I have a simple question: How will we know if and when racial equality ever arrives?
I believe there are two equally simple but strikingly different answers to this question, answers that lead to different and even conflicting policies. One answer is that racial equality will have arrived when discrimination on the basis of race has disappeared; the other is that racial equality will have arrived when the races are equal or proportional in everything measurable. Both answers often rely on the “level playing field” metaphor, but the second one actually requires an equal score as well, and handicaps (advantages) for the favored team to produce that equal score.
The first answer — let’s call it the traditional model of equality — aims for equal opportunity and demands the removal of barriers and obstacles that impose burdens based on race. By contrast, the second answer — let’s call it the “structural inequality” model — aims for an equality of results and requires the eradication of all manifestations of “inequality,” whether or not the inequality was caused by discriminatory barriers. One can readily see how the “disparate impact” theory of discrimination — that statistical racial disparities alone are strong evidence or even proof of racial discrimination — is a linchpin of the “structural inequality” model.
President Obama and the Democrats are lock, stock, and barrel in the structural inequality camp. In fact, as I have argued a number of times, they are so committed to that view that to be consistent the president should issue a new Executive Order explicitly replacing the ones issued by Presidents Kennedy (10925) and Johnson (11246) calling for colorblind equal treatment “without regard” to race, and the Democrats in Congress should repeal all civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race since their “inclusion” policies require racial preferences.
The “structural inequality” view in all its glory (and with all its customary obfuscation and confusion) was on grand display in President Obama’s recent address at the NAACP’s 100th Anniversary convention. Most, interesting, I think, is that the traditional model of equality still holds such sway in the hearts and minds of most people that it remains necessary to talk in terms of “barriers” even when those are hard to discern or define. Thus the president’s speech mentioned “barriers” to equality nine times, of which this was the first:
… yet, even as we celebrate the remarkable achievements of the past one hundred years; even as we inherit extraordinary progress that cannot be denied; even as we marvel at the courage and determination of so many plain folks – we know that too many barriers still remain.
What, then, are those “barriers”? The president doesn’t scrimp in giving his list:
We know that even as our economic crisis batters Americans of all races, African Americans are out of work more than just about anyone else – a gap that’s widening here in New York City, as detailed in a report this week by Comptroller Bill Thompson.
We know that even as spiraling health care costs crush families of all races, African Americans are more likely to suffer from a host of diseases but less likely to own health insurance than just about anyone else.
We know that even as we imprison more people of all races than any nation in the world, an African-American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a jail.
And we know that even as the scourge of HIV/AIDS devastates nations abroad, particularly in Africa, it is devastating the African-American community here at home with disproportionate force.
These are some of the barriers of our time. They’re very different from the barriers faced by earlier generations. They’re very different from the ones faced when fire hoses and dogs were being turned on young marchers; when Charles Hamilton Houston and a group of young Howard lawyers were dismantling segregation.
The president thus knows that these barriers are “different from the barriers faced by earlier generations,” and hence that we shall not overcome them with the same methods and policies that were used in the past because, he says, we “know that prejudice and discrimination are not … the steepest barriers to opportunity today.”
What are the steepest barriers? You guessed it.
The most difficult barriers include structural inequalities that our nation’s legacy of discrimination has left behind; inequalities still plaguing too many communities and too often the object of national neglect.
Now, take another look at the “structural inequalities” on Obama’s list:
- an unemployment gap;
- a health and health insurance gap;
- a prison incarceration gap;
- an HIV/AIDS gap.
He could, of course, have listed more “barriers,” such as various academic achievement gaps (reading and math scores, SAT scores, high school and college graduation rates, etc.), and it would have been helpful if he (or is that He?), or someone, would explain the sense in which these gaps are “structural,” but never mind. This unanalyzed list is sufficient to illustrate the new “civil rights” strategy — “civil rights” in quotes because it should be obvious that these gaps do not result from “barriers,” i.e., from policies or practices that treat people differently because of their race.
If these “barriers” cannot be removed (actually, if these gaps cannot be closed) by the passage or enforcement of laws barring discrimination, what should the modern “civil rights” movement demand of government? According to President Obama, exactly what he is providing.
These are barriers we are beginning to tear down by rewarding work with an expanded tax credit; making housing more affordable; and giving ex-offenders a second chance. These are barriers that we are targeting through our White House Office on Urban Affairs, and through Promise Neighborhoods that build on Geoffrey Canada’s success with the Harlem Children’s Zone; and that foster a comprehensive approach to ending poverty by putting all children on a pathway to college, and giving them the schooling and support to get there.
One does not have to deconstruct the president’s speech — one has only to read it — to see that he believes the “steepest barriers” holding down blacks are nothing less than the very nature and performance of modern American capitalism itself. The current downturn, in his view, did not result from correctable flaws in the system but from the system itself, a system “built on sand,” a system not in need of reform but of transformation.
But our task of reducing these structural inequalities has been made more difficult by the state, and structure, of the broader economy; an economy fueled by a cycle of boom and bust; an economy built not on a rock, but sand. That is why my administration is working so hard not only to create and save jobs in the short-term, not only to extend unemployment insurance and help for people who have lost their health care, not only to stem this immediate economic crisis, but to lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity that will put opportunity within reach not just for African Americans, but for all Americans.
Some wags used to joke (it was a joke, wasn’t it?) that nuclear war should be outlawed as discriminatory because it would have a disparate impact on women and children. I don’t think Barack Obama is joking when he argues, as he did to the NAACP, that capitalism must be transformed because it’s bad for blacks (and, oh yes, for everybody else, too).
