| A First Colorblind Racist Miniature: So What?
Our first protagonist is ccarollo, who (we will see) exhibits classic characteristics of colorblind racism--minimalization (not denial) of persisting racism, and an individualist focus that comes directly out of the framework of classical liberalism. In particular, we see a denial or discounting of structural racism, while insisting on the primacy of individuals and specific incidents, over-emphasis on supposed white victimization, and an insistence on specific evidence of racism in a given situation without acknowledging that such evidence might be visible to some and invisible to others because of racialized cultural factors. Here's the first interchange ccarollo participates in:
When an affluent white man is arrested for breaking into his own home
by a black police man, let me know.
by: Paul Goodman @ Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 20:52
but
an affluent black man wasn't arrested for breaking into his own home in this case, either.
I realize it's fun to say that, but it's simply not true, and is intentionally inflammatory.
by: ccarollo @ Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 21:12
Okay then.
When a white Harvard professor is arrested for mouthing off at a policeman, let ME know.
It doesn't even have to be by a black policeman, seriously.
by: Sadie Baker @ Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 19:33
Clearly most folks didn't think ccarollo's first offering was worth responding to. It was an odd remark--clearly true in one sense (Gates was arrested for mouthing off on his own property, not for breaking in), but as Sadie finally pointed out the next day, so what?
Paul's description may have been technically incorrect, but it was substantively true. If Gates had not broken into his own house, and if he had not been black, then he would not have been arrested. Period. It's nit-picking at best to dispute him like this, but ccarollo presents this as grave matter. And calling Paul's description "intentionally inflammatory" assumes that arresting Gates in itself was not inflammatory.
Crying "What Racism?" The Stuck Pig Syndrome
Personally, I chose to skip that first remark, and respond to the second one instead, because it provided a much better target. What happened with Gates was clearly part of a much broader pattern that black Americans are all too familiar with, and that white Americans routinely ignore. My diary was specifically focused on this fact, in particular on the pattern of harassment that black Americans experience at Harvard. But it also pointed out that we don't know for certain that Gates was correct. In my diary, as one of four main points, I wrote:
But, third, that momentary honesty doesn't really accomplish anything, beyond giving us a rush. That's why I--someone who's generally infuriated by the walk-back routine--am actually quite pleased with Obama's followup. The fact is, Gates may very well have been wrong about the officer--but only because the most widespread problem we face today is "Racism Without Racists" (aka "colorblind racism"--see the book by the same name by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva here.), the persistence of subconscious racial attitudes that have a pervasive, pernicious impact on black, Latino and other minorities' lives, without any conscious animosity on the part of whites who harbor such attitudes. And anything that helps us make some headway in sorting through the deceptive intricacies of colorblind racism is a good thing.
Now, look how completely ccarollo ignores what I wrote. Here's the first paragraph of his initial response to my diary:
racism? really?
Can you point to anything that the officer did that was in any way racist? Because I can't. If I put myself in the exact same situation -- as a typical white guy -- and I got short and confrontational with a cop like that, I wouldn't at all be surprised to find myself arrested, or at the very least plopped in the back a squad car to cool off.
So, I write that "Gates may very well have been wrong about the officer" (being racist), and ccarollo castigates me for even mentioning racism. Someone has a reading comprehension problem.
Colorblind Racism On The Attack
Or maybe not. Maybe it's an agenda:
That's the problem with "colorblind racism" -- it's easy to assume it exists everywhere and plays into every slight, regardless of whether it actually played a role or not. Maybe race was an issue in this case. Maybe it wasn't. But harping on race, immediately, and assuming that the cop -- in some small way at least -- is racist, is insulting, dangerous, and ultimately harmful to race relations as a whole.
So, it's wrong to point out the persistence of typically unconscious colorblind racism--not because it doesn't exist, but because doing so is "harping on race" which in turn is "insulting, dangerous, and ultimately harmful to race relations as a whole."
A very interesting sort of logic: telling the truth about race could make white people angry, so best to keep quiet about it. Seems like I've heard that before... for about the last 350 years. This illustrates the underlying persistence of certain aspects of racist ideology from one configuration to another, however much the main ideological content might vary.
It's exactly this kind of thing that makes white people terrified about talking honestly about race. Because they know that any misstep, even honest ones, even ones where there's no racial bias at all, will be seen as proof of racism.
This is mindboggling claim, when you stop to think about. White people terrified about talking honestly about race? I know they generally don't like to. But that's mostly because it means fessing up to the fact that someone else is getting a raw deal. That hardly equates to being terrified. In fact, while many white people feel uncomfortable with the prospect of talking about race, they are actually relieved once they've broken the ice. What's going on here may seem very subtle, but it's crucially important. Those who are terrified as ccarollo claims do not speak for all white people, as they imagine. They only think they are typical of white people in general. But they are actually significantly more anxious than most white people are--at least whites who aren't conservatives. Indeed, what they are most likely terrified of is losing the imaginary moral high ground of having white skin--and being "above race."
Look, I've been anti-racist all my life. I was very fortunate, because my parents raised me that way. It didn't require any great moral act on my part. I had a black friend when I was too young to even know he was black. But I'm still white, and so it's inevitable that from time to time I'll get falsely accused of racism. And, of course, growing up in a racist society, I undoubtedly do have traces of racist attitudes that I'm unaware of. So when I have been accused of racism, my responses have varied with the situation, but I've never been terrified, and never felt that it hurt me. Maybe my feelings were bruised a bit, but I am not my feelings. I've always known that however uncomfortable I happened to feel in that moment, it was just a taste of what most black folks live with most of their lives. And since it would soon be over for me, it was really no big deal so far as trauma to my psyche might be concerned. There was simply no comparison to what black folks experience as a result of racism.
So, why do I see possibly false accusations of racism as no big deal, while ccarollo considers them terrifying? Or "insulting, dangerous, and ultimately harmful to race relations as a whole"?
I refer you to #s 1-3 above:
(1) A struck pig squeals.
(2) What you see depends on where you stand.
(3) There are none so blind as those who will not see.
We'd All Be Better Off If White Folks Could Just Be Left Alone
Finally, ccarollo concludes:
We'd all be better off if we didn't assume that racism played a part of every single unfortunate thing that happened to black people. We shouldn't be blind to the advantages that white people have, but a continuous culture of victimhood betters no one.
In one sense, Sadie Baker had the perfect response:
When you say "we all would be better off"
don't you mean "people like me would be better off?" Because that's the problem, isn't it?
You seem to misunderstand what racism is. It's not a matter of personal animus, but a systematic imbalance of power.
But it was almost too obvious (though not to ccarollo, obviously). And besides, there was so much more here that was highly dubious, to it mildly. This is presented as if it were a perfectly sane, perfectly balanced remark. But who in the world actually does "assume that racism played a part of every single unfortunate thing that happened to black people"? No one I've ever met, that's for damn sure. That's a ridiculous mischaracterization of what people like me are saying--although we are saying that the impact of race-based harms is far more pervasive than most white folks (and even many blacks) realize.
Don't believe me? Just look at the diary I posted about the South LA Health Scorecard. South LA is predominantly black and Latino, and the Health Scorecard reveals a whole plethora of different sorts of factors that contribute to worse health outcomes for those communities of color. But at the same time, life is full of countless unfortunate incidents, from scraped knees to broken hearts that have nothing to do with race.
It is, in fact, a wildly narcissistic trait for white people to think that black folks--any black folks--spend all their time thinking about them. The reality is just the opposite. Poll after poll have shown that black people tend to substantially underestimate the amount of discrimination they suffer, whether the pollsters have realized it or not.
Now, of course, I didn't say all that in response to ccarollo's comment. I didn't have the time. But those are the sorts of thoughts that flashed through my mind. And not having the time, but being overwhelmed by the magnitude of wrongheadedness, I fell back on two old friends: hard data and snark. I replied:
You're Right
And the fact that blacks were arrested at almost 8 times the rate of whites for smoking marijuana in NYC in 2006:
Even though whites were bigger users: 
Has no impact whatsoever on any individual arrest!
Look ma! No racism!
How convenient!
What did not ensue was any discussion of the data I presented--evidence that tens of thousands of blacks had suffered a good deal more than Professor Gates on account of race. Ccarollo simply ignored that data as if it had never been presented. Such is the power of colorblind racism. Its not just color that it's blind to, but everything else that might point to color as an enduring social concern.
Systematic Misunderstanding
Instead, what ensued from here on can be summarized thus:
(1) Ccarollo: You're not listening to a thing I said!
(2) Paul: No. You're not listening to a thing I said!
(3) Repeat.
Well, pretty much, anyways. The point is, individualism and isolated incidents are defining elements of how colorblind racism construes the world. If you cut the world up that way, then it's very hard to see much evidence of racism, because we tend to think of "evidence of racism" in terms of the KKK, or separate drinking fountains--that is, in terms of the now-vanished racist elements of a previous era. In much the same way, a new racism took shape after the Civil War that didn't involve slavery, and so there were many who simply assumed that racism had been done away with, and any problems that blacks encountered were problems of their own making... or their innate inferiority. Nothing racist in that, right?
But if you cut the world up a different way, in terms of institutions, and statistical analyses of patterns of how people are treated, then a very different picture emerges. Then you see that racism still persists and has very pervasive impacts. Then you see colorblind racism in the world, rather than seeing the world through colorblind racist glasses.
It's only natural that two different people adopting these two ways of seeing the world would talk past one another. The difference was, (1) I was well aware of this situation, and said so, and (2) I do not regard each of these views as equally valid. A more systemic, more comprehensive view of the world reflects a higher level of cognitive development, which enables a more accurate view of the world. Seeing things in terms of isolated incidents and individuals reflects a level of cognitive organization that is objectively less valid than seeing things in terms of patterns of incidents and systems of social relations.
Of course each situation is unique, and cannot just be taken as nothing more than the automatic product of a larger whole. But neither can a unique situation be understood wholly apart from the larger whole, either.
Ccarollo's repeated insistence that I was the one who wasn't listening was completely understandable, coming from someone so deeply embedded in that worldview. But that doesn't make it true. For all the novelty or originally or whatever that was imagined to exist in the arguments presented, Ccarollo was simply repeating standard script from the colorblind racism handbook--script that I had not only heard myself, but that others, such as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, have analyzed over a period of years.
Situationism
But one need not simply rely on the framework of colorblind racism to understand what's going on here. There is a more general approach one can take, which is to critique Ccarollo's obsessive emphasis on individual attitudes from a perspective known as situationism. Underlying Ccarollo's entire argument is the assumption that if there was no racist intent, there was no racism. This is what the demand for "proof" of racism is all about--prove there was racist intent. But others--most notably Sadie Baker--repeatedly pointed out that racism is not solely, or even primarily a matter of individual intent. It is systemic, institutional, and on the individual level, today at least, it is largely unconscious, embedded in perceptual biases and assumptions that most people are not even aware that they have.
This has all been covered specifically in my previous diary. But there is a more generalized truth here that applies to more than just race. As the Situationist blog explains, situationism sees this as general condition applying to social/cognitive phenomena across the board:
About Situationism
Situationism is premised on the social scientific insight that the naïve psychology--that is, the highly simplified, affirming, and widely held model for understanding human thinking and behavior--on which our laws and institutions are based is largely wrong. Situationists (including critical realists, behavioral realists, and related neo-realists) seek first to establish a view of the human animal that is as realistic as possible before turning to legal theory or policy. To do so, situationists rely on the insights of scientific disciplines devoted to understanding how humans make sense of their world--including social psychology, social cognition, cognitive neuroscience, and related disciplines--and the practices of institutions devoted to understanding, predicting, and influencing people's conduct--particularly market practices. Jon Hanson & David Yosifon, The Situation: An Introduction to the Situational Character, Critical Realism, Power Economics, and Deep Capture, 152 U. Pa. L. Rev. 129, 149-77 (2003).
Situationism has been applied to such topics as power economics, natural disasters, obesity, commerical speech and junk-food advertising, Supreme Court dynamics, racial injustice, affirmative action, race and rape, employment discrimination, employee adherence to workplace rules, legitimization of war, inside counsel, corporate law, and player autonomy in the National Basketball Association, among other topics.
In terms of Kegan's schema of cognitive development , schools of psychology and other social sciences that focus on individual traits take as their basic explanatory phenomena are thereby focused on the underlying structure of Level Two: Durable Categories. Of course, this does not necessarily mean they are limited to Level Two thinking, but many people who latch onto simplistic interpretations of findings from these schools are so limited. In contrast, situationists take for granted Level Three situations as explaining behavior directly, and take for granted Level Four comparisons of different Level Three situations as theoretical constructs. The comparison of different theoretical constructs can readily lead situationists into Level Five cognition as well.
Kegan's book In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life uses a series of vignettes to illustrate a repeated pattern of misunderstanding between people functioning at different levels. The general nature of situationist social/cognitive science and policy analysis as opposed to trait-based counterparts is clearly prone to such misunderstandings, over and above those already discussed. Although those functioning at higher levels are just as prone to such misunderstandings as those functioning at lower levels, they are better equipped to understand their confusion once it is explained to them, because a higher level takes the context of the next lower level as its object--as something it can consciously examine and analyze. In short, those at a higher level can comprehend the situation of those at a lower level, while the reverse is generally not true.
Of course, merely having the capacity to function at a higher cognitive level does not ensure that one does so. Pressures for social conformity can clearly limit people who are abstractly capable of independent critical thought to deploying that capability so selectively that it serves instead to reinforce, rather than critically question, socially shared assumptions. This was vividly illustrated by the failure of the Versailles press to see the humor in Stephen Colbert's critical take on their record of conformity and subservience to executive power.
Protagonist #2: A Truth That's Told With Bad Intent
The awareness of such limitations is much more general than knowledge about mechanisms described above. The poor and ill-educated have always been sharply aware of many things not seen by their affluent, well-educated "betters." And this was a point that our second protagonist, jar137, might have wanted to make. It's certainly true, as this comment points out that class and race cannot be disentabled, and that
Although there clearly are advantages to being white in America, it is not shared to the same degree.
But this point is put across in a way that seems almost entirely aimed at derailing precisely the sort of tough-minded analysis that's needed to make progress, and what it offers up instead is blameshifting onto stereotypical "limousine liberals" (is that you, David Brooks?), which also involves an individualist focus (they should all do individual penance), rather than advancing a call for collective political action:
How about if
privileged (ie, in the socio-economic sense), liberal white people start acknowledging the role they play in the perpetuation of racism in America. When you grow up in de facto segregated, "nice" communities and attend almost exclusively white schools, and mingle with primarily only with other privileged white people, you are perpetuating racism through your classism. I have watched wonderful minority and integrated neighborhoods in NY become gentrified by white privileged people who have essentially driven out the community and turned these neighborhoods into lily white pseudo-suburbs. Although there clearly are advantages to being white in America, it is not shared to the same degree. I am sickened by white people who take full advantage of their socio-economic privileges and then want to preach to others about how enlightened they are because they identify racism and really, really want to work against it. Try forfeiting some of the advantages you have by sending your children to poor performing schools or living in neighborhoods with high crime rates. See, by doing those things you can really help those less advantaged, but I bet very few would assume that responsibility. So, until privileged white people start to put their money where their mouths are, I wish they would just stop sanctimoniously lecturing to the rest of us. It is really only done to make oneself feel better while they live their lives in a manner that promotes the racial divide.
It's more than a little ironic that this holier-than-thou anti-bourgoise screed also invokes a classical liberal individualist perspective, eschewing any calls for cross-class, much less cross-racial solidarity in fighting racism, but instead calling for individual penance. Looking back now, this contradiction is what strikes me more vividly. At the time, however, I was simply struck by how totally off the mark jar137 in visualizing who I am--always a problem when you respond to arguments with ad hominem attacks on the internet, where no one knows that you're a dog. And so I replied, and the following interchange ensued:
I've Lived In Integrated Neighborhoods Most Of My Adult Life
Either working-class or at least partly so. And, yes, I've been even been mugged on a couple of occasions.
You really don't have any idea who you're talking to.
by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 11:46
My comment was not meant personally
but was directed toward a group, to which it appears you belong.
I would argue privilege derives more from your socio-economic
status than the color of your skin (not that I'm denying the
discrepancies between treatment on the basis of race). That was
my point. On the basis of your comment it does appear that you
fall into the category I define, notwithstanding that you have chosen
(I would bet) to live in working class environments. Also,
the fact that you think getting mugged is some form of bona fides
gives me a pretty good idea of whom I am talking to.
by: jar137 @ Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 14:08
There are all sorts of things one can see in this exchange. As already noted, jar137, our purported working-class white liberal seems to be as thoroughly imbued with an individualist, classical liberal worldview as any colorblind racists. This is hardly a compelling foundation for any sort of working-class class struggle. And by interjecting the issue of class this way--first as an either/or proposition, then as the foundation for an ad hominem attack--jar137 effectively rejects and deprives himself of any benefit of the colorblind racism perspective.
It would be one thing to say, "This is a very interesting perspective, but what about class..." That could lead to a very productive discussion. But the actual approach we saw in action? Not so much.
A second observation comes from the situationist perspective. When I said, "And, yes, I've been even been mugged on a couple of occasions", I was responding to the situation, the dialogue in which jar137 had just written:
Try forfeiting some of the advantages you have by sending your children to poor performing schools or living in neighborhoods with high crime rates.
But after I wrote that, jar137 came right back, reading what I'd written as if it were a contextless revelation of an implicit trait--a Level Two "durable category", if you will.
I'll be the first to admit that all this stuff gets rather complicated. Which is why it's so important to be open to multiple perspectives, and also to be open to revision, admitting mistakes or oversights, and learning from them. This is part of what attracts me to perspectives like colorblind racism, which acknowledges the role of unconscious biases without demonizing people for having them, or like situationism, which generalizes that perspective across the entire range of human frailties and failings.
And thus I conclude this section by noting that although jar137 did indeed intrude with a "truth that's told with bad intent", it's very likely that the bad intent was not conscious, and it's virtually certain that it was not reflected on.
That's part of what genuine class struggle is supposed to be about--a struggle to make visible the hidden relationships, hidden injuries and hidden assumptions, for only by making them visible does it become possible to do something about them. Someone willing to look at, and admit their mistakes, is the most valuable kind of ally one can hope to have. I hope that jar137 turns out to be that kind of ally.
Looking Forward
In the next diary, I will be turning to the racist attacks on Barack Obama, Sonya Sotomayor and others. Some of the figures involved have clear records of displaying racial animus in the form of verbal expressions commonly recognized as racist. When such figures accuse others of being "racist" there can be no question of the bad faith of their attacks, and little question of the racism involved, when directed at people of color. So I will address this aspect first. However, as already indicated, colorblind racism provides a general framework for projecting racist charges of racism onto minorities for virtually any sort of action that upsets the individual colorblind racist--and this more general framework is far more pernicious, if less obvious to the untrained eye. Hopefully, the discussion in this diary has helped us to better train our eyes as we turn to examine the far more pernicious actors in this drama. |
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