We Are All Racists

Time to flog a dead horse. According to a Harvard study about a year ago, all whites are racists. All oppose blacks – often unconsciously. They can't help it. It's all around them.

Do you question Affirmative Action? You may justify it by demanding equal ability for equal opportunity but in reality, consciously or not, you really oppose any benefit for blacks. You're a racist. Do you note that there are more violent crimes in black neighborhoods than white? You wouldn't even be thinking about it if you weren't a racist. Do you oppose entitlement programs? The truth is that you oppose any program that helps blacks – especially assisting unemployed ones at the expense of taxpayers. That might never enter your thoughts, but it's there. You're a racist.

And that's the way it's always been. We've always followed the teachings of our society, whether we learned them in school or on the street. Only we never labeled each other based on that learning. We never faulted ourselves for believing – even subconsciously – “common knowledge.” “Givens” earned that position because we all know them to be true. And sometimes they are.

But even if they're not, belief or disbelief in a commonly held view should not, because of our own uncertainty, or our own wish to rise above bigotry, be the cause of labeling – or our refusal to do so. When the media report that a truck was driven into a large crowd, and the driver emerged carrying an automatic weapon with which he shot the survivors while yelling “Allah Akhbar,” it is not Islamophobia to consider it a terrorist attack. And, on the other hand, it makes no sense to label one who challenges a law that violates his conscience as a “religious bigot.” But that is the current practice – a practice selectively (and usually politically) applied.

We're all sexists. Men and women are different. It's true. Perhaps they shouldn't be, but they are. (I'm not quite sure “should” and “shouldn't” enter the picture. DNA and evolution have decreed that males are sexually aggressive while females use other methods to attract the bearers of that aggression.) Over the millennia people, and the societies in which they live, have developed approaches to the situation, and attitudes about it. A line existed between acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and, though that line was often crossed, violations were, in the past, usually viewed as “the way it is.” Not necessarily right, but not always as one-sided as we see them now. Current sensibilities tell us that the man is always wrong and women who accuse them of acts that happened decades earlier are reliable bearers of truth. And acts formerly considered unexceptionable (and often desirable) by the standards of their times are now prima facie evidence of abuse by a more sensitive society – even it they occurred when there was a different view. And those who question current reasoning are sexists. (As are those who don't believe that the same salaries should be given to all who do the same job, irrespective of decades of experience as opposed to a new hire.) So are those who are reluctant to hire pregnant women – women to whom they will almost immediately have to give paid leave.

If we don't make accommodation for a short person to play in the NBA, we discriminate against those who are “differently able,” while we are “ageist” if we have second thoughts about hiring someone close to retirement age for a long term position. And, of course, we're bigots if we require that an immigrant be legal. Nowadays we criticize whatever we don't like. We add an “ism” to it and accuse others of intentional ill-feeling irrespective of the mood of the times. Only a few may be doing the accusing but the label sticks, with media, eager to attract attention, trumpeting whatever a politically correct public will buy. It's society's fault.

Perhaps the reexamination of a question raised earlier will introduce some context.

“Do you question Affirmative Action?”

For whom and for what?

Anti-Semitism has been around for thousands of years but we've never raised this question in relation to the Jews. Obviously there can be no compensation for lives lost. And we bridle at the idea that we may have to make good for the ills of other societies. But there is no debating the fact that here in America it has been practiced since before the country was founded. Are we responsible for the sins of our fathers – sins which continue to this day?

If we know that, among other slights, there were quotas and other methods for keeping Jews from getting the education for which they were fit, should we have an Affirmative Action program for them? Or for other minorities against whom there was prejudice? Do we only feel guilt and responsibility, and do we only recognize those traits, when it is politically correct?

Whatever the virtues of the Harvard study, it is hard not to believe that the investigators hadn't reached their conclusion before starting, and that their “conclusions” won them much praise in the academic world.

December 8, 2017