Interweaving #24 - Somdeep Sen on Racism, Geopolitics, and Ukraine

"Stop Putin" sign held by person with "Tokyo Against Racism" T-shirt during demonstration against Ukraine invasion. (Syced, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

In this episode of Interweaving, host John Collins talks with Somdeep Sen, author of a recent article on how race and racism have shaped the field of international relations. They talked about how deeply racism is entrenched in the way we talk and think about geopolitics, both in general and in relation to stories such as the ongoing war on Ukraine.

Featured in this episode

Somdeep Sen at Roskilde University
https://forskning.ruc.dk/en/persons/sens 

Somdeep Sen, “Race, Racism, and the Teaching of International Relations”

John Collins and Somdeep Sen (eds.), Globalizing Collateral Language: From 9/11 to Endless War
https://ugapress.org/book/9780820360522/globalizing-collateral-language/ 

Transcript

John Collins: Welcome to Interweaving. I'm John Collins. If you've been listening to our recent episodes, you know, that we've been exploring some pretty deep questions about the war in Ukraine and how it might reveal some of the limitations in the dominant frameworks that are typically used to talk about geopolitics.

We've already heard from Mark Ayyash on Ukraine and Palestine, Claudia Hoffmann on the politics surrounding refugees in Europe, and, most recently, Damon Berry on the transnational significance of Christian nationalism. Today we're very fortunate to have with us someone who has thought very deeply about race and racism in relationship to geopolitics. Somdeep Sen teaches at Roskilde University and Denmark. He's a Weave News contributor, and he has published extensively in academic and journalistic formats on a wide range of issues in contemporary international affairs. Also, full disclosure, he and I worked together on a recent collection of essays published last year by University of Georgia Press. We'll put more info information about that book in the show notes for this episode. 

So, Somdeep, welcome, and thanks for joining us today.

Somdeep Sen: Thanks for having me. 

I've been starting each of our recent interviews by acknowledging that our identities and experiences always shape the way that we view major global news stories. And I think it's important to be transparent about that. So I wanted to give you the chance to tell us a little bit about the factors that influence your particular view of the Ukraine story.

My view of global politics in general is influenced by a few things, right? So I think a lot of it has to do with my experience starting off as a university student in 2003, not too long after the attacks of 9/11 in the midst of America's war on terror, but also the year of America's invasion of Iraq.

Also encouraged by my instructors at St. Lawrence, people like you, John, who forced us to really think and rethink our taken for granted understandings of the world. In times of crisis, politics, policy, seems to be driven by emotion, seems to be driven by our easiest explanations of what's happening in the world.

But because of what I experienced in the aftermath of 9/11 as a university student, you know, viewing politics in general, but also looking at politics on campus, I've always been, you know, instinctively I take a much more longitudinal view of politics. Someone said that good journalism is not supposed to be declarative. It's supposed to be comparative. The same way as an informed citizen, as a student, but also as a scholar, I believe it's important to, you know, have a longitudinal understanding, contextual understanding of why we are where we are today in terms of global politics. 

Of course, being a person of color, often navigating very white spaces where, you know, a very white college campus in upstate New York at St. Lawrence University or having a PhD in political science, a field that tends to be largely white and male, questions of race and racism have been central to the way I view the world. It has to do with my own experience of racism, both outside and within academia, but also in terms of understanding how the world is racially divided and racialized perceptions of the world. All of these issues sort of together in some ways, shapes my understanding of what's happening in Ukraine. 

And of course, that's one of the main reasons why I wanted to talk with you for this series of interviews. You recently wrote a really important article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia on International Studies, and the article addresses race and racism within the academic field of international relations. Could you say a bit about that piece and your motivation for writing it?

Yeah. I mean, the piece came out earlier this year, but you know, I've been thinking about writing something like that since the early days of my PhD. So I started my PhD program back in 2011. It was, you know, a bit frustrating where, both for me and for many people around the world, race and racism play such an important role in how you experience the political, global politics, right? Yet when I was looking at sort of, you know, disciplinary discussions, questions of race and racism were sort of put in this category of "critical," which sort of always appears in the back end of syllabuses or back end of textbooks and always placed in the margins of the discipline or margins of disciplinary priorities, so to speak. And this was quite frustrating for me seeing as a good chunk of the world's population has a very racialized experience of the world. 

So I was very much inspired by a number of international relations scholars that have brought issues of race and racism to the forefront. And they've showed that race and racism are central to the makings of international relations as a discipline, which has colonial roots, which has an imperial orientation, so to speak, and deeply racialized in terms of what it says about the world. So while I was inspired by these discussions, then the question became, okay, , how do I teach this? How do I bring this question into the classroom? And that's of course always challenging, right? 

On the one hand we're in this sort of neoliberal space when it comes to our university campus, when it comes to our curriculum, where we constantly have to justify the value of the education that we're providing. It's not just about creating informed citizens. Are our students gonna be employable? What value is there to a discussion of race and racism when we are talking about geopolitics, right? So that's sort of, of course, often the challenging aspect of bringing this discussion into the classroom, but also it's this understanding that the classroom is this objective space where we are just delivering, you know, objective, scientific knowledge to our students. And that's not the case, right? And these are some of the discussions that I try to bring up and some of the understandings that I try to unpack in the piece. 

I've been digging into that article, and I wanted to go a little deeper on some aspects of it that I think are really essential. One of the key ideas in the article concerns the operation of a quote unquote "color line" in the study of international politics. And that comes of course from the work of W.E.B. DuBois about a century ago. First, could you just say kind of in layperson's terms, what does "color line" mean in this context? And how does that fit into the way that we study, talk about, and teach about international politics?

Yeah. So obviously it's a very complex idea, but sort of in very simplistic terms, it's this idea that the world is divided on racial grounds, it's a racialized division of the world, right? And this racialized division is the foundation of a hierarchy where the lighter races of the world are seen as superior, progressive, modern, while the darker races are seen as, you know, backward and a bastion of everything bad, right? I mean, I use these terms "darker" and "lighter" races, but these are the kinds of terminology that was used in the first international relations textbooks, where that provided a, what they would say, a scholarly justification and a moral justification for colonialism and imperialism, because the argument was that the lighter races of the world were superior, were modern, were intellectually superior, and the darker races were not. And therefore the lighter races needed to dominate the darker races, especially with regard to resources and resource management, right, in order to know how best to use these resources, not just for the benefit of these darker peoples but for the rest of the world. 

And those ideas about white superiority became the foundation of the field of international relations.

Absolutely. And of course today we don't use that same terminology, but we use other sort of terms, you know, Western, European, modern, whatever that may be, to place a certain part of the world higher in the hierarchy and other parts in the lower, you know, the lower end of that.

Right. Now, the line from W.E.B. DuBois that you quote in the article, one of the most famous lines that he ever wrote, "the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line." Of course, international relations as a field has its origins in the 20th century, especially between the wars and then after World War II, when the foundations were really set. Now what I want to do is make the connection between that and the way we talk about global politics now, including in news coverage. So when we think about how news reports are constructed, we know that there are a lot of dominant categories and ways of seeing the world that are sort of hardwired into the coverage. They're taken for granted in the way that journalists talk and write about the world. So they can be hard to recognize. So if I'm reading or watching news coverage of global events, and I want to be more aware of how the color line is shaping what I'm receiving as a consumer of the news, what should I be looking for?

Right. So I think that one thing we need to reiterate that this color line is mobilized to emphasize Western superiority and the inferiority of the global south, right? Now of course the terminology has changed as I said before, but there are insinuations, right, taken for granted categories that we need to unpack.

So, you know, in any crisis, and especially this crisis that we're seeing, terms like Western, European, blue eyed blonde have been mobilized to emphasize or to demonstrate why what's happening to Ukraine is egregious, right? And of course it is. And of course it's a massive human crisis. But the use of the term Western and European, in the manner that has been mobilized, is not apolitical in any way. What kind of images do those sorts of terminology invoke, you know, in our minds, right? I think that's what we need to ask. And through that, you know, when they mobilize Western European, it should force us to reconsider, you know, how do we know what we know? What are our taken for granted understandings of the world? When a journalist is telling us this is not supposed to happen in a Western country, why should we take that statement for granted? Is it true? You know, have we forgotten about Bosnia? Have we forgotten about the fall of Yugoslavia? Why do we assume that this is not supposed to happen in the West? So I think this part of unpacking and rethinking of the categories of the world is necessary.

This also reminds me of, recently I interviewed a Danish government employee, and we're talking about refugee integration. This is before the Ukrainian refugee crisis. This is when Syrians and Afghanis were coming to Denmark. And we're talking about integrating refugees into the Danish labor market. And we were talking about education, skills, and qualifications. And I said, well, you know, do you do any process of skills matching where you look at what kind of qualifications and degrees these people come from and then help them find the jobs that are closest to their qualifications and expertise? And his argument was, well, no, we don't do that because they don't have any skills and qualifications that are valuable to the Danish labor market. Well, I said, how do you know that? Do you sit down and look at a, I don't know, Syrian engineering MA degree and a Danish engineering MA degree and compare? No, but it's a known fact that people who have the educations from third world countries don't have the education or the qualifications that are needed in a place like Denmark. 

And it's interesting, I mean, he's not a right wing politician. He's not in front of the media, but it's interesting how he has this taken for granted understanding of, you know, what's valuable and what kind of education that Syrians and Afghanis bring into Denmark. So these sorts of understandings, taken for granted understandings, you know, perforate every aspect of our lives. So, so yeah.

In your article, one of the examples you use is about nuclear weapons and the discussion that happened in the late 1990s when India was conducting a nuclear test, and there was widespread condemnation of India's actions. And you argue in the article that this reveals some racist assumptions about geopolitics, that only certain countries are allowed to have nuclear weapons and are part of the global north, the haves of the global north versus the have nots of the global south. And of course, around nuclear weapons, we continue to see, for example in relationship to Iran right now, we continue to see those sorts of attitudes. Are there other issues beyond refugees or the nuclear weapons example that you might flag as being examples in contemporary geopolitics where that color line is especially strong in shaping the public conversation?

In terms of, you know, how we are talking about Ukrainian resistance, right, resistance to occupation, resistance to oppression. I mean, there is a long history of colonial and imperial oppression of anticolonial and revolutionary movements. If you look at colonial discourse under colonial rule, you know, any anticolonial movement, violent or peaceful, was described as a source of disorder. And it was to justify the ordering actions of the colonial state, which meant brutal oppression, massacres, and so and so forth.

Now that discourse has continued on today, right? And if you see the case of Palestinian resistance, right? You know, when you talk about armed resistance, or when you talk about BDS, it's all seen as a source of disorder, something that needs to be oppressed, something that needs to be censored. Yet we were very quick to support Ukrainian resistance and, you know, Ukrainian political actions against Russian oppression, invasion, and occupation which is of course justified. But the fact that we don't allow for same level of understanding, support, to other political conflicts or other political struggles around the world, especially in the global south, the Middle East, in South Asia, in Africa and Latin America, is particularly revealing. 

We're talking with Somdeep Sen from Roskilde University in Denmark about race and racism in international relations and the way we talk about geopolitics. We're gonna take a short break. We'll be back with more in a bit.

[Break]

Before we return to our conversation with Somdeep Sen, just a quick reminder that you can subscribe to Interweaving on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And we hope you'll consider doing that so that you can get notified of all our new episodes as soon as they're released. 

So we're back now with Somdeep Sen. We've been talking about race and racism in international relations. And one of the things we covered in the first half of the conversation was this idea of there being a color line in the way we talk about and construct international relations. 

Yeah, I think it's been most visible in terms of the narrative that has surrounded our justification for support for Ukraine and Ukrainians. Right? So obviously it's been very heartwarming that the world has sort of mobilized around Ukraine. People have opened up their doors and governments have changed their policies to help out Ukrainians in this time of crisis and suffering. And what's happening in Ukraine is obviously brutal and completely unjustifiable. But this hasn't been done to simply support a group of people or a nation that is suffering under, you know, a brutal military attack and oppression, invasion. It's being done because Ukrainians are Europeans, and Western, right? And that's where you see the color line, right? Where the support for Ukrainians is just seen as taken for granted because they're European like us, they're Western like us.

I saw an interview with a Polish politician who was talking about the distinction he makes between letting Ukrainians in but not, you know, what he says is Muslim "illegal immigrants," right? Yet, and when they were asked, you know, we're not talking about illegal immigrants, we're talking about refugees, then his answer was, well, you know, we are letting in Ukrainians, good people, educated people, people who contribute to the society. We're not letting in, you know, illegal Muslim immigrants. And I'm not an expert on Russian affairs or you know, Western-Russian relations, but it's been interesting how Ukraine has been put in the category of West and Europe while Russia has been put outside that category. And it's interesting that we need to have these categories of European and non-European to mobilize public consent for any action we need to take against a particular actor. And there's a certain historical politics to that, right? 

Absolutely. And it is very interesting as you say, because as we learned in our previous conversation with Damon Berry, there are Russian and Ukrainian people who identify with a transnational idea of white supremacy. And yet in the US kind of response to Ukraine, we see this need to separate Russia and Ukraine, as you describe, right? Which is kind of awkward because if we need to defend Ukrainians because they're white, quote unquote European, et cetera, and we need to defend them from Russians who therefore must not be white. And yet the Russians in many cases are insisting that they are in ways that are quite troubling as well. That creates some awkwardness in the public conversation, right? Because then how do we take account of Russia's own image of itself and Putin's image of himself and so forth, at the same time as we're trying to mobilize on behalf of this racialized idea of Europe?

And it's also awkward because a lot of the countries, especially in Europe, and now I'm gonna speak from the perspective of someone who's been in Europe now for more than 10 years. Until now, Eastern Europeans weren't treated particularly well in Europe, almost a racialized discourse against them. The idea of the Polish worker taking over British jobs was something that was mobilized during Brexit. Everyday, pejorative statements about Eastern Europeans in Denmark is not uncommon to hear.

So it's very interesting how the categories have shifted, but it's also a time of learning because it also tells you how flimsy these categories and how made up these categories and how constructed these categories really are. So after a time of crisis, if you are to imagine, you know, or teach our students, for instance, we're too old to change anything, but maybe our students, right, to teach our students to change the world for the better, you know, it's a good example for how flimsy and problematic these categories are and how we should work past them, right?

Are you seeing any openings for a better conversation, a more inclusive conversation, a less racist conversation about Ukraine?

At this point, no, but I think that once, we hope soon when the violence dies down and we see a solution to this crisis, I think some of the hypocrisies of the way the global order works has become quite apparent through this crisis. And maybe because of the immediateness of the crisis and immediateness of the suffering that we are seeing in Ukraine, we may not have the opportunity or space in the airwaves to talk about that, right? But this could be a real moment in our recent history where we could really push to work across these categories and problematic categories that have, you know, plagued our understanding of the world. It can be a real teaching moment, you know, using Ukraine as a starting point in that sense. 

I thought now might be a good time to bring in the book that you and I edited recently. It's called Globalizing Collateral Language, and it focuses on the role of language in shaping the way we all talk and think about global violence and politics more generally. And a lot of this collateral language was driven by the US response to the 9/11 attacks. But what we found with this most recent book is that over the past 20 years, the language has continued to expand into issues that have very little to do with terrorism and anti-terrorism. So back to Ukraine now. What kinds of collateral language are operating in the Ukraine story? What are the words and phrases that we should be paying attention to there?

I mean, the basic sort of premise of our book was that in times of crisis, political language can be mobilized in a way that would garner consent from citizens for political projects that we may not otherwise, you know, agree to. And in that sense, I think, terms like Europe, Western, you know, the classic good and bad, right? But also illegal versus refugees, right? Illegal Muslim immigrants, but you know, suffering Ukranian refugees. Civilized, right? Another one that keeps coming up is like hardworking. These are hardworking Ukrainian refugees and you know, those in the past weren't, which is why we're making an exception for these people. 

Some of it is old and some of it is new, but I think, at least from the European perspective, because Europe has been so active in this and it's been so prominent in our airwaves, I think the idea of Europe and Western, I mean almost makes me cringe, right? I've seen several academic panels where, you know, crisis in Ukraine and what does it mean for the West, right. What is this category of West? Who does this represent? Does this include Australia? I mean, some basic questions that we were asked by instructors in our global studies 101 or government 101 courses, right? I think it's time to, you know, bring those questions back in. But also, Russia is also an easy enemy, right? I mean, it fits into sort of, you know, a global history of big power politics. So, you know, maybe even I think at some point we discussed, you know, America being one of the chapters, one of the terms we should talk about, and how just mobilizing the term America or American in discourse and how that, you know, what kind of consent that produces. 

Right, with the long memories of the Cold War and the way that the Cold War has shaped the attitudes of people all over the world but, in this case, in the United States. I'm also wondering about some of the language surrounding, let's say human rights. We've seen the use of the term human rights to condemn Russia, crimes against humanity, war crimes, terms like that, that have to do more with international law, which would not necessarily be used in this country to describe the invasion of Iraq or the war on terror in general, right? We wouldn't talk about the US as, at least you wouldn't find this in establishment media, as a violator of human rights. Or as a country that engages in illegal occupation or something like that, right, so a lot of the language surrounding international law is quite revealing here as well.

Absolutely. And also, you know, boycott, boycoytting not just institutions, but individuals, which is, you know, something as people who study the Middle East, something you don't quite hear in sort of mainstream public discourse, right? It's a prickly issue of policy making and practice. It's interesting how that's being mobilized, easily being mobilized without any resistance. It's almost taken for granted. Of course we are gonna ban the Russian ballet because they have ties to the government. I mean, if you get government research funding, do you have ties to the government as well? Because you know, then we have a lot to say about this, right? It's a slippery slope, isn't it?

It definitely is. Yeah. Before we finish up, I wanted to ask you the same question I've been asking everyone at the end of these recent conversations. We've been talking a lot about some of the problems in the way that geopolitics is discussed in public discourse. So what would better media coverage of geopolitics look like?

I think it goes back to what I said at the beginning of this conversation, which was this sort of longitudinal understanding of where we are now. Right? You know, in times of crisis, we become very declarative where we use the crisis as an explainer for what's happening, right? And then we go to the easy examples or easy answers, like, you know, Putin's crazy. That's why he's doing what he's doing, right? But if we have a longitudinal understanding, then we can better, you know, contextualize, you know, the current crisis and how we ended up here and what could have been done before and, you know, what should be done now.

I think that would be a much more educated way of moving forward rather than use pithy terminology of Western, we're supporting them because they're Western and European. That sounds good, but if we think about a long term, that doesn't really do much for Ukrainians at this point. Secondly, I think, as I said before, it's been quite heartwarming and positive to see how this terminology of international law, human rights, crimes against humanity have been mobilized in order to condemn what Russia is doing. But also we've taken this discussion forward where people have talked about what are some of the economic pressure points that we can use to pressure Russia into retreating and protecting Ukraine. I think that if we could have a much more global application of this terminology, right, every time we use this terminology, what are the other parts of the world where, you know, this terminology can be used for the betterment of humanity? I think that's something we should think about. And, you know, not use this terminology or not use this legal lingo selectively, in terms of when it helps, you know, our geopolitical interests. 

Connecting back to your article and what we talked about at the beginning then, it would mean applying these terms equally, regardless of where a particular country is located in that racialized hierarchy that you described so well at the start of our conversation.

I think we need to leave it there for now, but this has been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us, Somdeep. And I encourage everyone to check out the article that Somdeep wrote. We'll have a link to that, and we look forward to more conversation in the future. Thanks again for being here.

Thank you, John.