19 sep 06
"Is the NAACP a racist organization?"
Cartoon by Pat Oliphant, published on January 31st, 1989
sorry for the delay. it's hard to complete assignments for work, assignments for school, and then assignments for "ask the box". my life is one of assignments.
i think a lot of times "racist" (as an adjective) is taken to mean "a quality that implies any thoughts about race" -- ie, words that group people into "races", and then go on about the cause and effect of these groupings. there are people and organizations that are so painfully PC that they don't want to hear any words that mention differences between the races, call the "races" into existence in the first places, or even note cultural differences of any kind.
i know someone who, while a student in unitarian divinity school, went before a committee of sorts, one that would determine if she was fit to serve as a minister. during the course of the interview, she mentioned wondering if it was all-right, if it was acceptable, to note and appreciate aspects and elements of black culture -- specifically, the emotional and spiritual intensity of many african american church services (which provide stark and perhaps rather embarrassing contrast to the conservatism of many unitarian congregations, which tend to be white, upper-middle-class phenomena).
as a result of presenting this musing, she was made to attend a three-day seminar on "racial sensitivity" before she was allowed to preach. any recognition of race, whether it's considered social construct, physiological variation, or both, is deemed wrong and evil by surprisingly many entities -- you can't even talk about it. if there's not allowed any sort of open dialogue on race, then the associated social ills aren't going to get any better. if you have carefully plan every word that comes out of your mouth (and even every thought that comes from your brain), it rapidly becomes difficult to communicate or discuss anything. the P.C. "thought police" work against that which they claim to support: acceptance and diversity.
the NAACP fingers "colored people" ("african americans" now-a-days, even though that term has inherent problems and won't sit much longer -- see the above ollie phunt cartoon) as a race, and promotes their "advancement".
i've always taken "a racist" to mean "someone who applies stereotyped traits to every member of an ethnic group, without evaluating individual examples and observations". for instance, if a black man robs a bank, the racist will come to believe that all (or most, or some, etc -- any number than the one observed) black men rob banks -- being racist constitutes a refusal to deal with people on an individual basis. if a company doesn't give blacks job interviews because they've heard "blacks as a whole" (a statistical "average") exhibit poorer work performance, they're following a racist policy, as well as potentially overlooking their best people. in most cases, it's helpful to only assign traits to the individual, after observation and assessment of that individual.
is someone who says "i hate black people" a racist, as i'm defining it? yes, because he hasn't met every black person (let alone made the effort to get to know those few he has met). is someone who says "black people, on the whole, enjoy a lower income than whites" a racist? no. how about "black people, on the whole, commit more crimes than whites"? this might give you pause, but why is this different than the previous assertion? both are true statements, regardless of why they're true.
talking about black (or white, or whatever) people "on the whole" is dangerous -- yes, you can make statistical analyses that are no less valid than ones that conclude that "most dolphins weigh between 300 and 400 pounds". but even though most blacks aren't doctors and most doctors aren't black, this doesn't mean that the best doctor in the world isn't black.
i can see why someone might think the NAACP to be "racist" -- the organization works in favor of a particular race (there's an NAAWP, except it's usually signified with another familiar acronym). but is espousing and implementing policies that favor a particular race, as defined as a social category by the containing society, "racist", as in "bad"? is racism (recognizing that there are different races with different attributes, and treating them differently because of some of them) always bad?
no-one can argue that african americans didn't get saddled with one of the most reprehensible deals in the history of civilization, one which is still fresh and raw in the USA's national memory. blacks weren't allowed to use the same bathrooms as "real" americans until 42 years ago, and the last person born a slave died 27 years ago. in contrast, slavery and unfair laws have existed in the united states and the later-to-be united states for 345 years. the official policy of treating black americans as less than white americans didn't end all that long ago, and its repercussions have not ended by a long shot.
this is not to mention that bad feelings still exist -- that some white people hate, fear, and avoid some black people because of associated qualities (and that some blacks do the same to some whites); there's almost 350 years of bad blood there, from that first dutch slave ship that came into port in 1619 to the equal rights amendment in 1964, soaking the killing floor. i've heard it said, "what do blacks have to be angry about? those alive today weren't born slaves". not to mention the fact that many blacks born today were born in the days of segregation, cultural memory is longer than individual memory -- it spans the age of the culture in question. for the culture of the african american in the united states, equal treatment under the law began almost exactly one year ago (387/345 = 80/x). it takes some time to get over something like that.
furthermore, and perhaps obviously more importantly, black americans continue to get a raw deal in wealth, health, and education, which is why the NAACP is still around.
the NAACP is "racist", if one defines racist as "favoring any particular race over another". by that definition, affirmative action is racist, too. however, ignoring the power and subjectivity of the word "racist", let's look at a timeline of NAACP actions, straight from the horse's mouth. nothing on it is terroristic, amoral, or fascist; the NAACP has only endeavored, since 1909, to help black americans get treated like proper citizens. the NAACP isn't a controversial organization -- at least wikipedia doesn't say so, and wikipedia is an excellent place to dig for controversy.
affirmative action is a difficult topic, and i recognize the perspective that it's clearly racist (just like the NAACP): favoring one race over another. yes, this is certainly true -- but the goal of affirmative action is a long-term one, and one that is certainly not "racist"; rather, the goal is anti-racist: to put blacks on an equal footing with whites in the workplace and society overall. the NAACP uses "racism" to overcome "racism", if you will. do you see the problems inherent in the word i keep enclosing in scare quotes? it's not descriptive or useful, and its meaning different things to different people can and does generate a lot of trouble.
it's frustrating, and in a lot of cases devastating, to the white job applicant who gets passed over in favor of a less-qualified black applicant. but the goal here isn't to punish white people, even though it feels that way sometimes.
let's call this "racism". is racism, so defined, always bad? no. sometimes it's necessary to treat one race differently than another; for instance, in order to help a race overcome a comparatively low socioeconomic status. it's key to remember that affirmative action isn't some kind of revenge or reparations -- it's purely practical, and its goal is simple: to even things out.
but we can all imagine the parents who are against the death penalty until their daughter is murdered. and it's true -- i might sing a different tune if i discovered that i missed a great job due to quota policies. but taking a broad look at society rather than at the individual, affirmative action is placed in better light.
certainly i'd be more inclined to apply at an "equal opportunity employer" than at an "affirmative action employer". does affirmative action do its job (does it help put blacks on an equal footing with whites)? studies have been, as you might imagine, fraught with controversy, sort of like the studies described in the bell curve -- subject to unusual scrutiny that is sure to bring out flaws that wouldn't be discovered or focused upon under "the usual" scrutiny.
i've heard it said that affirmative action programs work to increase racial tensions -- create "racism", if you will. i agree -- they do. i know that some white persons look at black people -- any black person -- with resentment, because that given white person was denied a job due to quotas (or at least he thinks that's the reason he wasn't hired). or, maybe the white person is only aware of affirmative action second-hand, and still blames the black person walking by, in principle. "some damned coon like him took my job", or even "some damned coon like him would take my job if i applied at the wrong place".
as i said, racism means different things to different people. dictionary.com provides a couple of possibilities. one of them is:
a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
what's a difference between races? blacks have darker skin than whites. so, a black person would tend to win at a "who can sit in the sun longest without getting sunburn" contest. is that individual achievement, based on inherent traits? white people developed their skin tone in damp and dreary northern europe. australia has the highest skin cancer rate in the world, and the USA isn't far behind (consider these places' aboriginal inhabitants, and their skin tone).
a less-problematic definition:
hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
feelings like this are not logical -- how can you hate every individual in a group without assessing every individual? how can anyone "hate all black people"? however, someone might claim to hate "black people in general", based on some statistical analysis that may or may not be valid. is this wrong? if this attitude amounts to policy (which is inevitable), policy that mistreats people (in this case, black people), then it's clearly damaging.
there are physiological differences between the "races". in fact, people who study this sort of thing take "race" to mean the same thing as "biogeographic ancestry" -- ie, people with roots in greenland all looking like eskimos (err, i mean "inuit"). someone did an enlightening study in which he grouped people into "races" based on a number of different biological traits, such as fingerprints and lactose intolerance. he found, that depending on the trait he used to do the grouping, that a "race" might include, say, both swedes and xausas (members of an african tribe).
however, he ignores the "geographic" in "biogeographic" -- lactose intolerance isn't concentrated in a geographical area, whereas the physical traits of a group you or i usually consider a "race" do correspond to where the people in question hail from. i and quite a few others consider biogeographical ancestry to be the same thing as the social category of "race", even though people can (and do) define "race" any way they want. but biogeographic ancestry certainly exists -- it's the way we evolved as a species. that's what i mean when i say "race" -- a physiologically/genetically distinct group of people, where these distinctions correlate with where the group's ancestors are from.
we have no problem talking about a race of bears, or a race of swallows, but suddenly when the animal in question is humans, we hesitate to use that word.
the human races have different traits. does this mean we can say some are good at things, while others are bad at things? sure -- whites are bad at sitting in the sun without getting suburn. is this "racist"?
let me touch on race and intelligence, just because i know you're itching for it.
do you know what this is? does it fill you with emotion?
some research has found that IQ varies from race to race -- that the normal distribution of scores for a given race falls to the right or left of another given race. this is controversial, because IQ (the ability to solve the soduko puzzle in the morning paper) is taken to equate "value as a human being". this is just as silly as skin color equating value as a human being. we can make similar bell curves for skin tones in the races, and they're going to fall to the right and left of one another. no-one raises an eyebrow at this, even though it's a physiological difference. but as soon as the examination of physiological differences moves its way up to the brain, people get nervous, angry, or self-righteous.
When the New Republic devoted almost an entire issue (10/31/94) to a debate with the authors of The Bell Curve, editor Andrew Sullivan justified the decision by writing, "The notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is not, we believe, an inherently racist belief."
In fact, the idea that some races are inherently inferior to others is the definition of racism. -- Jim Naureckas in "fair.org"
why does having a lower or higher IQ make you inherently inferior or superior? it's just a physiological trait. and that's all i have to say about the hand-wringing surrounding the bell curve, and similar research (of which there's been a lot -- the findings are kept hush-hush, though).
is the NAACP "racist"? maybe -- they don't have a banner outside that says "all white people are evil", but they do focus on racial differences and advocate the betterment of a particular race. but are they doing the Right Thing, regardless of precarious and fuzzy semantics? i think so. it's never good to focus on what entities are, in lieu of what they do (naming rather than describing), and the NAACP is helping blacks to gain an equal footing, something they've been systematically denied for the aforementioned 345 years.
groupings of people, based on traits, behavior, thoughts on god, or whatever, are different. maybe some differences correspond to where the ancestors of those groups of people are from. maybe they also correspond to what elementary school they went to. why is this important? people have differently-colored skin, and different preferences in ice cream. enter "identity politics" -- a kind of tribalism where people will say "here we are! we are different from (and probably better than) you, because we are us!"
this is funny, and racist. it loops -- just leave it playing for a minute or so to get the full effect.