← New Books Network
New Books Network
Chelsi West Ohueri, "Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife" (Cornell UP, 2025)
00:51:10
Loading summary
Transcript36 lines
- [00:01]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [00:28]
Marshall Poe
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Hello, welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:35]
Regan Gillum
Hello, everyone, and welcome to New Books in Anthropology, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Regan Gillum, and today I'm talking to Dr. Chelsea West O', Hori, who is the author of the book Encountering Race in An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife, published by Cornell University Press. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. West O'. Hori.
- [01:57]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Great. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
- [02:00]
Regan Gillum
Yeah, I'm really excited to talk with.
- [02:02]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
You about your book.
- [02:03]
Regan Gillum
I really enjoyed reading it. And I'm going to start with a question I normally start with, which is about you and how you came to write it. And so your book traces these articulations of race and racialization in Albania. And so I wondered if you could just tell us about yourself and how you came to write the book.
- [02:22]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Yes, sure. So I often tell this story to my students on the first day of my classes, but I never intended to be an anthropologist. I feel Like a lot of us who found ourselves in anthropology have that story. I didn't even know what anthropology was when I got to college and I took Introduction to Anthropology to fulfill a social science credit. And that was because sociology was closed. And my undergraduate advisor at the time said, oh, but anthropology is like a cousin to social or to sociology. It's like, so, okay. And I took the class and just immediately fell in love with it. It felt like grown up. Social studies and social studies was my favorite subject in school when I was younger. And so I did a project that a lot of Intro to Anthropology classes have, which was a mini ethnography. And the assignment was supposed to be maybe six to eight pages, no more than eight to 10. And I wrote 26 pages. And I think that's when I knew that, okay, I really like this also too, because my professor lamented having to read it all, but he was great. He ended up being one of my two advisors as an undergrad. So I took another class with him and I told him, I said, hey, by the way, I grew up in Mississippi. My elementary school and high school were basically across the street from my college. And my cousin was worried that I would never leave Mississippi. And she had told me to study abroad. And so I told him, I said, hey, I need to study abroad somewhere. I think I've never left the US and he said, okay, where are you interested in going? And I said, I guess I'll go anywhere. I'm kind of open. And he talked with a colleague in the department who was doing a project, an ethnoarcheological project in Albania. So a couple months later, they said, hey, do you want to go to Albania? I'm going to run to my dorm, check my globe, make sure I knew where we were talking, and said, yeah, let me ask my parents. And so they were very hesitant at first, as I would imagine most parents would be. And my dad especially, he was just. And he was the only one familiar with the region. He had enjoyed History of Yugoslavia. Most people in my family didn't know where I was. Still a running joke that some relatives thought I was in Alabama. And being from Mississippi, that's also pretty normal to be expected. But I went to Albania that summer. Two things that really shaped how I get to my work. The first was that I was supposed to be doing archaeology, mostly survey archaeology that first summer. But when I was doing my surveys and for those unfamiliar. But at that time, we were using clickers and some early gps. This is before smartphones. We were using GPS and clickers and mapping out this area, collecting pottery, really trying to understand why this particular part of Albania was so isolated and kind of the history of the isolation in this area. At that time, most people we met didn't have even televisions. A lot of people in the village didn't have televisions. Cell phones weren't popular. People did not have Internet access. Our team didn't even have a phone. We had a mountain phone. And so that's really important because not only had Albania been closed for. For over 50 years and. Or nearly 50 years under communism, most people at that time hadn't encountered anybody who was black. And some hadn't even consumed popular media with black folks. So you can imagine the surprise people may have had seeing a black person for the first time. And so I'm supposed to be on these survey walks, but I kept getting interrupted. And I did not speak Albanian at the time, but some of the first words I learned were, shtippy cafe. Hi, Dan. So how's coffee? Come with me. And I couldn't really say no. And in fact, no is not no. No is yo. And so I was just like, no, no. And so people would take me. And then, I don't know, 30, 45 minutes later, I'd hear the team captains calling my name, like, where are you? And I'd be like, I'm in somebody's courtyard. And finally, after about, I don't know, 10 days of this, my other advisor, who was one of the directors for the project, he said, I really think you'd be better suited as a cultural anthropologist. He recently told me that he thought I was always going to be a cultural anthropologist, not an archeologist. But I had a. I had remembered it as maybe he thought I was going to be an archaeologist. But anyways, so a cultural anthropologist came out with us later that summer to that project. She was on the second half. I got to go out with her. I got to really see what it was like to do interviews with people in the village to see how she built relationships over time. She had already written a book about this region, and I was just really curious and interested. And the second thing that really shaped this trajectory of what became this book is that I had been told by numerous people that there was no race in Albania or that race wasn't an issue. I also had an understanding that I could study things like nation or nationalism or ethnicity, but that there. There wasn't a concept of race. And also, any encounters or interactions that I had didn't carry meaning or like it didn't mean anything, or that's not how people understood it in terms of how I might react to two encounters as a black woman. And so I began wrestling and grappling with that. That was 2006. I went back in 2007 for the summer for the same project season, except I stayed longer. I did some work for an honors thesis, and then I received a Fulbright in 2008 and moved to Albania for a year. And that's when I started studying advanced Albanian. And it was during that time that I applied to graduate school, applied to the PhD program at UT, where I went, and still thought that I had to study nationalism because it felt that in Eastern Europe, one couldn't study race, as though this region was raceless. But at this point, I was speaking Albanian, and I knew that race and language of race was very common in everyday conversation. Both how Albanians framed themselves as from Albanians feeling like black people, as one section of the book is called the N words of Europe, but also how Roma talk about race and how they feel racialized, the ways that Albanians feel racialized outside of Europeanness. And So finally, in 2012 or so, I said, you know, I really am researching race. It's just that it's not race as we might think about, or rather, it's not a framework we might use for studying race in the States. And it was by 2014 that I felt like I had a bigger articulation, which becomes the thesis of the book, which is that race is a global construct, but it emerges in very different ways locally. So it's globally formed, but it's locally situated. And race as a construct is very European. So part of my life's work, too, is that Europe is the center. You know, in 2025, people might say, oh, Americans are obsessed with race, or Americans keep exporting race. But the more I began to research the topic, and then the more I also went to the histories of even racist concepts, looking at early race science like, no, no, no, this is very European, and this is what shapes the modern world. And so those are kind of the key foci of the book. That's kind of how I came to it. And like most first books for anthropologists, it draws heavily from my dissertation. But I did some new field work. I rethought sections, wrote new chapters. And so it's an expanded. It's an expanded inquiry from the dissertation that I wrote.
- [10:12]
Regan Gillum
Yeah, thank you for that introduction. That is fascinating. And I, too, had to look up where Albania was when I read the book. And I Was pleasantly surprised to see it was right next to Greece. Where Greece.
- [10:24]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
I tell everybody that now. Well, now Albania is really on the map. Right. New York Times just had a story about Albania the last weeks. Like, oh, you could go see things beautiful like Greece, but cheaper.
- [10:34]
Regan Gillum
Yeah, went to Greece. And I was like, right. Albania is just right there. So you, you kind of touched on this in your introduction. Where, where. Where you were just saying. But in the introduction of the book, you know, you. You really, like, pinpoint this irony that Europe helped to invent race. However, like today, many European countries deny that race and racism exists in their countries. And I thought I was like, yes, that irony is just, like, spot on. And so in the book, you know, you're tracking racialization as an enduring process in Albania. And I. And I think you just kind of talked about your. One of your larger arguments and another argument seemed to also be that, like, race exists in Albania despite this denial. And so I wondered if you could expand upon that and talk about these larger arguments in the book.
- [11:22]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Sure, sure. So it's important to. One thing I often, when I teach my students is that race has to be locally and historically situated and contextualized. And that's a really big way of saying that history is incredibly important. And that even as we think about race as a global concept, there are particularities that we must be attuned to. And in the case of Europe broadly, one of those is World War II. And it affects our thinking about race in a way that it doesn't quite do so in the Americas. Not that it's not a pivotal moment, but it's particularly relevant because of the experiences of Nazi racism and Nazi science and how that shaped understandings about race. And then two, because of the various communist states that emerged after World War II and the impact of the Cold War on how we understand and think about race. And I say that because, especially traveling apart across many parts of Europe, people will liken racism to Nazism. And therefore, there are strong attachments. And David Theo Goldberg, a race scholar, writes about this strong attachments to the idea that if we have overcome race science because we eliminated the Nazis and we ended Nazism, then we also now are post racial. And when you have the cementing of the Genocide Convention and later human rights doctrines and the EU's focus on tolerance, there can be this idea that, no, we went through that period and we got rid of it. France starts its state formation of the modern France we see today, we see in the 20th century where they start to just get rid of numbers. We don't track by race. We don't even have figures. So we don't have figures. We don't have it right. And we see other, other countries taking a very multinational approach, even before multiculturalism, but where it's, you know, we're celebrating difference, we're all the same because we're all different. But we're moving to this space of there is no racism. The other thing too that's really important is that race as a concept is hierarchical and it's a hierarchy of humanness. And sometimes that's forgotten, especially in Today's context of 2025, where race might be associated with division or just difference in skin color. But early ideas of race, we're talking 18th, 19th century ideas of race were about human taxonomies. And so in at the end of World War II, especially thinking about the end of the Holocaust and the experiences of Jews in Roma, there are many groups and political leaders who say, hey, we have to abandon this, that we have to think, you know, think about humanity as a collective group. We can't give in to this kind of racial thinking. And so therefore we are, we are now post racial. So just a lot of these nation state declarations of being post racial. The other thing though is that beginning with the Soviets at the end of World War I and then later with former, I'm sorry, later with increasing socialist states after World War II, you have at least a public performance in rhetoric, often not necessarily in practice, but of anti racism. And the thing is that on the one hand, a lot of it's very performative and in terms of what people are saying about race and freedom and how the Soviets would say Marxism is about class and union of workers and because we're Marxists, we are beyond race and ideas of race. That was not necessarily the case. And I write about that especially looking at experiences of Roma, but relative to the United States, for example, the yes, places like the Soviet Union, especially the former Yugoslavia, did have in practice forms of integration or anti discrimination that the United States did not have at the time. And so there's a reason why you see black scholars and thinkers in the 20th century trying to go to the USSR, especially thinking about people like Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde eventually also goes to the Soviet Union. But it matters because of how people were thinking about the ways that these nations were responding to blackness that were very different from the United States. So all that's really important for understanding race in Europe as we can see. This is why there might be These ideas of racelessness, because it's like, hey, no, that's an issue that y' all have over there. We don't have that. The ways that racial segregation shapes the United States, United States society, often race and class are not necessarily the same across other parts of Europe. Class is, you know, obvious, is a lens of understanding things like housing, for example, across all societies. But you don't see it in the same way. Then you have theorists like Pierre Bourdieu is well known for saying that, hey, Bourdieu and Waquant actually wrote a very well known article saying, actually Europe has no lens of race, that it's just class. Class is the only way we can approach this. But race is not sufficient. All those are examples of ways that you get to these ideas of racelessness. And in my book, one of the things I challenge is that, well, this idea of racelessness, if nothing else, it doesn't work because if there really were no race and no one would have any kind of different reaction to me. So just off the bat, the reaction to me, and not even just the surprise of seeing me, that happened in 2006, but the ways that I was treated and not necessarily mistreated, right? There were ways I was mistreated, for sure. But even just conversations with me, especially once I learned Albanian, things that people would say to me about why I couldn't marry to their family, though I had many marriage proposals often. But I would have people saying like, I couldn't marry into their family because I was black, or they couldn't have blackness in their bloodline. People would say this over coffee. So it wasn't in a. Necessarily in a mean way, right? In a. That there was not necessarily the imminence present that we might expect. It's just kind of matter of factly, though, the ways that I began to study how, rather how I'm trying to say Sub Saharan African football players, that distinction is important, right? But like black football players, soccer players were treated in Albania and the Balkans. What got a little sticky and was still a sticky area is that because no one thinks I speak Albanian. I also would overhear comments people would make about me in Albanian and have to decide if I want to reveal that. But especially comments about my body, remarks about my hair, just the ways that then I could be attuned to racial grammar. And then of course, one of the more obvious ways is that when it comes to Roma and the group, I call the book, you know, Balkan, Egyptians, there's an entire way that people are just silencing everyday racialization that racializes Roma outside of Europeanness, outside of whiteness. And critical Romani scholars have been writing about this. I take the lead for a lot of those scholars in thinking about this. But it's as though, and this is not just unique to Albania, it's across Europe. There's so much focus on whiteness and blackness and with reason and understanding the history of race, that there's this incredible. I don't even call it ignorance to the experience of Roma, but an unwillingness to even acknowledge the race. The last thing I'll say, too, is that Aidan McGarry, he's a scholar, he's based in the UK, but he has a book called From. I don't know, I can't remember how long ago this book was published, about 10 years. But the title is Romophobia, and the subtitle is the Last Acceptable form of Racism. And that really resonates with me because as I've heard especially multiple times in Albania, racism towards Roma doesn't count. And so that also became one of my big questions in the book, is that in these proclamations or assertions of racelessness, how do racial logics operate? And that's one of the ways that it does that even when we have incredibly blatant practices of racism against Roma, for example, it's as though it's not. And I don't even know if it's obscured. I don't know if that's even a strong enough word. But for sure, though, for me, it was a huge line of inquiry.
- [20:31]
Regan Gillum
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. So in the book, going into some of your ethnographic examples, you know, you dive into, like, Albania's general ideas about race in chapter two, through the lens of hospitality. And this chapter was very lively as you found yourself on a national television program. But you also then, like, depict these various meals that you're having with people at their, like, gatherings in their homes. And you call. You. You detect what you call, like, the Hunger Games, which I love that title, of people when they have guests at their home and offer them food, and you chronicle what happens after. And so how are these rituals of hospitality that you encountered, like, how do they operate and what do they tell us about race in Albania?
- [21:20]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Yeah, that's a good question. I could hear some colleagues or friends from Albanians say, I don't think these tell us anything about race. Right. That's why I take this angle around hospitality, because for me. So starting with that television show where I was supposed to talk about my Research on race. And then it became, you know, this is Chelsea, and she's here to tell us why she thinks Albanians are racist. And so I had to defend myself from that first moment. And later, as I talk about, towards the end of the book, recognize that, yes, in fact, conversations of race often collapse into who's racist. And I'm trying to write against that. But it is, in fact, this focus on racism or who is racist. This does become often a singular lens for even talking about race. And I think racialization is much more productive. But I also think one of the reasons that happens is because for many people, the even idea or notion that there would be racial logics and hospitable, friendly, nice people, these cancel each other out. So it's not something that people can really fathom. And the reality is, is that Albania and Albanians are incredibly hospitable. I actually didn't even get to write all of the stories that I want to in this book, because I couldn't even begin to count. And the people that I do write about in the book, I've had such long standing, wonderful, incredible friendships with. And it's right about the Hunger Games, because people do play a lot of games around food and eating, where it's this performance of not eating, but then also too, as I say, eating and serving people and welcoming your guests is really key. And I'm not always hungry every time I go to someone's house, but I'm always performing this role of guests, sometimes eating to the point where I have to go take walks. And then it's really tricky because sometimes if I know I'm going to, let's say, two or three houses in one day, I know I have to eat or drink coffee or tea at each house. So then I won't consume as much. But then if I don't consume a lot, that's like, what are you doing? Why aren't you eating enough? Like my friend Basa's mom, who I loved and adored, every time I went to their house, you know, she'd always comment, like, look at the American. She's not. Why isn't she eating? You know? And here I am eating plates of food. It was never enough for her. It was never enough for Basa's mom. And then the same thing with my friend Mira. We actually went to Mira's house. I took my kids and my husband in 2023, and when we got there, we had just finished eating this huge lunch at the beach. And so then we went back to the house where Mira's mom was. We were in a different beach town, and she was making food, and she was like, go ahead, sit down, the kids. I'm getting food. I said, we just ate. We just walked here. And she's like, nonsense. You don't have to feel awkward here. We gotta eat. So, you know, that's really common practice across things, you know, Albanian culture. And when I used to write about this on my blog, I'd have Albanians comment and say, yep, yep, we do that. You know. And so I began, though, to think that there wasn't just. It wasn't necessarily that people were performing this ritual in a superficial way. Yes, I'm sure some people are like, this is the cultural practice. But there is a lot of sincerity in welcoming guests and welcoming people and serving people in your home and for friends, as well as other interlocutors who weren't as close, but who were people involved. In my research, it was counter to their idea that I could even talk about race. Because it's like, no, no, you know, we're not racist. And look at how well you're treated. And I would both say, okay, yes, this is not my way of calling anyone racist. Absolutely, I'm treated so well, I can't even. Again, I can't fully even describe how well I'm treated and how grateful I am for it. But in fact, this is also what contributes to this idea of racelessness. Because the idea that, okay, if people are really hospitable and welcoming, then there is no racialization. And I try to really write against that. The other thing, too, though, is that there is what I talk about in the book. There's a shame if people cannot welcome in the proper way. And whether that's along lines of class or what people have, especially this would happen with some of my Roma interlocutors who did not have anything to offer because they were barely scraping by collecting recyclables. And so there was shame in welcoming guests and not being able to fully welcome them, which is part of how Albanian ness is performed. It's through this welcoming. And again, this is not to call it, like, superficial. This is very real. But. But then you're not able to perform it in the same way. And so what are the complexities there around understanding, like, what it means to be Albanian? And lastly, I'll say, too. So on the one hand, I'm very well aware of lines of racialization along lines of whiteness and blackness. And without going into too much detail of, like, if you'd like more further I'd be happy to share a syllabus. But when we look at the history of race theory, early race thought again, it was hierarchical and it was around taxonomies, especially as Europeans leave the continent more or as they rely on other people's writings. Kant was writing a lot about black folks, and he never actually really left his house. But as Europeans are writing more in their thinking, they situate whiteness. And whiteness takes many forms. And we're talking Caucasians. Who becomes white? Who's Caucasian? Mel Irving Painter writes very well about this. And then who is black, which also changes over time. But these are the. These are the top and bottom of the hierarchy with this in betweenness, which is very incredibly murky. Now, scholars have taken various approaches to looking at this. Charles Mills and the Racial Contract just says, hey, what really matters is white and non white. Others have said, you know, well, we need to look at an approach that really complicates our thinking. But what matters, though, is that, yes, this relationship between whiteness and blackness, how they define one another, is really key. And so what I want to do with this book is not to argue against that, but to probe a little bit further. How are whiteness and blackness produced? And in what ways does a place like Eastern Europe help us see the ways that whiteness and blackness are produced and then reproduced? Because that's also really key, is that even as we talk about what does it mean to be Albanian, there are changing ideas, though, of what it means to be Albanian in relationship, what it means to be European. And a lot of Europeanists is shaped by whiteness, and that whiteness includes religion. Right? So there's a large percentage of Albanians, even if they are more secular, still identify as Muslim. There's a relationship to whiteness in terms of migration. And we have a lot of currently Albanian migrants and refugees seeking refuge in Western Europe. So these are just examples, too, of how whiteness itself gets redefined. And I'm very interested in that, especially, I mean, alongside how blackness gets redefined. The ways that Roma and Egyptians in Albania may articulate a blackness, but how that blackness needs to be complicated. And then finally, the changing nature of Southeast Europe. And this is something that my colleague Piero Riggie has written quite a bit about in his book White Enclosures. How this region, the Southeast Europe, also known as the Balkans, has been for a long time, this crossroad situated between east and West. But the global forms of migration, of war, have really made us to rethink the margins of Europe, the boundaries of Europe, who gets to belong to Europe and how and why. And so I hope that my book contributes to that conversation as well.
- [29:35]
Regan Gillum
Yeah, no, and I think it definitely does. And that takes me to my question about your idea of peripheral lightness. And before I say that, I want to say one of my favorite stories of your Hunger Games was when you were at someone's house, and they had, like, a feast, like, laid out, and everyone was talking, but they were waiting for you to. To eat. To start eating, because you're the guest. And the little girl says to you, like, can you just. Can you just start eating so that we can eat? I cry.
- [30:06]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
That's one of my favorite stories. And my friends in Alberta, they'll bring that story up. We were. We always laughed so hard. And I also just remember thinking that it was the baby's first birthday, and so I just happened to be invited. I. I just. I thought I was just tugging along with Bobbly's family, and when they sat me next to his uncle, I also just thought because he was a great storyteller. And so I didn't think much of it. And I'll never forget because I was so hungry. That was one of the times I was really hungry. And the place. Food was just there, and they were waiting on me to eat. Like, will this guest please eat?
- [30:45]
Regan Gillum
They're all.
- [30:46]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
See, they're.
- [30:47]
Regan Gillum
They're all, like, probably hungry, and they're like, I was laughing out loud.
- [30:53]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Yeah. And that's also why I call it games, Right? Because I don't even always know how to participate, how to even react to food, you know, Like, I don't even know, like, what to do at times. Also say, my mom actually visited Albania in 2008 when I was living there. And. Or maybe it's 2009. And I was trying to give her tips of how to, like, what to do at different houses. And I was like, you know, when in doubt, just copy everyone around you. Right? And so at one point, we were at Mimosa's house, and she had invited several women in her circle. She's like, chelsea's mom is coming. And, like, we want to give her a great welcome. She's traveling, you know, so far from Mississippi, and so there was, like, maybe eight of us, and Mimosa has made this huge feast. Like I said, she's one of the best cooks in Tirana. And I'm not biased. People say that all the time. And at some point, they serve wine, and people poured wine in these various cups. And then the ladies started passing around Coke and they started pouring a little coke in the red wine. And someone said, yeah, because, you know, the wine's a little strong. We just pour the Coke. And so I mimicked. I had never done that before, and I hadn't even seen that. But I got to my mom and she said, oh, no, I just want my wine. And they all said, oh, very strong lady. Like, she. She just has her wine, you know. And I was worried because I was like, ma, I think we're supposed to put Coke in. So just, yeah, my mom's also really direct. Like, nah, I don't need any more food. And I was like, ma, just keep showing you want some food, you know?
- [32:33]
Regan Gillum
Yep, that's probably why we're the anthropologists. Figure things out. Or like, I'll just go with it.
- [32:39]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Just go with it.
- [32:42]
Jack Daniels Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Response, responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee.
- [33:07]
Wayfair Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Podcasts. Follow us everywhere, whether you're cooking in the kitchen, chilling in the living room, or pretending to fold laundry in the bedroom. And with Wayfair, every one of those rooms can tell a story of its own. Their curated collections of furniture styles and prices make Wayfair the trusted destination to turn your home into your happy place. Shop everything home@wayfair.com with free and easy delivery straight to your door.
- [33:33]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Wayfair. Every style, every home. Some people think nature is like this, but actually it's like this. Mother Nature is not all sunshine and rainbows. Nature can be hotter than a sauna and colder than an arctic skinny dip.
- [33:58]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
That's why Colombia engineers everything we make for anything nature can throw at you.
- [34:03]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Colombia engineered for whatever.
- [34:07]
Regan Gillum
So let me ask you about your idea of peripheral whiteness, because you talk about Albania's longing for whiteness, and this goes back to what you were saying with Europe and ideas about whiteness in Europe. And you describe peripheral whiteness as shaped by aspirations to join the European Union and a longing to be considered fully within Europe. And so I thought this was really important and obviously goes along with your ideas of racialization and your contribution to these conversations. And so what do you mean by peripheral whiteness?
- [34:39]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Yeah, yeah, and so that's a great question. I think two recent scholarships. So I would say in the last 10 years especially, there's been an increased scholarship around race and racialization in Central and East Europe. This has not necessarily, though, been. Hasn't been contested at the last maybe three conferences for the association for the Study of East European and eurasian studies, or ACEs. There have been panels about this topic. There have been scholars from Central and East Europe who've pushed back against Western scholars, especially American scholars, for how they theorized. There's a concept of Westplaining that I've been trying to be more attuned to. And then of course, like I said, critical Romani study scholars have been studying questions of race even before this kind of recent boom in the subject. So I think that's really important to situate because there are scholars who've had approaches to trying to understand this marginal space of Europe. This Yvonne Kalmar, in his recent book called it white, but not quite even Charles Mills in the Racial Contract makes space for what he calls the off white. And so there. And kind of who's in the off white. Baldwin and his work focused on questions, for instance, of Jews and how we think about whiteness. And then of course, there's the book in the 90s, how the Jews became White Folks. We have how the Irish became white. So this idea of becoming white, even aspirational whiteness, I have it kind of situated in a lot of these arguments and areas. But the reason I'm thinking about peripheral whiteness, because it's both a simultaneous being racialized outside of whiteness and yet a local performance of whiteness. And that was a key part of it because especially in relationship to Roma and Egyptians, that is where we see a lot of this performance of whiteness. So much so that in Tiana we have these categories of dore, bard and dorezes which translate to white side or white hand and black side or black hand. And we see these used by both Albanians and Roma. In fact, I actually had somebody recently tell me that an Albanian woman told me she felt Roma came up with this concept of referring to Albanians as white and themselves as not. And that. So she actually had a different reaction to my analysis. And I don't say who necessarily configured. But what I do say though is that. But there are performances of people, you know, Doria Bard, understanding themselves as white Bard as white in relationship to Roma who are not. And for me, that's also. That was key to both challenge idea of racelessness, but also to show how Race is locally situated because even that understanding of who would fall into white and black, it's a complexity there especially too because Roma don't identify as people of African descent. So like, that's a more complicated thing. And not all Roma identify as black. In fact, many don't. They articulate that they feel like they've been made to be black, but they don't necessarily say that they are black. Right. And whereas you have groups like Egyptians who say, like, no, no, we are black people. So that part like that is a big part of peripheral whiteness is trying to understand how it operates and what it's doing. But the aspirations for European belonging are really key now. You know, I, I have enjoyed conversations with other scholars who've done work in the Balkans around this because some have said, hey, to want to be a part of the EU and want to be fully recognized by Europe does not necessarily have to be akin to wanting to be white. That could be about wanting the resources, wanting the political belonging. The reality is that being a part of the EU brings opportunities for travel in terms of traveling across the eu, that Albania was accepted into the visa Schengen Zone when it happened back in the early 2000 and tens meant that Albanians could travel to parts of Europe for 90 days without needing a long term visa. And that was key because before that Albanians couldn't travel that many places. So some people would say, hey, does that really mean that there's like an aspiration for whiteness? And I think there is some, there's ways we can question that. But what I argue in the book is that part of it though too, that, you know, we are also Europeans, I talk about a lot in the book. It is shaped by wanting to belong to Europe and Europe does, is attached to whiteness. So we have to understand that. But it's also that we could track in Albania's history these moments of performing Europeanness which was performing whiteness. And so as I show in the early 20th century, when Albania is breaking away from the Ottomans, when Albania is becoming a nation state for the first time, that there are these performances of anti Ottoman ness, of anti Muslimness, of gravitating towards the west again, Albania wants to be recognized, it wants to be recognized as a nation state, especially after World War I and the appealing to the great powers, how to protect land and borders, these are really key. And so of course we would see Albanians performing in a certain way for protection, for guarantees, security in terms of securing the nation state. But we see that this is heavily tied to Though a distancing from Muslimness, a distancing from otherness, that Albanians would be able to secure this by performing Europeanness. The figure of Skanderbeg, Albania's national hero, will get positioned as defender of Europe, as the person who tried to hold off, you know, the Ottoman hordes. And so what I do with peripheral whiteness is try to understand how that happens and then further, what happens with Albanians who leave Europe and seek to be a part of European whiteness and other Western European places. Again, that kind of longing, you know, as the quotes I have from my interlocutors about Albania is a bride, but she's wearing tattered clothes. We want to be better and recognized that we have to understand this in the context of whiteness. But again, I thoroughly enjoy thinking through this in multiple ways and really enjoy dialogue around that, because there are understandings of Europe in this way. But. But there are other facets, especially speaking about the political and economic sense that also must be included.
- [41:39]
Regan Gillum
So we're coming in a way, to the end of the interview shortly. But I couldn't, of course, end the interview without asking you about the Roma. And so because you've spent a lot of time with them in the book, as well as people who you call, like, as you said, Balkan, Egyptians. And so I wondered, what do the conditions. What are the conditions that the Dilma are facing in the country and, you know, how do their experiences there, like, again, speak to these ideas of racialization?
- [42:10]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Yeah, for sure. So I think what's really key in understanding racialization is to also see how we think about processes and not just something that happened. Right. So, like, race didn't just happen to also think about Gia Body picker's work. Excuse me. He's also done work around Roma and Central and East Europe, and that segregation is a process and it's ongoing. Marginalization is a process. And so I think we have to understand the tradition of Roma across Europe in this way, but especially in Southeast Europe and in Albania. And one of the ways I look at this is through housing, especially, and forced displacement and eviction. That there's a word that's a pejorative term in Albanian, gabel, but it means wanderer or stranger. And so I show that history of how Roma have been framed as these strangers, that they are strangers in every land they go to. That's a concept that. Or that's something that's been talked about by scholars like Ian Hancock. And they find themselves as outsiders. And that plays out in so many ways. And so outside of housing structures outside of educational spaces, outside of hospitals, but then also in my case, literally outside. So the people that I encountered most often, especially as I once I speak Albanian, I could hear people calling me. And so the woman in the book who I called Flora, I use a lot of pseudonyms in the book, so sometimes I have to remember the names I've given people. But the woman I called Flora, you know, she first called me over to her family and she said, hey. She said, hey, sister. And I said, oh, me? And she said, yeah, you like, oh. And then of course, you know, I got my notebook out, like, tell me why you called me sis or sister. And you said, because we're both black. And I said, uh huh. And I said, now tell me again, you know, why you understand yourself to be black. And Flora is a fascinating person because later in the book, she also tells me, oh, you know, I'm not really black, actually. My parents are white. And I'm like, what? She's like, yeah, but I'm married to a black man. And the word she uses, black, like Doris, is that. And we have children together. And because he doesn't have a job, I don't have a job, we don't have much money. You know, we live in this abandoned building. I just. People think I'm Dora Aziz. She's like, but I'm not actually Dora Aziz. I'm Dori Bard. Then. So then it made me again, like, question what it means to be black, how people get racialized as black, even if they aren't, and the political, economic components to look at when it comes to looking at Roma. Again, because we're talking about jobs, we're talking about housing, we're talking about hospitals. And the Roma camp that I spent a lot of time at had 60 families who were all living in terrible conditions. But outside of empty apartment buildings, which at the time were empty, no one was living there. And yet people were banned from going inside. The apartments were finished. It just was kind of a hangup in the municipality. And yet the Roma families were there. Two children had died in the winter, another in a fire. And deplorable conditions. There was no plumbing. It was just awful. And constantly Albanians would tell me, okay, but they're not fit to live here. And so these are some of the ideas that circulate in Albania that are further, you know, are further shaped by the broader, I would say, even European continental discourse about Roma, which many scholars like Magda Matache or Ionida Costaje have talked about, is the particular racial subjectivity or subjugation that Roma experienced across Europe, whether it be about Roma as thieves, the criminality of Roma. Right. So these are. We see that manifest in Albania, too. Despite Albanians, though, often insisting that they are people of hospitality, of tolerance, of welcoming, Albanians often give the example about religious tolerance, which is very fair. Right. Because Albania is a place where we have a. I mean, the numbers are murky, right. But roughly about 60% of the country as Muslim, 15% as Orthodox, and. Or I guess.
- [46:48]
Regan Gillum
Or.
- [46:49]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Yeah. So 60 to 70, 15% as Orthodox, and then 15% as Catholic. But those numbers are. Are murky. A lot of people are secular. Albania declared itself to be an atheist country and is the only country to this day to ever list its formal religion as atheism. There's common sayings from poems like, the religion of Albania is Albanianism. So there's a complicated relationship to religion. But that being said, there's a lot of religious tolerance in some cities. You have a mosque next to a Greek Orthodox church next to a Catholic church. So. And then relative to former Yugoslavia, where we see. Saw a lot of division by religion, you don't see that in Albania. So Albanians do talk a lot about tolerance and welcomeness, but that is not extended to Roma populations. And the segregation and there's not intermarriage. There are many ways that. The ways that Roma exists, again, going back to that word, the stranger, the. The outsider. I would watch people be physically assaulted, kids be physically assaulted, and it was very normative. I'm often blamed. And Roma would be blamed for their culture, be blamed for their behavior in a way that, to me, as a black woman, I didn't want to oversimplify it and say, oh, yeah, but the comments about Roma, Roma having too many kids, Roma relying on welfare support, Roma, you know, in terms of minorities, I immediately, as a black woman, thought, yes. Um, so in the book, I try to both look at these persistent structural forms of marginalization and inequality as well as though too, these sentiments around belonging and what people, what it feels, what it means to feel black, and try to really delve into that when it comes to Roma and Egyptians. And I should just say, for listeners, the best thing I can tell you is read the book. It's really complicated. People say all the time, who are Egyptians and who are Roma. And that's why I take in chapter four. I take the approach of saying, I'm just gonna use this chapter to follow six terms. And I'm gonna tell you this story through the terms because it gets complicated when I try to just say who Egyptians are and who Roma are. So the best thing I can tell you is to just see chapter four. But they do identify as two distinct groups. The helmet.
- [49:05]
Regan Gillum
Oh. People should definitely read the book. I mean, for, you know, from COVID to cover, the, the storytelling, the, you know, you are very situated in the book. You really bring to, to the fore the voices of people in Albania. This isn't just you thinking, I think there's race happening here. You know, you, you very much bring in their voices and stories and what they're saying about the situation. So I know readers will, will really learn a lot and you know, from that and your storytelling in general and then, you know, you're being on that television show. So. Thank you so much for sharing with us your work in the book. This was really fascinating. I'm Regan Gillum. I've been speaking with Dr. Chelsea West O', Hori, who is the author of the book Encountering Race in Albania, An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife, published by Cornell University Press. And thank you so much for writing this book and for sharing it with us on the podcast.
- [50:07]
Dr. Chelsea West O'Hori
Thank you.
- [50:20]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
Bundle and safe With Expedia, you were made to follow your favorite band and from the front row we were made to quietly save you. More Expedia made to Travel savings vary and subject to availability. Flight inclusive packages are atoll protected.