WHAT IS RACE?

One defeasible but serviceable tell that two species share a common ancestry is that they remain interbreedable. So though possible, it’s highly unlikely that the pre-contact peoples of the Western Hemisphere were sui generis, as some of their descendants claim. Rather it’s that when populations evolve in isolation from each other, though they remain interbreedable, their features adapt differentially to their respective environments. Hence the skin colours of Scandinavians versus sub-Saharan Africans. Call these variations, if you will, race.

WHAT RACISM ISN’T

Phenotype is a defeasible but serviceable tell of someone’s race. And race is important in allocating finite medical resources, e.g. screening for sickle cell anaemia or Tay Sachs. So by racism cannot be meant the acknowledgement that people are of different races. That’s just a duh. And given that to discriminate simply means to ascertain a difference and act accordingly, nor can racism mean, as we’ve just seen, discriminatory treatment of people of different races. Likewise a duh. So it must means wrongful discriminatory treatment of people because of their race.

But ‘wrongful’ is ambiguous here. It can mean misidentifying the relevance of race to the differential treatment in question. So, for example, no, East Asians aren’t inherently better at math. Or it can mean it’s wrong to let an otherwise legitimate difference play a role in that differential treatment. So, for example, even if blacks are more likely to shoplift, it would be wrong to profile them.

So suppose we were just wrong about sickle cell anaemia being largely confined to blacks. Then screening for it only in blacks would be a mistake, but not a moral mistake. It would be a moral mistake if and only we know that pre-diabetes is equally prevalent in whites and blacks, but we screen for it only in whites.

Well, phenotype, a.k.a race, is also a defeasible but serviceable tell of culture. Golf and skiing are expensive sports. Basketball and soccer cost virtually nothing. So it’s not surprising that there are fewer black golfers and skiers, and that “White Men Can’t Jump”. “White men can’t jump” is a legitimate cultural stereotype, in that it’s no less serviceable than had it been something about white musculature.

Serviceable in what way? Suppose time and resources are severely limited, such that we have only so many tryout spots available, and so whites are excluded from even trying out. Are these white would-be tryouts being wronged? No more so than not screening them for sickle cell anaemia. Is the whitey who would have made the team being wronged? No more so than not screening him for sickle cell anaemia and it turned out he had the haploid. So where exactly does what we do mean by racism kick in?

Suppose I know nothing about two candidates other than their race and diplomas, and I lack the resources to know anything more. Is it racism to suspect the white candidate will have more to show for his high school diploma than will the black candidate? If so, then induction is racism. But if induction is racism then racism loses all serviceable meaning.

WHAT RACISM IS

That said, it’s perfectly defensible for the state to allow, indeed to encourage, certain stereotyping, a.k.a. inductions, and to disallow others. A higher percentage of 13 year olds would pass a drivers test than whities would make the defensive roster in the NFL. We don’t allow 13 year olds to take the test, and yet neither do we allow whites-need-not-apply for the NFL. So what counts as ageism or racism is a political decision. White would-be professional athletes wield political power. 13 year old would-be drivers don’t.

Well yes, but surely there’s more to racism than this. Jane’s neighbourhood is 10% black. If Jane had been sexually assaulted only once, and that by a black man, she would not be entitled to conclude that black men are more likely to be rapists than white men. But if she has been sexually assaulted five times, all by blacks, she would. She could still be wrong. As it turns out these were the only five black men in the entire neighbourhood prone to rape. But she wouldn’t be culpably wrong. She’d be a racist. But she wouldn’t be culpably a racist. She’d be, what we might call, understandably racist.

And yet if, by racism, were meant understandable racism, a charge of racism would have no bite. The most that could be said about Jane is that she could stand to be more informed. But now let’s suppose she is informed her assailants were the only five black men in the entire neighbourhood prone to rape. She can no longer think black men are more likely to be rapists. But Jane might think, quite independent of these experiences – or any data, for that matter – that blacks are in some sense inferior to whites. In what sense? Less intelligent. Or less morally upright. Or what have you. Then and only then, it seems, is she a racist in the culpable sense.

She might, for all that, have a just-so story as to why they’re less intelligent or morally upright. But unless she has data that they are, she remains a racist in the culpable sense. And it’s this, I think, that people mean by a charge of racism in the culpable sense.

Are there many racists in the culpable sense? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that there certainly were, for example at the peak of the slave trade. And there are people who’ve inherited that view. But no in the sense that it remains a majority view. But yes in the sense if we expand what we mean by race. There are plenty of Israeli Jews who consider Palestinians less morally upright. In fact morally vile. And the sentiment is reciprocated. Is this just the standard ploy of dehumanising the enemy? Of course it is. But that doesn’t make it any the less racist. After all, the dehumanising of blacks was likewise a precondition of slavery.

But hang on. Does instrumental racism – which is what this amounts to – remove it from the category of culpable? Surely if it’s required to do what has to be done, the moral question redounds to whether what has to be done does have to be done. Does Palestine have to be ethnically cleansed of Palestinians to make room for the Jews? Did Europe have to be cleansed of Jews to make room for the Aryans? And these questions, in turn, redound to the moral defensibility of homogeneity. And that, it seems, is an issue no one wants to even think about thinking about. Because if the Jews can make their case, why can’t the Germans? And if the Germans can make it, why can’t Jane?

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: Aryans, culture, Germans, induction, Israelis, Palestinians, race, racism, stereotypubg