прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Ideology

are a rationalization of black failure', others may reverse the claim and state that D'Souza's denial of racism is a rationalization of continued white failure to come to terms with blacks in US society. No wonder that in D'Souza's hierarchy of ideological values, the real problem is not racism, but anti-racism — defined as 'intellectual and moral coercioñ .

In D'Souza' s attitude to racism, even when defined in his way, racism is a legitimate opinion (p. 538), which may be criticized, but which is no crime, despite many international laws, United Nations charters against racism, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We see that at this point the conservative values of law and order clash with the principies of his racist ideology — enforcing the many laws against discrimination does not exactly have priority in this attitude. On the contrary, discrimination, as D'Souza argues, may well be rational and legitimate in some situations. Ethnocentric supremacy, and neo-liberal freedom to discriminate (e.g. in business) are ideologically superior to the liberal principie of not violating the rights of others.

Wherever discrimination and racism cannot be bluntly denied it is mitigated, their current relevance and seriousness played down, or even legitimated in specific situations. Systematic everyday discrimination in the USA is thus euphemistically reduced to such improprieties as 'slights of taxidrivers who pass by African Americans' (p. 525), a forro of discrimination that is fully legitimate for D'Souza, because it is 'rational'.

Similarly, although structurally very similar and socially equally destructive, US segregation is deemed to be totally incomparable with apartheid, a familiar move of mitigating denial. And when D'Souza claims that 'we do not know how much racism exists in the USA', such a well-known move of apparent ignorance ('nobody knows how to measure it) is curiously inconsistent with his own repeated claim that racism has declined in the USA. But should some racism still exist, it is especially due to the behaviour of the black underclass, which violates all social and cultural codes of US society — another reversal by blaming the victim.

There are several points where D'Souza's beliefs about racism coincide with those of critical scholars who have studied racism. Thus, as we have seen, racism is certainly not universal, but a scientific invention of eighteenthand nineteenth-century Europeans, for example, used to explain observations of the 'primitivism' of other cultures. D'Souza does not mention here that it was also invented to legitimate slavery, genocide, land grab, colonization and many other highlights of Western 'civilizatioñ .

Indeed, racism is not an irrational antipathy of stupid, uneducated people, but had a scientific basis (and such science should never be called'pseudosciencé warns D'Souza). True, as is exemplary for his own book, racism, ethnocentrism and many other forms of inequality have always been preformulated and legitimated, in more or less respectable academic terms, by the elites. Por D'Souza, however, the argument has other implications: if discrimination is not irrational, but rational, this means that (white) people may have good, even respectable, reasons to discriminate against blacks.

Thus, D'Souza defends the attitude that prejudice, discrirnination and ethnocentrism may be natural, rational, expedient (good for business) and hence justified.

Given his attitude to racism, we should not be surprised by D'Souza's attitude to colonialism, another invention of Western 'civilizatioñ . Denial, mitigation, legitimation and simply ignoring the historical facts are only some of the strategies employed to protect the ideology of Western civilizational supremacy against overly critical examination. Thus, explorations were not 'carried out with hostile intentions', D'Souza claims, and should not be seen as rapacious land grabs, theft of resources, or (sometimes) genocide, but as Europé s contribution to 'world transformatioñ, as a sigas of progress, and as intellectual enterprises. What is clear from such attitudinal beliefs is that ideologies have a very powerful control over the very selection, focus, representation and construction of historical'facts'. And where ideologies, such as that of Western civilizational supremacy, might be inconsistent with these facts, they may be insulated against these facts by an entirely different version of reality.

Affirmative action

Little speculation is necessary to predict D'Souza's attitudes about affirmative action (AA), given his denial of racism and his conservative values and ideologies of personal merit, discipline, hard work and rejection of any government intervention. Whereas, on many other accounts, D'Souza rejects egalitarian values, social policy should, according to him be 'colocar blind'. He insists that this principle of Martin Luther King should be respected, but he especially does so to demonstrate that contemporary black intellectuals violate King's legacy: a well-known tactic of dividing the enerny.

Whereas elsewhere in his book he makes a case for the legitimacy of rational' discrimination, affirmative action is strictly rejected because it is

defined as discrimination — of whites that is. Following his own criteria that allow discrimination, one might ask whether affirmative action is an Irrational antipathy', rather than a rational policy to end inequality and many remaining disparities in hiring, promotion and work conditions of minorities in general, and blacks in particular.

That AA would corrupt US firms, as another of D'Souza's attitudinal beliefs suggests, is another definition of the situation biased by the fundamental ideological belief that social and ethnic inequality should not be taken very seriously. It certainly does not explain why many big companies, when free to decide whether to apply AA, choose to do so.

The most familiar attitudinal belief about AA is that it would lower standards', which presupposes that minorities (and especially blacks) are generally less qualified. D'Souza extensively cites all statistics to prove just that. Since he has rejected a 'racial' (biological) explanation of such lower qualification, he is free to play the 'culture card', and hence accuse blacks of lacking a culture of achievement. Of course, other social explanations (bad

schools) are hardly highlighted, nor may we expect the conclusion that if blacks (as a group) perform less well, not they, the victims, but the schools should be blamed.

Finally, in this sequence of accusations, reproaches and blaming the victim, D'Souzá s attitude on AA, as well as on civil rights more generally, is that this system means Big Bucks for the 'civil rights industry', and especially also for black intellectuals and (other) 'activista; how much, he does not tel us, one of the many claims about which suddenly his footnotes are scarce, nor how much white civil servants profit of the system. That attitudes are not always consistent among each other, shows here, because where the 'Civil Rights Industry' (and their black employees) are accused of gobbling up mega-dollars, blacks are elsewhere accused of not taking enough corporate or financial initiatives, This 'pathology' D'Souza traces back to black attitudes during slavery: 'a series of measures to avoid, postpone and minimize work' (p. 97). In more traditional parlance such an attitude was routinely expressed as They are lazy.' The point, thus, is not to try to establish a balanced picture of the social situation of African Americans and yace relations in the USA, but to fmd any argument to derogate blacks.

Multiculturalism

The ideology of cultural conservatism is not very friendly towards multiculturalism. As D'Souza also has shown in his earlier work,' in which he ridicules educational, curricular and scientific diversity, his ideology of Western cultural supremacy is inconsistent with the cultural relativism of the 'Boasians', and with that of most social scientists in the world, for that matter.

The specific attitudinal cluster organizing his beliefs about multiculturalism is organized by a number of familiar dimensions, such as the conceptual triple, encountered before for the representation of African-Americans: difference, deviance, threat. Multiculturalists are different from us, deviate from our cultural and educational norms and are even a threat to our Western civilization.

To make the case for the 'threat', various devices of hyperbole are of course necessary4 as has been the case more generally in the debate about multiculturalism. In such an attitudinal framework it is not consistent, for instance, to consider alternative versions of reality, for instance the fact that multicultural education in US schools, colleges and universities is, as yet, marginal with respect to that of the teaching and research about dominant Western culture from Aristotle, to Shakespeare and Einstein.

Another ploy to emphasize the deviance of multiculturalism is to associate it with other evil cultural developments, as seen by the cultural conservatives: Marxism, deconstructionism, and Third World scholarship, none of which is exactly a dominant force in US academia. However, appeals to anti-communist (Le. un-American), ideologies, ethnocentric doubts about the

excellence of Third World scholars, and anti-intellectual ridicule of (also foreign, while French) deconstructionism, are of course consistent with both conservative and ethnocentric ideologies.

That multiculturalism would 'result in imbalance and distortion', as another belief of this attitude states, is a final strategy in the negative representation of curricula that emphasize the need for educational diversity for an increasingly ethnically varied population. Of course, the imbalance of restricting education largely to Western authors and scientists, is not further considered, nor has D'Souza nor other representatives of cultural conservatism written alarming books about this form of scholarly distortion, which has dominated US (and other Western) education until today.

Afrocentrism

The combined ideologies of cultural conservatism, ethnocentrism and modem racism are brought to bear in the construction of an extremely negative attitude about Afrocentrism. Ridicule, over-generalization and hyperbole are also the major strategic moves here. Afrocentrism is thus represented as a dangerous philosophy. As usual in the representation of blacks, the views of a radical minority are first generalized and exaggerated by selective quotes, and then derogated. Altemative representations of Afrocentrism, as a correction to dominant Eurocentric ideologies, and as a means to enhance group identification and pride among blacks, would imply a relativist position that is of course inconceivable for D'Souza.

Where arguments about scholarship, the arts or other elements of culture do not suffice, there is always the option to ridicule and derogate the appearance or behaviour of blacks who indulge in Afrocentric beliefs, following the familiar constraints of modem racism:

[15] ... the hardened gleam in many Afrocentric eyes ... virtually cultic pattem of lockstep behavior: eve one dresses alike, and when the leader laughs, everyone laughs.... (p. 381)

Depending on oné s ideology and social actitudes, such a description would of course fit many outgroups, ranging from the military to the denizens of Wall Street. That is, there is no aim to correctly describe the others, but to construct a negative stereotype, according to which others are typically'all aliké and lack humanity, individuality and autonomy.

The IQ debate

Finally, D'Souza engages in a lengthy discussion of che IQ debate, spawned by the controversial book by Hernnstein and Murray, The Bell Curve. His position is very ambiguous here. He feels ideologically related to there authors because they also question 'the foundation of twentieth century liberalism: the denial of natural differences and the premise of the inherent equality of groups' (p. 434). Indeed, he asks-

[16]Why should groups with different skin color, head shape, and other visible characteristics prove identical in reasoning ability or to construct an advanced civilization? (p. 440)

He thus goes a long way towards agreeing with many of the racist presuppositions of Hemnstein and Murray. He extensively cites all scientific evidence that claims to show genetic black inferiority, as he also does when discussing the presumed lack of academic achievements of blacks. He thereby ignores the vast literature that shows that intelligence is largely contextual and socio-economical, and may even change dramatically within the same group within one generation. This shows that, typically for ideologically based persuasion, evidence is selectively focused on and presented in accordance with oné s group attitudes: only those data that confirm the negative characteristics of the others will be given due attention.

The whole argument of biologically based racial differences of intelligence (and culture), of course presupposes the viability of the very notion of race', which he claims most scientists accept:

[17]Most anthropologists and biologists agree on the existence of three broad racial groups: the Caucasoid, the Negroid and the Mongoloid. (p. 449)

Again, he is virtually silent about (or simply rejects) all the scholarly literature that concludes that, despite obvious and undeniable differences of appearances between people in the world, a classification of people into races' on the basis of such (superficial) differences of appearance only makes sense in common sense. It is the same common sense, rather than scholarly evidence that makes D'Souza smugly use the following argumentum ad absurdum:

[18]If the concept of race is entirely fictional, shouldn't all civil rights laws which rely on racial classification be struck down by the Supreme Court as meaningless and unconstitutionally vague? (p. 447)

One of the many problems with this argument is that he disregards the difference between a biological classification and a socio-political or legal one. 'Race' is a social, commonsense construct, and racism is based on such a commonsense classification. Legal measures to counter racism of course recognize the existence of a social category of on which racism is based, but do not presuppose the existence of biological classifications of people into races.

Again, the strategic aim of D'Souza's argument is not so much to prove or disprove the existence of biological races, but rather to provoke supporters of civil rights, and hence his ideological enemies, into accepting biological races through the back door of the social and legal classifications of Moreover, the argument is inconsistent with his critique of the 'one drop of blood rule' that (socially) defines people in the USA as 'black' if they have one drop of 'black' blood. If, indeed, most blacks in the USA do have 'mixed' ancestry, then the very point of their biological classification as black (and hence their racial inferiority on IQ tests) makes litde sense. Thus,

what African-Americans do have in common, though, is their social position, namely, as being selfand other-defined as being black.

Ultimately, however, D'Souza rejects (without'much argument) the biological account of 'racial' differences and the IQ gap between blacks and whites, because that would be inconsistent with his ideologies of cultural conservatism and ethnocentrism. After all, if the 'pathologies' of the black community were largely caused by their genetic predisposition, they could hardly be blamed for them. A cultural explanation, by which deviant black culture is seen as the source of all problems, is much more persuasive in an argument that sets out to emphasize Western, white civilizational supremacy. Such an argument also rules out, as we have seen, any socio-economic explanation of African-American'failuré :

f 19] My conclusion is that it is an illusion to 'believe that racial differences etween blacks and whites are largely a phenomenon of socioeconomic class and that such differences will disappear with the current menu of preschool and

public-school government interventions. (p. 457)

L20] Contrary to the assumption of cultural relativism, the problem, it seems, is not test bias but the functional inadequacy of African-American culture. (p. 461)

These discursive manifestations of underlying attitudes show again how beliefs are strategically shaped in accordance with prevalent ideologies. According to ethnocentric and modem racist ideologies, blacks need to be represented as inferior to whites. The cultural ideology then provides the explanation of such inferiority in terms of the 'functional inadequacy of African-American culture', which again is the belief that sustains the vehement attack against African-Americans. Biological explanations of black inferiority would invalidate such an argument, although D'Souza seems quite impressed by the biological evidence that might explain the IQ gap as well as the cultural inferiority of blacks. However, if D'Souza were to accept that blacks are genetically unable to compete with whites (or Asians), one solution would again be affirmative action and remedial schooling, and hence (more) government intervention, which is of course off limits for the conservative ideologue.

Models

We already briefly indicated, aboye, that ideologies and the social attitudes they control not only appear directly in discourse, as general statements, but also affect mental models, that is, personal interpretations and opinions about concrete events. D'Souzá s book has few stories of such personal experiences: the 'definition of the situation' he presents is generally quite abstract. However, when he does tell about such an experience, we do see how underlying ideologies also control his mental models. Here are small fragments of one of the stories that express such a personal model, namely, his experience of the celebration, on 28 August 1993, of the thirtieth anniversary of Martin Luther King' s march and '1 have a dream' speech:

[21] ... One by one the leading civil rights spokespersons took the podium, gravely invoked the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. and demanded that Americans do more to vanquish the forces of white racism so that blacks could achieve what one speaker termed 'meaningful eguality'. .

But I did not hear anyone invoke King's principie of a race neutral society in which laws and policies are indifferent to colour. The reason for this reluctance was implicitly expressed by black activist Benjamin Chavis's rallying cry. 'We don't just want equal rights,' he said. 'We want our fair share of the economy.' Other speakers decried what they termed 'institutional racism', although they were not specific about this terco. The rhetoric suggested the existence of a new civil rights agenda, in important respects different from the one which Martin Luther King, Jr. championed...

Certainly the style and tone of the 1993 assembly differed in two important respects from that of King's march three decades earlier. First, many of the audience seemed middle-class, and diere were conspicuous signs of prosperity. A number of speakers arrived in chauffeured cars. I overheard talk of appointments and schedules. 'I have to be at the coalition meeting at six.' I hope that they hold my dinner reservation.' ... Some activists engaged in minor turf warfare, sparring over whether they had been booked at the Willard or the Madison hotel, over who spoke first at the podium, over who sat where on the dais, and so on. One black professor who felt neglected erupted,'This event replicates the structures of oppression in American society.' Despite this distress, it was gratifying to see indications that the lives of many blacks in the United States have nnproved dramatically. People whose condition is economically and socially desperate do not fret over speaker schedules and hotel bookings. (pp. 201 _2)

As this passage shows, his personal model of the event closely follows his general attitudes about the condition of black America: a successful black middle class which do not cace about the black underclass, black people being 'conspicuous' with their wealth, and attributing ah problems to racism, whereas the 'real' problem is the violence of the ghetto. Strategically aligning himself with Martin Luther King (a move of positive selfpresentation), he sees the manifestation as a contradiction to what King and D'Souza favour: a'race neutral society'. The description and the ironic and derogatory style of this story obviously define the event in tercos that are consistent with this attitude about the black community Prominent in that attitude is the rejection of racism as the main problem of black America, and an emphasis on violence and other 'pathologies' of the inner cides and of 'a second black America'. That is, not our failure (racism) but their failure (pathologies), are then explained in terms of an overall 'black culture' (p. 204). Such an overall classification ignores class division so that the whole black community can be blamed, as he also does in the passage just quoted. In other words, the ideologies of modem racism and cultural conservatism combined produce a mind-set that has such biased models as a result: D'Souza can only 'see' the events the way he describes them.

Discourse

Social representations and personal models control the style and content of text and talk. Let us therefore finally examine how D'Souzá s ideologies and

attitudes, as well as his personal views, impinge on the discourse of his book. Space limitations do not allow me to provide a detailed discourse analysis of a book of 724 pages, however, so I must limit myself to brief comments on some significant passages. Since ideologies about groups and cultures are involved, I shall focus on the well-known ideological square of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. Also, the analysis will be relatively informal so as to enhance its readability. Within the broader framework of a critical discourse analysis, I shall also occasionally formulate critical comments on D'Souza's book, but my aim is to illustrate the relations between ideologies, actitudes, models and actual discourse, rather than to denounce D'Souza's book or the ideologies that he represents.

Aboye, I have already given some text examples from D'Souza's book, and also briefly made some analytical remarks about them. Typical for a rhetorical book like this, which intends to contribute to an ongoing ideological debate, and which aims to sharply criticize the black community, are the various strategies that represent Us and Them. Thus, Our group as well as those with whom D'Souza identifies himself, namely, the West, Western civilization, Europe, white people, conservatives, and so on, are consistently described in positive tercos, whereas any negative characteristics will be ignored or mitigated, whereas the others and especially African-Americans are consistently described in negative tercos.

Derogating African-Americans

Thus black 'pathologies' are described in stark contrast to Us, and with the usual forros of hyperbole. Lexical choice, comparisons, metaphors and any other device that may be used to paint a negative picture of blacks will be used. Here are some examples, which I cite at length in order to get a good impression of D'Souza's discursive style (some repeating earlier quotes):

[22]... the hardened gleam in many Afrocentric eyes ... virtually cultic pattern of lockstep behavior: everyone dresses alike, and when the leader laughs, everyone laughs.... (p. 381)

[23]... black racism is more explicitly menacing. (p. 421)

[24] Louis Farrakhan reportedly uses the profits to subsidize a lavish lifestyle which includes expensive silk suits and stretch limousine. (p. 426)

[25]The last few decades have witnessed nothing less than a breakdown of civilization within the African-American community. The breakdown is characterized by extremely high rates of criminal activity, by the normalization of illegttimacy, by the predo minan ce of single-parent families, by high levels of addiction to alcohol and drugs, by a parasitic rehance on government provision, by a hostility to academic achievement, and by a scarcity of independent enterprises. (p. 477)

[26]The conspicuous pathologies of blacks are the product of catastrophic cultural change that poses a threat both to the African-American community and to society as a whole. (p. 478)

[27]Of course no one is to blame for being a victim. But if as a reaction to being victimized, a group develops dysfunctional or destructive pattems of behavior which perpetuare a vicious cycle of poverty, dependency, and violence, then continuing to inveigh against the oppressor cannot offer the victim much relie£ (p.482)

[28]Yet black culture also has a vicious, self-defeating, and repellent underside Wat it is no longer possible to ignore or euphemize. As more and more blacks seem to realize, no good is achieved by dressing these pathologies in sociological cara, complete with the familiar vocabulary of disadvantage and holding society to account. Society must do its part, and blacks must do theirs. But first, the magnitude of the civilizational crisis facing the black community must be recognized. This crisis points to deficiencies not of biology but of culture; yet they are deficiencies and they should be corrected. (p. 486)

[29]For them [middle class blacks], apparently, antiracist militancy is carried to the point of virtual mental instability. It is hard to imagine whites feeling secure working with such persons: surely such inflamed ethnic insensitivitiel are now what companies have in mind when they extol the diversity of work environments. Yet if these individuals are cranks, they are in respectable company.

[30] Qobs?] Yet it seems unrealistic, bordering on the surreal, to imagine underclass blacks with their gold chains, limping walk, obscene language, and arsenal of weapons doing nine-to-five jobs at Procter and Gamble or the State Department. Many of these young men seem lacking in the most basic skills required for steady employment: punctuality, dependability, willingness to perform routine tasks, acceptance of authority. Moreover studies show that even when jobs are available, many young blacks refuse them, apparently on the grounds that the jobs don't pay enough or that crime is more profitable. (pp. 504-5)

[31]With some discomfort, we see that there is some truth to the historical stereotype of the black male stud, or, at least in the case of the black underclass, what used to be a stereotype now contains an ingredient of truth. (p. 517)

These passages give a representative impression of the various strategies of negative other-presentation employed by D'Souza. Person descriptions of black activista and Afrocentrists draw on familiar racist stereotypes about conspicuous dress and lavish lifestyles. Blacks are poor and so also their leaders should dress soberly, and at least not more conspicuously than'Nyé do. Cultural difference is here interpreted as cultural deviance, if not as a lack of solidarity with the black underclass. And whereas the middle class is described as living conspicuously, underclass youths similarly are characterized in terms of the street counterpart of deviant conspicuousness (gold chains, limping walk, obscene language, etc.) (example 30), described in such a way as to legitimize that they are not being hired.

Thus, black young men from the 'underclass' are seen to violate all basic values of the conservative ideology: 'punctuality, dependability, willingness to perform routine tasks, acceptance of authority' (example 29). No wonder they get no jobs, and they are thernselves to blame for it. Black individuality is denied when they are described as a mindless group following their

leaders (as in example 22), behaviour that is inconsistent with the dominant white norm of individualism. If not seen as different and deviant, blacks and their rage are characterized as a threat (example 23). D'Souza's conclusion is to admit that these may be stereotypes (e.g. about the 'black male studD, but then accepts the grain of truth hypothesis to prove he must be right about his generalizations (example 31). His analysis thus is reduced to creating the familiar racist stereotype of the'tad nigger' (p. 524), who is portrayed as the 'menace of society'. For young black women, as we shall see in more detall below, the stereotype is similarly predictable: they have too many babies, at a too early age, are unmarried, and thus contribute to the lastardization' of America.

Social problems of the black ghetto are hyperbolically characterized in tercos of a 'civilizational breakdown' (example 25) or as 'catastrophic cultural changé (example 26). Having to be on welfare is negatively represented and blamed on the victims by expressions such as 'parasitic reliance on government provision' (example 25). In other words, blacks are lazy parasites who live out of 'our' pockets. Being ill-prepared for university study because of bad schooling, is similarly blamed on blacks themselves, also in tercos of aggression. Based on a few examples of some blacks who see such achievement as 'acting white', D'Souza concludes that (ail?) blacks share a lostility to academic achievement'. Black behaviour is interpreted with formal style expressions such as 'dysfunctional' or less formally as 'destructive' (example 27), whereas black culture is said to have 'a vicious, self-defeating, and repellent undersidé . Black people who have lost patience over everyday racism, and developed a standing rage against whitedominated institutions, are deemed to be 'mentally unstable' (example 29), so that whites seem to have a good reason not to want to hire 'such people'.

Black women

Black women constitute a special target for D'Souza's diagnosis of black 'pathology'. Their double jeopardy when it comes to discrimination and prejudices is clearly illustrated by D'Souza's derogatory discourse itsel£

[32] Perhaps the most serious of African-American pathologies — no less serious than violence — is the routinization of illegitimacy as a way of life. The bastardization of black America is confirmed by the fact that nearly 70 percent of young black children borra in the United States today are illegitimate, compared to 22 percent of white children. More than 50 percent of black households are headed by women. Almost 95 percent of black teen mothers are unmarried, compared to 55 percent of their white peers. (p. 515)

Note the usual hyperboles, here further emphasized by the phrase 'perhaps the most serious'. For outsiders of the conservative ideology, it may seem preposterous to assume that the phenomenon of mothers who decide not to marry has become a threat bigger than violence, and at the top of the list of the 'pathologies' D'Souza attributes to the African-American community.

They might conclude that if that is the main problem facing the USA and