Racism

SolitaryRoad.com

Website owner:  James Miller

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Info ] [ Mail ]

Racism

The following is from Thomas Sowell. Conquests and Cultures. pp. 364 - 368

____________________________________________________________________________

Definitions

"Racism" is a term not only used very loosely by many, but also a term for which a more precise definition is not easy to achieve. In various usages, the term applies to the ideas of (1) those who have animosity toward people of another race, (2) those who believe that people of another race are genetically inferior, (3) those who believe in discriminating against people of another race, out of sheer self-interest, and (4) those who believe that members of another racial or ethnic group are less capable, or have other undesirable traits, as of a given time, even if for non-genetic reasons. Those who believe all these things at the same time provide the clearest examples of racism. But all four notions need not go together and often do not.

What of those who believe that other races are intellectually or otherwise inferior, but who take a benevolently paternalistic attitude toward them? If such well-meaning believers in genetic inferiority are to be considered racists, even if they favor giving largess or preferential treatment toward those considered inferior, then animosity is no longer part of our definition. What about those who wish to discriminate against another race for purely selfish reasons, such as the early twentieth-century white organizers of an anti-Japanese immigrant movement in the United States, on precisely the ground that the Japanese were such able, intelligent, and resourceful competitors that whites could not maintain their own higher living standards in open competition with them, but required the help of special legal protection? Halfway around the world, a very similar argument for preferential policies favoring the majority population was made in Malaysia, where it was claimed that otherwise the Chinese minority would best the Malays in every form of open competition: "Whatever the Malays could do, the Chinese could do better and more cheaply," according to a Malay leader who defended preferential policies for Malays and who later became prime minister.

In Nigeria likewise, preferences and quotas were defended on grounds that otherwise "the less well-educated people of the North will be swamped by the thrusting people of the South." Similar claims for preferential treatment, on grounds that other racial or ethnic groups have superior capabilities, have been made in India, Burma, and Fiji, sometimes accompanied by fears that either physical or cultural extinction threaten without such protection. If acknowledgement of superior capability in racial or ethnic groups who are targeted for discrimination is to be included as "racism," then opposite assumptions are being encompassed by the same word.

What of those who believe that particular racial or ethnic groups are less capable or less desirable in various respects, even if not for genetic reasons, and even if the people who believe this have no general animosity toward those from these groups? If the term "racism" is applied to those who have this view, even if they support programs designed to raise the level of capability in the group considered to be lagging, then social workers and lynch mobs are being lumped together. Nor is this a problem only in Western countries. A tenth-century Moslem scholar noted that Europeans grow more pale the farther north you go and also that the "farther they are to the north the more stupid, gross, and brutish they are." Considering that this was said at a time when southern Europe was in fact far more advanced than northern Europe, where illiteracy was widespread and conditions often primitive, can we confidently reject this as an empirical generalization about correlations among location, skin color, and cultural development at that particular juncture in history, and say that such a conclusion is so false that it could only be based on bias or animosity? More to the point, would this be racism because it dealt with the social characteristics of races, even if it did not attribute the differences to genetics? Again, this simply illustrates the difficulty of consistently applying the term.

The tendency to dismiss all unfavorable conclusions about any group as racism or as prejudice, stereotypes, or other manifestations of ignorance overlooks the fact that often those with the most unfavorable opinion of a group are those in closest contact with them, while those with a more favorable view know them less well and often from a greater distance. During the generations of armed conflict between whites and American Indians, for example, those whites with the most unfavorable view of the Indians were often those most in contact with them on a daily basis, while those most favorably disposed toward Indians were often those with less personal contact. When the U.S. army massacred an encampment of Indians in Colorado, the news was greeted with cheers in Denver but with horror in the eastern United States, where a peace movement developed to try to bring hostilities with the Indians to an end. However benign or paternalistic a view of Indians was taken by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Abraham Lincoln, the most unfavorable view of them was that taken by Andrew Jackson, who had fought with Indian allies, as well as against Indian enemies, before becoming president. Perhaps the most romantic view of the American Indian was that among some intellectuals in Europe who had never seen an Indian.

The point here is that adverse opinions on any group cannot be automatically waved aside as prejudices, stereotypes, or other forms of ignorance. These opinions might be mistaken for other reasons—or they might be true. Each specific case requires evidence, analysis, or agnosticism. It is sheer dogmatism to say, a priori, that adverse opinions must be wrong. Genetic differences may be neither necessary nor sufficient to account for many differences among groups, nations, or civilizations, but these differences can nevertheless be very real and very consequential.

Sometimes the issue of racism has involved not so much capability, in either intellectual or economic terms, but desirability in some social sense encompassing personal hygiene, congeniality, or cultural assimilation. Thus the first Chinese seen in the United States were welcomed, for they were disproportionately visiting scholars, business leaders, or others with the social graces or admired achievements that made them acceptable. It was after the later masses of largely illiterate and primitively-living Chinese laborers arrived that widespread anti-Chinese hostility developed, resulting in indiscriminate legislation directed at keeping out all Chinese and discriminating against those already in the country. Since both the earlier Chinese visitors and the later Chinese immigrants were of the same race, is "racism" a consistent term to cover the attitudes of the same generation of Americans who first welcomed them and later rejected them?

Where a particular group is dedicated to hard work, thrift, and sobriety, they may have a particularly negative attitude toward another group whom they see as lacking in these respects that are important to them. Italian Americans, for example, have often taken this view of black Americans. However, when black moderate Republican Senate candidate Edward Brooke was running for election in Massachusetts in 1966, he captured more of the normally Democratic Italian vote than either the Republican governor or the Republican president, even though other black candidates in Newark and in New York City were resoundingly defeated in predominantly Italian districts. Was it "racism" to repudiate certain kinds of behavior or ideology, which was seen as more prevalent in one group rather than another, even though there was no such wholesale repudiation of other individuals of the same race who were not seen as embodying such behavior or ideology? Is this then "racism" or "behaviorism"? That is, is it race or behavior and attitudes that are being condemned?

.................................................................

A more tendentious definition of racism has emerged in the late twentieth century to exempt racial minorities themselves from the charge. Racism was now said to require power, which minorities do not have, so that even the most anti-white, anti-Jewish, or anti-Asian statements (including those asserting a genetic basis for depravity) were automatically exempt from the charge of racism. No such proviso that power was required for racism ever existed before. That this new and self-serving escape hatch remained largely unchallenged has been one index of the level of moral intimidation surrounding racial issues. One might as well add the proviso that murder requires right-handedness, so that multiple killers who are left-handed could escape murder charges. In the ordinary sense of the word, minorities of all colors have shown themselves capable of as vicious racism as anybody else, whether in or out of power. The hostility, boycotts, or violence of African-ancestry people against people from India has been common from Kenya to South Africa, as well as in Jamaica and Guyana. Such behavior differs in no essential way from the behavior labelled "racism" when it is the African-ancestry population being abused by people of European ancestry.

____________________________________________________________________________

16 July 2024