In his column in the Washington Post today, “Why Wait for Reparations,” the always interesting William Raspberry inadvertently, I think, reveals some tensions in the way we think about equality. He writes:
There was a time not long ago when we believed that all we needed for equality was a fair shot. Don’t deny us the opportunity to use places of public accommodation, to absorb as much education as our appetites demand, to work where our skills and potential warrant, to vote for the people who make our laws, to live where our money will allow and, in general, to seek the good things of life.
That demand could be translated: We don’t need white America to do anything for us because we are black; only stop doing things to us because we are black. Just treat us fairly from now on.
The demand for reparations says something else: that fair treatment from now on can’t solve our problems; we need someone else to solve them or, failing that, to accept responsibility for them.
To his credit, Raspberry is critical of this new responsibility-shifting notion, but I believe he misses a crucial element in our disagreements about equality. It’s not that we used to believe “that all we needed for equality was a fair shot,” as Raspberry maintains. We used to believe that a fair shot, i.e., non- discriminatory treatment, was equality. Non-discriminatory treatment, we used to believe, was not something that made equality possible. It, itself, was the essence of what we meant by equality.
Raspberry seems to approve of the older idea of non-discriminatory equality, at least insofar as he rejects the “give me the money” ethos that underlies the demand for reparations. But he also seems (in many other columns) to approve of racial preferences — doing things “for us because we are black” — which conflict with that principle. His uncertainty about what equality requires reflects a confusion that is quite widespread.
P.S. [8/27/02] – A coupla weeks ago the blogosphere was filled with discussion of Charles Krauthammer’s observation that conservative’s think liberals are stupid and liberals think conservatives are evil.
William Raspberry is definitely not stupid, nor is he the sort of columnist or liberal (if he is a liberal) to call conservatives evil. I don’t know him, but I bet he even has conservative friends. Nevertheless, there is one paragraph in his column that reveals — again, unintentionally — how the way issues are framed today gives rise to Krauthammer’s astute comment:
For a lot of people, not all of them black by any means, America isn’t working very well. Sometimes it’s their own fault, and sometimes — particularly in the case of children — it isn’t. Can’t we agree that it is in our own interest to improve their outlook, their preparation, their life chances — spending whatever it takes in money and human effort?
Once the issue is framed in this manner it’s easy for liberals to believe that anyone unwilling to spend “whatever it takes” to save the children is greedy, selfish, and evil. It’s also easy for conservatives to think that anyone who believes “spending whatever it takes” is the best way to solve the problems of children is stupid.
We would all be better off if both conservatives and liberals assumed good will all around and spent less time taking pot shots at the character and intelligence of their opponents and more time arguing about their substantive disagreements.
