American's Tortured Discourse on Race, Part III
Part III of a Three-Part Article
W. E. Smith, Editor, The Social Democrat
The Prevailing Left discourse on race is a protean, hydra-headed monster, one with a seeming infinite number of heads and always changing shape. It is composed of a constantly shifting menu of unsupported assertions, ridiculously transparent untruths, casual claims that defy common sense and outrageous demands. At the same time, there are actual and provable instances of unequal treatment—greater levels of non-lethal police misconduct, for example, or a disinclination of some employers (10 percent of cases in a recent U Cal Berkeley study) to interview applicants with ARB-sounding names—which would seem to require a response, though whether such factors prove a systemic racism prevailing in 2023 America is another matter. The Discourse has infiltrated every area of American life, from education and employment to healthcare, entertainment and the arts; and these two factors—the tremendous amount of illogic and falsehood, mixed with some truth, as well as the vast number of circumstances in which the Discourse is invoked—make it very difficult to clearly write, or even to think, about the subject. It certainly makes it difficult to write about the subject concisely: this article has grown longer than I would have wished, yet I feel that in many ways I have only scratched the surface, failing to provide as much nuance as would be ideal.
One is reminded of the old saying, “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit,” and one can’t help suspect that the incoherent, sprawling nature of the “anti-racism” argument is in fact an intentional feature of the “philosophy’s” founders: intended, that is, to forestall discussion and, more especially, critique. When there are so many claims, some legitimate, others wildly exagerated or just plain unsupportable, in a constantly onrushing stream of invective and penetrating every area of our lives, where does one begin to disentangle the mess?
As such, this article should be seen as one observer’s best shot at a tentative contribution to a subject which has already spawned considerable critique, such as John McWhorter’s books Losing the Race and Woke Racism, but here within the context of a social-democratic worldview. I very much welcome pushback and, where appropriate, a pointing out of blind spots in regard to a topic the negotiation of which may determine whether we can build a better society for all in the coming years.
The Prevailing Left Discourse on Race has created a toxic relationship between ARWs and people in other racialized groups. It is teaching ARB children (and all other “people of color”) that people racialized as “White” (who are still by far the largest racialized groupt of their nation) are their natural enemies and wish them no good. Graduate-seminar propounders of the Discourse will say that I am oversimplifying their ideas, but this is how the vast majority of ARWs—not habituées of graduate seminars on semiotics and the like—experience their rhetoric. And one cannot escape the discouraging impact this must be having on ARB children. To constantly drum into these young and impressionable minds that the society in which they live is set against them succeeding; that the majority of its population (ARWs) don’t care about them and would like to see them fail in life; that all is futile because no matter what you do you’ll never be accepted in the inner sanctum and will probably be randomly shot by the police because of the color of your skin, must be creating an entire generation of young ARBs who live in despair and hopelessness, along with in many cases resentment and rage. And, what adds to the tragic nature of it, it is for the most part based on a load of baseless propaganda.
Meanwhile the Dicourse teaches children racialized as “White” that they are evil and wrong and responsible for all immoral acts committed by their ancestors, or any racialized-as-“White” person, even hundreds of years ago. A friend of mine recently told me that her 21-year-old son, let’s call him Josh, disliked a man she had been dating because that man “represents everything Josh hates—White men.” There may be a few sick souls out there who think it’s good that Josh, who himself is a “White” man, and one of the kindest, gentlest souls I’ve ever known, has been taught to hate himself, but this does not look like progress to me. ARWs are further being told that they cannot possibly have an opinion that matters about anything and must unquestioningly and reverently accept every proclamation coming from anyone racialized as “Black,” no matter how incongruent with simple facts and common sense, as solemn wisdom. To the extent that many ARWs involved in our public discourse (academics, politicians, journalists) accept this premise, it is a brilliant tactical move by Ibrim Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates and their fellow travelers to completely muzzle dissent, thereby achieving a clear and unchallenged field for their ideas. (It is also working well personally for both of these systemically oppressed gentlemen: Coates’ net worth is between $6 and $12 million, depending on your source; that of Kendi a whopping $215 million.)
But a better society cannot be built on lies and confusion, of that I am certain.
The eternal victim narration proffered by the Prevailing Discourse, if implemented fully, would create a world of false incentives. If anyone not racialized as “White” could have the desired level of income, wealth, college admissions, corporate executive jobs and everything else simply by somehow keeping alive the idea that some number of ARWs are looking at them askance, and that for that reason government and taxpayers should be responsible for their success in life until all outcomes are the same, there would be very little incentive, or certainly scant incentive, for any young non-ARW to strive for personal betterment. (The same dynamic would of course apply if you told all ARWs that they need not do anything to get a house, a car, an income and a back account.)
The anti-racism solution to disparite outcomes—remove all standards on which ARBs, when aggregated statistically as a racialized group, perform less well—is already being applying with disastrous effect in some Left-governed cities. City councils in places like San Francisco and Washington, DC, upset that more ARBs are being convicted of crimes (as already noted, this is because this racialized group commits multiples more crimes than the rest of the population), have responded by ceasing to prosecute entire ranges of criminal behavior, and not merely shoplifting and flash mobs but car theft and other more serious crimes. Law-abiding working people, along with businesses and their tax contributions, are responding with their feet and leaving these ungoverned badlands. We cannot make a better society by abandoning tried and true standards of behavior and of excellence.
To summarize, I believe the following things to be more or less true:
People racialized as “Black” who had reached the age of majority by 1968, when the federal Fair Housing Act was passed, should receive reparations bringing their net worth and net income up to the median level of people racialized as “White” and born the same year. Those who were alive but had not reached the age of majority by 1968 sould receive progressively diminishing amounts depending on how many years they lived prior to 1968. Had such reparations been made in 1968 I am sure we would be in a very different place today. We cannot rewrite the past, but we can ease the burdens of Americans still alive today who were grievously wronged; and if this nation does not now take that opportunity, we will have missed a chance not only to “do the right thing” but also to make a large dent in the disparate measures on income and wealth between ARBs and ARWs.
The idea of reparations given to all currently living ARBs for wrongs committed against people other than themselves, however, going all the way back to slavery, is intellectually unsupportable and toxic in its social ramifications. If those of us calling for reparations constrain our claims to something more reasonable, we will likely get a better hearing.
My reparations scheme would only directly benefit ARBs 56 years old and older and, to the extent these beneficiaries might wish to share with descendants, their children and grandchildren. As for ARBs younger than 56, I do not believe that they have spent their lives, by and large, in a “systemically racist” society. Keep in mind that a 56-year-old turned 21 in 1998, during the Clinton administration and after decades of affirmative action, the EEOC, school busing and scores of preferential programs for ARBs from the SBA and the like. I do not deny that some ARWs continued, in the last decades of the 20th Century, to discriminate against ARBs; but I do not believe this discrimination was so prevalent or systematic that it made success in American society impossible. We should also consider that any discrimination faced by ARBs in the post-Civil Rights era must be balanced against the many preferences afforded, and also by the fact that ARBs also discriminate in favor of other ARBs in employment and other areas.
Disparities in income and wealth between ARBs and ARWs are indisputable, though, as I’ve shown, not as grievous as the manipulated statistics typically used by the “anti-racism” crowd suggest. And as I’ve already noted, a reasonable plan of reparations, targeted at ARBs alive prior to 1968, would certainly make a major dent in, if not eliminate, these disparities. Beyond that, I argue that we stop racializing the problem of poverty. Consider that there are many more Americans racialized as “White” living in poverty than those racialized as black (about 17 million as against about 7 million). It’s true, as the Prevailing Discourse loves to point out, that the 17 million ARWs living in poverty are 8.6% of all ARWs, while the 7 million poor ARBs make up 17% of that racialized cohort: nearly twice as great a proportion of the larger group. But when we talk about poverty in America as if it’s a racial problem we err on several counts. First, we treat 17 million poor ARWs as if they are of no importance, that their poverty is of no concern to us (and the Democratic Party can’t figure out why it has lost the “white working class” vote). Second, we miss the opportunity to build a coalition irregardless of racialized categories that will support the kind of social democratic measures I advocate at The Social Democrat: measures, for example, ensuring that all Americans willing to make an effort have access to either a job at a living wage or training programs also paid at a living wage. I take exception with the Prevailing Discourse idea that the major social justice issue of the day is racism, supposedly proven by the disparate outcomes achieved by ARBs on various success measures. I would argue instead that the major social justice issue of today’s United States is a lack of social democracy. We need to ensure that all children receive a quality education from pre-K through college (where college is warranted), a result not dependant on spending more money but focusing instruction on learning the basics at the 1st through high school levels, good teaching, student discipline and creating motivation to learn. We need to generously fund after-school centers to address the needs of children who do not receive proper support at home: providing help with homework, wholesome leisure activities and counseling when needed. We need to provide adequate accompaniment to secondary students who are not college bound, with apprenticeships, work-study programs, and coordination with junior colleges, to ensure that these young people have access to viable career paths. We need a federally mandated living wage for all jobs, with paid training for those for whom jobs are not available; affordable health and dental care; old-age pensions; and long-term care options in Medicare.
Focusing on disparities between groups of people aggregated on the basis of the dubious concept of race is pernicious on many levels. First and perhaps foremost, it contributes to the continuing fallacy that there are multiple types of human beings: “White,” “Black,” “Latino,” “Asian” and etc. Such thinking is both intellectually unsupportable and morally wrong. It encourages the “othering” of those in racialized groups different than one’s own, thereby diminishing a sense of solidarity and making empathy less likely. Solidarity and empathy are vital especially to installing and maintaining the kind of social democratic program briefling outlined in the previous paragraph; the dividing up of the population into competing racialized groups makes achieving solidarity difficult if not impossible. Leftists used to argue that the ownership class used strategies of divide and conquer to keep the working classes in subjection: in today's America the Prevailing Left Discourse is doing that for them. Working class people racialized as “White,” including the 17 million of them living in poverty, should be natural allies of working class people racialized as “Black” (or “Latino” and etc). Yet the racialized Discourse being constantly spewed not only by fringe actors but echoed by sitting Democratic politicians and mainstream Left news organs has created a new Yugoslavia at the end of communism: with competing, ethno-racialized groups vying for their respective shares. When the Democratic Party picks up the refrain that “Whites” are evil, privileged and “fragile,” is it any wonder that the average working class ARW responds with, “I don’t think I’m evil”; “I come from a working class family and don’t even make the median income, so I sure don’t feel very privileged, not like, say, Barack Obama, one of the most powerful people in the world who lives in a multi-million dollar mansion”; “and I’m sure not fragile, humping hods of bricks all day at my construction job?” Upon hearing the prevailing Left’s constant hammering of the idea that “racial justice” requires lots of special consideration for everyone who isn’t racialized as “White,” not only working-class ARWs, but all ARWs not privileged from birth, not part of the graduate-seminar set, or all those not suffering from guilt complexes, can’t help but conclude that the Democratic Party (the Left’s only avatar in the U.S.) is not for them, but for some other people. So-called “anti-racism,” and even the entire “racial justice” theme, as it is normally played out in the U.S., actually promotes racism. When ARB polemicists decry unjustifed police killings or harrassment only against people racialized like themselves, doesn’t this lack of concern for people of other racialized group smell a lot like racism? When they decry the poverty of 7 million ARBs but ignore the poverty of 17 million people racialized as “White,” doesn’t this again look an awful lot like racism?
Race-based slavery and the Jim Crow that followed are the signal stains on this nation’s history. Both, though obviously slavery to a greater extent, were nightmares. But—and this is where I part company with the Prevailing Discourse—the nightmare is over. Sure, Ahmaud Arbery would likely not have been chased down and killed had he been an ARW. And, maybe, George Floyd would not have been killed were he an ARW—though there is no actual evidence that this is the case. Both killings were atrocious and unconscionable, but they were statistical anomalies, as I have already described above; and in both cases the perpetrators of these horrible crimes are serving long prison sentences: life in prison without parole in the case of two of Arbery's murderers. There are other terrible crimes, like the bludgeoning to death of Tyre Nichols by five police officers all racialized as “Black”; the more recent case of 11-year-old, unarmed, hands-in-the-air Aderrien Murray shot to death by a racialized-as-”Black” officer responding to a domestic disturbance at his home; or the 10,000-plus garden-variety gangland killlings perpetrated every year by ARB private citizens against other ARBs. None of these unjustified and heinous killings, however, have resulted in national and international protests. (It would appear that for many, “Black” lives only matter when they are taken by people racialized as “White.”) My point: bad stuff will happen. People will commit heinous violent acts. Such people, as a matter of public safety, should be removed from circulation and an attempt made to rehabilitate them so that they cannot do further harm. But rare cases of wrongdoing by people racialized as “White” against victims racialized as “Black” do not prove, or even suggest, that our society is systemically racist.
When I say “the nightmare is over” I recognize that some percentage of ARW employers would rather interview someone whose name is Betty than Lakisha (10 percent in a major, recent University of California study)[1] but it is also true that ARB and ARL (Americans racialized as “Latino”) employers prefer to hire ARB and ARL employees;[2] that ARBs were largely responsible for attacks on people racialized as “Asian” during the pandemic; and that a racialized-as-“Latino” member of the Los Angeles City Council was recently recorded using racial slurs about the ARB child of another Council member. We should all be advocating for an end to racism, no matter where it’s coming from. We are all in this together, and the social democracy I advocate for is built on solidarity and radical inclusion. I simply do not believe that racism is a major feature of the 2023 United States, or at least not in any way that materially affects the capacity of any citizen, of any racialized group, from achieving their potential. Don’t get me wrong, I think that there are still barriers against Americans achieving their potentials: I just believe that those barriers are chiefly to be found in the lack of the kind of social democratic programs outlined above, and not in a “systemic racism.” Consequently, the solution to those barriers has little to do with chasing after an already small and ever-diminishing degree of racism against ARBs, but in instituting a broad social democratic program that will assure that all can fully participate in the economic, social, cultural and political life of community, state and nation. For those worried about disproportionate success (or failure) measures for ARBs when aggregated as a racialized group, I would suggest (trigger warning for those who can’t bear common sense) that efforts be made to convince ARB males (typically young) to stop committing violent crimes at many times the rate of the rest of the population; to encourage all ARBs, and all young people, to gain every possible bit of education and training you can; and to attempt to form two-parent, stable households. Non-criminality, education and stable households seem to be major drivers of success in America, as in any society I am aware of.
Yes, race-based slavery and Jim Crow was a long and bitter nightmare; and that nightmare, and attempts since the 1950s to correct it, have been one of the major themes, and major projects, of our lifetimes. After generations of justice warriors fighting this foul system, and after decades of active government programs to dismantle it, a difficult readjustment of attitudes will be required to move to the next phase: the non-racialized society sought by such towering figures as Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King. We need not wait to realize Dr. King’s dream—and it would be a mistake to wait—until every vestige of racism in every individual is eradicated. We will continue, for some time and perhaps forever, to have the occasional Travis McMichael (the Georgia ARW who shot Ahmaud Arbery for “jogging while Black”); L.A. City Council members Nury Martinez and Kevin de León (ARLs who referred to the ARB child of another councilmember as “a little monkey”); or the racialized-as-“Black” Darrell E. Brooks Jr., who drove an SUV into a group of mainly elderly ARW women at Waukesha, Wisonsin’s Christmas parade, killing 6 and wounding 62 others, after writing on social media “the old white ppl 2, KNOKK DEM TF OUT!! PERIOD.” After all, some children in my 1960s, all-ARW (segregated) elementary school mercilessly picked on anyone that was different: “carrot-top,” “fatty,” “skinny,” “sissy,” “retard!” We can and must always strive to convince others (and ourselves) to leave these unenlightened, childish and dangerous ideas behind.
But we can’t let a few bad actors keep us from building the society we all deserve.
And if we stop constantly pushing the idea, in the press, in education, in politics, that we’re all members of separate racialized groups, we might just give people fewer reasons to look upon others as “different.” It’s time to stop racializing people. The system was invented for no good end, and the benefits of its use (in effectuating and measuring the dismantling of still-lingering racism, as well as the progress of ARBs in general) are now, to my mind, outweighed by its nefarious effects in reinforcing the wrong idea that we are a nation consisting of multiple types of people treated differently based upon superficial physcial characteristics. It is my conviction that first, reparations to Americans racialized as “Black” who were alive prior to 1968, and then a fulsome social democracy, vigorously applied to all Americans, is the proper remedy for what ails America; and this cannot be achieved until we begin to promote solidarity among all Americans—especially all working Americans. Racializing has become so ingrained in the U.S. that eliminating it may seem unthinkable to some. But it is not the only way to look at things. In France, long considered a bastion of racial tolerance by American emigrés like Josephine Baker and Richard Wright, it is against the law for government agencies to divide people statistically by race. A long-cherished and foundational principle of France is universalism: since the French Revolution, it has been an article of faith that any French citizen is just that: a French citizen, irregardless of class background or where your ancestors lived. The French system is under attack today by some who wish to apply identitarian thinking derived from the American school of so-called “anti-racism, but this trend is being stoutly resisted by wiser French men and women who see in it a cogent threat to a “social model” painfully built over generations through the fostering of national solidarity. At heart we must decide what we believe about human nature: are human beings essentially mean and selfish, or are we more naturally inclined to be good and generous? Only a person inclined to the latter viewpoint, as am I—one inclined to credit the “better angels of our nature”—is likely to believe that we can build a better society based upon the social democratic ideals of solidarity and radical inclusion. Most ARWs were fooled into believing, for generations, that people with Afro-descendant features were a different, and inferior, type of human being. It is my impression that the vast majority of Amerians racialized as “White” have for some time now figured out that this is not true. I realize that it will require an act of faith on the part of many ARBs, given past experience, to believe that ARWs are basically just as fair, and good at heart, given proper information, as they surely believe that they and their fellow ARBs are. This will also require a relinquishment of the bad habit of conflating past with present and insisting that currently living Americans must bear the burdens of both the victimization and the victimizing of the past. A brilliant future awaits us if we can stand together, today and tomorrow, to build a better, social democratic society for all.
[1] https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/08/18/name-discrimination-jobs
[2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-sep-18-fi-11575-story.html
