The Search for Authenticity an Exploration of an Online Skinhead Newsgroup

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The search for authenticity: An exploration of an online skinhead newsgroup

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ARTICLE

The search forauthenticity:

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An exploration of an online skinheadnewsgroup

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ALEX CAMPBELLThe University of New England, USA

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AbstractIn the popular imagination skinhead identity has come tobe inextricably connected to a white-racist identity. Thisarticle explores this tenet through an ethnographicexploration of an online skinhead newsgroup, a milieuwhere racial markings are seemingly absent. The empiricalfindings expose that ‘racism’ is read ambivalently by thenewsgroup’s skinheads. ‘Racism’ is not viewed as aconstituting component of skinhead identity; however,there is widespread commitment to a ‘white identity’. Thisarticle concentrates on the processes which give rise to adigitalized (white) skinhead identity, (re)established onlinein and through textual performances. Narratives ofwhiteness articulated through the node of skinness, revealthe salience of racial bodies in the virtual world. However,the imagined relationship between skinheads and racism isnot straightforward. The skinheads of this research do notenact an explicit discriminatory racism, but rather theyimagine whiteness as a performative condition of skinness,a notion that necessitates a figurative (and literal) aggressiverelation to ‘otherness’.

Key wordsculture • ethnography • identity • online community •performativity • race and racism • skinheads

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Copyright © 2006 SAGE PublicationsLondon, Thousand Oaks, CA and New DelhiVol8(2):269–294 [DOI: 10.1177/1461444806059875]

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RACISM, RACE IDENTITY, AND THE INTERNETInternet technology has tended to encourage populist theorizing,which imbues it with transforming properties; in particular, as creatingradically new conditions for community and identity formation. Discussionsaround the subject of the internet and its intersection with race, racialidentity and racism, specifically, tend to oscillate between utopian anddystopian visions. Utopian imagery depicts a sublimely postmodern ‘space’,where the race marked subject, over-determined in the corporeal world,exceeds the economy of meanings attached to in the physical world (Sterne,2000), as substance becomes digitalized (Haraway, 1991). The virtual worldis imagined as erasing the scene of difference as users appear to transcendrace (and gender) marked embodiment, which has formally determinedplace within hierarchies of social, political, and economic power-relations(Turkle, 1995). In contrast, is a picture of the racial cyber-subject, or ‘whiteracist warrior’, who uses the net to extend a racist message worldwide onan unprecedented scale (Stern, 1999). The internet is viewed as a toolenabling the creation of menacing racist communities, out of which emergenetworks of connected, like-minded racists who exploit the nets interactivecapabilities to coordinate ‘real-world’ global activity (Wine, 1999).

One version of the ‘white warrior’1 depicted in dystopian sketchings2 isthe virtual skinhead who uses the internet to connect with other skinheadsfrom around the globe to affect a global skinhead culture. Indeed the‘skinhead’ has come to be understood as a distillation of the racist (Nayak,1999), a cultural identity which is widely perceived, represented as it isthrough popular texts,3 to be conceptually linked to white-racist violence.Recent news reports, which point to skinhead perpetrated violence againstgypsies in the Czech republic, the involvement of German skinheads inviolent attacks towards ‘Turks’ and other foreigners, appear to authorise thislink. In Britain, the connection is historically well-established throughrecourse to the very public association between skinheads and the far-rightpolitical party, the National Front (NF), and, more recently, with groupssuch as Combat 18 and the White Wolves (Lowles and Silver, 1998).Scholarly discourses further cement the skinhead/racist association, includingHamm’s seminal criminological account American Skinheads (1993), andMoore’s Skinheads Shaved for Battle (1993), among others.

Websites clearly exist which involve self-identified racist skinheads,4 andon the surface they appear to confirm both the skinhead/racism association,and the thesis that the internet is (simply) a conduit for the linking oflikeminded racists. The existence of websites, chat rooms, and newsgroupsdedicated to skinheads, ‘white supremacy’ in general, as well as othersrelated to nationality, region, culture and more, indicate that the internet isbeing used as a means to re-stage racial and ethnic identity and to broadcastracial and exclusionary messages. This is arguably not surprising given that

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the internet is not removed from the rest of the social landscape, but thriveswithin a set of established power structures. The bodies with which we typedo not evaporate, but are carried through, discursively inscribed, as internetusers re-establish race (and other forms of) identity online. ‘Race’, then,clearly matters in cyberspace. But the alarmist tenor of many dystopian,populist narratives (which warn against the ‘sinister web of hate on theinternet’, of how it is being utilized as a means to recruit new members,and of how neo-Nazi’s, in conquering ‘it’, teach each other how to makebombs [Stern, 1999]), suggest that the race/internet relationship has atendency to be conceived in narrow ways. This limited conceptualization,which views the internet as a dangerous recruiting and organizing tool inthe hands of the wrong folk, speaks, I think, to the way in which racism isordinarily abbreviated to refer to overt discrimination (Gilroy, 1992), and atendency to define ‘racists’ as identifiable right-wing bigots who holdirrational prejudices (Doane, 1999; Rex, 1970).

Contemporary race theorists, however, have long noted the changingcharacter of racism, particularly in the post-Civil Rights era, which, asBulmer and Solomos (1996) contend, has led to a decline in theacceptability of overt displays of racism and ideologies of (biological)superiority and inferiority. Nonetheless, a ‘classical’ definition of racism isoften the prism through which we see when it comes to analysing racializeddiscourse. In spite of the fact that, as a concept, it has evolved greatly, as thesocial, cultural and political environment in which racism occurs changes.Initially coined as a term to describe adherence to ideologies of biologicalsuperiority/inferiority, a shift in the meaning of racism sought to includeprejudicial attitudes, or discriminatory acts, directed towards members ofother racial groups; individual beliefs which did not necessarily have to beconnected to an ideology of biological supremacy. This ‘classical definition’(Taguieff, 1999), which encompassed individual behaviours and beliefs,made racism an essentially social-psychological phenomenon (Doane, 1996;Rex, 1970), a formulation which supposed that racism was a consciousaction if not an actual choice (Gilroy, 1992). Carmichael and Hamilton’s(1967) research, which unequivocally linked racism with institutionalpractices, further extended understandings.

Despite these definitional developments, recent race theorists have beencritical of classical definitions for both viewing racism monolithically,assuming a colonial, discriminatory model of racism, and, furthermore, forpresupposing that racism follows from (naturally) established racial subjects(see Ferber, 1998; Gilroy, 1992; Mac an Ghaill, 1999). Theorizations, moregermane to the times, have grappled to capture the nuances of attitudes andbehaviours in a society where overt and blatant racist displays are generallyconsidered socially unacceptable. Noting, for example, that decliningreferences to biological race have been replaced with ‘race as culture’, as

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race is identified with subcultures, nation, region, language groups, religion,group habits, mores or customs, a dominant style of behaviour, dress,cuisine, music, and so forth (Goldberg, 1999). A ‘race’-as-culture is no moreless imagined in essentialist terms: that is, as a unique (always recoverable)entity which should be preserved intact, and a reality which cannot besignificantly modified by any method of cultural provenance (Bauman,1995: 188).

Taguieff (1999) describes the discursive shift of racial discourse effectivelyby highlighting the discriminatory character of more familiar forms of racism,which preoccupies itself with maintaining dominance in a racial hierarchy,in contrast to less obvious differentialist racism, which concerns itself withkeeping (imagined) identity unique and pure. Taguieff notes that the ‘ideefixe of differentialist racism is the loss of what is characteristic, the erasementof the group’s identity’ (1999: 210). The shift from hierarchy to differenceengenders concerns which revolve around ‘incommunicability,incommensurability, and incomparability’ (1999: 210). Away, then, from apreoccupation with the annihilation of the Other, in its place the anxiety ofSelf-preservation; more precisely, the preservation of (racial) ‘identity’. Thisdiscursive shift is evident through analyses of both mainstream racialdiscourse as well as rhetoric authored by movements historically associatedwith extreme racism. The British National Party, for example, a politicalorganization connected to overt racism and racist violence, have followedthe differentialist trend, no longer overtly concerning itself with the explicitsubordination of the other, but instead concentrating on the preservation ofa unique ‘cultural’ identity. Tara McPherson’s (2000) research on neo-confederates in cyberspace, similarly demonstrates this shift, as she highlightshow confederate authors skilfully appropriate the language of the civil rightsmovement to focus on the preservation of a regional identity, itselfunderstood in ethnically (white) absolute terms. Indeed, race need notnecessarily be overtly alluded to; instead, race is made lucid throughreferences to region, nation, culture, heritage, style, and more, which standin as more ‘palatable’ synonyms (see Gilroy, 1992). The increased focus onthe preservation of self has also meant that representations of the Other areless visible. This is not to suggest, however, that the Other is absent, as Terryand Urla (1995) suggest, the shadow of the Other is always there, thespectre of otherness, or the ‘constitutive outside, as Hall (1980) puts it,provides the implicit defining contours which are demanded to give the‘besieged’ identity meaning. For identity to seem unique it must beconsidered to possess distinct properties, but such properties only becomedistinguishing when they are contrasted with another identity (if onlythrough inference) that is made to stand as a (negative) opposite.

At a time, then, when racism is intent on differentiating as opposed toinferiorizing, there is a need to focus on racial discourse which symbolically


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and insidiously inscribes and maintains racial identities; in other words, toconcentrate on processes of racialization (Ferber, 1998; Goldberg, 1992).Arguing that race scholars have for too long neglected this area, Ferberconcentrates her own inquiry on the racialization of whiteness, that is, onthe social construction of whiteness, which she maintains is central to thecontemporary white supremacist movement (1998: 48), and, I would add,to the hegemonic racial project more widely, for as (white) identitydefines itself in opposition to (racial, ethnic) others, racism – modes whichkeep the Other as different and separate – becomes the maintenance of(white) identity.

Regrettably, differentialist logic has been for the most part normalized,and even underwrites many anti-racist multicultural initiatives, whichunwittingly repeats a separatist racial structure (Gilroy, 1992; McPherson,2000). This also means that such racialized discourse is perceived widely asunproblematic, and older conceptions of what racism entails endure. Whenone hears of ‘racism on the internet’ – or more specifically for the purposesof this article, skinheads on the internet – it should perhaps be expectedthat the internet is reduced to a tool, while racist discourse is limited toexplicit epithets and instructions. McPherson’s work on neo-confederatewebsites has made clear, however, the efficacy of drawing on conceptualtools attuned to the consequences of racial discourse which appears, on thesurface, not to be racist at all. McPherson, among others, have thusunderscored the need to examine both the form and the consequences ofdiscourse which is made to carve out (unique) identity. Critically, whileclassical analyses of race and racism have largely assumed race identity as a‘natural fact’ from which racist acts flow, race is far from a given (Goldberg,1999). Racial categories are socially created, constructed through therepresentation of difference (Bulmer and Solomos, 1999: 14), in andthrough the inscription of symbolic boundaries. Whether those inscriptionsconcern themselves with the demonization of the Other (making the Selfpositive by implicit contrast), or they focus on the promotion of the uniqueself (making the Other negative by implicit contrast), and whether theyintentionally aim to exclude or do not: the end is much the same, thereplay, as McPherson puts it, of a ‘logic of separatism’ (2000: 127). Speechacts do not have to be supplemented with the marks of hate or extremism,neither does the speech have to refer to a hateful or harmful act it seeks toprefigure for it to have a set of exclusionary effects.

The socially constructed character of race should not lead one tounderestimate the devastating effects of a racial logic which differentiates andseparates, for it has intensely material (economic, social, political,exclusionary, violent, and more) consequences (Guillaumin, 1995). Racialcategorizations are neither objective nor banal designations, spontaneouslyoccurring, but emerge through power enmeshed racialized discourse, which


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constructs and sustains a logic of incommensurability. Articulated in andthrough everyday speech acts and representations (often innocuously), ‘racetalk’ constitutes racial subjects who are constructed as possessing immutablecharacteristics, which marks them as different, in short, incompatible withracial others. Naming and declaring something in the name of whiteness orblackness (implicitly through nodes of regionality, nation, etc.) constructs,reproduces and concretizes the idea of whiteness and blackness, it invitessubjects through processes of interpellation to see themselves in relation tothese ideas, establishing and sustaining differences between Self and Other assubjects reproduce and appear to substantiate identity norms througheveryday interactions, and an absolutist logic which results in exclusion andseparatism. It is not always easy to read the racialization of whiteness,circulating as it does ghostly and virtually unseen (Dyer, 1997). However,whiteness is always there, and is always present in processes of racialrepresentation. Representations are never merely just representations;identities are constituted within not outside representation, they are producedprecisely in specific historical and institutional sites within specific discursiveformations and practices by specific enunciative strategies (Hall, 1996: 4).

Rather than accept dystopian accounts of race and the internet whenthinking about skinheads in cyberspace, this inquiry, following the work ofFerber, McPherson, and others, seeks to make processes of racialization thefocal point of exploration. The aim is to produce an analysis which does notconfine itself to overt racialized discourse, but to encompass more seeminglyinnocuous texts, which might at first appear to be indifferent to questions of‘race; further, to underscore the significance of discourse in the negotiationand production of a particular (white) skinhead identity. The internet is notsimply apparatus utilized to extend pre-existing (skinhead) identities. Whilewe do not come to cyberspace as ‘nothings’ who construct self-fashioned,post-modern identities, neither do we come to the net as fully constitutedbeings, stable loci from which acts follow. Judith Butler’s theory of identityperformativity (1990) posits that routine actions and gestures, which appearas expressions of identity, are in actuality constitutive of the idea of identity.In other words, the idea of the essential and stable (racial, skinhead, etc.)‘self ’ is performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to beits results (Butler, 1990: 25). The idea of the already-established (white)skinhead, who uses the computer to disseminate information, overlooks thatthe (white) skinhead only becomes so through the sedimentation of thewords they write and send. The internet is not, then, simply a tool, butmight be better understood as an ‘electronic geography’ (Poster, 1997: 216),a space which overlaps with other territories (online and offline spaces),which allows for the (re)constitution of identity (racial or otherwise).

In these terms, the internet is a space where skinhead identity is(re)produced – and not simply extended. The internet not only enables the


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dissemination of data, but it is also a space which allows for dialogue andinteraction. And in an era of increased dependence on mediainterconnectivity, dialogical spaces, such as newsgroups, are one site amongmany in everyday life (Denzin, 1999: 271), a ‘place’ where identity isnegotiated and (re)produced. As such, newsgroups present an opportunity toexplore skinhead identity – its meanings and the negotiation of thosemeanings.

Given the increasingly insidious character of racism in wider society,where a post-nazi state and civil rights era have effectively discouragedexplicit avowals of racism, this research examines the processes, forms, andfunctions of race and racism in relation to skinhead identity through anethnographic inquiry of a skinhead internet newsgroup; a subculturecommonly associated through popular and academic5 discourse with whiteidentity, racism and explicit racist practice. This focus of investigation raisesnumerous questions, including, but not limited to: Is skinhead identity a(sub)cultural identity which effectively operates as a node for ‘whiteness’?How is ‘whiteness’ used to define skinhead identity, and how, in turn, doesthis help to substantiate the idea of whiteness? In what ways is ‘race’ and‘racism’ understood, accepted, negotiated, and/or refused? What socialrituals give rise – since identity is produced and maintained in and throughperformative gestures – to skinhead identification? How do the political,historical, and material conditions interplay with processes of (race)identification and modes of racism?

SKINHEAD CULTURE: HISTORY AND HYBRIDITYBefore exploring these questions in relation to this specific group, however,it would be useful to provide some historical and contemporary context tothe skinhead movement. For as I discuss below, skinhead identity historicallyis a heterogeneous identity vis-a-vis race identity and racism, and whilepopular cultural texts construct a fairly monolithic picture of the skinhead –as synonymous with whiteness and racism – it is in fact a far morefragmented and ambiguous identity.

Skinheads first became visible in England towards the mid to late-sixties,and emerged from a declining economy, which was significantly effectingthe white, working class (Chambers, 1986; Hebdige, 1979). An off-shoot ofanother youth subculture, the ‘hard mods’, skinheads attempted to breakaway from the ‘style conscious consumerism of the general mod movement’,as they constructed a tougher image to counter, among other things, the‘dandy’ image of the ‘soft’ mods and the rise of the more ‘feminine’ hippies(Forman, 1992: 4). Skinhead style vis-a-vis hippie style, which was signifiedstylistically by long hair, was epitomized by a now trademark razor-cuthairstyle. The skinhead look was made all the more distinctive through the


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uniform wearing of Fred Perry shirts, braces, short-legged jeans and DoctorMarten brand work boots (1992: 4).

Skinhead culture, emerging from a multi-cultural Britain, was influencedsignificantly by West Indian ‘rude boy’ cultures, in particular, Forman (1992)notes, by Jamaican styles of music, such as reggae and ska. Indeed, (white)skinheads could often be found frequenting Jamaican dancehalls. Theinextricable ties between skinhead culture and Jamaican influences extendedbeyond aesthetic choice in music and clothing, however; moreover, first-wave skinheads identified socially with black, West Indian, who likethemselves, they reasoned, ‘were the trash of modern society, confined tomanual labour positions and fluctuating between ‘shit’ work and the dole’(Forman, 1992: 4). This cultural fusion, inextricable from the developmentof skin culture, is made all the more striking by Hebdige’s (1979) socialhistory of skinhead culture, in which he notes the presence of blackskinheads as well as all-black skinhead gangs during this time period.

In the early 1970s, skinheads began to wane; but in 1978, arising fromthe explosion of ‘punk rock’ into mainstream culture, there was somethingof a revival. While punk rock had become popular on college campuses,which were viewed as the domain of the ‘middle classes’, an off-shoot ‘streetpunk’, labelled ‘Oi’, emerged. Oi music was regarded as punk for theworking class, and this, along with ska, were the main musical choices forthe second wave of skins. Emerging from the Oi genre were bands such asSkrewdriver, an explicitly racist band with a large neo-nazi following.Skrewdriver’s fan base increasingly comprised of skinheads who were quicklybecoming associated with right-wing political parties, in particular theNational Front (Lowles and Silver, 1998). While much ‘Oi’ music was notracist, and even at times ‘anti-fascist’, it gained a reputation for its racism.

While skinheads were increasingly becoming associated with racism andnationalism the second wave of skin culture also bought about the ‘TwoTone movement’, skinheads who adopted the original style of the earlyskinheads and listened primarily to ska. The ‘Two Tone’ flagship activelyopposed the National Front, and these skinheads associated themselves withas many anti-racist events and groups as they could, playing large outdoorfree concerts in direct opposition to the National Front. Anti-racistskinheads were also emerging in the USA, in the form of RASH (Red andAnarchist SkinHeads) and SHARP (SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice),the latter group an anti-racist organization founded in 1987, in New York,whose primary purpose was to ‘recover’ the true history of skinhead culture,which they claimed had been hijacked by racists (Skully Records, n.d.).

This brief historical overview, which points both to anti-racist activityand the presence of non-white skinheads and influences on skinheadculture, undermines the cogency of monolithic, populist accounts ofskinhead culture which consign it as already-racist. In fact, the cultural


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fusions, hybridity, and appropriations of skinhead culture historically havegiven rise to a contemporary heterogeneity. For instance, while skinheadidentity is viewed as primarily a hyper-masculine, heterosexual identity, withlinks to excessive alcohol drinking, football, aggression, and more, there is alively culture of gay skinheads particularly in Europe (see Healy, 1996), andthere are an increasing number of ‘straight-edge’ skins who eschew tobacco,alcohol and drug use. In respect to racist politics, skinheads can broadly (butimperfectly) be said to identify with one of three (usually self-identified)groups: explicitly racist (white pride), explicitly anti-racist (sometimes linkedto organizations such as SHARP), and non-racist (or ‘Trads’). The lattergrouping, whose affiliates claim indifference to racial politics in that theyview themselves as neither racist nor anti-racist, is a fragmented andambiguous grouping. As I will discuss below, the group under investigationwas primarily comprised of skinheads who identified themselves as ‘trads’;but what this identification entails, its meanings, and its negotiation was notstraightforward, and, as I will suggest, was often a position which allowedfor more covert forms of racism and less visible identifications with‘whiteness’, reminiscent of a wider hegemonic differentialist racism which Iearlier sketched.

INVESTIGATING THE VIRTUAL SKINHEADAn assortment of racist, non-racist and anti-racist skinhead websites,6

illustrates the range of identity possibilities in relation to skinhead culture.Yet on their own, such sites do not reveal the processes which give rise to aspecific skinhead subject position vis-a-vis race and racism. Theinterpretation and negotiation of meaning occurs at the level of interaction,as the practices, actions and gestures which produce and maintain identity,are carried out through routine, mundane relations (Butler, 1990). Whileidentity is produced in relation to the external field (the nexus of circulatingdiscourses), it is not a systematic relationship, whereby one can predict theeffects of the social on the psychical. What is enunciated and what thisconstructs is neither, as Pellegrini puts it, ‘once for all nor all for one’ (1997:83). On the contrary, identity is always in progress, the subject always in theprocess of becoming, as they actively interpret and negotiate (social) meaning.

There are several ‘skinhead’ newsgroups, which draw participantsinterested in skinhead culture from around the world. This study concernsitself with one such group. While ethnography has traditionally beenconcerned with locality-based action in ‘material’ environments, it was clearfrom early observations that this newsgroup was a site of significant andmeaningful interaction for the group’s participants. The participants madeuse of various techniques to convey physicality, emotion and feeling:colloquial vernacular (an indication of locality), the selection of specificwords which expressed subtly in feeling, the use of uppercase letters to


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denote anger or shouting, and the more explicit use of emoticons. Methodsfor constructing individual idiosyncrasies included the use of quotes,automatically incorporated at the end of each message, lyrics from skinheadsongs, or hypertext links to favourite or self-authored websites. These modesconstructed and communicated versions of the ‘self ’, and they were read andinterpreted by others as style and dress might be read offline. Collectively,interactions, which constituted the skinhead newsgroup, engendered afeeling of community. Long-standing members formed meaningful friendlyand adversarial relationships with others, and this provided a social andhistorical context which grounded the field. The newsgroup site wascomplex and multi-layered, a ‘space’ which was significant for theparticipants whose offline experience was evidently tethered to their onlineexperience (Denzin, 1999: 108).

A shared skinhead identity inscribes the boundaries of the skinheadcommunity. Not fixed or organized around any mediated material place, thegroup’s participants are geographically and globally7 dispersed, though themajority of those actively participating8 tend to be located in NorthAmerica (primarily the USA) and Europe (primarily the UK). Despite thisgeographical scattering, the group is both familiar and close; discussions areintimate and casual, the dialogue is brief, conversational and colloquial. Thecore participants are long-standing: the characters, Bill, Stephen, Tom, ‘SkaStar’, Roddy, Wire, and Lenny form the foundation of the community.

I came to know most of the group as a PhD researcher who wasinterested in ‘finding out more about skinhead culture’; it was assumed bymost of the group that I was both Male9 and North American. I was invitedto ‘stick around’, and some of the vocal group members agreed (tentatively)to answer some questions. What follows are my interpretations of the dataarising from a year long ethnographic inquiry into this group, gleamed fromobservations and discussions between some of the skinheads and myself,which took place both in the public arena of the newsgroup and viaprivate email.

‘REAL’ SKINS AREN’T RACIST . . .In light of the homogenized accounts of skin culture, I was immediatelystruck by the heterogeneity of skinhead identity as represented by thegroup’s members. Perhaps because of this variegation, the question of whatit means to be an authentic skin turned out to be a central concern for allof the participants. Being accepted and understood by others as authenticwas fundamental, and this made the threat of being labelled a phoney auseful means to prohibit behaviour deemed as unauthentic (as I discussbelow). It was also striking that the issue of race and racism was acontinuing concern – given that this was primarily a ‘trad’ (non-racist, non-political) group. Indeed, it was clear early on that the issues of ‘race’ and


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racism were the spectres which threaded this varied group. Discussions onthese topics, though, were often initiated by ‘outsiders’, in the form ofcross-posts or messages sent by trolls. Cross-posts came largely in two forms:the first were messages posted by apparent ‘anti-racists’ who sent messages tothe group reproaching members for their assumed ‘nazi’ beliefs. The secondwere messages cross-posted from white-supremacist newsgroups, no doubtassuming that they were reaching like-minded individuals.

’Ska Star’, a prominent anti-racist skinhead, regularly challenges theskinhead/racist equivalence which these cross postings infer. However, heis not the only skinhead to assume this responsibility. In response to aracist message warning that the world is ‘becoming browner’, participantBill responds:

I’m sorry but from my own experience white+black = light brown,white+Asian = lighter brown than Asian. The world could be seen asbecoming lighter so why look at it the other way around. Is the glass halfempty or half full?

To which Tom adds:

I agree. Just remember that when you mix black and yellow, it turns green.Paint and markers and such – it’s some chemical reaction in the pigments. ‘Icecold milk and an Oreo cookie, they forever go together they’re the classiccombination’.

Seriously, though, I agree w/Bill – whether the world is getting lighter ordarker depends on your outlook, and it doesn’t necessarily mean a damn thingeither way. I dated a half-European, half-Japanese girl; I had a half-black, half-white roommate; a Chinese friend of mine is married to a blue-eyed, blondgirl . . . and the list goes on. Race doesn’t matter in friendship or love, sowho cares?

As the participants take issue with a racist belief that the ‘world is gettingbrowner’, the dominant image of racist skinheads is undermined.Nonetheless, while these core participants actively engage to contest theracist claim in this instance, it would be erroneous to suggest that the groupis typically anti-racist. For the place of race and the issue of racism withinthe group turned out to be far more ambiguous, and was an issue of on-going contention. Seeking any definitive conclusions regarding its placewere complicated by the various covert forms of racism in operation, whichwere not widely perceived as racist (as I discuss later), the generalheterogeneity of the group, and the fact that skinness proved to be dynamic,fluid, and always beyond total comprehension.

Nevertheless, the significance of race in skinhead culture was an issue thatI broached early on, somewhat accidentally, as I attempted to respond toSka Star’s suspicions that my research would repeat the recurring stereotypesof skinheads as racist thugs.


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Ska Star had replied to my original appeal for help, asking:

Why?? So you can paint yet another false picture of the skinhead subculture??So you can further force feed lies and bullshit down the throats of anignorant public??

Nevermind, I am in a bad mood this morning.

To which I replied:

Fair comments Ska Star. But, I’m really not out to do this. I’m looking at thewhite pride movement in general. Skinheads historically have had somerelationship with racism. It is equally interesting that this is becoming less so.

This response only seemed to annoy Ska Star further, as he added:

What a crock of shit. More lies and distortion. Get your facts straight, myfriend.

A response from Tom was in more friendly terms:

It looks like you got the history backwards – organized racism didn’t have anyhistory with the original skinheads in the 1960s . . . lurk around here awhile,you might learn a lot more just reading these posts than you wouldinterviewing a racist . . .

Bill responds:

When you look at the history of skinheads there has always been a history ofchauvinism and a kind of irony at the screwball way of modern life in cities.Gangs of skins hanging around the young Jamaican sounds like a great exampleof a ‘multicultural society’ but they did go around kicking seven balls out ofPakistanis. Of course blacks play this down. They were only following the skinsand trying to fit in . . . Even so, I still think it is wrong for neo-Nazis to tryand use this to define the skinhead culture.

Tom replies:

Bill– . . . I fully agree that there was Paki-bashing etc. among the 60s skins, Ijust wanted to point out that there wasn’t *organized* racism, no Britishmovement or National Front or White Aryan Resistance or anything likethem, originally. The presence of racism, hippie-bashing, etc. among theoriginal skins is one reason I don’t consider anti-racist activities a part of beinga skin any more than organized racist activities. Both came later.

The above interchange between Ska Star, Tom, Bill, and myself, and finallywhat turned into an exchange between Tom and Bill, is revealing. Itillustrates varying subject positions in relation to the issue of skin culture


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and racism. From Ska Star who thoroughly rejects the link, to Tom whodoes not see racism as a ‘genuine’ part, to Bill who acknowledges some pastassociations. It also exposes some of the mechanisms which produce thesediffering standpoints. In particular, the role of historical narratives, which areemployed as a means to establish or to refute a link. Bill draws attention tothe implication of skinhead involvement in ‘Paki-bashing’ in the 1970s, butan archaeology of skinhead history which is taken to its ultimate(ontological) limits by Tom, who articulates what Ska Star infers, that the‘original’ skins of the 1960s (the authentic founding skins) were notinvolved in racist activity. For both Tom and Ska Star (who dispute linkagesbetween the original skins and racism), racism is not considered to be apart, let alone an essential part of skin culture.

Being an authentic skin today is shown to be dependent on theontological beginnings of skin culture. Not what comes after and transformsskin culture, which is imagined as static and unchanging. For Ska Star andTom this leaves no room for racism; for them, those racists claiming to beskins, and who declare that it is a constituent of skin culture are, contrary topopular belief, the impostors, also known as ‘boneheads’. Ska Star frequentlydraws attention to the ‘Jamaican rude boy influences’ exhibited throughoutskinhead culture, such as the musical styles of reggae, the influences of blues,and the sounds of rocksteady.10 Ska Star’s sign-in name, which signifies theseinfluences, operates as a continual reminder of multi-racial beginnings, andsignal Ska Star’s own commitment to the promotion of skinhead identity asan anti-racist one.

Four months after the above exchange, the matter of the skinhead/racistrelationship again arose, rekindled by a recently published skinhead book.Ska Star again rejected the association, this time in response to remarksmade by Bill who asserted that ethnic minorities, generally, are mistrustfulof skinheads. This time a debate ensues between Bill, who is joined byStephen (both of whom are British), and Ska Star (who is Canadian). Thefollowing dialogue, an example from this debate, reveals how differinghistorical narratives inform how the ‘now’ is experienced (Parker, 1997), andalso accentuates some of the local and regional peculiarities at work in theproduction of antagonistic, historical accounts, as Bill makes clear:

I was talking about Britain. In Britain, most blacks hate skins. I’ve had blackpeople in the street start giving me shite when they don’t know the first thingabout me. Canada has a totally different social history attached to skins in adifferent culture and over a different time span . . .

Stephen concurs, and adds, directing his response at Ska Star:

. . . Because it exists in the UK. Skinheads have *always* been associated withand active in racism here. As someone who was alive and remembers 1969 and


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the early 70s clearly, believe me the thing you heard most about skinheads wasracism and football violence. You didn’t hear about the wonderful embracing ofCaribbean music/culture and ska. I have this clear memory of seeing skinheadson the front page of the newspaper after a riot in some seaside resort fromwhen I was about 12 and guess what? I wanted to be one. . . .

. . . Shaved head, boots = racist in most people’s eyes . . . I have to agree withBill. There is a link in the public mind and always has been (in the UK atleast) between skinheads and racism. You can’t ignore or not acknowledge it.West-Indians and Asians do have an inherent mistrust of any white guys withshaved heads. You can see it and feel it as you walk down the street even ifnothing is said . . .

Common to these historical accounts is the importance placed on the past,which is privileged as the site of authentic action, the present the site of itseffects. For Canadian Ska Star and the American Tom, the historical originsof skinhead culture are conceptualized as linear and total, as they pinpointan inception unconnected in any way to racism, and this serves as the castfor the authentic skin today.

Tom, on the other hand, acknowledges the racist happenings of the 70s,but maintains that the absence of ‘organized’ racism and anti-racism in thebeginning makes skinheads neither racist nor anti-racist, rather it makesskinheads non-racist. For Bill, the racist actions of the past, while not afounding component of skin culture, are a little more significant, affectingrelations with ethnic others. For Stephen, skinhead history is always-alreadyracist, and it was this racialist past (at least in part) that Stephen confessescompelled him to want ‘to be one’.

Each mode of recollection, invested with meaning, produces andauthenticates each of the speakers’ skin identity in the present, yet theseantagonistic recollections of the past also expose a history (and a present)continually in negotiation and process. The debates and contestations whichare apparent through these dialogues, are extremely significant for the skins,for much is at stake. By laying claim to the authenticity of their accountagainst which they position themselves, they announce and performativelyaffirm to themselves and to others who and what they are, in short,authentic skinheads. For instance, Ska Star’s insistence on multi-culturalbeginnings gives credence to his explicitly anti-racist skinhead identity; incontrast, Stephen’s insistence on racial links (though not essential)authenticates his previous racist skinhead identity. It is perhaps unsurprising,then, that debates revolving around this and similar issues of authenticitycontinually recur, for the most compelling historical account confirms thespeaker as appropriately skinned.

More significant, perhaps, is what arises as a result of these types ofdialogue, namely an (sometimes tacit) agreement that racism and anti-racismhave no essential connection to skinhead culture. Even self-proclaimed


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‘racists’ such as ‘Wire’, a female, ‘white-pride’ skinhead, ‘[who] believes inthe separation of the races’, concurs, as she remarks: ‘It’s not about racism,even though that’s what most people see about it in the media’. This isconfirmed as Wire takes issue with the barrage of racist, but non-skinspecific, material sent to the group:

You stupid son of a bitch . . . most skinheads aren’t white racists (and in myexperience, most who start out as both just end up becoming one or theother, either burning out on the racism or finally figuring out they’re notreally skins)

Much of the anger generated by racist cross-posts can be explained by theshared group intolerance for non-skinhead contributions. More significantly,though, it is a performative act which enables a known racist to effectivelydistance themselves from ‘boneheads’ (racist skinheads); thus an opportunityto establish oneself as authentic. In a group seemingly hostile to the idea ofthe racist/skinhead equivalence, skinheads only in it for the racism arecondemned as impostors; thus, as Wire postures irritably to racist cross posts,she establishes that she transcends the equivalence, as she asserts a skinheadidentity not reducible to a racist one.

Open expulsions of racism, which results in an apparent group decisioninvolving the non-role of racism (but not of known racists) in skinheadculture, is a manoeuvre which allows the participants to interrupt theskinhead/racist equivalence. At the same time, it enables them, even thosewho believe in the separation of the ‘races’, to rid themselves of the racistlabel and to see themselves as moderate and non-racist. What I want tosuggest is that this self and group distancing from racism, which is clearlyunderstood as explicit and discriminatory, creates a specific context whichparallels a wider cultural happening; namely, an environment in which adifferentialist racial logic is legitimized and normalized. As I discuss below,this involves establishing the group as neither racist nor anti-racist, and,moreover, establishing skinhead identity as a white identity, while appearingto elide the question of race and ethnicity (McPherson, 2000).

FENCE-WALKING OR ‘WHITE’ WOLVES IN SHEEP’SCLOTHINGA neither racist nor anti-racist stance, also referred to as ‘fence-walking’ ispersonified by Bill, who declares that he is a ‘trad’ or a non-racist, and forthis reason indifferent to politics:

. . . These days I don’t prescribe to either politics. It achieved nothing but tosplit the scene right down the middle. It cut down the potential for meetingup with other skins by 50 %.

This neither racist nor anti-racist position (known to skins as‘fencewalking’), which at first glance appears to be a political neutral


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position, is unsustainable, and this becomes apparent in and throughinconsistent and ambivalent performances. Visible throughout the researchwas Bill’s on-going involvement in discussions oscillating around matters ofrace, ethnicity and racism, an observation which seemed at variance with hisrepeated affirmations of indifference.

Bill is a pivotal figure in the group, and affords great respect. He is alongstanding British skinhead, characteristics which appear to carrysignificance within the group, signalling commitment and allegiance as wellas marks of authenticity. This made his evaluative comments concerning raceall the more significant for the group’s dynamic. Thus, when Bill declaresthat skins are neither racist nor anti-racist, his utterance operates to police thegroup, leaving minimal room for either politic, at least explicitly. Bill’s highstanding within the group partly explains this, but, importantly, Bill alsoappears impartial in matters revolving around race. As Bill condemns bothextreme racists (understood as overt) and anti-racists (understood as zealots),he mediates a polarization which locates him as moderate or neutral; whilehe risks alienating both sides, for the most part he succeeds in appearingnon-aligned – regardless (or perhaps because) of his ambivalence.

During one conversation, Bill reveals past connections with racism in hisearlier skinhead days:

When I moved to . . . (inner city area), the skins were much more organisedin terms of the NF/BM thing. They had their own pub and had meetings andshit like that. I got to know a bloke called Tony who I started doing a zinewith.11 It wasn’t a specifically White Power zine. It was called Wonderful Worldof Oi. I listened to Screwdriver . . . It seemed right at that particular momentin time. When I met some of the other NF skins, they were complete muppetsand I soon realized that for every one like Tony who had no police record assuch and was very articulate, there were four or five dumb fucks with nothingbetter to do than go round taunting Pakis . . . The WP skins had CS gas by thetruckload and loved dropping a canister at gigs to show they’d been . . .

This passage, which reveals Bill’s involvement with racism in the past, doesnot have the effect of tarnishing him with racism; on the contrary, Billeffectively dissociates the Bill of now from the racist label by recounting hisrejection of the racist scene. It would also appear that Bill has never beenreally racist at all since the real racists are represented as the ‘muppets’ (notarticulate skins such as Tony and, by inference, himself).

Bill’s self-distancing from racism allows him to enact less explicit forms.This is aided by a general vision of racism within the group which isperceived as organized practice. Indeed Tom rebuffs the link between skinsand racism on the very grounds that ‘among the 60’s skins . . . there wasn’t*organized* racism’, even though in the same sentence he admits, ‘therewas Paki-bashing etc.’ Hence, when Bill states, ‘I’m not a racist but I don’tlike Paki’s’, he is not viewed as ‘racist’. The non-racist self-declaration,


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coupled with the image of racism as organized, leaves little room formore prominent anti-racists in the group to counter the clear racism ofthe utterance. This is further enabled by Bill’s eminent position withinthe group, which means that his (and others’) comments go uncontested,creating conditions for more insidious, differentiating modes of racismto flourish.

SKINHEADS ‘R’ WHITE: ESSENTIALIZING IDENTITY ANDTHE ‘BLACK’ PRETENDERAn unfamiliar skinhead, ‘Africanskinhead’, posts a message to the groupentitled, ‘Boneheads from a Black skinhead’s perspective’. Given the dominantimage of skinheads this message seemed significant.[A.I1] The blackinfluences of ska and reggae are widely overlooked in popular depictions.Thus the motivations of this poster for incorporating a skin identity were, inthe face of its racist connections, intriguing. However, ‘Africanskinhead’s’visit to the newsgroup was fleeting and he did not appear again through theduration of the research. His remarks, however, generated much debate.Conversations once again returned to the issue of race, although this timethe discussions focused on whether blacks could be skinheads.

Taken as given in wider culture is the skinhead norm as always-white,and this was evidently an assumption made by the majority of skinheads inthe group. Previous debates on the status of ‘racism’ assumed a priori thewhiteness of skins, who do or who do not posture aggressively against thenon-white Other. When Bill states, ‘. . . I can’t ever see skins hanging aroundwith blacks in Britain. Blacks hate skins and they believe us all to be Nazis,’he does not simply make an observation about the general state of race-relations, he also (re)establishes skins as already-white. This differentiatingdiscourse constructs whiteness as a ‘fact’, in a manoeuvre which alsoconstructs and separates blackness from skinness. Not only does this speechact (re)establish racial identities as fixed absolutes, it quite specifically makesblackness incompatible with a cultural identity which turns out to beethnically exclusive.

If the place of racism (understood in narrow terms) is radically undecidedby those in the group, the ethnicity of authentic skins appears a little moreclear-cut, despite the exclusionary and absolutist processes at work in thisrecognition. Even as Ska Star attempts to negotiate a more inclusive skinidentity, one in which blacks are included (hence undercutting ethnic andracial absolutes established by Bill), Roddy (an adversary of Ska Star)effectively disregards any possibility:

Lots of blacks cropped their hair and wore the fashions of the day back in thesixties, even had skinhead friends perhaps . . . still weren’t skins.


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Despite the historical presence of blacks in skinhead gangs, particularly inthe first wave of the skinhead movement, Roddy refuses the possibility of ablack skin identity. Black people with baldheads who might take a skinheadstyle are, for Roddy, ostensibly pretenders. They are differentiated from theauthentic white skinhead, and in so doing whiteness is rendered an ethniccertainty, transcendent to skinhead culture. The black Other provides thecontours against which the white skinhead stands for definition, as whitenessis made to strike the pose of realness (Dyer, 1997), lending immediate racialembodiment to the disembodied dialogue on the computer screen. Withoutexplicit assertions, ‘whiteness’, then, is made to appear as the immutable‘quality’ which displays authenticity. For the notion of authenticity itselfpoints to a characteristic which is essential and unchanging: clothing,haircut, music listened to, are all viewed as malleable – easily appropriated;race and ethnic identity, understood as disprovable facts, provide the threadand a contour.

Only Ska Star makes any sincere attempt to undercut the white skinheadsubject as incarnated by Bill and others, and he is further regulated byStephen, who responds to him, stating, ‘I never quite understand why youinsist on pushing this racial division and pressing the racial hysteria, but youdo . . .’ Ska Star is at once made to speak partially and ideologically, unlikeothers who are regarded as making commonsense, objective observations;Ska Star is represented not only, paradoxically, as the one obsessed with‘race’ but also for having an agenda (he has a ‘Black’ girlfriend, he oncebelonged to SHARP), who is always politically motivated, always speaking asan extreme anti-racist and never just as a skin.

AUTHENTIC SKINHEADS ‘UNITE’Despite the centrality of the race issue to this group, on the surface most ofthe participants aggressively denied any ‘real’ links between race/racism andskinhead authenticity. I thus asked the group to characterize what wasmutual between them. I received a resounding response from most of thecore participants that the most critical facets were ‘unity’ and ‘pride’ A moredetailed response from Stephen made it clear that unity is about‘comradeship and loyalty from my mates’, ‘it’s being ready to drop whatyou’re doing and help out – no questions asked’; while Wire suggested thatunity was a transcendence of politics.

A feeling of group unity was engendered as participants posturedaggressively towards outsiders: newbies, visiting non-skins, and especiallyresearchers such as myself. Acting with some hostility and suspicion put theother on the outside of the group, which established it as bounded,exclusive and cohesive. However, the idea of friendship overcoming politicswas not as straightforward, and again the spectre of racial authenticitysurfaced. Roddy, a more overt racist, was frequently involved in heated


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discussions with visiting anti-racists (some of whom were skinheads),involving unequivocally racist and homophobic epithets, as the followinginstance highlights:

More fag shit from the gay nigger. Predictable. At least you didn’t butcher thelanguage this time. You’re learning . . . And they said we couldn’t teach yousavages to be civilized.

In one case, Roddy is involved in a ‘racial’ dispute and finds himself under-attack. At this point Bill interjects and supports Roddy, adding his ownracial slur, as he comments:

This is the only really funny bit Paddy. I dunno, give a Paddy a computer andall of a sudden they ‘tink dey’re smart.

Bill’s apparent show of unity towards Roddy, goes uncontested by others inthe group, even though Bill’s support seems to endorse and to encourageRoddy to continue in the same racist vein:

Oh come on, Bill, give the mick some credit, he did pretty well for someonefrom a nation who almost starved to death when they ran out of potatoes.

Bill appears to transcend politics and so seems to realize the essentialcomponent of skin culture: ‘unity’, making it difficult for others in thegroup to challenge either Roddy (whose position is sanctioned by Bill’sbacking) or Bill, who can lay claim to be merely doing what an authenticskin does – i.e. stick up for your skinhead mates – no questions asked. Butthe undecided place of racism in skin culture produces a number ofantagonistic relationships, significantly between more explicitly anti-racists,such as Ska Star, and more openly racist skinheads, such as Roddy. This notonly exposed the on-going magnitude of race and the dis-continuities ofskin identity, it pointed to an inevitable dilemma for (supposedly) non-racistsof whom to performatively (in the sense that it establishes the backer asauthentically uniting) support? When Ska Star questions Bill about hisdefence of racists in spite of his non-racist claim, Bill responds:

. . . That’s the thing you hate about me, that I don’t instantly dismiss someonebecause they are a nazi/nationalist/white power. I can understand non-whiteshaving a pop at them for what they say, but I’m white. It’s not me they’reoffending . . . It’s a pathetic notion – that you should disown even your ownfamily if they were racist.

While Bill’s non-racist position is revealed to be thoroughly racist as heselectively and tacitly sanctions the utterances of those such as Roddy (soconfirming Roddy as a ‘real’ skinhead as opposed to a bonehead), his appeal


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to notions of kinship and unity make it difficult for others (who might beinclined) to counter what is said. Bill’s (fictive) impartiality here is crucial;were an explicit racist to support another racist, the transparency of theprejudice would become intolerable, the support appearing to be offeredbecause of a shared racist identity.

Throughout the research process it became increasingly evident that somein the group were more united than others, that solidarity and friendshipwere conditional, and depended on your perceived skinhead authenticity.For those such as Ska Star, moments of being included were fleeting, andwere largely contingent on a willingness to conform and to consent to anon-racist position. This dynamic enabled a more insidious racism tocirculate, one which sanctioned ‘racist banter’, and which took as given thewhiteness of real skinheads, which always necessitated on-going processes ofexpulsion and denials of blackness. Unity, if only tacitly, was predicated onauthenticity, itself understood as equivalent to whiteness. Yet this equivalencewas concealed from view through a claimed indifference to racial politics.The convergences between explicit avowals of white unity and skinheadunity were viewed as utterly unrelated. Those who claimed to be ‘whitepride’ skinheads – unified not through a shared skin identity but through ashared ‘whiteness’ – were regarded as ‘boneheads’. The group memberstended to discount the consequences arising from their own implicitcommitment to whiteness, and the exclusionary and absolutist logic thatthis promoted.

MASCULINITYUnity was not simply contingent on an assumed shared whiteness but on aparticular form of whiteness. To be authentically skinned you must also beappropriately male: tough and, most critically, heterosexual. This not onlyprovided boundaries for skin identity, it simultaneously shaped ‘whiteness’.This was accomplished in part by the participants’ on-going(autobiographical) narratives, which told of stories of nights out, callingattention to the amount of beer drunk, blurred memories and hangovers.Descriptions of tattoos, favourite football teams, chronicles from theterraces, evoking a peculiarly ‘traditional’ British, working class masculinity,not only by British skinheads but an image appropriated by others fromother locales. Yet an appropriated image at once belied by other(inconsistent) autobiographical accounts, which revealed Universityqualifications, professional jobs, values more commonly associated with the(British) ‘middle-class’, including the pursuit of respectability, an intoleranceof the welfare state, and so forth.

Motifs of violence appeared to universally translate in a much lessambiguous way, unanimously attested to through narratives evoking brawlsand tussles. A show of violence was rarely portrayed as mindless or


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meaningless, but a means for realizing more abstract (integral) principles; forinstance, being able to ‘stand up for yourself ’ and ‘your mates’ (in a show ofunity), or simply ‘having a laugh’. Moore’s (1994) research indicates thecentrality of fight narratives to skin culture, and explains: ‘The good time isthe act, the story the evidence, and authenticity the verdict bought downon the act’ (1994:142). Installed through fight narratives was an antagonistic,hyper-masculinity standing contra the effeminate ‘gay’ man. Skinheadmaleness was thus further maintained through a discursive expulsion ordistancing of ‘things’ which did not belong, such as vulnerability, frailty,powerlessness, and ‘queerness’. These ‘qualities’ were construed as belongingsome place else, specifically, with women and gay men. A patently visiblehomophobic discourse was endemic to the group, which emasculated andmade deviant the gay man. The hetero-sexist policing operated to keep incheck a certain form of maleness, which was deployed to govern theboundaries of (white) skinhead sexuality. Homophobic slurs frequentlyintersected with racial epithets. The inter-articulation of racial and sexualdifference effectively consolidated the speaker’s separateness from these‘deviancies’, and, at the same time, this differentiating narrative establishedthe skinhead as genuine, namely, as (the opposite of these ‘deviancies’) whiteand heterosexual.

In a milieu so openly hostile to ‘gayness’, it was with some surprise thatStephen responded to a question I posed on skinhead sexuality, byannouncing ‘publicly’ that he was gay. Unexpectedly, everyone whocommented on Stephen’s ‘outing’ (including Bill and later Roddy, who wasinitially ‘away’ when the episode occurred) was accepting and supportive.While these responses might seem to signal a shift in attitude towardsgayness, further observations revealed that this acceptance was conditional.In short, on Stephen’s self-distancing from ‘gay qualities’, deemed contraryto a very particularized white masculine core. This involved a propagation ofStephen’s own homophobic utterances, which helped to re-inscribe thehetero-sexualized boundaries of skin culture, and further allowed Stephen todifferentiate himself from the effeminate ‘real’ gay man. Stephen’sperformance is revealed to be everything. The sedimentation of hishomophobic utterances and his aggressive posturing is enough to establishhim as an authentic skinhead. This is an image which he only momentarilydisrupts, since he does not re-iterate his ‘difference’. By ‘talking’ thehomophobic ‘talk’, Stephen defends himself against a homophobic culturebut one which he at once recapitulates (Pellegrini, 1997). But his outingexposes a blatant dis-continuity at the heart of skin identity, the tenuousnessof a specific white, heterosexual masculinity, on which skin identity issupposedly founded. In the end, Stephen’s potentially subversive act ispoliced through self-regulation, his declaration clearly out of sync with theculture of the group, which is seemingly too uncomfortable.


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CONCLUSIONS: CENTRING THE EXTREMEThis study underscores that racism and racist practice (violent or otherwise)is not confined to identifiable groups of people who can be readilycategorized and heralded as inherently racist. This characterizationunwittingly infers that racism is easily spotted and on the fringe of politicallife (Gilroy, 1992: 51). Indeed this skinhead group was not typically‘explicitly racist’, but instead enacted subtler forms of racism, characteristicof a wider contemporary racial project, where racial discourse is more intentin constructing and separating racial and ethnic identities, in an effort tocreate permanent contours between Self and Other. These processes wereillustrated in and through many of the skinhead participants’ sharedinvestments in white identity, a signifier of authentic skinness, whichnecessitated the violent (literal and metaphorical) exclusion of the Other,even while this involved a revision of the skinhead culture’s hybrid roots anddevelopment (Nayak, 1999: 83).

It is clear that investments in white identity exceed discreet groups suchas skinheads. Whether identification with whiteness is explicit, through thenode of skinness, or through more everyday and seemingly legitimatemechanisms, such as national or regional identity, the processes enablingabsolutist identifications are alike. That is, the expulsion of the Other, sinceracial and ethnic categories become meaningful only when they operatealong an axis of difference, as groups are constructed with specific andunique ‘qualities’, and differentiated from other groups on the grounds ofmutual incompatibility. This requires the brutal erasure of the Other, notonly through exclusionary mechanisms in the present, but also an erasure ofthe Other through historical narratives, since how we recount the pastprofoundly effects our understandings of the ‘now’, as this studyunderscores.

This study also highlights that the disembodied world does not do awaywith racial, ethnic, and gendered subjectivities. However, since the‘substance’ of the body and the spatial (the ‘material’ which is proffered asproof for racial ontologies) is carried through to the virtual world moreobviously discursively (hence making it in the very least seem morepermeable), then it may be a space, not where we are able to transcendthem entirely as in utopian accounts of identity and the internet, but aspace where their seeming veracity is not so compelling. These conditionscould create ‘space’, among other things, for a more rigorous hybridizationof culture, whereby the notion of separate and unique racial identities isproblematized. For the internet offers the capacity to bring new, previouslymuted voices into dialogue, upsetting reified and monolithic narratives ofwhiteness (and other identities understood as fixed), as marginal voicesnegotiate and contest established historical tenets from which they havebeen excluded, and which give rise to narrow and exclusionary


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identifications in the present. Indeed, if the Other was shown andunderstood as always being ‘there’ (historically), it becomes difficult tomaintain both the notion that the Other is the Self ’s absolute difference,and in turn that they are incompatible in the now.

Notes1 Skinheads clearly are not the only image of the racist. Different social, cultural and

historical environments give rise to diverse personifications: from the hoodedklansman to the Nazi soldier.

2 See publications by the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight and the anti-racist WiesenthalCentre, which monitors racism on the internet

3 Cinematic representations such as Romper Stomper, Made In Britain, American HistoryX, serve to illustrate the extent to which skinhead identity is entwined with imagesof racism. Each film, set in different continents, points also to the global currency ofskinhead meaning.

4 See, for instance, websites created by the British Hammerskins.5 Mark Hamm’s seminal criminological study, American Skinheads, and Moore’s Shaved

For Battle. . . .6 Skinhead websites are often self-identified as racist, non-racist (traditional), or anti-

racist. When they were not, I distinguished websites by assessing the overall tenor ofthe content. For example, did the website include a history of anti-racist skinheads;were there links to more explicit websites; what specific music groups were alludedto, etc. While imperfect, this categorization pointed to the array of skinhead identitypossibilities.

7 It is critical not to interpret the meaning of ‘global’ for ‘universal’, for it is clear thatthe internet is accessed by only a small fraction of the global population, its use isunevenly concentrated in western industrial nations, where it is further distributedunequally along race and class lines.

8 It is impossible to ‘know’ how many others lurk and merely observe the discussionsin newsgroups. At times ‘lurkers’ post messages when a point of interest arises, buttend to retreat into ‘lurkedom’.

9 I chose a deliberately androgynous name for this research figure. Early observationshad revealed the group to be a male dominated domain and I was concerned by theresponse (or lack of) that a female researcher might induce.

10 See Hebdige (1978).11 The term ‘zine’ refers to ‘Fanzine’, an amateur magazine

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ALEX CAMPBELL is an assistant professor of Sociology at the University of New England. Shehas a BA (Hons) in Cultural Studies, and an MPhil and PhD in Criminology from the Universityof Cambridge. She has researched and co-authored numerous works in the area of race andracism in Britain, and she is currently working on a book, which explores ‘white identity online’.Her other research interests include the globalization of communication technologies and theconsequences of these developments for cultural, social, and national identities.Address: Department of Sociology, The University of New England, 11 Hills Beach Rd.,Biddeford, Maine 04005, USA. [email: [email protected]]


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The Search for Authenticity an Exploration of an Online Skinhead Newsgroup

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