The Politics of a National Identity Survey: Polishness, Whiteness, and Racial Exclusion

Abstract

This article analyses a popular survey on national identity in Poland. However, the analysis of the survey is a pretext to remind one of the limitations of crude quantitative methods and to look at the Polish national identity itself. The article shows that the survey questions are far from unambiguous, and respondents might attribute different meanings to them. The survey does not “measure” national identity existing in the world, rather it serves to maintain the hegemonic concept of Polishness. It diminishes the significance of Catholicism and the perceived biological dimension of Polishness. It ignores public sentiment linking Whiteness and Polishness, contributing to maintaining the dominant image of Polishness as free of racism. Under the guise of objective research, the survey is one of the elements sustaining the image of a relatively open and inclusive Polishness. Referring to my own qualitative research and recent literature on the topic, I argue that Polish identity must be seen in terms of selective racism without racism—that is, it is an identity based on racial premises but which at the same time neglects its racial character.

Representations of race/ethnicity and the nation: A content analysis of televised Polish international football

“…In most European national contexts, Essed and Trienekens (2008: 63) argue, race/ethnicity and Whiteness play an important role in meaning-making but remain invisible, "inherently subsumed" and "repressed under the coverage of cultural and religious markers". This has also been noted for the Polish context, where Whiteness has been identified as latently embedded in dominant discourses on Polishness and Europeanness (Jaskułowski, 2020;Balogun, 2020).…”

“…There has been an increasing academic investment in deconstructing this persistent racial exceptionalism in Central-Eastern Europe (Imre, 2014; Polynczuk-Alenius, 2020) Jaskułowski (2019) and Polynczuk-Alenius (2020) have shown how popular conceptions of Polishness are constructed through and undergirded by notions of shared ethnicity and religion. These ‘ethnic’ markers readily slip into definitions that identify Polishness in more ‘racial’ or biological markers such as common ancestry, blood relations, and, Whiteness (Jaskułowski, 2020; Polynczuk-Alenius, 2020). This points to an intersection of racism and nationalism in popular Polish self-definitions (Polynczuk-Alenius, 2020).…”

Conditional citizenship in the UK: Polish migrants’ experiences of diversity

“…The ethnic compositions of Poland and the UK have been shaped by different political, historical and social processes. Acknowledging that nation, race and ethnicity exist as social and political constructs rather than fixed homogenous entities (Brubaker, 2009), Polish national identity is understood as constructed around notions of whiteness and Catholicism (Jaskulowski, 2020). With ethno-national minorities constituting only 5% of the population and 88% of the nation declaring themselves to be Catholic (Główny Urza ˛d Statystyczny, 2015), Poland imagines itself as a homogenous nation.…”

A Sense of National Pride in Central and Eastern Europe Based on Data from EVS and WVS

“…Z drugiej jednak strony może być wyrazem megalomanii narodowej albo poczucia półperyferyjności i związanym z tym kompleksem niższości, szczególnie wobec Zachodu, który dla Polaków jest znaczącym punktem odniesienia (Wysocki, 2017). Ten drugi sposób wyjaśnienia potwierdzają wyniki badań nad szczegółową dumą narodową i wstydem narodowym (Bokszański, 2005;TNS OBOP, 2008;CBOS, 2016;Nowicka, Łodziński, 2021), autostereotypem i heterostereotypami narodowymi (Błuszkowski, 2005;CBOS, 2015;Wysocki, 2016), nacjonalizmem i patriotyzmem Polaków (CBOS, 2016;Burszta i in., 2019;Jaskułowski, 2020) czy psychologicznym podłożem zbiorowych zachowań Polaków (Zajenkowska, 2016;Chajbos, 2019).…”