Laws and Hearts
In the debate about whether or not racism still exists in this country, I think that the central point of disagreement is whether a country with equal laws can still be unequal. The civil rights movement did an enormous amount of heavy lifting as far as equalizing the laws of the land. There is no longer state-sanctioned apartheid, not to mention slavery. And we are not only explicitly granted equality under the law, but discrimination is specifically forbidden. So the argument that we are now in an equal society is persuasive, to the extent that the laws are now more or less equal.
But, discrimination law suits are much harder to win than a lot of people might expect. It’s just too easy to claim you had some other reason for discrimination (the person was lazy, or had attitude or what-have-you). This is basically what happens when policemen use racial profiling when making an arrest, or when juries convict, and therefore, to my mind, is the best explanation for the incredibly high rates of minorities in jail.
To support this idea, I fall back (as I always do) on the statistics. More minority people in jail, fewer in college. Lower average incomes. Etc. etc. ad nauseum. When confronted with these kinds of statistics, there’s only three explanations I can reasonably imagine:
- there is still racism, and/or classism
- past racism has effects which linger several generations
- minorities haven’t seized the opportunities given to them
To me, the last one smacks of the same “minorities are lazy” assertion that has always existed in this country (and, in fact, is the etymology of the slur “nigger”). If we, as a culture, maintained that people were lazy as slaves, and then were proven wrong; and then maintained that people were lazy under apartheid, and then were proven wrong; then why oh why would we continue to make the same argument? I’m not even sure how you can rationally argue that an entire population of people are lazy. Clearly, even if I concede that a whole group of people are lazy (which I don’t) then there should be some *reason* why they are lazy. And if not, then you must be arguing genetics — which is the height of 19th century pseudo-science-style racism.
Now, I’m not saying that everyone who thinks that this country isn’t racist are themselves racist. What I’m saying is that I don’t think they’ve really thought through their position. I’m not sure how you can start with the idea that this country isn’t racist and end with any assumptions that are good; but I’d love to hear from someone who disagrees.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
What about East Asians?
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
What about them? Certainly, East Asians tend to do better in this country than other types of minorities. One could argue that since East Asians didn’t endure centuries of slavery, that you’re actually making my argument for me — that history continues to affect us today.
I think it’s more reasonable to assume that racism itself is complicated and doesn’t affect all minorities in the same way (that is to say, that there isn’t a simple blanket “non-white” racism), than to assume that the entire population of Asian people are more motivated than the entire population of anyone else.
But I think that the “issue” of East Asians in America versus other minorities obfuscates a deeper pattern. Recent immigrants tend to do a lot better than non-white populations that have been here a long time. African immigrants, for example, do a lot better than African Americans. And a greater proportion of East Asians are relatively recent immigrants compared to African Americans. This brings in all sorts of confounding factors ranging from the issue of brain drain and whether expatriates as a group have positive qualities, to comparative issues surrounding the civilizations that people come from (e.g. trying to compare 20th century China to 16th century Ghana is basically impossible).
In other words, I think it much more likely that first generation immigrants have a strong work ethic compared to mainline Americans than to say that East Asians per se do. I haven’t seen any hard data, but it seems to me that the very old ghettoized Chinatowns in some parts of the country support this analysis.