ARTICLES BY TOPIC

America's Tortured Discourse on Race, Part I

Part I of a Three-Part Article

By W. E. Smith, Editor, The Social Democrat

At no time since the days of official apartheid has the American Left been more focused on racialized categories. Many no doubt see in this trend a welcome attention paid to the lingering effects of once officially sanctioned discrimination, as well as to the persistence of racist attitudes and practices today, by a new generation of Americans born after the bad old days of pre-1970s America. As a lifelong denizen of the American Left, born in 1955, I remember with pain and sadness the racism so prevalent during my early years, and I have always stood in solidarity with those seeking egress from the toxic society we then lived in and the attitudes that supported it. Yet I question, as a dedicated social democrat, whether many aspects of the American Left’s prevailing discourse about race are not doing more harm than good in terms of building a more just and humane society for all.

In the interest of narrative coherence, I will chiefly focus on Americans racialized as “Black” in this article, the main—though not only focus—of the Prevailing Left Discourse on race. Most of the thoughts I will offer apply, if not always in equal measure, to other racialized groups for whom self-appointed spokespeople claim harm, grievance and special treatment.

A quote widely attributed to Socrates is “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” And I will begin this examination of the American Left’s prevailing discourse on race with the terms used in that discourse. Let’s begin with “race” itself. Both biological and social scientists have for more than a generation denounced the very idea of race as a made-up concept with no valid descriptive purpose. They tell us that there is only one human race, one homo sapiens sapiens; we are all members of the same human family. Yet we continue, in common parlance, in politics and in the press, to speak about race as if it has some real substance: against all scientific wisdom, we essentialize it. We classify people into different  groups—“Blacks,” “Whites,” “Latinos,” “Native Americans,” etc.—often based on nothing more substantive than superficial physical characteristics, and then treat all members of each racialized category as if they share some common essence not shared by those racialized into other groups. This is only the beginning of the incoherence in our discourse on race.

Consider the terms “Black” and “White.” Theoretically these terms refer to people whose ancestors lived in either Africa or Europe (the oldest ancestors of all human beings lived in Africa, of course, if you go back far enough; we refer here to ancestors of the last, say, 500 years), but in this we are already defining things incorrectly. In fact, most Americans racialized as “Black” have significant numbers of European ancestors; and many Americans racialized as “White,” and the majority of them who live in the Southern states, have some African ancestors. So as a marker of where your ancestors lived, the terms “Black” and “White” come up short. Looking at the terms on another level, as mere physical descriptors, they again fail to properly define things. I have never met a human being who is either black or white. I have seen photographs of certain tribal peoples in Africa who are nearly black, and I have seen people of European heritage who are perhaps dangerously close to being white, but the vast majority of all people racialized in America as “Black” and “White” are actually varying shades of brown, from a reddish or golden tan to a coffee and cream or more rich, darker brown hue. Race was invented, it is widely believed by social scientists and historians, to create an “other” group; in the case of Americans racialized as “Black,” naming them as “other” made it possible for some in ante-bellum America to subject them to the barbarities of slavery with a clean conscience. And in considering the terms “Black” and “White,” it cannot be escaped that these two colors represent diametrically opposite concepts in our minds: nothing could be more different than black and white. This is no doubt why these terms were chosen: they suggest an unbridgeable different-ness between the people placed in these two categories. In continuing to use these terms, we are unfortunately carrying forward a stratagem used to divide members of the human family so that one group might oppress another.

To maintain the fiction of difference, the slave masters of the ante-bellum South developed a practice around the phrase “one drop of blood.” What this signified was that if a person had as much as a single African ancestor they would be considered “Black” and subject to all of the cruelties, injustices and indignities that such designation allowed. This is another piece of imprecise propaganda that we have carried forward; so that Barack Obama, whose ancestry is exactly 50 percent European and 50 percent African, is racialized as “Black.” If 75 percent of Barack Obama’s ancestors were in Europe, and only 25 percent in Africa, he would still be racialized as “Black.” Think about it: there’s something wrong here.

Another highly imprecise term used in our discourse on race is “African-American.” The term suggests that those to whom it is applied—a group which corresponds exactly to those racialized as “Black” under the “one drop of blood” rule—share some kind of “African-ness.” Yet of the dozens of Americans racialized as “Black” (or “African-American”) whom I have known, none spoke an African language, practiced an African religion, wore African clothing, ate African food, listened to African music or in any other way appeared to participate in any culture identifiable as “African”; only one of my many acquaintances racialized as “Black” has ever set foot on the African continent. I realize that it may be argued, and very plausibly, that the term “African-American” applies not to Africa itself, but to the sub-culture which evolved in the United States among enslaved people from Africa and their descendants, and continues to evolve in its distinct fashion today. Yet I would still argue against use of the term for at least three reasons. First, the phrase will always carry the incorrect connotation that those to whom it is applied are in some way culturally “African.” Second, even if we grant that the term references a distinct sub-culture in the United States, different people racialized as “Black” share in that subculture to different degrees and in different ways; and many people racialized as “White” also share in that subculture, if we look at things like participating in jazz or hip-hop music or using certain slang expressions. The fact is that “African-American” culture is a syncretic mixure of remnants from Africa preserved by the enslaved, elements absorbed from the then-surrounding European-American and First Peoples cultures, elements created by descendants of enslaved Africans post-slavery and, most of all, elements common to all modern Americans. At the same time, America’s mainstream culture has been considerably enriched by Afro-descendant elements, so that we are all to some extent living in a culture evolved from both European and African elements (as well as Hispanic, Native American, Asian, etc., etc.). Finally, we do not refer to people of chiefly European descent as “European-Americans,” so why for others? Just because some of my ancestors lived in Germany, I do not consider myself in any meaningful way “German”: I don’t wear leiderhosen, drink large quantities of beer from steins, and hate schnitzel; I neither speak nor read German and would be a fish out of water were I forced to take up residence in that country. Such hyphenated terms may make sense for first or second generation immigrants who still practice, to a large extent, the culture of their countries of origin. Beyond that time, such terms can have but little utility. In using terms like “Black” and “African-American,” we carry forward the “othering” of everyone with “one drop” of African ancestry, impeding the kind of true solidarity needed for a properly functioning society.

I understand that many Americans with African ancestry heartily embrace the terms “Black” or “African-American.” It is not to be wondered at that, after so many generations of Americans of chiefly European ancestry insisting that those with African ancestry are a different kind of humanity, so that they could oppress them without too much guilt, many Americans racialized this way decided to just embrace the distinction and make it a point of pride: “If you want us to be different, we will claim that difference with pride; and furthermore, we don’t need your acceptance.” This is not, however, the vision for a future America held by Frederick Douglas or other Americans with African ancestry who lived during slavery or in the generations that immediately followed. Such thinkers as Douglas believed that with emancipation and education of the formerly enslaved, Americans of putative European ancestry (those, that is, who could claim pure European ancestry, whether or not they had some number African ancestors) would come to realize that there was no meaningful distinction to be made on the basis of physical characteristics indicative of either European or African ancestry. This did not come to pass, tragically, but even throughout the first half of the 20^th Century many prominent Americans racialized as “Black” (Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington) continued to militate and hope for a race-less United States, encapsulated in Martin Luther King’s dream of an America where people would be judged by the “content of their character” and not “the color of their skin.” It was only with the Black Power movement of the 1960s that thinkers like Malcolm X rejected this assimilationist program to opt for a militant embrace of different-ness coupled with no-nonsense demands for equal treatment.

With the end of officially condoned, if not dictated, discrimination signaled by the Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968; the establishment of affirmative action programs and other measures to uplift Americans with African ancestry; and also with real, measurable progress in the participation of those racialized as “Black” in mainstream American society, the next several decades were quieter on the race question. Ironically, it has been in the last ten years, when the racism of the 1950s and 1960s is a distant nightmare, and after America has elected a man racialized as “Black” to its highest political office, that claims of race-based grievance have reached a new intensity, with a new insistence upon racializing Americans. Now the terms “African-Amerian” or “Black” are justified by those using them as a necessary means of focusing attention on those who not only have been wronged in the past but continue, in their view, to be wronged today. According to this line of thinking, advocating for a non- or post-racial America is a feint designed to prevent the injustices still being practiced against Americans not racialized as “White” from being measured. What was once considered an abomination by the American Left—dividing everyone up into racialized groups and emphasizing their “different-ness”—is by the most predominant segment of the current American Left now considered essential for the achieving of “racial justice.”

I will address the comparing of success measures among aggregated racialized groups in full just below, but for now will state that I do not believe that the path to a more sane society, one in which we finally recognize race for the contrived concept it is, lies through doubling down on racializing people. For one thing, I believe it disrespectful to reduce any fellow human being, the repository of so many dreams, visions, memories, thoughts, wisdom, passions and pains to a mere set of physical attributes (Michael Jackson: “I don’t want to spend my life being a color”). Aside from being morally objectionable in itself, such essentializing of race leads to other faulty conclusions.

First, it carries the implication that all people racialized into the same group somehow have the same interests, thoughts, feelings and opinions. We talk about the “Black” vote, or “White” society, as if all  people racialized as “Black” share some fundamental “Black” essence and all people racialized as “White” share some different fundamental “White” essence. In fact I, racialized as “White,” have far more in common with my racialized as “Black” friend Jack—fellow staunch Democrat, fiction writer and lover of jazz music—than either of us has with “White” Republican politician Ron DeSantis or “Black” Republican politician Tim Scott. My first cousins, children of my mother’s (racialized as “White”) brother and their second-generation-Filipino mother, surely have a greater share of my affection than virtually anyone on the planet. And few children could make a greater claim to my attention and aid, should he need it, than my racialized-as-“Black” great nephew, Luke.

The obverse of the misleading implication that all those racialized into the same group share some distinct racial essence (the “essentializing” of the made-up concept of “race”) is the idea that all those sharing one essentialized racial essence are in opposition to all those supposedly sharing a different racialized essence: “White” against “Black,” “Black” against “Asian,” “Latino” against “White,” and etc. The latest trend, “people of color,” is equally suspect: from the point of view of objective description, as already noted, we all have a color (none of us are actually white); and in attempting to pit all those not of putative 100 percent European ancestry against those of putative 100 percent European ancestry, this propaganda ignores racialized-as-“Asian” students suing Harvard over preferential admissions for candidates racialized as “Black”; Los Angeles city council members racialized as “Latino” caught making racist remarks about the racialized-as-“Black” child of another member; multiple attacks upon Americans racialized as “Asian” by those racialized as “Black” during the pandemic; or the fact that 32 percent of people racialized as “Latino,” 34 percent of those racialized as “Asian” and 12 percent of those racialized as “Black” voted for Trump in 2020.

There is no conceptually meaningful “people of color.”

In the interest of beginning on our path to wisdom by properly defining things, throughout this article I will use such phrases as “racialized as Black” or “racialized as White” to refer to the contrived, logically incorrect and descriptively imprecise categories into which we have forced both one another and ourselves.

As noted, some Americans racialized as “Black” (ARBs) as well as many others on the American Left claim that we must continue to racialize people because this is the only way we can measure whether each racialized category, as a group, is getting its fair share. The most extreme branch of this school of thought, represented by Ibrim Kendi and his “anti-racism” stance, further argues that whenever one racialized category, when aggregated statistically as a group, does not perform as well on any measure of success—be it income or wealth, health, educational attainment or staying out of prison—the one and only cause must be a racism practiced systemically throughout American society with the subtle but determined aim of maintaining a disproportionate amount of power, influence and material resources in the hands of people racialized as “White.” This assertion is absurd on its face, of course, for no one would deny for a second that the poorer life chances of a racialized-as-”White” individual who drops out of school to sell drugs illegally and subsequently spends time in prison (or whose parent(s) sold drugs illegally and ended up in prison), or who turns to drink to cope with life’s stresses and cannot hold down a job or stay in a marriage (or whose parents . . .) are the result of bad individual choices. Yet we are asked to accept that all bad outcomes experienced by ARBs are caused by the racism of ARWs; or we are in any case asked to accept that on any measure where ARBs, in the aggregate, do less well than ARWs, the reason is racism: and not the lingering effects of past racism, but an ongoing and systemic racism woven throughout the fabric of contemporary American society. But by this logic, we would have to conclude that racialized-as-“Asian” (ARA) students are given some unfair advantage in college admissions, since they perform better than other aggregated racialized groups (including those racialized as “White”) in this arena; or that both ARAs and Americans who identify as Jewish are given unfair economic advantages, since their household incomes are substantially higher than the national average; or that Americans racialized as “Black” are given special preference in hiring for NFL and NBA teams where, in spite of constituting 13% of the U.S. population, they form the majority of starting lineups. We all know that any of these proprositions are absurd, yet many on the Left readily accept the premise that whenever ARBs perform less well than others, when racialized and thus aggregated, the reason must be that someone is either getting an unfair advantage or someone is being unfairly handicapped.

It is not surprising that remedies proposed for this incoherently and tendentiously defined problem are not merely less than cogent but in many cases outright toxic. One of the worst of these, championed by the Ibrim Kendi school of “anti-racism,” involves the dismantling of any protocol or standard which results in ARBs showing lower measures of success, when people are aggregated into racialized groups for statistical measuring, than ARWs. So if ARBs are not doing as well as ARWs on SAT tests, quit giving SAT tests; if due to their higher rate of criminal convictions, ARBs are turned away from apartment leases more often than ARWs, make it illegal for landlords to refuse to rent to convicted felons; if, because people racialized as “Black” are committing crimes at a substantially higher level than others, and thereby ending up in prison in greater numbers, stop prosecuting whole ranges of crimes—or completely dismantle police departments. For the average American, things like SAT tests, the vetting of lessees or the prosecution of crime are tried and true methods employed for generations, if not centuries, to ensure that society functions well and smoothly for all. From the toxic viewpoint of the Ibrim Kendi school of thought, however, America is rotten to the core, the defining element of its existence the practice of race-based slavery, its present organization characterized by a cruel systemic racism. By this logic there is no society, nor any standard or protocol, worth preserving: since every single standard and protocol which has made the United States the most prosperous nation in the world has been designed for the sole purpose of preserving White supremacy. I, clearly, reject this reasoning. While it is indisputable that ARBs score lower, when aggregated into a racialized group, than ARWs on many measures of success; and while I roundly accept that these disparities, by a plausible chain of causation, could be shown to stem in various ways from the officially condoned, if not mandated, discrimination of the 20^th Century; and while I also accept that there are still people in America who harbor negative prejudices about ARBs (just as many ARBs harbor negative stereotypes about racialized groups other that their own); I do not believe that current American society is systemically, and certainly not sytematically racist (more on this just below). Americans racialized as “Black,” along with the rest of us, are living in the most safe, healthy and prosperous society that has ever existed on the face of the earth with a democracy that, while not perfect, offers a capacity to participate in government decisions that affect one’s life that is superior to almost any society that has ever existed. I believe that major changes are needed to create the more just and humane society, built upon the ideals of solidarity and inclusion, that a committed social democrat like myself advocates; but I also think it would be a mistake to minimize the accomplishment of former generations of Americans in bringing us to the unprecedented plateau at which we now find ourselves. And to the extent that things like SAT tests, the strict regulation of anti-social, criminal behavior and other standards of excellence have made our current level of success possible, we should be extremely chary of jettisoning them.

Some in the so-called “anti-racism” school of thought go so far as to attribute neo-liberalism and other excesses of unregulated capitalism to racism: according to this line of thought, Americans racialized as “White” would never permit other ARWs to suffer in poverty as they do ARBs. The folks who came up with this idea presumably have little awareness of European feudalism, Dickensian England or France of the ancian régime: that is, ARWs have shown themselves perfectly capable of brutally oppressing other ARWs without needing racism as an excuse. And this does not just apply to the past: witness the fact that some 17 million Americans racialized as “White” live below the poverty line in the U.S. today, more than double the number of ARBs living in poverty. Many Americans racialized as “White” (read, “Republicans”) seem little concerned about the precarity and deprivation suffered by their fellow human beings, regardless of the racialized category into which they are generally placed.

One simple problem with accepting the core premise of the modern American Left’s prevailing discourse on race—that America is systemically racist, set up at its core to keep Americans racialized as “Black” (ARBs) from getting a fair shake—is that we must first overcome a great deal of countervailing, if admittedly anecdotal, evidence. We have recently had a two-term president racialized as “Black”; there are 62 ARBs in the United States Congress; ARB celebrities like Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey are both wildly popular and exorbitantly wealthy; entertainers like Will Smith or Stevie Wonder are rewarded not only with stratospheric incomes but the respect, admiration and affection of millions of Americans racialized as “White”; there are one million, seven hundred and ninety thousand millionaires among the ARB population; NFL and NBA teams staffed chiefly by ARBs are fervently cheered on by tens of thousands of largely ARW fans, standing side by side with ARB fans, while being fantastically remunerated; and 61% of the ARB population is now considered middle-class by the U.S. Census. Just looked at from a common-sense standpoint, America does not look like a society that is trying to keep people racialized as “Black” from participating or achieving success: or if it is, it’s allowing an incredibly large number of ARBs to somehow slip through the cracks.

To this the Prevailing Left Discourse on Race will reply that while it is true that some—even millions—of Americans racialized as “Black” are succeeding in American society by just about any measure you choose, these are either the lucky, or the especially gifted, ones who were somehow able to break through the barriers of systemic racism. Then they will tell you that the proof of this systemic racism is right there in the fact that, when aggregated statistically as a group, ARBs do less well on such measures of success as income and wealth, health, educational attainment, being shot by the police or staying out of prison.

But let’s closely examine, at this point, two of the most oft-cited of these disparities: wealth and income. On wealth, advocates for a certain version of “racial justice” and the Left press are in the habit of trumpeting figures showing glaring disparities in wealth between Americans racialized as “Black” and Americans racialized as “White.” Perhaps the most alarming of these is the “ racial wealth gap,” as reported in one of many instances on the CNN site October 31, 2023, under the headline, “White Americans Have Far More Wealth Than Black Americans”: “The net worth of the typical Black household in 2022 was $44,900,” the article states, while the median  household net worth for Americans racialized as “White” was $285,000. These figures are not in dispute, and if taken in the sense that the CNN editors and headline writers are clearly aiming for, they paint a shocking picture of a nation where Americans racialized as “White” are getting all of the goodies, presumably by maintaining a “systemically” racist society that keeps other racialized groups under their metaphoric knee. But here it would be a good idea to remember Mark Twain’s brilliant observation: “there are lies, there are damnable lies, and then there are statistics.” That is, statistics are only useful, for anyone wanting a fair and objective view of a situation, if they are used in a fair and objective manner. It is true that the median household net worth of ARWs is $285,000 while the median household net worth of ARBs is $44,900, but let’s look at a few factors, other than possible racism, which no doubt go a large way toward explaining these disparties. First, the aggregate ARB population in the U.S. is considerably younger than the ARW population: the median age of ARWs is 44 and that of ARBs is 34. Now consider, the median net worth of all American households of those younger than 35 is $39,000, while that of households of those 35 to 44 is $135,600 and that of those 45-54 years old is $247,200. In other words, given nothing more than the simple age differential between ARWs and ARBs, we would expect ARBs to have considerably lower household net worths than ARWs (by just a rough calculation, this would appear to account for up to $100,000 of the aggregate difference). Second, ARWs achieve college degrees at a significantly higher percentage than ARBs: 41.8% of ARWs have a bachelors degree and only 27.6% of ARBs. Consider: the median net worth of all Americans with a college degree is $464,000, while the figure is only $106,800 for those with only a high school diploma. So here is another factor, along with the age differential, which surely contributes in no small degree to the net worth gap between ARBs and ARWs (factoring in the difference in educational attainment would appear to account for another roughly $50,000 of the aggregate difference).[1] Finally, since these “wealth gap” figures are calculated by household, we must consider the number of wage earners in a household. Consider: according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 64% of children racialized as “Black” live in single-parent households and only 24% of children racialized as “White.” So, in comparing net worth by ARW and ARB households we are to some considerable extent comparing apples and oranges; that is, the net worth accumulated by two working adults against that accumulated by one: this, along with the aggregate age differences and wide disparity in college degrees renders the CNN figure virtually meaningless. The same CNN piece undercut their own aura of “systemic racism” by providing another helpful data point: American households racialized as “Asian” have higher net worths than all other groups at a whopping $536,000 (as compared to $285,000 for Americans racialized as “White”). By the logic of the anti-racism group, we must conclude that somehow, somewhere, Americans racialized as “Asian” (ARAs) are being given some very signifianct extra advantages. But, as we know this supposition is absurd, let’s seek the answer elsewhere. Consider: only 16% of ARA children are being raised in one-parent homes (as against 24% for ARWs and 64% for ARBs); 59.3% of ARAs have college degrees (as against the 41.8% for ARWs and 27.6% for ARBs). One begins to suspect, anathema to the Ibrim Kendi school of thought, that personal behaviors and life choices must be playing a considerable part in the greater economic success of Americans racialized as “Asian” as against both ARWs and ARBs. Put differently, the CNN headline might more accurately have read: “Older, two-parent and college-degreed households have more wealth than younger, single-parent and non – college degreed households.” This would not, however, have served the propaganda purposes of CNN which, like much of the American Left, is addicted to the story of a cosmic moral struggle between racialized groups in America, with ARWs the evil Darth Vader, and everyone else the guys in the white hats.

Let’s just consider a few other concrete figures before moving away from economic success. A natural inference, upon seeing the tendentious “race wealth gap” figures touted by the anti-racism crowd and the standard Left press, is that Americans racialized as “Black” must be earning a mere pittance compared to their ARW fellow citizens. Actual facts paint a substantially different picture. The following table shows U.S. Department of Labor figures for the median annual personal incomes of various racially defined groups:

Racialized Group	Men	Women
“White”	~$64,000	~$50,000
“Black”	~$50,000	~$50,000
“Hispanic”	~$47,00	~$42,000
“Asian”	$87,000	~$70,000

A couple of observations: the differences in personal median incomes between ARWs and ARBs are far less substantial than one would expect in a systemically racist society. In fact, ARB women earn about the same incomes as ARW women. The ARW men median is $14,000 per year higher than ARB men, but we must consider several factors that could easily explain this differential: the higher median age of ARWs (44 vs. 34); the higher level of college degrees among ARWs (about 42% vs. 28%); and the far greater degree of criminal activity and resulting incarceration among ARB men (33% of all ARB men have a felony conviction, as opposed to 8% of the overall population: and no, those convictions are not chiefly for simple drug possession, typically a misdemeanor).[2] Once again, Americans racialized as “Asian,” who make up only about three percent of felony defendants,[3] by the way, are the real outliers here, with median annual earnings blowing away both ARWs and ARBs. And once again, in clear contradiction to the idea of a “White America” supposedly viciously opposed to the advancement of “people of color,” it would appear that such behaviors and choices as getting a college degree, maintaining stable, two-parent families and staying on the right side of the law may be the main drivers of economic success, not race.