Am I a Racist or What? (Correct answer: "What?")
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I researched and wrote this in 2002 after a parishioner of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. called me a racist. It has not abated – the accusations keep coming. Some people take my white color as prima facie evidence that I must be. I am posting it here to make it available for ready reference. Graham July 19, 2022.
The Al Sharptons of the world use the word racist with abandon. A fellow parishioner informed me recently that the Republicans are a racist party. My kids have in the past called me a racist. It begs the question. What is a racist?
Every dictionary I consulted was unanimous. A racist is somebody who believes or practices racism. Whew! Cleared that up. Now what the hell is racism? The dictionaries in our household are all over the lot. It is some combination of beliefs, emotions and individual and group actions. We could all be racists or almost none of us. What am I?
A racist society implements discriminatory policies that result in segregation, discrimination and persecution. Well, I'm not a society unto myself, and unless the Republicans have some dark secrets of which I'm not aware I don't support racist policies. The actions that define an individual racist are discrimination and oppression. I don't do those either.
The Germans tell it like it is as far as emotion goes. They define racism as Rassenhaß, literally "racial hatred". Several definitions bring up the notion of racial purity, which strikes me as an emotional issue. I'd say that prejudice remains in the category of emotion until it is acted upon. Anyhow I'm safe on these grounds. My emotions don't get roiled dealing with people of different races. Thank God most people's don't, given how thoroughly integrated our society has become.
In the belief category, all the definitions agree that it is racism when one believes that there is a natural hierarchy of races, especially if you suppose your own race is better than the rest. A broader definition says you are a racist if you believe that people of different races are different in ability. What ability they don't say. The only way such a claim can have meaning is if it applies to averages, which makes it racism when I notice that great gymnasts are often Oriental, chess players Russian, basketball players black and hockey players white.
The sad fact is that I notice other things as well. The incidences of different races among different professions, in different neighborhoods, driving different cars and among the faces associated with crime that appear in the newspaper. The news informs me of the average scores achieved by different races on standardized tests such as the SAT. If making mental associations such as these defines a racist, only the most profoundly out of touch are not racists.
People from every part of the political spectrum note these facts. The chief difference is in their explanation and interpretation and opinion on appropriate courses of action. The liberal arguments are primarily environmental. The chief cause of black underperformance is past and present discrimination, and the proper course of action is to give blacks the opportunity to excel by remedying that discrimination. The conservative argument is that racial differences have been found to be in significant measure genetic (the counterarguments are vociferous but largely ad hominem -- there has been no effective rebuttal to the findings Vanhanen, Rushton, Lynn, Jensen, Murray, Herrnstein, Terman et. al.) and to some degree cultural, and in any case it is not the government's job to address them. The government must and does provide equality under the law, at least to the degree that it has ever been available in any human society, and the success of large numbers of black citizens is testimony to the fact that they are not all held back by systematic discrimination.
Republicans and Democrats differ primarily on prescribed courses of action. Republicans tend to be of the opinion that citizens must be responsible for their own lives. They take it as given that each individual is uniquely and differently endowed with the characteristics need to make him or herself successful. It has always been thus, regardless of race and privilege at birth. Whatever their degree of individual competence in different fields, relieving people of responsibility for their own lives does not make any of them more productive citizens. Democrats tend to see individuals, and especially groups of individuals, as so disadvantaged that government must step in to protect them. Enable them to compete more successfully if possible, and protect them from fate if they are not competent to care for themselves.
In terms of race, this has come to mean that the Democrat party favors programs that redistribute society's goods to the disadvantaged, who are disproportionately minorities. Republicans believe that such distribution perversely distorts the incentive to work and that money is better managed by those who earn it than by government. They note that government programs are invariably expensive to administer, compromised by fraud and tend to funnel money as much to individuals clever enough to game the system as to those with real needs.
George Bernard Shaw observed that a government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. It is no surprise that the parties have a differential appeal to voters. In the broadest sense, Republican candidates and platforms appeal to those who pay the taxes that would be redistributed. Democrats appeal to the prospective beneficiaries. The former tend to be white, the latter minority. Is either party racist for making such appeals? More significantly, could any party devise a platform that did not in some measure generally favor members of one race over another?
If seeing the world as it is and looking out for our own self interest is racist, we are all racists. If racism retains its most common historical meaning, that of oppression, discrimination and prejudice, then D'Souza is right that racism is largely a thing of the past and is not a major factor in modern politics. Today the use of the epithet "racist" provides more information about the person doing the describing than the person or group being described. A far better term is "race realist." That is a member of that rare minority who is not afraid of an honest discussion about what researchers and reporters know about race
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