Who we are depends on who's talking and to whom. In our society, public race talk is part of the larger political conversation concerning national affairs. But there is private race talk too-that conversation among segregated confidants who speak with a candor not possible in public. Civil rights, affirmative action, multicultural education, and voting-rights policy are discussed publicly in explicitly racial terms while the implicit racial themes of crime and welfare simmer beneath the surface of public conversation. Race talk has always dominated communal deliberations among blacks as we have sought, through heated internal dialogue, to come to terms with the inherited disability of second-class citizenship. I am sure that whites too engage in lively, if guarded, private deliberations on race-related matters.
Modes of race talk
These two levels of deliberation-public within the national polity, and private amongst blacks and whites themselvesinteract in important and complex ways. What is acceptable and effective to argue in either forum depends on the nature of the discourse in the other. Prudent discussion of racial matters must attend to these interrelated contexts. So, I am engaged here in two connected, but distinct, conversations, practicing a kind of "double speak," if you will. On the one hand, I speak as a public man, an American, to the whole nation, offering advice on bow "we"-that is, all of us-should approach questions of race. But, I also speak as a black, addressing "my people" about how "we" should endeavor to make progress.
This dual role limits what I can say without risk of misunderstanding by one or another audience. Both audiences may extend to me a certain license because of race but, for the same reason, may also demand a certain fealty: Each listener will search for evidence of disloyalty to cherished values and for confirmation of strongly held convictions. Inevitably, some of you must be disappointed.
As a veteran of the academic culture wars during a period of growing racial conflict in our society, I have often had to confront the problem of balancing my desire to fulfill the expectations of others-both whites and blacks, but, more especially, blacks-with my conviction that one should live with integrity. Sometimes this has led me to act against my initial inclination in ways which would elicit approval from my racial peers. After many years, however, I came to understand that, unless I were willing to risk the derision of the crowd, I would have no chance to discover the most important truths about myself or about life-to define and pursue that which I most value, to make the unique contribution to my family and community as God would have me do. (The stakes are now too high for any of us to do otherwise.)
This small private truth points toward some larger social truths: that the seductive call of the tribe can be a siren's call; that there are no group goals or purposes existing prior to, and independently of, the life plans and the ideals of individual persons; that, unless individualism is truly exalted, multiculturalism descends into crass ethnic cheerleading; that, after all is said and done, race is an epiphenomenon, even here in America, even for the descendants of slaves.
Race talk like this is heresy for those I call racialists. Racialists hold to the doctrine that "authentic" blacks must view themselves as objects of mistreatment by whites and share in a collective consciousness of that mistreatment with other blacks. Believers of this creed have shaped the broad public discussion of racial affairs in America for decades; they have also policed, and therefore stifled, black communal discourse. They have argued, in effect, that the fellow feeling amongst blacks, engendered by our common experience of racism, should serve as the basis for our personal identities. Only if whites fully acknowledge their racist culpability, the racialists insist, can the black condition improve. In this they have been monumentally, tragically wrong, They have sacrificed, on an altar of racial protest, the unlimited potential of countless black lives. These are strong statements, but I regard them as commensurate with the crimes.
Because we share this problem-identical in essentials, different only in details-we can transcend racial difference, gain a genuine mutual understanding of our respective experiences and travails, and empathize with one another. As Sartre might have said, Because we all confront the existential challenge of discovering how to live in "good faith," we are able to share love across the tribal boundaries.
From the inside out
Ironically, to the extent that we individual blacks see ourselves primarily through a racial lens, we sacrifice several possibilities for the kind of personal development that would ultimately further our collective racial interests. For, if we continue to labor under a self-definition derived from the outlook of our putative oppressor and confined to the contingent facts of our oppression, we shall never be truly free men and women. The greatest literature of ethnic writers begins from this truth. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce says of Irish nationalism:
When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by these nets.... Do you know what Ireland is?... Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
Just as Irish nationalism stultified Stephen Dedalus of A Portrait, so too has the racialist emphasis on a mythic, authentic blackness worked to hold back the souls of young blacks from flight into the open skies of American society.
Toward the end of chapter 16 of Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison's hero recalls a lecture on Joyce that he heard while in college at Tuskegee, Alabama, in which the teacher argues:
Joyce's problem, like ours, was not actually one of creating the uncreated conscience of his race, but of creating the uncreated features of his face. Our task is that of making ourselves individuals.... We create the race by creating ourselves and then to our great astonishment we will have created a culture. Why waste time creating a conscience for something which doesn't exist? For you see, blood and skin do not think!'
Further on in this passage the hero concludes: "For the first time, lying there in the dark, I could glimpse the possibility of being more than a member of a race. It was no dream, the possibility existed. I had only to work and learn and survive in order to go to the top."
This is precisely the point. Ellison understood it. A later generation of black writers have refused to see it: Skin and blood do not think. The "conscience of the race" must be constructed from the inside out, one person at a time. If this is a social truth, it has important consequences for political life and discourse in contemporary America.
My colleague Charles Griswold has nicely captured the impossibility of discourse in a society that is dominated by mutually insulated groupsthose who define themselves by race, from the outside in. In a recent, essay he writes:
One frequently hears people declare, with passion: "speaking as an [X] I can inform you that [Y]," where -X- is the name of the relevant group and "Y" stands for some description or evaluation of the condition or beliefs of X. An auditor not in group X cannot speak with any authority about that group; one must and usually does defer immediately. The moral authority embodied in statements preceded by "Speaking as an [XI" stems in part from an epistemic thesis to the effect that the point of view shared by all members of X is not accessible, or at least not sufficiently accessible, to non-X persons.
Griswold is interested in the paradox of these mutually insulated groups, neither capable of understanding the other, who nevertheless insist upon equal group recognition. This is an apt description of the current state of American pluralism. But we must ask whether recognition can reasonably be demanded when understanding is denied to the outsider? How can genuine respect arise from mutual ignorance? How can the white, who has "no idea of what black people have endured in this country," really honor the accomplishments of blacks who have transcended the barriers of racial constraint? How can a black, who could "never see things the way the white man does," ever hope to persuade the "white man" to meet him halfway on a matter of mutual importance?
It would appear that empathy and persuasion across racial lines are impossible unless an understanding obtains that the conditions and feelings of particular human beings are universally shared. Such an understanding can be had, but only if we look past race to our common humanity. This implies that the problems facing poor, black Americans should not be presented as narrow racial claims but should be conveyed to the rest of the polity in their essential human terms.
From this perspective, the racialist's assertion of epistemic privilege is more than a philosophic stance. In our pluralistic democracy, it leads, as Griswold notes, "to the destruction of any notion of community except as the arena within which war is waged for recognition, and for the political and economic benefits which follow from recognition."
A politics of despair
Black-white relations are actually far worse than Charles Griswold's assessment would suggest. Racialists have waged a war for recognition" under the banner of black victimization for the past 20-some years. This war has now ended with a plaintive demand to be patronized. In a stunning attempt at political jujitsu, the voices of black authenticity insist that the very helplessness of their group gives evidence of whites' culpability, to which the only fit response is the recognition of black claims. This is a politics of despair, especially after the 1994 elections that illustrated that other white responses are possible. The racialist strategy has proved disastrous.
Consider the issue of affirmative action. Advocates of blacks, interests are now reduced to insisting that affirmative action is just and necessary because, without the use of special criteria for selection, the numbers of blacks in various important institutions of the society would be unbearably low. This argument is rooted in desperation.
The backlash against race-conscious policies continues to grow. Survey researchers Paul Sniderman and Thomas Piazza found in a recent study that "merely [mentioning] the issue of affirmative action [to whites] increases significantly the likelihood that they will perceive blacks as irresponsible." In the 1994 elections, white men voted in favor of Republican Congressional candidates over Democrats by a margin of 63 percent to 37 percent. This fact has many explanations, among which resentment of race- and gender-based preferences figures prominently. Claims of "reverse discrimination" by white men have long been treated by liberals as a mere annoyance or as reactionary expressions of distaste for the noble goal of civil rights." These resentments can now be seen for what they really are manifestations of the cost to the American polity of the reification of race. Ignored for a quarter of a century by those who make and administer our laws, these costs have now found their way into our political life, with unpredictable effects. For instance, a ballot initiative in California outlawing affirmative action may become the "Proposition 187" of the 1996 campaign. Can anyone doubt that it will attract considerable electoral support?
One consequence of all this is that the black poor are especially vulnerable politically. Democrats all, racialist black leaders of inner-city communities have cast their lot with those seeking to expand the welfare state, increase taxes, and promulgate more regulations. Blacks reliably provide one-fourth of the Democratic votes in presidential contests. Black congressional representation is significantly dependent on districts that have been gerrymandered so as to assure that ultra-liberal black candidates are elected without the inconvenience of having to persuade any whites to support them. 2
This political dependence on the Left has persisted despite the rightward political drift of the nation, ongoing for the last generation, and notwithstanding the cultural conservatism of a deeply religious blackAmerican population. These leaders have struck an alliance with feminists, gay activists, and civil libertarians, while building few bridges to center-right political organizations. It is now obvious that a conservative political majority can be constructed in this country, and that it can govern without the support of urban minority voters.
2 Political reporter Juan Williams has concluded that the Republican sweep of Congress in the 1994 elections "pushed black America into a corner.... The Congressional Black Caucus is politically impotent, its members stripped of key committee chairmanships and their voices weakened in the diminished choir of Democrats.... The most influential black American in government today is Republican-appointed Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas."
Justice Thomas had warned of these difficulties. Yet be was widely denounced by black politicians for his passionate opinion in Holder v. Hall, the voting rights case handed down in June 1994. Thomas, criticizing the Court's voting-rights jurisprudence to date, declared: "we have devised a remedial mechanism that encourages federal courts to segregate voters into racially designated districts to ensure minority electoral success. In doing so we have collaborated in what may aptly be termed the racial 'balkanization' of the Nation."
Thomas's concerns deserve more serious consideration than they have yet received. Because racial gerrymandering concentrates black voters in a relatively few districts, it actually makes it easier for conservative candidates to prevail ill the many districts not set aside for black politicians. According to Juan Williams, "redistricting brought eight new black seats to Congress from Alabama, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina. But it has also meant that 15 more Republican seats have been added from those states."
Poisoning democracy
The paradigm of racial accountancy has, of course, spread beyond politics, with deleterious effects. In The Bell Curve, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray point to a large gap in the average IQ scores between blacks and whites, suggesting that much of this difference is determined by genetic factors. The authors have received perhaps unwarranted criticism for simply stating the fact that, on the average, blacks lag behind whites in cognitive functioning. They certainly deserve criticism for implying, as they do, that we should accommodate ourselves to this difference in mental performance between the races and to the consequent social inequality. Yet Herrnstein and Murray can claim, with cause, that they are merely responding to the Zeitgeist: Their psychometrician's brew is expressed in the terms of racial groupings previously anointed by the advocates of social equity. They are saying, in effect, "Counting by race wasn't our idea; but since you've mentioned it, let's look at all of the numbers!"
Black American economic and educational achievement in the post-civil - rights era has certainly been ambiguous-great success mixed with shocking failure. The loudest voices among black activists have tried to bluff their way past this ambiguous record by cajoling and chastising anyone who expresses disappointment or dismay. (For instance, on the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, campus, it is now considered a racist act to observe publicly that black basketball players are flunking their academic courses.) These activists treat low black achievement as an automatic indictment of the American social order rather than a revelation of black inadequacies. They are hoist with their own petard by the arguments and data of The Bell Curve. Having insisted on the primacy of the racial lens, they must now confront the specter of a racial intelligence accountancy, which offers a rather different explanation for the ambiguous achievements of blacks in the last generation.
So the question now for blacks, as well as for whites, is whether, given equal opportunity, blacks are capable of gaining equal status. It is a peculiar mind that fails, in light of American history, to fathom how poisonous a question this is for our democracy. Let me state my unequivocal belief that blacks are, indeed, so capable. Still, any such assertion is a hypothesis or an axiom, not a fact. The fact is that we blacks have something to prove, to ourselves and to what W.E.B. Du Bois once called "a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity." This is not fair; it is not right; but it is the way things are.
Some conservatives have signaled their belief that blacks can never pass this test. Some black radicals agree. Increasingly and with greater openness, they argue that blacks cannot make it in "white America" and, so, should stop trying and that blacks should go their own way, burning a few things down in the process. At bottom, these parties share the view that blacks cannot meet the challenge.
Yet the challenge confronting blacks today is not racial at all. It is primarily the human condition, not our racial conditions, with which we must all learn to cope. What Paul wrote to the Corinthians many centuries ago remains true: "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man; but God is faithful, He will not allow you to be tempted beyond your ability, but when you are tempted lie will provide a way out so that you can bear it." The Greek word for "temptation" here can also be translated as "trial" or "test." If indeed blacks must now endure under the weight of a great human trial, still, God remains faithful. We can either confront and dispel our difficulties or deny and avoid them. That we can and must meet this challenge makes the core of Herrnstein and Murray's race talk spectacularly unhelpful. What they are actually saying is that success is unlikely given blacks' average mental equipment, but never mind, because cognitive ability is not the only currency for measuring human worth. Yet this is where viewing people first as members of racial groups must lead. This is the inevitable fruit of racialism.
Whatever the merits and demerits of IQ tests, the scores need not be bandied about in aggregate terms of race. If low intelligence is a problem, then changing the racial identities of those at the top and bottom of the IQ scale' does not solve it. Similarly, the crime problem in our society has nothing to do with the skin colors of the perpetrators and victims. It is a great-if common-moral and political error to advance the view that a person's race is his most important characteristic. Portraying a handful of vicious criminals-who happen to be black, and who prey disproportionately upon other blacks-as themselves victims is an egregious act of racialist propaganda. The result is not to engender sympathy in the minds of whites but instead to foster fear of, and contempt for, the communities from which these criminals have been advertised to have come. Smugly confident of their moral superiority in pursuit of "racial justice" for deathrow inmates, the racialists are unable to see how shrill and hysterical their claims sound to the average American.
Toward the unum
How can we begin to overcome the fragmentation of the "unum" that is the result of racialist politics? I propose that we suppress, as much as possible, the explicit use of racial categories in the conduct of public affairs. This will, of course, not erase ethnic identity as an important factor in the society; but a conscious effort to achieve a humanistic, universal public policy and rhetoric would redound to the social, political, and psychological benefit of underprivileged minorities in America. Racialists, of course, will dispute this. Stubborn economic inequality between groups, they will argue, gives the lie to the ideal of "E pluribus unum." But why should we care about group inequality, per se? Why not focus on inequality among individual persons, and leave it at that?
The preoccupation with group inequality is usually defended on the grounds that group disparities reveal the oppression of individuals based on their group identity. This rationale is ultimately unconvincing. As Thomas Sowell has shown, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Indians in East Africa, and the Jews in Western Europe are groups that, though subjected to oppression, have economically surpassed their oppressors. The lesson of history is not that-absent oppression-all relevant social aggregates must reap roughly equal economic rewards. Indeed, that view ignores the economic relevance of historically determined and culturally reinforced beliefs, values, interests, and attitudes that define ethnic groups. "Historically specific cultures," political theorist Michael Walzer has observed, "necessarily produce historically specific patterns of interest and work."
Nor can we claim that the very existence of distinct beliefs, values, and interests among groups proves oppression. In effect, this is to argue that, but for historical oppression, all groups would be the same along every dimension associated with economic success. Yet, if group differences in beliefs, values, and interests bearing on economic achievement are the fruit of oppression, then so are those differences in group styles celebrated by the cultural pluralists. To put the matter simply by way of a concrete example: If poor academic performance among black students reflects "oppression," then does not outstanding athletic or artistic performance spring from the same source? No. Obviously, the existence of group disparities is not a moral problem ipso facto. In any case, to the extent that inequality is a problem, it can be dealt with adequately without invoking group categories. American society has for 30 years pursued government, corporate, and academic policies as if the necessity of using racial categories were a Jeffersonian self-evident truth, The great costs to our sense of national unity arising from this fallacious course are now becoming evident.
Martin Luther King, Jr., is justly famous for his evocation of national unity in his 1963 speech "I Have a Dream," in which he said: "I have a dream that 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.,, Today, it is mainly conservatives who recall King's dream. And to evoke, with any passion, King's color-blind ideal is, in some quarters, to show a limited commitment to racial justice. In the face of formal equality of opportunity, liberals cling to race-conscious public action as the only remedy to the persistence of racial inequality. How deeply ironic that a vigorous defense of the color-blind ideal is regarded by the liberal mind as an attack on blacks.3 I submit, to the contrary, that establishing the color-blind principle is the only way to secure lasting civic equality for the descendants of slaves.
I Lest this appear an exaggeration, consider the following: in her 1984 book A New American Dilemma, political scientist Jennifer Hochselfild argues that the unwillingness of American courts and legislatures to override popular, democratically expressed opposition to massive, cross-district busing for school desegregation exposes our nation's limited commitment to the ideal of equal opportunity. In his 1993 bestseller Race Matters, noted black scholar Cornel West asserts: "visible Jewish resistance to affirmative action and government spending on social programs" is an assault "on black livelihood." In a similar spirit, black Congressman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) made headlines during tile 1994 campaign when he alleged that Republicans' advocacy of tax cuts was racist in motivation.
In his 1982 study Slavery and Social Death, Orlando Patterson rejects a property-in-people conception of slavery. Instead, he defines slavery as the "permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons." The novelty of this definition lies in its emphasis on the systematic dishonoring of enslaved persons. Patterson argues that hierarchical symbolic relations of respect and standing between masters and slaves are the distinguishing features of the institution of slavery. He finds it a common feature of slavery that masters parasitically derive honor from their power over slaves, while slaves are marginalized by virtue of having no social existence except that mediated by their masters.
Patterson's insight into the nature of slavery implies that emancipationthe legal termination of the masters' property claims-cannot by itself possibly suffice to make genuinely equal citizens of slaves (or of their descendants). The freedman must also overcome a historically generated and culturally reinforced "lack of honor-" matter that formal legal resolutions alone cannot dispel. How are the deeply entrenched presumptions of inferiority, of intellectual and moral inadequacy, to be extinguished? How are the doubts of former masters and the self-doubts of former slaves to be transcended?
This "problem of honor" is a tenacious ideological remnant of our origins as a slave society. It must be faced if we are to live up to the ideal of -E pluribus unum." Securing the respect of whites and enhancing selfrespect have been central themes in black American history. The late historian Nathan Huggins clarified the matter by noting that blacks, unlike the various American immigrant groups, are not an alien population in this society but an alienated one-an essentially indigenous people who, by birthright, are entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The political history of black Americans may be instructively viewed as the struggle to secure an acknowledgment of this birthright claim. Our goal has always been to belong to the "unum." Despite various separatist movements, the wisest African Americans have known that inclusion is the only way.
But this pursuit of freedom and inclusion is a very hard road. Booker T. Washington understood that blacks would have to confront the "problem of honor" and its demands in their efforts to achieve true emancipation. Washington argued
It is a mistake to assume that the Negro, who had been a slave for two hundred and fifty years, gained his freedom by the signing, on a certain date, of a certain paper by the President of the United States. It is a mistake to assume that one man can, in any true sense, give freedom to another. Freedom, in the larger and higher sense every man must gain for himself.
Washington also knew that progress for blacks in our democracy depended upon being sensitive to the concerns of whites. Indeed, every black leader of any influence has worked within such a context. Only in our time has the notion been advanced that "authentic" black leadership should be unencumbered by the need to consider white opinion. Only in our time, to repeat, are electoral districts drawn so that blacks may be elected without the inconvenience of winning white votes.
The old civil-rights activism sought to persuade; the new activism seeks to extort. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his followers protested vigorously on behalf of clear principles of social justice. Their use of nonviolent civil disobedience drew forth the affirmation of common principles from their fellow citizens. Their reliance on the humanity and decency of the American majority shows respect for the moral integrity of their fellows. King was thus, rightly, a leader of both black and white Americans. His stature in each community depended upon his influence in the other. The dramatic public confrontations he and others in the movement engineered were closely followed by white and black audiences-each aware that the other was watching. The morally persuasive nature of King's appeal mobilized the conscience of the white majority. By doing so, he also convinced many blacks that there was realistic hope, at long last, that their essential interests would be accommodated. King thus confronted the most critical task of any leader who seeks to promote racial harmony in our divided society: to assure the good people of each race that their counterparts on the other side do, in fact, exist.
That so many young blacks see in Malcolm X and Martin Luther King a legitimate polarity of philosophic alternatives is a telling commentary on the moral confusion of today's orthodoxy. Malcolm X is an exceptionally poor guide, especially concerning blacks and the American Unum, since the interests of blacks, properly understood, are inescapably intertwined with the concerns and sensibilities of whites. But it is to the radicalism of Malcolm X that the Afrocentrist rejectionist rabblerousers, like Al Sharpton, look for inspiration. And it is precisely because the civil-rights establishment has itself lost sight of the need to take whites' fears and revulsions seriously that it falls mute in the wake of the excesses of Sharpton, Jeffries, Farrakhan, et al., who, rather than persuade on the basis of a common humanity, issue demands from their racial bunkers.
We can see the consequences of this racial insularity in Crown Heights, New York. Murderous mobs of black youth rampaged, openly incited by Sharpton and others who then claimed status and prestige for themselves as brokers of the peace. Leaders like Sharpton have emerged because more respectable black advocates have abandoned that cardinal principle that Booker T. Washington understood so well. The dominant message of these leaders is that blacks have abjured persuasion, hold white opinion in contempt, and seek to frighten and extort. Such "leadership" apparently intends to ensure that bad people of both races will find each other, the better to keep conflict alive.
The truth is that whites do not need to be shown how to fear black youths in the cities; instead, they must be taught how to respect them. This means that effective, persuasive black leadership must show whites a disciplined, respectable black demeanor. That such comportment is consistent with protest for redress of grievance is a great legacy of the civilrights movement. But more than disciplined protest is necessary. Discipline, orderliness, and virtue in every aspect of life will contribute to the goal of creating an aura of respectability and worth. Such an aura is a valuable political asset and the natural byproduct of living one's life in a dignified, civilized manner.
Character counts
Because racial oppression tangibly diminishes its victims, in their own eyes and in the eyes of others, the construction of new public identities and the simultaneous promotion of selfrespect are crucial tasks facing those burdened with a history of oppression. Without virtuous character and public citizenship, there can be no genuine recovery from past victimization. But, thankfully, overcoming the accumulated disadvantages of past victimization is not an experience unique to black Americans. It's not just "a black thing, which you wouldn't understand."
A prominent civil-rights leader teaches young blacks the exhortation: "I am somebody." True enough, but the crucial question then becomes: "Just who are you?" The black youngster should be prepared to respond: "Because I am somebody, I will not accept unequal rights. Because I am somebody, I will waste no opportunity to better myself. Because I am somebody, I will respect my body by not polluting it with drugs or promiscuous sex. Because I am somebody-in my home, in my community, in my nation I will comport myself responsibly, I will be accountable, I will be available to serve others as well as myself." It is the doing of these fine things, not the saying of any fine words, that proves that here is somebody to be reckoned with. A youngster is somebody not because of the color of his skin but because of the content of his character.
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