A Short Leap: From Anti-Racism to Racism
Looking at positions on a few popular questions...
I’ve created a few tables with the general stance of three different generalized political orientations towards different questions (below). See if you can detect any pattern here…
Should race be a significant factor in choosing who to hire or promote?
Is it completely fine for a person to prefer dating outside their race?
Is race usually definitive is shaping a person's views and identity?
Should race be a significant factor in determining how kids are raised and taught?
Is the history of white people qualitatively different than that of others groups?
Should a color-blind society be our ultimate goal?
The last question is, I think, the most consequential. I could easily add a dozen more examples to this list but you probably see where I’m headed. The point is: you have really two choices when it comes to race (or any identity label that I can think of). You can make the characteristic or identity MORE salient or LESS.
The ‘Anti-Racist’ worldview says that we need to privilege “blackness” (whatever that is… it’s NEVER concisely defined and moves in conversation to conversation between mindsets and shared experiences to cultural values to the mere state of having darker skin). We need to lower standards for black students and employment candidates and divert resources toward this “community”. In reality of course there is rarely an example of a black community or a white community in the modern United States. Racial segregation still exists but it would be deeply wrong to say that race is the organizing principle for communities. This is just a way to refer to entire groups of people while excluding all those not in the group without sounding TOO harsh or exclusionary (indeed, without sounding racist).
If we could somehow convince ALL white people in the United States that these were worthy priorities it could work but that will never happen. Absent that, you will have a situation in which black students are being disciplined differently than white ones, where black patients are being given more medical resources (PURELY BECAUSE THEY’RE BLACK) and where black business loans are considered preferentially…as a matter of official policy, known to all. Objectors will say that this is currently the case for WHITE citizens: white citizens are favored merely because they’re white. I’m sure this does happen but it is massively unpopular and illegal and something that we as a society are working away from. It certainly doesn’t happen as a result of explicit policies on the part of government and corporations (and I defy you to show me ONE example in the past 20 years where I’m wrong). By privileging one group categorically and formally you will create unbelievable resentment among other poor and under-privileged people… the vast majority if whom are NOT black. This inevitability seems to escape the (often young and white and prosperous) Anti-Racists in the world today.
“In a very unequal society, people with the influence to sustain narratives tend to be insulated from what is happening to most of the population.”
- Simon Tilford
One last note: racial conversations in the U.S. often devolve into a conversation along a black/white binary but that’s obviously not our situation and never has been. Were you to craft policies on the basis of historical or statistical ‘privilege’ where do Jewish citizens fall? They’ve been victimized historically but outperform white people on average… should we prefer or discount them? How about Americans whose ancestors are East, or South, Asian? Ditto. Many groups of AFRICAN immigrants are actually more successful than naturalized white citizens in many areas (an odd result for a country with so much supposed racism). Should Hispanics receive half of the set-asides reserved for black people? On an absolute or a per-person basis? How about multi-racial citizens? This is the ridiculous mire of competing grievance priorities that you immediately run into with identity politics.
The only solution and the only worthy social ideal is to deal with each person individually, as institutions and under law. Ultimately knowing that a person is ‘white’ (or not) tells you almost nothing about them. Meaningful policies should not be drawn on racial bases.