Introduction
Everything I’m about to say has probably been said before, by me and many other people. The topic is not new and its importance does not seem to have diminished with time. I refer to the topic of racism and the influence that race plays in society in creating divisions and provoking violence and dysfunction. It is a problem that is as old as humanity itself.
In the wake of the brutal murder of a young black man, George Floyd, by a white policeman, racism has been given the very bright spotlight, adding fuel to the already simmering fire of discontent that characterizes our public discourse. Race already occupied a central position in every possible political disagreement. And this event has added incredible energy and brought a lot of attention to those who want to make race the central issue, not merely as a service to the truth of the importance of race in our social problems, but also, crucially, as a lever to obtain the legislation, regulation and reform that they see as necessary to fix this “racial injustice.” This big group of “racial justice warriors” includes both those who are sincere, and those who are simply cynical political opportunists.
I want to try to do a few things. First, I want to try to clarify the issues involved, the complicated and fuzzy concepts that are packed into the expression “racial justice” or “racial injustice.” I think much of the emotion comes from a lack of clarity as people use the same term to mean different things. So my first order of business will be to try to create a common starting point, a set of terms that we can all agree on.
Secondly, I want to explain my own point of view and why sometimes I seem to get into trouble for it. Some of the time it is not my fault; whatever I say I will be judged wrong, as I will explain. But often, I think it has to do with the semantics and my using terms, or reacting to terms used by others, that are unclear. Hopefully, having cleared up these meanings, I will be better understood. But as preparation for presenting my own point of view I wanted to take a little time, begging your indulgence, to say something about my own background and the context from which I come to this topic.
My hope is that this will add clarity to understanding my own position and strongly felt concerns surrounding the perception of racism, and the use of the idea of racism in social activism. So let’s get started.
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Defining Terms
What does "systemic racism" or equivalently "institutional racism" mean?
A definition would go something like this: Systemic racism exists in an organization or a society when the rules and modes of behavior are such as to discriminate between people in terms of their race.
This definition and the concept does not reference attitudes or intentions, it simply assumes that racial disparities in outcomes are the undeniable result of racist intent. In other words, if you google the concept 'systemic racism' you will find definitions in term not of individual attitudes or even group attitudes (whatever that means), but rather in terms of stark differences between blacks and whites in things like unemployment, wealth, incarceration, police shootings, etc. Pretty much, the observation of any disparity can be used to both define and provide evidence for 'systemic racism'. In a nutshell disparate racial outcomes are taken as sufficient proof of racism and actual racial discrimination. I will return to this in a moment.
Before I do, I need to point out a serious problem with the very concept of systemic racism, namely, it is incoherent. It is incoherent because a social entity like a social system (a society) or an institution cannot itself be racist. Racism is an attitude. It is a particular kind of prejudice, an aversion. Only individuals, not systems or institutions. can have attitudes and prejudices. Only individuals can be racists. By the same token, there may be discriminatory outcomes but they are not "racist outcomes" - which is a meaningless term. We may know what it means, what it is intended to convey, but we should rather say discriminatory outcomes, outcomes whose effects, for whatever reason, discriminate by race.[1]
Notably, discriminatory outcomes, pernicious though they may be, may not be, and often will not be, the result of discriminatory designs. This does not mean these outcomes should not be regarded with concern, but it does mean that dealing with them, trying to fix them, does not entail changing people’s attitudes (see John McWhorter here). It is not behavior modification or attitude adjustment that is needed (though this appears to be something very high on the racial justice activists’ agenda). Rather it is action to bring understanding of the root causes of the unintended, unanticipated, unrecognized outcomes that needs to be arrived at, and having arrived at that understanding, fashioning appropriate policy to deal with it. It is my contention that most of the stated or implied elements of the racial activists’ agenda are either useless or counterproductive if fixing the racial disparities is the goal. If we make this plain we may discover the essence of the disagreement – it is not about goals, it is about the means to achieve those goals because of disagreements about the causes of the problems.
Before leaving this, let me say a word about racist attitudes. There is an implication in the use of the concept 'systemic racism' that there is widespread racism in America today, in the sense that many or most or all white people are, at least a bit, racist at their cores. In fact, this may be an alternative definition – widespread racial attitudes leading to significant racial disparities. Along with this, we encounter concepts like “white privilege”, “inherent bias”, “racist microaggressions,” and similar ideas.[2]. It is hard to imagine how anything could be more fundamentally racist that this attitude. But, the intellectual space in which it is propagated is one in which people will not allow that conclusion, because they see no way at all in which whites can be the victims of racism.
I want to strongly claim that all these concepts like “white privilege”, “inherent bias”, and similar terms are nasty and destroy the possibility of any productive discussion, that is, of any discussion that aims to improve the lives of people in the real world. In fact, much harm to innocent individual lives has already been and is continually being done by taking these concepts seriously. Their use ought to be declared illegitimate by all people of good will.
In addition, examining the idea that there is widespread racism in America today. the idea that racist attitudes abound and are hidden within even innocent sounding comments, I claim that this is simply false, there is no systemic racism in this sense. In general, individual attitudes in America have never been less racist.
Of course, racists do exist. Sad to say, they always will. But they are not proportionately large in number and they are not considered acceptable by most of us. They are ridiculed or regarded with horror. All people have prejudices of different kinds. To mine the depths of people's souls for hints of racism strikes me as incredibly perverse. So, I strongly deny the claim and the assumption that racist attitudes confront black people wherever they go in America and dramatically constrain their lives, and I know that many if not most, black people agree with me. This is not the central issue underlying their many problems that many black people in America face, and they know it. But, evidently many white so-called “liberals” and “progressives” did not receive the memo.
So, to summarize, for these multiple reasons, I think the term 'systemic racism' is basically untenable and we ought to speak about racial disparities or even systemic racial disparities rather than systemic racism. In part 2 discuss the determinants of racial disparities.
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[1] My more technical friends in the social-sciences will recognize the problem. If you believe that all social-science inquiry should adhere to the principle of methodological individualism, then you simply cannot attach a coherent meaning to the term systemic racism or its equivalents. Methodological individualism is a principle of investigation in the social-sciences that claims that any meaningful explanation of social phenomena must begin with individual actions, since social phenomena are, after all, are the results of many interacting individual actions, and mostly these results, though brought about by these human actions, are in no way the result of human design.
[2] It can be quite tricky and disconcerting. For example, if you are white and you get into a discussion about this, your claim that you are not a racist can be summarily dismissed with the counter claim that since you are white and have not experienced the pain of being black you inevitably harbor an inherent prejudice based on your incurable ignorance. In fact your very denial may be seen as proof that your white privilege blinds you to your ditherer racism. On the other hand if you admit to being a reflexive racist, they will take your word for it. In this bizarre post-modernist logic your white skin simply dooms you to be a perpetual racist. All you can do is to try to overcome this bias as best you can, probably by adopting an attitude of perpetual contrition. “Please forgive me for being white, how can I help.”
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