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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2020

Krzysztof Jaskulowski Open the ORCID record for Krzysztof Jaskulowski [Opens in a new window]
Krzysztof Jaskulowski*
Affiliation:
SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland
*
*Corresponding author. Email: krzysztofja@interia.pl
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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.

Keywords

Polandnational identityracismexclusion
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 49 , Issue 6 , November 2021 , pp. 1082 - 1095
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities

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