Racists All
Recently the pastor of my church noted that when he was a child, he thought racists were people like the Klu Klux Klan. Now, though, he realizes his definition was too limited; in fact, he himself is a racist. He was clearly sorry about this, but he never explained why he's a racist, and I began to wonder — am I a racist, too?
"If you have to ask..." right? Does even asking the question demonstrate a telling racial insensitivity? (And is insensitivity the same as racism?) I'll plead guilty if guilty I am, but before I answer the charge I want to understand it — and I'm not really clear on what 'racism' means anymore. The classic definition is something like 'treating a person badly because of his skin color (or another racial feature).' Is that still what it means?
It is hard to talk about this. Writing so explicitly about race feels a little dangerous. The national rhetoric on race suggests that race relations are extremely fragile. In a November 11, 2017, op-ed in the New York Times, the author (a black man) argues passionately that whites' racism makes it impossible for blacks and whites to be genuine friends. My experience says otherwise, but the fact that such an opinion would be expressed in such a reputable organ is fairly amazing.
Or consider the kerfuffle surrounding an August 9, 2017, op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, written by law professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander. The professors' thesis was that cultures which emphasize bourgeois norms yield happier, more productive and more satisfied citizens. (By bourgeois norms they meant truisms like the value of stable marriages, steady employment, self-improving education, etc.) The professors argued that a return to these values would aid Americans in struggling demographic groups — including working-class whites, Hispanic immigrants and inner-city blacks — whose cultures minimize these bourgeois values.
While the article was assiduously race-neutral, Wax and Alexander were nevertheless immediately branded racists. They had hinted at the third rail of American public discourse: the black achievement gap (i.e., the shortfall between whites and blacks on measures like legitimacy, crime, education, income, wealth, etc.). This is such a sensitive topic that simply mentioning these statistics is treated as a de facto attack on the black race, a perception made worse if you also criticize black culture. (Summaries of the firestorm provoked by the op-ed can be found here and here.)
This dynamic has played out frequently before. Observers who attempt to dissect the black achievement gap are liable to be accused of implicitly claiming that blacks are inferior. An early example is Patrick Moynihan's seminal 1965 report on the disintegrating black family, which generated heated denunciations. (As an aside, it is a little terrifying to see how much worse things have gotten in the past fifty years. In 1963 the black illegitimacy rate was a then-shocking 23.6%; in 2015 the percentage was 77.3%. So almost eight out of ten black babies will likely have pretty tenuous relationships with their fathers.)
But occasionally even distinctly liberal voices are pulled in this direction. An October 18, 2017, op-ed in the Wall Street Journal notes that the Cornell Black Student Union recently complained to the administration that, in the words of the students,
the Black student population at Cornell disproportionately represents international or first-generation African or Caribbean students. While these students have a right to flourish at Cornell, there is a lack of investment in Black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America.
Therefore (the students continued), Cornell must "come up with a plan to actively increase the presence of underrepresented Black students," i.e., "Black Americans who have several generations (more than two) in this country." So the Cornell Black Student Union wants multi-generation black Americans to receive more admission preferences than those whose families have only been here for one or two generations.
While the Cornell Black Student Union is no doubt miles from Wax and Alexander in political terms, its demand hints in their direction. Since first- and second-generation black applicants share skin color with, but differ in many other respects from, multi-generation black applicants, they are a sort of control group to test broader racial issues. If the visceral dislike of a person because of his skin color is indeed holding back multi-generation black applicants, then we would expect first- and second-generation black applicants – who share that skin color – to be similarly held back. But those recently-arrived black applicants have higher admission rates, creating an achievement gap at Cornell within a race. So something besides pure skin-color discrimination seems to be at work.
Might the difference be that first- and second-generation black applicants come from cultures which emphasize family stability, educational improvement, etc., while multi-generation black applicants do not? Perhaps... there are so many individual factors that it is of course dangerous to generalize. But at the least, the professors' "bourgeois values" argument is not ridiculous. And yet, the left castigates them as racists, as if their criticism of cultural norms masks a despicable racist attitude. Why is that?
The reason is because the 'racism' that we fight today is something subtler and more varied (and more controversial) than pure racial animus. A person no longer has to have negative feelings towards all black people, or even any particular black person, to qualify as a racist. Racism can mean being unmindful of the historical and lingering wrongs done to black Americans (the "African Holocaust in America," as the Cornell students call it). Or racism can mean believing that black Americans have equal or more responsibility than white Americans for bridging the achievement gap. Or racism can just mean being insufficiently welcoming to black interests (political, artistic, academic, economic, etc.). Ironically, it could even be racist to refuse to think in racial terms, since that might prevent you from seeing all this ubiquitous racism we must fight.
This broadening of the charge of 'racism' must be what justifies the accusation that Wax and Alexander are racists, because they certainly don't fit the traditional definition. They never suggested that black people are inherently inferior nor that there was anything insurmountable about the black achievement gap. Quite the contrary, they were offering suggestions to eliminate the achievement gap so black communities would integrate with and succeed at the same rates as white ones. Was that ever part of the Klan's platform?
But the professors are called racists because their critics are not swayed by their attempt to distinguish culture from race. After all, what does the difference amount to? If the professors are suspicious of a young black man dressed and acting a certain way, does it matter if their sentiment is cloaked in some statistics about race and crime? Aren't they still forming an opinion about an individual based on generalizations about his group? Relying on statistics as an excuse doesn't bleach out the prejudice.
In fact (the critics would continue), the statistics embody the prejudice. They would argue that the professors blame the achievement gap on black culture when its imperfections are actually among the many rippling effects of white racism. America's plantations and lynch mobs planted the seeds on which the professors' subtler cultural prejudices feed today. Racism continues to be an unjust overgeneralization, but one which now defines its subjects in cultural terms rather than physical ones, and which papers over it all with social science statistics. If Wax and Alexander want to engage in culture-blaming, they should be focusing on white culture for its centuries of mistreatment of black people. Or so the professors' critics would say.
I understand this response, but it is just as dissatisfying to me as was the original prejudice of overt racists. Those old-fashioned white racists once argued that the black achievement gap was the result of some inferiority among black people as a whole. This perspective was obviously wrong: it dehumanized individuals, and it ignored the truth that each of us is a unique child of God made in His image.
But now the left argues not just that white racism was bad, but that it was and is so profound and irreducible that it is the cause of the achievement gap. So the black community's problems are the result of a peculiar moral inferiority in whites — their racism, a racism that has no excuse or rationale, but sprang ex nihilo from whites' black hearts. Obviously the historical inadequacies of this explanation are legion, to say nothing of the painful irony of claiming anything of whites as a race! This attempt to blame whites for black failures is just as racist as blaming blacks for them.
We've come full circle. Our dialectic has resulted in a race-blaming tit-for-tat — with racists of one sort claiming the black achievement gap is due to some inferiority in black people, and racists of the opposite bent responding that the inferiority is actually in whites. We go back and forth... everyone thinking the problem lies with the other guy.
This feels like the first certainty I've come across in this hazy and jumbled discussion. We humans are all self-interested at heart, and hence are always evaluating circumstances in ways that cast ourselves — and our friends or family, and our business or political party, and our nation or race — in the most favorable light. We are little machines that identify, rationalize and exploit differences with one another, eternally predisposed and prejudiced to think better of ourselves and people who share our perspective.
And what can we do to free ourselves of this problem? Try harder? That has not proven to work reliably in the long-term. We unthinkingly favor people like us and disfavor people unlike us, whether that's defined in political, racial, cultural, religious or any other terms. Depending on the organizing principles you subscribe to, you might try to explain this phenomenon in evolutionary, theological, historical or some other terms. But however you explain its origins, we must acknowledge the sad fact that we're always assuming the worst of the other guy, and assuming the best of ourselves. Try as we might, we're all racists.
At least until something — or someone — saves us from it.
If you wish to discuss this post with me, I'd welcome receiving an email from you. Please email me at language.on.holiday@gmail.com.