The question of whether politicians are racist is all over the news these days, and not just in the case of the Governor of Virginia. Several Democratic candidates for President have been asked whether they believe Donald Trump is a racist. Meanwhile, in the realm of celebrity, Liam Neeson admitted to entertaining fantasies of racial violence while denying that he was a racist himself. All of this has raised, once again, a question which has vexed Americans for some time now: how do we adjudicate whether or not someone is racist? I am certainly not the person to answer this question, but I have some thoughts on why the confusion exists, and it has to do with the political vocabularies.
Rather than relying on a spectrum or any other abstracted spatial metaphor, I find it most useful to organize political ideas into three broad yet easily distinguishable traditions: the conservative, the liberal, and the radical. These three streams of thought have accounted for most of the significant political concepts of the past few centuries, and it is often illustrative to look at how each, in a general sense, approaches certain political problems. For example, as Alan Kahan has written, the three traditions had very different ideas about how to determine who could participate in politics during the 19th century. Conservatives thought that suffrage was a hereditary property, not to be diluted by expansion. Radicals argued that it was a universal right, and liberals suggested that a limited but gradually expanding franchise should be delineated by “capacity,” or the ability to behave as a good political subject.
Now, think of how different Americans tend to talk about race and racism. We will set aside, for now, those Americans who are openly racist—the vast majority agree that it is bad to be a racist. The confusion lies in how they define racism. What follows is a very rough sketch of how the three major political traditions discuss racism in American society. It is important to remember that people can use the vocabulary of more than one tradition at different times. I’m merely trying to point out some general tendencies.
Conservatives use religious vocabulary and frameworks in talking about cases of racism. To be a racist is a kind of political or social sin. That is, it is an individual fault, and its cause is some defect in the individual’s heart, or soul. The criterion for “being a racist” is an open profession of an interior belief that one race is superior to another, similar to Christian professions of doctrinal beliefs. It is critical that the individuals inner beliefs and outward statements or acts are in alignment. Therefore, renouncement of personal racist beliefs (“I don’t have a racist bone in my body”) is often enough for conservatives to acquit an accused racist, just as the renouncement of heretical beliefs was often sufficient to demonstrate one’s allegiance to orthodox Christianity. In the rare case that person actually confesses to holding racist beliefs (and furthermore accepts that they are reprehensible), the only requirement for readmission into polite society is honest repentance, or simply the passage of time.
As with other social ills, when liberals talk about racism they rely on a system of medical metaphors: pathology, trauma, therapy, etc. Racism is conceived of as a disorder corrupting social relations within the body politic, which ought to be harmonious. It exists perhaps because of specific malignant agents or structures within the whole, or maybe without an intentional cause at all — it can be a kind of social neuroses, an imbalance that can develop on its own or represent an inheritance from earlier generations. The solution to the problem of racism is therefore limited therapeutic interventions by expert actors. This can mean the government, but also includes nonprofits, NGOs, specialized activists, and even private businesses. Occasionally a mass movement is necessary, but this is usually in the service of winning some specific policy reform that is meant to provide for healthier race relations. On an individual level, racists can be rehabilitated through education, psychological treatment, or even travel and culinary experimentation, all of which fall under the general rubric of “self-improvement.”
For liberals, racism and other bigotries are things that prevent the social system from functioning as it should. To radicals, on the other hand, racism is a feature, not a bug. It is one of the many structures of power that allow the ruling class to dominate and exploit the great majority of people. It exists not only in structures, such as the criminal justice system, but also in individuals as an ideology which buttresses the dominant position of the ruling class. Whereas liberals see prejudice as irrational, to radicals racism makes perfect sense, because it justifies unequal social relations after the fact. Thus, the solution to the problem of racism is to topple oppressive structures through mass movements and to confront racist ideology head-on, using force if necessary.
Once again, these are all rough tendencies, and oftentimes people are not consistently in one camp or the other. For example, the putatively liberal news media does rely on a liberal vocabulary when discussing racism in general, but when it comes to adjudicating whether or not individuals are racist, they often fall back on the more stringent conservative criteria. (I would even suggest that this is a big reason why no one is particularly pleased with the state of the discourse on race.) In any case, I merely offer this sketch as an explanation for some of the confusion — why, for example, conservatives insist that black prejudice against white people is just as big a problem as white supremacy. Sure, it’s partly self-interested hypocrisy, but it’s also justified by a much broader set of concepts that inform how they see the world. It’s useless, in my opinion, to point out their hypocrisy and accuse them of “bad faith:” my sense is that they genuinely view the issue like they say they do.
More interesting than the attenuated and self-serving conservative view, however, are the differences between radicals and liberals. The distinction I draw here can of course be applied to a variety of other topics: wealth inequality, climate change, imperialism, etc. In a political environment where left-wing activists are called “very liberal,” I think it’s worthwhile to continue to articulate what makes them different, even if any eventual solution to our deeply-seated racism problem (not to mention our current political crisis) will require some synthesis of the two traditions.
HUGE REALITY 