America’s Unoriginal Sin
Posted by WiredSisters on October 1st, 2014 filed in College Life, Daily Life, Democracy, Guest Blogger, History, Moral Philosophy, Race
Many years ago, I worked with a Jesuit priest, who once told me that, after his first month of hearing confessions, he had ceased to believe in original sin. “Nothing original about it,” he told me. “Just the same damn things over and over.” I don’t believe in original sin either, at least not on the level of individuals. Collectivities, however, may be different. I believe every collectivity has the potential for a collective egotism (lately I’ve seen it called “groupishness”) that can be profoundly harmful to non-members and often to members as well. Every individual entity more complicated than a rock has an urge to self-preservation. That urge gets fulfilled by eating, reproducing, moving around, and self-defense. In the course of doing those things, the entity may, unavoidably, harm some other entities. This does not raise moral issues for most of us (for one of the more interesting exceptions, try googling “Jainism.”) But when a group does the same thing, the moral issues become more complicated.
Mr. Wired used to make the very useful distinction between prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is the awareness of other people being, well, “other.” Different from oneself and other members of one’s group. Sometimes this awareness may include the feeling that the “others” are less-than one’s own group in various ways, or maybe even threatening to it. This is the homo sapiens collective version of the urge for self-preservation. Everybody has it, to one degree or another, about one or another “other.” There is nothing wrong with it.
But discrimination is acting on that prejudice. It’s wrong, anti-social, dangerous, immoral, and a Bad Thing. Mr. Wired did not add, but I do, that it’s wrong to shame people about having prejudices, which nobody can possibly help having, but perfectly okay to shame them about behaving in a discriminatory manner.
Over the last couple of years, the major trendy public discussion of prejudice and discrimination seemed to be around homophobia. People whose religion deems homosexual behavior sinful argue that (a) that’s not a prejudice, it’s a religious doctrine or even a divine commandment, and (b) therefore, those who believe such doctrines are not prejudiced, and (c) therefore, for supporters of gay rights to call those who believe such doctrines “bigots” is not only erroneous, but discriminatory. This discussion has died down a bit lately, partly because the facts on the ground, most notably various pro-gay-rights changes in legislation and judicial rulings, have made it less consequential.
And so we’re back to talking, once again, about America’s original prejudice, race. (Well, that’s not exactly the first prejudice to be brought to our shores by English immigrants, but it’s the oldest one that’s still around. The first may arguably be anti-Catholicism, which even gets favorable mention in the Declaration of Independence:
“For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these states” is a reference to the Quebec Act, by which, among other things, the British government guaranteed freedom of religion to Catholics in that province. But I digress.)
The institution of chattel slavery of Africans in the Western Hemisphere was, I think, what the crack in the Liberty Bell really symbolizes. The best and brightest of each generation keep wrestling with it in one form or another. We keep thinking we’ve overcome it. And then it returns in some new form. First we ended the international slave trade. Then we abolished the forms of chattel slavery. Then we abolished de jure Jim Crow. Now, a generation after that, we are just beginning to notice its current incarnations: mass incarceration, the War on Drugs, and the presumption of dangerousness applied to all African-American males and many African-American females. In the meantime, we’ve gotten less prejudiced about interracial romance and marriage, and workplace diversity. You win some, you lose some.
One of the more interesting subheads of the current discussion of prejudice and discrimination is “The Talk.” In this instance, it is the talk the parents of African-American children have with them at some crucial age, instructing them on how not to get perceived as dangerous, and, above all, how not to get shot by the police. Many of its practical details are similar to the instructions routinely given to people about to cross paths with wild predatory animals: move slowly, talk slowly and clearly, don’t do anything unexpected. As a taxpayer, I am disturbed by the notion that the police we train, and arm, and pay, to serve and protect us are in some contexts no better than feral dogs or grizzly bears. But if I had the raising of an African-American boy, I would give him pretty much the same advice.
There are other versions of The Talk, and probably the most common is the talk mothers give to their just-prepubescent daughters about how not to get raped. When I was growing up, girls got it at age eleven or so. Given the decrease in the average age of puberty and the increase in the sexualization of childhood since then, I shudder to think what age that talk is given at now. Judging from much of the current discussion of sexual assault on college campuses today, perhaps it isn’t given at all, which would explain a lot. It would explain why young women are only lately beginning to develop the caution my generation of young women grew up with, about being alone, or drinking too much, or displaying too much of oneself, with young men one doesn’t know and trust. As the mother of a friend of mine once told her, one of the basic requirements of good mothering is making sure one’s children know what to be afraid of. In the wrong hands, this can all too easily degenerate into conditioned paranoia. And even young people who follow whatever rules their parents give them may not be safe from harm anyway. We don’t always know what to be afraid of, and even when we do, we can’t always bring ourselves to say it. What mother would say to her daughter, “Don’t get too close to your stepfather”?
But, getting back to racism, Mr. Wired, despite his belief that prejudice is morally different from discrimination, also believed very strongly that the only way to overcome discrimination is to stop paying attention to racial differences, that color-blindness is the only way past any current incarnation of Jim Crow. He could point to the fact that people with blond hair and blue eyes were once objects of prejudice both in ancient and Byzantine Rome (where slaves and prostitutes were often Slavic imports) and Norman England (where of course the Saxons were the underlings), and now are not only accepted but eagerly imitated by people whose natural coloring is darker.
Is a color-blind society possible? Okay, scientifically speaking, “race” is nonsense. But it is a social reality, and unless we’re willing to wait a thousand years for nature to take its course as it somehow did with the Saxons, it has to be dealt with. Refusing to identify people by “race” on official documents doesn’t create an integrated society, it just makes it harder to see discrimination, much less to confront it.
And, even more important, would a color-blind society be desirable? I’m a member of several “minorities”—female, Jewish, elderly, Hispanic, bisexual, intellectual, independently poor, and mildly disabled. I would not be especially grateful to anyone who treated me as an honorary man, or an honorary Christian, or a potential marathoner. You get the idea. If all I am offered for giving up the various subcultures and “other” communities I belong to is a chance to be a second-class member of the majority, why on earth would I bother?
Quite aside from that, we have seen over and over again during the last century communities that lived side by side in complete acceptance, intermingling, and even intermarriage, for generations and even centuries, until some demonic genocidal outbreak destroyed them both—Jews in Germany, Serbs and Croats and Muslims in Yugoslavia, Hutus and Tutsis in Ruanda. The Hatfields and the McCoys, for that matter. It’s hard to trust current tranquility if you pay any attention to history.
The utopia I aspire to is one in which all of our differences are recognized, and none of them is used as a basis for a hierarchy. Maybe ISIS can make this happen, at least for non-Muslims. Some historians have suggested that Pope Urban had this sort of thing in mind when he declared the First Crusade, in which case ISIS could be right on track. World War II could be a salutary lesson for us, in that, while Hitler was persecuting Jewish atomic scientists, Roosevelt was enlisting the Tuskeegee airmen, and he was on the side that won. Churchill called that war a crusade, too. We Jews, of course, view the Crusades through somewhat jaundiced lenses, since one of the things the crusaders and their local admirers did before getting to the Middle East was slaughter Jews. But a war against the Martians could work to unite all humans, at least for a while. If I were president….
Well, in the meantime, what do we colorless people do about the persistence of prejudice and discrimination against people of color? At the very least, we need to recognize and work to overcome the perception of dangerousness, the almost instinctive fear of non-white male strangers that pervades the consciousness of even the most liberal of us (including some people of color, by the way.) The perception of dangerousness is, of course, closely related to the conditioned paranoia that often feeds into, or results from, The Talk. We need to be a lot more careful, and a lot better informed, about what we tell our children to be afraid of. And perhaps we also need to be more nuanced in how we tell our children to behave in the context of that fear. For instance, crossing the street to avoid intersecting with a bunch of unruly teenage boys (of whatever ethnicity, really) or men of color is likely to be perceived by them as a sign of disrespect. Even if they don’t take visible umbrage at it while you are around to see and hear them, it could have a really bad effect on their next encounter with people like you. Unless they are all visibly armed and actively chanting gang slogans, you may do more to improve the situation by following your current trajectory and saying “Hi,” as you pass them. They may surprise you by reciprocating your greeting. Maybe next time, you can even have a short conversation with them about the weather or the local sports team. One small step for an individual, one giant leap for a group.
Red Emma
October 1st, 2014 at 8:47 pm
“But discrimination is acting on that prejudice.” Sort of like the difference between lusting in your heart and actually cheating on your spouse?
“the presumption of dangerousness applied to all African-American males and many African-American females” One of the disconcerting things about racial discourse in this country is how this presumption of dangerousness, and its sometimes lethal consequences, are at one and the same time so glaring and so vigorously denied (every new death of an unarmed black man being absolutely not at all about race, how can you say that?).
“Serbs and Croats and Muslims in Yugoslavia” I traveled to former Yugoslavia in 1992 when it was falling apart, to work with peace groups there (actually, mostly my husband traveled there, for three months, and I joined him just for the last three weeks). I remember how, for people looking on from outside, all the talk was about ancient grievances, while, if you talked to people on the ground, many of them would ruefully say that they had been living peacefully until just yesterday. One woman in a train, the daughter of a Serbian parent and a Bosnian parent (I forget which was which), said to me sadly, “I am a Yugoslav. My country does not exist any more.”
“For instance, crossing the street to avoid intersecting with a bunch of unruly teenage boys (of whatever ethnicity, really) or men of color is likely to be perceived by them as a sign of disrespect.” I’m torn between the part of me that says that, well, if John Derbyshire really feels black men are that dangerous, he should stay the hell out of their way, for their safety, and the part that says, yeah, you don’t want to be treating people as a threat unless they show signs that they are. But I do feel that, at the very least, one shouldn’t teach a new generation to fear people of whatever color and cross the street. After all, I manage to confine my phobia of riding in ski lifts to myself, and recognize that it’s not the sort of thing I need to teach all my nephews and nieces.
October 12th, 2014 at 6:45 am
Red Emma,
I believe, as you do, that prejudice is inherent to the human animal. I also believe that prejudice requires that one be discriminating. In order for a prejudice to manifest itself, one has to note difference, which is to say that one has to be discriminating in one’s observations. That said, I do understand that you are referring to discrimination in its other sense, that is, discrimination that leads to negatively judging another due to race, sex, sexual orientation, etc. My argument is that the various meanings of discrimination are related and that one has to discriminate in order for prejudice to be manifest. Let’s take a look at a more benign example of racial discrimination: racial discrimination in the sexual marketplace. According to OkCupid, white women are the group most likely to discriminate on the basis of race when it comes to dating and mating. I see nothing wrong with this. One’s personal dating/marriage preferences are no one else’s business I think you would agree. But if this is the case, why is a person allowed to discriminate on a racial basis in one sphere of personal relationships (dating/marriage) but harshly punished for discriminating in another sphere of personal relationships (employment). Sappho broached this previously here:
http://notfrisco2.com/leones/?p=6503
What’s your take on this issue?
Red Emma wrote:
it’s wrong to shame people about having prejudices, which nobody can possibly help having, but perfectly okay to shame them about behaving in a discriminatory manner.
I’ll go along with this. Shaming is a perfectly acceptable form of social control. I would draw the line at prosecuting/suing someone for discrimination.
a generation after that, we are just beginning to notice its current incarnations: mass incarceration, the War on Drugs, and the presumption of dangerousness applied to all African-American males and many African-American females.
About the dangerousness bit, I’ll relate a story. I am a black American male. When I was about 19, I remember entering the vestibule of a bank after hours to use the ATM. A middle-aged black woman was ahead of me. We were the only people there at the time. The woman was just about to put her card in the slot when she stopped, turned around, looked at me, withdrew her card and said, rather nervously, “You go first.” The woman was clearly frightened. Note that I was hardly an imposing figure. I was of average height and quite underweight. I got my money and left, feeling ashamed. What could have inclined her to react the way she did? Was it the way I was dressed? I remember having a sweat suit on. I may even have been wearing a hoodie. My guess was that this woman, who reminded me of my grandmother, had been mugged before by a young black male, just like me. On the walk back home, I recounted incidents where I frightened people, just by being in the vicinity. Few of those incidents involved whites. The group of people I most often frightened was young black men. If I walked too fast behind a lone black man or group of young black men, he/they would turn around with a start. Of course, I would react similarly when walked up on by young black men. Were we all delusional? Did we all believe the racist propaganda produced by the racist white media? I would have to say no. The more likely answer was that we had all been jumped/mugged by young black males before, and we were wary of them, despite the fact that we WERE them. It is the pervasiveness of black crime that leads people, ESPECIALLY black people, to the presumption of dangerousness regarding young black men. And I do mean young black men. Now that I am middle-aged with a head full of gray hair, I scare no one. When I am in NYC, I can hail cabs with ease (so long as I am not wearing a hat). White people stop me and ask for directions. Coeds studying in the library ask me to keep an eye on their laptops when they go to the ladies room (I’m not sure I like that, but that’s another soapbox). The point here is that stereotypes often serve a useful purpose and are usually based on some universally perceived truth.
In this instance, it is the talk the parents of African-American children have with them at some crucial age, instructing them on how not to get perceived as dangerous, and, above all, how not to get shot by the police
Until the black crime rate goes down, young black men will be perceived as dangerous. That said, there are things young black men can do to minimize the perception of dangerousness:
1)Don’t dress or act like a thug. Don’t wear hoodies. Don’t walk around with your pants down to your knees. Don’t wear gold teeth. Don’t wear braids. Don’t get tattoos. And please refrain from using the word nigga every five seconds. Now, is that so hard? Well, yes, especially given that many young men, regardless of race, especially young black men, revel in their perceived dangerousness. Let’s face it. The persona gets women excited. Perhaps women’s desires have to change.
My version of “How not to get shot by a cop” that I gave my black sons was very similar to the talk my lawyer gave me regarding how I should interact with cops:
1) Be respectful and polite.
2) Give the officer your ID, driver’s license, registration, insurance card if asked.
3) Don’t answer any questions unrelated to proving your identity.
4) Don’t consent to a search of your person or your car.
5) If the officer persists, ask for a lawyer.
6) Above all, DON’T COMMIT CRIMES!!!
I found this Chris Rock bit instructive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2plo4FOgIU
Okay, scientifically speaking, “race” is nonsense.
This statement is the left-wing equivalent of Evolution denial. Is the field of genetics nonsense too? Is race completely unrelated to genetics? Why is it that forensic scientists can identify with a high degree of accuracy the “racial” origins of a deceased person? Why does Biodil benefit blacks more than whites? Why do bone marrow centers strive to match the racial backgrounds of donors and recipients when conducting bone marrow transplants? Why did Scientific American delve into the debate if race has no basis in science:
http://www.brandeis.edu/provost/diversity/Events/diversitypdfs/Does_Race_Exist.pdf
And, even more important, would a color-blind society be desirable
Probably not, but a racially and culturally homogenous society would be. What we have now in the US are extremes of cultural and racial diversity, which is increasingly becoming unmanageable.
The utopia I aspire to is one in which all of our differences are recognized, and none of them is used as a basis for a hierarchy.
But your desire is naïve. Human beings are a competitive, hierarchical species. Since we compete against each other as individuals and in groups, differences in ability levels and behavior would HAVE to be noted and acted upon.
Well, in the meantime, what do we colorless people do about the persistence of prejudice and discrimination against people of color?
This statement really grates. You speak as if whites (and please speak in racial terms. Whites do have a color.) collude in keeping non-whites down. Clearly non-whites cannot and should not be reduced to their non-whiteness. If we are talking about black Americans, let’s use the phrase black Americans. If we are talking about Chinese Americans, let’s use the phrase Chinese Americans. The phrase “People of Color” is a very inane and useless expression. The big question to be solved is not what white people can do to minimize white prejudice against non-whites. From my perspective, this question has been addressed and remediated to the extent that is humanly possible. The big question is what non-whites can do to minimize their prejudice against each other and their prejudice against white Christians. The second question is : What can be done to maximize the respect for traditional white Christian institutions among non-white groups (and some non-WASP white groups too)? Traditional WASP institutions are the most liberal in the world. We need to preserve those.
October 12th, 2014 at 7:29 am
Sappho wrote:
But I do feel that, at the very least, one shouldn’t teach a new generation to fear people of whatever color and cross the street. After all, I manage to confine my phobia of riding in ski lifts to myself, and recognize that it’s not the sort of thing I need to teach all my nephews and nieces.
This is a dubious analogy. I’ve been black for quite a long time. No one had to “teach” me to be wary of young black men. It was my experience with young black men that caused my wariness of them, despite the fact that I was part of that group in my youth and I now have sons who are part of that group. Are you suggesting that people should not be familiar with crime statistics and that people not act in their rational self-interest? Clearly, certain phobias can be irrational. Your fear of ski-lifts is probably irrational, being that ski-lift accidents are rare. But what if ski-lift accidents weren’t rare? What if they occurred as often as young black men commit armed robbery? If this was the case, your fear would be justified and you would be justified in warning your nephews and nieces about the dangers of ski-lifts. I mean, you write as if the perception of black crime was somehow not based on crime statistics. As if the stereotype of the black criminal was just a figment of the white racist imagination. It isn’t. We can’t solve the problem if we refuse to see the issue clearly. The reality is that the biggest threat to the lives of young black men is not the police, but other young black men.