The Case of Race
I want to congratulate you on your editorial on race, "Race to the Bottom" (December 1995). I have been quite disturbed by the racial overtone that has surfaced within conservative, and I should add libertarian, rhetoric in recent years (especially from the paleo-libertarian crowd). The critique of government race-based public policy must not be confused with racial intolerance. I appreciated your call for a consistent liberalism that celebrates the virtues of tolerance and the cosmopolitan vision that sustains the social cooperation of the liberal order.
Peter J. Boettke
New York, NY
It is indeed, as Virginia Postrel in her December editorial points out, "hard to lead a crusade for treating people as individuals when you're busy lumping them together by race." Her point is absolutely fundamental, and I have seen it made nowhere else. Conservative colorblindness rhetoric is often greeted with deep skepticism, and Ms. Postrel tells us why: Colorblindness advocates too frequently "wallow in stereotypes and omit coun tervailing experience." They complain that group-obsessed liberals are blind to individuality, but, in fact, it's an infirmity that crosses ideological lines.
Racial equality in American society awaits the day when blacks as well as whites are seen as individuals. The categories appropriate to a caste system that racial stereotyping creates are a poor basis on which to build a community of equal citizens. If con servatives want to shed their reputation for racism, it's a point they need to understand.
Abigail Thernstrom
Lexington, MA
Virginia Postrel, relying on Dinesh D'Souza's luridly distorted account of the 1994 American Renaissance conference at which I was a speaker, refers to me (along with columnist Samuel Francis) as an "overt white racist," without bothering to give a single example of my "racist" beliefs. Presumably Ms. Postrel makes this damaging but unsubstantiated charge because I argued at the conference that there are "large and enduring differences in average intelli gence between blacks and whites," resulting in different levels of civilizational abilities. D'Souza himself specifically defines racism as the belief in such racial differences.
However, D'Souza's definition of racism is profoundly misleading. It makes racism sound like an intellectual or scientific theory, whereas in actual usage (including D'Souza's or Postrel's) to call something "racist" is to say that it is morally bad . These meanings contradict each other.
An idea stating a possible fact, whether it is the existence of gravity or the existence of inherited group differences in intelligence, cannot be morally bad, though it may turn out to be false. An idea can only be bad if it is knowingly false and hurtful. To take an extreme example, the statement "Group X are devils are created in a laboratory 5,000 years ago by a mad scientist" (which is what the Nation of Islam teaches about whites) is so implausible that the speaker must know it is not true. This suggests that his motivation is not to arrive at truth but to dehumanize Group X.
Based on the above, I'd like to propose what I think is a coherent and useful (though not exhaustive) definition of racism. A person is being racist if he 1) attributes a negative trait to an entire group; 2) does this out of ill will; and 3) is indifferen t to evidence. By this definition, Ms. Postrel has the right to argue that assertions of racial differences in intelligence are untrue or socially harmful, if that is what she believes. But (lacking proof of either ill wil l or indifference to evidence) she does not have the right to call them racist.
Lawrence Auster
New York, NY
After reading Virginia Postrel's editorial, I went back to reread the Dinesh D'Souza articles she mentioned. The charge that "they seem designed not to elucidate the complexities of race in America but to justify readers' preconceived notions of black inferiority" is not only insulting to the editors and readers of The American Spectator andNational Review , but, more importantly, is without basis in fact.
The National Review article "Myth of the Racist Cabbie" in particular discussed the critical observation that people of all races let racial stereotypes play a role in their treatment of other people (even people of their own race), and the article attempted to address why th is is true. Although you might with some cause ridicule at least one of D'Souza's illustrations of stereotypes with "an empirical basis in shared experience," you never addressed his arguments about the public's common use of r acial stereotypes, nor did you bother to suggest any source for the stereotypes other than the one D'Souza suggested.
Even in The American Spectator article, D'Souza raises the important question of how many of black Americans' problems are self-imposed by the lifestyles they choose to follow rather than externally imposed by white racism. Complaining about the lack of balance in his portrait of black Americans' culture totally misses the basic problem with his article--that is, that he simply assumes that a common culture is shared by all black Americans. Rather, to the extent that black Americans share common life experiences, most of these experiences largely stem from the common American culture in which all of us participate and contribute regardless of race. To the extent that many black Americans share the pathologies and dysfunctional characteristics about which D'Souza writes, these problems are largely the product of a drug-infested, violent subculture whose nucleus is certainly in the black lower c lass but whose scope clearly encompasses many Americans (including whites) outside that population segment.
Ms. Postrel writes, "You cannot get to a colorblind society by constantly reinforcing racial categories." True. But one also cannot get to a colorblind society by ignoring inconvenient facts and black Americans' problems, like the lack of academic ambition in many of their children. I must say that I laughed out loud at the suggestion in Ms. Postrel's editorial that attending Harvard University is part of "the black experience." (It is not even part of the white experience.) Perhaps she should join me at the convenience/liquor store near my old residence in Inglewood one evening. She will find remarkably few Harvard graduates loitering around its parking lot. She will unfortunately find all too many examples of people exhibiting the dysfunctional behaviors about which D'Souza writes.
Instead of acting indignant about D'Souza's articles and the magazines which published them, you should view the articles as merely a new contribution in a frank public dialogue about race and race relations--a dialogue which cannot be free of error or of giving offense because of human fallibility and the nature and complexity of the subject. Without the social liberty to p articipate in such an open and honest discussion, better long-run understanding cannot occur between the races, and a truly colorblind society in America will remain an elusive dream.
Carl L. Brodt
Columbus, OH
Virginia I. Postrel complains that the portions of Dinesh D'Souza's The End of Racism excerpted inNational Review and The American Spectator omit the "countervailing experience" found in the excerpt published in The Washington Post , which thoughtfully includes "critical portrayals of overt white racists." She rudely suggests that the readers of National Review and The American Spectator are racists by saying that the mention of white racists "would have undoubtedly disturbed their readers."
As a regular reader of both REASON and The American Spectator , I am offended by Ms. Postrel's comment. Although we Spectator readers may prefer bourbon to white wine, we are just as aware of racism (white, black, and otherwise) as she is. I read the excerpt published in the Spectator and did not find a single factual error or misstatement. Nor, apparently did Ms. Postrel, since her whole gripe seems to be based on the fact that D'Souza presents examples of black hoodlums without balancing them with examples of black actors, servicemen , or data processors.
Of course D'Souza shows only one side of the story: This short section of his article is concerned with the pathology of black criminals, not with the hagiography of black choirboys. Ms. Postrel seems to believe that the only proper discussion of race is one that places a nice smiley face beside each frowny face.
Harvey Click
Columbus, OH
Ms. Postrel replies:
I appreciate the comments of Peter Boettke and Abigail Thernstrom, both of whom restate nicely the main point of my article: that it is difficult, if not impossible, to advance the cause of individual treatment while reinforcing racial categories.
Mr. Auster's letter illustrates why I generally steer away from the term racism , which means related but different things to different people. I do think his requirement of acknowledged ill will goes beyond most people's use of the term, as does the leftist definition that requires political power (thereby absolving members of minori ty groups of racism). He also omits perhaps the most important components of racial bigotry: the assumption that the bigot is, by virtue of his or her race, superior to members of the inferior race.par Since I was not present at the conference in question, I cannot vouch for Mr. D'Souza's account of it (though subsequent quotes from Sam Francis in newspaper articles on his firing by The Washington Times convince me that he, at least, merits description as an overt white racist). At any rate, it was that account--and the absence of such acknowledgement of white racism from conservativ e discussions of race--that interested me. White racism, however defined, is not as pervasive as the left might have us believe. But it does exist, and not always in subtle forms.
Mr. Brodt's letter, while it contains some good points, also illustrates the problem of embracing racial stereotypes. In defending the rationality of stereotypes, Dinesh D'Souza not only suggests (as I mentioned in my editorial) that it's rational to think Jews are conspiring to take over the world--an idea I sincerely doubt he be lieves--but also that Hispanics (read: Mexicans, the actual stereotype) are lazy. This ancient stereotype defies any rational basis, since it is refuted by both statistical measures and casual observation; based on what anyone living in Southern California sees every day, "shared experience" would lead us to conclude that Hispanics are workaholics. Yet it is the laziness stereotype that Mr. D'Souza winds up defending, because the logic of his argument that essentially all stereotypes are grounded in reality leaves him with no alternative to doing so.
Clearly, something more complicated than simple experience is at work in producing stereotypes. History plays a role, as do group rivalries. How we generalize from our experience is warped by systematic biases, as a large body of work in social science hav ing nothing to do with race suggests. And the lopsided numbers of whites and blacks in America can skew experience. Yet conservative writers on race, of whom Mr. D'Souza is only one example, are rewarded for esc hewing any such complexities in favor of a simple defense of prejudice.
My point was not, as Mr. Brodt and Mr. Click suggest, that articles about race should be "balanced," in the ping-pong style so popular among newspaper journalists covering public issues. Rather, I would like to see the very distinctions Mr. Brodt himself m akes--that there is not a single black culture in America, that black Americans participate in and help shape our common culture, that social pathologies are not limited by race--not o nly nodded to but internalized by policy analysts who say they advocate a colorblind society.
It is, of course, wrong to conclude that graduating from Harvard is typical of any race. The point Leonce Gaiter, whom I quoted, was making is that his experience, which includes a Harvard degree, is as authentically "black" as that of the gangster Kody Scott, a popular black exemplar for both liberals and conservatives. In fact, neither man's experience is typical, but Scott's is very often portrayed so . And Gaiter rightly objects to being lumped in with criminals on the basis of his race. A "frank public dialogue" would not exclude his position, his experience, or the law-abiding--and quite ordinary--lives of Scott's siblings, the "black actors, servicemen, or data processors" to whom Mr. Click refers. Their lives, not encounters with white racists, constitute the "countervailing experience" omitted from too many conservative discussions of race.
The alternative to portraying blacks as criminals (or, to take another example, men as rapists) is not hagiography or smiley faces. It is subtlety, individuality, and a willingness to challenge comfortable assumptions. This last goal might have been served had Mr. D'Souza's Washington Post piece appeared in National Review , and his NR piece in the Post. Instead, each publication's readers simply had their prejudices confirmed, their political world view undisturbed. That's a good way to avoid angry letters to the editor, but it's not especially helpful in moving America toward an honest, as opposed to merely nasty, discussion of race.