Racism is prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group.
Forms of prejudice, or hate, are definitely bad when they inflict, or advocate inflicting, physical harm to a person who poses no threat to you. By person, I mean the individual and all that matters to the person, like his family, his means of earning a living or his belongings. Race hate as a reason does not make it any less bad. Harming someone in self-defence, merely hurting someone’s feelings or failing to give someone something they never had in the first place do not count as harm.
A second wrong that is often part of racism is simply assuming that something superficial like skin colour tells you all you need to know about the character and worth of a person. It is bad to not try to recognise value when you could easily do so. Consideration is due to all of us.
A third wrong that is often part of racism is assuming all members of a group are alike and then failing to consider whether a particular racial stereotype applies to the person being judged. Such racists will be wrong in their judgement of a large fraction of cases even if their stereotype is accurate on average. Ironically, their discrimination may be wrong because it involves a failure to discriminate.
These wrongs suggest a failure or inability to think i.e., they imply the racist is stupid. Indeed, of all social behaviours various facets of racism have among the highest associations with being measurably unintelligent.
There is a claim that if the racist belongs to a marginalised group, it either is not racism or not bad. I disagree. It is racism and could be bad for any of the reasons above. On the other hand, there are situations where racism is not bad.
Likewise, there is a claim that racism undermines the human dignity of a people, and that they have an absolute right to that dignity. Really? Is truth not relevant? People have a right to dignity in the sense of the consideration due to fellow human beings. However, even with consideration, denying an unflattering truth is a bad idea – particularly if the truth exposes real threats to others. For example, it is true that young men are seven times as likely to be violent than women. Hiding that fact because it ‘undermines a man’s dignity’ is a bad idea because it poses a risk to women. In terms of morality and rights a woman’s safety trumps a man’s hurt feelings.
Element of truth
Stereotypes usually reflect a statistical reality. They contain an element of truth. We take that sort of probabilistic risk seriously when we craft driving-safety laws around factors such as speed, in spite of the rarity of incidents. So why not also take large average group differences in violent behaviour seriously, even when the vast majority of people in every group are not violent? The debate around the cause of such differences should not influence our basic right to notice them and act on that information to our own benefit. After all, is it bad if women notice that men are more likely than women to hit them and bad for them to then take precautions in male company, if most men do not hit anyone?
What if the racist mistakenly thinks there is an average racial difference on a matter of importance to him? Is it morally bad to be wrong when it influences the outcome for the target of the racism? Should it be illegal? I do not think so. Firstly, is it impossible to be unerringly correct on statistical matters that are not widely publicised? Secondly, the authorities are frequently wrong themselves about the facts even when there are research findings available. Two examples are the statistics on the proportion of people served by public health and the racial distribution of wealth in South Africa. Even more frequently no research exists or authorities ban it. One cannot research whether racial differences are genetic because authorities have preordained that they must be socially determined. France does not record race at all, making research all but impossible. It is not acceptable to demand that we trust authorities. At the end of the day, we must rely on our own thinking for every choice.
Researchers should investigate whether differences in racial outcomes or unflattering traits are genetically determined. If the research shows these hypotheses to be false, we will have strong anti-racist ammunition. Without knowing the answer there is always the suspicion that the racist is right.
If the hypothesis proves true, then we can control for that to find environmental solutions that do actually help. If the racist is right, and we declined to check, we have a slew of unhelpful, wasteful and harmful policies in play. Likewise, if there are large racial differences in harmful behaviour it is fair and important that the victims know about the risks. If a racial group is falling behind at school, we cannot deal with it if society bans noticing. So, France should record racial stats.
People like themselves
What if racists simply prefer people like themselves? Is that bad? To be honest it is not necessarily good, but it is not necessarily bad either. It is not bad when people choose to marry into the same race and ethnic group. In fact, the informed tell us the greater the similarity the more likely the marriage will work. Cultures that differ in jarring ways do not make for good collaboration, so it is questionable to insist that forced collaboration and integration is good. Why then is it bad when the racist does not want cross-racial interaction in any other sphere, in business or neighbourhood, say?
In sum, racism can be bad, neutral and even good. It is bad when it leads to actual harm or fails to invoke real consideration for the victim as an individual. It is not bad when it identifies racial differences that are associated with harm to the racist.
[Image: Markus Spiske on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend