What the charge of white racism really means

Here, from the Washington Post, is the declaration of the latest thought crime—symbolic racism, which, according to Alan Abramowitz, explains why working-class whites prefer Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama:

Racial attitudes have changed dramatically in the United States over the past several decades, of course, and overtly racist beliefs are much less prevalent among white Americans of all classes today. But a more subtle form of prejudice, which social scientists sometimes call symbolic racism, is still out there—especially among working-class whites.

Symbolic racism means believing that African American poverty and other problems are largely the result of lack of ambition and effort, rather than white racism and discrimination. Who holds symbolically racist beliefs? A relatively large portion of white voters in general and white working-class voters in particular, according to the 2004 American National Election Study, the best data available on this topic.

Here’s what Abramowitz is saying. If you see the fact that blacks are behind, i.e., disproportionately poor, low-achieving, and prone to disorderly and criminal behavior, and if you reasonably infer that it is something about these low achieving blacks—their behavior, character, beliefs, aspirations, abilities—that is keeping them behind, that means that you think that blacks have a defect or inadequacy relative to other groups, which means that you think that blacks are inferior, which means that you’re a racist. Therefore the only way not to be a racist is to think that blacks’ poor performance is caused by factors that have nothing to do with blacks—factors that are artificially imposed on blacks by racist whites.

In other words, if you’re white, the only way not to be a racist is to believe that blacks perform poorly because they are victimized by white racism. If you reject the idea that white racism is what keeps blacks down, that proves you’re a white racist.

To call whites racist because they reasonably believe that blacks’ chronic problems are a function of blacks’ own abilities, qualities, and behaviors, is to say that whites are morally defective for using their reason. Which is the same as saying that whites don’t have the moral right to use their reason. Which is, obviously, an infinitely worse form of racism than the racism that Abramowitz falsely attributes to whites.

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Jim N. writes:

“In other words, if you’re white, the only way not to be a racist is to believe that blacks perform poorly because they are victimized by white racism.”

Which is utterly absurd, obviously. It is precisely because I think blacks are essentially equal to me that I fault them for not living up to their own abilities. If I thought they were stupid savages by nature, I would no more waste time criticizing them than I would criticizing a duck for not becoming an accountant.

Mark Jaws writes:

You are exactly right about the racism practiced by liberals such as Abramowitz! According to liberal dogma, if a white person uses his or her gift of reason with regard to black under performance, then he or she is branded as a racist. Liberalism imposes a violation of our most basic of human rights—the right to think and to express an opinion. I have always said that if black people in Africa had managed to advance some respectable form of civilization, then we race realists would be wrong and the liberals would have a leg to stand on. But since blacks have contributed nothing to civilization (the Egyptians were not black), and when left to their own devices are not even capable of maintaining what whitey has built for them, e.g., Rhodesia, it is a liberal leap over logic to assume that black chronic underachievement is our fault.

LA replies:

“if a white person uses his or her gift of reason with regard to black under performance, then he or she is branded as a racist.”

Just as (to change the subject), if a person uses his gift of reason to notice the ubiquitous and undeniable signs of design in plant and animal life, he is branded a hoaxer and an enemy of civilization.

Adela G. writes:

You quote Alan Abramowitz in the Washington Post: “Symbolic racism means believing that African American poverty and other problems are largely the result of lack of ambition and effort, rather than white racism and discrimination.”

But of course. Symbolic racism is a demonstrably false belief, as the most cursory examination of any African nation reveals.

Take Zimbabwe, where the end of white rule has meant the institution of a socially just rule of law, the implementation of the democratic process and the fair and equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth and resources. This government of and by blacks for blacks has made life immeasurably better for all black Zimbabweans, increasing their personal wealth and educational opportunities and enhancing their health, with famine a relic of the white racist past.

Now if only white racists would quit the genocidal spreading AIDS throughout Africa, blacks there would make rapid progress on a scale that would dwarf the greatest achievements of even the Roman Empires and the Chinese dynasties at the heights of their power and influence.

Mark Jaws writes:

So Jim N thinks blacks are “essentially equal.” Just on what is he basing that Pollyannish view? I think there are inherent differences in population groups, and all the wishful thinking in the world will not make them disappear.

Paul Nachman writes:

Note that the Scientific American article also butchers an important detail of the Diallo case:

On February 4, 1999, four New York City police officers knocked on the apartment door of a 23-year-old West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo. They intended to question him because his physical description matched that of a suspected rapist. Moments later Diallo lay dead. The officers, believing that Diallo was reaching for a gun, had fired 41 shots at him, 19 of which struck their target. The item that Diallo had been pulling from his pocket was not a gun but his wallet. The officers were charged with second-degree murder but argued that at the time of the shooting they believed their lives were in danger. Their argument was successful, and they were acquitted.

See Mac Donald’s tentative account from that summer, which is backed up by the Wikipedia entry on Diallo.

It’s not clear to me if this is actually an article from the print magazine. (I went to the site.) If it is, though, we should refute it with letters, both on the Diallo carelessness and on the larger point—best data for that is the reporting by crime victims that Jared emphasizes and that I recently saw someone else emphasize—oh, it was Mac Donald, again, in her latest at City Journal:

Let’s start with the idea that cops over-arrest blacks and ignore white criminals. In fact, the race of criminals reported by crime victims matches arrest data. As long ago as 1978, a study of robbery and aggravated assault in eight cities found parity between the race of assailants in victim identifications and in arrests—a finding replicated many times since, across a range of crimes. No one has ever come up with a plausible argument as to why crime victims would be biased in their reports.

Plus there’s your point that if whites are inveterately racist, the only solution is separation.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 10, 2008 01:07 PM | Send