Home Our Focus Areas Roger Clegg Columns Concerns today are not legal, they're cultural

Concerns today are not legal, they're cultural

Written by Roger Clegg

Sunday, 01 February 2009

This is a good time to take a step back and think about what remains to be done to improve race relations in the United States. Let's limit the discussion to African Americans here, since the inauguration of Barack Obama makes this the logical focus, and the problems with respect to African Americans are the longest standing (except for American Indians) and remain the most difficult. But before we can discuss what can be done to improve race relations, it makes sense to ask first where, ideally, we would like to end up. A realistic goal would be for being black to be roughly analogous to being Irish. That is, we don't expect people to be literally colorblind, and we don't demand that people ignore or forget about their roots. It's fine to celebrate that heritage, but the celebration ought to be a relatively minor part of one's makeup. No one should be discriminated against on account of this ethnicity, and any legal distinction on this basis should be forbidden. In terms of legal distinctions, we are already there (with the important exception of racial preferences). That is, the government is not allowed to treat people differently on the basis of skin color, and it is illegal to do so in most publicly transacted private matters as well: employment, housing, public accommodations, you name it. Rather, there are two problems people might identify. First, while we have made huge progress over the last half-century, there are still individuals who harbor racial bias and engage in racial discrimination. Second, there are a disproportionately high number of African Americans clustered at the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. What can we do about individual bias and discrimination? Again, one thing we have already done is make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race in most public transactions. Our society has also made it socially unacceptable to be a bigot. Our laws and our popular culture condemn racial discrimination. But the root task is to convince people that they are wrong to think African Americans are in some way inferior. For that, racial stratification is a problem. In fact, bigotry today exists not because it is taught by the government or in school, but principally because bigots observe the disproportionate number of African Americans who are jobless or in prison or whatever, and predictably but unfortunately conclude that there is something wrong with the whole race. Ironically, racial preferences often encourage bigotry as well. Classifying people according to skin color and what country their ancestors came from, and treating some better and others worse depending on which box they check, is discrimination and undesirable for the long-term harmony of an increasingly multiracial and multiethnic country. Racial preferences foster resentment and apparently confirm the suspicion that blacks are incapable of competing without special help. They also impede improved race relations by stigmatizing African Americans - in their own eyes and in the eyes of their classmates, teachers, coworkers and customers. As African American race-relations expert John McWhorter has noted, racial preferences also encourage separatism and a victim mind-set and create disincentives to trying one's best. Finally, by mismatching individuals and institutions, they set the former up for failure; thus, as professor Richard Sander of UCLA law school has demonstrated, racial preferences in admission to law school have actually resulted in there being fewer African American lawyers than if those preferences had never been used in the first place. We must continue to fight discrimination, but the more important task is now cultural rather than legal, like fighting the pernicious notion that studying and working hard are "acting white." Even more important, we must address the fact that seven out of 10 African Americans are born out of wedlock. It is illegitimacy that results in the bunching of black people in poverty and unemployment and prison, as well as having the next generation of children also out of wedlock, perpetuating this cycle. There is much to celebrate in 2009. Race relations are good - have never been better. The most important elements to further improvement are in place: A legal regime that is antidiscrimination and a popular culture that condemns bigotry. Did I mention that Americans have elected an African American president? And, partly on that account, there is hope regarding the two major impediments to further improving race relations. The president has already encouraged African Americans to follow the Obamas' lead when it comes to family and child-rearing. It would also be heartening if he would follow the logic of his own words - that his daughters probably shouldn't get preferences, and that poor nonminorities probably should - and transform racial preferences into programs that help disadvantaged individuals of all colors.