rationalpassion (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} rationalpassion) wrote,@ 2008-05-10 15:51:00 |
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Via the racialist--if he's not a full-fledged racist, he's pretty close--Lawrence Auster, I read this from the Washington Post:
"Racial attitudes have changed dramatically in the United States over the past several decades, of course, and overtly racist beliefs are much less prevalent among white Americans of all classes today. But a more subtle form of prejudice, which social scientists sometimes call symbolic racism, is still out there--especially among working-class whites.
"Symbolic racism means believing that African American poverty and other problems are largely the result of lack of ambition and effort, rather than white racism and discrimination. Who holds symbolically racist beliefs? A relatively large portion of white voters in general and white working-class voters in particular, according to the 2004 American National Election Study, the best data available on this topic." (Emphasis added)
Auster's response is uncomfortably close to the truth. This is awful because the guy takes a truism--that some significant portion of the failures of African American individuals can and should be blamed on those individual African Americans, not on white racism--and uses it to bolster his "racial realist" view that we should not be surprised by African American failures but should rather expect them because people of African descent tend be to stupid failures who resort to crime (or, at minimum, government-mandated affirmative action) because their intellectual inadequacy leaves them incapable of competing with, for example, whites of European descent, on a level-playing field. Anyway, here's Auster's response:
"Here's what Abramowitz is saying. If you see the fact that blacks are behind, i.e., disproportionately poor, low-achieving, and prone to disorderly and criminal behavior, and if you reasonably infer that it is something about these low achieving blacks--their behavior, character, beliefs, aspirations, abilities--that is keeping them behind, that means that you think that blacks have a defect or inadequacy relative to other groups, which means that you think that blacks are inferior, which means that you're a racist. Therefore the only way not to be a racist is to think that blacks' poor performance is caused by factors that have nothing to do with blacks--factors that are artificially imposed on blacks by racist whites.
"In other words, if you're white, the only way not to be a racist is to believe that blacks perform poorly because they are victimized by white racism. If you reject the idea that white racism is what keeps blacks down, that proves you're a white racist.
"To call whites racist because they reasonably believe that blacks' chronic problems are a function of blacks' own abilities, qualities, and behaviors, is to say that whites are morally defective for using their reason. Which is the same as saying that whites don't have the moral right to use their reason. Which is, obviously, an infinitely worse form of racism than the racism that Abramowitz falsely attributes to whites."
The color-blindness advocated by Martin Luther King in his "I Have A Dream" Speech (putting aside, for the moment, his other views or the position on color-blindness he may have held at other times and that his followers, such as Jesse Jackson, may have once held or may still hold today) is the only hope this society has of avoiding racial conflict. To go from racial consciousness--either the kind practiced by Auster or the kind practiced by Jeremiah Wright--to full-fledged racism is no great leap. Putting aside (for the moment) my policy disputes with Mr. Obama, I fear that his candidacy will inflame race relations in this country like nothing America has seen since the decade-long nightmare that was the 1960s. This is not to say that Obama should drop out--he has every right to seek the office, and he is well on his way to winning it, or at least the Democratic nomination. It is to say that his near-monolithic support among blacks and leftists--and the tendency of said supporters to dismiss any criticism of Mr. Obama as stemming from racism and therefore illegitimate--will make this election, whether he wins or loses, awful for American race relations. A win will leave the opposition enraged that its legitimate criticisms will be dismissed as "symbolic racism" or some such nonsense, while a loss will give Obama's supporters license to charge this country with racism simply for having failed to elect their preferred candidate. It promises to be an ugly summer and fall...and beyond--there's no end in sight to our misery! And I haven't even talked about the bad policies advocated by Mr. Obama or his rivals! When you factor those in...ugh.
UPDATE: As if on cue, Auster follows up the post I linked to with this gem:
"He was speaking of the regrettable reality that black youth ARE, in fact, dangerous.""Black youth" are individuals and must be judged as such. In failing to do so, Auster shows that racialism/racism may be a distinction without a difference. But I want to make a different point: those who suggest that there is a such a thing as "symbolic racism," which consists of judging African American individuals as individuals and refusing to lay every African American individual's failures at the feet of a racist "system" have set up the dichotomy: deny the evidence or be deemed a racist. I regard this as a false alternative. That said, if those are the only alternatives, Auster and his ilk will feel justified in regarding themselves as brave truth-tellers when they are anything but. While left-liberals have succeeded in rendering the Austers of the world politically and socially marginalized--and said marginalization is definitely a good thing--they have done so at the expense of making frank, reality-based conversation about America's racial divide--the kind Mr. Obama said he wanted to start in his speech in Philadelphia--all but impossible. When it is taboo for a non-left-liberal to state his honest opinions on the subject of race relations--because a left-liberal may call him a racist even if he isn't--don't be surprised when a genuine racist is able to attract an audience for his poisonous nonsense.
