Race Relations and the Future

Race Relations and the Future

This essay on race relations, race and society, and the conceptions of race is aimed in the realms of theoretical and abstract thinking.  It is meant less as a specific policy guide but more as a thought experiment for rumination.  What follows is more a collection of thoughts than specific policies to be adopted by our elected public servants. 

The ideas of race and race relations have been topics of discussion and of great importance from the founding of the United States to our present time.  There are a multitude of many incredibly intelligent people who have in the past and currently speak passionately on the subject of race and I have no doubt they will be able to speak and write much more intelligently and succinctly than I.  I have no pretensions of adding greatly to the existing debate.  It is with these thoughts and disclaimers in mind I will begin. 

In a broader sense, racism should be defined as a human characteristic, in the sense that racism is colorblind; it can affect any human being regardless of their race, whether they are black, brown, white, blue, or green[1].  Racism as the process of ranking and differentiating based on presumably inherent traits which can be utilized as justification for discrimination can be employed by any individual of any race against individuals of different racial or ethnic compositions.  No one racial or ethnic group possesses a monopoly on racism. 
We should correctly diagnose racism wherever and in whomever it presents itself; whether the individual perpetrating racism is white and the offended individual is black or of the individual perpetrating racism is black and the offended individual is a brown skinned Hispanic or if the individual perpetrating racism is a brown skinned Hispanic and the offended individual is East Asian or if the individual perpetrating racism is black and the offended individual is white.  Racism can be utilized by any individual regardless of their race or ethnicity and can offend any individual regardless of their race or ethnicity any society in any geographic location anywhere around the world.  Racism is truly a human characteristic and a human problem.

In addition to defining racism as a human characteristic I believe it is also important to utilize a more nuanced, practical view of race that avoids a kind of politically correct color blind racism.  To say that every person of every race is exactly the same is fine in a larger metaphysical context, but problems arise when people apply the idea to specific situations and physical characteristics.  There are clearly physically differences between people of different racial groups even different ethnic groups with a race.  Somalis have distinct ethnic differences from ethnic West Africans as do European South Slavs have distinct ethnic differences from ethnic Swedes as do Japanese and Filipinos as well.  These physical differences are as obvious as different hair color among European peoples.  To deny the fact that these racial and ethnic differences exist, is to deny objective, observable facts.  I however do not think that these physical differences are the cause of racial classifications and discrimination, because when one points out a physical difference to one as a problem, they often are referencing issues or problems that are much larger and complex than a mere physical difference.  Problems arise because the color of one’s skin or certain physical racial and ethnic characteristics carry with them meanings and insinuations beyond a mere physical description of the occupant.  The color of one’s skin or certain physical and racial or ethnic characteristics are just a convenient way to stereotype and identify these much larger meanings, insinuations, and often insecurities.  In this sense physical racial characterizes do more than describe the physical appearance of another person, they define the person by the stereotypes and metaphysical traits that have been ascribed to them.  Race has moved beyond a descriptive characteristic to a defining characteristic.  Race now defines one; it does not merely describe them.  Many people when they see a person of a certain race walking up to them on the street instantly have many thoughts and opinions of that person in regards to the behavior that person engages in, there interests, likes, and desires.  All information obtained without a single conversation or even a surface level interaction with that person.  Many of us default to preconceived notions and stereotypes about that person walking towards us on the street.  I believe the biggest obstacle to racial coexistence and understanding are the stereotypes and preconceived notions that are associated with racial and ethnic groups.  In the United States we need to let race describe us, not define us.  If we can reach a point where the color of one’s skin and their distinct racial and physical characteristics merely describe their physical appearance without implying personality traits about the person in question, racial coexistence and understanding can be achieved. 

Letting race describe you, not define you sounds very much like a vague aphorism and a nice ideal that will lead to nothing more.  There is an inherent disconnect between agreeing with an idea and putting it to practice on a mass scale.  I have no illusions about what I am asking people to do, and more importantly how to think.  Disregarding stereotypes and preconceived notions about others is a difficult task mentally, the pursuit of which will require mental fortitude and endurance.  It will require individuals to think critically and think critically often about their interactions with people throughout the course of their day, day in and day out.  Added to the already present stresses involved with working and living day to day, the mental exertion expended on critical thinking throughout each day, day in and day out, will be considerable.  But, the mental energy expended on critically thinking about one’s interactions with the people they encounter and not treating them as stereotypes must be undertaken by each individual in society, regardless of race.  Racial coexistence and understanding, and thus the elimination of discrimination, will not come from a government program, it will come from the majority of people in society choosing day in and day out to think differently about race and how they perceive and think about others.  Hopefully with increased collective awareness about how we perceive and think about race, we can live in a society where the color of one’s skin describes that person and doesn’t define them.    

Stereotyping people by how they look is not only confined to race.  We stereotype certain kinds of people as well, regardless of race, usually based on how one dresses: hipster, banker, construction worker, etc.  The fact that how one dresses can be another way we discriminate against individuals and adds another element to the conception of race in the United States.  Often cultures in the United States are racialized.  We ascribe cultural traits and beliefs to people of a certain race.  One can discern why we often racialize cultures. The majority of individuals from many racial groups do belong and identify with a particular culture, which is a sound rational for association, but association is often misinterpreted and not true in every case.  I believe associating cultural characteristics to racial groups contributes greatly to the stereotyping of races discussed earlier in this essay, perhaps providing the leading source for most non-physical characteristics that become ascribed to physical racial characteristics.   The implications of ascribing cultural characteristics to race are fairly intuitive; misrepresentations, inaccurate views, providing a societal cage for individuals to live in, basing interactions on false foundations, etc.   Also, I believe that racializing culture leads to false accusations of racism, when the point of contention is not racial, but in fact cultural.

In a world where a racial group is perceived to embody a certain culture, cultural disputes can be viewed as racial disputes.  What a person of one culture views as appropriate and well intentioned can be viewed by a person of a different culture as inappropriate and rude.  The dispute is between cultural definitions of acceptability, not based on the race of the people involved, but because we perceive a certain race to embody a culture, the cultural dispute becomes viewed as a racial dispute.  I believe in these situations race is just the mask that hides the true area of dispute, culture.  As a result many cultural disputes are falsely diagnosed as racial disputes, which acts as a non-starter for racially based solutions or arbitration because a racially based solution does not address the core problem, cultural dispute.  Mistaking culture for race, leads to many false accusations of racism.  Dissociating culture from race is an intellectual step that must be taken, we must be able to analytically move beyond mere association as defining evidence and towards an approach centered more on critical thinking on a case by case basis, which has a greater ability to provide respect for individuals. 

A common example of mistaking culture for race can be demonstrated by the perceptions people have of one another based on how other people dress.  Few people when seeing another person walking down the street feel threatened or afraid if that person is wearing a business suit and appears on their way to a business meeting.  Regardless of the race of that person walking toward one on the street, if they are wearing a business suit, few people, if any feel threatened, regardless of the race of the observer.  However if that person is dressed like a criminal from the lower class, then feelings of foreboding and being threatened rise to the surface.  If the person walking on the street is dressed in the attire stereotypical of a criminal, usually the observer is frightened.  They are not frightened by the race of the person dressed as a criminal, but rather by the implications of the behavior of the individual dressed as a ; the implication that the individual is more likely to use violence, carry a weapon, and have less moral qualms about engaging in criminal activity.  The fear of the implications of a person’s dress can come regardless of the race of the individual wearing the fashion of dress, whether the individual is an African-American or Hispanic dressed in gang clothing or a European-American[2] dressed supremely in ‘white-trash’ attire.  Often the fear of another individual is caused by the fear of the implications of their behavior which is suggested by their choice of clothing and not because of the individual’s race.  At the same time, the previously explained assertion is not meant as a hard and fast rule to cover every person.  Regrettably there still are real racists in American society, who will view a person of a particular race, regardless of their choice of clothing, as pertaining to a certain class of people.  They do however constituent a minority, and we must make sure that a few racists are not allowed to characterize an entire people or social situation. 

At its heart I believe racism is about power; real power with elected office, members of police forces, and the military as well as soft power with media presence and cultural influence.  Culture plays into these power dynamics because of its close association with race.  Power dynamics play an important role in race relations.  I believe much of the friction between cultures in the United States is the result of a numerically larger culture that through its larger numbers exerts more influence on United States society.  The United States was founded largely by Europeans and descendants of Europeans, which have maintained a numerical majority of the population from the founding in the late 1700s to the present day.  The implications of this numerical advantage are wide ranging; the subject matter for film and television is directed at this audience as well as the majority of advertising being directed towards the numerical majority cultural group.  The United States government is also comprised mostly of elected representatives who are descended from Europeans and the current European derived majority.  I think much of the cultural tension in the United States stems from this power dynamic and perhaps power imbalance.  Also as a result of cultural power dynamics, when a society has a numerically larger culture with far more influence than others, other cultures react in this power deficit.  Many minority cultures may reinforce certain culture elements and hold on to them with more pride in the face of outsized pressure from the dominate culture, fueling a cultural conflict.  This clinging to culture combined with thoughts previous mentioned in this essay may contribute to certain races becoming associated with certain cultural traits that are clung to more fiercely in the face of pressure, the whole process creates stereotyping of racial characteristics with cultures.   The phenomena creates many big question United States society must confront; how do we respect other cultures?, how does the more powerful and majority culture respect minority cultures without hampering itself?  An unavoidable fact is that we must establish certain rights and a framework that allows citizens to conduct themselves as they will individually as long as they do not trample the rights and lives of others.     

Much of the topics of previous discussion in this essay pertain to analyzing how we think about race and perceived problems in our judgments of race.  While of importance, they do not offer a solution or way to move forward from our present condition beyond becoming aware of perceived flaws and problems.  In these next paragraphs I will propose a few tactics and solutions with the aim of increasing critical thought and coexistence in regards to race relations in the United States.            

I thoroughly believe that the United States needs productive conversations on race in all areas of public life, from Congress to coffee shops, productive conversations are critical.  The operative word though is productive.  We must make sure that we engage with our conversation partners in an empathetic, understanding way and that we avoid conversation stoppers, that is sensationalized often hurtful statements with the aim of hurting or embarrassing the other person and not seeking to win by superior logic.  The first step involved in productive conversations is engaging with each other.  In order to achieve this we need to make an effort to try and understand our conversation partners’ point of view and where they are coming from.  We also need to give people the right to unintentionally offend others.  Each partner in a productive conversation comes from different communities with varying degrees of knowledge about a variety of topics.  It is entirely possible they may be uneducated and ignorant about certain facts or viewpoints.  The media sources they have received their information through can distort and make subtle insinuations that a person may have absorbed.  All of these previous mentioned aspects can lead to a conversation partner inadvertently offended the other conversations partner.  If we simply end the conversation and make the conversation more about this unintentional offence, then we have not produced a productive conversation.  We need to learn to differentiate between intentions, often people offend out of ignorance when they had no desire to offend.  A conversation should not stop simply because of ignorance and lack of understanding, after all, ignorance and lack of understanding of other races is what we are trying to overcome with conversation in the first place.  We must differentiate by intention and give our conversations partners the ability to offend, recognizing if it is intentional or not.

I think the only way toward racial harmony and coexistence is through a process of greater understanding.  Peaceful coexistence should be the ultimate goal as advocated by Martin Luther King.  If we seek a traditional power dynamic of gaining superiority of power over another group we will be locked in a process of violence until either we are defeated or victorious.  And if we are victorious we must constantly keep the defeated group down, we must watch over them and be ever vigilant.  If we sought to and succeeded in over throwing our overseer and cannot live with them, we will need to keep watch over them and maintain our superior status.  We will have become the very overseer we sought to overthrow; we will become the evil we hated.  The only way to avoid become our enemy is to reach an understanding with the other group and learn to coexist with that other group.  Both groups don’t have to agree on everything, they only have to agree on the really important matters.        

I think in general there will be three waves of racial acceptance in the United States.  The first wave will be white Americans coming to terms with everyone else.  The second wave will be everyone else coming to terms with white Americans.  And the third wave will be everyone else coming to terms with everyone else.  I think the first wave is already happening.  White Americans have constantly been drilled by films, other media, and discussions on racism and racial sensitivities.  This process is not perfect or complete, but it is largely underway.  I do not think that we have seen race and racism come full circle yet.  Racism seems to be seen as a white American problem, perhaps partly because the majority of racial discussions have been aimed at white Americans.  The third wave of racial acceptance in the United States will be the most interesting and brings up a larger issue with racial discussion in the United States.  For the vast majority of American history racial discussions have been trapped in a white black dynamic, which does not represent the current racial makeup of the United States.  For most of American history the two largest racial groups have been white Americans and black Americans.  For example in 1950 the United States was 85% white, 10% black, and 5% everything else and given the history of black slavery in the United States, it was natural that racial conversations would be focused on white and black dynamics.  The United States is no longer living in the 1950s, the United States is a much more racial diverse country than we were in 1950.  We need to broaden our racial conversations to include other races and ethnicities.  In a recent Pew Research poll the two racial groups who held the highest percentage of members with negative feelings towards African Americans were Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans.  Given that Asian and Hispanic Americans are the two fastest growing demographic groups in the United States it is imperative that we engage them in our national discussions on race.  Simply reducing racist views among white Americans will no longer be sufficient.  We need to update and broaden our conversations on race in the United States to incorporate changing demographics.    

I also think that the racial makeup of the United States changing isn’t good or bad, it is different.  We often say race doesn’t matter.  If race carries little importance, then how can we ascribe a value to changing racial demographics?  If then how can we place a value on racial diversity, especially if we do not racialize culture as we presently do?  Under the logic that increased racial diversity is a positive aspect, then shouldn’t we label Finland and Japan, two of the most ethnically homogenous countries in the world, as horrible countries?  Yet Finland and Japan constantly score near the top of most metrics associated with great countries, such as quality of education.  If we stop racializing culture and other nonracial aspects, we find that the color of one’s skin does not tell much about that person and that race does not carry the importance we have ascribed to it.  Simply put in a world thinking more critically we find that race is not one of the most important aspects about a person.      

           

                   

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[1] How to appropriately classify and describe people by race and ethnicity is a topic of debate in and of itself.  I will use common color classifications in this essay because I think they are more appropriate in an increasing globalized world with each geographic area becoming more racially and ethnically diverse with the international exchange of tens of millions of migrants.  This type of classification is not without its flaws, but I believe it to be the best for the purposes of this essay.   Another problem with a geographic classification system for race is that it promotes an otherness associated with non-European derived Americans.  Americans of European origin are not classified as European Americans; they are classified simply as Americans.  Where Americans who are descended from other geographic areas have an additional qualifier in front of American; African American, Asian American, Indian American, and so on.  This process creates an otherness or that an American with a qualifier in front of American is a contingent American.  If we are to continue to use the geographic system for classifying race, we should add European in front of American to Americans whose ancestors originated in Europe.  Or we could get rid of the geographic system for racial classification.  In addition I think we  should also allow people to self-identify and choose their racial classification, especially for interracial Americans.         

[2] I use the term European-American to refer to individuals traditionally classified as ‘white’ in the United States.