BEYOND BLACK AND WHITE

• Date: 20 December 2000
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-6136(2000)0000002016
• Published date: 20 December 2000
• Pages: 301-323
• Author: Barbara Perry

BEYOND BLACK AND WHITE:

ETHNOVIOLENCE BETWEEN

OPPRESSED GROUPS

Barbara Perry

ABSTRACT

It is ironic that at the same time that policy makers, scholars and

commentators point to the increasing diversity of the United States, they

stubbornly persist in collapsing racial and cultural relations into a black-

white binary. If we are to make sense of the current state of racial and

cultural conflict, it is imperative that we broaden our understanding to

recognize the United States for what it is: a multicultural, multiracial and

multiethnic community, characterized by multiple and cross-cutting

coalitions and cleavages. It is particularly important to acknowledge this

in our conversations about hate crime, where minority on minority

violence is not unheard of. Two recent conflicts highlight this often

overlooked reality: the Crown Heights, NY violence between blacks and

Jews in 1991; and the black-Asian-Hispanic conflicts which exploded in

the Los Angeles riots of 1992. While obviously signs of the long-standing

tensions among and between these similarly marginalized groups, these

incidents represent efforts to negotiate identity and place in the United

States. These events – and others like them – present the actors with

opportunities to do difference through violence.

This paper explores the phenomenon of intercultural violence among

and between oppressed groups. This task is made difficult by the lack of

Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Volume 2, pages 301–323.

Copyright © 2000 by Elsevier Science Inc.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

ISBN: 0-7623-0680-7

301

literature in this area. Thus what follows is a preliminary analysis, in

which I have drawn from the fields of anthropology (e.g. Herdt, 1997;

Almaguer, 1995), social work (e.g. Greene), and cultural studies (e.g.

West, 1993, 1994; Hooks, 1992, 1994, 1996). Specifically, I argue that

minority on minority hate crime can be understood as a resource for

‘doing difference’. However, this bias motivated violence is played out

within the broader context of white, male, heterosexual supremacy.

Consequently, violence between oppressed groups is an attempt to sustain

identity, and to attain some semblance of dominance on the part of groups

who may otherwise be marginalized. As a test of my proposition, I will

examine three illustrative sets of relationships: African American-Asian

American; Jewish-African American; and gay men within communities of

color.

DOING DIFFERENCE, DOING HATE CRIME

Race, gender, sexuality, and all those dimensions of difference which shape our

social world, represent what West & Fenstermaker (1987, 1993) refer to as

‘ongoing accomplishments’ (see also Messerschmidt, 1993, 1997). Difference,

and identity are created through conscious, reflective pursuit and must be

established and re-established under varied conditions. In other words, identity-

construction is an activity concerned with “managing situated conduct” (West

& Zimmerman, 1987: 127), according to socially normative expectations of

what constitutes the ‘essence’ of one’s race or gender, for example.

The construction of identity is an interactional accomplishment by which

actors perform their ‘manliness’ or ‘womanliness’, their ‘whiteness’ or

‘blackness’ or ‘Asian-ness’. They do so with an eye to how their behavior will

be interpreted or evaluated by others. Central to this conceptualization is the

notion of ‘accountability’. At all times, in all situations, actors are concerned

with whether their behavior will be seen to be in accordance with approved

standards for their assigned identity. Consequently,

To the extent that members of society know their actions are accountable, they will design

their actions in relation to how they might be seen and described by others (West &

Fenstermaker, 1987: 25).

Since this enactment is situated within existing relations of power, the conduct

will generally repeat and thus support those relations (Winant, 1997, 1998).

Conventional culture is consumed with ensuring our awareness of and

commitment to traditional notions of gender, sexuality, race, and so on.

Movies, advertising, the legal order, even the organization of department stores

take for granted the essential differences between groups noted earlier. It is in

302 BARBARA PERRY