Racism

Discussions about racism can be confusing, because we do not have a shared understanding about what racism is. Children are taught that racism is "hate", but racism today bears little resemblance to that word, even if its consequences are just as destructive. Consequently, people can think, talk, and act in ways that are racist without having the slightest idea that they are being racist. On the flip side, people with extremely expansive definitions of racism will see racism around every corner, and their perpetual righteous indignation can take on a "crying wolf" effect among the dominant culture.

It would be nice to come to some kind of general consensus about what racism is and isn't. It would be nice to expand white people's understanding of racism to capture more nuance, while perhaps curbing some of the excessive accusations of racism.

For some people, any mention of less-than-desirable group characteristics is racist. In my mind, this approach is excessive. It is not racist to utter statistical facts about group tendencies as measured by the best available research instruments. The explanation of these facts may evince racist thinking, and it may be racist to assume that a group's characteristics obtain in any individual member of that group, but it is not racist to report statistical differences on important measurements across racial groups. Yes, I am aware that the scientific method itself can be tainted with bias in its assumptions and methods, but unless we want to turn a blind eye to racial issues in society altogether, we have to discuss race as a culture, and to do that, we should lean on the best available data.

For some people, racism is defined very narrowly to mean an irrational hatred or devaluation of an entire race such as, for instance, the belief that a race is genetically inferior. The key there is the word "irrational." Those who take this definition of racism do not believe they can be racist if their feelings can be defined as rational. For instance, an employer might not hire a black person, not because the employer "hates" black people, but because the employer is afraid his clients do. Such a narrow definition of racism is inappropriate, because it fails to account for the momentum that carries the effect of historic prejudice into today's society.

So-called "color blindness" is destructive for a similar reason. Even IF people could judge and treat every single individual based solely on that individual's merits, it would still fail to account for how historical prejudice of the virulent hatred variety has momentum and continues to shape society today. No, color-blindness is not tantamount to fairness, at least not yet. It's as if for the first 2/3rds of a game of Monopoly, one player was prevented from buying properties, and then was allowed to play by normal rules. It would be ludicrous to contend that it was fair when we won and they lost. No, clearly, this would not be fair, and neither is it fair to pretend that history started yesterday. The legacy of historical racism has proven more stubborn than that. The economic and geographic disadvantages that were legally entrenched until the Civil Rights movement persist still today, and the exploitation of class disadvantage will, by virtue of racial disparities in poverty rates, automatically translate into racial inequality.

In my mind, the most insidious form of racism today occurs at the intersection of the rational and the irrational. It occurs when individuals make what appears to them to be a rational decision, which they therefore tell themselves is not racist, but which nevertheless has the collective effect of disadvantaging a race. Some have called this "statistical discrimination" to distinguish it from the virulent "hate/inferiority" variety of racism that was once so prevalent. While this statistical discrimination is certainly destructive, it is even more so when mixed with subtle forms of irrational thinking. That is, the veneer of rationality hides the irrational cognitive biases that have long fueled racial hatred and fear.

For my money, racism today is most commonly practiced as the application of double standards. It is the tendency among whites to forgive, or even celebrate, certain types of behavior among other whites which they would condemn among racial minority groups. Drug possession among white youth is seen as a momentary lapse on the way to their productive middle-class respectable life; drug possession among minorities is evidence confirming their depravity. A white guy who shoots his neighbor over an argument is a hot head, but he has a good heart and deserves a second chance. A black guy who shoots his neighbor is a murdering thug who deserves to be put to death. It's fine when Hank Jr. says, "I'd like to spit some beechnut in that dude's eye and shoot him with my ol' 45." It's fine when Johnny Cash sings, "If I hadn't o'shot poor Delia, I'd have had her for my wife," but when Public Enemy raps about violence, they're dangerous, out of control animals. Guns are great if you're Ted Nugent but terrible if you're Common. A single mom on welfare in rural Indiana is a deserving victim; a single mom on Welfare in Compton is a welfare queen mooching off the honest tax payer. Wanting a yacht and a Ferrari is just good ol' fashioned capitalism when it's a white stock broker, but it's spiritual and moral turpitude among dark skinned kids. A hillbilly accent and atrocious grammar are endearing when it's some white redneck, but, "for god's sake, why don't those people learn English" when it's a Hispanic immigrant.

All that being said, it is also frustrating when discussions of racism are divorced from discussions of class. That is to say, just because a person is white does not mean that their lives have been handed to them on a silver platter. A white person who grows up poor faces challenges in life that a person growing up black and middle class does not, which I believe is why many working class whites bristle so much at the idea that they are living high on the hog off of "white privilege." Who has faced more challenges in life, a white kid who grew up with a single mom living in a trailer, or an upper middle class black family growing up in an affluent suburb? Recently the income achievement gap (the test score gap between poor and middle class kids) exceeded the racial achievement gap. I believe white America would be more capable of opening their eyes to racism if it weren't always divorced from the general problem of income inequality in this country.

We still see enormous disparities in income, education, and incarceration rates across racial groups. If one assumes an even distribution of talent and intelligence across racial groups (which I do), then clearly these disparities are inconsistent with a system that claims to provide equal opportunity. Any definition of racism must account for the momentum that historical racism has carried through to today and must take into account rampant double-standardism, but it should allow for discussions of group characteristics and take seriously the challenges that growing up poor presents to all racial groups