Colorblindness Is Racist … Except When It Isn’t

According to a distressing amount of mainstream social science these days, Americans fall into two broad groups: conscious racists and un-conscious racists.

Occasionally this grouping becomes confused, or at least blurred. Thus the conscious racists include many people who think of minorities as different from themselves. But then, all those who justify giving preferences based on race to promote “diversity” also trumpet this supposed “difference.” To accomodate this inconvenience, there is a convention of regarding the latter position not as racist but as racialist, a distinction that strikes me as having little more legitimacy that another distinction without a difference that it resembles — between discrimination and “reverse discrimination.”

Perhaps the most familiar argument for unconscious racism is the view that colorblindness is racist. (Some of the more extreme proponents of this position argue that advocates of colorblindness are intentional, conscious racists, but most do not.) Now comes a political scientist from Cornell, Nicholas J.G. Winter, who argues, according to a recent report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that the “universalism” at the core of such programs as Social Security both reflect and reinforce a pervasive if unacknowledged racism.

Political discourse has subtly and symbolically framed Social Security as an issue of race — as, in fact, a privilege of whiteness…. Conversely, he contends, “subtle and symbolic” linkages have framed welfare in a way that associates it with blackness.

“Whiteness,” he says, enjoys an “easy equation with normality and universality,” and thus

New Deal social-welfare legislation created two tracks of programs — needs-based programs such as Aid for Dependent Children, and “universal” programs such as Social Security.

“Universal,” he says, was associated by the racial majority with “us,” and “needs-based” with “them.” Moreover, he says, those racial associations come with attributes, including “the familiar stereotypes of blacks as lazy, dependent, poor, and potentially subject to discrimination.”

And now comes the “unconscious” gloss:

Mr. Winter believes that political leaders “almost certainly do not intend to draw on racial considerations when they discuss Social Security.” Nevertheless, he says, they do “engage white Americans’ race schemas” and — subtly and insidiously — increase the racialization of politics more generally.

Similarly, he does not think many voters would recognize the “racial resonance” of political discourse about Social Security. But that, he suggests, only serves to emphasize that “ostensibly race-neutral policy and political language can nevertheless draw on and reinforce the legacy of race in America.”

Well, there you have it. The fact that neither political leaders nor voters thing of Social Security in racial terms — excuse me, don’t recognize its “racial resonance” — just goes to show you how racist they, and Social Security, are.

Insofar as social science pretends to be a science, it may be worth asking here how one would go about falsifying this interpretation. For Sherlock Holmes, at least, the “dog that didn’t bark” at least was really not there; here, the absence of racial thought or intent proves racism.

Prof. J.G. Winter is impressed by the “subtle and sybolic” linkages that lead universal (read “white”) opinion to associate areas such as welfare policy or criminal justice with minorities, but I’m not. That is, I don’t think you have to be a rocket (or even social) scientist to understand why programs that are “universal” are not linked to particular racial groups, and why programs that serve disproportionate numbers of particular groups become associated with them.

Normal people make these associations even when their betters at Cornell or the New York Times do not. Thus, as Roger Clegg points out in several comments on National Review Online (here, here, and here), a recent front page article in the NYT on “New York Killers, And Those Killed, By Numbers” studiously avoided mentioning mentioning race except once or twice in passing and thus ignored some of the more dramatic facts in the numbers it reported. The NYT does note, as Clegg points out, that

“The offender and the victim were of the same race in more than three-quarters of the killings,” and “Whites and Asians, who seldom murdered, were also infrequently killed: Together, they represented 75 or fewer victims each year.”

Clegg continued:

Now, if my math is right, that means that at least 86 percent of the murder victims (and thus, if victim rates follow killer rates, about the same percentage of murderers) are black or Latino. You know the old joke about the Times: When an atomic bomb is dropped on the city, the headline will read, “Bomb Dropped on New York City/Blacks, Latinos Suffer Most.” But apparently this is not the case for murder victims, at least if it would also require reporting that the overwhelming majority of murderers are also black or Latino. According to Wikipedia, by the way, here are the City’s demographics as of 2004: “The racial makeup of the city was 44.66% White, 26.59% Black or African American, 0.52% Native American, 9.83% Asian, 0.07% Pacific Islander, 13.42% from other races, and 4.92% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 26.98% of the population.” So we wouldn’t expect the majority of those murdered and murdering to be white or Asian, but we would expect it to be more than 14 percent. My point is that the Times is hypocritical in when it emphasizes race in its reporting and when it doesn’t, and that, in its zeal to hide politically incorrect facts, it also hides the fact that the brunt of brutal crime is borne by, of course, Latinos and African Americans.

Shortly thereafter (here), Clegg pointed out:

if you click onto one of the nonracial charts accompanying the online version of the New York Times story re NYC’s murder statistics, you find out that, indeed, my math was pretty good: 87 percent of the murder victims, and 89 percent of the murderers, in the city over the past three years were black or Latino (and only 53 percent of the city is black or Latino).

And, in one last thing, he adds:

While whites and Asians are underrepresented among murderers and murder victims in New York City, it does not appear to be the case that Latinos are overrepresented; in fact, their murderer/victim rate is the same as their percentage in the general population (about 27 or 28 percent). The overrepresentation is among African Americans, who are 25 percent of the population, but make up 60 and 61 percent of murder victims and killers, respectively.

Clegg titled his first comment above “The Colorblind New York Times,” because it neglected to discuss the dramatic racial concentration of both murderers and their victims. I wonder if Prof. Winter regards this politically correct colorblindness as “engag[ing] white Americans’ race schemas” and — subtly and insidiously — increas[ing] the racialization of politics more generally.”

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  1. David Nieporent May 2, 2006 at 12:15 am | | Reply

    I had the same reaction to this article as Roger did. As I read it while sitting at the diner, I turned to my wife, described the topic of the article, and said, “Guess which issue the Times forgets to mention.”

    (For the record, she guessed it in one guess.)

    They focus on trivial issues like sex — most murders committed by males, which is so obvious as to be uninteresting — but bury their brief discussion of race in this “Front page article” on the inside part of the article.

    They don’t actually discuss the fact that most murder is intraracial, but you can figure it out from looking at the numbers.

  2. Chauncey May 2, 2006 at 1:49 am | | Reply

    You’re being a bit dismissive. When people think of welfare, I don’t think they view blacks as its “disproportionate” beneficiairies. In other words, most people think that welfare recipients are overwhelmingly black. They don’t correctly conclude that more blacks on average receive welfare than whites. They just presume that more blacks are on welfare than whites (real numbers). In fact, the “black welfare myth” is pervasive because people don’t take the time to do the basic math. Perhaps Winter’s arguments are a bit exaggerated, but they aren’t completely ridiculous.

  3. sharon May 2, 2006 at 6:32 am | | Reply

    You might be able to make that argument about welfare, but I doubt anybody thinks of Social Security as a “white” entitlement. I think they think of it as an “old person” entitlement.

  4. John Rosenberg May 2, 2006 at 7:24 am | | Reply

    Chauncey – I agree with Sharon. That is, I think you’re right in saying that most people probably do think of welfare as “black,” i.e., that nearly all (certainly most) recipients are black. But that is not the part of Winter’s argument that I think is “completely ridiculous.” What is ridiculous, I believe, is his view that Social Security is “white,” because of its “universalism,” and thus reinforces racial stratification, in part because most people don’t think of it as white.

    What I think reinforces racism is not “universal” programs — say, college scholarships to everyone, “without regard” to race — who meets “universal” academic and financial need standards — but racial preference policies that treat some better than others because of their race. They reinforce racism because they assert that blacks can’t be expected to meet the same standards as everyone else, and they increase racial resentment because people think, with good reason, that such racial discrimination is not fair.

  5. Anita May 2, 2006 at 9:25 am | | Reply

    if liberals really want to reduce racism, accusing everyone of being racist is not the way to go. It undermines the premise of liberalism, which is the goodness of human nature. And right along with the accusation that americans, that is, whites are evil and racist, is the implication that others are not or that it is okay that they are not. The lesson that I learn from the media every day is that all the demands of liberalism, and they are heavy demands, rest on whites or westerners or christians. No one else has to liberal. They can keep themselves “pure”, as for instance, muslims making sure that no one converts to a different religion. Liberals, black and white, should not imagine that people do not notice these contradictions.

  6. Hull May 2, 2006 at 9:59 am | | Reply

    I think the point of the comparison between welfare and social security is to show how differences in perception can reinforce our stereotypes. Social Security is basically welfare for old people, but we don’t have the same negative associations with Social Security that we do for welfare. The same can be said for farm subsidies and corporate welfare. We don’t think of corporate welfare queens or farmers being lazy because they get hand outs from the government.

    I think the “white” perception of social security is evident in the lack of stigma that comes with this form of welfare. It’s not so much that people think Social Security = white. It’s more, why is one form of welfare considered pathological (social welfare) while other forms of welfare are perfectly fine?

    Some might say that social scientists are just buying into racial propaganda and “race hustling” by acknowledging these differences in perception. I disagree. I think that social scientists and those who point out some of the biases (hidden or overt) that we share, are helping to achieve a more just and fair society. Really, John and the rest of the posters on this site from “the right” are doing the same thing: pointing out the apparant biases and prejudices in society that effect their group(s). The difference though, is that one group is fighting hegemony, the other is fighting bias resulting from efforts to undo hegemony.

  7. Chauncey May 2, 2006 at 2:09 pm | | Reply

    Yeah, his social security angle isn’t too convincing. I have to admit, though, it made me think. Your second point about racial preferences makes sense. But my view on it is that racial preferences don’t really “reinforce” racism to any noticeable degree. I mean, blacks are going to be perceived as inferior with or without preferences. They’ve always been perceived as inferior, even before preferences (perhaps even more so). Preferences may reinforce racism to an extent, but not enough to justify abandoning them (this is not to say race preferences are justified).

  8. Dom May 2, 2006 at 3:30 pm | | Reply

    “Social Security is basically welfare for old people”. Actually, SS is sold as forced savings, that is, we save now and collect later. It is nothing like welfare. As it turns out, it is more like a pyramid, but it is not perceived that way.

    “We don’t think of corporate welfare queens or farmers being lazy”. Sure we do. Most people would like to see these programs end. The little support they have is bipartisan. Why do these programs still exist? Because once installed, government programs are impossible to remove. That is why all decent people want to end AA right now.

  9. John Rosenberg May 2, 2006 at 7:41 pm | | Reply

    Hull writes:

    … but we don’t have the same negative associations with Social Security that we do for welfare.

    Indeed we don’t, and I believe the primary reason we don’t is precisely that it is universal, that it is avaliable to everyone (oh well, everyone who is legal) who has worked and who has reached a certain age.

    I myself have always thought, and still think, that all such government programs should be means tested, but the New Dealers who created SS were very much aware that if it were not made universal it would in fact be regarded as a welfare program, and resented. They chose to enlist middle class support by including the middle class in the benefits.

    There is one other distinction between Social Security and welfare that we should not allow political correctness to prevent us from mentioning. Although some demogogues no doubt exaggerated the amount of welfare cheating in the past , the fact remains that there were in fact at least some welfare cheats, not only those engaged in outright fraud but others who could have worked, and thus gotten off welfare, if they had chosen to do so. Those rotten apples exposed the whole barrel of welfare recipients to the unfair charge of being lazy, etc. By contrast, it has always been hard to be a Social Security cheat; either you’re old, or you aren’t.

  10. David Nieporent May 3, 2006 at 4:22 am | | Reply

    I think the point of the comparison between welfare and social security is to show how differences in perception can reinforce our stereotypes. Social Security is basically welfare for old people, but we don’t have the same negative associations with Social Security that we do for welfare. The same can be said for farm subsidies and corporate welfare. We don’t think of corporate welfare queens or farmers being lazy because they get hand outs from the government.

    We don’t think of those people as being lazy because they, you know, work. (Or in the case of SS, worked.) Whereas not only did welfare recipients traditionally not work, but some race baiters of the left actually called the minimal work requirements in the 1990s welfare reform “slavery.”

    (Which is not to say that I approve of government social security, farm programs, or other redistributionist government programs. It’s merely to say that the comparison between traditional welfare and some of these other programs is inapt.)

  11. Hull May 3, 2006 at 8:59 am | | Reply

    I’ll concede the point on Social Security.

    Still, I think that there is an obvious difference between a news report trotting out several minorities on welfare and a story on subsidies being given to lumber companies or airlines. That difference is a little bit deeper than “they, you know, work.”

  12. sharon May 3, 2006 at 8:23 pm | | Reply

    You are correct that there’s a big difference between welfare and industry subsidies. The first demeans the recipient, making him more dependent on the government and less self-reliant. The latter provides incentives for companies to grow, expand, and hire more employees who will presumably enjoy a better life because of that employment.

  13. The Constructivist May 4, 2006 at 1:30 am | | Reply

    Might be worth looking at Ira Katznelson’s history of social security and related matters in his recent book, When Affirmative Action Was White. He points out that to get through the Southern-dominated Congress, New Deal programs had to fit the preferences of the largely anti-black representatives, which lead to programs that on their face appeared neutral but in their effects (and he argues, in intent) minimized and even excluded African Americans from their provisions.

    On the larger question of color-blind racism, I recommend an article by Neil Gotanda in Wahneema Lubiano-edited essay collection The House That Race Built and by Kimberle Crenshaw in the Toni Morrison-edited collection on the OJ Simpson case, Birth of a Nation’hood. Don’t forget that although the Constitution never explictly mentioned slavery (and Jefferson’s veiled references to it were largely edited out of the Declaration), pro-slavery advocates found plenty to support their politics in it.

    Coded or veiled language that appears “race neutral” often isn’t. Matthew Frye Jacobson’s Whiteness of a Different Color shows that this tactic was even turned against southern and eastern European immigrants between the mid-19th and early 20th C, culminating in the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 that sought to drastically reduce the number of “questionable” European races coming to American shores.

    So while it’s easy to make fun of the professor and the social sciences (as a humanities prof I do it all the time, heh, just joking), I do think the issues he raises are actually worth looking into further rather than dismissing out of hand.

    On the crime/prison issue, I recommend Randall Kennedy’s Race, Crime, and the Law for a historical overview and Christian Parenti’s Lockdown America for a more political analysis of why the US is #1 in the world in imprisonment. If the suggestion here is that “race” is the primary cause, these books point to “racialization” as at least as important a factor.

  14. sharon May 4, 2006 at 6:20 am | | Reply

    “Don’t forget that although the Constitution never explictly mentioned slavery (and Jefferson’s veiled references to it were largely edited out of the Declaration), pro-slavery advocates found plenty to support their politics in it.”

    Likewise, the anti-slavery advocates. 3/5ths persons, you know.

  15. Hull May 4, 2006 at 8:27 am | | Reply

    Sharon, why do you think that welfare “makes one more dependent on the government and less self-relient” while subsidies provide “incentives to grow”? Without further explanation, you appear to be falling into the bias I mentioned. There are people on welfare that work and there are people that cycle between welfare and work. The assumptions that many people have about social welfare versus corporate welfare is exactly what Winter was talking about in the Chronicle of Higher Education piece.

  16. John Rosenberg May 4, 2006 at 11:40 am | | Reply

    Constructivist – I appreciate your comment, and I even agree with you that issues surrounding colorblind equality raised by Winter and others “are actually worth looking into further rather than dismissing out of hand.” Thus I hope you (and others) will not think me overly sensitive or defensive when I say that, although I profoundly disagree with their arguments, I don’t dismiss any arguments of the anti-neutrality professors and politicians “out of hand.”

    I certainly haven’t read everything, but as it happens I actually have read every book and article you cite in your comment, and have written here about some of them. (For example, Katznelson: here, here and here; Randy Kennedy [though not his crime book], here and here. I have also discussed a recent example of the “whiteness as privilege” argument here.)

    In short, I may be said to “dismiss” the “whiteness studies” criticism of colorblind neutrality (though I myself wouldn’t equate disagreeing with dismissing), but I don’t believe I do so “out of hand.”

  17. The Constructivist May 4, 2006 at 2:06 pm | | Reply

    Sharon–you’re right, that was a key disagreement between Garrisonians (“No Union with Slaveholders”) and black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass who held in “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” that the Constitution was salvage-able as a basis for a post-slavery nation.

    John, thanks for the tips/links–mind if I link to your site?

  18. sharon May 5, 2006 at 11:27 am | | Reply

    “Sharon, why do you think that welfare “makes one more dependent on the government and less self-relient” while subsidies provide “incentives to grow”?”

    It’s well-known that government taxes (punishes) behavior it considers bad for society and rewards (tax breaks, credits, etc.) behaviors considered good for society.

    A welfare recipient cannot continue receiving money from the government if he/she becomes self-sufficient. The payment is incentive not to become self-sufficient.

    The incentives given to businesses ARE government encouragement for the business to grow. In growing, it will virtually always hire more employees (tax payers) so the business can make more money for its shareholders who, many times, are these same employees.

  19. Cobra May 5, 2006 at 5:22 pm | | Reply

    Sharon writes:

    >>>”The incentives given to businesses ARE government encouragement for the business to grow. In growing, it will virtually always hire more employees (tax payers) so the business can make more money for its shareholders who, many times, are these same employees.”

    Except that corporations have no higher loyalty than profits. If corporations were loyal to their employees, we wouldn’t see runaway downsizing, outsourcing to cheap foreign labor, insourcing of illegal immigrant labor or forfeitures of 401K and health benefit packages.

    If corporations were loyal to the American nation, we wouldn’t see rampant off-shore accounting practices to dodge corporate taxation, putting a further load on the American taxpayer.

    If corporations were loyal to the American people, we wouldn’t see Energy companies lobby their bought and paid for politicians for billions of dollars in tax breaks, while putting a pittance towards research and development of alternative energy sources, while giving their CEO’s ABOMINABLY HUGE retirement packages (over $400 million dollars for Exxon CEO Lee Raymond.) Think about that one this summer while you’re forking over your paycheck for that same Saudi import product that those “multicultural” Brazillians don’t have to anymore.

    But, of course, Lee Raymond’s sultan like compensation still doesn’t reach the level of outrage in some circles, as the image of some random single mother slicing a piece of government cheese to share with her toddler for dinner.

    That’s just another casualty of the class war propaganda campaign.

    –Cobra

  20. sharon May 7, 2006 at 11:56 pm | | Reply

    Why should corporations have a higher loyalty than profits? When corporations are profitable, that money goes into expansion of the company, which leads to more jobs and dividends to shareholders.

    And sorry you are jealous that you can’t make the money of Exxon’s CEO. But then, you probably aren’t responsible for nearly the people.

  21. Cobra May 12, 2006 at 10:09 pm | | Reply

    Sharon writes:

    >>>Why should corporations have a higher loyalty than profits? When corporations are profitable, that money goes into expansion of the company, which leads to more jobs and dividends to shareholders.”

    I have no problem with corporations having profits as their highest loyalty. I do have a problem when the US GOVERNMENT has a higher loyalty to corporations than to the AMERICAN PEOPLE, to the degree that corporations write public policy.

    That’s the textbook definition of FASCISM.

    Sharon writes:

    >>>”And sorry you are jealous that you can’t make the money of Exxon’s CEO. But then, you probably aren’t responsible for nearly the people.”

    Well, let me post three statements about Exxon:

    >>>”…With $339.9 billion in revenue and profits of $36.1 billion, Exxon earned more than any U.S. company in history last year—more than the profits of the next four companies on the FORTUNE 500 combined…”

    “…This year Wall Street expects it to spend roughly $15 billion on exploration and production, buy back at least $20 billion in stock, and pay $8 billion in dividends, all without having to raid a cash hoard that exceeds $30 billion…”

    “…It’s discipline, and it’s apparent in everything from the company’s dress code (forget casual Fridays in Irving) to its ability to CUT MORE THAN 10,000 WORKERS FROM THE PAYROLL since 2000, even as revenues rocketed. ”

    Corporate Gods

    You seem to forget that I’m a liberal, which IMHO grants me the oft elusive ability to actually READ the whole story about something. When the largest company with the highest profits in American History lays off THOUSANDS of workers, while spending more money buying back stock than research, while giving a $400 million dollar retirement package to a CEO already earning over $14,000 a DAY, I can’t consider that behavior I would find myself jealous of.

    –Cobra

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