Racist America?

The World's Most and Least Racially Tolerant Nations

Many of my academic colleagues are dedicated to the proposition that the United States is racist to the core. That, in fact, is the thesis of the influential book Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations, by former American Sociological Association president Joe R, Feagin. The nation is so deeply poisoned with white supremacy, in this view, that the country must pursue a massive mandatory re-education program for whites and compensatory political, economic, and educational benefits for all non-whites.

This argument has always puzzled me. I’m aware, of course, that racial inequality is one of the fundamental dilemmas running through American history. I grew up in the South during the period of the Civil Rights Movement. But I have also lived and traveled widely outside the United States and I have continually been struck by the fact that the U.S. is actually more egalitarian and more tolerant in attitudes and practices than most of the other places on our imperfect little planet.

A couple of days ago, I happened on the map above, which, according to an article in The Washington Post, shows the world’s most and least racially tolerant countries.  This was the work of two Swedish economists who used data from the World Values Survey to see whether economic freedom made people any more or less tolerant. Apparently, they did not find a relationship between racial attitudes and economic freedom, but it is notable that “racist America” is, by their measure, one of the world’s most racially tolerant countries.

One can raise questions about the measurement. Attitudes are difficult to measure. I suppose one could also take the position of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, that racism is not a matter of attitudes, but of social structures, so that we have “racism without racists.” This ultra-radical proposition means that any statistical variation at all among groups, regardless of attitudes, is evidence of racism and requires the continual redesign of American society until a goal of complete categorical equality can be achieved.  Like Feagin, Bonilla-Silva has no real world, historical basis of comparison for his condemnation of American society.

This lack of a real-world basis for comparison, I think, is the reason that social critics are often so willing to portray what is arguably one of the world’s most open, inclusive, and tolerant nations as redeemable from its racism only by a regime of radical transformation, and also the reason they blindly believe that some such regime of transformation actually would create their fantasy of a “just” society. These critics are not judging the United States by the standards of world history or by the standards of existing nations. Instead, they judge by the standards of a “counter-system,” the perfect society that exists nowhere but in their own imaginations. Measured against Cloud Cuckooland we will always fall short.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Body: Rites and Rights

Mr. Tsarnaev

In an earlier post, I commented on some of the strange, logically and psychologically contorted responses to the Boston bombings, such as David Sirota’s  early “I hope the bomber’s a white guy” article. The weirdness apparently continues. Meghan Darcy, writing on Policy Mic, has accused the United States of being “barbaric” for refusing to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

I don’t know if I agree that everyone “deserves” a place of burial, as Ms. Darcy has asserted. No such right can be found in the U.S. Constitution, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, or the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1793. Apparently, Ms. Darcy believes that her own sensitive feelings are sufficient to make assertions of universal rights and obligations.

Ms. Darcy

The bizarre part, though, is the accusation that the murdered was not yet buried because the United States refused to bury him. “There have been countless articles,” She writes indignantly, “asking why other countries and religions seemingly hate America … refusing a body burial and religious rites is a pretty good reason. But maybe that’s the new plan; maybe the U.S. hopes to deter future terrorists with the threat that if they die on U.S. soil they won’t be given a proper resting place.”  Let’s overlook her senseless suggestion that “other… religions seemingly hate America” (Is America a religion?  Can a set of beliefs and practices hate?) Let’s also overlook the fact that no critic of American foreign or domestic policy has ever complained about the unavailability of funerals for murderers in this country.  The claim that the U.S. has refused to bury Tsarnaev is clearly and obviously not only wrong, but ridiculous. The United States has never refused to bury anyone as a matter of policy or for any other reason.  The federal government has no authority in this matter.

At the time that Ms. Darcy wrote her piece, no city or town within the United States had agreed to accept the remains. This civic reluctance cannot be attributed to any pressure from the national government. Surely, since Ms. Darcy has such exquisite sensitivity on matters such as the civilized treatment of dead murderers, she should be able to extend a tiny bit of that sensitivity to the grieving people of townships in Massachusetts and elsewhere.  

An update at the top of her article informs us that someone has provided a burial plot and quietly resolved the problem of the unwanted body. Apparently, no representative of the United States interfered in any way with this civilized proceeding.

My point in writing this is not that one blogger shows a poor grasp of facts and an inability to think clearly.  Rather, I suggest that her craziness is symptomatic of a reflexive self-righteousness among some of our fellow citizens that leads them to cast aside reason and realism whenever they can find any excuse, however far-fetched, to preach against the evils of Satan America.

The Boston Bombing and Blame: A Sense of Proportion

Lone Wolves

The bombings in Boston killed four people and injured hundreds of others, leaving some maimed for life. The surviving perpetrator has said that he and his brother committed this crime for the sake of Islam. It would be unfair for anyone to blame uninvolved Muslims for the actions of the Tsarnaev brothers.

Note the shift from the indicative mood to the subjunctive in the sentences above. Also, note that the first two sentences describe murdering people and ripping apart their bodies, and that the last sentence makes an observation about potential unfairness.  There is a big difference between a reality and a possibility, however likely that possibility may be in someone’s judgment. There is a huge gap between blowing people up and merely being prejudiced against them.

These distinctions are the reasons I find some of the responses to the bombings so astounding.  Before any suspects had emerged, David Sirota published an opinion piece entitled “Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber is a White American,” by which he meant a native-born non-Muslim. Sirota is presumably disappointed now, but he may be looking forward to another vicious attack on innocent people, perpetrated by a criminal or criminals more to his preference.  The reason for his hope was that white males, enjoying “white privilege,” are not collectively denigrated,” while Muslims are.

Now, for another point of grammar: the passive voice. White criminals are identified as “lone wolves” by some cultural perspective that supposedly floats through the disembodied American mind. But all Muslims (or members of other supposedly “unprivileged” groups)  are held responsible for the act of any one in this cloud-like collective view. Now, as far as I know, investigators describe the Tsarnaev brothers as “lone wolves,”  and I haven’t seen any lynch mobs in the streets.  If I did see one, I’d hold those in the mob responsible, not some free floating culture of “white privilege.” But there probably are people in the United States who blame the religion of Islam or Muslims in general, just as there are people in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia who see Americans in general as imperialistic evildoers. The latter appears to have been the perspective of the Tsarnaev brothers, and they would have had the political right to their prejudices if they had not chosen to express them through destroying innocent men, women , and children.

This bizarre focus on potential popular prejudices resulting from actual atrocity can be found elsewhere, as in The Chronicle of Higher Education article on fear of a backlash against Muslim students. Now, I certainly hope that this doesn’t happen. I don’t regard the nice people at the mosque near me as responsible for attacks on anyone. If others do, I deplore their prejudices. But let’s maintain a little sense of proportion.

Napoleon Chagnon's Noble Savages

If one of the purposes of a book review is to inspire readers to take up the original work, Elizabeth Povinelli’s sneering ad hominem attack on anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon a couple of months ago can at least be credited with contributing to my interest in obtaining a copy of Chagnon’s memoir, Noble Savages. I did not find any of the “self-pity” that provoked such contempt from Povinelli, a Columbia University professor of anthropology and gender studies. This charge struck me as very odd, in fact, because most of the book is an account of Chagnon’s work among the Yanomamö and of the development of his theories. Only at the very end does he discuss the unsupported charges against him made by writer Patrick Tierney and by some anthropologists. Even in that part of the book, I thought Chagnon’s defense of his work and his reputation was entirely reasonable and justified. As an outside who is not an anthropologist, I thought that Povinelli’s review simply supported what Chagnon and his defenders have claimed: that many in the anthropological profession, including Elizabeth Povinelli, don’t like Chagnon’s ideas and that they’ve responded by trying to discredit the man rather than rebut the ideas.

Chagnon with Yanomamo

Essentially, Chagnon attempts to draw inferences from his studies of the Yanomamö about the development of human societies. I do have some reservations about how much one can say about early human social organization through looking at contemporary tribal groups, particularly when the generalizations are based mainly on a single people in a fairly unique environment, the tropical forest of South America. To Chagnon’s credit, he does support his generalizations with some references to archaeological evidence. Still, how many differences there may be between a tribal society on the African Savannah or in Mesopotamia tens of thousands of years ago and a contemporary tribal society in Venezuela. Despite this hesitation, though, I find Chagnon’s theories extremely interesting and worthy of serious consideration.

The conventional wisdom about the development of human societies primarily concerns the interrelationship of technology and economics. In the “socio-cultural evolution” model, the earliest human societies consisted of hunters and gatherers, whose tools consisted of sharp implements for hunting animals and cutting edible vegetation. These hunters and gatherers were nomadic because they had to be on the lookout for food. Depending on the environment, the hunters and gatherers gradually learned how to use simple tools to grow food or how to domesticate and herd the animals, resulting in horticultural and herding societies. As the former developed more advanced technologies for turning up the soil, such as plows, they created a greater surplus, leading to more social inequality, the need to protect surpluses (or to grab those of others), and therefore to political societies and warfare. These agricultural societies lasted until factory production made possible the production of even greater surpluses.  The mystery has always been, though, why people would make the transition to agricultural societies, since these usually relied heavily on single crop production, so that most “civilized” people suffered greater malnutrition, in addition to more oppression by elites than their tribal ancestors.

The socio-cultural view has a great deal in common with Rousseau’s description of the development of society: complex societies derive from fencing off property and (early civilization at least) was a fall from a better and more egalitarian state. Chagnon, though, draws on genetic ideas of “inclusive fitness” to offer a modified Hobbesian view, with the Yanomamö as empirical evidence.  Tribal societies are basically kinship groups. Human beings have evolved to support and trust their kin because when people who share genes (kin) cooperate with each other, the shared genes are more likely to be passed on. Now, comes probably the most politically incorrect part of Chagnon’s argument: the related individuals who cooperate are mainly men who are related to each other, and they are cooperating in obtaining the means to pass on their genes, i.e., women. Chagnon argues that warriors in a tribal society don’t fight  over material resources. They fight to grab or keep women.

Tribal groups tend to form larger and more complex alliances, still based mainly on kinship, because larger sets of warriors have an advantage over the smaller sets in the constant warfare. Agriculture does not lead to population growth; population growth, for the sake of efficacy in fighting, leads to the development of agriculture as a means of supporting more fighters (and, presumably, more specialized fighters as differentiation increases). Chiefs and kings emerge because the larger societies can’t be governed by informal, kin-based tribal methods.

One of the reasons I find Chagnon’s views plausible, as well as interesting, is that when I look at human history, in the recent past as well as the distant past, I see that warfare has been a driving force in both technological development and social organization. I am not sure that bride capture was as exclusive a motivation for fighting as Chagnon suggests, even from Darwinian logic. People do need access to resources, and competition for available food supplies is one of the primary mechanisms of natural selection. Still, warfare usually does have sexual dimension, even in modern conflict. 

The Stiglitz Plan for Engineering Mobility

Joseph E. Stiglitz

In the review section of the Sunday New York Times, the economist and Nobel Laureate Joseph E.Stiglitz remarks that “study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity.” We do not have equal opportunity in this country, he argues, because the probabilities for upward mobility vary among individuals starting life in different socioeconomic levels. He points out that only (his word choice) 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners move out of that category and just 6 percent move from the bottom fifth to the top. This is less mobility than is found in most of Europe (without giving specific examples) and all of Scandinavia. This state of affairs can be reversed by federal intervention. Washington should make sure that all mothers are not exposed to health hazards and that they get prenatal care. The government should put more money into preschool, and provide all children with adequate health care.  On this last, the federal government should not only provide resources to parents, it should “incentivize parents, by coaching or training them, or even rewarding them for being good caregivers.”  It should give more money to poor schools and offer summer and extracurricular programs to poor students.  Finally, the federal government should make higher education more affordable, perhaps by an income-contingent loan program like Australia’s or perhaps by providing the free universal higher education Stiglitz identifies as the European system.

As one considers this argument, the first point to recognize is that the phrase “land of opportunity” can mean at least two different things. Historically, it has meant that there are no laws or official barriers preventing individuals from pursuing their own goals, whatever those goals may be. If one accepts this definition, then it would be entirely reasonable to respond that there is no “myth” at all.  The second meaning would be the one that Stiglitz accepts, apparently with less reflection than one would expect of a Nobel Laureate. This is that opportunity should be measured by statistical outcomes. Even if one accepts this definition, though, one might conclude that Stiglitz is engaging in hyperbole. He says, for example, that only 58 percent of those born in the bottom fifth move up. This means that a clear majority of those born at the bottom of our socioeconomic scale do achieve significant upward mobility. Moreover, by his estimates, one of every sixteen people born in the bottom quintile ends up in the top.  While that is certainly far from complete fluidity, it would seem to me to suggest that there is not just “some” upward mobility, but a pretty fair amount.

Since he doesn’t cite figures for Europe or say whether he is comparing us to Europe as a whole (including Southern Europe) or across specific countries, it is hard to know exactly what his basis of comparison is. It certainly does not make sense to compare a society as large and varied as the United States to the relatively small and still mostly demographically homogenous Scandinavian nations.

I do think it is probably the case that there is less mobility in the United States today than there was in the decades immediately following World War II.  Mobility in the post-war period, though, was a consequence of structural change in our economy driven by worldwide demand for American industrial products and an accompanying expansion of managerial and professional jobs. There were more places at the top for people to move into. Without that kind of massive structural mobility, a lot of people can move up only if a lot of people move down. Given that most families in the top fifth of earners sensibly and justifiably dedicate their efforts to ensuring that their own children do not experience downward mobility, I think it is impressive that one out of every sixteen individual born in the bottom layer is able to move to the top.

Early childhood education may be a good idea. Healthy neighborhoods are definitely good. But we should think very carefully about whether these are matters that citizens should resolve through their local administrations and associations or whether it would be a good idea to let the central government decide these matters for us through regulation.  On the issue of pre-school, we might want to reflect that the benefits of Project Head Start, a federal pre-K program that has now existed for almost fifty years, have been highly dubious and that it does not appear to have had much of an impact on the mobility statistics.

The suggestion that the federal government start “coaching or training” parents is more than a little creepy.  The anthropologist Lionel Tiger (a great name, but a real one) coined the term “bureaugamy” to describe the state of affairs in which government bureaucracy had essentially become the equivalent of a bread-winning spouse in low-income families.  Stiglitz’s suggestion would complete this process by making government a full-fledged and even dominant partner in the rearing of children.  This could make low-income children ultimately even more dependent on the government-parent and actually end up decreasing statistical upward mobility. Regardless of the outcome, though, we should ask ourselves whether we want the nationalization of children.

I certainly agree that higher education should not be as absurdly expensive as it is in the United States today. Arguably, though, demand-side subsidies for higher education have been one of the forces driving tuition costs up.  Stiglitz’s reference to “the near-free higher education system in Europe” struck me as extremely odd. The European Union has achieved uniformity on a few things, but higher education is not one of them. Each European country has its own system. Some of them that do provide near-free tertiary schooling, moreover, don’t do so for everyone who wants to study anything, but have highly tracked designs that direct people into industrial trades or university studies. This approach may have its positive side, but it certainly is not a prescription for social mobility.

Another Affirmative Action Case for the Supreme Court

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette

The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that the U.S. Supreme Court is being urged to take up Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s appeal of a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that ruled a voter-supported state constitutional ban on racial preferences in higher education unconstitutional last November. Affirmative action advocates also want the Supreme Court to take up the decision, hoping it will produce a ruling against all propositions to end affirmative action across the nation.

The narrow 8-7 Sixth Circuit decision was based on the idea that there are many sorts of preferences in college admissions.  Universities may choose to show preference for students who will contribute to athletic programs, to children of alumni, or to dependents of faculty. In singling out racial preferences, the mandate placed a burden on those who received preferences because of race. The mandate did not ban legacy admissions or special consideration of athletes. While legacy and other applicants could simply lobby an admissions office to favor children of alumni, minority applicants seeking racial preferences would need to mount a campaign to change the state constitution.Therefore, according to the federal court, the ban places a heavier legal burden on one form of preference among many, and thereby treats the beneficiaries of race-based policies differently from the beneficiaries of legacies. The Sixth Circuit ruled that this differential treatment was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

One big problem with this reasoning is that the Supreme Court has consistently indicated that racial preferences do not constitute one preference among many. In the majority opinion for the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, Justice O’Connor approvingly quoted the 1984 Palmore v. Sidoti decision when she wrote “we are mindful, however that ‘[a] core purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to do away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race.’” I do not think that anyone has ever suggested that the Fourteenth Amendment contemplating eliminating legacies or athletic admissions. Justice O’Connor wrote further that “racial classifications, however compelling, are potentially so dangerous that they may be employed no more broadly than the interest demands.”

Given what seems to be a glaring contradiction between the Sixth Circuit view of racial preferences as one kind of preference among many and the Supreme Court view of racial preferences as an especially dangerous practice and as a fundamental target of the Fourteenth Amendment, I speculate that if the Court takes this up, it will strike down the Sixth Circuit decision.

Charter Schools and Integration

Little Rock Central High

The National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education has a new study just out on the effect of charter schools on racial integration. As the study observes in its introduction, many school desegregation advocates have argued that if families have freedom of choice in their children’s schooling, the families will exercise this choice to maintain or increase racial segregation. As Steve Caldas and I discussed in our book, Forced to Fail: The Paradox of School Desegregation, this line of thinking led to the coercive desegregation movement, which sought to dictate student assignments to schools in order to achieve true racial integration. Caldas and I maintain that this movement was self-defeating because policies of force contradicted the goals and interests of those who were able to move across school districts or out of the public school system and into the private. One of the examples we give is Little Rock, Arkansas, important for its historic symbolism because of the highly televised battle over the integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1957-58. Although Central High has long been acclaimed as a glowing success story in desegregation, by the time Bill Clinton visited the school to celebrate this success forty years later, it had changed from an all-white school to one that was two-thirds black, with much of the white minority internally segregated from the majority into the school’s advanced classes.

Naturally, those who believe that freedom of choice should be limited or eliminated for purposes of desegregation oppose charter schools because free choice is one of the core principles of the charter movement. However, the authors of the NCSPE study look at that historic district of Little Rock and they find that charter schools there actually show less racial segregration than the district’s non-charter schools.  They maintain that this is because schools are based on place of residence and that charter schools give people reasons to send their children to schools in other neighborhoods.

This is, of course, a case study of one school district and it is possible that a different district could yield different results. I would not conclude that charter schools necessarily produce more racial integration, or that this should be one of the goals of school choice. Still, I think the authors have a solid argument. If families see sending their children to schools with children from other neighborhoods and from other backgrounds as in the interests of their own children, then they will send their children to those schools. If they don’t, then they won’t, and efforts at coercion will backfire.