3

Varieties of Racial Ills

We can best understand the boundaries I am suggesting that we draw around personal racism by exploring phenomena that are often called “racist” but that, on the understanding I have been developing, are something else. Doing so will help to stem the conceptual inflation of the term and help us develop the richer vocabulary that recognizes a range of racial ills distinct from racism.

Racial Insensitivity or Ignorance

There is much insensitivity and ignorance about race in people’s lives. Here are some examples, the first two of which are types frequently cited as causes for resentment, irritation, and anger: (1) in a high school class, a Haitian American girl is asked to give “the black point of view” on an issue relating to race;1 (2) a non-Asian student thinks that a Korean name is Chinese or Japanese; (3) white high school students do not understand why their African American friend cares so much that Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday be honored publicly in their school.2 Such behaviors are sometimes, misleadingly, referred to as “racism.” Let us look at why each is objectionable.

Recognizing Ethnicity and Acknowledging Identity

By asking a Haitian American to represent a black point of view, the teacher in example 1 fails to recognize the student’s distinctive ethnic identity in relation to other black groups, especially African Americans. There are two parts to this failure. One concerns Haitian Americans as an ethnic group. Charles Taylor famously argues that ethnocultural groups, especially minorities, desire recognition from authoritative institutions in the societies of which they are a part.3 Although it is not always clear what forms such recognition should take, the teacher in this example, as an authority figure in a school, is surely denying it. A second aspect is failure to recognize the individual as having a distinctive group identity that is personally important. Whether every individual owes such recognition to every other individual, as Taylor sometimes seems to imply, it is at least reasonable to suppose that teachers owe it to students.4 The identity feature might concern race, religion, a neighborhood, a personal interest of some sort, a family heritage—not only ethnicity. Not all identity features are equally pertinent to the educational enterprise, but if a teacher knows that a student is attached to some group, activity, or tradition, it is appropriate for her to recognize this in some way.

A similar dual failure of recognition afflicts the student in example 2 who confuses Korean with Chinese or Japanese names. If she is insufficiently aware of the existence of nationally, culturally, and linguistically distinct Asian and Asian American groups, she shares a serious form of ignorance in American society today. Furthermore, names, and especially their ethnic character, are not a trivial dimension of individual identity. In the film Skin Deep, a Vietnamese American student speaks with great emotion about the disrespect and nonrecognition he feels when other students mispronounce or fail to remember his name (Khanh).5 How culpable the student who confuses Asian names is for her ignorance depends on how sheltered her background has been and, more generally, on her degree of exposure to information about Asian Americans.

Let us contrast this student with another who is perfectly aware that Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and so on are distinct Asian groups, that they have different languages, and that generally it is possible to discern the ethnicity from the name. She realizes, however, and regrets that she is not sufficiently knowledgeable to match names with ethnicity or country of origin. Here there is no failure to appreciate ethnic distinctiveness, and thus no failure of recognition of the Asian American groups as ethnic groups. But her lack of knowledge might result in lack of recognition at an individual level.

In each case the failure of ethnic group and individual recognition does not necessarily concern race as such. The teacher treats the Haitian American student as representing all blacks, but the failure is in not recognizing her ethnic distinctiveness within that racial group. In the Asian case, the failure of recognition may resonate with the racist depiction of all Asians as inscrutable and “alien,” which has plagued Asians throughout American history. It might for that reason be a more damaging form of nonrecognition.

A more distinctly racial case is the white friends in example 3 who fail to recognize the importance to their black friend of publicly recognizing Martin Luther King’s birthday. This case does not involve a failure to recognize the existence of the identity in question (the white friends are perfectly aware that their friend is black, in a way that the teacher is not aware, or not fully aware, that the student is Haitian).

However, the moral fault in this case is entirely analogous to the individual-level failure of recognition in the Asian and the Haitian cases; it is a failure to grant adequate recognition to an identity that is important to a given individual.6 For the black student, not recognizing the importance to him of honoring King’s birthday is a way of not appreciating the significance of his racial identity to him.7

Neither failure of individual identity-recognition (whether racial or ethnic), nor failure of ethnic group recognition is helpfully called “racism.” Neither involves an inferiorization of or antipathy toward a racial group.

Recognizing Internal Diversity in Racial Groups

A second wrong committed by the teacher in example 1 is failure to recognize the internal diversity of racial groups. By speaking of “the black point of view” as if she believes that any black person can represent it, the teacher fails to recognize that, like any large group of persons not defined by ideology, blacks have a wide range of opinions on any issue; the fault would be no different were the student African American rather than Haitian American. There can be no single viewpoint of a group containing millions of people. This diversity of opinion can be related to age, gender, religion, region, occupation, family background, and other factors including ethnicity, and it can be inferred that the teacher is insufficiently attuned to or aware of these differences.

This failure is a form of misrecognition or inadequate recognition which may stem from ignorance; the teacher may simply not know enough about blacks to see the group’s internal diversity. Such ignorance would be culpable, both because blacks are such a central group in American life that everyone (especially a teacher) should possess a lived recognition of its internal diversity, and also because a teacher has a responsibility to know something about her students’ primary group affiliations. As we shall see in more detail in chapters 6–8, race as a form of group identity especially lends itself to such homogenizing. The very idea of “race” implies a false commonality among members of racial groups that tends to mask internal diversity.

The failure of recognition here is race-related although ethnic, gender, regional, and other groups can suffer similar misrecognition. But this is not personal racism, as it does not necessarily imply on the teacher’s part an inferiorizing view of or animus toward blacks.

Appreciating Individuality

A distinct, though related, wrong is the teacher’s failure to appreciate the Haitian American student’s individuality. The student is there to learn and speak for herself, not for a group. This recognition of individuality is a form of human respect to which any participant in an educational (or other) setting is due. Nor is this recognition inconsistent with recognizing the importance of the student’s ethnic, racial, and other group-based identities. A person is always more than the sum of such identities, while at the same time her sense of her own individual identity is not separable from those group affiliations.8

The failure to recognize individuality is encouraged by the racial homogenization that also tends to mask internal diversity. But, similarly, this failure is not in itself racist, as it need not involve seeing the individual as racially inferior nor stem from race-based animus.

Honoring the values of recognizing individual and ethnic group identity, internal group diversity, and individuality does not prevent a teacher from exploring the opinions and experiences of groups as groups. After all, statistical generalizations can be made about the opinions and experiences of a group, though they are generally made with much less basis than they require. A teacher might ask the class, “How do you think most Latinos feel about X, and do you think different groups of Latinos feel differently?” This question allows for the possibility that a non-Latino student may know as much or more about that issue than does a Latino student. This way of asking it does not treat any Latino student as an epistemological representative of his group. The open-ended question to the group allows the minority group member, should he desire to do so, to attempt to contribute the views of his ethnoracial community as he sees it, with whatever degree of qualification he sees fit, and to call explicit attention to whatever internal diversity he sees.

Sensitivity to Vulnerable Groups

A final wrong committed by the teacher in example 1 concerns the moral asymmetry discussed in chapter 2. All the forms of identity-recognition discussed here are especially important to vulnerable minority groups. Such groups are more at risk for being marginalized in important social institutions like schools and workplaces than are whites. Hence failure to accord them adequate forms of recognition is likely to contribute to such marginalizing. Suppose, for example, that a student in the same class as the Haitian American student is a Polish immigrant, and wishes this aspect of his identity to be acknowledged, but the teacher does not do so. The harm is not likely to be as great as the harm to the Haitian student, whose group is much more subject to demeaning views and stereotypes.

Thus we have considered five different forms of racial, ethnic, or cultural insensitivity or ignorance: (1) not recognizing distinctive ethnicities; (2) not recognizing personally important group-based identity components; (3) not recognizing the internal diversity within any racial group; (4) not appreciating individuality; (5) not being sensitive to vulnerability. None of these, in themselves, involve racism as either inferiorization or racial animus. Nevertheless, they are, or at least in certain situations can be, serious moral failings.

Judging Persons on the Basis of Race: Jim Sleeper’s Liberal Racism

It has become increasingly common to hear racism identified with the idea of judging persons—and especially conferring benefits and burdens on persons—on the basis of race or skin color.9 A famous sentence from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech expresses this point: “I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”10 Popular expressions of this idea abound in many forms. The director of an organization that militantly opposed busing for integration in South Boston in the 1970s writes, “To give preference to one group over another because of the color of their skin is racist.”11 In response to an article about black students protesting the teaching of black studies courses by white faculty, a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education objects that these students have forgotten the important fact that “it’s racist to judge another person by her skin color.”12

This view has been given intentionally provocative expression in the title of Jim Sleeper’s popular 1997 book, Liberal Racism. That title, and some of the book’s actual argument, suggests that liberals who favor racial preferences and more generally, believe it sometimes appropriate to take account of racial identities in public policy have abandoned their own historical allegiance to the struggle against racial discrimination and injustice. At one point Sleeper compares liberals to aristocratic southern racists who “condescend sweetly to blacks while projecting contempt for inferiors onto poor whites.”13

To his credit, Sleeper does not sustain the implication that liberals in general have become racists. In contrast to the two letter writers cited above, Sleeper knows that King’s remark about character can be understood only in the context of the struggle for black civic equality. King maintained an integrationist ideal, but he was very race-conscious. He was leading a struggle not for contextless color blindness but for justice and equality for blacks, in the context of a wider vision of racial harmony. As David Hollinger remarks about the Civil Rights movement, it “affirmed a national American ‘we’ and the solidarity of black people at the same time.”14 King’s eloquent remark about his children meant primarily that they not be judged as inferiors because of their race, but be accorded equal respect as human beings. Moreover, Sleeper does not reject color-conscious policies entirely. He approvingly cites Justice Harry Blackmun’s “wise dictum” in the 1978 Bakke affirmative action case: “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”15

I will focus on what is of genuine interest in Sleeper’s argument in a moment. But first let us be clear why “judging persons on the basis of race” is not in itself “racist.” It is true that an integral part of racist social systems, such as the one King was fighting, did involve judging people on the basis of their race. But the moral force carried by the idea of “racism” can not be totally severed from the particular form and purpose of such judging, which was to maintain blacks, as an inferior group, in a subordinate status. Though the meaning of the term “racism” may have undergone some change from its origins in the 1930s, if it strays too far from its context of either race hatred or racial subordination or inferiorization, it loses the moral force it has inherited.

To say this is not in itself to defend affirmative action, or any other race-preference policy, but to insist rather that the moral strengths and drawbacks of affirmative action be expressed in terms other than “racism.”16 It is also to say that what makes a particular instance of judging someone on the basis of his race “racist” is either the judgment being made (was the individual judged as inferior or humanly defective?), or its purpose (was she being selected for a degraded or inferior status in society, or in some institution?). And of course, as I have been emphasizing all along, even if the judging was not racist the act might well have been morally faulty in some other way. Perhaps taking race into account was simply inappropriate, irrelevant to any of the purposes at hand, or unfair for some other reason.

So we come to an interesting remark in Sleeper’s book: “Liberal racism also assumes that racial differences are so profound that they are almost primordial. The term ‘racialism’ is sometimes used to denote this belief that racial differences are essential to our understanding of ourselves and society, and at times I will use it to refer to such thinking.”17 The concept of “racialism” is indeed a useful one. (Its meaning here is much more distinct from “racism” than even Sleeper recognizes, and he slides too readily back and forth between the two.) I would define “racialism” somewhat differently than Sleeper—though I think my definition captures much of what he has in mind—as “conferring too much, or inappropriate, importance on people’s racial identity, either in general or in a particular case.”18 This definition leaves many questions unanswered, but it will do for the moment.

To understand the difference between racism and racialism, let us consider Asian and Asian American students protesting a white faculty member’s teaching of a Asian studies course. It is racialist to assume that racial identity in itself should be a decisive criterion, or even play a large role, in whether a given instructor gets to teach a particular course (that is, conferring too much importance on racial identity). It is racialist to assume that a white person could not have sufficient knowledge, empathy, or expertise to competently teach a subject concerning Asian Americans or any other nonwhite ethnoracial group.

Would it be racialist for the students to assume that, if the instructor were white, they would not be sufficiently comfortable in an Asian studies class to reveal their true feelings and opinions? In fact, this might well be true of at least some of the Asian and Asian American students, thereby detracting from the educational value of the course. This lack of comfort (no matter how skillful the white instructor was in trying to create a comfortable and trusting atmosphere) might be a product of a deeply racialist sensibility on the part of the students; they might have a blanket distrust of all whites. But the discomfort need not be racialist. It might be that the racial divisions in society, and in a particular student’s experience up to that point, have caused her not to feel comfortable being open with a white instructor (hardly a bizarre occurrence—the same can happen with instructors and students of different genders). This student might even be a distinct nonracialist, trying to keep race and racial identity from playing an overinflated role in her own life. But she might also know that her sentiments have not yet caught up with her convictions, and that she will in fact be uncomfortable.

The Asian and Asian American students who do reject the white instructor out of racialism are not, thereby, necessarily racist, unless their point of view stems from racial bigotry or prejudice against whites in general. The mere making of a racial distinction (“judging another person by her skin color”) is not in itself racist; what determines whether it is racist is why or for what purpose the distinction is being made.

It would not be racialist for a member of a disadvantaged racial group to make his racial identity the centerpiece of his personal identity—for example, by dedicating his life to the welfare of his people. This would be a justifiable, and indeed a worthy and admirable, personal choice. (The African American concept of a “race man” or “race woman” expresses this idea of identity.) It would be racialist, however, for this individual to be unable to recognize that his goal can sometimes be accomplished only through alliances with people not of his racial group; or for him to be totally indifferent to the welfare of persons not of his group.

It is not racialist to recognize that racial divisions exist, that racial identities do matter, and that it might be sometimes appropriate to reflect that reality by giving race an importance in one’s thinking and actions that, in an ideal world, it would not have. And thus in the world we live in, taking into account the likely reactions of students, it might be appropriate to select an Asian instructor over a white one for an Asian studies course.19

Such consideration allow us to see what is faulty about Sleeper’s particular definition of “racialism,” which involves “the belief that racial differences are essential to our understanding of ourselves and our society.” Indeed they are essential, if Sleeper is talking about our actual current society and its particular history. Anyone who failed to recognize the salience of race in our history and current social arrangements would be deeply out of touch with reality, and possibly deluded about his own place in it. Some degree of racial consciousness is indeed appropriate. So racialism on Sleeper’s definition is not something to avoid. Racialism on my understanding is the conferring of a too great, or inappropriate, importance to racial identity.20

My definition of “racialism” obviously leaves many questions unanswered. How much is “too much”? Who is to say what is “inappropriate”? The value of the conception, even in this vague and schematic form, is that is provides a concept distinct from “racism,” invoking a different set of values or disvalues in the racial domain and thus providing another tool of moral criticism.

So judging someone on the basis of race is not, in itself, racist. But such judging can stem from a moral, cognitive, or interpersonal failing, and that is “racialism”. Racialism, unlike racism, does not necessarily involve racial hatred or a belief in the inferiority of the racial other. It need not involve actual racial prejudice.

Same-Race Socializing

African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans sitting together in same-race groupings in student cafeterias and socializing primarily with members of their own group has produced criticism and consternation. White students who might have wanted to join these groups have sometimes felt discouraged from doing so. Such situations have led to charges of racism.21

Unless the black, Latino, or Asian American students believe the white students unworthy to sit with them, or unless they exclude out of racial animus, there is no racism here. Even if the students of color were hostile toward white students sitting with them, because they wanted to preserve an enclave of their own members but not out of a prejudice against whites, it would not be racist.

If we clear the charge of “racism” out of the way, we can examine the values and disvalues of same-race socializing. Some white opposition to or discomfort with such socializing stems from its implicit but publicly visible rejection of an unworthy and outdated “assimilationist” norm. A dean at Harvard once approached a group of African American students having a good time together in a dining hall and said, “Now, we didn’t bring you all the way out here for you to sit off by yourselves.”22 The condescending assumptions that the institution belongs to its traditional white constituency and that groups of color are acceptable as long as they do not challenge this conception are inconsistent with a sense of equal inclusion, a norm that should govern all educational institutions. (The dean’s condescension does border on racism.) Especially when all-white tables in the dining halls are not themselves a comparable target of concern, such assimilationist assumptions are likely to be operating.

Even referring to same-race socializing as “racial self-segregation,” as is traditionally done, smacks of an inappropriate assimilationism. It is a biased way of characterizing the issue, blurring at least the difference between exclusive and partial in-group socializing (see below). In addition, such language misleadingly invokes the officially sanctioned exclusions of the era of state-sponsored segregation. The neutral term “same-race socializing” is more appropriate.

Nevertheless, same-race socializing is by no means always a good thing, and not all criticism of it stems from unworthy sources. To assess its value, we must view it in its wider institutional and societal context. It is not possible to look at one table of, say, only Latino students and determine whether this is a good or a bad thing. Do the students at the table always socialize only with fellow Latinos, or do they also socialize outside of their group? It is perfectly reasonable for any group of students, however constituted (for example, racially mixed or same race) who feel comfortable with one another to hang out as a distinct group. At the same time, it is also constricting to a student’s social experience to make that group her sole source of social contact.

When the groups in question are of only one race the constriction is greater than when the group is racially diverse. Race is a major divide in the nation, and an inability to interact comfortably with members of groups other than one’s own is a serious social deficiency. Though its material consequences may be worse for groups of color—since being comfortable with whites, or making whites comfortable with oneself, is generally a requirement of professional success—it is nevertheless a serious disability for whites as well, and will become more so as whites continue to become a smaller majority in the population.

Benefits of Single-Race Groups and Activities

In predominantly white educational institutions, single-race groups, organizations, programs, and activities can serve important purposes. For many students of color, especially those who come to residential colleges from same-race environments, they provide a safe and comfortable environment the students may not otherwise find. Same-race groups provide a space for students to discuss race-based experiences—of stereotyping, ignorance, unwarranted assumptions, exclusions, and perhaps stigmatizing, harassment, and discrimination—that many of them will experience. (It is also a comfortable venue in which to help sort out whether certain experiences have a racial dimension or not.) Same-race groups provide a space where many students of color will feel valued in a way they do not in the larger institution.23

Same-race groups and organizations can also provide natural forums for cultural expression, where the racial group (as a panethnic group—see chapter 8) encompasses distinctive cultural groups. Of course some students may seek ethnically based rather than racially based groups for this purpose—Korean American rather than Asian American, Caribbean American rather than black.

Those who advocate abolishing programs that cater to students of a given ethnoracial group or discouraging single-race socializing fail to recognize that the playing field of social and academic comfort, acceptance, and valuing is not level at most white-majority institutions. While factors other than racial identity per se, especially socioeconomic background, affect this sense of acceptance, these factors often correlate with racial identity (especially among blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and south-east Asian groups). In any case, racial identity affects the sense of belonging at institutions partly independent of socioeconomic factors.

Single-race groupings can also provide an essential context for seeking recognition, within the wider institution, of the group’s racial or ethnoracial distinctiveness. They reflect a desire to be included as equal partners and members in the institution, but recognized as Latino or Hispanic, black, Asian American, Native American—as a distinct group with a distinct racial or ethnoracial identity. Equality and distinctiveness are by no means at odds with one another. A group may have equal standing yet be recognized in its distinctiveness (though a misunderstanding of equality might read it as “sameness” and thus give it an unwarranted assimilationist slant). Equality and distinctiveness are different values and must be addressed separately by institutions endeavoring to honor both of them.24

White students are sometimes genuinely confused about why it is regarded as legitimate for students of color to have their own organizations and activities, but not them; other white students perhaps recognize that there is a difference but are unsure how to articulate it. The above analysis explains the asymmetry (other forms of which were discussed in chapter 2) between students of color and white students. Within a white-dominated institution, white students do not need special support for their identity. They are much less likely to experience objectionable stereotyping and racial discrimination. (Individual white students may, however, experience objectionable stereotyping—as being racist, clueless, wealthy, for example—and it would be appropriate for an institution to provide peer counseling and an occasional white-only setting for the explicit purpose of discussing such experiences.) Individual whites may, of course, require academic support; but they do not require race-based academic support. Where white students wish venues for cultural expression, ethnic groupings themselves (Polish American, Irish American) will serve that purpose.

Not all minority students require or desire same-race groups; it is insulting to assume that they do. Here it is important to keep in mind recognition of the internal diversity of racial groups. Single-race social and programmatic opportunities should be viewed and presented as resources for students voluntarily to avail themselves of, not as imposed race-based expectations.

Drawbacks of Single-Race Groups and Activities

Though same-race groupings can serve valuable purposes, they may be unhealthy in some respects also. Some in-group socializing can be driven by racialism—in this context, the view that racial identification should determine one’s primary social group. It is constricting to individual members of a given group to impose on them “a kind of moral code that dictates solidarity and cohesiveness, and punishes those who stray into white circles of friendship.”25 (Whites can be victims of such racialist thinking as well.) It is not in any case inconsistent with an appropriate black solidarity and loyalty for a black student also to have white, Asian, Latino, and other friends.26

Bi-racial persons—those with parents from two different major ethno-racial groups—are particularly harmed by racialist ways of thinking and of organizing social life. Nonracialist ways of viewing group membership would embrace half-Mexican, half-Asian students in both the Mexican group and the Asian group, should they wish to be so identified. Adoptive students from a different group than their parents can also suffer from racialist ways of judging them as insufficiently “Asian,” “black,” and the like.

Even apart from racialism, the benefits of the same-race comfort zone have corresponding drawbacks. Some personal and educational growth requires risking discomfort, reaching beyond settings in which one is sure of oneself.27 This is one reason for institutions to put in place various opportunities, incentives, and pressures for students not to remain in the cocoon of their same-race groups—in classes, extracurricular activities, racially mixed residence activities, and so on. It is a reason for the institution to empower members of same-race groups to resist the exclusivist tendencies within those groups, though it is not a reason to discourage the groupings themselves.

Another pitfall of same-race groupings appears where acceptable “modes of racial being” are too narrowly defined. A healthy mode of same-race grouping embraces the diversity, likely to be found in any sizable racial group on a campus, of backgrounds, cultural styles, and self-definitions of “being black” (or Asian, or Native American). But campus groups may instead tilt toward certain styles, sub-groups, and modes of racial being as norms against which others are found wanting; this tilt may be implicit rather than consciously adopted—as, for example, when the upper-middle-class majority (increasing at elite institutions) in such groups has the effect of making those from more modest backgrounds feel uncomfortable. (An opposite example is the adoption of urban “street” styles as the normative mode by a black group with predominantly suburban backgrounds). The idea of “not black (or Chicano, or Native American) enough” should play as little role as possible in acceptance into a same-race group.

Interracial Community

Apart from these drawbacks, exclusive same-race socializing is detrimental to interracial communication and community in any institution. It is also harmful to the development of the interpersonal skills necessary for functioning in an ethnoracially plural democracy. Interracial community is a value in its own right. Any bridging of the profound divide of race is to be especially welcomed. The value of interracial community resides not merely in recognition, or even respect, but in an embracing of the racial diversity within a community of shared purposes. Creating interpersonal community requires settings that encourage students to form cross-racial friendships and other bonds, to acquire skills of cross-racial and cross-cultural communication, and to be committed to interracial community as a distinct value.

Interracial community is not entirely at odds with same-race socializing. Some of the values of same-race socializing may even support the goal of interracial community. For example, some students of color may need the support of a same-race community in order to gain a sense of confidence, place, and security in the wider institution that enables them to connect with students of other races. The wider community morever, should not be conceived in a purely color- (or race-, or culture-) blind fashion, but the particularistic ethoracial identities of its members should instead be recognized and welcomed.

Even in the best of circumstances, there will be some tension between the pulls of interracial community and those of same-race groupings. But educational institutions should strive to realize the values of both, recognizing that some balancing will likely be required.

Is Gaertner and Dovidio’s “Aversive Racism” Always Racism?

In the past forty years, social scientists have attempted to come to grips with changes in the forms of racism and other race-related ills brought about by the end of legally sanctioned segregation, the changes in moral culture spurred by the Civil Rights movement’s challenge to racial inequality, and the scientific delegitimizing of classic racist beliefs. Some have adopted an inflated use of “racism” that has damaged public discourse on race-related matters. Others, alert to this problem, have fallen prey to its moral counterpart—implying that whatever falls outside the scope of “racism” is of little moral concern, or is not subject to moral criticism.

Samuel Gaertner and John Dovidio’s discussion of racism among the well-intentioned was a milestone in understanding unacknowledged or unconscious racism. Their analysis derived from an elegant and striking experiment conducted by Gaertner and reported in 1973. White political liberals and conservatives received phone calls from researchers pretending to be stranded motorists attempting to call a service station and getting the number wrong.28 The callers had culturally identifiable “black” or “white” voices. If allowed to complete their message, the callers asked the subjects if they would call the service station for them, explaining that the call to the subject had taken their last bit of change.

While the white liberal subjects offered the requested help equivalently to those white and black callers whom they permitted to present their full story, the liberals were much more likely to hang up “prematurely” (as Gaertner put it) on the black caller, before he got to present his full story.29

Gaertner and Dovidio coined the expression “aversive racism” to describe this behavior. The liberals thought of themselves as unprejudiced racial egalitarians. If they regarded a situation as governed by norms calling for non-discrimination, they would be likely not to discriminate. (This was less true of the conservatives.) Gaertner and Dovidio plausibly hypothesized that the stranded motorists’ full story would elicit a norm of social responsibility that the liberals would not want to, and would try not to, implement in a discriminatory manner.

Prior to hearing the caller’s plight, however, no norm requiring assistance (or even staying on the line) kicked in for the liberal subject; there is no socially recognized norm to hear out every phone caller. Gaertner and Dovidio hypothesized that an antiblack animus on the part of the liberals accounted for their hanging up more frequently on the black than the white callers. This “aversive racism” was unconscious; the liberal subject did not think of himself as doing something discriminatory and presumably was not aware that he had hung up on the caller because he or she was black. Such an awareness would be inconsistent with the liberal’s egalitarian self-image. Later experiments revealed similar behavior and were similarly explained.30

The experiments do seem clearly to suggest differential feelings on the part of liberal whites toward whites and blacks. My quarrel is with the theoretical superstructure the authors erect around their findings. The term “aversive racism” suggests that behavior such as hanging up, or other “race-avoidance,” is always a form of racism—that it always involves dislike of blacks, suggested by the term “aversive.”31 I agree of course that sometimes such unconscious racial animus might be operating, and is likely to be operating often in the motorist experiment. But other possibilities suggest themselves. The liberal might be someone like Ms. Verano, the fourth-grade teacher discussed in chapter 1. She does not dislike black parents or think ill of them, but she is not comfortable with them either. Her discomfort or anxiety could easily lead her to hang up on a black caller or to other forms of avoidance behavior (such as avoiding potential interactions with blacks) that Gaertner and Dovidio’s theory would, misleadingly, call “aversive racism.”

In fact, Gaertner and Dovidio say explicitly that “the negative affect that aversive racists have for blacks is not hostility or hate. Instead, this negativity involves discomfort, uneasiness, disgust, and sometimes fear, which tend to motivate avoidance rather than intentionally destructive behaviors.”32 Discomfort and uneasiness should not be placed in the same moral category as disgust, which portrays its object in a negative light; one need not actually feel negatively toward someone with whom one feels discomfort. By acknowledging that aversive racism may be discomfort and not hostility or hate, Gaertner and Dovidio should have been led to question whether it should be regarded as “racism” at all.

As far as I know Gaertner and Dovidio did not perform comparable experiments with the races reversed. People of different racial groups in our society often feel uncomfortable with members of at least some other racial group. One can easily imagine some black subjects hanging up on a caller identified by their voice as white, or Asian, or Hispanic out of the discomfort of not being confident that one could manage the interaction adequately. Would Gaertner and Dovidio want to call these actions evidence of aversive racism? Race-related discomfort should not be conflated with an actual aversion to members of other racial groups, as the term of art “aversive racism” encourages us to do.33

Racial Discomfort or Anxiety

We see the difference between discomfort and genuine race-based aversion among schoolchildren, say of fifth grade or above. Children recognize differing groups among their classmates. Some of the groups are defined according to racial criteria, and children of this age know that race is a socially salient category before they fully grasp what it means. They may know enough to make them feel uncomfortable with this perceived and experienced difference from another group of children. Race might be associated with somewhat different ways of behaving, in addition to visual, phenotypic differences. These ways of behaving may have a class, linguistic, or cultural dimension as well, and the children may associate these with the racial designation. (Sometimes they grasp the cultural difference as a distinct component, for example seeing Haitian, Laotian, Central American, or Mexican children as both racially and culturally or linguistically different from themselves). Some of these children will experience discomfort, though not dislike, in regard to some other group, and it would be very misleading to call them aversive racists.34

We can realize that a group of persons is different from us in some socially important way, and we can feel that we are just not knowledgeable enough to feel comfortable with them. We can be anxious that we will embarrass ourselves by saying or doing the wrong thing. We may worry that the group will dislike and reject us if we attempt to approach it. This social anxiety is perfectly familiar in regard to cultural differences; the individual is anxious approaching a culture about which she lacks knowledge. It might be thought that similar considerations do not apply in the case of race, since members of different races live in the same communities. But members of different racial groups are often quite ignorant of one anothers’ modes of life, even if they interact in schools and workplaces. In a sense racial anxiety is even more likely than cultural anxiety, since differences in “race” are more socially charged than are cultural differences. (We will discuss this further in chapters 5–8.) If one is equally ignorant of a racial and a cultural group, there may be more reason to be anxious about violating some unknown norm with regard to the racially different group than with regard to the culturally different one.35

Racial anxiety or discomfort is not necessarily racist.36 Nor is racial discomfort the sort of thing for which its possessor is subject to moral criticism. It is not morally bad to be racially anxious, as it is morally bad to be racially prejudiced.

But an individual who recognizes her racial anxiety should not rest content with it just because it is not a moral blot on her character, in part because, as in Ms. Verano’s case, it can lead to discriminatory behavior. In addition, racial discomfort invites stereotyping—an especially acute problem with regard to race. Racial anxiety reinforces a sense of separateness from other racial groups. It makes it difficult to recognize internal diversity in such groups, and to appreciate the individuality of members of the group. Racial anxiety feeds into (in addition to drawing on) the homogenizing of racial groups that is a particular pitfall in the racial arena.

Racial discomfort is also inimical to the development of interracial community, reinforcing a sense that interracial groupings are somehow not “natural” (this seems particularly true among high school and some college students). Racial comfort not only makes social existence more pleasant, varied, and interesting for members of all groups, but serves the purposes of civic attachment and civic engagement as well.37 Teachers in particular would do well to try to decrease racial discomfort and anxiety in their classes, for example by forming interracial groups for various tasks.38

That it is often difficult to tell whether reluctance to engage with racial others is a product of animus or mere discomfort takes a toll on racial minorities who have to worry and wonder. “‘In waiting rooms or lobbies… I’ve tried to initiate a conversation [with whites], and I could tell they don’t want to talk,’ says Sharon Walter, an African American. ‘But when a white person walks in, conversation begins. I don’t want to think it’s racism…The better part of me wants to think otherwise.’”39 Merely having such thoughts is itself a psychic cost.

Racial Prejudice and Racial Equality: Sniderman and Piazza’s Scar of Race

In The Scar of Race, Paul Sniderman and Thomas Piazza present an argument, drawing largely on sophisticated opinion survey data and carefully crafted experiments, about the relations among racial prejudice, stereotyping, and people’s stances on public policies bearing on race. They concur with my contention that the use of “racist” is frequently corrosive to honest and fruitful discussion, and that its current conceptual inflation has backfired into a diminishing of moral concern for racism and racial prejudice.40 The authors are particularly concerned to demonstrate that attitudes and feelings toward blacks are much less determinative of white people’s stances on policy-related matters concerning race than one might think; opinions on affirmative action, especially, they argue, are minimally correlated with significant prejudice against blacks. (Like Gaertner and Dovidio, Sniderman and Piazza seem concerned only about whites and blacks, not other ethnoracial groups.) Prime targets in this argument are various forms of “new racism” theorists who, Sniderman and Piazza believe, overstate the degree of unconscious and unacknowledged racial prejudice—especially prejudice alleged to manifest itself as a belief that blacks violate certain core American values such as individualism and a strong work ethic.41 “New racism” theorists tend to see personal racism as implicated in opposition to policies that aid blacks.

Sniderman and Piazza are correct to resist such theories. “New racism” theories that take opposition to affirmative action as automatic evidence of racial prejudice are akin to David Wellman’s definition of a racist belief as one that helps to sustain black inequality. A belief in minimal government may make it difficult to support programs necessary to reduce black-white inequality, but that does not make it a racist belief, nor adherence to it necessarily a sign of racial prejudice.

Yet Sniderman and Piazza’s analysis of race-related ills on the contemporary scene suffers from two serious weaknesses. First, their conception of racism or racial prejudice is unnecessarily narrow; they appear to count only racial antipathy and not racial inferiorizing as significant forms of racism. Second, and more significant, although theirs is a work of social science rather than moral philosophy, Sniderman and Piazza very much intend their argument to have moral implications concerning legitimate forms of criticism of racial attitudes and policy stances on race-related issues. On this score, they operate with a moral vocabulary that is uncomfortably close to the all-or-nothing reasoning I criticized in chapter 1. If an individual’s stance on race-related issues can not be chalked up to personal racism, they imply, it is immune to moral criticism—simply a matter of political ideology or policy about which reasonable persons may disagree.

The authors find that holding what they call “nasty” stereotypes of blacks—for example, blacks as violent—does not correlate with opposing social spending targeted to blacks, affirmative action, and governmental efforts to ensure nondiscriminatory treatment in employment.42 They conclude that personal racism, or bigotry, does not signal opposition to black advancement at the policy level.43 They find, however, that avowal of a range of what they regard as less vicious stereotypes—blacks need to try harder, blacks on welfare could get a job if they tried—do correlate with such opposition. By regarding such stereotypes as indicators only of “low level prejudice” they do not count this finding as a counter-example to their view that racial prejudice correlates with policy stances.44

These stereotypes, however, are indicators of holding inferiorizing, and in that sense racist, stereotypes. The ideas that blacks need to try harder, that blacks on welfare could get a job, and that their failure to do so is a major cause of their lot in society are extremely damaging stereotypes without foundation. Obviously any individual or group that exerted more effort would be likely to advance further in life. But to single out and stigmatize the entire group of blacks and fail to apply this banal truth to members of any other racial group is to do serious damage to blacks—and to evidence a deep misunderstanding of American social reality. The stereotype is a somewhat softer form of the perennial notion of blacks as lazy, a paradigm form of inferiorizing racism.

A more serious deficiency in Sniderman and Piazza’s argument is the delegitimizing of a moral language for characterizing the unequal life chances of whites and blacks. Independent of how much one agrees with the authors’ account of the relation between racial prejudice and ideology on race-related public policies, one must take issue with their confining moral concern to the personal side of the ledger; they essentially imply that while personal racism and prejudice are clearly moral matters, political ideology is not. (This counterposing of morality and politics is implied in the following passage: “Prejudice is at work, and there are still questions of race that have moral issues at their center. But the politics of race is complex.…The politics of race is driven not only by racial sentiments but also by politics.”45)

But is not a rejection of the principle of equal opportunity a moral stance? Is it not a moral matter how one comes to terms with the historical injustice perpetrated uniquely on blacks, and with the contemporary legacy of such injustice? Why should it be accounted a moral issue if someone is personally prejudiced against blacks, but not if that person supports unequal opportunity for blacks? Of course the latter issue is “political” in a way that the former is not; ensuring equal opportunity is a matter for public policy. But this does not make it any less a moral issue. Commitment to these moral/political principles (equality of opportunity, rectifying historical injustice) does not, to be sure, automatically dictate a specific stance on every issue of race-related policy—affirmative action or welfare policy, for example. But the existence of this complexity should not be allowed to imply that moral language is inappropriate in discussing such policy issues, just because one can not reduce stances on them to personal prejudice.46

By severing racial attitudes from policy stances, Sniderman and Piazza imply that one can be a racial egalitarian and yet oppose government action to reduce unjust racial inequities. They say explicitly that both support for and opposition to social welfare policies are consistent with “the American Creed.”47 In doing so they imply rejection of the view that racial inequities are themselves contrary to ideals of justice and equality to which our nation allegedly aspires.48 In the course of arguing that bigotry is a minor factor in contemporary racial politics, Sniderman and Piazza imply that stances regarding the deeply troubling historical legacy of slavery, segregation, and widespread, institutionalized racial discrimination can be consigned to a realm of “politics” shielded from moral assessment.49 By cordoning off the “political” from the “moral,” they feed into a mindset that says that if something can not be characterized as “racism” or “racial prejudice,” it is removed from serious moral concern.

White Privilege

In the past decade, the idea of “white privilege” or “white skin privilege” has emerged as a powerful tool of moral critique of the racial social arrangements in Western societies and the United States in particular. What is white privilege, how is it related to racism, and what is the moral foundation of criticism of it?

At one level the idea of white privilege is a morally distinctive approach to what has more frequently been thought of as racial disadvantage. As Harlan Dalton puts it, “We have long since grown accustomed to thinking of Blacks as being ‘racially disadvantaged’. Rarely, however, do we refer to Whites as ‘racially advantaged’ even though that is an equally apt characterization of the existing inequality.”50 For example, because of housing discrimination blacks are frequently unable to move into neighborhoods they desire to and could afford to live in. We might decry this injustice or misfortune. If we are white, we are decrying an injustice or misfortune that happens to a group other than our own. The “white privilege” perspective forces our attention on the fact that we enjoy the privilege, or advantage, of being free from such discrimination. We are likely not to have thought about it this way, for privilege is something most white people simply take for granted. Indeed one of the benefits of white privilege is precisely that one does not have to think about it and face up to its possible injustice.51

There are two distinct forms of advantage or privilege involved here. One is simply that of being spared racial discrimination, stigmatizing, indignities, stereotyping, and other race-based wrongs. As Peggy McIntosh says, “Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.”52 A second, however, consists in material benefits accruing to whites because of discrimination against racial minorities. When a black is denied a job because of discrimination, there is one more job available to a non-black (usually a white). When poor schooling leaves many blacks and Latinos inadequately prepared for higher education or the job market, jobs and places in colleges become more available to whites (and to others, such as some Asian groups, positioned to take advantage of these opportunities). If one includes not only contemporary forms of discrimination but the legacy of historical discrimination, the unearned material advantage becomes quite considerable.

Even if they acknowledge the disadvantages suffered by large numbers of blacks, Native Americans, and Latinos or Hispanics, most whites do not recognize these advantages. What is the relation between this white privilege and racism? Some writers have placed white privilege at the center of their definition of “racism”; for them, racism is a system of privilege, or beliefs that support such a system.53

We discussed David Wellman’s example of the latter in chapter 1, and saw why this is misleading as a definition of personal racism. The whole point of the idea of white privilege is that it does not depend on the attitudes of its beneficiaries toward disadvantaged racial groups; nonracists still partake of white privilege. Even if I deplore discrimination, jobs are still available to me, I still reap the accumulated advantages of decades, even centuries, during which nonwhite people were denied opportunity, even if my own ancestors have been Americans only for several generations. What is so disturbing about white privilege is that you need not be in any way personally blameworthy for having it, but it is still unfair that you do. It is not personally racist to have white privilege.54

Nevertheless, one understands why some commentators do not wish to abandon a connection between individual racism and white privilege. If “racism” is the only way one can express racial wrongfulness, one will certainly want to count white privilege as a form of racism. I suggest a different approach. Let us give up the idea that the only way to talk about racial wrongfulness is by means of the concept of “racism.” Let “white privilege” be permitted to carry its own moral force, just as “racial justice,” “respecting racial identity,” or “promoting interracial community” should do.

Yet if white privilege is to join the pantheon of race-related ills, its moral foundations require a bit more scrutiny. Peggy McIntosh notes a difference between privileges that are morally suspect—such as being able to ignore the perspectives of less powerful individuals at no personal cost—and those that are morally worthy and should be available to everyone—such as not being expected to speak for all persons in one’s racial group. McIntosh also asks whether some of what look like privileges are so in fact. In part this question is related to the moral suspectness of certain privileges. Being able to glide through life without being aware of the experiences and perspectives of important social groups in one’s society, and of marginalized or discriminated-against groups in particular, constitutes a form of personal ignorance or obliviousness that can be regarded as an “advantage” only within a very narrow value system.

More generally, even with regard to privileges that are genuine benefits, an individual who, having become aware of the injustice of her having an advantage, embraces it nevertheless, is arguably morally damaged by her deliberate collusion in injustice.

A different issue relates to the long-term and short-term dimensions of such alleged advantages. Although whites on the lower end of the income scale have often been willing to avail themselves of the society’s offer to consider themselves superior to blacks, it can be argued that this status gain was a diversionary sop that prevented them from recognizing their class interest as workers, and their possible commonality of interests with blacks. W. E. B. Du Bois put forth a powerful version of this argument in his 1935 work, Black Reconstruction.55 Even if many white workers benefited from wage discrimination against blacks, that benefit was arguably outweighed by the loss of being played off against blacks through what Du Bois called the “psychological wage” of white superiority. Even if all whites do benefit in some respect from white privilege, it is a mistake to think of “whites” (as of “blacks”) as a single, unified, homogeneous grouping. On a larger social canvas, some benefit much more than others.

Whites are differentiated by forms of privilege with a structure similar to racial privilege. McIntosh mentions age, ethnicity, religion, physical ability, nationality, and sexual orientation. (Indeed, she was led to a recognition of white racial privilege through her experience on the disadvantaged side of gender privilege.) Many whites who do genuinely benefit from white privilege may be on the disadvantaged side of many of these divides. They may not be “privileged” in any overall sense, and the notion of white privilege should take care to avoid this implication.

A different pitfall in the use of the term “white privilege” lies in conflating some of these other forms of privilege with race. Louise Derman-Sparks and Carol Brunson Phillips say that only whites “who are affluent, male, adult, and generally Protestant” gain “the full economic, political, and cultural benefits of racism.”56 The privileges of wealth, maleness, adulthood, and majority religious status may in practice often be intertwined with those of whiteness, but they are distinct sources of privilege in themselves. Persons advantaged on some dimensions may be disadvantaged on others. A poor white woman is not subject to racial stigmatizing and discrimination. A wealthy black man avoids the insecurity and material depredations of poverty, and need not fear being raped as he takes an evening stroll in his neighborhood.57 (He may risk being stopped by the police, however.) Conflating the privileges of wealth with those of race can, in addition, encourage stereotyping whites as wealthy and blacks as poor.

The discussion so far implies that the wrong involved in white privilege depends on a prior determination of injustice. Speaking of privilege becomes another way of speaking of injustice; it may be a way that elicits moral attention and concern more readily or forcefully than the invocation of “injustice” alone. (Indeed, the idea of white privilege may help to return to public attention a concept of racial injustice that has been absent from public discourse for a decade, perhaps two.) But it has no different moral status from that injustice.

If white privilege is a way of talking about injustice, we must recognize that not all racial inequality is racial injustice; hence not all forms of benefit to whites will count as “white privilege.” Consider number twenty-four on McIntosh’s list of white privileges, “I can be reasonably sure that if I ask to talk to ‘the person in charge,’ I will be facing a person of my race.” (Ignore for the moment that this seems a morally suspect “privilege.”) Let us imagine that in such a setting the percentage of “persons in charge” of each racial group exactly matches their percentage in the general population. Then a Latino or Hispanic asking to speak to the person in charge will be much more likely to face a white than a fellow Latino or Hispanic. But is this a (racial) injustice? It seems similar to a Jew or Muslim encountering Christmas lights in a large majority of houses in a residential area. The Jew or Muslim may be uncomfortable being reminded of her minority religious status and thus her exclusion from the dominant culture. But it does not seem an instance of injustice. Some inequities may be unfortunate, but not unjust.

Yet injustice may not be the only morally problematic dimension of “white privilege” or “unearned white advantage.” Consider the above analogy of “Christian privilege.” The idea of privilege may not invoke an injustice but could serve to encourage the Christian to recognize explicitly that she indeed represents the dominant group—not simply to take this for granted as if it were part of the natural order of things, but to acknowledge it as historically and socially contingent. In doing so, the idea of Christian privilege invites her to extend recognition and empathy to members of minority religions—to try to imagine what it is like for one’s religion to be other than the norm.

The class inequality discussed above is another example. It may or may not be unjust for the child of the upper middle class to have greater resources than the child of the working class. But it still constitutes a kind of privilege that the former does not earn. It is a privilege that is easy to take for granted, but wrong to do so. In recognizing the privilege, the child is more readily led to recognize and empathize with the situation of those with fewer resources then she.

This understanding of “white privilege” can apply to race-based inequities or disparities that are not unjust—for example having less power, visibility, and cultural influence purely because of minority status.

“White privilege,” then, is a complex idea. Some of what are so named are unworthy privileges, and some are not privileges at all, except perhaps in a very narrow sense. Among morally acceptable privileges, some are distinctly unjust, and speaking of white privilege is a way of naming that injustice that explicitly calls attention to whites’ benefiting from it. Other morally acceptable but not unjust privileges are still things the privileged should not simply take for granted or fail to recognize. It is not racist to have white privilege; white privilege is a different sort of racial ill than personal racism. But it is morally wrong to be complacent about or accepting of racial privileges once one knows one possesses them; one is (often) thereby being complicit with injustice.

The range of race-related wrongs, misfortunes, and missteps is quite vast. I have considered a somewhat random sample of those often referred to as “racism.” Few of these, however, are racism in the sense of antipathy or inferiorization. Recognition of personally-significant racial (or ethnic or cultural) identities; recognition of internal diversity in a racial group; appreciation of individuality (but not by denying the importance of group identities); and sensitivity to recognition issues in vulnerable groups are all important values, but violation of them is not generally racism. Gaertner and Dovidio’s influential idea of “aversive racism,” based on experiments that expose troubling racial attitudes, conflates racial discomfort with genuine racial antipathy, though certainly racial discomfort is itself damaging to interracial relationships and understanding. It is not in itself racist to judge a person by her race; the content of the judgment, or its purposes, alone can make it racist. Jim Sleeper conflates “racialism”—the attaching of inappropriate importance to race or racial identity—with racism; but racialism can nevertheless be quite damaging. Same-race socializing among students of color (in educational institutions) is almost never racist. It can serve some valuable race-related goals of personal and academic support; comfort, safety, and security in the not always welcoming environment of white-dominated institutions; and cultural expression. At the same time, exclusive same-race socializing can be constricting to individual development, unduly exclusionary, and harmful to interracial community; it is especially likely to be so when fueled by racialism.

We should not be required to regard something as “racist” in order to view it as worthy of moral concern. Sniderman and Piazza’s Scar of Race, while helpfully cautionary about inflation of the term “racism” and about the danger of oversimplified thinking about relations between racial prejudice and race-related policy, yet fails to avoid this pitfall. The authors imply that because race-related policy stances are not generally fueled by personal racism and are related to political ideology, moral critique can not be applied to them. They thereby imply that racial inequities in life chances are not matters of moral concern.

“White privilege” is a recent important concept to help us talk about racial wrongfulness. It both enables and presupposes a conception of racial justice and injustice, but also invites moral concern about advantages that, while not unjust, should not be taken for granted as if they were natural or cosmically justified. Empathy for the disadvantaged is the proper moral response to such advantages. Though white privilege is a personal matter in that each white individual partakes in it, it should be kept clearly distinct from personal racism.