Race and religion

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Race and religion

The following is from Thomas Sowell. Is Reality Optional? pp. 163 - 165.

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Race and religion

CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND: Is it necessary to go l0,000 miles away from the United States to have a rational discussion of race? Perhaps. Certainly it has been years since I have heard such a sober and thoughtful examination of racial and ethnic issues as during the meetings of the Mont Pelerin Society in New Zealand.

The Mont Pelerin Society is an international organization of free market supporters and its various conference meetings in New Zealand covered everything from foreign aid to philosophy. Among those on the panel discussing racial and ethnic issues, 3 out of 5 were American economists. Why couldn't we have met in the United States and had the same discussions at home?

Maybe we could have. But on most leading college and university campuses in the U.S., hoodlum behavior and storm trooper tactics would disrupt any public discussion of race or ethnicity that did not fit the prevailing dogmas. With 10,000 miles of ocean between ourselves and the intolerance of academia, it was possible to have a calm and candid discussion of issues that have become taboo at home.

One of the most thought-provoking talks was by Professor Jennifer Roback of George Mason University. She argued that the politicization of race was almost inevitable—and extremely dangerous. She noted the parallel with the politicization of religion, which caused so much death and destruction across the continent of Europe for centuries.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States forbids Congress to pass any law respecting an establishment of religion. This essentially took religion off the political agenda, precisely in order to avoid the traumas that Europe had gone through. Professor Roback suggested that a similar amendment was needed to take race off the political agenda.

Many who are convinced that government policies have greatly benefitted disadvantaged racial minorities would no doubt be horrified by any such suggestion. However, the most important benefit the federal government has conferred on racial minorities over the past half century has been destroying state government discrimination in the South. Had race been off-limits to the politicians, there would have been no Jim Crow laws in the first place, Neither would the law have recognized the enslavement of one race by another.

Particular policies such as "affirmative action" have helped particular individuals or classes—usually those individuals and classes who were already more fortunate to begin with. But the less educated and poorer blacks have fallen further behind during the era of "affirmative action." This pattern of advancement for the elite and retrogression for the masses under such policies is not peculiar to blacks or even to the United States.

The closer you look at the actual consequences of government policies on race and ethnicity, in countries around the world, the more depressing the picture becomes. It is not just that these policies have not worked, or have been economically counterproductive. The politicization of race and ethnicity has escalated hostility and violence between groups in country after country.

The current situation is strikingly parallel to the slaughters that grew out of politicizing religious differences in times past. Whether with race or religion, it is not the differences as such that produce the animosity and violence. All sorts of groups have co-existed peacefully for generations, until some demagogue came along to whip up their emotions against each other—or until some government programs gave them freebies to fight over.

The great religious battles that tore countries apart were not just over ideas and beliefs. Money and power were at stake—including the power to persecute other religions. If you were a Catholic in Ireland two centuries ago, you still had to pay taxes to the established Protestant church and you couldn't sit in Parliament or do all sorts of other things that Protestants were permitted to do.

Buddhists and Hindus co-existed peacefully for generations in colonial Ceylon. But once it became an independent nation (now called Sri Lanka), the government created privileges for the Buddhist Sinhalese majority. Group polarization soon reached the point of riots, atrocities, and civil war.

The United States already has the kind of Constitutional Amendment Professor Roback suggested. It is the Fourteenth Amendment that mandates "equal protection" for all people. Unfortunately, clever judges twisted its interpretation in the nineteenth century to allow racial discrimination, and have twisted it more recently to allow racial and ethnic preferences.

The worst racial and ethnic polarization in any American institutions are today found in our leading colleges and universities, where all sorts of double standards prevail and all sorts of benefits are earmarked for particular racial and ethnic groups. As resentments against these groups increase and erupt in ugly incidents, the response has been to create still more racially earmarked benefits.

It defies both logic and history to respond to polarization with more of the things that create polarization. We can only hope that this pattern does not spread from the campuses to American society in general.

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13 May 2024