y cotidiano. Junto con Siegried Jäger (1937-2020), del Instituto de Investigación Lingüística y Social de Duisburgo (DISS), es uno de los pioneros del análisis del discurso. Desde la década de 1980, desarrollaron métodos de análisis para hacer visible y medible el racismo cotidiano oculto en interacción con el racismo de las élites, entre otros, de los políticos. En esta conversación se aborda, entre otras cosas, la cuestión de la influencia que tienen en la sociedad las declaraciones racistas de las élites en los medios de comunicación y los partidos políticos.
📚 Veröffentlichungen u.a. / publications a.o. / Publicaciones, entre otras: - Teun A. van Dijk: "De Rasoel-Komrij affaire." Critics Verlag, Amsterdam 2003. - Teun A. van Dijk: "Discours and racism in Spain and Latin America." Benjamins Verlag, Amsterdam 2005. - Teun A. van Dijk: "Discourse and Context. A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambrige Univ. Press, Cambridge 2008.
🔥 See also Teun A. van Dijk homepage 🔥 See also Centre of Discourse Studies Barcelona
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome to Audioarchiv, the channel for historical interviews with writers, philosophers, activists,
and intellectuals from around the world.
(00:34):
Hello. Teun van Dijk is one of the most significant and influential linguists in Europe.
The Dutchman developed, among other things, methods for the empirical study of everyday racism.
Racism is a broad field that has played an increasingly significant role in the conservative
(00:54):
rollback of democratic societies since the mid-1980s.
Today, racist parties can be found in all European societies.
Their electoral successes depend on how well they manage to incite and deliberately amplify everyday racism.
The strategies of this racist fervour are mastered not only by far-right parties such as the
(01:18):
AfD but also by conservative parties like the CDU-CSU, as well as so-called left-wing parties like the BSW.
Nevertheless, this racist fervour has been little researched so far.
Certainly, this connects the anti-migration elite discourse with the authoritarian control of society.
(01:39):
Emancipation efforts are halted, traditional role models replace equality discourses, and violence
and discipline replace tolerance and social empathy.
However, for Teun van Dijk, this elite racism is not limited to political parties; it also exists
in academia, the media, and the economy.
Their respective elites are still white, heterosexual, male, and are meant to remain so.
(02:04):
Teun van Dijk has been investigating the exact strategies by which this occurs since the 1970s. Century.
In doing so, the questions have changed in the present.
How is it that people have racist attitudes and defame minorities at all?
What role does the interplay of media and politicians play in elites?
(02:27):
And what effects does elite racism have on the different groups in society?
In light of the dramatic loss of emancipatory and democratic certainties in Europe, these questions are highly relevant.
Mr van Dijk, you are a professor of discursive studies at the University of Amsterdam and have
(02:50):
repeatedly engaged in your research with racism and its various manifestations in language and written texts.
Before we delve into these manifestations in detail, first a general question.
What defines racist language today?
(03:10):
Of course, this cannot be summarised in two sentences, but one could say that nowadays there
is primarily a kind of indirectness and a way of not stating things so explicitly.
This means it is rather, let's say, implicit, toned down to deny racism.
(03:33):
And there are a whole range of textual phenomena through which one can see that people are turning
against immigrants, minorities and so on.
This is currently, as one might say, a kind of racism that is referred to in English as New
(03:53):
Racism or Subtle Racism or Symbolic Racism.
There are many expressions for it.
And precisely because it is so indirect and because it is so little blatant, as it is sometimes
said in English, so open, so little open.
This New Racism is, as mentioned, more culturally oriented and is also less, let's say, biologically oriented.
(04:23):
This does not mean directly genetically that one says foreigners or black people or whatever
are less intelligent or such things.
It is more about culture, for example, especially things that have to do with cultural differences,
(04:44):
as I discuss in the last book Ideology, it is primarily like a cultural conflict between black
and white in the United States.
And many of the things one finds there in that book can also be found in Europe, that is, also
(05:04):
in Holland, Germany, France and so on, that the others are not inferior, but rather different.
But indirectly they are of course saying exactly the same thing, that the other culture is less
valuable or less interesting than our culture.
And indirectly the traditional concept of superiority keeps coming back indirectly.
(05:28):
Before we delve further into more examples, I would like to pose a structural question.
Scientifically, with which methods can one analyse language or discourses, what is meant by
discourses, how can one work on that?
How can one work on such an aspect as racism in this language?
(05:52):
This cannot be done with classical linguistic methods.
One can do quite a lot.
This means that someone who has simply studied literature or linguistics or literary studies can get quite far.
I mean, even with classical rhetoric, for example, one can get quite far in studying these things.
(06:13):
But now, of course, in the last 30 years, we have text studies, as it is somewhat called in
German and also in Dutch.
Discourse studies in English have certainly done much more than just that.
This means we are much further along than just the grammatical analysis of 20 or 30 years ago.
Much more has been studied about spoken language.
(06:34):
There is now much more that could be used as tools to analyse this.
This means one knows roughly how people speak in everyday conversations.
We now know much more about how language appears in newspapers, so one already has something general to study.
And therefore, one can also compare how people speak in Parliament or on the street about foreigners,
(07:00):
about immigrants, and so on.
Of course, not how one speaks in general.
And there are many things that are quite clear.
I mean, if one already knows what the normal topics in the newspaper are, and one compares what
the topics are when speaking about foreigners, then one can compare that even without much technical knowledge.
(07:25):
This means, yes, we can do a lot with many classical things that we already have.
However, in the last 20 to 30 years, we have learned quite a lot in text studies, a bit further out from linguistics.
And with all these methods, both the more technical and the less technical, we can now describe
(07:45):
quite well the more subtle differences in language when one speaks about any topic or about foreigners.
In the publications I have looked at, there was always talk of the interdisciplinary approach
regarding racism, which is always their research subject as an example.
(08:10):
How do you investigate this interdisciplinary approach in relation to racism?
Of course, racism is not just for one discipline.
There is, of course, when one wants to analyse how people speak, then one goes to the text scholars
and they can then say something technical about it.
But racism is also related to prejudices.
(08:32):
And prejudices are typically and traditionally a subject of social psychology.
That means, one must of course know something about prejudice, about prejudices.
And when one then connects this with an analysis of texts, one can particularly link the relationship
between what one thinks and believes with what one says.
(08:52):
And therefore, that is a first step.
And one can, for example, also somehow analyse that sometimes people say certain things for various communicative reasons.
For example, out of politeness or out of fear that one might be considered racist and so on.
They say very specific things, but sometimes they think something different.
(09:17):
So that one can somehow analyse this relationship between language and thought.
That is already a first interdisciplinary step.
And secondly, racism has to do with actions, with social matters, with institutions, with newspapers, universities and so on.
With organisations, institutions and so on and so forth. And politics for example.
(09:38):
And there one needs a third point.
That is why I always say, to do this well, we always need this triangle. Language and discourse, texts.
Secondly, cognition, so let's say the analysis of the mind or the other cognition.
And then thirdly, the social analysis.
We will continue shortly with the interview.
(10:00):
Like us if you like it.
And with these three areas, let’s say social sciences, psychology and language and text studies,
one can understand quite a lot of what is going on.
Could you please give an example to illustrate how such a thing looks in practice?
In a word or in a situation?
(10:22):
We can for example look at the media.
I mean, if one wants to understand what exactly happens when, for example, a journalist writes
a report in the newspaper.
To analyse this, we first need the analysis of the newspaper article.
And for that, we naturally need a linguistic analysis to analyse the language structure of the
(10:46):
headlines, of the article and of the sentences.
Also the meaning structure of the sentences and so on.
The meaning structure of the entire article, the themes and so on.
Rhetorical features, of how one speaks about immigrants.
All of this would then be, let’s say, the more language-textual analysis.
But of course, one wants to know more.
One wants to know, for example, how the journalist perceives the ethnic situation or the immigrants.
(11:13):
For instance, if one has a report about, I don't know, for example, what I analysed in my book
'Racism in the Press', it was at that time the so-called 'Riots' in London.
And there is somehow an event.
And the story then appears in the newspaper.
But what one also wants to know is how the journalist perceives it simply.
(11:35):
And how they interpret it.
And this interpretation that they have comes indirectly through the language, through the texts in the newspaper.
So those are already two things.
On one hand, language and text.
On the other hand, what they think, what they mean, what they believe.
Prejudices, attitudes, and ideologies that journalists have, let's say, white, European, German
(11:58):
or Dutch journalists have about the ethnic events.
And it also comes that they are not only constrained in that they cannot write freely as they wish.
Because they have to deal with an editor, with the chief, and so on and so forth.
And therefore, of course, they must also write something very specific institutionally, because
(12:20):
somehow a news item must of course be a news item.
That means it must have all the characteristics of news.
That means there are institutional and other restrictions involved.
And to really explain how, for example, prejudices are spread through the press in society,
one must describe and explain these three different things in some way, to say, look how the
(12:43):
press spreads prejudices in society.
As a question, because that is of course part of racism. So one has racism. Racism is not innate.
They mainly learn this from the street, from people, from parents, friends, and so on.
On one hand informally and on the other hand from the media.
(13:03):
Therefore, the media are part of this process of reproduction.
And to explain this whole reproduction of racism, one needs this complex multidisciplinary analysis of, for example, news.
And exactly the same can be said for political speeches or for everyday conversations on the
street or in workplaces and so on.
(13:24):
One always needs at least three steps to really explain these connections.
Let's stay direct at best, since we are already here, with the press.
The press actually has a completely different function.
In a democracy, in Western countries, the press represents its own power.
(13:45):
It is, so to speak, an extra-parliamentary opposition or non-opposition, depending on the context.
But it is a force in its own right.
From its particular conditions in which it operates, in which the press becomes effective, there
are special mechanisms that specifically promote such racist reporting.
(14:07):
Look, there are various factors at play.
Firstly, the press is dependent on many things.
I mean, the press is a power in its own right, just like politics and science and so on.
But they are always dependent.
As institutions or elites, they are dependent on other elites.
And the press is very dependent on politics.
(14:27):
And they receive almost everything they know about immigration, about foreigners, and so on.
They always get this, and quite often it comes from politics.
This means that much is pre-formulated by the politicians.
And the press can only work if they have a good understanding with politics.
This means that in almost all studies I know about the press, it is quite clear that although
(14:51):
they are strong and partly independent, it does not mean that they can be totally different from politics, for example.
That simply does not exist.
Additionally, the attitudes of most journalists are not very different from those of politicians, politically speaking.
I mean, it is not the case that all politicians are extremely right-wing and all journalists are extremely left-wing.
(15:14):
It is simply not like that.
This means they are quite close.
Journalists may be generally a bit more to the left, and politicians perhaps a bit more to the
right, but in the middle.
This means that the ideological differences are not very large.
And because the press sometimes has to work with deadlines and constraints of time and money
(15:34):
for institutional reasons, they sometimes simply have to adopt the definitions from the politicians.
This means that if, for example, the ministry says that a new group of refugees is coming from
a certain country, then the situation is usually defined precisely by these politicians.
And this is usually taken up in the press.
(15:56):
This is a matter that has an effect, particularly the influence of politics.
And another matter is that the press also has to sell.
This means they are partly dependent on the audience.
This means they also have to cover the topics they know the audience is interested in.
This means there are various forces that influence the press and ensure that certain topics
(16:18):
make it into the press while others hardly ever do.
This means we simply know, as has been extensively studied in Germany, France, the Netherlands,
and especially in England, that certain topics are always selected.
And for example, crime is always an important topic.
And a topic that hardly ever appears in the press is, for example, racism.
(16:40):
This means certain issues are selected, and these are the topics that concern many readers and
also interest politicians and other, shall we say, elites, and which generally do not benefit
foreigners or, shall we say, minorities.
And especially the issues that concern minorities appear very little in the press.
(17:03):
Of course, because there is still only a very small group in Europe that does not require much to sell.
In the United States, it is different.
The groups are already so large that one cannot simply write something that disturbs the minorities
too much, because one would simply lose customers and readers.
So I would say there are various forces that influence the press.
(17:26):
This means they are partly independent.
Partly it simply has to do with professionalism and how one goes about it. But not only that.
There are certain matters that are independent of this, and these are mainly, I would say, the
influence of politicians, as well as that of science.
I mean, there are certain scientific discussions that then indirectly make it into the press,
(17:48):
and because science is not different and is also more interested in deviation and so on than
in racism, this is also another reason why the press writes very little about it, because there
are simply very few reports on it.
Now, the press is generally something that always claims to serve enlightenment.
(18:08):
This discourse has grown significantly in the last ten years.
At the same time, racism has also increased in various forms.
What can be taken from such statements when compared to what you said before?
Well, it is naturally part of the ideology.
There is simply every professional group, even journalists have a professional ideology.
(18:33):
That means they simply say, we are there for enlightenment or as they say in English, we are
the watchdog of society, a watchdog.
And that is part of a very positive self-presentation that we all have.
I mean, we professors also say we are here to somehow find the truth and so on and so forth.
(18:53):
But in practice, many other things also play a role.
I remember when I started doing this work about 18 years ago, I had a kind of dialogue, a correspondence
with the chief editor or something of the Telegraaf in Holland, a large conservative newspaper.
And I asked him about this negative reporting on foreigners and so on, he said, that's the truth,
(19:21):
this and that with crime and so on.
Then I said, but there are many truths that are not in the newspaper. Where does that go?
Why, when you write about, say, Turks or something, must it necessarily be like this and that?
Why is it, for example, that if it is still the case that when you find something about immigrants,
(19:42):
foreigners, minorities in the newspaper, it is negative, it is always on the front page?
And the positive things, the contributions to the economy and so on and so forth, the normal
news that also concerns other groups in society, somehow, when it comes to Turks or other foreigners,
never appears on the front page.
That means the negative things are selected, focus is placed on them, and all other things are hardly mentioned.
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That means, if there were really balanced reporting on foreigners, it would simply go like it does for other groups.
But that is not the case.
One can simply show that it is somehow always a bit biased, a bit distorted.
Now I assume that not all people in the countries are racist and have an interest in that.
(20:28):
How can one even prove that such reporting, as it is in the press, has an effect in reality?
Is it simply read from the number of attacks that occur afterwards?
Or that is a crucial point in such an investigation. Exactly.
So there are two facts.
Firstly, what the press writes can be analysed, it can be proven quite accurately, and one can
(20:54):
conclude that the press is part of the problem.
That means the problem of racism.
And I really must emphasise that when I talk about racism, I am not only talking about right-wing extremism.
That means, for me, racism is something much more complex and general.
There are also very subtle and indirect forms, not just right-wing extremism.
(21:16):
And secondly, one must, and that is much more difficult, prove how the readers deal with it.
We all read the newspaper, and for different people with different attitudes, it will also be received differently.
That means, depending on what one already knows, what one can already do, what one already thinks,
the reporting will of course be read and interpreted differently. That is quite clear.
(21:37):
One cannot simply say, now it is in the newspaper, so tomorrow. That hardly ever happens.
It only occasionally occurs with television programmes and so on.
But in general, the influences are rather diffuse, somehow indirect and so on.
So rather about what one generally knows, what one generally thinks, what is being talked about and so on.
(21:58):
That is more like, I would say, the influence is more ideological in general, not always based on concrete facts.
But there are quite a few examples.
I can give an example where one could somehow, let's say, almost experimentally prove that.
That was in '85, back then in Germany and also in Holland, the Tamils came from Sri Lanka.
(22:21):
And there, people in, let's say, now Holland, I assume in Germany the same, knew almost nothing about Tamils.
That means one can simply say, that was just a zero point of thinking and so on.
They had no opinion and no understanding and so on.
And then suddenly, through the definition, it also came back into the spotlight from politics,
(22:41):
prominently in the newspapers and on television, that they had come in droves to Germany and Holland.
That was in the first months of '85.
And coincidentally, we were doing some work at that time in various parts of Amsterdam and also outside.
And that was simply a field study on opinions about immigrants, foreigners, and so on.
(23:03):
And at that time, people started to talk spontaneously about these Tamils, whom they had never
seen, heard of, or encountered, instead of discussing Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese, and so on.
This means that it can be demonstrated that these opinions were not based on any other reasons, and so on.
But the opinions were simply pre-formulated in the press.
(23:25):
And what was recorded and analysed back then was exactly what had been pre-formulated in the press.
Of course, with different, I mean, different people expressed it a bit differently, which again
depended on the knowledge of the individuals.
But in general, it was very clearly pre-formulated by the press.
And what one hears afterwards about refugees, and even now about refugees, is almost solely
(23:49):
from the media, as the refugees in the cities, for example, are hardly known.
They are in the countryside in Holland.
This means that I would say a large part of what one knows about, for example, refugees, certain
specific groups can only be obtained from the media.
And therefore, I would also say that the opinions, for example, the opinions that were previously
not so negative about refugees.
(24:10):
People who came from the East or from fascist Latin America back in the 70s were rather paternalistic.
We should help, they are poor people, and so on. And also Vietnam.
The bread refugees and so on were viewed quite positively.
Suddenly, from one year to the next, '84, '85, the discussion completely changed.
(24:31):
And this can almost be evidenced, step by step, how it unfolded back then.
And it was simply the politics, the ministries, and so on, together with the press that brought this about.
What I find very interesting is that the press is part of the racist problem. Yes, everyone.
That means, also science, also politics, in principle all larger areas and institutions are involved.
(24:54):
You said, 84, 85 it had already tipped over.
Are there reasons for that, that one can find out?
It could be found out that it had tipped over there.
But why did it tip over? I don't know.
There are various reasons that one can somehow think up.
First of all, the honourable refugees came in smaller groups. That makes a difference.
(25:18):
But don't forget that much of the honourable refugees was rather European.
The people from South America and so on were rather European South Americans.
And the people from communist countries could come for political reasons, because it was all
great with anti-communism, of course, when we could somehow take in people back then.
(25:38):
So that had political reasons.
And the people who came in 85 came from the Third World, the Third World, in Africa and so on and looked different. That adds to it.
And somehow, even in Germany, there were never really many problems, not in Holland either,
when there were 1000 or 2000 European parties or whatever, people came.
(26:00):
But when suddenly people came who looked different, that simply, one never admitted it, but
it was simply part of really unspoken racist reasons.
Can it be linguistically proven that, for example, suddenly adjectives or similar things were
used that can really only be explained from a racist understanding?
(26:21):
As I said, modern racism would never obviously say that it has to do with colour or something
like that, but they always hide behind culture.
We'll continue with the interview shortly.
Like us if you like it.
And what one already finds is that it was said, the people are so different from us and so on
(26:43):
and so forth, they have a different culture.
And back then it was also made very clear, and I have studied the different pronunciations several
times, that it was said they should be caught in their own, in English region, so in their own environment, let’s say. Well, not that.
That means, if they had fled, for example from, I don't know, from Uganda, it was said they
(27:04):
should then be caught in the other countries around.
This is certainly largely the case.
Most refugees did not come to Europe; they stayed there.
And that was also the opinion of various people here.
They said, well, they should stay in their own environment.
That it would simply be, let's say, culturally roughly the same.
They simply said, we come here as outsiders, they come as real strangers, they also look different,
(27:29):
they have a different culture, and so on and so forth.
For me, these were very clear indications that there were somehow racist reasons.
I would like to talk again about how it works.
I imagine it quite simply.
People come who look different, and you encounter someone who seems foreign to you.
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Because you may have never seen anything like that.
Someone who looks like that or who is dressed like that.
And in that moment, things like the press or politicians come into play, who assess this.
Can one see it that way?
So the politicians also have a decisive role in the evaluation of what one might encounter,
contributing to this racist image that is then created.
(28:11):
I would agree with that.
Look, most people in the country do not encounter this smaller group at all.
There are two, three thousand people, maybe ten thousand, but not many more.
After a few years, of course, there are more.
But let's say, at the beginning, people are not known at all.
I mean, they are not encountered; you do not see them on the street or at work.
(28:34):
That means you almost only know how people look through the media, from television and in the newspaper.
That is the first point.
And that means, in everyday life, most people do not have a problem.
One cannot say, well, for example traditionally, I grew up in an environment with so many Turks
and so on, and they cause these problems in the environment, and so on and so forth.
(28:55):
And that is why I find it this way and that.
One could say there is something that could be called a popular folk racism in the sense that
it is also based on personal experiences.
But for the most part, it does not start that way.
That means, for most, for example for the refugees and other groups, there is no daily experience of this at all.
(29:15):
And what I have found repeatedly is that the elites who already have these contacts, for example,
people in the press, in politics, scientists, and so on, or in the police, they have what I have called pre-formulations.
And these are then picked up by people, let's say from the public, in the sense of those who
(29:40):
watch television and say, it's a shame, this and that and so on.
But these evaluations from the public are, as I said, pre-formulated by the elites.
This means that the situation is not presented or defined neutrally or positively, but already with an evaluation.
And these evaluations are then somehow mostly, let's say, further emphasised by the people.
(30:04):
This means that sometimes it gets worse.
This means that, in general, popular racism is rather more open and, let's say, stronger than elite racism.
This means that, in general, it tends to get a bit worse.
A keyword has been mentioned, elite racism.
I think that should definitely be explained again.
What are the elites and what have they investigated and what is their elite racism? What does that mean?
(30:30):
I need to preface something.
That means I started studying racism everywhere in the 1980s, on the street, in conversations,
in very specific parts of cities, districts, and so on. That's how I started.
I simply wanted to know.
And I noticed that many people constantly referred to the press and that you read it in the
(30:52):
newspaper and see it all the time on TV, and so on.
The politicians say this and that.
This means that people pointed this out tremendously.
That was somehow initially a reason to do something different.
But I wanted to study everything, not just how people speak in everyday life, but also how the
newspapers write, how television reports, and also how politicians speak, how scientists write, and so on.
(31:14):
I wanted all of it.
And the more I analysed and studied this, the more I became convinced that the elites played
a very important role in what I then called the reproduction of racism.
This means how easily racism, prejudices and so on arise and spread in society.
(31:36):
And there are of course anti-racist elites.
Sure, they naturally have an oppositional role, let's say.
But in general, it is the case that the dominant groups, even among the elites, somehow tend
to, as one notices constantly with immigration policy, prefer not to have foreigners. For many reasons.
(31:57):
Elites can of course be defined in many ways.
My definition would be, this is of course also a linguistic or discursive definition, that is
to say, these are simply the people who have a say. Literally.
That is to say, simply the people who sometimes say a bit more technically, they have access to the public discourse.
These are simply people who, due to their profession and so on, have access to most public resources,
(32:23):
for example textbooks, the media, and political.
Discourses and so on, they simply have the most access and control.
And this access and control over what one can somehow say, write and so on in society, that is only the elite.
They are not just anyone in a working-class neighbourhood or something like that.
(32:43):
It is precisely these people who somehow control the political debate.
Who control the debate in the newspaper.
Who know what is coming on television.
Who formulate scientific topics somehow. That is the elite.
And I have simply noticed that almost all topics that circulate in everyday life have already
been formulated by these elites.
(33:04):
And that is why I say that the elite is not alone in this reproduction process.
They certainly need much more.
And afterwards, they will somehow use the people with populism.
They simply say, we cannot have more immigrants or refugees, because the people do not want that.
But the people are first influenced by the same people who said, this and that.
(33:26):
This means that someone like a circle and once, one can say, yes, 70 or so percent of people
in Holland or in Germany or in France do not want more immigrants and do not want more refugees.
Then the politicians will somehow say exactly the same, for political reasons, because they want to be re-elected.
And whether one is left or right, that makes very little difference.
(33:48):
And Labour in England is exactly the same, and in France even the Socialists.
That means it doesn't make much difference.
If they want to be elected, they say exactly the same thing, perhaps not so openly, but in practice
it is exactly the same.
What do you think this discourse, this public discourse of the elites, this racist discourse
(34:10):
from politicians is used for at all, or by the press?
Well, that's a good question in the sense that, for example, it is always the case in the United
States that part of racism can be explained simply by direct interest.
That means I am against Turks because they somehow threaten my job or that I can't get a house and such things.
(34:33):
But the larger part of racism is not like that at all.
Modern racism, let's say modern elite racism or the new racism is not just interest-based, a little bit it is.
I mean, we do not want to give up our social society when millions from the poor south come
in, that much is true.
(34:54):
I mean, such polemics certainly exist.
I would say that especially the elites at all levels, all levels simply want to keep the group as it is.
That means, we Germans among ourselves, we professors among ourselves, we journalists among
ourselves, we politicians among ourselves, and everything that comes from abroad is somehow
(35:17):
a threat in the sense that we are no longer homogeneous.
And if people, for example, if a thousand white North Americans were to come, then that is of course no big difference.
But as soon as people look different, have a different culture, then suddenly you have a different kind of society.
You have a society that is more multicultural, and most people, scientists, politicians, deal terribly with that.
(35:42):
And especially here in Holland, it is very strong that people want to somehow remain as they are.
And they do not want to suddenly, I always say exceptions, but they do not want to suddenly
have such a diverse, such a multicultural society.
And you can see that there, and again, for example, also with journalists.
It is said in our press in Holland, there are simply no influential journalists from minority groups.
(36:04):
They simply do not exist.
And I once asked that somehow.
And first of all, the editors-in-chief have become angry.
They said, we are not racists.
And then I said, oh, so you are not racists.
But how is it then that there are now 30 percent of people in Amsterdam who are of colour or
Turkish or Moroccan and so on?
And that not even one of you, maybe someone cleans, but does not report news.
(36:30):
And then they somehow come up with stories, yes, they must master the language and so on.
Although they know that the younger generation speaks Dutch just like we do.
And that is of course no reason.
And that is of course also known in the case of women and discrimination against women.
They simply want to remain among themselves.
This is simply a group of white men.
And you can see that everywhere.
(36:51):
You can see that in politics, you can also see it in science and so on.
Even in science it is said now, because it is always best to talk about racism at home, as it is with us.
That means, in our science it is the same.
It requires an enormous amount of work to study how the others are.
That means, they are studied like in anthropology.
Well, they are so strange, and so on.
(37:13):
They are different from us. And that is great.
That is perfect, because it fits exactly into the concept.
But what does not fit into the concept is that people study us.
That they analyse how, for example, minorities experience racism or discrimination or prejudice and so on.
And as soon as scientists from these groups come and try that, they encounter enormous problems.
(37:39):
I mean, that is for example a big example, like my own wife, Filomena Esset, who wrote a few
books about everyday racism back then, and she encountered enormous problems.
At first not, but afterwards with journalists, especially because she is a black woman from
Suriname and so on, and very, very good, that is, she has a doctorate, Gumlaute and so on, on
(38:02):
a dissertation that was published in America, which sold out directly in three months. That almost never happens.
And precisely because someone was so good and wrote a dissertation that was so good, also theoretically,
they could not cope with that at all.
And almost all social scientists have fallen upon that.
And it was even the case that in the left-wing weekly newspaper, the Green Amsterdam, a two-page article appeared about them.
(38:30):
It was titled, who is afraid of Filomena Esset, like in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
And those were just two pages of rumours, impressions from journalists and so on.
It has nothing to do with scientific work at all.
And now it is such that it has somehow been proven that more than 95 percent of all work concerning
minorities in Holland is done by white Dutch people.
(38:51):
And among the people who lead these projects, I believe it is 99 percent.
That means there is almost no leading research.
There is some, but they have nothing to say in this field in Holland. And that is science.
They don't even talk about how many black professors there are, because there are almost none at all.
At the University of Amsterdam again, where now among younger people, 50 percent are not even authentically Dutch white.
(39:19):
And the University of Amsterdam not only has very few female professors, but it has almost no black professors.
So science is not much better in that sense.
Moreover, what they study is almost all very stereotypical.
Studying racism hardly occurs or very, very little.
Racism is simply taboo for them.
(39:39):
It must not be spoken about.
I have the impression that when it comes to political racism, there is also a certain way in
which political elites can instrumentalise others for other political goals.
So in Germany, this is very clear.
Is this racist discourse, as it is conducted among political elites, not also a lever to control
(40:04):
and discipline social contexts of a different kind?
Of course, of course, because all these things have different functions.
And it is exactly the same.
Of course, in Holland back then, anti-communism in Western Europe and the United States was
not only against Russia, but also against the left in their own country and so on, to control them.
(40:25):
Elite racism has many characteristics.
One of the characteristics is to say, we are not racist.
Of course, the elite are never racist, because they say our country is not racist and neither are we.
And what then happens with people is to say, no, but that already exists in the poor neighbourhoods.
That means, among ordinary people, that already exists.
(40:45):
There are already somehow strong feelings against those people.
And what you then get is that ordinary people somehow get blamed.
So what I have somehow called, let's say, textually as a strategy, of transfer, that means a transmission.
(41:07):
That means the elites keep trying to shift the racism that they somehow construct onto others.
Thank you for being with us at Audioarchiv.
Follow us, so you won't miss an episode and don't forget the like button.
See you next week, your Audioarchiv team.
(41:39):
Subtitles on behalf of ZDF for funk, 2017
Welcome to Audioarchiv, the channel for historical interviews with writers, philosophers, activists,
and intellectuals from around the world.
(00:34):
Hello. Teun van Dijk is one of the most significant and influential linguists in Europe.
The Dutchman developed, among other things, methods for the empirical study of everyday racism.
Racism is a broad field that has played an increasingly significant role in the conservative
(00:54):
rollback of democratic societies since the mid-1980s.
Today, racist parties can be found in all European societies.
Their electoral successes depend on how well they manage to incite and deliberately amplify everyday racism.
The strategies of this racist fervour are mastered not only by far-right parties such as the
(01:18):
AfD but also by conservative parties like the CDU-CSU, as well as so-called left-wing parties like the BSW.
Nevertheless, this racist fervour has been little researched so far.
Certainly, this connects the anti-migration elite discourse with the authoritarian control of society.
(01:39):
Emancipation efforts are halted, traditional role models replace equality discourses, and violence
and discipline replace tolerance and social empathy.
However, for Teun van Dijk, this elite racism is not limited to political parties; it also exists
in academia, the media, and the economy.
Their respective elites are still white, heterosexual, male, and are meant to remain so.
(02:04):
Teun van Dijk has been investigating the exact strategies by which this occurs since the 1970s. Century.
In doing so, the questions have changed in the present.
How is it that people have racist attitudes and defame minorities at all?
What role does the interplay of media and politicians play in elites?
(02:27):
And what effects does elite racism have on the different groups in society?
In light of the dramatic loss of emancipatory and democratic certainties in Europe, these questions are highly relevant.
Mr van Dijk, you are a professor of discursive studies at the University of Amsterdam and have
(02:50):
repeatedly engaged in your research with racism and its various manifestations in language and written texts.
Before we delve into these manifestations in detail, first a general question.
What defines racist language today?
(03:10):
Of course, this cannot be summarised in two sentences, but one could say that nowadays there
is primarily a kind of indirectness and a way of not stating things so explicitly.
This means it is rather, let's say, implicit, toned down to deny racism.
(03:33):
And there are a whole range of textual phenomena through which one can see that people are turning
against immigrants, minorities and so on.
This is currently, as one might say, a kind of racism that is referred to in English as New
(03:53):
Racism or Subtle Racism or Symbolic Racism.
There are many expressions for it.
And precisely because it is so indirect and because it is so little blatant, as it is sometimes
said in English, so open, so little open.
This New Racism is, as mentioned, more culturally oriented and is also less, let's say, biologically oriented.
(04:23):
This does not mean directly genetically that one says foreigners or black people or whatever
are less intelligent or such things.
It is more about culture, for example, especially things that have to do with cultural differences,
(04:44):
as I discuss in the last book Ideology, it is primarily like a cultural conflict between black
and white in the United States.
And many of the things one finds there in that book can also be found in Europe, that is, also
(05:04):
in Holland, Germany, France and so on, that the others are not inferior, but rather different.
But indirectly they are of course saying exactly the same thing, that the other culture is less
valuable or less interesting than our culture.
And indirectly the traditional concept of superiority keeps coming back indirectly.
(05:28):
Before we delve further into more examples, I would like to pose a structural question.
Scientifically, with which methods can one analyse language or discourses, what is meant by
discourses, how can one work on that?
How can one work on such an aspect as racism in this language?
(05:52):
This cannot be done with classical linguistic methods.
One can do quite a lot.
This means that someone who has simply studied literature or linguistics or literary studies can get quite far.
I mean, even with classical rhetoric, for example, one can get quite far in studying these things.
(06:13):
But now, of course, in the last 30 years, we have text studies, as it is somewhat called in
German and also in Dutch.
Discourse studies in English have certainly done much more than just that.
This means we are much further along than just the grammatical analysis of 20 or 30 years ago.
Much more has been studied about spoken language.
(06:34):
There is now much more that could be used as tools to analyse this.
This means one knows roughly how people speak in everyday conversations.
We now know much more about how language appears in newspapers, so one already has something general to study.
And therefore, one can also compare how people speak in Parliament or on the street about foreigners,
(07:00):
about immigrants, and so on.
Of course, not how one speaks in general.
And there are many things that are quite clear.
I mean, if one already knows what the normal topics in the newspaper are, and one compares what
the topics are when speaking about foreigners, then one can compare that even without much technical knowledge.
(07:25):
This means, yes, we can do a lot with many classical things that we already have.
However, in the last 20 to 30 years, we have learned quite a lot in text studies, a bit further out from linguistics.
And with all these methods, both the more technical and the less technical, we can now describe
(07:45):
quite well the more subtle differences in language when one speaks about any topic or about foreigners.
In the publications I have looked at, there was always talk of the interdisciplinary approach
regarding racism, which is always their research subject as an example.
(08:10):
How do you investigate this interdisciplinary approach in relation to racism?
Of course, racism is not just for one discipline.
There is, of course, when one wants to analyse how people speak, then one goes to the text scholars
and they can then say something technical about it.
But racism is also related to prejudices.
(08:32):
And prejudices are typically and traditionally a subject of social psychology.
That means, one must of course know something about prejudice, about prejudices.
And when one then connects this with an analysis of texts, one can particularly link the relationship
between what one thinks and believes with what one says.
(08:52):
And therefore, that is a first step.
And one can, for example, also somehow analyse that sometimes people say certain things for various communicative reasons.
For example, out of politeness or out of fear that one might be considered racist and so on.
They say very specific things, but sometimes they think something different.
(09:17):
So that one can somehow analyse this relationship between language and thought.
That is already a first interdisciplinary step.
And secondly, racism has to do with actions, with social matters, with institutions, with newspapers, universities and so on.
With organisations, institutions and so on and so forth. And politics for example.
(09:38):
And there one needs a third point.
That is why I always say, to do this well, we always need this triangle. Language and discourse, texts.
Secondly, cognition, so let's say the analysis of the mind or the other cognition.
And then thirdly, the social analysis.
We will continue shortly with the interview.
(10:00):
Like us if you like it.
And with these three areas, let’s say social sciences, psychology and language and text studies,
one can understand quite a lot of what is going on.
Could you please give an example to illustrate how such a thing looks in practice?
In a word or in a situation?
(10:22):
We can for example look at the media.
I mean, if one wants to understand what exactly happens when, for example, a journalist writes
a report in the newspaper.
To analyse this, we first need the analysis of the newspaper article.
And for that, we naturally need a linguistic analysis to analyse the language structure of the
(10:46):
headlines, of the article and of the sentences.
Also the meaning structure of the sentences and so on.
The meaning structure of the entire article, the themes and so on.
Rhetorical features, of how one speaks about immigrants.
All of this would then be, let’s say, the more language-textual analysis.
But of course, one wants to know more.
One wants to know, for example, how the journalist perceives the ethnic situation or the immigrants.
(11:13):
For instance, if one has a report about, I don't know, for example, what I analysed in my book
'Racism in the Press', it was at that time the so-called 'Riots' in London.
And there is somehow an event.
And the story then appears in the newspaper.
But what one also wants to know is how the journalist perceives it simply.
(11:35):
And how they interpret it.
And this interpretation that they have comes indirectly through the language, through the texts in the newspaper.
So those are already two things.
On one hand, language and text.
On the other hand, what they think, what they mean, what they believe.
Prejudices, attitudes, and ideologies that journalists have, let's say, white, European, German
(11:58):
or Dutch journalists have about the ethnic events.
And it also comes that they are not only constrained in that they cannot write freely as they wish.
Because they have to deal with an editor, with the chief, and so on and so forth.
And therefore, of course, they must also write something very specific institutionally, because
(12:20):
somehow a news item must of course be a news item.
That means it must have all the characteristics of news.
That means there are institutional and other restrictions involved.
And to really explain how, for example, prejudices are spread through the press in society,
one must describe and explain these three different things in some way, to say, look how the
(12:43):
press spreads prejudices in society.
As a question, because that is of course part of racism. So one has racism. Racism is not innate.
They mainly learn this from the street, from people, from parents, friends, and so on.
On one hand informally and on the other hand from the media.
(13:03):
Therefore, the media are part of this process of reproduction.
And to explain this whole reproduction of racism, one needs this complex multidisciplinary analysis of, for example, news.
And exactly the same can be said for political speeches or for everyday conversations on the
street or in workplaces and so on.
(13:24):
One always needs at least three steps to really explain these connections.
Let's stay direct at best, since we are already here, with the press.
The press actually has a completely different function.
In a democracy, in Western countries, the press represents its own power.
(13:45):
It is, so to speak, an extra-parliamentary opposition or non-opposition, depending on the context.
But it is a force in its own right.
From its particular conditions in which it operates, in which the press becomes effective, there
are special mechanisms that specifically promote such racist reporting.
(14:07):
Look, there are various factors at play.
Firstly, the press is dependent on many things.
I mean, the press is a power in its own right, just like politics and science and so on.
But they are always dependent.
As institutions or elites, they are dependent on other elites.
And the press is very dependent on politics.
(14:27):
And they receive almost everything they know about immigration, about foreigners, and so on.
They always get this, and quite often it comes from politics.
This means that much is pre-formulated by the politicians.
And the press can only work if they have a good understanding with politics.
This means that in almost all studies I know about the press, it is quite clear that although
(14:51):
they are strong and partly independent, it does not mean that they can be totally different from politics, for example.
That simply does not exist.
Additionally, the attitudes of most journalists are not very different from those of politicians, politically speaking.
I mean, it is not the case that all politicians are extremely right-wing and all journalists are extremely left-wing.
(15:14):
It is simply not like that.
This means they are quite close.
Journalists may be generally a bit more to the left, and politicians perhaps a bit more to the
right, but in the middle.
This means that the ideological differences are not very large.
And because the press sometimes has to work with deadlines and constraints of time and money
(15:34):
for institutional reasons, they sometimes simply have to adopt the definitions from the politicians.
This means that if, for example, the ministry says that a new group of refugees is coming from
a certain country, then the situation is usually defined precisely by these politicians.
And this is usually taken up in the press.
(15:56):
This is a matter that has an effect, particularly the influence of politics.
And another matter is that the press also has to sell.
This means they are partly dependent on the audience.
This means they also have to cover the topics they know the audience is interested in.
This means there are various forces that influence the press and ensure that certain topics
(16:18):
make it into the press while others hardly ever do.
This means we simply know, as has been extensively studied in Germany, France, the Netherlands,
and especially in England, that certain topics are always selected.
And for example, crime is always an important topic.
And a topic that hardly ever appears in the press is, for example, racism.
(16:40):
This means certain issues are selected, and these are the topics that concern many readers and
also interest politicians and other, shall we say, elites, and which generally do not benefit
foreigners or, shall we say, minorities.
And especially the issues that concern minorities appear very little in the press.
(17:03):
Of course, because there is still only a very small group in Europe that does not require much to sell.
In the United States, it is different.
The groups are already so large that one cannot simply write something that disturbs the minorities
too much, because one would simply lose customers and readers.
So I would say there are various forces that influence the press.
(17:26):
This means they are partly independent.
Partly it simply has to do with professionalism and how one goes about it. But not only that.
There are certain matters that are independent of this, and these are mainly, I would say, the
influence of politicians, as well as that of science.
I mean, there are certain scientific discussions that then indirectly make it into the press,
(17:48):
and because science is not different and is also more interested in deviation and so on than
in racism, this is also another reason why the press writes very little about it, because there
are simply very few reports on it.
Now, the press is generally something that always claims to serve enlightenment.
(18:08):
This discourse has grown significantly in the last ten years.
At the same time, racism has also increased in various forms.
What can be taken from such statements when compared to what you said before?
Well, it is naturally part of the ideology.
There is simply every professional group, even journalists have a professional ideology.
(18:33):
That means they simply say, we are there for enlightenment or as they say in English, we are
the watchdog of society, a watchdog.
And that is part of a very positive self-presentation that we all have.
I mean, we professors also say we are here to somehow find the truth and so on and so forth.
(18:53):
But in practice, many other things also play a role.
I remember when I started doing this work about 18 years ago, I had a kind of dialogue, a correspondence
with the chief editor or something of the Telegraaf in Holland, a large conservative newspaper.
And I asked him about this negative reporting on foreigners and so on, he said, that's the truth,
(19:21):
this and that with crime and so on.
Then I said, but there are many truths that are not in the newspaper. Where does that go?
Why, when you write about, say, Turks or something, must it necessarily be like this and that?
Why is it, for example, that if it is still the case that when you find something about immigrants,
(19:42):
foreigners, minorities in the newspaper, it is negative, it is always on the front page?
And the positive things, the contributions to the economy and so on and so forth, the normal
news that also concerns other groups in society, somehow, when it comes to Turks or other foreigners,
never appears on the front page.
That means the negative things are selected, focus is placed on them, and all other things are hardly mentioned.
(20:07):
That means, if there were really balanced reporting on foreigners, it would simply go like it does for other groups.
But that is not the case.
One can simply show that it is somehow always a bit biased, a bit distorted.
Now I assume that not all people in the countries are racist and have an interest in that.
(20:28):
How can one even prove that such reporting, as it is in the press, has an effect in reality?
Is it simply read from the number of attacks that occur afterwards?
Or that is a crucial point in such an investigation. Exactly.
So there are two facts.
Firstly, what the press writes can be analysed, it can be proven quite accurately, and one can
(20:54):
conclude that the press is part of the problem.
That means the problem of racism.
And I really must emphasise that when I talk about racism, I am not only talking about right-wing extremism.
That means, for me, racism is something much more complex and general.
There are also very subtle and indirect forms, not just right-wing extremism.
(21:16):
And secondly, one must, and that is much more difficult, prove how the readers deal with it.
We all read the newspaper, and for different people with different attitudes, it will also be received differently.
That means, depending on what one already knows, what one can already do, what one already thinks,
the reporting will of course be read and interpreted differently. That is quite clear.
(21:37):
One cannot simply say, now it is in the newspaper, so tomorrow. That hardly ever happens.
It only occasionally occurs with television programmes and so on.
But in general, the influences are rather diffuse, somehow indirect and so on.
So rather about what one generally knows, what one generally thinks, what is being talked about and so on.
(21:58):
That is more like, I would say, the influence is more ideological in general, not always based on concrete facts.
But there are quite a few examples.
I can give an example where one could somehow, let's say, almost experimentally prove that.
That was in '85, back then in Germany and also in Holland, the Tamils came from Sri Lanka.
(22:21):
And there, people in, let's say, now Holland, I assume in Germany the same, knew almost nothing about Tamils.
That means one can simply say, that was just a zero point of thinking and so on.
They had no opinion and no understanding and so on.
And then suddenly, through the definition, it also came back into the spotlight from politics,
(22:41):
prominently in the newspapers and on television, that they had come in droves to Germany and Holland.
That was in the first months of '85.
And coincidentally, we were doing some work at that time in various parts of Amsterdam and also outside.
And that was simply a field study on opinions about immigrants, foreigners, and so on.
(23:03):
And at that time, people started to talk spontaneously about these Tamils, whom they had never
seen, heard of, or encountered, instead of discussing Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese, and so on.
This means that it can be demonstrated that these opinions were not based on any other reasons, and so on.
But the opinions were simply pre-formulated in the press.
(23:25):
And what was recorded and analysed back then was exactly what had been pre-formulated in the press.
Of course, with different, I mean, different people expressed it a bit differently, which again
depended on the knowledge of the individuals.
But in general, it was very clearly pre-formulated by the press.
And what one hears afterwards about refugees, and even now about refugees, is almost solely
(23:49):
from the media, as the refugees in the cities, for example, are hardly known.
They are in the countryside in Holland.
This means that I would say a large part of what one knows about, for example, refugees, certain
specific groups can only be obtained from the media.
And therefore, I would also say that the opinions, for example, the opinions that were previously
not so negative about refugees.
(24:10):
People who came from the East or from fascist Latin America back in the 70s were rather paternalistic.
We should help, they are poor people, and so on. And also Vietnam.
The bread refugees and so on were viewed quite positively.
Suddenly, from one year to the next, '84, '85, the discussion completely changed.
(24:31):
And this can almost be evidenced, step by step, how it unfolded back then.
And it was simply the politics, the ministries, and so on, together with the press that brought this about.
What I find very interesting is that the press is part of the racist problem. Yes, everyone.
That means, also science, also politics, in principle all larger areas and institutions are involved.
(24:54):
You said, 84, 85 it had already tipped over.
Are there reasons for that, that one can find out?
It could be found out that it had tipped over there.
But why did it tip over? I don't know.
There are various reasons that one can somehow think up.
First of all, the honourable refugees came in smaller groups. That makes a difference.
(25:18):
But don't forget that much of the honourable refugees was rather European.
The people from South America and so on were rather European South Americans.
And the people from communist countries could come for political reasons, because it was all
great with anti-communism, of course, when we could somehow take in people back then.
(25:38):
So that had political reasons.
And the people who came in 85 came from the Third World, the Third World, in Africa and so on and looked different. That adds to it.
And somehow, even in Germany, there were never really many problems, not in Holland either,
when there were 1000 or 2000 European parties or whatever, people came.
(26:00):
But when suddenly people came who looked different, that simply, one never admitted it, but
it was simply part of really unspoken racist reasons.
Can it be linguistically proven that, for example, suddenly adjectives or similar things were
used that can really only be explained from a racist understanding?
(26:21):
As I said, modern racism would never obviously say that it has to do with colour or something
like that, but they always hide behind culture.
We'll continue with the interview shortly.
Like us if you like it.
And what one already finds is that it was said, the people are so different from us and so on
(26:43):
and so forth, they have a different culture.
And back then it was also made very clear, and I have studied the different pronunciations several
times, that it was said they should be caught in their own, in English region, so in their own environment, let’s say. Well, not that.
That means, if they had fled, for example from, I don't know, from Uganda, it was said they
(27:04):
should then be caught in the other countries around.
This is certainly largely the case.
Most refugees did not come to Europe; they stayed there.
And that was also the opinion of various people here.
They said, well, they should stay in their own environment.
That it would simply be, let's say, culturally roughly the same.
They simply said, we come here as outsiders, they come as real strangers, they also look different,
(27:29):
they have a different culture, and so on and so forth.
For me, these were very clear indications that there were somehow racist reasons.
I would like to talk again about how it works.
I imagine it quite simply.
People come who look different, and you encounter someone who seems foreign to you.
(27:49):
Because you may have never seen anything like that.
Someone who looks like that or who is dressed like that.
And in that moment, things like the press or politicians come into play, who assess this.
Can one see it that way?
So the politicians also have a decisive role in the evaluation of what one might encounter,
contributing to this racist image that is then created.
(28:11):
I would agree with that.
Look, most people in the country do not encounter this smaller group at all.
There are two, three thousand people, maybe ten thousand, but not many more.
After a few years, of course, there are more.
But let's say, at the beginning, people are not known at all.
I mean, they are not encountered; you do not see them on the street or at work.
(28:34):
That means you almost only know how people look through the media, from television and in the newspaper.
That is the first point.
And that means, in everyday life, most people do not have a problem.
One cannot say, well, for example traditionally, I grew up in an environment with so many Turks
and so on, and they cause these problems in the environment, and so on and so forth.
(28:55):
And that is why I find it this way and that.
One could say there is something that could be called a popular folk racism in the sense that
it is also based on personal experiences.
But for the most part, it does not start that way.
That means, for most, for example for the refugees and other groups, there is no daily experience of this at all.
(29:15):
And what I have found repeatedly is that the elites who already have these contacts, for example,
people in the press, in politics, scientists, and so on, or in the police, they have what I have called pre-formulations.
And these are then picked up by people, let's say from the public, in the sense of those who
(29:40):
watch television and say, it's a shame, this and that and so on.
But these evaluations from the public are, as I said, pre-formulated by the elites.
This means that the situation is not presented or defined neutrally or positively, but already with an evaluation.
And these evaluations are then somehow mostly, let's say, further emphasised by the people.
(30:04):
This means that sometimes it gets worse.
This means that, in general, popular racism is rather more open and, let's say, stronger than elite racism.
This means that, in general, it tends to get a bit worse.
A keyword has been mentioned, elite racism.
I think that should definitely be explained again.
What are the elites and what have they investigated and what is their elite racism? What does that mean?
(30:30):
I need to preface something.
That means I started studying racism everywhere in the 1980s, on the street, in conversations,
in very specific parts of cities, districts, and so on. That's how I started.
I simply wanted to know.
And I noticed that many people constantly referred to the press and that you read it in the
(30:52):
newspaper and see it all the time on TV, and so on.
The politicians say this and that.
This means that people pointed this out tremendously.
That was somehow initially a reason to do something different.
But I wanted to study everything, not just how people speak in everyday life, but also how the
newspapers write, how television reports, and also how politicians speak, how scientists write, and so on.
(31:14):
I wanted all of it.
And the more I analysed and studied this, the more I became convinced that the elites played
a very important role in what I then called the reproduction of racism.
This means how easily racism, prejudices and so on arise and spread in society.
(31:36):
And there are of course anti-racist elites.
Sure, they naturally have an oppositional role, let's say.
But in general, it is the case that the dominant groups, even among the elites, somehow tend
to, as one notices constantly with immigration policy, prefer not to have foreigners. For many reasons.
(31:57):
Elites can of course be defined in many ways.
My definition would be, this is of course also a linguistic or discursive definition, that is
to say, these are simply the people who have a say. Literally.
That is to say, simply the people who sometimes say a bit more technically, they have access to the public discourse.
These are simply people who, due to their profession and so on, have access to most public resources,
(32:23):
for example textbooks, the media, and political.
Discourses and so on, they simply have the most access and control.
And this access and control over what one can somehow say, write and so on in society, that is only the elite.
They are not just anyone in a working-class neighbourhood or something like that.
(32:43):
It is precisely these people who somehow control the political debate.
Who control the debate in the newspaper.
Who know what is coming on television.
Who formulate scientific topics somehow. That is the elite.
And I have simply noticed that almost all topics that circulate in everyday life have already
been formulated by these elites.
(33:04):
And that is why I say that the elite is not alone in this reproduction process.
They certainly need much more.
And afterwards, they will somehow use the people with populism.
They simply say, we cannot have more immigrants or refugees, because the people do not want that.
But the people are first influenced by the same people who said, this and that.
(33:26):
This means that someone like a circle and once, one can say, yes, 70 or so percent of people
in Holland or in Germany or in France do not want more immigrants and do not want more refugees.
Then the politicians will somehow say exactly the same, for political reasons, because they want to be re-elected.
And whether one is left or right, that makes very little difference.
(33:48):
And Labour in England is exactly the same, and in France even the Socialists.
That means it doesn't make much difference.
If they want to be elected, they say exactly the same thing, perhaps not so openly, but in practice
it is exactly the same.
What do you think this discourse, this public discourse of the elites, this racist discourse
(34:10):
from politicians is used for at all, or by the press?
Well, that's a good question in the sense that, for example, it is always the case in the United
States that part of racism can be explained simply by direct interest.
That means I am against Turks because they somehow threaten my job or that I can't get a house and such things.
(34:33):
But the larger part of racism is not like that at all.
Modern racism, let's say modern elite racism or the new racism is not just interest-based, a little bit it is.
I mean, we do not want to give up our social society when millions from the poor south come
in, that much is true.
(34:54):
I mean, such polemics certainly exist.
I would say that especially the elites at all levels, all levels simply want to keep the group as it is.
That means, we Germans among ourselves, we professors among ourselves, we journalists among
ourselves, we politicians among ourselves, and everything that comes from abroad is somehow
(35:17):
a threat in the sense that we are no longer homogeneous.
And if people, for example, if a thousand white North Americans were to come, then that is of course no big difference.
But as soon as people look different, have a different culture, then suddenly you have a different kind of society.
You have a society that is more multicultural, and most people, scientists, politicians, deal terribly with that.
(35:42):
And especially here in Holland, it is very strong that people want to somehow remain as they are.
And they do not want to suddenly, I always say exceptions, but they do not want to suddenly
have such a diverse, such a multicultural society.
And you can see that there, and again, for example, also with journalists.
It is said in our press in Holland, there are simply no influential journalists from minority groups.
(36:04):
They simply do not exist.
And I once asked that somehow.
And first of all, the editors-in-chief have become angry.
They said, we are not racists.
And then I said, oh, so you are not racists.
But how is it then that there are now 30 percent of people in Amsterdam who are of colour or
Turkish or Moroccan and so on?
And that not even one of you, maybe someone cleans, but does not report news.
(36:30):
And then they somehow come up with stories, yes, they must master the language and so on.
Although they know that the younger generation speaks Dutch just like we do.
And that is of course no reason.
And that is of course also known in the case of women and discrimination against women.
They simply want to remain among themselves.
This is simply a group of white men.
And you can see that everywhere.
(36:51):
You can see that in politics, you can also see it in science and so on.
Even in science it is said now, because it is always best to talk about racism at home, as it is with us.
That means, in our science it is the same.
It requires an enormous amount of work to study how the others are.
That means, they are studied like in anthropology.
Well, they are so strange, and so on.
(37:13):
They are different from us. And that is great.
That is perfect, because it fits exactly into the concept.
But what does not fit into the concept is that people study us.
That they analyse how, for example, minorities experience racism or discrimination or prejudice and so on.
And as soon as scientists from these groups come and try that, they encounter enormous problems.
(37:39):
I mean, that is for example a big example, like my own wife, Filomena Esset, who wrote a few
books about everyday racism back then, and she encountered enormous problems.
At first not, but afterwards with journalists, especially because she is a black woman from
Suriname and so on, and very, very good, that is, she has a doctorate, Gumlaute and so on, on
(38:02):
a dissertation that was published in America, which sold out directly in three months. That almost never happens.
And precisely because someone was so good and wrote a dissertation that was so good, also theoretically,
they could not cope with that at all.
And almost all social scientists have fallen upon that.
And it was even the case that in the left-wing weekly newspaper, the Green Amsterdam, a two-page article appeared about them.
(38:30):
It was titled, who is afraid of Filomena Esset, like in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
And those were just two pages of rumours, impressions from journalists and so on.
It has nothing to do with scientific work at all.
And now it is such that it has somehow been proven that more than 95 percent of all work concerning
minorities in Holland is done by white Dutch people.
(38:51):
And among the people who lead these projects, I believe it is 99 percent.
That means there is almost no leading research.
There is some, but they have nothing to say in this field in Holland. And that is science.
They don't even talk about how many black professors there are, because there are almost none at all.
At the University of Amsterdam again, where now among younger people, 50 percent are not even authentically Dutch white.
(39:19):
And the University of Amsterdam not only has very few female professors, but it has almost no black professors.
So science is not much better in that sense.
Moreover, what they study is almost all very stereotypical.
Studying racism hardly occurs or very, very little.
Racism is simply taboo for them.
(39:39):
It must not be spoken about.
I have the impression that when it comes to political racism, there is also a certain way in
which political elites can instrumentalise others for other political goals.
So in Germany, this is very clear.
Is this racist discourse, as it is conducted among political elites, not also a lever to control
(40:04):
and discipline social contexts of a different kind?
Of course, of course, because all these things have different functions.
And it is exactly the same.
Of course, in Holland back then, anti-communism in Western Europe and the United States was
not only against Russia, but also against the left in their own country and so on, to control them.
(40:25):
Elite racism has many characteristics.
One of the characteristics is to say, we are not racist.
Of course, the elite are never racist, because they say our country is not racist and neither are we.
And what then happens with people is to say, no, but that already exists in the poor neighbourhoods.
That means, among ordinary people, that already exists.
(40:45):
There are already somehow strong feelings against those people.
And what you then get is that ordinary people somehow get blamed.
So what I have somehow called, let's say, textually as a strategy, of transfer, that means a transmission.
(41:07):
That means the elites keep trying to shift the racism that they somehow construct onto others.
Thank you for being with us at Audioarchiv.
Follow us, so you won't miss an episode and don't forget the like button.
See you next week, your Audioarchiv team.
(41:39):
Subtitles on behalf of ZDF for funk, 2017
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