The Bernoulli Effect

FWIW, I don't think the position that minorities can't be racist has ever been more than a substantial minority itself within the academic left.

Come to think of it, I don't know if I was right in saying that was a minority position. I've always thought it a stupid idea, so I naturally assumed most people did, too.

I've been trying to dial back the hyperbole; I wasn't too successful in my last statement. So there might be a few raised eyebrows...

But really the entire statement was probably a mistake because I didn't start off with the intent of making a generalization about the extent of the idea; however common it is or isn't (and that's an interesting question on its own), it's common enough.

This also brings to mind the non-reciprocity inherent in the arguments of the open borders advocates. I wonder if there is some common ancestor to both ideas: minorities cannot be racists and the US has no right to enforce its own immigration laws.

Thank you for your kind words. I don't think that "most" leftists hold this definition of racism (although it probably depends on what you call a "leftist"), but it certainly has a noticable following.

I will say that a structural definition of racism, by itself, doesn't bother me as much as long as there is recognition that there are "pockets" of minority power within the structure. I think there are problems with making racism solely a structural analysis, but at the same time I understand why leftists push the definition. Structural racism IS a major problem, and there is a major gap in our language to discuss what it is and how it works. These leftists would argue that what you're talking about is better labeled "racial prejudice", and we should use "racism" to talk about a system of domination, rather than isolated acts of stereotyping. In a sense I agree--I think that the word "racism" is being asked to do too much in our society, and eventually it's going to have to be broken up into a variety of vocabulary ("racism" "racial prejudice" "racial insensitivity" et al) to describe the variety of problems under the umbrella. And while we have another phrase that rather intuitively refers to irrational prejudice on basis of race ("racial prejudice"), we don't have one besides racism that refers to structures of domination and subordination on account of race.

The reason leftists are so shrill about defining racism as a structural issue is that when it isn't--when it's defined purely as "irrational prejudice"--then structural issues aren't discussed at all. If there could be some guarantee that these issues would actually be addressed, then the war over the vocabulary we use to describe them would become less important.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I don’t think I can agree with you that “structural racism IS [still] a major problem”. I would feel much better about saying, “Racism in structures is still a major problem.”

I have a problem with any sort of structural definition (meaning inherent only to the structure, that is), because it relies upon the negation of the core principal of conservative/libertarians: that it is the individual who is ultimately responsible for his or her own actions; and that since the individual is imperfect, so will anything created by individuals be imperfect (including governments, activist organizations, and oil companies).

This, of course, is not to deny that race hatred doesn’t still exist—and if a critical mass of prejudiced people wind up in one group or organization then clearly the group will reflect the prejudices of its members.

But assigning a status to a group or class that is equal to that of an individual goes to the heart of my rejection of Marxism/socialism. For every bad example of group behavior there are many obvious refutations: Enron epitomized the greed of capitalists, but Whirlpool relieved women from the crushing physical burden of doing the laundry. And et cetera.

Maybe I don’t know enough about how collectivists have constructed their group theory; I may be guilty of bad assumptions. But assigning characteristic behaviors to monolithic groups seems to founder upon the rocks of empirical evidence.

I agree with you that focusing on the words does nothing to fix the problem (though asking Leftist academics to not sweat the words is probably a mug’s game). I just try to keep in mind the overall trend of race relations in the US: from lynching in 1900, to integration (of the army and schools) in the 50s and 60s, to widely-accepted interracial marriages nowadays. Lots of bumps along the way, but focus on the beginning and endpoints. Maybe those oppressive group structures need some capitalistic efficiency training—they’re not doing their job too well after all.

I don't think it's necessarily wrong to relate certain traits (especially social perceptions) to certain groups. And I think it's really important to recognize how this reality circumscribes my individual choice. For example, I'm Jewish. As you know, there are certain stereotypes that surround Jewishness--for example, money-grubbing and untrustworthy in business.

If someone sees a Mezzuzah on my storefront, and says "oh man, I'm not going to do business with that Jew--they're not trustworthy," I can't help that. The social realities that define "Jew" in the public psyche have real effects on me that are primarily outside my control. If a society is sufficiently constructed on theories of Jewish inferiority (even if its beneath the conscious, superficial level), then there is little any one individual can do to counteract that. Subconscious racism is similar phenomona. Academics such as John Dovidio, Samuel Gaertner, Charles Lawrence III, and Jerry Kang have documented considerable amounts of subconscious racism even amongst Whites is claim to not be racist. Since these perceptions track/target groups, not individuals, analysis on an individual-to-individual level is going to be wildly underinclusive. Instead, as Richard Delgado argues, we should use the social inequalities we can see as proxies for the subconscious discrimination we can't: forcing us to take subtantive inequities (the fact that American schools are still largely segregated, for example; or that Blacks are arrested for crimes disproportionate to how often they commit them, charged more often once arrested, convicted more often once charged, and sentenced more harshly once convicted) serious as indicators of continued racism (or any other isms) even when our procedural standards are nominally neutral.

I argued in a past post that one can view social positioning as being primarily caused by three categories: Luck, Pluck, or F*cked. Philosophical liberals believe in a primarily autonomous, self-constructed self, which can be largely separated and atomized from the outside world. From there, it is easy to make the syllogism that b/c people are responsible for their actions, and their actions constitute their social position, they are (by and large) responsible for their current situation. Within these paradigm, liberals think that good and bad luck plays a relatively larger role to play, while conservatives think it plays a relatively smaller role compared to "pluck" (hard work). Post-modernists would argue that while both have roles to play in some cases, their are people for whom the deck is stacked against from the start--who are intrinsically disadvantaged via social small-t truths. While a post-modernist might agree that individuals are responsible for their own ACTIONS (in a Sartre-existentialist sort of way), they would disagree stridently that they are primarily responsible for their own SITUATION. If I'm fired from my job because of subtle (unprovable) racial prejudice, pulled over because of a Driving While Black, mistrusted by society b/c my race is primarily shown on TV as being a criminal, etc--the impacts these realities have on my life can only be ascribed to my fault in a perverse world.

I deal with racial issues quite often on my blog--I encourage you to run a search in my archives for "race" and read through. Or alternatively, I have a brief (8 page) introduction to Critical Race Theory I could send you, that would give you a more thorough background to the subject that I can give in this comment.

There's much to digest here--and I'm afraid I'll need a little time to come up with a reply.

Your citing of Delgado's theory that visible results are proxies for hidden causes rings an uncomfortable bell: I've used a similar argumentative device a lot.

Back in engineering school, we studied the "black box" technique, whereby an unknown complex system was analyzed by providing a known input and noting the corresponding output. With enough observations a "transfer function" could be derived that completely described the behavior of the system in the context of the real world. The exact complexity of the internals could very well remain unknown forever for all we cared--as long as we knew the input, we could predict the output. Hence "black box".

I've adapted the concept to analyze (admittedly mostly postmodern academic) political problems, mainly as a way to circumvent my lack of extensive postgraduate study of those guys; my theory remains a work in progress. ;-)

I'll do some reading on your blog.