Anti-Racist Action (ARA) is an anti-racist social movement with a number of traits that distinguish it from other anti-racist social movements. Its origins and continued involvement in North American youth subcultures, along with its distinctively decentralized, anti-hierarchical, and informal organizational structure already separate it from the vast majority of anti-racist groups. Also noteworthy is ARAâs devotion to the social problem of extreme racism -"highly personal attacks on others who are perceived as culturally or biologically inferior" typically characterized by "derogatory slurs and minority name-calling" (Fleras and Elliott: 72). This type of racism constitutes a form of deviance considered by ARA members to be "so dangerous·that they bring special sanctions to bear against it." (Erikson: 6). In fact, the willingness and even eagerness of members to confront extreme racists face-to-face separates Anti-Racist Action from more moderate anti-racist groups. It is also a key factor in their most controversial strategies and tactics.

One such tactic employed by ARA chapters in Chicago, Louisville, Minneapolis, Montréal, and Toronto has been the use of "outings" ö organized rallies in the neighbourhoods of racist extremists where ARA activists go door-to-door naming the targeted racist and informing his or her neighbours about his or her activities. Posters, complete with the racistâs photo and home address are put up on lamposts and placed in mailboxes. At the end of an outing, ARA members gather outside the home of the racist to inform them of the eveningâs activities.

As a manifestation of an external conflict between racists and anti-racist activists, outings have as their ultimate goal the internalization of controls governing behaviour

(Wehowsky, 1978: 74). The means employed to achieve this goal is shame. Outings are a ritualized form of shame sanctioning with a surprising historical lineage. In addition to detailing this lineage, this investigation of ARAâs outings will examine the social control dimensions of shame sanctioning; the tactical use of this particular form of shame sanctioning; its usage in relation to ARAâs views regarding the effectiveness of official social control agencies; criticisms of this type of shame sanctioning and the relevance of these criticisms to outings specifically.

Charles Tilly describes precisely such a ritual in his depiction of the charivari. In this traditional form of French protest, a group of protestors "assemble in the street outside a house; make a racket with songs, shouts and improvised instruments
such as saucepans and washtubs·the words and actions are mocking, often obscene. They describe and condemn the misdeeds of the house's residents." (30).
ARAâs outings are very similar to the French charivaris. The term "outing" derives from a tactic of the radical gay and lesbian movement in which they would

A key factor here is that the demonstration occurs in the targeted racistâs neighbourhood, culminating in a noisy display right outside their house. This demonstrates a recognition by ARA that for their targets, home functions as a "back region - a place, relative to a given performance, where the impression fostered by the performance is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course," but where "the performer can reliably expect that no member of the audience will intrude." (Goffman, 1959: 112-113). One of the goals of the outing, then, is to intentionally intrude on this space and lay bare the contradictions between the racistâs back region and front region performance. By informing neighbours about the racistâs performance as an extreme racist (a performance typically hidden from them), while simultaneously making the "safe space" of home into a front region in which the racist is unprepared to perform his role as a racist, ARA brings to the fore matters that are likely to cause shame in their target because of their disclosure. (Ibid.: 70). By confronting extreme racists in the back regions of their homes, ARA is further likely to discredit racistsâ self-conceptions, which "may deeply involved his ego in his identification with a particular part, establishment, and group." (Ibid.: 143).

Guilt is considered "a form of self-criticism that results from a comparison of one's action with internalized standards...resulting from violating personal standards...guilt is defined as a feeling of negative self-regard and does not need an audience." (Bierbrauner: 184). The key to guilt as an internalized means of social control

is that it operates as "an emotional expression following a violation of internalized moral codes·wholly independent of others' knowing of the violation." (Karp: 279-280).

Guilt and the a priori knowledge about what one should feel guilty about must be learned through socialization processes. In this way, we "are inculcated with the patterns of conduct demanded by society; fears are instilled in them: conditioning by means of threats or punishments creates displeasure and suppresses unwanted expressions of desires." (Wehowsky: 68). If the effectiveness of guilt to control behaviour can be construed as a major objective of social control, the process by which we learn to feel guilt is often one of shaming.

Unlike guilt, shame can be defined as "a reaction to criticism of others and a fear of rejection and withdrawal of love, resulting from the existence of a real or imagined audience of one's misdeed." (Bierbrauner: 184). The sanctions involved in shame are external, rather than internal, and depend upon the presence of an audience. Specifically, shameâs power lies in the fear of losing social esteem or social status because of violating a social proscription. (Karp: 280; Wehowsky: 75). In this manner, "shaming has functioned as a means of social control for centuries ö certainly as long as reference to

Viewing outings as an attempt to instill a sense of guilt in the offending racist by first activating shame in them makes sense, particularly given their focus on the offenderâs home. Braithwaite notes that "shaming is more likely to be heeded when undertaken by a loved one, whose respect and affection it would be more painful to lose," (167), and that "·sanctions imposed by relatives, friends or a personally-relevant collectivity have more effect on criminal behaviour than sanctions imposed by a remote legal authority·because repute in the eyes of close acquaintances matters more to people than the opinions or actions of criminal justice officials." (69). By making the targeted racistâs home address a matter of public knowledge, ARA seems aware that the stigma they hope to inflict upon them will likely also affect family members who may live with the offender. Rather than concerning themselves with the injustice of tarring all residents with the same brush, ARA appears to be attempting to stimulate familial involvement in sanctioning the offender through mutual implication. Families are "the key social units which take responsibility for reintegrating the convicted offender." (Ibid.: 63), and this mutual implication may compel the offenderâs family to sanction the offenderâs behaviour.

Shaming rituals have power because of how we form our conceptions of self. Individuals evaluate their social position in relation to others based largely on the opinions of others. Social identity theory posits that individuals construct the self partially on the basis of group membership, which makes any threat of rejection by the group also a threat to self-identity. Shaming sanctions threaten the social position of individuals by threatening to injure or sever the social bond between the individual and the group, diminishing the deviantâs social status and ultimately threatening their social self and self-identity. (Karp: 277-280).

Many scholars have noted a gradual shift "from primary means of social control, such as the family, the neighbourhood, and the community, to secondary means, such as the police, the press, the political machine, and the courts." (Pitts: 383: emphasis mine). Charles Tilly "shows the opening of a breach between bourgeois law and the law of popular custom," as commencing in 18^th-century France, with "the intervention of the police in a nonviolent charivari." (32). It is interesting to note that, some two centuries later, Montreal police mirrored the actions of the gendarmes in Tillyâs example, when they intervened in an ARA-organized non-violent outing, arresting two participants. (Maddux: 2).

As a result of this shift, most people now assume "that the regulation of sanctions and norms, whether or not they are made explicit, belong to the realm of the legal system." (Bierbrauner: 184). By selecting violent offenders as targets for outing campaigns, ARA is in effect questioning the legal systemâs ability to ensure compliance to the norms of society. This sentiment is clearly read in an ARA press release that asks if Montreal police "cannot protect Montréalers from racist violence, or prevent the murder of people like Christian Thomas by violent, organized fascists known to them, or even bring such murderers to justice, who will do their job for them?" (ARA Montreal: 2).

There appears to be a general cynicism and suspicion regarding the role and effectiveness of the police and the legal system among ARA members similar to the manner that middle-class white residents saw the police in Andersonâs study of a changing inner-city neighbourhood. (131). Here we see another crucial distinction between other anti-racist organizations. While moderate anti-racist groups press for legislative and other forms of political change and work closely with the police, Anti-Racist Action rejects working with the polity. Like Waters' new citizens movements of France (181), ARA demonstrates a genuine mistrust and hostility towards existing political structures and attempt to work in complete autonomy from political parties and institutions. Their unifying document states that ARA does not "rely on the cops or the courts," (Author Unknown, 1998). Another factor not to be ignored is ARA's hostile analysis to the polity itself as a racist institution. ARA chapters claim that racism "is

perpetrated by the government and its internal army of cops." (Author Unknown). This may in part explain the adoption of the tactic of outings.

In this context, outings may be seen as attempts to re-assert informal social control mechanisms in areas of life where formal social control agencies claim exclusive jurisdiction. Primary groups such as family, friends and neighbours have an advantage over the impersonalities of the criminal justice system in that "their sanctions are pervasive in their incidence and impact and that even the deviant is usually highly motivated to maintain group membership." (Pitts: 389). Informal sanctions can also have a stronger affect on deviant behaviour "than sanctions imposed by a remote legal authority·because repute in the eyes of close acquaintances matters more to people than the opinions or actions of criminal justice officials." (Braithwaite: 69). ARA may claim that by attempting to reassert the importance of such informal sanctions, they may be more effective at curbing racist extremist violence than the efforts of official social control agencies will be, and even that they may be able to prevent such violence, whereas official social control mechanisms are likely to only come into play after violence has occurred.

However, all this is not to say that ARA wishes to claim the exclusive rights of using informal shame sanctioning as the sole means with which to contend with violent racist extremists. It is more probable that the movement takes a somewhat pragmatic approach, recognizing that the police and the criminal justice system do have a role to play. Even their unifying documentâs statement about not relying "on the cops or the courts" is immediately qualified by the statement that "this doesnât mean we never go to

court." (Author Unknown, 1998). Evidence does suggest that informal social control mechanisms such as outings can complement and enhance the efforts of formal social control mechanisms. Bierbrauner notes that the legal system is most effective when it is based "on more subtle forms of social control like group pressure." (182). Braithwaite concurs with this assessment, going so far as to claim that "potent shaming directed at offenders is the essential necessary condition for low crime rates." (4). Perhaps when both ARA and the police come to view outings as complementary to the efforts of the criminal justice system will their effectiveness truly manifest.

One reason ARA conducts outings is to reveal discrediting facts hidden by extreme racists from their neighbours and, often, members of their own families. That extreme racists keep their controversial views hidden and become extremely upset when this information is made public during an outing testifies to the importance of their position in the community, no matter how marginal it may be. It also speaks to the communitarian aspects still present in communities in the highly individualized present-day North America.

In fact, "If a person cares nothing about the disapproval of others, shame is a useless tool," (Karp: 288), be it of the disintegrative or reintegrative variety. "But such a person is extremely rare·the trick is to increase the stake of the offender in the larger community." (Ibid.). Outings play on the stakes the offender has in the larger community

by attempting to involve actors relevant to the offenderâs other roles and identities ö be they family members, loved ones, or neighbours.

Much then appears to be dependent on the degree to which a community can be described as communitarian. Effective shaming works best when individuals "are enmeshed in multiple relationships of inter-dependency; societies shame more effectively when they are communitarian." (Braithwaite: 14). But shame sanctioning by peers and intermediate groups simply "cannot work in an individualist culture" (Ibid.: 171), because it is the threat of social exclusion, "of not being regarded as a worthy member of the community, that is the primary sanction in a shame penalty." (Karp: 280).

Are shame sanctions ineffective because of the individualistic and alienating nature of modern North American society? Braithwaite has noted how the high interdependency and highly-developed communitarianism of Japanese society enhance the effectiveness of reintegrative shaming. (62). While North American society is not nearly as interdependent or communitarian as Japanese society may be, the two are not polar opposites, either. This fact is evidenced by the high concern Americans place on the opinions of others, as well as the development of consciences through social interaction, normative influence and the internalization of standards in both societies. (Karp: 290). The extreme concern shown by targeted racists when subjected to an outing evidences that North American society is still communitarian enough for shaming to be effective to some degree. The success of outings hinges partially on this concern deriving from the targeted individual defining her identity at least partially "in terms of their ingroup, such as family or local community," because in these cases "the latter will

have a major influence on their conduct, whereas individuals who feel that they are free from tight social control may be less influenced by social values and norms from their immediate social environment." (Bierbrauner: 183).

Some other reasons to question the effectiveness of outings as shame sanctioning stem from the fact that it is racist extremists who are targeted. Erikson has noted that communities judge deviant individuals by sifting and responding to a few deviant details among an array of conventional behaviour. (6-7). The problem with shaming sanctions, according to Braithwaite, Karp and others, is that such penalties "blur the distinction between moral condemnation of the act and of the actor. (Karp: 286). This point is emphasized in Braithwaite's model of reintegrative shaming, in which it is crucially important to ensuring "that the deviance label is applied to the behaviour rather than the person, and that this is done under the assumption that the disapproved behaviour is transient, performed by an essentially good person." (55).

It is very difficult to describe someone who strongly, even primarily, self-identifies as a neo-Nazi as "an essentially good person." The line between the disapproved behaviour and the individual's very identity in these cases is highly indistinct. This close relationship between the deviant behaviour and the self-identity so cherished by the deviant individual explains why the humiliation inflicted through shame sanctioning may generate anger rather than remorse in the offender, thus enabling the racist "to shift his or her self-concept from victimizer to victim." (Karp: 286). This is reflected again and again in racist extremist literature, which typically portrays white males as victims and the so-called white race as an endangered species.

The informal nature of a shaming ritual like the charivari or its modern-day version, the outing, can cause concern regarding the possibility of the innocent suffering the shame and stigma meant for the guilty. Braithwaite claims that "informal means of control are, because of their informality, probably more likely to convict the innocent." (158). This is precisely the kind of criticism leveled against ARA for outing racists, which members of more moderate anti-racist organizations have characterized as attempts to "create disorder and take the law into their own hands."(Author Unknown, 1996). It has already been noted that ARA may partially hope that some of the shame and embarrassment they inflict by informing neighbours about the exact residence of an extreme racist will be shared by their target's family, in the hopes that this may spur the family to action. But is it fair to force family members to share this shame? This question seems difficult enough without including the possibility on acting on wrong information. When I asked members of one ARA chapter embarking on an outing how they knew that the occupants of a targeted house were racist extremists, they informed me that they had heard second-hand from people that the occupants held racist beliefs and had recently assaulted some people. At the outing's climax the group knocked on the door of the targeted nazi, after spending two hours distributing posters with his photo and address on them throughout the neighbourhood, only to be told by his brother that he no longer lived there. The next week, rumours circulated that a large group of bat-wielding men converged on the house just days after the outing.

While Braithwaite is correct to point out this shortcoming of all informal means of social control, he provides no evidence that formal social control mechanisms are more

apt to prosecute and persecute only the guilty. In fact, given much-publicized wrongful conviction cases in both Canada and the United States, and the more severe consequences of the criminal justice system, there may be a stronger case to be made for informal sanctioning over formal sanctioning.

Another common criticism of outings is that they may well encourage violence instead of discouraging it. The logic behind this criticism is that extreme racists will attempt to compensate for the humiliation suffered during the outing by re-establishing their discredited identity as racist "warriors" as quickly as possible, by stepping up their violent activities. Only one of the five ARA chapters contacted reported an increase in violent activity after outing a racist - members of the Louisville chapter were attacked by ten neo-Nazis the day after outing one of them. However, some ARA members pointed out how such a reaction can be construed as evidence of the tactical success of their outing ö the racists targeted were obviously affected enough to come after ARA members in retaliation, which was argued as being better than having them randomly attack their more "usual" targets for violence ö people of colour, gays and lesbians, and others.

Despite these numerous criticisms of outings and other forms of disintegrative shame sanctioning, the reintegrative shaming model does not necessarily stand as an option beyond criticism itself, and the question of how to deal with racist extremists illustrates some of these criticisms well. When an offender faces shaming sanctions, they have three possible responses to choose from - "they may protest their innocence; admit guilt but demonstrate that the action did not in fact cause harm (the norm, not the violation, is unjust); or accept responsibility for causing harm." (Karp: 286). The former

choice is a non-collaborative response, in the latter two, the offender collaborates and cooperates to some extent with the social control agents who are attempting to label and stigmatize her. For reintegrative shaming to work, the offender must not choose the former option - they have to adopt a repentant role. (Braithwaite: 165).

The reintegrative shaming model works in two stages; in the first stage, the deviant is subjected to shaming and expressions of disapproval for their behaviour. This stage is followed "gestures of reacceptance into the community of law-abiding citizens." (Braithwaite: 55). Throughout both stages, communication between the offender and the community must be maintained "to facilitate apology and recompense." (Ibid.: 161). But these offers of reacceptance are conditional upon the offenderâs offering of apology and recompense ö something rarely, if ever, offered by neo-Nazis. This is unsurprising, given the degree of importance given to their self-identity as neo-Nazis, "proud Aryan warriors," etc. Braithwaite himself concedes that "the citizen is ultimately free to reject these attempts to persuade through social disapproval." (9). If the role and identity valued most by the deviant individual is an oppositional one, reintegrative shaming is not an option and the only hope to persuade the individual to comply with the behaviour boundaries of the community may be to threaten other social bonds, roles and identities with disintegrative shaming sanctions.

CONCLUSION

Outings serve as both public ritual and shame sanction in a way rarely seen since the days of the French charivari. To amass a large group of people who loudly proclaim the misdeeds of an offender to the offenderâs neighbours and from the offenderâs very

doorstep seems to smack of vigilantism and to go against societal norms surrounding privacy and fair trial. However, in actively engaging and organizing outings, Anti-Racist Action is re-invoking a primary means of social control that has gradually been replaced by the secondary means of the bourgeois, formalized rule of law. In doing so, ARA is making a statement about the saliency of neighbourhood communitarianism and social interdependency. They may also be reinforcing communitarianism and interdependency by encouraging community members to come together and participate in the ritual of behavioural boundary definition.

Outings are essentially highly-public disintegrative shaming rituals. Because of the lack of reintegrative qualities, they are readily-criticized as doing more harm than good. But perhaps due to the non-collaborative nature of their intended targets, it is difficult to devise a workable reintegrative shaming strategy to employ against racist extremists. In any event, it is obvious that formal social control techniques do not work by themselves. Perhaps any effort at bringing back informal shaming sanctions, be they disintegrative or reintegrative, can help ensure the safety of everyone within the community.

The Anti-Racist Action Network consists of people from all different backgrounds, with a lot of different viewpoints. With over 150 ARA chapters out there, it's not surprising that no two are alike!

What we all agree on, however, is the following:

1) WE GO WHERE THEY GO: Whenever fascists are organizing or active in public, we're there. We don't believe in ignoring them or staying away from them. Never let the nazis have the street!

2) WE DON'T RELY ON THE COPS OR THE COURTS TO DO OUR WORK FOR US: This doesn't mean we never go to court. But we must rely on ourselves to protect ourselves and stop the fascists.

3) NON-SECTARIAN DEFENSE OF OTHER ANTI-FASCISTS: In ARA, we have lots of different groups and individuals. We don't agree about everything and we have a right to differ openly. But in this movement an attack on one is an attack on us all. We stand behind each other.

4) We support abortion rights and reproductive freedom. ARA intends to do the hard work necessary to build a broad, strong movement against racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, discrimination against the disabled, the oldest, the youngest and the most oppressed people. WE INTEND TO WIN!

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