Catholic interracialism: between racism and militant antiracism
The studies on race and racism have expanded over the last four decades. However, the history of antiracism as a 20th-century global ideology is still waiting to be analytically reconstructed. “An inevitable starting point is that antiracism must be investigated as a heterogeneous, plural and sometimes contradictory opinion movement, changing over time. This also applies to the way religious agencies, and Roman Catholicism specifically, has been approaching the issue of the ‘colour line’,” explains Matteo Caponi(opens in new window), project coordinator of the EU-funded US E AntiRacism(opens in new window) project. In line with this, the US-E AntiRacism project, with the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions(opens in new window) programme, set out to deconstruct two opposite clichés affecting both scientific and public debate. “That is the polarisation between the assumption of ‘natural’ Christian antiracism and a definition of white supremacy as embedded in the DNA of Western Christianity,” notes Caponi.
Notions of racism and antiracism
“One of the most interesting results of the project was discovering that the notion of antiracism entered the Catholic discourse only since the 1960s, and with great difficulty,” reports Caponi. Before this breakthrough, the Catholics opposing racism as an anti-Christian tendency relied on a more ambivalent perspective that can be summarised under the label of ‘interracialism’. ‘Racism’ and ‘antiracism’ were categories born as both descriptive and polemic tools in the face of Nazism. This origin strongly influenced the Church’s assumptions and actions until the race-based worldview got discredited from the 1960s on. To make this argument, the project combined different sources and perspectives. For instance, the project’s analysis tracked the complex evolution of Catholic mindset from the paternalistic paradigm of the so-called ‘Negro apostolate’ that aimed at guaranteeing the welfare of Black people up to the 1960s condemnation of racial discrimination. “That change was associated to the mediatisation of three phenomena: Jim Crow segregation in the United States, the apartheid in South Africa, and decolonisation,” adds Caponi. Project research also showed how an increasingly globalised focus on the Black Question gradually framed a new Catholic sensibility. “The perception of racism as a paramount issue was almost ‘discovered’ by American interracialist Catholics in the confrontation with the threat of right-wing totalitarianism; on the other hand, Catholics in France, Italy, and the Holy See revisited their position according to what happened outside Europe. This process of mutual exchange and cross-fertilisation was not free from self-absolving bias, basically addressing racism as an exogen phenomenon,” highlights Caponi. It is essential to also note that those involved in shaping Catholic discourse kept generally thinking throughout the 1950s that temporary racial discrimination was legitimate in certain situations, being not racist per se. This is particularly relevant to the dimension of anti-Black racism.
Shaping history of Catholic antiracism
US-E AntiRacism offers an overall investigation of Catholic discourse on anti-Black racism, reconsidering previous historiography in light of the cultural/global turn. It also has wider societal implications by putting into historical perspective the current debate on the relationship among antiracism, Christianity, and ‘White privilege’. “This research is expected to counteract in its small way the current trend by which public debate on racism and antiracism seems often to fully absorb the scientific and critical debate, encouraging rigid positions and forced interpretations instead of a more nuanced study of the past,” concludes Caponi.
