These Are The 4 Academically Accepted Categories Of Racism
Maybe I’m a little too proud, but the racism of low expectations is my least favourite kind of racism.
I can handle the “where are you from” brand of racism. And the name-calling flavour of racism positively rolls off my back. But the, “we’ll make an exception for you because you can’t possibly live up to the standards of your white peers,” genre of racism really gets on my last nerve.
In my article, Is It OK To Be Racist?, I highlighted racist rhetoric from white people and people of colour. I pointed out that if we ever want to move beyond racism, everybody needs to abandon it.
Thomas thought I should make an exception.
Thomas:
While this is extremely well written and articulated I think it doesn’t make a key distinction. The quotes you gave do absolutely represent racial prejudice (which absolutely goes both ways) but they themselves do not constitute racism. Racism is the systematic application of racial prejudices in ways that influence laws, policies, and norms.
In the 18th century many white people held a prejudice against black people as being an inferior race. However if white people in positions of power had never acted on the prejudices they would have only been just that, prejudices. It’s the manifestations of that prejudice written into our laws like slavery and the 3/5th compromise that were racist, not the thoughts themselves. Today, those manifestations include things like voting rights laws that specifically make it harder for shift-based workers (which are worked predominantly by people of color) to make it to the polls.
The reality is that when white people make public displays of racial prejudice they (1) have a greater ability to act on those prejudices through societal systems that as a result promote racism and (2) are inherently endorsing the continued existence of other already existing racist structures.
In contrast when people of color espouse racial prejudice towards white people they can do (1) but to a lesser extent on the whole and cannot really do (2) because those racists structures against white people don’t really exist.
Is this a double standard? Absolutely. But when you analyze how racially prejudiced remarks from white people stoke the racial fabric of society’s institutions in ways that does not happen with remarks from people of color, you realize this double standard is not quite as egregious as it may seem.
Steve QJ:
“Racism is the systematic application of racial prejudices in ways that influence laws, policies, and norms.”
No. This is simply one type of racism. To pretend this is all there is to racism actually ignores the majority of racism that people of colour face. Please stop it.
Thomas:
Respectfully I believe that influences of racial prejudice on laws and policies promulgate institutional and structural racism while the influences of racial prejudice on societal norms promote interpersonal and internalized racism. These are the 4 academically accepted categories of racism and I believe that the highlighted quote here encapsulates each of them. I mean no ill will and would love to hear your point of view if you disagree.
Steve QJ:
“These are the 4 academically accepted categories of racism and I believe that the highlighted quote here encapsulates each of them.”
Racism is not an academic exercise. Nor is it likely to be addressed in ways that might reduce it by people whose careers depend on finding ever more abstract ways of claiming that it's ubiquitous.
For example, please describe some of the laws and policies you're saying are influenced by racial prejudice. What concrete changes would you make to these policies? How would they be better for people of colour?
Systemic racism, white supremacy, these are stock "academic" answers to questions at all levels of public life nowadays. But what are you actually talking about when you invoke them?
Don't get me wrong, there are examples (more of policies than of laws) that carry racial prejudice. I can even think of a few policy changes that would decrease prejudice against people of colour. But comments like these get lazily thrown around by people who have almost never given any thought to the specifics of what they're talking about. They're just articles of faith that do precisely nothing to improve the lives of black people who are genuinely struggling. All while making the person repeating them feel pious.
People of colour don't need to be coddled by white people. It is belittling and patronising to pretend that because we aren't in the majority, we have no agency. That a person whose skin is brown who fantasies about killing white people should be taken less seriously or viewed less harshly than a white person who says the same thing about people of colour. This view, for the record, is white supremacy.
Thomas:
Laws and Policies
- The North Carolina voting rights laws requiring specifically a drivers license to vote in person when black voters are 39% less likely to have a license than white voters.
- Texas SB1 voting rights bill that restricted in person polling hours making it more difficult for shift based workers (who are predominantly people of color) to be able to voteThe solution. Numerous studies have proven the voter fraud across the country is not statistically significant so therefore voting should be made AS EASY as possible to allow for maximum voter turnout no matter your socioeconomic situation. Having maximum voter turnout over times creates a government and society that’s truly reflective of the will of all the people and not just those who have the ability to perform all the administrative steps that allow them to vote. Take a state like Colorado, as soon as you have a registered address in the state, with no action required, a ballot is automatically mailed to you and can be dropped out anytime til the close of polls on Election Day. Why make voting harder when voter fraud even in places with the easiest voter registration and highest turnout has not proven to be a statistically significant issue?
Systemic Racism
- Public schools with predominantly students of color receive as much as $2700 per student less funding than predominantly white public schools.
- People of color are 2-3x more likely to get denied for loans
- people of color get on average longer prison sentences for equivalent crimes compared to white peopleI understand that much of this is caused by people color on average being poorer than their white counterparts. But this disparity for blacks is a holdover from Jim Crow America where they didn’t have equal access to employment and nor equal access to property purchases which in turn reduced the generational wealth they were able to pass on to todays generation. The fact that this systemically created disparity is allowed to persist means that the government and society at large is ok with it rather than actively attempting to correct it.
Steve QJ:
Unless something happened in the interim that I'm unaware of, that law was struck down (https://www.npr.org/2021/09/17/1038354159/n-c-judges-strike-down-a-voter-id-law-they-say-discriminates-against-black-voter).
But more to the point, this has nothing to do with Scott Adams saying racist things on the internet. Or whether Elie Mystal or Aruna Khilanani saying racist things on the internet is any less meaningful.
It has nothing to do with black people being called ni**ers and slaves by customers as they try to do their jobs. It has nothing to do with them being less likely to get a job. It has nothing to do with an education system where young black people are consistently told that the world is against them, chipping away at their confidence and ambition.
It also has nothing to do with black elementary school kids thinking it's a good idea to make their white classmates kneel and pledge allegiance to BLM. It has nothing to do with this asshole yelling at a child on the subway because he's white.
All of this is racism too.
I'm not denying the existence of systemic racism. Though its influence is less all-encompassing than most people claim. But to suggest that this is all there is to racism, or that racist people of colour don't have any culpability in perpetuating racism, badly misses the point.
It is also, as I said before, white supremacy in the true sense of the term. It is a view built, however well intentioned, on the premise that white people as individuals, not as a demographic, inherently hold more power than black people. This isn't true. We can talk about systemic racism and racial disparity without pretending that it is true.
In his defence, Thomas has at least given some thought to what he means by systemic racism. You wouldn’t believe the number of conversations I’ve had where it’s used as a catch-all for anything from a rude barista at Starbucks to a funny look from a stranger.
But, like so many people, he doesn’t seem to have given much thought to whether it's relevant.
A white person speaking, no matter how vile and racist that speech might be, is not systemic racism. And a person of colour sharing their fantasies about killing white people is not…not racism.
Sadly, people like Thomas don’t get to feel like the heroes of a story of systemic racism unless they insist that they still hold power over every black person. And too many black people enjoy the cloak of victimhood too much to admit that their lives are already mostly free of racism.
The black people who are dealing with the impact of past racism aren’t writing op-eds in the New York Times. They aren’t expounding the “four academically accepted categories of racism” or yelling in the comment sections of my articles. They certainly aren’t arguing that we shouldn’t be talking about gun violence in black communities or the need for more policing (not less) in their neighbourhoods or any of the other important topics the media refuse to touch.
Any meaningful conversation about racism needs to start with the people who need help. Not the people who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars turning their lives into abstract academic theses.
Anybody who draws attention from these people is maintaining racism.
This is true whether they’re spreading hateful rhetoric or faking racial grievance or mindlessly parroting dogma. Whether their intentions are good or bad or profit-driven. Whether their skin is black or white or turquoise.
No exceptions.
People get into a stink about affirmative action in university admission when they think it favors black people. What they don’t realize ó the extent to which it protects white people too.
If admissions were based on academic achievement alone, universities would be mostly Asian. Not because Asians are smarter, but because of the strong cultural emphasis on achievement.
And that's why I've attempted to stop using the terms "racism" or "racist" online - the terms have been unilaterally (and in my view, smugly) redefined by activists, and so at best you wind up arguing (mostly unproductively) about definitions rather than content. At worst, people just argue past each other, implicitly referring to different things and making no sense to each other.
Also, even without recent redefinitions, when the same term is used for anything from lynchings to teaching kids standard English in school, it's both inherently confusing and easily weaponized to borrow extreme emotional valence from one end of the spectrum to exaggerate the seriousness of something at the other end. "Racism" has become a huge amorphous blob concept, not much better than, say, "scientists say".
So instead I decided to exclusively (as best I can remember) use the terms "racial prejudice", "racial discrimination", "racial bias", "racial stereotyping", "racial hatred" etc. in discussion with strangers. Even DiAngelo etc agree that all races can do these things to all races, so it circumvents a tiring and predictable replay of the same old metadiscussion.
Perhaps a new term like "racial patronization" would be useful to add to that vocabulary, for the "low expectations" form you reference in the article. (Acknowledging that it's a subform of racial bias and racial stereotyping).
An unexpected benefit is that I found that deciding more specifically which term to use was clarifying for me as well. I suggest readers try this in their own writing and see how it goes.
I recall a study which found from video recorded interactions that liberals tend to simplify their vocabulary and sentence structure when speaking to an unknown Black person, while conservatives tend to verbally treat them more as equals. I believe that when critical social justice ideology promotes empathy for the downtrodden by centering "the poor oppressed who need our help" in their conscious and unconscious, it reinforces negative unconscious stereotypes of functional inferiority. A typical white progressive's internal model of a archetypical Black person is often somebody barely literate living in urban poverty and oppression by police - and they can have trouble recognizing that a majority of Black folks are middle class or above today. (There are differences in the economic stats between races, but not as stark as their internal model would have it.)
My spouse grew up in Geneva, and tells of how when visiting New York on family leave, her mother automatically spoke French to the serving staff. In that case, she would obviously catch herself when they looked in confusion, but a liberal automatically speaking simplified language to Black people would typically would never realize it - although a message can be sent anyway.
If CSJ advocates were serious about "micro-aggressions" and rooting out their own "unconscious biases", they would take this as a key element to reform about themselves, but (in my view) since this "being kind to our oppressed lessors" with a corresponding boost to one's own moral status (at least in one's own unconscious) is one of the unacknowledged psychological payoffs powering the adoption and spread of the ideology, this tends to be pushed out of consciousness.